Haven’t been terribly productive lately – or posted a lot. Stress at work – but most of that went away when I passed the biggest certification test I needed on Friday. One more certification test to go, but I’m much more confident about the next one.

In the good timing department Shiny (my lovely daughter) was scheduled to be off camping last night. The wife and I got some celebration time after we dropped the kiddo off, but not much – we were pretty wiped out from the week.

Today was an excellent day. The wife and I spent the entire day together. It was like an extended date. Most of what we did was totally mundane (like visiting relatives, shopping, watching a show), but we did it together and that made all the difference.

The non-mundane stuff: we went and had Lebanese food for dinner at Cedars in Camp Hill. The food was delicious. We may just venture that way again. http://cedars.dzvin.com/

Capstone: went to Cupboard Maker Books (personal favorite) to help the owner celebrate being named 2013’s Bookseller of the Year! It’s a great shop – you should drop by if you’re in the area and pick up something to read. http://www.cupboardmaker.com/

I’ve got a handful of posts lined up and waiting – just have to crank them out. More soon.

Balticon 47 (this year) is the first time that I’ve been invited as a guest to a convention. There’s a ton of work going on behind the scenes to get the convention ready for everyone including setting up all the tracks and included panels. I can only imagine that getting all the guests lined up and in order is like herding cats. I’m doing my part – signing up for stuff I want to participate in.

And it’s away… I’ve sent in the list of panels I’m requesting to be on.

Very Excited!

http://www.balticon.org/

Yes, I’ve seen it already. It was good. Others that were with me thought it was great. I’m going to put a bunch of stuff here in no particular order – all first impressions stuff. I’ll try to stay away from spoilery stuff, but you’ll probably be able to figure stuff out and then not be “surprised” by where things go if you read this. Not my fault if you go on from here.

This movie hit all the notes it was supposed to from a story point of view. The first one was excellent, the second one had issues and then there was the Avengers part. This felt like a good cap point when it was done. Yes, they left themselves a way back… it’s based on a comic book, duh. There’s always a way to come back.

Speaking of that – I spoke to somebody that read the comics as a kid. Yeah, you may or may not be disappointed in the way a couple of story lines got blended together. It’s not the comic (just as the Hobbit movie isn’t the book). I only really know the films, and from that point of view – it worked for me. There were a couple of fairly predictable parts from my point of view, but that’s part of “hitting the right notes”.

Notes – the music was not at all what I thought it would be. Funny that I’d notice that, but I did. The cynical part of me thinks they just couldn’t afford the royalties to the rock music anymore.

The kid in the movie was well done. Good acting on his part. The smaller parts really were good in this. The lady in the bar, the sheriff that meets a bad end, the guy in the TV truck – all totally believable (if not a little scary – guy in the truck I’m looking at you). Stan had his cameo – and it was amusing.

The ending – you know, the bit after all the credits roll? Yeah, really nice cameo. I like that particular actor quite a bit. Stay for it.

That about sums it up I think… OH, yeah, the 3D bit. It wasn’t distracting, so I’ll say good. Needed? I’m not so certain of that, but at least it didn’t take away from the film. I’ll also say this is worthy of a trip to the big screen even though it wasn’t the over the top special effects bonanza I was afraid it was going to be. Well done and likely to be added to the home collection to round out the set (at least until the next one comes out;)

The weather has been fantastic. This is a great spring weekend. I suspect I picked a very difficult time of year to start doing lots of work on this “inside” kind of project.

On the up side, I got an old fashioned thank you note in the mail from a friend. I was shocked (at least initially) and then felt really grateful that I still know other folks that think things like that are important.

I’d like to say everything’s up and running, but stumbling is more accurate. There’s a lot of work to do here – and very little knowledge on my part about how to get it done. This will take time.

I know some helpful folks have passed suggestions along to me about SPAM control, but until I get a little better at everything here – ALL comments are being moderated… at least when I get the chance to log on here and check things out they will. Still need to keep the day job rolling along.

Yay! The web site is up and visible. I’m on my way!

So… Here’s hoping somebody other than me can see this.

No, Mark, you don’t count – you’re sitting right here.

So, I still can’t figure out what the hell I’m doing wrong that this web site can’t be seen. To add to that, I’ve had 4 spam comments that have found there way there – even when nobody else can see the site. Stupid spammers.

Sooner or later, I’m going to figure out how to drive this here website correctly and get something posted that everyone can see.