This post comes to you from the top of Monte Sano Mountain!

I wanted to update all weekend long, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Greetings to all those of you in my adoring public and a special greeting to those of you joining us for the first time.

Reign Over Me
I saw Rein Over Me this weekend. It was written and directed by Mike Binder, the same guy who brought you The Upside of Anger (Amazon, IMDB). Rein Over Me had one hell of a cast where it counted. Adam Sandler broke type by not playing a comedian but rather a grief-stricken father and husband to a family lost on 9/11. Don Cheadle was also top notch in role playing Sandler’s former college roommate as well as a husband and father to his own family. The interesting thing to note was Alan Johnson (Cheadle) wasn’t neglecting his family because of work or the re-discovery of his roommate Charlie Fineman (Sandler); rather, he was neglecting his family because he was in a sense still discovering who he was as a person.

I can only comment on Binder’s work through the prism of The Upside of Anger. The concept was a good one and the execution of that idea was somewhere between 6 and 6.5 on a 10 scale. I expected the slow pacing; after all, Binder had recently given us a script that centered around the world of five girls from the female perspective. Much to his credit, Reign Over Me doesn’t need to be fast-paced or action-packed and box office sales will take a direct hit because of this. The film dragged a bit towards the 3/4ths mark making the ending a little anti-climatic but is ultimately forgivable because of the curveball of Donald Sutherland cameoing as a judge who, brooding at first ultimately gives us a little comic relief before delivering the message of the movie not unlike Family Guy.

Work, work and more work
I have a little story that I’ve been dying to tell you my gentle readers since Thursday. I was delivering to a local upscale motel (which is to say that it wasn’t the headquarters for the escort service which means that alas, the girl isn’t included in the price of the room.) Having worked the area while at Domihoe’s, I am familiar with the manager and he I. He was outside behind the office chatting it up with one of his customers who happened to be puffing away on a stogie. I complimented him on keeping the art of smoking fine cigars alive and we started up a little chat.

He claimed that two weeks prior, he was in a cigar shop in Jamica which sold Cuban cigars. The owner of the shop sold him a box of 20 sticks for $130. Included in the price was the removal of the original bands, the application of substitute bands as well as a substitute box. Customs gave not a second look and allegedly the shop owner gave this gent his card saying, “just email me when you want more. I’ll do the same and send them to your doorstep.”

Let me tell you about my introduction to Cuban cigars. My neighbors of yore were both in the Army and served together in Afghanistan. I met her first; her tour had ended before his. We became friends and her beau (they were married in November of 2005) joined in our little reindeer games when he finally came back home. I forget the occasion of just why, but she was smoking a Cuban. I don’t remember what brand so don’t ask. I do remember it had a large ring gauge (probably a 60) and a lot of young uniformed Army guys (18-22 age range) were at her place because her husband was their commander and they were gearing up for redeployment.

I remember the drag I was allowed was rather mild. The thing that sucks about it was that I had just started fooling around with cigars (if peach White Owls count as cigars) so I really couldn’t appreciate it because I had no basis for comparison. I also remember “Alice” saying that she got her box (I don’t remember if it was 20 or 25) for $150 and that there were boys paying $300 a box just to get their hands on product to attempt to smuggle into the country.

I didn’t tell that story to the gentlemen at the motel. All I know is he got me to thinking about how I wanted to travel and freely buy Cuban cigars in foreign countries. I thought about walking around in some cigar shop on some beach somewhere exotic wearing a comfortable tropical shirt, khaki shorts and sandals. Man, did I ever want to have a Cuban cigar right then! I don’t know if it was because I wanted to have bragging/gloating rights or if I actually thought I’d have some kind of satisfaction from consumption, but I wanted a damned cigar.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end and our pleasant conversation was no exception. Off to my delivery I went. When I came back down he was still there so we talked some more. Finally he said, “Because I’m such a nice guy, if you’ll follow me back to my room, I’ll give you one of these.” You want to talk about a bull in a china shop! I had reservations about following him for security reasons but it turns out he was traveling with his family. His wife couldn’t believe it either! And now, I offer photographic proof:

The stick itself

The Band

I apologize for the fuzziness, but I do not own the much coveted Nikon D-80

I have already decide that I will save this prize for consumption with when I visit him and his the first part of August.

I think they finally figured out at work that I’m brighter then the average light bulb. I installed a few of the products on my laptop this afternoon and was planning on cataloging my “library” i.e. the few books and DVDs I have. Well, that didn’t quite happen. I spent time walking around on top of Monte Sano and when I got back I worked on this post some more after viewing the Google Tech Talk, How To Break Web Software – A look at security vulnerabilities in web software. I’ve had a bit of a power struggle that might make a protected post soon. We’ll see.

In the meantime, after I get through cross-posting this but before I can retire, I’ve got a post or two to reply to and an email or two to send as well as a chapter or two in .

Maybe I’ll catalogue my library tomorrow.

Hot water or Yes, I am an Asshole

Guess who had a ten minute hot shower this morning? If you guessed me, give yourself a cookie. For those of you just joining us, there was a story a while back about how I hot water was intermittent in my apartment at best. Well, now I know why that was occurring.

You see, waaaay back when, the water just wasn’t hot enough. So I turned the temperature up on the water heater. It took several tries to get the water temperature to where I wanted it. One of the times I was making my adjustments I replaced the cover. The outside of the cover was plastic, but the inside was metal. Well, when I did this, I shorted something out, got a spark and heard a pop.

Skip forward several months. In the summer the water was always the right temperature because it was over 100 degrees outside. But when winter finally came, the temperature of the water once again would not stay hot above a minute or two’s use.

For those of you with keen observational and inference skills, you can probably guess what happened. For those of you aren’t a cut above, I’ll explain. That thing that sparked and popped so many months ago was the thermostat on the hot water heater. Apparently it worked just enough to heat some water but would then cut off because it thought the water was too hot. And therefore I had no hot water.

What’s the morale of this story? Don’t work on your hot water heater unless you first flip the breaker. You could short the thermostat and be in hot water…or not.

If I started this post out by saying I’m crazy, I’d be scared that all I’d get are comments agreeing with that sentiment, not comments of substance.

A lot of things have been driving me crazy or at least causing me to have doubts about what is to come. First of all, ehowton disappeared last week and I was really worried about him. I sent him a text and he confirmed that he was alright, but still, it has been several days that since his last public post on LJ. Couple that with terse or no responses to a few of my own posts, I knew that not all was right. Well, today I got news that everything is well, even if he is the worst for wear.

Speaking of positive news, I started the tech support job today. My boss keeps telling me that it takes most people a couple of months before they have their first live call, but I am confident that I will be online within a few weeks. My goal is to be so two weeks from today (Monday) as the guy I was training with claimed that he too made the transition in two weeks.

Other things that were disconcerting about last week was not having heard from Michaela now in two weeks. That has been most hard. While I worry for and about her, I leave it in good faith that she is doing alright because I have not heard otherwise. I miss talking to her; she has such a sexy South African accent. (To me it is a British accent even though she denies it.) Michaela, please come talk to us soon; the suspense is killing us.

I went home the great town of Juanita this weekend to see the play that my parents put on. It was something they toured 48 times in three States. However, it was written in the 70′s and they used a cassette from the same era. The tape hiss was intolerable…as was the performance. One thing that did occur to me while watching that play was the diminishing return factor in entertainment.

I do not want to work two jobs. I wished that the tech support job paid enough to just quit Steak Out. There has been talk of doing some A/V work with Jesse, perhaps as early as two months from now. I’d rather supplement that way. Hell, I’d drive the 45 minutes to Cullman (and back) ever night if I were going to be able to do video and get paid for it. Please cross your fingers concerning this issue.

I’ve occupied my time the past two weeks with The Twilight of Courage (Hardcover, Softcover). I prefer the hardback myself. The book just went out of print late last year, so you will have to purchase it off of Amazon. Here’s the text from the dust jacket that made me buy the book over ten years ago:

Between the sky and the assembly, a cloud of red and black banners unfurled, fluttering in time to the trumpet blasts. The expectation of the gathering had reached a feverish pitch, exactly the right moment for their worship to appear. As if controlled by a single switch, all light and sound vanished. The arena was plunged into absolute blackness and total stillness with such suddenness that thousands believed they had been struck both deaf and blind in that instant. And then…a single spotlight reached out from the back of the stadium, stabbing the highest podium. As if by magic, the lectern was now occupied by the stern, brooding figure of Adolf Hitler.

As the clouds of war gather over an unprepared Europe, the remarkable and stories of an international cast of characters unfold in The Twilight of Courage. Follow diverse and memorable personalities such as American journalists Josie Marlow and Mac McGrath as they narrowly escape from the collapse of Warsaw in the fall of 1939 and suddenly find themselves caught up in the events of the so-called Twilight War–when Hitler was preparing to march and the Allies did nothing to stop him.

Meet Polish mathematics genius Richard Lewinski who heads a desperate attempt to crack the Nazi secret code; brother Andre and Paul Chardon who organize an heroic defense of the French Calvary School in Lys; German Captain Horst von Bockman who is caught between the love of his country and the insanity of war, and David Meyer, an American pilot who, shot down during an air war, struggles to escape the German onslaught and return to the lovely English woman Annie Galaway.

From Mac’s expirences at Dunkirk to Josie’s expirences in Paris, The Twilight of Courage brings to life the cataclysm of war as seen through the eyes of men and women who faced unbelievable challenges in a time of crisis.

Intricately woven and impeccably researched The Twilight of Courage is a war story, a love story and a spy story wrapped into one unforgettable package.

The other thing that I have filled my time with is studying illusions in the hopes of performing magic. I have already sunk a small fortune into this pursuit and expect a third large package/order sometime this week. While I have shunned a large portion of the material, I have found a few illusions that I want to master and may give those which I so glibly passed over a second chance.

I am ready for change. While change in and of itself is truly neither good nor bad, there are some things I don’t want to change, some I wished would get back to the way they were, and still others I will be glad to see changed and will not remember them any other way but in their changed state. I wished I had gotten a white collar job many years ago.

This comes to you from a forum I recently joined. I won’t say where for a number of reasons, but this guy really got under my nerves. The site sells DVDs and props and so forth created by an American and incorporated in America. While I suppose my reaction was just that, I find the whole issue on the one hand to be absurd while on the other to be enraging. It is because of the underlying ideology that we are losing the war against illegal immigration in this country.