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Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

Have you seen this trailer?

Notice that you really don’t see anything about the movie other than how beautifully shot it is. And that’s thanks to Lance Acord who worked on Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation (both gorgeous movies). Otherwise you get a sense of the mood (thanks to Arcade Fire’s track on the preview – Karen O and the Kids do a good job maintaining that mood, if less big sounding and theatrical) and shots that evoke a reminder of the book’s illustrations.

What you don’t a sense of is how slowly paced the movie is. Or how muddy the messages are. Or how tedious it is to watch.

Can you tell I wasn’t impressed? In fact, I was less than impressed. I was disappointed with everything but the cinematography. With how boring the story and pacing were, I still had to sit through countless moments of Karen O’s shrill screaming. Sweet Lord. The soundtrack was cool other than her screaming. But that’s also why I’m not a big fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The story deviates pretty quickly from the book. Given the book only has, like, 10 sentences in it. But Max is coddled and runs away from home. And isn’t punished at all in the movie. He is a brat and “out of control” but does he get any discipline from his parent? No. Not once in the whole movie.

And I swear, if I had to be punished through that long, boring film, Max should’ve been punished in some way too.

Google Wave Disappointment

Yes, I know it’s probably too early to be talking about this, seeing at Wave is still in its preview. But I’m a little bit disappointed in it. This is probably just because the web app isn’t feature complete. Still, at this point I can’t see myself using it as broadly as it was represented in the announcement video.

For one, it’s just confusing to keep track of who is writing/changing what when you have multiple people working on the same wave. It’s also tough even to reply to other wavelets that are sitting there. Some of the UI still seems really rough and not at all intuitive. Maybe they’re working on this.

But I think that that is my biggest issue with it. It’s so confusing to work in that I just get turned off to it. At least in IM you know who is talking when. In Google Docs you can save and edit – though the changes by other people don’t display in realtime. I guess the collaborative part of it is the point. It’s a realtime wiki, basically. And I suppose that’s okay. But it certainly doesn’t feel ready for all of the other tasks it was suggested for when Google premiered it.

Oh well.

I’ve still got a few Wave nominations. Anyone want one? First come, first served. (You can also tweet @joelgoodman)

Mixed Feelings

Man. I’m not sure how today is going to go.

I woke up to a Google Wave invite, but also to a cold room. Jessica had left early for work already and I guess was running late because it was 7min to 7:00 when I heard the front door slam.

Coffee was a disaster this morning. Jess usually makes the coffee because I can’t seem to get it right. With her being rushed this morning, she wasn’t able to get coffee started before she bolted out the door. So I thought I’d give it a try.

Yeah. Messed it up. She had put water in the maker already, just hadn’t ground the beans – but I didn’t realise this. I ended up adding a bit of water to the tank before noticing there was some in there already. The coffee came out weak.

We’re snobs about coffee. It has to hit our minimal strength scale otherwise we chuck it. I should’ve just pulled the french press out and made some more, but to be honest, I just now thought of that. Three hours later, sitting at my desk.

I got to work and the outside door was lock. It’s the only door I don’t have a key to. So I stood out in the rain for a few minutes until someone showed up.

Now I am staring at a long list of work orders and trying to get my dotCMS test server up and running so I can test a few things. And it isn’t working. Hopefully the day will improve.

My Time Is Not Valued

…or it’s over-valued. I’m not sure which.

But I am about ready to quit this job. Perhaps not really, but I am not happy about the way I am treated here. And it’s only since the new leadership came into play. It drives me nuts.

This happens a lot lately, but I got a call from Annie in Advancement at about 2:30 this afternoon. She tells me she just warning me about what’s coming down the pike.

It turns out that really she had been asked to talk to me about a job I was apparently given without being consulted. In fact, if she hadn’t told me, I probably wouldn’t have found out until tomorrow. The task came from the college president and one of the vice presidents — though not to me. It seems that with the rash of swine flu pandemonium going on they want to improve the information page that they had me create.

But the best part is that they want it done by tomorrow. Like, tonight, I guess. I don’t know why it’s so urgent that it needs to be done right this instant, and can’t wait till next week. Or why they couldn’t have decided this LAST week and then talked to me. Everything is so stupidly last-minute with these people.

Project Overload

This week has been absolutely nuts. I’m hoping I’m not heading toward burnout at work. I’m trying not to. It’s become super important for me to protect my time, otherwise I wouldn’t get anything done.

After a long day of talking to people and trying to explain to them what exactly it takes to provide them with the web stuff they are asking for, I come home and work on freelance stuff. The good part about that is that I should have a new project premiering later this week after a a couple months of work (sporadic, of course).

I have another WordPress template coming out in a couple of weeks. In fact, I completely redesigned said template because I wasn’t happy with the previous one.

Also found out at the beginning of the week I’ve got about $1300 worth of car repairs I need to take care of. Great. I need some more freelance jobs to pay for the fixes.

Couple other exciting things coming up including National Novel Writing Month in November. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMO, make sure you add me as a writing buddy!

A Quarter of a Century

Today I turn 25 years old.

25. Wow. That’s a quarter of a century.

Jessica bought me a straight razor and some awesome shaving soap. She also had some caramel/chocolate shipped in from an Etsy seller in Paris.

Tonight we’re going out for dinner with friends to an excellent restaurant. Then my wife is going to take me out to St Louis tomorrow to go birthday shopping.

All in all, a good birthday so far, with lots of promise.

Also, David Hechler informed me that today is both summer and fall (as it turns to Autumn around 5:something PM tonight). That’s interesting, I think.

Happy Wedding

Sam and Melissa’s wedding was great yesterday. It was awesome to see so many people from school that I hadn’t seen in awhile and also to share with Sam and Mel on their day. Sam was in our wedding and he was nice enough to include me in his as an usher.

I met a couple of his friends I hadn’t met before as well as reacquainting myself with some that I had. The guys all had a lot of fun and got along great.

Jess and I realized that there really wasn’t any need for us to stay in Springfield. It was only an hour and a half drive (for some reason I was thinking it would be closer to two or two and a half hours there) and we easily could’ve driven back home after the rehearsal dinner on Friday and driven back up on Saturday for the ceremony. But it all worked out alright.

I think Sam and Mel had a good day and we may be meeting up with them for my birthday on Tuesday. Overall it was a great weekend.

Avast! It Be Talk Like a Pirate Day

Today be the day where all good lads and lasses disregard their noble upbringing and embrace the humble words of a pirate. If ye happen across a mate who sounds to be speaking in a foreign tongue, do not shun him. Nay embrace his callous heart with a hearty greeting and loud “YARR!”

It be also me friends Sam and Melissa’s wedding day. And as such I know not how me custom will go over. A pirate in a tuxedo may perhaps be a strange site.

Well now me wife and I shall address the victuals awaiting us on that fair shore called Denny’s fore disembarking for our port of call, the wedding.

YARR!

Don’t forget ye must tweet like a pirate too!

Regeneration

I’ve been sick the past two days. I caught whatever illness plagued my dear wife Jessica over the weekend. It was unfortunate because I woke up Monday feeling so good. This morning I was able to get back to work but definitely did not feel awesome. I’d say that right now, at 7:09 PM I am at probably 85% on a wellness scale. Definitely recovering.

The second half of next week and first half of the following is going to be busy. First we’ll head off to Springfield, IL for our friends’ Sam and Melissa’s wedding. I am an usher and apparently that means I need to wear a tux (is that normal?). So a 2.5 hour drive and a stay in a hotel will be a mini-vacation before all of our favourite television shows come back on the following Monday while I am teaching a class (boo!). Tuesday the 22nd is my birthday (25 years!) and we’ll be going out to a fantastic dinner with friends at Dressel’s in St Louis that evening. Wednesday the 23rd Jessica is taking me out of work for a day in the city. I will probably be getting some new clothing for the winter and generally enjoying a day off with my wife.

Hopefully by then the air in Southern Illinois will have cooled down to a consistent mid-70s and it will actually feel like autumn the way it did a few weeks ago.

In two weeks’ time I should have one of my pending projects done (you can watch progress as it’s made here) and hopefully be working on a second one to be finished in October. Then it’s Jessica’s birthday, Halloween candy to pass out, and finally November shows up.

November means NaNoWriMo. And I am really excited about it this year. Mostly because I’ve had a whole year to loosely and mentally plan for it (as opposed to the -1 day I had last year when I first discovered it). I’ve got a sort-of plot ready and want to get it down on paper. You should totally do it too! If you sign up, let me know in the comments and we’ll all be writing buddies this November.

December means Christmas in California with my family and then in January we’ll be heading up to Portland with the fam for my little sister’s wedding. I guess it’s just busy all the way until 2010 comes around. Hopefully teaching this class will continue to be good as well.

How’s the end of your year shaping up?

Recent Favourites

I haven’t written about any recent favourites lately, and I have a few new ones. So. Here we go.

  • Arctic Monkeys – Humbug
    An excellent record from Arctic Monkeys. It’s a bit moodier than their previous offerings and a bit more chill.
  • Green Curry
    Not exactly a new favourite, but I’ve been eating it a lot the last couple days.
  • Teaching
    I love it. I could definitely see myself going into teaching as a primary career at some point. As long as the teaching was along the lines of web design and new media marketing. Maybe after I’ve got that MA I’m jonesing after. I think ideally I’d like to teach college and do freelance. And that’s all.
  • Winston Churchill
    Again, not exactly a new favourite, but I’m hoping to read a lot more about him and his life in the coming months. The HBO movies The Gathering Storm and Into the Storm are excellent.

It’s September now and that means my birthday is coming up. I will be 25 years old. For some reason that has been resting heavily on my mind the last couple of weeks. It’s almost as if I feel like I will actually be a real adult. As if I’ve been playing the grown up game the last four years or so.

And with that feeling the ever-present urge to move on someplace resurfaces with resounding gusto. I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted my young life in this small town. I want to go and do something different. Even at 25 the notion that life is short has hit me hard and I don’t want to sit idly by watching the years pass as I feel like I’ve done the past nearly three years. Perhaps I need to make things happen. Or perhaps I need to wait and see if any of my leads pan out. I’ve always had a hard time with patience.

Only time will tell.

Recent Releases

Wow. It’s already been a busy week.

We released the new Athletics site at work that I have been developing for the last few months. That was Monday. I have gotten far fewer comments than I expected. And no news is good news as far as I’m concerned. Overall I’m pretty happy with it. Everything at work just seems to overwhelm me right now, so it’s good to have a major project out of the way. Check it out if you want: http://www.gcpanthers.com

I did a project for Randall a couple week ago. I’m only going to say this: I coded the design as a WordPress template in about 2.5 hours.

I’ve got a few projects on deck now (freelance speaking). One of those is a new WP template for a friend from back home. It’s a fun project. And I feel kind of bad because it’s not going to take that long to code, I just haven’t had much time the last few weeks what with work and preparing for my class. But it’s coming in the next couple of weeks. She’s got a really great blog and I’m excited to be a part of getting this design out for her. Check out tea@elevensies »

I start my first bout with teaching college students on Monday evening. I’m really excited about it, but have a bunch of work to do. I need to put together a better keynote presentation and finish up the first assessment for them. I need to get a feel for what they already know about web design. So I’m going to “test” them the first evening. They’ll get points just for taking the assessment, no matter what they know or don’t know. So hopefully the students will forgive me for a test during the first class.

If you’re interested, I could still use help creating questions for that initial test. Check out my previous post and leave the question you think I should ask.