Misc

I hope everyone has remembered and been enjoying the new Avatar : The Last Airbender episodes on Nickelodeon. Today they just finished The Boiling Rock (really glad they aired both episodes in one day), which means starting tomorrow I will be viewing brand new episodes I haven't seen before. (Remember, I watched the previous "all new" episodes somewhat illegally off of the 'net.)

The big event is Saturday, 8/7c, when there is a 2-hour Avatar that will finish up the last chapter. Sweet!

I actually just wanted to upload this to my webserver so that I knew it was stored in a safe place. But, since it's on the server anyway, I figured I should just go ahead and post it here for anyone.

This is NPR's This American Life's episode on the mortgage crisis. Now, I'm a big fan of TAL in general, but this episode was particularly interesting because I had never really understood what all the hoopla was about before. This episode does a great job of explaining the problem--where it all originated, how things began going downhill, and why it is difficult to fix now that we recognize the issue.

Now, I'm not all that sure about the legalities of posting this here, so to try to do my part and ease my conscience, I'm going to post a link below, along with the mp3 download, to where you can donate to TAL. They've been calling for donations recently, asking for just a dollar or two per person. So, if you enjoy this episode, I would recommend checking out a few others, seeing if you like the show, and if you do, go ahead and give a buck to the cause.

If you want to know what life is really like for our soldiers in Iraq, then check out this story from Ed on his blog, Warfighter. He's an amazing writer--all the more to make me worry about his work over there.

So go check it out, and give the boy some love.

Another one of the lovely things about living out in the country is that cell phone coverage is only hit-or-miss. Today, it appears something is going on with the only ATT cellular tower in range...so I have no cell signal at all.

All this is to say: if you've been trying to call me, I'm not ignoring you...I just don't have a signal. Go ahead and leave a message if it's not urgent. If it is, I'll be on Google Talk: felixruina [at symbol] gmail [period] com.

P.S. I'm not being arrogant and expecting a bunch of people to call. Really, it's just wishful thinking. A guy can get lonely out here, you know. ;-)

Just wanted to let everyone know that Ed has posted another entry on Warfighter. If you missed the announcement, Warfighter got moved to a nice subdomain, with a fancy new theme: http://warfighter.felixruina.com, so update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!

Go and check it out...and be sure and leave a comment so Ed knows you're there and you care!

Peace

Tell me if you don't do a double-take at this web address, because I sure did:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac

It's the real deal. "Mactopia"
It actually makes sense if you visit it (not that I'm endorsing it!), but I never would have guessed there would ever be a Mac site on the microsoft domain.

Next I'm going to try http://www.microsoft.com/linux :)

EDIT: whew! All is right with the world:

Tuesday was my birthday, and I took the opportunity for my grandmother and I to make the hour-long trip to Guymon (the closest town with a movie theater) so that we could see the recently released The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian movie.

Now, I'm a big fan of C. S. Lewis' books (as so many of you are, as well), so I was both looking forward to the movie and dreading it. I truthfully was not all that impressed by Disney's treatment of the first book in the series: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. It was fun to see many of my favorite moments on the big screen (and in general, I liked it better than the BBC version done several years ago). But, I really felt like the acting fell flat in many cases.

Thankfully, that is something that two or three years of maturing has remedied in the new movie. Read more »

I found this link through ze frank: Yeondoo Jung.

Basically, photographer and artist Yeondoo Jung staged photographs based on children's drawings. It's a really cool project. And I say that both as a wannabe amateur photographer, a cartoon junkie, and someone who can't draw. :)