Spike Lee’s latest movie is wonderfully put together and beautifully acted. With a nod to the ultimate bank heist film, Dog Day Afternoon and a twist or two to keep you guessing, Inside Man does not disappoint.
Rating: See it the theaters, and then rent it when the DVD is released.
Everyday for the past nine days I have started the morning my covering first one eye and then the other to see what I could see. Everyday for the past eight days when I put my hand over my left eye what I see with my right has been blurry and out of focus beyond a range of eight or so inches.
Today when I tried my highly scientific little eye test I could actually read the computer screen at nearly arms length - with either eye. The text still isn’t sharp but it is a lot better than it was yesterday morning. My theory is that my eyes are going to be there best first thing in day as they’ve been relaxed and unused all night. In other words, I’m not going to be surprised if this new found focal distance fade a bit during the day as my eye gets tired.
Still is is hugely encouraging to see the text on the screen as well with my right (near) eye as with my left (far) eye. I think a celebratory breakfast at the local greasy spoon is in order. Hot-diggity.
For the past five years I have watched television primarily through the Tivo. The number of live programs that I watch has decreased almost to zero. I find this to be a largely a good thing. There’s only one problem.
The weather hysteria people feel it is necessary to cover the bottom THIRD of the screen with their scrolling gloom-n-doom banner any time there is more a single cloud in the sky. I particularly like it when the scrolling ticker is telling me about bad weather miles away to the east - downwind and moving away from me. Of course, thanks to the time shifting properties of the Tivo I am seeing this useless information days or even weeks after the event. While it is bad enough to have my show interrupted in the name of panic and fear when the program is live, to have it interrupted after the fact really sucks.
So, Tivo, if you are listening, figure out how to record the show from the national network feed rather than the local “we want to be your parent because you are too dumb to stay in out of the weather” idiots.
Several weeks ago I happened to drop into the management office here at the apartment complex. The woman that Michele befriended still takes care of the cats when I am away and I was setting her up for another weekend. In passing she told me that my troublesome upstairs neighbors and their “Jerry Springer Show” approach to life were moving out. At the time I was pleased but I really didn’t put too much stock into it as I didn’t want to get my hopes up. This afternoon, coming home from a late lunch I discovered a large moving truck blocking my garage and theirs.
They are actually moving out.
Ding Dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.
While I am mildly irked that they blocked my garage without so much as a by-your-leave, I’ll put up with it as the bastard is finally going to be gone from my life. No more midnights spent listening to screaming matches, no more sea of cigarette butts in the lawn, no more incessant barking from their small yapper type dog, no more incredibly loud car coming into and out of the garage at all hours of the day and night. no more anything.
Good riddance.
Best part - I know that the complex has a number of empties so the odds are this place above me will stay empty for at least two months.
Michele would have so loved this event.
After two months of daily use I am very satisfied with the Lenovo ThinkPad Z60m. It has been reliable and largely without flows or issues.
Minor Gripes The lack of a powered FireWire (IEEE-1394) port is annoying. What it has is a 4-pin 1394 port instead of a 6-pin. Not paying attention I didn’t realize the significance of the missing two pins until after I bought a plug adaptor to allow me to use a 6-pin FireWire cable for my portable drive. Not really major as I can use the USB 2 ports and get decent transfer speed.
Even after two months I still think this machine is too thick. At 1.5 inches it is only .5 inches thicker than my Powerbook. In a side by side comparison the ThinkPad looks huge and clunky. Apple’s industrial designers really are the best. Still the case is sturdy and has held up will with near daily handling, trips in a case, and being carried around at work. The oil from my hand does leave a mark on the cover where I grip it, but so far that has wiped off easily.
Recently the machine has developed a reluctance to stand-by, even when I use the Fn-F4 key combination. Some of the development software (Eclipse) that I use appears to interfere with the stand-by mode. Quiting the software sometimes allows stand-by to be achieved, but not always. One more than one occasion I’ve had to shut the machine down in order to regain suspend mode. I’m sure there is some obscure driver conflict buried in the depths of the morass of DLLs and registry entries that make up a Windows XP machine, I just don’t have the patience to hunt it down and remove it.
To be fair, the stand-by issue is really the fault of the OS and installed software and not the ThinkPad itself.
Things I like The wide-screen is worth the extra money. Especially with the higher end video card; at 1680 x 1050 maximum resolution I have lots of real estate for the tools I want to use. The 1.86 GB processor is snappy; and the upgrade to 2 GB of RAM makes this machine a great performer.
Would I Buy One Again Yes. Although, if in a year or so the MacBook is openly running Windows OS as well as any non-Apple Intel machine I would be sorely tempted to sell the ThinkPad and get an Apple - just for the form factor.
Overall I’d give the ThinkPad Z60m a 7 out of 10.
My much thought about and anxiously anticipated dinner out last night was postponed due to sever weather in the Kansas City area. High winds, potential hail, and torrential rain were forecast; so we all agreed to reschedule one night next week.
Sigh.
Today marks the one week milestone in my quest for glasses-free vision. To say that my eyes have been the focus of my life the past seven days would be an understatement, and a bad pun.
Focus The literature about LASIK surgery indicates that post-operative vision could fluctuate daily for three to six months. I’m here to attest to the daily changes in my ability to focus clearly. My near eye still only sees about eight or nine inches out from my face. Once or twice, when staring in an “unfocused” manner I was able to see clearly with that eye well past the eight inch barrier. So far I haven’t been able to sustain that range for any length of time.
The far eye seems to be adapting faster than the near one. Which only makes sense as it only had the astigmatism removed and a slight farsightedness taken away. Objects less then three feet away (and more than a foot) are blurry but manageable. I do have clarity at distances, except at night when there are halos around everything. Driving after dark is a surreal experience and not one I enjoy right now. I’ve been using the amount of haloing as a measure of the healing process of the incisions. Hopefully the halos will go away, meaning the incisions have fully healed.
Patience My fears that my vision will be like this permanently have made it extremely hard to be patient. I have to go reread the post-op documentation on the LASIK site every so often to assure myself that my vision isn’t ruined forever, but rather that I am only at the beginning of a six month process. One week down, twenty-three to go.
Drops and Shields Today I get to stop wearing the eye shields at night. While the tape-to-your-face ones are surprisingly comfortable, I’ll be glad to get rid of the gummy residue from my cheeks and forehead once and for all. As for the medicated drops (a steroid for swelling and an antibiotic for germs) I was supposed to use them four times a day for seven days. Two calls to the LASIC center yesterday did not generate a return call, so I don’t know yet if I should (can) continue until the bottles are empty; or if I should stop today.
Overall I am still pleased that I took this step, but I am anxious for the near vision to develop fully. Not being able to see a computer screen without hunching forward and peering at it myopically is not what I had in mind for the future. Hopefully the next week will see improvement in my arms-length focal range.
For maybe the last five years I haven’t listened to FM radio at all. And for several years prior to that I only listened sporadically, usually to morning drive time shows like “The Bob and Tom Show.” Monday night, however, I had a loaner from Lexus while my car was in for service, and without any CDs in hand or my iPod transmitter, I was forced to turn the radio on unless I wanted to listen to silence. Poking the scan button several times I finally landed on the “classic rock” station. I could tell it was the classic rock station because they were playing the same music they play five, or ten or even fifteen years ago.
Remember the scene from “Crocodile Dundee” where he’s in the Manhattan hotel and turns on the television only to see “I Love Lucy”, and he remarks, “that was on the last time I saw a TV too.” Well, FM radio has become the same wasteland in my opinion. Has there been no new rock and roll music since the Eagles, Yes, Melloncamp, and Journey? I like the old rock and roll songs, but over and over again for two decades? Three?
The other part of FM radio that is absolutely unbearable is the commercials. In the loaner car yesterday morning I discovered that KC does have a station that carries the “Bot and Tom Show” and I was listening to it on my drive in to work. Midway through my twenty minute commute they broke for commercials, and TEN minutes later when I arrived at the parking lot, they were still playing commercials. To add insult to injury, this morning I decided to listen to Bob and Tom again, only to find that I turned the radio on in time for the 6:20 am commercial break. It was the exact same ten minutes of commercials.
Thank Jobs and Co. for the iPod, with nearly 30GB of material to choose from I’ll never have to listen to FM radio again.
Regarding my pique at being invited over to someone’s house for the first time, and my initial reaction of “why now?”, I think I came to a better understanding about it last night in group.
While I have been over to other friends houses since Michele’s death, this is the first brand new relationship I’ve experienced on my own. It has the potential to be something good, and it is hard to accept something good when I’m alive and she isn’t. Going over to a new friend’s house for dinner, meeting their spouse, is movement forward, away from Michele. I know deep down that I need this movement, but it is very difficult to accept. In a very real sense this is another nail in her coffin, it is consciously choosing to leave her behind.
New is good, movement is good. Coming to terms with my need for it, and my willingness to move out from the place I share with Michele, to explore and test, is difficult. I know that Michele will never truly leave me, I carry a part of her in my heart at all times; the man I am today is colored and shaped by the influences we had on each other during our relationship. Even if I were to develop a hundred new relationships I would still have Michele inside of my memories. I just have to get over the shock of reentry into the pool of life after staying huddled on my little rock of despair all winter.
Saying it all out loud to the group did ultimately trigger my understand explained above, so I got what I needed. I just miss the shared wavelength that Michele and I used to communicate so effortlessly.
Over the weekend I received a call from one of my coworkers. Usually a call from work like this pertains to work, however this turned out to be a social call. The gist of the conversation was asking me if I would like to come over to their house for dinner one night this week. I found this intrusive and off-putting on several levels.
First, in the year-and-a-half I have known this person there have been no real attempts at friendship beyond the normal “work acquaintance” level. On rare occasion (like maybe twice) there have been brief conversations that were not work related, but no real relationship has developed. I suppose this overture is a way of establishing a true friendship, but the cynic in me wants to know why? And why now?
Which brings me to point two. My change in status to widower has generated an increase in concern and attention from all sorts of people. For the most part the outpouring of emotion has been generous, heartfelt, and has given me hope. I truly appreciate all that everyone around me has done in the past five months. However, new friendship overtures make me wary, in much the same way I suspect people who suddenly acquire wealth are wary of new attention from people who previously left them alone. Why wasn’t this friendship proffered prior to Michele’s death? I am having a hard time not feeling like a charity case.
And so I am grumpy today. I feel trapped and out of control, two feelings that have plagued me since Michele’s death. I know that feeling out of control is the biggest trigger I have right now, further I know that my reaction to it can be, ah, excessive. I felt out of control during the phone call this weekend; asking me point blank like that put me on the spot. And, having tentatively accepted I feel out of control about the entire evening. What if they serve salad, or some other dish I prefer not to eat. My capacity to be polite is at an all time low. What started as a generous offer of friendship could end up with ill feelings that will be difficult to incorporate into a work atmosphere.
In the end I know in my heart that Michele would want me to get out and explore new relationships and activities. If, as I believe, as part of her reason for ending her life was to remove the drag her illness placed on my life (I do not believe she in any way dragged me down, but I recognize she saw it differently) then my sitting at home and sulking forever would royally piss her off. Self pity is an ugly place to live and at some point I suppose I need to start back up towards the light of “normal” life from this well of despair I’ve inhabited since October 10, 2005.
However, I retain the right to be grumpy about all of this.