The Latest Thing to Drool Over...

I'm a geek. I know it. I don't feel any shame, but I do have to fight the urge to make somewhat... random purchases of those things which tickle that inner magpie which lurks in the hearts of all Otaku.

And that magpie nature works for traditional geeks such as myself to those whose geek-dom involves things such as sports. After all, we have NASCAR ornaments for the Christmas tree right next to the Star Wars ones, thanks to my Beloved Wife's inner Otaku in relation to some blue and silver race car.

So, it's not that big of a surprise that I saw this pretty thing run across my RSS Reader and commenced drooling. After all it's a 1/350^th scale reproduction of the Space Battleship Yamato. I mean, how utterly cool and awesome is that?!?!

And it even comes with light-up engines (via a remote control no less!), and a number of the space battle planes that were used in the anime.

Over all, I have to say that the Yamato is one of the coolest space ship designs (if not necessarily the most practical).

Time for More Monday Morning Rambling...

Hmm... well, I'm still in the process of re-reading Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss in order to write its review. Sadly, the book has not even lived up to my memories of how it read the first time. It's bad mojo when a book does not age well.

Anyways, because these first FotJ novels were micro-books (in related to most other modern SF works I read) it shouldn't be too much longer before I have this second read-through done, and the book ready for review.

Also, Death Troopers should be arriving from Amazon in the next couple days, so good times there.

Something I have done though is gone back and re-watched one of my favorite animes from recent history: True Tears.

This is a story that has aged well. It's still a story about love, and change, and those that inspire us. I enjoyed it as much today, as I did during my first viewing of it, even thought I knew who was going to end up with who by the end of things; additionally, that foreknowledge allowed me to pick up on a few extra hints as to which way the story was heading earlier on.

And Noe still reminds me of my Beloved, just in the sheer vibrancy that she approached life, as well as the somewhat.... randomness which that vibrancy exhibited itself.

But in the end that's all okay.

Ah, well, I've blathered on enough for this morning, for now I'm off to work, but as I said, I'll be getting the Abyss review up soon, and hopefullly other things here and there as I find time for them.

Yet Another Monday Morning

Well, that was a busy weekend. My dad's 60^th birthday was on Sunday, so someones in the family decided that it was a fine time for a birthday party.

A couple of pertinent facts here:

1. I hate traveling.
2. I live 5 hours away from my family
3. Did I mention that "hate traveling" bit?

So, I got to spend hours upon hours in the car this weekend. Ultimately, it's not that big of a deal and I got to see my elder brother and his family, but still... traveling.

That said, it was a fun-filled, geek weekend. To start, as my Beloved Wife was driving down to Pensacola on Friday night, we were behind a tanker trailer for the better part of an hour. Now, normally, this wouldn't be that much of an issue, but due to the exact distance that my wife was pacing said trailer at, and the fact that it was night, the circle of the tanker was lit up.

So, after a while--and utterly out of the blue--my Beloved Wife said, "You know, that looks like a Stargate."

I glanced out the window, and realize that yes, it does kind of look like a stargate. Which is when two things hit me:

1. My wife made a geek reference
2. My wife made said geek reference before me

And before I could open my mouth to say such things, my wife spoke said realizations.

Oh, I do so love my Beloved Wife, especially as she becomes more and more... well, geek-i-fied.

So, the birthday party went off without a hitch. We were able to surprise my dad without giving him a heart attack, so good times right there, and I spend most of Saturday morning with my elder brother, his kid and my kids, in which we had a grand discussion on anime.

And my Beloved Wife, as you're reading this, I'll have you note that HIS wife watches some of the anime with him.

Ah well, such was my time spent this weekend, and now I must go forth and toil in the exciting world of software engineering....

Monday Ramblings for 11/9/09

Wow, it was a fun-filled weekend in my household.

It was my youngest son's birthday, and my wife is a firm believer in the concept that every birthday should be celebrated with as many people as possible.

So, we had a party at a park. The little megalomaniacal Ewok had two friends his own age show up, and we had a few older kids for his elder brother to play with as well, so fun was had by all. Of course the pizza left me with a bit of indigestion, but that's kind of expected, what with it being pizza and all.

Of course such things as family celebrations cut into the very important GEEK TIME that I have, and as such I failed to read Abyss for the second time (a requirement for its very late review). Yet, I was able to get caught up on Stargate Universe and Sanctuary. These are both shows that I'm enjoying immensely, though my beloved finds SGU a bit... boring at times.

So, I've got to review a couple of episodes of 11Eyes and Abyss, and then I feel the need to take my eldest to see Astroboy sometime soon, but if his behavior doesn't improve that may not get to happen.

Also something that should be happening soon is me getting a phone upgrade. I'm currently looking at the new Verizon Droid, as it is a great phone device (I played with one on 11/6 which was "Droid Day") and since I'm on Verizon I would be able to keep my plan. Nice, "win-win" thing here.

I'm also very interested in the accessories that are rumored to go with this device. Things such as a table-top dock or a car dock both of which will make them switch into relevant modes. The car-dock transforms the UI into what supposedly looks like a standard GPS device while the home view for the table-top mode is an alarm-clock.

The car-dock is retailing for about $30 while the table-top dock has yet to be released.

And of course I'm in the process of downloading Eclipse and the ANDROID SDK in order to see what type of fun and games I can cook up for this highly interesting piece of hardware.

We live in interesting times.... at least for us geeks...

Monday Morning Rambling 11/02/09

Gah! I now have two episodes of 11Eyes which I need to review. Frankly, I suck at episodic reviewing, mainly because I get so easily distracted by other things--like Crunchyroll's collection of anime.

Basically, I re-watched Myself;Yourself over the past few days and realized just how.... freaky some of the character arcs are in that thing. Especially the one revolving around the Watsuki twins .

Oh well.

On the children front, the Beloved Wife and I got yet another example of our youngest having an affinity for megalomaniacs. Remember, this is the kid who's favorite character to play-act as from the Star Wars franchise is Emperor Palpatine.

So, Sunday after church we all went to Burger King. Well, their current kid's meal toy promotion is for some Spongebob thing. We got two, a Plankton and a Patrick.

My wife was holding the things, trying to decide which one to give to each child, when the youngest spoke up, and while pointing towards Plankton exclaimed, "I like that one." A moment later, my eldest spoke, asking for Patrick.

That crisis of differing toys averted, my wife handed them out. Then a moment later glanced at me, her head shaking slightly, as she realized that once again the youngest chose the bad guy as his toy-of-choice.

I fear that my son may be the reason that Real Life Super-Heroes are starting to pop up....