Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica told me this morning that she has never seen The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh before. So we got up early this morning and hooked up the laser disc player and watched it. She has been playing that Kingdom Hearts video game based on the Disney movie so she knew a lot of the parts of the stories but didn’t know how they all fit together and she hadn’t realized that all of the parts of the video games where straight out of the movie.

After watching Winnie the Pooh, we popped in the original Parent Trap. What a great movie that is. The Parent Trap is one of my all time favorite Disney live action movies ever. The Parent Trap represents the height of the Disney “era.”

While we were watching all of these Disney movies, I decided to make a page that lists all of the Full Length Animated Features. I also added a list showing which ones of the movies are in the collection. I am only about a dozen movies shy of having the entire collection – and, according to Amazon, all of the movies that I don’t currently have are all available. On the list, Beauty and the Beast is listed as Min DVD because it is the only one that Dominica has that I don’t. So I wanted it listed anyway. So I specified. Now I am anxious to own the rest of the collection. It is tempting when I am so close to owning them all. Min is very anxious to get Swiss Family Robinson.

I finally got around to adding the Assorted Views on France page that Eric sent to me weeks ago. It is one of the funniest additions to our Funnies section that we have had in a long time.

After the Parent Trap, Min wanted another live action Disney movie so we popped in In Search of the Castaways. It isn’t the most classic Disney film ever but it is ok. Nothing compared to the Parent Trap. Actually, it is pretty silly and almost all of the scenery is done with a camera projecting random rocks behind the actors and all of the distance shots actually look like a painting and not like a real place.

At 6:00, the house went out to celebrate Nate’s birthday at Maxie’s Supper Club. Nate, Tammy, Bob, Zach, Min and I all made it out. Dinner was a lot of fun; it is nice to get to have a “family” outing from time to time.

After dinner, Min and I went on a Disney movie shopping spree because we have been addicted to them all day and the rest of the gang headed up to Ithaca College for the Choir Concert. Well, Min and I did pretty well and we managed to get Swiss Family Robinson, Babes in Toyland, The Rescuers Down Under, Fantasia 2000, Make Mine Music, Melody Time, The Three Caballeros, The Fox and the Hound, Dumbo and The Sword in the Stone. As you will be able to see from my Disney page, we now have every one of the full length Disney animated features except for Saludos Amigos (which is in moratorium and we haven’t been able to find yet,) Mulan (which we forgot to pick up) and Lilo and Stitch (which I thought was awful.) One thing that I have learned is that I really don’t like the early Disney films. Of the first fourteen movies, only Bambi is good and it is very sad. Other than that, the early movies have bad or no stories with weird art. But number fifteen was Lady and the Tramp which was one of the greatest cartoons ever made and the streak of great movies continued all the way until Pocahontas ruined it in the nineties. During the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties Disney managed to turn out an amazing feature film every couple of years.

When we got back to the house, Min and I popped in The Three Caballeros. That has got to be one of the worst cartoons ever. There is no story or plot and even the music is pretty bad. It is mostly just Donald Duck watching a travelogue about South America. I have read before that the early 1940’s were a time for great appreciation of all things Latin American here in the US and so Disney made two big filmes about South America.

After that bad movie, we decided to watch something safe, so we popped in Swiss Family Robinson which I haven’t seen in forever. It is nice to get to see it after all these years in the original wide screen. On the Disney Vault DVD, it is so much better than it was on television over the years.

Happy 27th Birthday Nate!

It is just that birthday time of year. For those of you who know what has been going on – the big news is that my mom is off of chemo and doesn’t have to see a doctor again for a little while. So that means that she is doing pretty well.

I spent a lot of time yesterday and today just following the news as everything has been unfolding. I tend to really enjoy watching news on war. It is very interesting, I guess. I have discovered CNN Radio which is available from www.CNN.com and they seam to have a pretty decent show. I watched a little NBC on television yesterday and it is really surprising just how much CNN has surpassed NBC in its ability to create a cohesive program. NBC had so many technical problems and glitches and the whole setup with Tom Brokaw sitting two inches from the camera is just really cheesy. It’s like they never made a television show before and were just learning the ropes. It was very amateur.

Min’s books for college arrived today. She has been impatiently waiting for them for weeks now. She is going to be taking classes over the summer to prepare for nursing school. She is planning on attending the University of Rochester’s Excellerated Nursing Program next year.

I finally managed to get Windows XP Pro and SuSE 8.1 Pro installed on my main computer. What a relief that is. Loopy will be happy to hear that it actually went really smoothly with only the most minor of problems. I have SuSE Linux running off of my Promise RAID controller to give it the maximum in performance and disk space. Both SuSE and XP are running wonderfully now and I even have all of the updates taken care of and almost all of the software that I use on a regular basis has been reinstalled. It is nice to do a complete reinstall from time to time as it gives me a chance to clear out all of the old crap that accumulates over time and make sure that I am using the most recent copies of all of the different pieces of software.

The weather is beautiful again today. Susan is up visiting and she rode along when I went out to pick Min up for lunch. Min and I just got some food from Wendy’s at the mall and Susan went shopping at Tops. This is the first day that it really feels like spring is here (ok, I think today is actually the first day of spring as well…) But the other day when it was this warm, it just had a different sort of feeling in the air. Now it really feels like the cold weather is behind us for a while. I hope so, I like the cold but this year was pretty extreme.

After looking more carefully at my Linux install, I realized that there was a problem with the way that the hard drive was set up so I am trying to get that fixed. It will most likely end up being a major undertaking. Loopy will be happy that at least something went wrong with it.

Today is a full week after Axiohm said that they would let me know about the position that I interviewed for there and they still haven’t let me know whether or not I have gotten the position. My first impression was that the company really had things together but that impression is fading rapidly. I will be actively searching for other work come Monday morning. I have little faith in their hiring process at this point.

After work, Min and I headed down to Barnes and Nobles and picked up Father Ted Series 3 and the first season of another British comedy series, Coupling. I have never seen Coupling so we are taking a gamble on it. We also swung by Hollywood Video and I picked up About a Boy with Hugh Grant and Serving Sara with Bruce Campbell, Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurly. Nate has seen Serving Sara before and said that it wasn’t too bad. Min and I watched a bit of Father Ted before turning in for the night.

Happy 25th Birthday Amanda!

Loopy is still in far away Canada (hopefully he hasn’t been lynched since Canada is defying the motherland and siding with the cheese eating surrender monkeys who sold weapons to Iraq and try to act all peaceful!) We have no idea when we will be returning; I have talked to him via email earlier in the week but that was the last that I had heard from him.

Tammy and Tess came down today to visit with Nate (tomorrow is his birthday.) Dominica decided that she wanted to watch The Little Mermaid II (no, it isn’t mine.) So she watched that while I started working on installing Windows XP Pro and SuSE 8.1 Pro on my main computer. Hopefully it will end up going a bit more smoothly than it did when Loopy tried to do it.

So the “war” on Iraq has finally started. That is good, the process has been dragging out for forever. It is good to see something decisive finally happening.

The February postings have been moved to the archives so look for back days there.

Slow day today. Again. This week is my week to work on paperwork and have nothing much of anything happen.

After Min got home from work, we went out and picked up Series 5 of As Time Goes By (yes, Emily, we have the next season now…) So we opened a bottle of wine and watched the entire season all at once! All seven episodes back to back. That is still my favorite show of all time. And season five didn’t disappoint either. My parents have watched more of the later seasons than I have and they way that the series is still going strongly. I can’t wait until series six comes out on DVD. But that will probably be a while yet.

Eric came to Ithaca to work today and Amanda came along because she didn’t have any class. Eric and I had a lot of work to do so we didn’t have much time to do anything else. We did all go out to lunch with Min and the State Street Diner.

Very slow day today. Min and watched more of Father Ted Series II. It is really a good series. Other than that, no news. Sorry.