It’s sad, but true, this picture defines our marriage.
What did it eat?
Just to be clear, I’m the baby here and Chris is the puppy. I have a “loud” stomach so when Chris decides to lean on my during the evening, my stomach tends to make a LOT of noise (actually, even if he doesn’t lean), which ‘scares’ him and makes him think the alien is going to come out of my chest and eat him.
Hasn’t happened.
Yet.
A while ago Chris posted about 2 conversations we had. One here, the other here and they are fairly typical of a conversation we have. In fact, they are accurate transcriptions of what we said. Here’s another one.
This could be why our friends refuse to hang out with us too often.
Chris: “Um, Jeff, how do I…”
Me: “If you use all the words, I can answer you better.”
Chris: “Never mind, I think I got it. I have a bad habit of asking questions without thinking.”
Me: “That’s where the teddy-bear comes in.”
If you think you can keep up, or not go crazy, give us a call and we’ll do coffee.
Yeah, I never thought I’d say that either, but I’ve been disappointed by cookies. More on that later.
So, on this beautiful Saturday morning, Chris and I got up early, dragged the dog out of bed for his walk, and headed off to the ScotiaBank Theatre or whatever to see Terminator Salvation. While not quite as bad as X-Men Origins: Wolverine (bad), it was no Star Trek (awesome) either. It also had nothing much to do with any other Terminator product you may know.
Ok, that’s not true. We see a picture of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton style, thank-you), we have an Arnold-bot, John Connor, Kyle Reese, Cyberdyne and a bunch of killer robots. I guess the basics are there.
What’s different (without giving everything away)? John’s not the be all and end all for the revolution. Either he hasn’t gotten to that point yet, or this timeline isn’t quite the same. He’s a well respected leader of the rebellion, but NOT the boy-king he’s painted to be previously. There’s no time-travel here, although Sarah mentions it on a tape John listens to. In fact, this story is more about Kyle Reese ultimately than John Connor.
John Connor is of course played by Christian Bale. Yawn. He chews on scenery and is cranky most of the time. Christian’s done some good work, but he’s overshadowed here by pretty much everything else in this movie, and the sourness of his character. He’s not the smart-alecy John Connor we saw in T-2.
This time out, Kyle is played by Anton Yelchin (Yeah, Chekov is fighting the terminators) and they’ve given him an adorable little sidekick named Star(r). Star(r) is great but other than being adorable and handing people weapons at the appropriate time, I’m not sure why she’s there. She reminds me of Newt from Aliens or Laddie from The Lost Boys. Fun little kids, but not 100% relevant to the core story. For the record, I think Anton does a better job as Kyle Reese than he did as Chekov, but I wish they’d gotten B.A.G. to do the movie. Much hotter.
Sam Worthington – handsome bloke. Needs serious acting and dialect coaching. Seriously, WTF? His accent was all over the place. For a few minutes it was flawless American. Then, for most of the movie, every third word sounded like a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Mel Gibson on a bad bender. The opening scene of the movie is an intense prison scene between him and Helena Bonham-Carter (huh?) and I almost quit the movie after that. McG may be a good action director, but give him an emotional scene and he’ll let the actors do whatever they want with no regard for how it ends up. Like he delegated it to the 3rd unit and didn’t care.
Overall – the special effects are pretty awesome. Good scale, decent story, interestingly different from what you’d expect.
Now for the cookies.
So, after our lunch, we needed dessert. Right across the street is Cookies By George (now you get the title of this post) so we went over and indulged in several (expensive) cookies. Considering the price and size, the cookies at Starbucks are a better deal, and actually taste better.
I had 3 (which is why I’m sick now). My first cookie was something with big chocolate chunks and that one was ok, so I boldly moved on to cookie number two. Peanut butter. Yuck! I love peanut butter cookies, but this was horrible. Like they waved some peanut butter near it and the rest was slightly undercooked dough. Blah. Finally I had an Oatmeal cookie (they have some other adjective at the start, I don’t remember what) and it was horrible. I gave it to Chris and he wouldn’t finish it either, even though he said he enjoyed his. This Oatmeal and Raisin cookie (again, LOVE them usually) was laced with orange peel or something and had a strong orange/citrus taste. I hated it.
Thus, after a morning of disappointment, I am now laying on the bed at 4:00 in the afternoon, tired, slightly nauseous, but finally happy. Why? Because I have an awesome husband and the world’s cutest dog right here with me, and outside is the gorgeous bright sunshine you can only find in a world-class city like Vancouver.
Do you Tweet? Have you Twittered? Do you know about the Fail Whale? Twitterific or Twitterfon? Twitterberry? Tweetdeck? Twhirl? TwitPic?
If you’re not completely lost then you must know about the social media phenom called Twitter. It’s technically a micro-blogging system. What this means is that instead of writing hundreds of words for a blog (like this one), you have just 140 characters in which do answer “What are you doing now?” for anyone who’s listening. In reality it’s used for just about everything from micro-blogging to customer service to finding jobs etc.
It’s like Facebook in terms of having some privacy options, allowing for followers and private timelines and yet in the absense of the private timeline you can see what a person has been doing by simply knowing their Twitter name. For example, visit http://twitter.com/jeffrose and you can see everything I have posted in the past.
Twitter Fail Whale
Twitter’s growth has been incredible with figures reported that they have been doubling growth in a single month. Recently, Ashton Kutcher fought it out with CNN to get 1,000,000 followers and won. That’s right, celebrities use it for real! You can keep up to date with Brittney or Ashton and Demi, or Shaq, provided you can find their REAL account among the usual fakery. They are out there. I had to turn of Ashton and Demi because they just weren’t that interesting. Sorry guys.
Twitter’s growth has caused a lot of problems recently in that their site is often down or slow resulting in the notorious Fail Whale shown to the left. This is their page that says that something is wrong. They’ve got quite a sense of humor and show an owl asking you to “mosey along” when you find a page that’s been suspended for some reason.
Since Twitter has been growing so fast and because they provide a nice open API there are tons of third-party clients, tools and site available to assist with various tasks. Many attempt to fill in missing features, add more features or improve on existing features. I mentioned several at the top and don’t profess to be an expert, but I’ll share my experiences with you.
TweetDeck and Twhirl are 2 Windows based desktop applications that use the Adobe Air platform. I use both and they have several differences. Tweetdeck takes a semi-tabbed approach and lets you create groups for various uses. I have a Van Folks group, a developers group etc. This lets me more easily follow people or conversations I care about. That’s one of the main benefits of TweetDeck. Twhirl’s main benefit (as far as I use it) is that you can have multiple Twitter accounts setup and open simultaneously in it. I have mine, Rumble’s and West Coast Favors (defunct) setup. Yep, Rumble Tweets.
HootSuite is a website that lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts and even pre-schedule Tweets to go out when you’re not around. Great if you’re going to be away. HootSuite offers lots of other options too such as a bookmarklet that lets you instantly Tweet out a website you discover by just clicking a bookmark and you can share it with everyone.
On my iPod Touch, I use Twitterific and Twitterfon and have heard good things about Tweetie (which is not free). Twitterific just released version 2 and offers a lot for it’s price (Free) and works really well.
Every day, Twitter grows. Every day, new applications appear to add more and more features. Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, recently talked about the need for Twitter to make money but how they don’t want to resort to classic banner advertising.
As I think about it, the vast majority of people I know use Twitter through an external service like those mentioned above and therefore Twitter’s monetization will have to no rely on on-page advertising since quite a few people won’t see it, thus reducing impressions and the effectiveness of advertising.
Remember to follow @jeffrose, @rumbledawg and @christophert7.
I’m not a MadMan or anything, but I, like everyone, have an opinion about ads I see, slogans I hear, jingles I sing etc. So here`s the latest one.
While channel flipping tonight, I saw an ad for Tide, you know, the laundry detergent that seems to be constantly reinventing itself.
Can I digress for a second? This particular ad featured a BOX of Tide. Who uses powdered laundry detergent anymore and WHY? I learned this lesson a few years ago. Perhaps the powder is slightly cheaper, I don’t even know anymore (Chris takes care of that) but powder just sucks! Liquid people. Use the liquid. Why?
So, back to the ad I saw. Tide has a new slogan and if you let your mind run amok in the gutter, you’ll understand why I giggled when I saw it. Yes, the picture actually links to the coupon.
Tide Coupon with funny saying
The new slogan reminds me of something a pimp would say when marketing the new girl. Yeah, I had to go there for you.
