Yesterday, we went geocaching. It is so much fun. I really look forward to working on the more difficult finds.

Does anyone else absolutely LOVE sci-fi/horror/fantasy anthology shows? Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Monsters, Tales from the Dark Side, The New Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, and even Are You Afraid of the Dark?

I've recently introduced Zoe to the original Outer Limits (we bought the entire series on DVD), as well as the George Romero-produced Tales from the Dark Side. She's really enjoying them so far. I'm more of an Outer Limits fan than ...Dark Side but it depends on my mood. Outer Limits is sci-fi while ...Dark Side is horror. But anyway.

When I was a kid, I used to stay up late on weekends and watch these shows. Monsters came on before "USA Up All Night" and Tales from the Dark Side aired immediately after. It was tough staying up that late, but worth it. Ditto for MonsterVision, which was more of a 1990s thing so a bit easier to deal with.

These anthology series fell out of favor when stuff like X-Files and Buffy started airing, with episodic story arcs and recurring characters. The week-to-week approach was similar to the anthologies (specifically--and especially--Outer Limits), but when the anthology shows were revived yet again (Forest Whitaker hosted The New New Twilight Zone, which sucked), they just didn't get the ratings that the previous series received. The biggest reason for that was a lack of good writers. Rod Serling and Richard Matheson wrote the bulk of the original Twilight Zone, and the remake in the 1980s (known as The New Twilight Zone) used stories written by luminaries such as Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Harlan Ellison.

It is my hope that an anthology series debuts that captures the minds of disaffected nerdy teenage boys the same way those old shows did. Perhaps I will write and produce it myself.

Only in the Twilight Zone, of course.

I've been playing EverQuest 2 with Zoe and Erik.

Sometimes I miss the days of playing Skate or Die on my brother Jeff's Commodore 64. I'll never forget that loading music that played after I typed in LOAD "*",8,1. Several years later, I bought a used copy of Skate or Die for the NES and finally mastered all the half-pipe tricks. Nobody was there to see it, though.

I think, when we buy our house, I'll build a man-cave with a sweet setup for classic gaming. Maybe I'll get that MAME arcade cabinet I've always wanted.

I really want an Indian Chief. Sure I don't know anything about them and I've never ridden a motorcycle before, but damn they look sweet.

I'd just put it in my garage and sit on it from time to time.

I woke up today, turned on my PC, inserted a Windows Vista 64-bit DVD, rebooted, commenced the install, and was plunged into an endless cycle of BSODs. I tried to install Windows Vista 32-bit. Same problem. I tried to install Windows XP x64. Same problem. So I gave up. That PC has been nothing but problems since I bought it in December 2007.

I had been wanting to buy a Mac Pro for quite some time, so today's events pushed me over the edge. Zoe went to the Apple Store, picked out my new Mac (dual Xeon quad-core, 6GB RAM, etc), paid for it, and here I am. In typical Mac fashion, I was up and running in minutes.

Finally, finally, I have a Mac that can be one and only do-it-all machine. Development in Mac OS X, development in Windows, all my games, and everything else, all on this single box. I think that's what I'm most excited about.



Oh yeah, it's also the fastest computer I've ever used in my LIFE.

The Watchmen?



Hated it!

Today we went to look at a Victorian house for sale, and it was way, way too big. It was a really pretty house, but I don't want to pay enormous energy bills for the 7/8 of the house I'd never use.

It rained all day today and I must admit, I liked it. I love the sound of the rain pelting the skylight.

What ever happened to Heavy D and the Boyz?

The core skill of innovators is failure recovery, not failure avoidance.

I spent some time today watching the channel known as "Chiller" on cable. It's in HD, and it has a nice spread of horror and horror-related programming. Things get a bit repetitive, but that's to be expected for a 9-month-old television station, I mean, channel.

When I lived in Lansing and had DISH Network, I had a similar channel called, uh, Monstervision? Something like that. I can't remember. It was removed from the lineup along with the rest of VOOM (including the Kung Fu Channel). It was very repetitive too. How many times a day do I really need to see CHUD 2: Bud the CHUD?

Today I watched an episode of the horror anthology "Monsters." It's pretty cheesy. I like anthologies, though. Creepshow, Tales from the Darkside, Twilight Zone (and it's 1985 redo), Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, and Monsters are the ones that come to mind. Oh! And there was one on HBO back in the 1980s called The Hitchhiker that was really cool. It was more mystery than sci-fi/horror, but it had some of the same conceits.

I miss the days of staying up late on Friday and Saturday nights to watch old horror movies on USA Up All Night or one of the various local channels. In Dallas it was KTVT Channel 11 and KDFI 27; in Austin it was 39, but the station letters escape me, but I remember the jingle: "39 is miiiiiine." Channel 11 played kung fu movies on weekends and reruns of 1970s shows like CHiPS and Ironside on weekdays, mixed in with ads for truck driving schools and Sally Kellerman selling diplomas.

Did you grow up with channels like that? Do you wish you could recapture some of those memories?

I saw the Wrestler today.

I watched wrestling in the 80s. I was a fan of guys like Robin "Randy The Ram" Raminski. A commenter on a review site had this to say about the movie.

The character Randy "The Ram" was once a superstar in the "Big Leagues" of wrestling. 20 Years Later he's been used and abused and forgotten, now working bingo halls and high-school gyms for little money.
This is exactly what the WWE does, they chew the wrestlers up and spit them out. No union, no pension. There is a reason guy like Roddy Piper, Ric Flair, Terry Funk and Mick Foley had such a strong reaction to the movie...it's very real. Just count the number of pro-wrestlers that have died before their 40th b-day.
Of course, Vince McMahon will never have to work a high-school gym, but he'll make sure there are plenty of pro-wrestlers who have to.

It's a fantastic film from which I left with an unsettled sadness.

I like telling Zoe about a band and then singing an excerpt of one of their songs, but changing the lyrics to something silly.

She listens for a good 30 seconds or so before she'll say, "That's not how it goes!"

Now I know why novemberbug's posts are the way they are.

Nothing much has been going on lately. Holidays were what they were.

I might lose my job, but that's not unfamiliar to anyone.

There are a slew of good movies coming out soon that I can't wait to see. The Wrestler, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, and some others whose titles escape me are all on my short list. I still need to see Milk and Slumdog Millionaire, as well as ...Benjamin Button.

If any of you Des Moines folks are up for going to the Fleur or elsewhere to see one or more of these movies, let me know.

veazey21 will love this.

I really want an electronic drum kit. I've always wanted one.

I think I should get involved with a local volunteer program to help kids get access to musical education and equipment. I always lamented the fact that I didn't have access to music education, mainly due to poverty.

I played trumpet in school, and when my house burned down, my trumpet was destroyed. Subsequently my mom's boyfriend at the time loaned me his Getzen Eterna Severinsen, which was an amazing instrument, but when they broke up I had to give it back. Thus ended my trumpet career. I went into newspaper and theater subsequently.

Nowadays so much can be done in software. It's crazy. I don't like playing most instruments via my MIDI keyboard, except piano-type devices. Assembling a drum beat on a keyboard creates a satisfactory rhythm, but it has no soul. Just ask REM's "Up" album.

I think I'll go to Best Buy tonight and do my best Joe Morello impression.

Zoe will get this.

Yes we can, and we did, and we will.