Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

The dogwoods have been blooming a while now. This is from the tree in my backyard. I suspect the snow from the nor’easter damaged most of the blossoms. All the trees seem to have petals tipped with a bit of brown. I love dogwoods – they have such a simple, uncrowded elegance to their blossoms.

Breakfast came late this morning due to the boys. The Fop needed a ride to the train station first thing this morning which meant making sure he got up and out the door with minimal fuss then taking him in to 30th Street Station. I originally intended to get up and have breakfast but opted to try to sleep a little more instead. Why? Because some cat was howling alllll night. As you can tell from his photo, he’s thrilled.

This whole morning would have been easier if Tennyson had let us sleep. He’s not a happy kitty. He had surgery on his foot to remove a toe yesterday. A growth that had been removed in December came back, so removal of the toe was the best option unfortunately. One foot is all bandaged up and he’s wearing an Elizabethan collar around his head. (Poor little conehead!) This makes for one very unhappy cat and he’s certainly not hesitant to let us know that. Overnight I was up at 3:30 and 6:30 to comfort the poor little thing since he was yowling rather loudly. He’s truly pathetic. He quieted down around 7 a.m. I got up at 8 to find him “resting” in the litter box. So sad yet so funny, especially since he’s so big he took up most of the box and had knocked the top lip askew. Apparently propping his head up on the edge was comfy so I made him a better bed out of a box in my office. (He’s currently on the floor outside the box propped up on it… he lounges like nobody’s business!)

From observing him today, I think the collar is the worst part. He’s tentative on his foot, but it doesn’t seem to be causing him too much pain. I got him to eat and drink a bit. He’s not enthusiastic about the stairs so I will probably end up setting up food and water upstairs for the week. We’ve already dumped 2 cups of water on my office rug. Once he’d had a little to drink he perked right up and demanded attention, hopped in and out of my lap and wandered about knocking things off my desk. He’s calmer today than yesterday as well. The vet’s office says he’ll figure out how to eat and drink and get used to the collar. I hope so because I feel so bad for giggling when he misjudges a corner and ends up coming to a sudden full-halt when the collar gets caught on something. I’m also worried that he’s not getting enough water.

Hopefully he’ll let me sleep tonight. I need to sleep off some of the intense guilt I’m feeling for … putting a photo of him in the collar on my blog… among other things.

cat, dogwoods, elizabethan collar, flowers, mornings, silly, spring, surgery, tennyson

Spider-man 3 was the worst comic book movie I’ve ever seen. (Yes, I’ve seen Elektra and Daredevil, not to mention Ghost Rider.) In the interest of full-disclosure, I did not like Spider-Man 2 very much either. I also have never read the Spider-Man comics. But I also like most movies, even the bad ones. My favorite part of Spider-Man 3 was seeing the back of haeddre‘s head during the jazz club scene.

There are possible minor spoilers below.

I dislike Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and Peter Parker to begin with. If the purpose of this movie was to make the audience hate Peter Parker and his ego-centric, self-indulgent personality, it worked. By halfway through the movie I was hoping he’d miss with his webbing and fall to his death. Kirsten Dunst is cute but plays Mary Jane as a whiner which doesn’t really work for me either. James Franco was a highlight of the cast as Harry Osborn, despite his mercurial personality swings. Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace, deserved a little more screen time and character development. Unfortunately, that screen time was sucked up by Peter Parker doing some sort of bizarre strutting montage.

Spider-Man 3 plods along painfully. I found the exposition in the beginning about 5 minutes longer than necessary especially since the previous movies have been fairly huge blockbusters. There was so much character and relationship development I wondered if the script had been written by a romance novel writer. There was an extended scene where Peter Parker struts about town, getting startled looks from random women on the street, to a horrible piece of music. I’m not sure if a selection from the Bee Gees would have made it better or worse but it certainly would have been fitting. The Jazz Club scene with Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy is also painfully long. The audience got the idea that Peter Parker was a cocky, self-centered egotistical asshole already, we didn’t need another extended musical scene for this. The best part of this scene is the end when Gwen apologizes to Mary Jane and storms out in tears leaving Peter behind. (Gwen Stacy is played by Bryce Dallas Howard from The Village and Lady in the Water if you’re trying to place her but can’t figure out where you’ve seen her.)

Another problem was an overpopulation of villains. Sandman and Venom and a new Goblin, oh my! Too many storylines (focused primarily on the villains’ hatred of Spider-Man, which I could totally relate to) were presented too quickly and even felt far too over-simplified and condensed to me. The special effects were not as amazing as in previous Spider-Man movies. Something about the cgi and the physics was just not as realistic. The result was a movie that felt like a character and relationship study that happend to have some bad guys and a little cgi. I have no idea where they spent all the money they supposedly spent on this movie. On talent, I guess?

Word is that Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst won’t be doing another Spider-Man movie. Good. Perhaps Sam Raimi should step down as director as well. These movies have created an interesting universe that could continue to be successful with better acting, writing and directing. I won’t feel quite as bad about driving up the opening weekend ticket sales results on this movie if a sequel happens with completely new people. It’s almost as if this comic book movie got lost somewhere. Perhaps the guy in the editing room thought he was editing a drama instead of an action comic book blockbuster.

It was so bad we came home and watched another movie (Shaun of the Dead) just to get Spider-Man 3 out of our heads.

movie reviews, movies, reviews, spider-man, spider-man 3, spiderman, spiderman 3

Friday Flowers

Sometimes the light is just right and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get the shot. Sometimes the light is just right for just one shot. This is one of those photos – the follow-up shot I took a fraction of a second later lacked the glorious filtering of the sun through the tree. (I encourage you to click on the thumbnail for a bigger version of this photo – it’s one of those photos that you miss the details and effect at this size.) This tree is one of the older trees just inside the wall. The trunk is twisted and gnarled, the major branches have been taken off, but it has fresh young branches growing from its trunk and it is blooming with all its might. It’s also a far paler pink than the other trees, more a blushing white than pink.

The other photo is a close-up of some of the blossoms from the same tree. I love how the soft sunlight filtered through the tree onto these flowers. The close-up was actually taken before the full tree photo – the sun was playing hide-and-seek with me that whole walk.

Work, laptop and technology fluff

I am waiting for the new work laptop to arrive. While the only problem was a bad hard drive, my Thinkpad was old enough that the IT group didn’t want to support it anymore. (Oh darn?) So they successfully retrieved my data and loaded it onto a brand new Thinkpad. Shucks, and I didn’t get them anything! I’m optimistic that this laptop might be lighter. Please let it be lighter!

So I’ve been without a computer most of the week but I was able to get work done anyway. Logging into Outlook web access every 30 seconds is a small price to pay for a new lighter, faster, cooler laptop. I’m really glad I did a full sweep of my mailbox recently. It would be really annoying to be going over my pitiful mailbox quota on top of everything else this week!

Speaking of work, WebEx is a very cool thing and appears to be working quite smoothly on my fabulous Mac. We’ve started using it for our bigger meetings instead of NetMeeting because NetMeeting just can’t handle gracefully the volume of users we need to stream simple presentations to. I think I’ll use the Mac for all future WebEx meetings too – it’s nice to be able to multitask and still see the presentation (much bigger screen here). It helps since, in the case of today’s presentation, I spent 2 or 3 weeks working with the project team on the presentation (and we did a full practice run-through Wednesday morning) and tend to zone out if I’m just staring at the presentation. Amazingly, it’s easier to pay attention if I can divert some of my focus to babbling here.

Apple & iPhone fluff

The date is getting closer… the iPhone approaches. A little over a month from now we’ll be able to order it if all goes well. Though I’m not usually an early adpopter, I’m hoping to have one in my hot little hands by the beginning of July at the latest. I can’t wait to play with it! Apple’s stock has been doing very well lately. I hope the iPhone release happens on time and drives it up even further. I’d love to see another stock split by the end of this year.

If you are amused by the Apple “I’m a Mac.” ads, the UK ads are also available on the UK section of Apple’s web site.

Also, Steve Jobs came published another missive – this time about what Apple is doing to become a greener company.

apple, cherry blossoms, flowers, iphone, laptops, spring, technology, webex, work

There are an obnoxious number of cherry trees lining the street along the graveyard. The street is lined with trees that have been attacked with pink at the moment. The grass is littered with pink petals. Walking under the trees today resulted in petals stuck in my hair. I’m torn between being excited by their springtime grandeur and sickened by the concentration of pink. (It’s a lot of pink… at least a half mile. Though there are 2 trees blooming in white to break it up a little.) The trees are very exuberant this time of year.

Computer drama of the week…

Unsurprisingly, I dislike calling IT Help Desks. I would prefer to solve issues myself. Oh, and I have a little too much insight into the mind of an IT support person. The Help Desk at the company I’m currently working for is actually quite good, responsive and clueful, honestly… but that doesn’t make calling them with a randomly freezing laptop any happier. Yesterday morning, my laptop started to freeze up. I gave it a timeout over lunch (off, unplugged, battery out). Sadly, it didn’t magically fix the problem. I did successfully get the presentation I’m currently working on for Friday off the drive before it crashed for the 12th time. I called the Help Desk. The nice support guy thought it might be my hard drive and escalated me (with a very high priority) to an appropriate tech.

The tech timed his call perfectly – calling right after my afternoon meeting. (Doing a meeting blind when you’re supposed to be introducing the ins and outs of a new presentation? Not fun.) He agreed with the hard drive diagnosis (I was still desperately hoping for a video driver issue) and asked how soon I could get it to him. I overnighted it to him and he received it today. Apparently my laptop is toast. Poor little laptop. He thinks he can save my data though, so all is not lost (literally and figuratively). I think I’ll have a new-to-me laptop in my hands by the end of the week. In the meantime I get to limp along with temporary access to my e-mail via a web client that times out every 30 seconds. Irritating, but at least I can still work!

April Stats:

• Flickr: 40 new photos, 300 hits.
• Miscellaney of a Cheshire Cat: 12 new posts, 5458 hits.

cherry blossoms, laptop, pink, spring, statistics, tech support, work