Posts

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ID, Please

There was talk of the new Real ID at work today, and I decided to check my driver’s licence.

It expires next year.

So I looked up what was needed for a Real ID.

Since I don’t have a valid passport or my original birth certificate, I decided to check online how to get a valid copy of my birth certificate.

I could either walk across the street to the county clerk’s office, or be lazy and order on online.

I decided to be lazy.  Which then cost me more time than necessary.

After filling out the request form and paying the fee, I then had to print out another document and have it notarized and then get a digital (scanned or camera phone) copy sent to the clerk’s office.

It took a couple of trips to the notary public office up the street to get that part done.  They didn’t take credit cards, so I had to run down to the ATM to get cash.

All told, I could have had an actual copy in my hands if I had just walked across the street to the county clerk’s office.

Ah well.

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Christopher Robin

When you pair Obi-Wan Kenobi and Peggy Carter together in a movie, along with Mycroft Holmes and a bunch of beloved stuffed animals, you know I’ll come a-runnin’.

Christopher Robin is the first movie in a long time that had me laughing and crying equally, sometimes at the same time.

I couldn’t relate to the title character because let’s face it, I’m still a kid at heart.

But to watch him interact with some of my best friends from childhood (at some point after Kindergarten, we had the whole gang from the 100 Acre Woods) just made me smile with tears of joy, though there were a few moments of real sadness.

The voice acting was great, it was a pleasure to hear Peter Capaldi as Rabbit.

And two songs that I had hoped would make it into the movie, did.  One is obvious, about a certain bouncing animal, the other almost made me jump out of my seat from pure surprise and happiness.

I highly recommend seeing it.  Go now!

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Dell

My home desktop died on Monday, I so I went and got a replacement.

I found this one in the open box/display model section at Best Buy, for about $300 less than what it runs on Dell’s website:

This may be the first actual Gaming Desktop that I’ve ever bought.

After installing and configuring and transferring programs and files, I tried a few games that I still play to see how they look.

The results were impressive. 

So impressive that I actually forgot to take screenshots in Star Wars The Old Republic, World of Warcraft, and Star Trek Online.

I try to do that later.

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The 50s

Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the best monster movies ever made.

This was one of the first ones I remember watching on TV, probably on the tiny 13-inch black and white set in my parent’s bedroom.

And probably on the 3:30 Movie on KGO Channel 7 in San Francisco.

Between the weird ‘metal’ aliens (Kilaaks) and the 11 Toho monsters and the Moonlight SY-3 (I still want a toy of that) there’s very little to not like about this one.  It’s campy and silly at times, just like a classic Godzilla film should be.

My favorite part is when the Kilaak leader begins to gloat near the end, and then Godzilla smashes into their secret base.

It’s like, “naw, b*tch, we comin’ for you, too!”

This was one of the few classic Godzilla films that I got to watch with Dad, sometime last year.  He found it just as silly as I do, but entertaining.

What I found amusing was that the English subtitles did not match the English dubbing for a good portion of the movie.

I watched it over the weekend, not knowing that today was the actual 50th anniversary.  I may watch it again tonight, just because.

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Cleaning Up

My Dad rarely, if ever, asked for help with anything around the house.  I usually ended up helping him bring groceries up the stairs, or laundry, or bringing down garbage and recyclables from the kitchen or bathrooms.

Sometimes he’d make it halfway up the stairs with a sack of rice before I knew what he was doing.  I’d bring it up the rest of the way.

When he moved back home in 2016, the basement and garage was filled with the moving boxes from his place up in Washington state.  I kept asking if we could reorganize or clear a lot of the boxes so one or both of us could park inside the garage.  He kept insisting that he’d get to it, eventually, and while he did empty a few boxes and dumped stuff, the garage was never cleared.

So I did that this weekend, dumping and rearranging the boxes so I could park my car back inside the garage.

The best part?

The boxes are situated so I can go through a few every weekend, and do more dumping.  They were not so arranged before my reshuffle.  I just need to back my car out and have plenty of room to sort through the rest of the boxes.

And then I can start on the basement.  Again.

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Camera stuff

I did a factory reset on my Canon, and a couple of test shots this morning appeared to have fixed the issue with whatever settings I screwed up.

I also picked up a couple of new memory cards (64GB) since they were on sale, and the 32GB card that I was using was producing a ‘cannot read card’ error message.  I initially thought that the off brand replacement battery may have been causing the error, as some folks had been stating online, but it happened when I used the stock battery with the camera as well.

I need to start taking pictures again.  Maybe my toy rocket will go on a mission this weekend.

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Friday

This week has felt like a kiddie coaster compared to the roller coaster ride of the past couple of months.