link Whitney and I ran out to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire matinee at Georgetown Theatres yesterday, and I’m of two minds about it: On one hand the acting, individual scenes, effects, and “wizard world” are all stunning, but on the other, the movie is unsatisfying. I attribute that dissatisfied feeling to the underlying book itself. “Goblet of Fire” transitioned the series from the Harry story-arc to the rise of Voldemort, and the movie makes a briefer trail through the same ground. ...

Last weekend, Whitney, Joey, and I ran in Phil Schneider’s 60+ mile TSD rally south of Lexington. Whitney tried her hand at driving, I navigated, and Joey held court in the back of the Pup. It was a very intense rally, but Whitney and Joey were both magnificent. We ended-up with an aggregate score of only 230 after 60 miles, which was good enough for second place. But for an error on my part, we would’ve won :-) ...

The new Golf and Jetta weren’t just late to the U.S. they were several model years late. And to make matters even worse, VW dealers were fending-off irate customers who were saddled with quality problems from the get-go. And those customers rewarded VW for their callousness by abandoning the brand in droves - never to come back. taken from: Peter’s latest Rant I am Volkswagen’s ideal customer. Or, at least, I used to be. I really wanted a BMW, but I couldn’t afford one. (I argue no one can really afford a new one, but that’s another topic for another day!) The VW Jetta Mk.IV was like a baby 3-series, solid, serene, teutonic, and just snobby enough to be above the rice-burners from Honda and Nissan. ...

Waking up at 7 is early for most folks, but when you’re due to pick-up a pal at 7 and you wake-up @ 7 on the dot, it’s dead late… I was supposed to get Gary at Nolan Ford this morning, but I ended-up 20 minutes late after a panicked, flight-of-the-bumblebee race around my house. Didn’t shave, and that just feels icky… * * * News: I’ve got my own office. Sort of. My perennial office-mate, Patrick, moved up to the 3rd floor, leaving his side of the office empty. I soldiered-on in the old furniture configuration for a couple days: ...

Article The whole process confirms that the laws of nuclear physics worked just the same 2 billion years ago as they do today. So, you mean things like Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong Nuclear Force, and the Weak Nuclear Force existed before people?!! Fascinating article, but that conclusion is LAME…

“Jumping the Shark” v. To achieve a moment where people realize “it’s all downhill from here”. On ER two weeks ago, they treated a chimp. A CHIMP. ugh. John Leguizamo’s character is awful, and Kristen Johnson is trying hard, but her character makes the show suck. Luca and Abbey are the only decent characters remaining. For more details Jump The Shark

I hate edmunds.com…they’re verbose, unprofessional, and they don’t know passive voice from active voice (a particular annoyance of mine, thanks to Dr. Barbara Burch). Article on why small cars rock

Today is my birthday, and I feel like crap. I don’t know if this is the yang to my normal yin, the depressive to my normal mania, but I’m pissed off. Thoughts/Rant: * Money does actually suck. After trying to convince Whitney for 3 years that it’s neat, fun, green stuff that you convert into food, hobbies, etc., I’ve given up. It’s the stuff you pay other people to leave you alone. It’s the stuff you hemorrhage because cars break, people get sick, and houses leak…um…everything. Eighty percent of personal finance is behavior, and the remaining 20 is accounting. Unfortunately, the ‘behavior’ part of me is really reaching for that ‘blow’ part of the budget that just isn’t there. Don’t get me wrong–my family and I are fine, but we’re not going to get to have any fun for the next decade or so. How the hell do people maintain the lifestyles they do these days? ...

After dropping-off Whitney’s Intrigue at the Don Jacobs body shop at 6:30, I didn’t have a ride. I could have waited until 7:45 for the Don Jacobs shuttle van, but why do that, when I have Lexington’s fabulous Lextran After hoofing it about 1 mile towards downtown, I boarded the bus for the transfer station and met a nice lady who worked at the UK College of Pharmacy. At the transfer station, waiting 1/2 hour for my next bus, I met Serge Steshenko, my co-worker on my team who rides the bus everyday. He made sure I got on the right bus (#2 North) and we kept one another company until we go to the Northside Walmart, right beside Lexmark. ...

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I love buying tires. I imagine I feel the same way about buying tires that women feel about buying shoes. Each tire has its own engineering qualities, balancing wear, noise, cornering, bad weather, and price. After consulting ConsumerReports, I chose the Yokohama AVID TRZ, 225/60R16, with an 80,000 mile warranty and good ride, noise, and bad weather characteristics. Not a performance tire, but why do you want one on a regular sedan? ...

Before being emasculated by Miss Jolene, Dr. Bud had a firecracker named Nadine whose Dad was a Texas oil tycoon. Read here for a little escapism, and plain fun about about Gulfstream IV’s, UT Longhorns fans, and the redhead’s new Mustang Cobra.

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Trying out a new Image hosting site… Album

Random thought I had in church yesterday: Lawyers and their derivatives (Judges, etc.) are the apex people of our society. There is no one more powerful, ultimately, than a lawyer in American society, because these are the people who mediate disputes between two or more equal parties. Without lawyers and a judiciary, democracy couldn’t exist with our current code of laws–people would get frustrated and start killing one another, and society would break down. ...

There’s something unamerican about being at work at 6am. Whitney and I heard a great sermon yesterday about how to balance work, God, and home, and one suggestion from a guy who worked 45-50 hours/week (like me…) was to go in to work early, so that he could come home at a decent hour. Mondays are traditionally my longest days, so we set our alarm for 5 am and I was in to work by 6:08. ...

Bill Randall has a Website. Not a blog, for he disdains these unstructured musings, a WEBSITE. :-) good stuff, especially the lists of films he o’ersaw at GSP for the past 4 summers.

Setting the stage, I write this blog as my darling Bella exclaims, “And by the way, it’s NOTHING like ‘Garden State’”. Yes, this Cameron Crowe written/directed opus is long, unconventional, and dialog heavy, but Whitney and I both loved it, and any Kentuckian is sure to love it as well. Nominally, “Elizabethtown” is the story of a wayward shoe designer (Orlando Bloom) who lost his benefactor corporation “roughly one billion dollars”. At the very moment he’s going to ginsu himself, he learns his father, favorite son of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, has died. His mom’s thrown into overdrive, his sister is a mess, and he–as oldest–must fly from Oregon to Kentucky to bring his corpse home. What follows is a non-conventional fish-out-of-water tale, shot in and around Central Kentucky, as our wayward designer finds life and love. ...