Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

(sorry, I've been an Elton John fan for a VERY long time)

Tonight is an observatory night, so I actually have some time to get some writing in!

I drove up Saturday, arriving about 7pm. Russet met me at Chili's for dinner then we went off and saw Fantastic Four. Thus, a brief review


As superhero flicks go, Fantastic Four was not too bad. Better than The Hulk or Elektra, but that's not saying much. Watching Congress in live session on C-Span, or worse, in person, would be better than those two movies.

The previews tell the basic story. They're on a space station researching something when they get bombarded with cosmic rays. Any comic book fan knows that radiation doesn't kill, it causes change. Reed Richards gets stretchy, Sue Storm goes invisible and can throw force bubbles around, Johnny Storm (Sues' brother) turns into fire, and Ben Grimm gets stony. They learn about their powers, do weird things, then have to fight a supervillain. Supervillain is invariably defeated, but normally set up to reappear in #2 or some future installment.

Hmm. Nothing at all like any other superhero movie that I've ever seen. :-)

IMHO, you're either a fan of the FF comic or you're not. I've never been too much of a fan, but I'm a sucker for superhero flicks (that's my excuse for seeing The Crap That Was Elektra and I'm sticking with it). I don't expect too much from them, especially when I already know the characters. I think they did a good job of setting up for the next FF movie, and that's what the superhero movie genre is all about: the first movie shows everyone's origin and powers, they adapt to their powers and learn about each other, then they have to go beat up one or more bad guys. The second movie expands on the theme with more interesting plots, so I never have too high of hopes for the first movie. It's an introduction, nothing more.

So, criticisms. There's not much substance to this film. Basic and predictable story with few twists. The dialog isn't all that impressive. The acting, well, I guess I'd give it a B- to a C+. Michael Chicklas was great as Ben Grimm, I had quite a discussion with Magic Rat and we agreed that he was very well cast as Ben. Everyone else? Ehhh. Johnny Storm was great as an arrogant asshole. Sue Storm didn't seem nearly as smart as I expected. Reed Richards was a great ubergeek, very socially inept, but also as extremely smart as I expected. Victor Von Doom was also a pretty good job. Oh, and there was the standard Stan Lee cameo, I missed him in X2 and Elektra, but I also slept through a lot of the latter.

Some reviewers are saying it's garbage, basically wanting an ultra-slick superhero film along the lines of X-Men or X2. I tend to side with the minority that said they weren't making as pompous a film as that, they wanted something quieter, something that kind of poked fun at itself. I think they succeeded.

Would I recommend it? If you're huge on the FF or superhero flicks in general, yes. If you're not huge but like superhero flicks, wait for the matinee or DVD.

One thing that I do want to see on the DVD, but I doubt it will be there as it admits lack of vision: allegedly when The Incredibles came out, they redid a lot of Reed Richards' stretching things because they did such a fantastic job with Elastigirl. I'd love to see the before/after versions.


Sunday was spent largely snoozing. I was tired, and Russet had just come off five full nights. A full night is approximately 6pm to 7am, fortunately you do them about five days on, ten days off. Obviously the first day or two is spent doing little but sleeping.

After the movie we headed over to Walmart to pick up a few needed goodies, we then headed up the mountain to home. It was now after 1am. We're driving up the mountain, making good time, and I see a black bear running up the road in the on-coming traffic lane, not that there was any significant traffic coming down the mountain. It was definitely a good sized bear. Then we got home, Russet was miffed that I'd seen my first bear: she's been up here around seven years and has seen three, and she'd been here four years before she saw her first. Now I'm not even a resident yet and I've already seen one!


Our DSL circuit was installed Thursday. I'd bought a wireless router when I expected them to install it while I was up there the previous week which did not happen. With Russ working full nights, she didn't have time or patience to fool with it, so I set it up and got it nicely configured: changing SSID from the default, no broadcasting SSID, setting a WPA/TKIP password, changing the channel from the default of 6, so it's as reasonably secure as can easily be made. I still need to check for a bios update for it and back up the configuration in two or three places, such as my laptop, my USB thumb drive, and Russet's Mac.

So we now have DSL, but let me tell ya: it ain't nearly as fast as I'd like. It's only 384K, which is approx 7x the speed of dialup. Seems fast, but when you're doing some of the stuff that I do (not including games), it ain't. My Cox Cable broadband in Phoenix is over 3meg downstream, there's simply no contest. I can really feel the slowness when accessing my PC at work via VPN, verry laggy.


Today, Monday, I went down to Alamogordo and enrolled at NMSU. I'm taking a photography class and a intro to algebra, thus exploding the myth that you have to be very good in mathematics to be a computer programmer. I've been doing database programming for over 20 years and I've never needed anything beyond sum, average, minimum, and maximum. Of course, there are numerous exceptions, it's just that in my niche higher level math is not a requirement.

Going to this school is probably going to entail some very burdensome hassling. I have to get transcripts from the four different junior colleges that I've attended, I also have to give them my high school diploma! I can't imagine why they'd want a 23 year old record of my graduation. Whatever. I have to be enrolled as a non-degree seeking student until all my transcripts come in, then they'll decide if they want to admit me to the degree program.

The general plan is to go to NMSU-Alamogordo for two years and complete the lower level courses for a BFA/Photography, to be theoretically completed at NMSU-Las Cruces, which is the four-year school. NMSU has numerous junior college branches throughout Southern NM, so it's a pretty slick setup.

I had to take two math placement tests to show what class I needed, fortunately I didn't need a total review of math. I showed sufficient skill with everything short of algebra, so at least I don't have to sit through division with decimals and stuff like that.


As I said earlier, tonight we're at the observatory. I've got my camera, I've got my tripod, and it's totally clouded over. That's not entirely fair, the clouds are breaking up a bit. We had the going away luau for Scotsko, many laughs, a bit of sadness. I got some very nice sunset shots, I'll have to get them posted soon.


Currently I'm working on finishing up arranging my wedding photos. I'm resequencing them so that the 35mm, APS, and digital shots are in roughly logical/chronological sequence. It's coming along, I should finish soon.


My original travel plan had been to stay at the observatory until 11pm or so, then head back to Cloudcroft, go to sleep, and head back to Phoenix Tuesday AM. But as previously reported, my air conditioning went out Friday evening. My dad called while I was taking the math test and left a message: it's the blower motor (no big deal) but the part won't be in until Wednesday noonish at the earliest. So I think I'm going to stay Tuesday night. It'll work out well enough as I can go back to Alamogordo and get the info on getting my New Mexico driver's license and vehicle registration.

I just now told Russet of my plan to get info on my driver's license tomorrow, she said that apparently to get your license you have to attend a class on drunk driving. There's an interesting point to be made here that was made in a class that she heard about. New Mexico is infamous for having one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the country due to drunk driving. The point was made that they are requiring people from out of state to take a class on drunk driving when they are, as a point of fact, coming from a state that has a better record on drunk driving fatalities. Another point was made that one of the states that is worse than NM is Wyoming, curiously, both states rate high in the number of UFO sightings.


And I think I shall end this post on that note. :-)