The Dead Zone

With Christina in North Carolina, I find myself with some serious TV-watching time on my hands. Last night, I watched the movie The Dead Zone, which Christina had seen some time ago. We have been watching the TV series "The Dead Zone", which is based on the novel by Steven King. Well, actually it started up again last summer and TiVo got confused, so we missed a bunch of episodes, but we've seen all of them but seven, six of which we've now got stored on the TiVo.

The point of this (I think) is that I'm familiar with a different version of the same basic plot-line, so I spent more of the movie comparing it to the TV-series than evaluating it on its own merits.

Well, the verdict is in: Christopher Walken is creepier than Anthony Michael Hall. (Well, duh.) That underlies much of the difference between the two plots. Hall plays a much more sympathetic version of "Johnny Smith". I suppose that makes sense -- in an episodic format, you want your audience to sympathize with the main character. I appreciated the creepy element of the movie -- it added an element missing from the series. But overall, I like the series better.

The comparison may be unfair, since the TV series has more time to develop characters. But I like various touches from the series, like Johnny being the father of his ex-girlfriend's son.

Bowlin'

I went bowling yesterday with Christina and some of her friends. I bowled 132 and 99. I knocked over similar numbers of pins in both games, but I couldn't get any marks in the second until the 8th frame. In the first game, I was happy that in the first 9 frames, I knocked over at least 9 pins in each.

Board Game Geek

My friends and I have been playing a fair number of board games lately. So I did some searching and stumbled across the BoardGameGeek web site. One of the features is a gaming calendar, where you can see what board games I've played recently. (Hey, I did say Geek, right?) I also added that link to my now slightly more detailed gaming page.

As you can see from the calendar, the two games we've played the most lately are Carcassonne and Robo Rally. Carcassonne is a tile-laying game, which sounds wierd, but it's actually fairly simple and fun. You place tiles, which have roads, cities, farms, and cloisters. You then have a certain number of people pieces (called "meeples"), which you can place on the various board elements -- for example, as farmers on the farms, or as monks in the cloisters. It has a number of interesting elements -- it's somewhat cooperative, and it doesn't have the "get knocked out of the game" feature of a lot of other games. I'm not very good at it -- we've played 4 times, and I've been last every time. But it's a lot of fun.

Robo Rally is an older game, and in fact is now out of print. The basic concept of this game is that you "program" your robot by laying down 5 cards in order. The cards say things like "Move 1", "Turn Right", "Back Up". Your robot does things in the order that you tell it to -- except if you run into another robot programmed by someone else. Then your robot keeps doing those things, but he might get bumped off course and do completely unintended things. The other possibility is not paying attention and having a "bug" in your program. Running into other robots and my continual inability to tell my left from my right worked together pretty well yesterday, when I started doing the wrong thing, got bumped by Martin, and then ended up on a "healing" square to end the turn. Another source of fun/danger is the board itself, which represents a "factory", complete with conveyer belts, crushers, pits and other dangers.

Christmas Day

Here are some pictures from Christmas Day.



Here's Christina opening a present.



Here's me opening my big present from Christina -- a laptop cart.



Here's Teddy wearing one of his presents.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Christina fixed us a nice Christmas Eve dinner. Here are some pictures.



Christina enjoys a refreshing beverage while preparing dinner.



I put myself in charge of the multimedia entertainment options.

Dinner at my cousin Sean's

Yesterday we went over to my cousin Sean's for Christmas dinner. Here are some pictures.



Here's my cousin Sara and her fiance Marty.



Here's my cousin Sara again.



Here's Sara and Marty's bengal cat, Squirt.



Here's my cousin Sean and his fiancee Jeannine. Note her newly acquired ring.

Oh, Christmas Tree

Here's our Christmas tree this year, as prepared by Christina. The tree itself is older than I am and accompanied my family and me back from Germany in '72.

Travel

Due to popular request, I've updated my travel page with trips from the past year and a half. (And links to descriptions, where available.) I also updated the maps.

Hugo Update: Forever

When we last heard from my project of reading the Hugo-award winning novels, I was at #22. I recently added #23 and #24.

I looked at the list of novels and decided to read the most recent one I hadn't read. That would be Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman, the 1997 winner. But I knew that Haldeman's The Forever War had won the 1976 Hugo. Thinking that FP was the sequel to TFW, I decided I needed to read them in order.

Well, I was wrong, but that didn't matter. Forever Peace was another novel on the same subject as The Forever War, but in a different setting. The subject was war. I enjoyed them both, although The Forever War suffered from a goofy idea of what life would be like in the early 21st century. Forever Peace suffered from being too much of a cyberpunk novel -- I don't buy the whole nanotechnology hype.

On the other hand, TFW is the only SF novel I've ever seen that sets a section in the adjacent town of Hyattsville.

Down to #21

Despite two recent trivia outings, I've dropped to #21 on the Santa Fe Cafe's NTN rankings. Check out Christina at #48, though!

Unfortunately, our last experience at "the Fe" featured rather disappointing food. I guess we'll give it another chance when the students clear out for winter break, but we may have to look for a new location.