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While listening to Slice of SciFi, I heard about a movie called The Man from Earth. I rented it from Netflix and watched it last night. It’s about a college professor who is having a goodbye/retirement party that is attended by several of his colleagues. At the party he reveals that he’s been alive for 14000 years and that he believes that he is a Cro-Magnon. Every 10 years or so when people notice that he doesn’t age, he packs up and moves on. It quickly becomes a philosophical discussion about life, death, and religion. It‘s not the kind of movie I would normally watch. There are no special effects or action scenes. Most of the movie is a group of people sitting or standing around in one house talking to each other. To me, it never seemed to drag on. I really enjoyed watching it.

The only problem I had with the movie was the video quality. It changes at different times throughout the movie and gets noisy and grainy at times. It distracted me somewhat. I eventually got to the point where I was only listening to the movie and not really watching. If it seemed like something interesting was happening on screen, I would watch then.

Definitely check this movie out if you get a chance.

I figured that Wheel of Time fans would somehow find out what was supposed to happen at the end. If nothing else Robert Jordan’s wife Harriet could’ve written something saying what the ending would have been like. It turns out that Harriet has selected author Brandon Sanderson to write the last book in the series, A Memory of Light. I had never heard of him until now, but I’m interested in reading some of his books.

What a great game! It is so much fun! Last weekend we spent pretty much the entire weekend playing it. We beat it and now are going after those last few stars. I think we have two more to go. I’m amazed at how different the levels are from each other. I don’t know how they came up with some of that stuff. I can see why it’s the highest rated game of all time. The camera angles do cause problems sometimes and it may take a little getting used to playing sideways and upside down, but those are minor issues. It’s definitely worth the time. This is what we have been waiting to play on the Wii.

The end of the Harry Potter series may have gotten much more attention, but this year I’ve also been looking forward the final book in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. The book is called Confessor. I enjoyed the book overall, but there were a few problems.

One thing I hated was when Character A was trying to explain a concept to Character B that Character B either didn’t understand or didn’t believe. Sometimes it took pages of dialogue for Character B to come around. Usually some kind of analogy had to be used before Character B finally comes around. It happened a lot in previous books but it severely irked me in this one. I’m sure a lot of that had to do with me wanting to find out how the story was going to end.

Another thing that annoyed me was that Goodkind kept repeating a lot of the same ideas over and over again. Richard changed everything…the Order doesn’t value life…the Order is brutal…blah blah blah. I’ve read this way too many times. Just get to the end. I got bored reading Confessor many times, but I just had to put my head down and keep going.

Goodkind also kept putting charactesr in situations that I knew had to be resolved before the book could end. Examples are someone getting captured or something being stolen. I got annoyed every time someone ended up in one of these situations, because I knew I would have to read through a lot of pages of stuff that I didn’t really care about.

After reading these books for the past 7 years or so, it was sad to see it end. At the same time, I’m glad to have a resolution. I was very happy with the way that it ended. Getting there was only a slight pain.

• Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
• Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
• The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
• The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Confessor, Terry Goodkind

I finished watching season 3 of Deadwood yesterday. Season 3 was the final season. It was such a great show. I like westerns and I like historically based movies and TV shows. I wish Deadwood was still on. They’re supposed to be making 2 TV movies to resolve all the storylines, but it looks like that may never happen. Oh well. I’m happy for what we got.

Thanksgiving Break was pretty good this year. It was great seeing my family again. I got to finish reading the new Terry Goodkind book and begin another Stephen King book. I always got to watch the end of season 3 of Deadwood. I also undertook a major cleaning project here in Starkville. It took a lot a work, but I’m glad that I did it. I’m hoping that it can remain this clean…for a while at least. I wish I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow.

I’ve been slowly working on Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson for the past couple of months. I really wanted to like it because of all the good things I’ve heard about it, but for me it was only okay. I guess the amount of time I spent on it should be an indication of how much I liked it. It took about 100 or so pages for me to and eventually I got to the point where I just wanted it to end. Maybe my next book will be better. Hopefully, it’ll be coming in the mail tomorrow.

• Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
• Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
• The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
• The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Confessor, Terry Goodkind

I got my second replacement copy of Halo 3 from Microsoft yesterday. The disc is looks excellent! No scratches! This weekend I’ll finally be playing Halo 3!

What did we do before DVRs? I’m so glad that we have DVRs now. I had heard people say that it changes the way you watch TV, but it really does. Say I’m watching a show like Heroes or LOST and they give you a brief glimpse of something mysterious and important. I can rewind it and watch that part over and over again even if I’m watching it live. I can actually pause and go to bathroom or to get something to eat and not worry about missing anything.

I hardly ever watch anything live. I’m usually watch shows a day or two after they are recorded. It’s good being able to skip through commercials. Who wants to sit through commercials? Sometimes I’ll wait until a show has already been on for a while before I start watching just to I can skip the commercials.

I don’t have to try to in front of the TV at certain times anymore. If I want to record something. I no longer have to worry about making sure that the VCR, TV, and DirecTV receiver are on the proper channel. I don’t have to worry about setting the proper time and channel. It was a big pain and I have up on trying to do all that. It’s all so easy now. I can record new episodes of shows that I like to watch or record reruns of old shows (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Press Your Luck, Tales from the Crypt, 227) just for nostalgia. I think one of these days I’m going to tell it to record 6 hours straight off one of these cable channels I’m interested in trying out.

The biggest problem I have is that both DVRs are about full. I guess we need to start watching stuff or burning them to DVDs. I’m not ready to start deleting unwatched stuff just yet.

Nice being back in New Orleans…taking in the city…good music…Pumpkins were awesome…won money at the casino…lots of walking…muscles still sore…stomach still upset…picture with Wolverine…good time.