A few months ago my brother and I set out to get the bulk of these old films digitized for their preservation and our enjoyment. After researching several online companies, we settled on CJS Technologies. The benefit of using a professional service is that they physically clean and scan each individual frame of the film and create a remastered digital movie. CJS offered a free trial offer to digitize a single five-minute film reel at no cost. We mailed off a test reel and were very impressed with the results.

My dad later mailed off our entire family collection of 27 film reels, all of which were shot in the 70s and 80s. CJS spent a month cleaning and scanning all of the film and we received the completed package just in time for Christmas. It was a wonderful, lasting gift for the entire family.

It is wonderful to have all of our old family movies preserved, and in a modern format that everyone can share and enjoy. I have to commend CJS on doing a fantastic job restoring our films. I would recommend them to anyone looking for such a service. Their company not only outputs your restored movies to a playable DVD, but they also send along the pure digital output files in uncompressed AVI format. Most impressive! Job well done.

These days, I compose the bulk of my writing in a local word editor on my computer. My personal editor of choice is the simple Mac TextEdit app, which is the program that I am using to write the text you are reading now. It provides reliable on-the-fly spell checking, which is a must. Fortunately, it but doesn’t have grammar checker, which I have never really cared for in any program. I have always been a fan of Microsoft Word, and I have used it to write a few posts, but it is largely geared toward print formatting, and I consider it to be overkill for this venue.

Once I have typed a working draft in my editor, I print it out so that I can step away from the computer and read it in its entirety on paper. This may seem somewhat wasteful and absurd, but I think there is a purity in reading my work on a plain sheet of paper, absent any visual distractions. I even scribble notes on the printouts and almost always find careless mistakes and room for improvement.

At the end, I go back to the computer and make my tweaks. Once I’m finished, I simply paste my body of work into the WordPress editor and hit Publish.

The end.

I cannot predict his reaction to my idea. I guess I’ll have to see. At the very least, it wouldn’t cost us anything to start it, and there would be the added benefit of being hammered the whole time while recording it. Sounds like a winning idea! Will he bite?

The eatery is called Goodberrys and only has locations in Raleigh, Durham, or Cary North Carolina. Goodberrys has a good reputation in the Triangle for their ice cream and frozen custard. I don’t particularly have a problem with their desserts, but I can say first hand that their hotdogs are a complete abomination. They are so bad, I imagine that eating one could possibly take a year or more off of your life.

I remember the meal like it was yesterday. We each ordered hotdogs from the location in Cary and ate them on our way back to work. I have to say that the Goodberrys in Cary is historically the worst of them all. Neither of us could choke down an entire hotdog that day. My teeth simply could not separate the internals. I liken it to biting into a rubber, steel-belted garden hose. To this very day, it remains the single grossest thing I have ever eaten from a restaurant in my life.

Hilariously, Laura has had the same experience. She told me that her encounter with a Goodberrys hotdog happened almost fifteen years ago. She said the hotdog had the consistency of a rubber stick with a bone in the middle. Disgusted, she threw the rest of her half-eaten hotdog to the stray cats that had made themselves a home around her house. The stray cats would not touch it! That says it all.

I realize that it has been over a decade since I ordered food from Goodberrys, which isn’t really fair to complain about now, but it may as well have been yesterday. It continues to haunt me as the most terrible meal I have ever consumed.

To summarize, if you are in the Raleigh area, for heaven’s sake, do not order a hotdog from Goodberrys. Trust me, they are absolutely dreadful. I seriously have my doubts that what they are serving even legally qualifies as food. You’re likely to get more flavor and nourishment from ingesting a dead cat on the side of the freeway.

• Visit Sedona Tourism Site

Not long ago, I heard on a podcast about the famous pizza restaurant, Pizzeria Biano, located in Phoenix. It’s supposed to be among, if not best, pizza in all of the country. We were looking forward to dining there on our vacation, but their website tells us it will be closed during that time. What a bummer. I find that to be unusual, but at any rate, it looks like that will not be possible on this trip.

Two weeks to go! Hurry up.

In considering how to upgrade my player, I considered three options:

1. A relatively inexpensive DVD upconverting player
2. A Blu-ray player that upconverts traditional DVDs
3. A Playstation 3, which does upconverting, Blu-ray movies, and plays PS3 games.

The PS3 seemed like the obvious choice. However, my research has shown it to have too many drawbacks for me to consider purchasing one. For starters, despite common belief, the new PS3 systems DO NOT play old PS2 games. That was only true for a short time in the first generation PS3 player, which was ridiculously expensive. That fact alone was a deal-breaker for me.

Second, the Blu-ray players I’ve been eying included YouTube and Netflix streaming, via an Ethernet connection. It turns out that the PS3 DOES NOT stream Netflix movies. Another deal breaker for me! I know that the XBOX 360 streams Netflix movies, but it doesn’t have a Blu-ray drive, so that is out, too. The XBOX 360 is a great, affordable gaming console, but as a double for movies, HD-DVD is dead.

I’m upset at the two deal-breakers I found in the Playstation 3. The PS3 was released for sale in November of 2006. We are coming up on three years that it has been on the market. Despite that length of time, the game titles are still very limited, and still very expensive. Considering that, and more, I think Sony is simply asking too much for the system itself. I have a large catalog of PS2 games that I am not willing to part with. I’m not willing to shell out $60 a pop for PS3 game titles. I’d sure love to play GTA IV (PS3 only), but I can’t bring myself to pay $400 for the PS3 hardware without PS2 backward compatibility and Netflix streaming.

In conclusion, I decided to pass on the PS3. Instead, I bought a sweet standalone Blu-ray player that not only plays Blu-ray discs, it also upconverts standard DVDs, and streams Netflix and YouTube, right out of the box. For nearly half the cost of a PS3, I thought this purchase was a no-brainer. I’ll happily continue playing my old PS2 game titles on my capable Playstation 2. Considering the still small library of PS3 game titles, Sony needs to offer a bit more than games for me to want to shell out the kind of money that they are asking for the PS3 console.

I wonder what Jane Austen’s reaction would be to this book if she were alive today. Especially after seeing Amazon.com’s description of the novel which reads, “The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!” (That sold me, too.)

After only reading a single sentence, I love this book already! It could be, quite possibly, a modern masterpiece. Yes, I love zombies that much.

While in the Big Apple, we went to see the Broadway play Exit the King, starring Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, and others. It was truly wonderful. I hadn’t seen a live play in many years, and certainly never one of that caliber. Bravo! It was a great show.

The three of us had a fantastic weekend. I’m ready to go back! I was impressed with the city, it’s energy, and oddly, and it’s delicious tap water. Seriously, I found the tap water to be unusually good. I now love NYC!

Now that I own Blitzcraig.com, Blitzcraig.net, and Blitzcraig.org, I now have made quite a monopoly of the Blitzcraig name. This is all part of my master plan, which I tend to make up as I go along. Now that the elusive .com has opened up for me, I’m more tempted than ever to move my blog to that domain, but for now, I’ll resist that urge and will continue under Blitzcraig.org, where you have all come to find me.

Cheers!

• Phoenix 2009 Travel Page

Someone has finally posted the Charlotte setlist online. Included with the setlist was a positive show review. Read that here. I am posting the setlist myself, seen below.

1. Your Song
2. Honesty
3. Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me
4. My Life
5. Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
6. Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
7. Burn Down the Mission
8. Madman Across the Water
9. Tiny Dancer
10. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
11. Daniel
12. Rocket Man
13. Levon
14. I’m Still Standing
15. Crocodile Rock
16. Angry Young Man
17. Moving Out
18. Allentown
19. Zanzibar
20. Don’t Ask Me Why
21. She’s Always a Woman
22. Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
23. River of Dreams
24. We Didn’t Start the Fire
25. Still Rock ‘n’ Roll to Me
26. Only the Good Die Young
27. Bitch Is Back
28. You May Be Right
29. Bennie and the Jets
30. Birthday
31. Back in the USSR
32. Candle in the Wind
33. Piano Man

With that in mind, we set off for the new IKEA last Sunday. It was an awesome sight to behold. At a whopping 365,000 square feet, the store offers just about anything you can image to furnish your home. I was immediately hooked. The low prices and ultra-modern designs that IKEA offers in every department are fantastic across the board.

While at the store, I bought a new bed, a coffee table, dishes, plants, and a CD tower. I racked up. Best of all, the assembly instructions for the furniture were as basic and easy as it gets. All instructions were in simple, friendly pictures, without text or language translation. Any bozo could follow the illustrations and put the stuff together.

I’m already planning my next visit to the store. If you want to refurnish your home, or are planning a move, you absolutely must go to IKEA and see what they have. You’ll certainly be impressed.

I took the computer, wiped the drive, and installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10. It is relatively speedy, despite it’s age. It runs Ubuntu with ease. This is my first computer which will run Linux full-time. My only hiccup during installation was that my Linksys wireless card didn’t work on its own. This problem righted itself when I connected to a wired Internet connection. The proper proprietary driver was automatically installed, and my wireless connection has been problem-free ever since. I am able to do everything I want with this little computer.

Above all, I love the Thinkpad hardware. It’s rough and tough, like a tank. It has a 14″ screen, and it is the perfect size and weight. I’d be happy to buy a new Thinkpad in the future, based on how solid this machine feels. I’ve also come to love the pointer stick! I’m thrilled with my new toy!

The list is always a work in progress, but progress and creativity come slower with time. Over the years it has become a challenge to keep it focused and targeted. If I start tossing out anything that comes to mind, it will eventually veer from its unique originality. Also, I want a reader to be able to read the oldest entries and the newest entries, and know that is the same personality, with the same delivery throughout. I think I have achieved that. It helps that I have almost no disagreement with all of the things I hated ten years ago.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Here’s to ten more years?

We finally arrived in Austin around 10am Friday, and immediately checked into our hotel at the Hampton Inn Downtown. It was very nice. That evening, Chris and Sara’s rehearsal dinner was a lot of fun, and the food was great. Several of us went out on the town to the popular 6th Street after dinner. We went to an Irish pub where we toasted Guinness. It was a blast!

On Saturday, me and Kevin did a walking tour of downtown Austin in the drizzling rain. We visited the capital building, which I found to be very extravagant for a state capital. Saturday night was Chris’s wedding. Me and Kevin had the hardest time directing our cab driver to the wedding location at the Barr Mansion. We called friends and family trying to get someone to find the directions online. Frustrated and late, we arrived in time for the wedding. It was a very nice ceremony — short and very sweet. The bride and groom are genuinely happy. The wedding reception was a ball! The location was very charming and could not have been better.

I flew home to Raleigh yesterday afternoon. It was a stark contrast to the drive all the way to Texas, which took about 20 hours. In the air, I was home in two hours, and I had a great flight. This weekend was so much fun. It was worth every penny, but spending such quality time with the family was priceless. Thanks to everyone who showed me a fun time.

• Austin Trip Log (PDF)
• Chris’s Wedding Website

I have had some confusion of video support, though. I was able to transfer a music video that I’d downloaded via iTunes, and a single MP4 conversion from a DVD using Handbrake. Those played beautifully on the iPod screen. Other videos I’d made with Handbrake weren’t allowed in by the iPod. I don’t know why, since I thought I’d used the correct setting in Handbrake to do so. I’ll have to research that matter further someday. I plan to eventually try a movie rental from iTunes (a new feature), to see how it plays, though I don’t intend to make a habit of renting iTunes movies.

I think Jordan Lake is the number one place to camp if you are in the Raleigh area. Take my advice and check it out. Look the sunset photo I snapped, shown below.

When I was in fourth grade (sometime in the mid-80s) we had a substitute teacher one day. I recall that she said that when it was the first day of the month you should say “rabbit rabbit” first thing in the morning when you wake up, and if you do so, you’ll have good luck for the month. This had to be the first thing you said or it wouldn’t work. You’re probably wondering why I still have this memory. Well, in high school, it popped in my mind and I told one of my friends about the memory. This exchange was never forgotten and it has stuck ever since.

Me and my friend Chad still keep in touch today and for the past several years we have written each other an email on the first day of the month to try to beat each other to the punch to get “rabbit rabbit” on the others screen. There have been times when I have sent him an email at 12:01 on day one of the new month, usually with a silly masked subject line. This has been kept alive for so long. Years back, my friend told his work friends, and soon they were in on it too, trying to email him and beat him to the punch. Of course, neither of us remember to do it every time, but it is something that has stuck for all these years. Even if a few months pass without remembering to send the message, it will start again sooner or later.

Happy 2007!

Anyway, I guess I’ll be driving without air until I ditch the car and buy a new one. Surprisingly, I have had the car for almost six years now and slowly I think she’s beginning to crack up. I’ll drive it until next summer, then we’ll see how long I can tolerate the heat.

But since using my new 512 mb iPod, I can see why it is above and beyond its rivals. Sure, the Shuffle doesn’t have a screen, but its simplistic abilities and size were my primary reasons for wanting this particular model. The player just plain works, and works well. Managing my music library and playlists is so brain-dead easy with iTunes that I can’t imagine going back to using any other software. It is so smooth and slick, it makes others in its class seem clunky and complicated.

The iPod has a few noteworthy cool things that I doubt you’d find in other players. For instance, if you are playing music and your headphone cord is pulled out, it automatically pauses the music for you. The built-in rechargeable battery never needs to be swapped out; only charged with a powered USB port. The device also doubles as a portable storage drive for any kind of data, not just music files. The onboard USB plug gives you freedom from having to search for the right cable to connect the iPod to the computer all the time.

Overall, I am very satisfied with it. Now that I am a proud iPod owner, I have moved up to the ranks of the elite class of music lovers. I can wear my white earbuds with pride.