Thursday, November 8, 2007

Harper Lee Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom



On Monday November 5, 2007 Harper Lee, author of classic American novel To Kill A Mockingbird was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This award is the highest award a US civilian can get and recognizes contributions in the arts, literature, science, and the cause of peace and freedom. At last count, over 30 million copies of the book have been sold and I suspect another 30 million pages have been written by high school kids as part of school work. Now usually the book is 100 times better than the movie, but in this case - the movie is pretty darn impressive. OK, not as good as the book - but Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Brock Peters as Tom Robinson give you amazing performances. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three. Check out To Kill A Mockingbird - it is as good as you remembered, maybe even better on the second or third viewing.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Holy Chute! Skydiving is fun!



A few weeks ago, my buddy Randy asked me if I wanted to jump out of plane and go skydiving. Sure, sounds like fun - but give me a five or six days because we are moving the servers next week and as such, I had way too much going on to enjoy it. But that week came and went, the move went as smooth as warm butter, and Randy got back to me and said, OK, let's do it on Sunday Cot 28th, I am already booked at 11:00AM. He was convinced I would chicken out, but in truth - i was really looking forward to it so I called the place and made my reservation. Now times have changed a lot since college 30 years ago - when parachuting meant jumping out solo with an old WWII surplus silk parachute. Back then, training included practice jumping from a hayloft and learning to land - HARD! Today - training involved listening to a lawyer on a videotape telling you that you had signed all your rights away, and even the rights of your family and your employer. There was no way you, or they could sue, no matter what happened, even if it was their fault. You understand? That was our training. We were not jumping alone this time, but a tandem jump with a certified instructor, who is highly skilled in the art of skydiving. In short, it was a great experience and I plan to go skydiving next spring when the weather warms up a bit. Check out the video and see what it is like.

Monday, November 5, 2007

One Step Beyond - More episodes!



Look out Sci-Fi buffs, because that wacky pyscho sci-fi afficiando, John Newland is back in town. He's much more frightening than Mack the knife, who also came back to town. Why? Because Newland uses all kinds of psycho kinetic E.S.P. to put the wang doodle on you. He's been known to use bi-location, premonitions, love potions, voodoo, and ghosts, and even magic mushrooms to explore the unknown. Okay... so we have a writer's strike in Hollywood. So they'll be no new episodes of recycled humor that are presented with less class than when they got when the writers were kids. Don't worry folks. Newland is back in town and more One Step Beyond episodes are on the way, to save the day for mankind.

Today we have a really fun episode, where things work out well. It is about that weird pyschic communication that goes on between identical twins. One of my personal favorites called The Trap. Have fun and don't get too scared.