Spelling Bee

Uh....

Wow.

That's ... just ... cool.

Sahara - Clive Cussler

I recently saw Sahara. I thought it was an ok movie. Had potential to be much more. But it was a little disjointed, a little implausible. Not as bad as Spiderman 3, but it had its issues. But I could see the "Dirk Pitt(tm)" character having a run of movies.

I enjoyed it enough to read the novel. The novel is about 500 pages of text (with words in English using Arabic lettering) printed on paper for you to read with your eyes which is how most people read when 300 would have been better. That is to say it's very verbose.

The book was so amazingly different from the movie that I think that someone read the book, said "This would make a great movie, if..." and then gave a 5-minute synopsis to someone else who tried their best to make a workable script out of it. In the end, I have more admiration from the film, considering where the movie came from.

"I'm very glad to hear it," sighed Massarde, letting out a deep sigh.

You know how John McClane seems to be so lucky at his inability to get seriously hurt when shot, set on fire, walking across broken glass and falling many stories? Dirk Pitt and his amazing awesomeness makes John McClane look like a wus. Seriously, Dirk's combination of applicable and relevant past experience, strength, wit, knowledge and intelligence borders on ludicrous. (Oh, and he's apparently very handsome and not a womanizer and a very nice guy.)

If they do another Dirk Pitt movie, I'll see it on video. I won't read another Clive Cussler book. For the last three nights, I've laid here in bed reading it, pausing occasionally to yell at the book demanding that it get finished already.

Next up: Getting Things Done. Someone in the office got a number of copies of GTD. They gave a copy to my boss, who really needs to read it. Well, he hasn't gotten to it, so he gave it to me (despite round-tripping to London next week, though he usually uses the flights to reduce his inbox by several thousand e-mails). I'm looking forward to it. The GTD stuff I've found from Lifehack, Lifehacker, ParentHack and Unclutterer (to name a few) has really been exciting stuff.

Cool Site: Newsmap

I think this is pretty cool. Would make an excellent screen saver. Newsmap pings Google News to find out what the biggest stories are and displays them all on a grid. Brighter color for newer article, bigger box for bigger story. Refreshes itself every (15?) minutes. I like to leave it on my second monitor at work when I'm focusing on something on the other monitor.

Let's Get Pink

These guys wrapped their friend's apartment in pink paper. Bummer for him. PinkPrankProject

The Black Void of Nothingness

My friend WorldGirl says that life is meaningless, that there is no point or meaning to life.

I reject this line of thinking. By the very nature of one's ability to ascribe something (or nothing) to their own existence, does that not in itself cause meaning?

If life were in fact meaningless, or without meaning, then we'd all be better off killing ourselves and directing that our ashes be spread over mountainsides covered in wildflowers so that we'd be producing fertilizer to help the plants grow, instead of driving our cars, causing pollution, giving charity and posting blogs to tell others what we think.

Thoughts?

Match.com: "Hey hey hey. Over here. Yoo, hoo, girlfriend!"

MSNBC.COM -- Ok, this is downright moronic. Woman's suing eHarmony because of its policy of only catering to the heterosexual community. This is all about picking a fight. There are plenty of other dating websites that do allow "men seeking men" and "women seeking women" and I'm sure there are some that only offer such pairings.

In my opinion, it's one thing to demand that someone sit at the back of the bus, or Wal*Mart passing someone over for a promotion because of their skin tone/hair color/sexual preference/accent/etc. and entirely another for you to sue because someone's trying to make money by catering to a specific demographic.

It'd be like a Christian suing JDate or me suing Goodwill-competitor "Out of the Closet" thrift stores for not offering non-flamboyant used clothing. Or Olive Garden for not offering Lobster and Hummis on the menu. (Ok, the last one's a stretch, but still...)

Of course, in our sue-happy culture, this is all about the lawyers and people wanting to get something for nothing just because they can say "boo hoo" and claim they've been slighted because they couldn't find a size zero at Catherines, a size 21 at Forever 21 or a well-made car at a GM, Ford or Chrysler dealership.

If it's the sophisticated matching that eHarmony does (and I've heard people say it's bunk and that they didn't find any matches) that they're after, then it probably won't work to find compatible matches amongst gay people. Instead of harassing eHarmony, go start your own gayHarmony with your own sophisticated matching algorithms designed for the gay dating scene.

*sigh*