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I saw this movie last night, and it totally blew my mind. Escape to Witch Mountain is one of the earliest movies I have of a movie. And I don’t think I have seen it more than once, so we’re pulling from some seventies, CBS still-wetting-the-bed kind of mothball memories.

It was absolutely intriguing to me to watch this movie and match the long-distorted memories in my head with the reality of the movie. To sum up, my memory had this movie categorized as cool, creepy and oscar-worthy. The modern-retrospective reality had this movie categorized as cool, creepy and exceptionally [horrifyingly] cheesy. Cheese upon cheese. Terrible kid acting, and an exceptionally specious plotline. Yet it was still very much entertaining, and somehow I think I might have watched it even if I wasn’t in it for nostalgia’s sake. It was still a very fun movie, and a lot of my memories just “popped” out of the screen, and served to add color and clarity to an otherwise fading recollection. That is a rare treat.

Watching this movie also reminded me of a long-forgotten fact: I spent majority of my pre-teen years madly in love with Kim Richards, who plays Tia, one of the Castaway kids in the movie. About the only reason I ever watched Differn’t Strokes (yes the classic sit-com) was that she showed up in six or seven episodes. I saw one episode with her in it, and watched religiously from then on, waiting and hoping. I was gaga for this girl. Even more than Kristy McNichol, and that’s saying something.

But, alas, her career was brief and relatively unaccomplished for an ostensible heartthrob who regularly appeared in Tiger Beat. Her last movie in her day, Tuff Turf, could not be more cheeseball. Add to that the fact that her co-star was James Spader, and now I am forced to conclude that this greasy hairball of an actor likely “hit that”. He “hits” everything. Every other love scene in Hollywood history involves James Spader.

So now I am sad, and memories have been tarnished. And, after a bit of time spent Googling her, I now know that Paris Hilton shares a good amount of her blood, being her niece. Another horrifying thought, and that makes this whole Escape to Witch Mountain experience very bittersweet.

But we’ll always have Differn’t Strokes.

I just got this for my new mac, and it works great. I can now edit the pimples off of porn pics with nothing but my mind.

Wow. Not sure if any of you have heard about this or not, but I ran across this report on Google Sightseeing (which is a cool site even without this report)

I had not heard this, but apparently there is an underground fire burning/smouldering since 1962 in Pennsylvania. It started with a landfill fire, then a vein of coal got into the party. From there, the town’s ground started cracking open belching maws of hell all over the place, and the peeps just up and left.

Check the article to read more deets, and to check it out on google.

Makes me feel better about leaving my car idling outside the grocery store yesterday while waiting for the wife.

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My favorite child with a penis turns FOUR on Monday! Pretty cool that I’ve kept ‘em alive this long. Well, I guess C-dawg might have something to do with that. He wouldn’t have lasted to three with my diet of Cheet-o’s, cola, and bologna-on-hand. I did, however, perform a miraculous save from a fall off a swing-set once, but otherwise, have likely presented more risk to his life than protection.

It seems that people around me are sprouting children as well. Either I am getting around (aaaallllriiigght!), pregnancy is an airborne contaigen, or there is sperm in the Ohio drinking water supply.

In other news, my other baby is, so far, treating me very nicely. Come on in, the water is fine! OS X is really almost the perfect OS. The consummate tinkerer is left frustrated as there is so little to tinker. Don’t get me wrong, you can tweak the hell out of this OS if you get under the hood deeply enough. But you just don’t need to. I’ve never seen a system that works so completely with no effort. And I am the KING of needless tweaking. Hell, I bought Stardock Windowblinds for cryin out loud. That waste of bloated code just for fancy menus and bling.

It’s only problem is still, and truly, the whole software thing. And that’s not even a valid strike against the OS itself, just a state of the market thing. So it’s true, you can’t find as much software for it. And yes, though you can run many X11 compatible OSS apps on it, they are often even more of a pain in the butt than your average Linux install, and run slow as pigs.

But the software thing is negated, in my mind, by the fact that it has a bash prompt. A command-laden bash prompt that actually works as well as my favorite Ubuntu install adds to the utility of this OS many-fold. So far, the system is working out well enough to be an admittedly ram-pigging keeper. Add VMWare Fusion to this, and the fact that it so effortlessly runs this (big set of hot hairy dual-core balls inside), and this is almost the best OS setup I have used. But I won’t commit to that on-the-record for some time yet. And I haven’t set up Ubuntu on this baby yet - which is still my fave.

So happy birthday to Marshall on Monday, and happy lappy to me today.

Is not like the other? Which one of these does not belong? (cue Sesame Street music)

(huge screenshot warning)

VMWare Fusion, with Unity enabled. Drops the root window, providing seamless windows apps. And it works remarkably well. Interestngly, OpenOffice.org running natively via the X11 server runs almost runs slower than OpenOffice running on a Windows VMWare guest OS.

This OS really is solid, well thought out, and exceptionally easy to use. However, this enormous desktop resolution presents indescribably tiny fonts, even on this 17″ screen. I can’t imagine the WUXGA resolution on a 15″ screen. Gawd.