We watched the new version of Pet Sematary last night. It was pretty good, but they really messed with the story. I had thought Stephen King would have hated it, since they completely changed the child that gets hit by the truck (a major part of the story) from the toddler (Gage) to the older girl (Ellie), but it turns out King really liked the movie.

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here, at least not if you watched the trailers for the movie. The second trailer pretty much tells the whole story, in fact. This is interesting, and I assume they figure the movie is solid enough to reveal all of the major points right upfront in the trailer, so they did that. I guess, since they already have King’s endorsement, it probably can’t lose anyway. Those millions of fans will see it, good or bad, and they’ll make their money.

Stephen King says he was sent a copy of the movie early, so he saw it before it was released. I’m assuming this was to get his reaction and possible endorsement, which apparently did the trick. He said it was watermarked with a huge “STEPHEN KING” on it throughout the entire movie, which was a bit distracting, so he planned to see it in the theater as well.

Even with the endorsement of The King, I think I still prefer the original version though. I understand how they could do more with having an older child be the one who gets killed and is brought back, but it’s just not true to the story as a whole. Then again, all of the connections, atmosphere and “feelings” that are expressed in the book can’t possibly be expressed in a movie, so I guess they have to make up for it somehow.

They also completely removed the old man’s (Judd Crandall’s) wife, but I think they pretty much did that in the original movie. She had medical issues, which Louis helped with as the story in the book started unfolding, and it set a good foundation for what was to come in the story. I guess she just wasn’t as important a character as I had thought.

If you’re a Stephen King fan, see it. If you’re a horror fan, see it. It’s decent for what it is. If you’re a huge fan of the book though, like me, it just whips by like a freight train and it’s over before you know it.

I also recently re-watched Hollow Man (2000), the “Invisible Man” movie starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Shue. I remembered a lot of it, though I forgot a few “naughty bits” that were quite fun to find again. And for a movie made in 2000, the effects were pretty awesome, especially when they injected the orange stuff into a human or animal and watched as it flowed throughout the entire body and all the major organs and then the entire body faded in or out, including the skeletal structure, all organs, and skin. Very cool.

Lastly, I re-watched “crash” recently (yes, its title is in all lowercase), an excellent movie from 2005, where all of the character’s stories are strangely interwoven, resulting in a great story overall. It is based in Los Angeles and was inspired by an actual carjacking that took place in LA in 1991. It has an awesome cast too. I love this movie.

Who would have thought it would be so difficult just to get a nice comforter delivered to a house?

It all started a few months ago when Sandy realized just how nice the comforter was that she got me for Christmas in December. It was on sale at K-Mart, so she bought one for me. We tend to sleep with separate blankets in the same bed now, since we both sleep completely differently–I get too warm and kick off my covers often, and I also roll over constantly throughout the night, while she says tucked-in, covered and toasty all night long, barely moving. As a result of this, Socks always preferred to snuggle up with her instead of me so he rarely gets disturbed when sleeping.

Once I got my big new comforter for Christmas we both realized how soft and warm it was after I started using it, and once the puppies were old enough to sleep outside their pen, they too learned how nice and comfortable it is, and they didn’t care how much I tossed and turned during the night, they just rolled with it and adjusted their sleeping places as needed. This also often resulted me me getting slowly nudged to the edge of the bed, nearly falling out, but I don’t mind them getting a little revenge once in awhile, so I put up with it just as they do.

So Sandy started wondering, out loud, how she could get the same comforter for herself, so they both matched. I took to the internet using the information on the tag of my comforter. I quickly found the exact one she bought from K-Mart. It was on Amazon, but from a different seller. It also costed a bit more, since at K-Mart it was on sale. Since it wasn’t a “Prime” item, it would also take much longer than the one or two days for shipping.

So after a couple weeks our credit card was finally charged and the item was shipped. After another week or so, we were notified that the carrier had returned the item to the seller claiming the package was damaged in shipping, so we were refunded our money.

I went back to the same seller on Amazon and re-ordered the same comforter again, and we waiting some more. After a couple weeks with no change in the status of our order, I contacted the seller (no easy feat to get them to respond, believe me) and asked what the status was on our second order. I provided the second order number, and eventually was told that the order was cancelled. I asked why, explaining that the FIRST order was cancelled when the carrier returned it as damaged, but the SECOND order should have been ok. I received no explanation, just that the order was cancelled.

Back to the drawing board. I went back to the seller’s page on Amazon again and this time I got the “This item is no longer available” and the “We’re not sure when this item will be in stock again” messages, which pretty much mean “Give it up, go find it elsewhere.”

My searches everywhere else on Amazon over the next few weeks turned up nothing remotely similar to the original comforter, so I eventually gave up trying to find one on Amazon. But while I was on the web one day, on my phone, looking at something completely unrelated, I saw an add for comforters at Home Depot. It caught my eye, looking just like mine, or at least very similar, and it was cheap–and even on sale! So I checked into it further and it looked too good to be true. This one was almost exactly the same one as mine, except that it also came with two pillow cases made out of the same material as the comforter. Since the price was so low, it was truly hard to believe, and Sandy had already given up on getting a matching one at that point, figuring we’d never get one delivered, for one reason or another. But I gave it a shot and placed the order, directly through Home Depot’s website.

Our credit card was billed again, and I was notified a week or more later that the package was on the way. When the package didn’t show up a day or two after the expected delivery date, I contacted Home Depot support. They looked into it quickly and told me the package should be delivered that evening (the same evening I contacted them). If it doesn’t arrive, please contact them again and they will open an investigation with UPS to find out what happened. When it didn’t come that evening or the next day, I contacted them again and they soon replied back stating the package was lost and I was refunded my money. Here we go again.

I don’t know what it is with us and comforters–two completely different merchants and we can’t get a nice comforter successfully shipped to our house without something getting totally screwed up! Home Depot’s support apologized and offered us a 10% discount if we wanted to order the same item again. So again, I went back to Home Depot’s website and ordered the same comforter again. I was half expecting it not to be available again, but it still was, and this time the site was offering free shipping. After ordering it again, I sent the order number to Home Depot support so they could apply the 10% discount. They replied back stating that they gave me a 15% discount instead of 10% because the shipping was free. Even better. All seemed ok at that point, and I started playing the waiting game again.

A couple weeks later I got a notification that my shipment would be delayed one week later than expected. Sandy and I were not surprised at this point, as we both now assumed we’d never get another comforter delivered to us from anyone. But after another week, guess what finally arrived. Yup, the comforter.

It turned out to be pretty nice too–even much softer and warmer than the first one and the puppies love it.

Ah, but the saga doesn’t end there. Guess what arrived the next day. The long-lost package that was ordered from Home Depot the second time. You see, apparently the first one that arrived was the original lost package from UPS. The second one that arrived the day after that was the new one we order to replace the lost one. So NOW what do we do? We wouldn’t mind keeping both of them, now that we know how nice they are. My account on their website shows 1 comforter ordered and delivered, the other ordered then returned and refunded.

At this point, we like it so much, we’d rather have an extra on-hand, so we’re keeping it. Maybe we’ll get some credit for advertising… Here’s what we got.

I hardly ever post on Facebook these days. It’s not because there’s nothing is going on, it’s just nothing I feel the need to share with the world. And believe me, posting to Facebook IS sharing with the world. Sure, I can set it to only post to my friends, but there is little difference between the two. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, in public where anyone can do anything with it, keep it, use it against you, or whatever. Post your favorite videogames and the game systems you have and you’re a potential target for robbery. Post details about your day-to-day and you’re a potential target for many more things. These days, literally anything can potentially get you in trouble, so you have to be very careful to pick and choose your words, posts and photos very very carefully. Post a simple photo of a vehicle and you need to blur the license plate out. Post a photo of your front door and you have to blur out the address numbers. Heck, post a photo of someone or a bunch of people and you need to get their verbal or written consent before posting the photo or you’re taking a risk there too. Everyone posts photos of everything and everyone these days though, so there’s also the ever-increasing chance that your photo just gets blended into the mix and no one even notices… Until maybe far down the road when it comes back to haunt you, perhaps even in a background check for a potential job, someone just out for revenge, or a deranged psychopath with weapons he has nothing better to use them on.

Wow, that got ugly real quick. I’m serious though, this is all the stuff that comes to mind every time I sit down to write something for my website. It’s ridiculous and I hate it, but that’s just the way it is. And as a result, you’ll almost always find only very carefully written and structured posts and photos here, everything curated, edited and sanitized so it’s safe for posting, yet sometimes crossing the line just a little in one or more areas, just because I know there’s only a few friends and family reading anyway. At this point, anyway.

Can you imagine me posting something that actually goes viral and gets millions of people visiting my site? Nope, me neither. I can dream though. Or nightmare. At least I can’t ever imagine posting anything anywhere near as unfiltered as President Trump has though. I guess being at the top gives you great responsibility, and what you choose to do with that responsibility is ultimately completely up to you. I don’t think most ‘mericans realized that until it was actually put to the test during this presidential term. No other president has ever dared to be so bold and transparent. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I don’t know.

Look at me being all political and shit. I really don’t know crap about this particular topic and just posting this makes me worry someone smarter might reply, prompting an actual conversation on the subject. Oh, the horror. Nah, it’ll never happen. This is my soapbox. I’m stepping down now.

1. Google Maps/Navigation FINALLY added a speedometer. Nice!
2. The puppies will each have BOTH surgeries at the same time so we don’t have to pay for anesthesia twice… Boy, they’ll be hurting at both ends at once. I feel so bad for them already. Surgery is in July.
3. Just started a 90-day trial of TIDAL. It supposedly has 20 million more songs than Spotify. We’ll see how it compares. I passed on 14-day and 30-day trials of it, but with 90 days I just had to give it a shot. So far, no good: Oceans, the awesome Modern Jazz band from Milwaukee that I went to see play at The Brat Stop with Hans once, is still nowhere to be found. At least on Spotify I can use a PC to add “Local Files”, create playlists, and still download those playlist songs on my other devices. So far I haven’t been able to tell if this is possible in Tidal.
4. McDonalds has a breakfast deal: 2 breakfast burritos & a beverage for $3.50. Burritos normally cost $1.00 each and a large coffee is $1.49. We are sheep.
5. Trump is running for a second term. Oh joy.
6. O.J. Simpson is on Twitter. Oh joy.
7. I’m looking forward to “The Loudest Voice”, a series on Showtime that starts June 30th.
8. Hey Hans, remember the movie “Scanners”? Wow. Re-watched that one this weekend. Ah, good times. I was a huge horror and gore fan back in the day. I worshiped Tom Savini and Dick Smith.
9. Thanks for introducing me to Stephen King when I was a kid, Mom. Seriously. I still seriously crave his next new book, film & TV adaptation, each and every time.
10. I binged the entire third season of Designated Survivor on Netflix last week. Wow. Great stuff–and I don’t usually like political shows. Is it just me or did the show just get tons better once Netflix got hold of it?

The puppies had a checkup yesterday and they’re doing fine except for a couple of upper baby teeth that refused to fall out. They’ve been working hard on their rawhide chew sticks, so I don’t think it’s from a lack of trying. They’ve also been shredding their pee pads in their pen whenever they’re locked up for more than 4 hours, but that’s another story.

So they’re going to require those two top baby teeth to be surgically extracted. It’s the exact same two teeth on both puppies too–you sure can tell they’re twin brothers by their teeth. It must be hereditary. They’re also ready for neutering, so the poor boys are going to be under the knife at both ends pretty soon!

We’re in the process of scheduling both of these procedures for both dogs right now. Other than their teeth though, they’re in great physical shape, normal heartbeats, weight, appearance, and bloodwork. Tiger gave us a bit of a scare after their last checkup when his liver enzymes were abnormally high, but we stopped the soft treats altogether and had him rechecked a couple weeks later and his numbers were back to normal.

They’re keeping each other in great shape by wrestling and chasing each other around the house and the backyard as often as possible. The neighborhood bunnies and birds don’t seem to like it so much though… they constantly get chased out of the yard. And our neighbors who walk their dogs past our backyard seem to be a little more challenged as well, as you can imagine.

We had a wooden cabinet mounted on our bathroom wall above our toilet that held all of our bathroom essentials, which recently fell on the toilet tank, resulting in a leak. We found a rubber washer on the floor and water leaking from one of the bolts on the bottom of the toilet tank. I put towels down to soak up the water and then set out to find a plumber.

I could probably fix it myself with the proper tools, and a few years ago I would have, but with my new knee now and the other knee getting worse, I thought it best to have a professional to it properly instead of me doing a crappy job and possibly hurting myself. I’ve never been much of a home handyman, that for sure, but even less som these days. If it were a computer or a gadget though, let me at it.

The first place I called (this was last night in the evening) answered promptly and said they’d send the info to their on-call tech and he’ll give me a call shortly. I was impressed they had an answering service. The tech called me back a little bit later and I explained our leak. He said that if he came tonight there would be an additional “after-hours” charge of $125, plus the $100/hr for the repair, or someone could come tomorrow and he could have the office call me in the morning to schedule it. I said it could wait until morning, so I waited for someone to call. In the morning someone called promptly and we scheduled them to come out later in the morning. Shortly afterward someone called me again and said their technician called in sick today, so now the soonest they could come out would be 3:30pm, and they would have to charge me the $125 after-hours fee in addition to the $100/hr for the repair. I told them “If I had known that, I would have just had it done last night for the same price”. So I reluctantly agreed, and it was scheduled. Shortly after that some called back and said, “Based on the details you provided about the toilet issue, you’ll need a new toilet, so which type do you want, round or oval?” Very frustrated, I said “Oval, but I’m going to need to discuss this with my wife before agreeing, so I’ll call you back shortly.” A new oval-shaped toilet would be $380.

Instead of calling Sandy, I called another local plumber. I explained what happened and the issue. They’re $125/hr, a little more than the other one, but they can come out between 1pm and 3pm and repair the toilet. That sounded fine, much better than the minimum $605 the first plumber was going to charge us for everything.

The second plumber arrived within their time window, performed the repairs well, and we’re good to go (literally). Just gotta be careful out there with everything these days. Some companies will try to talk you into things or services you don’t need. Just slow down and look at the details before agreeing to anything. Yelp and Google reviews can also help a lot–I used those when I chose these particular local plumbers.

I just had one of those very rare do-nothing weekends. I felt kind of guilty not getting anything done, but I went ahead an did it anyway just to see what it would feel like in the end. A weekend filled with catching up on a few games and TV shows, playing with the puppies, and that’s about it. I was on-call though, but even that was unusually uneventful with no pages at all, so everything just worked out nicely. Not even any employee terminations or Gift of Hope pages to remove or add network access.

I got to one point on both Saturday and Saturday where I actually felt blah, just so lazy things actually ached a bit–almost like me muscles were atrophying. Kind of achy, but I was too lazy to even try to pull out of it, so I rode it out. I know that can be bad for my new knee, I’m supposed to stretch and exercise it very often, so I hope I didn’t do any damage there. I was a little concerned this morning when I woke up and had to go through my regular routine to get ready for work, but that worry quickly dissipated as I realized I feel great, and even much more refreshed than usual, ready to get out and go.

In the end, my day at work was pretty good and I felt much more energized and eager for everything throughout the day. I think the weekend really helped. I think I have to modify those rare weekends a little though and actually force myself to take a walk or do the treadmill for a mile or two each day. That would be even more healthy. But at least I have something to compare it to now, so we’ll see what happens.

I did feel bad at times though, knowing I shouldn’t “waste” a single day, since they’re so limited as it is. But I don’t think it was wasted, it was more of a recharge. Or so I tell myself just to make me feel ok with it. I did spend some quality bonding time with the puppies though, and they enjoyed the crap out of all of it. Oh, we DID walk a little, I totally forgot… Saturday afternoon Shadow, Tiger and I went to the lakefront – Eichelman/Wolfenbuttel park – and walked the path. It was less than a mile, but they loved it. As usual, Shadow choked a lot, since he constantly pulls on the leash, and Tiger was skittish as usual, but always kept up and walked nicely, never choking himself. So there, at least one day out of the two had a bit of exercise in it.

I binged a 8-episode show on Amazon Prime yesterday called “UNLOCKED – The World of Video Games, Revealed”. It was a pretty nice history of video games and provided a lot of inside information. One question often asked was “What was your first video game system?” I had to think on that one for awhile, and couldn’t remember the name of mine and the image in my head was pretty vague at this point, but after searching the web for less than a minute there is was!

My first game system was the RCA Studio II. It came with 5 games built-in and that was it. It came out before the Atari VCS (2600), and I’m not sure what made me choose this particular system, but I saw it in the Christmas catalog and chose it as one of my Christmas gift picks one Christmas. I remember it being black and white, coming just after Pong was released, so at the time it was really exciting to have more than just a single game to play on our TV. I didn’t remember any gameplay at all, but I’m sure I got it for Christmas 1977, when I was 14 years old. I thought it was so cool to have more of a “computer” to play with instead of just a game.

I was quickly able to find videos of it on YouTube though–it is SO friggin’ awesome that the whole world is now at our fingertips, isn’t it? Several of the videos dubbed it “History’s Worst Home Console”. I think that’s a bit unfair unless you were actually there, and the reviewers all seemed to be much too young to have actually been born before the release of that system. In one review, the reviewer didn’t know how to play any of the games on the system and it was obvious he didn’t spend any time even trying to understand it or learn to play any of the games, he only reiterated how crappy it was, over and over. So unfair.

Those of us who were there and lived through the Atari 2600 years know it was a great experience and we understand that everything has a starting point and this was it. These were the earliest stages of video games, when gaming was in its infancy. Someone needs to give these old games a fair shake, someone who was there, who experienced it first-hand, in the moment. And that’s where a few of the people in “UNLOCKED” come from. They don’t make fun of or put down these old systems, they understand it’s all a part of the history and they respect it and accept it.

Yeah, I guess I just sound like an old curmudgeon now, spewing the ratchety “Back in MY day…” and “When I was a kid we had to…” but that’s my right, and someone has to preserve history properly and accurately, dammit! Hell, if I even still HAD that old system, I’d get it up and running again and give it a fair and honest review based on my actual experience.

I do like how everything is coming full-circle now though: 8-bit graphics are coming back, blocky is cool again, Minecraft is awesome, and retro gaming is everywhere! Even all of the old games are available everywhere as ROMs now, playable on home-built Raspberry Pi kits, allowing kids and adults to cheaply build their own custom retro gaming systems with hundreds, even thousands, of games built-in. Awesomeness!