I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, prepping for the upcoming Oscars. They’re on Sunday, February 9th, 2020. I always make several copies of the printable list of nominations that they post on their website, then try to find and watch everything I can so the show makes more sense when I watch it. I enjoy it probably as much as most football fans enjoy the SuperBowl each year. It’s even always on a Sunday, just like the SuperBowl. If some of my favorite movies of the past year are nominated, I think it’s much like if someone’s favorite team makes it to the SuperBowl. It makes it that much more enjoyable.

I bet it’s very difficult for the average person to enjoy the Oscars as much as I do, because unless you go see nearly every single movie that releases, you don’t see even half of the movies that are nominated, and the “shorts” and foreign films nominated are even harder to find than the mainstream movies. I have some personal techniques and methods I use each year that help me a great deal in this regard, so fortunately I am able to have much more available for me to watch than I can consume before the actual Oscars air. So I watch everything I can that looks like it might be interesting in the weeks before Oscar day, and I think I do pretty good. Not with my picks, mind you, but with the percentage of nominated content I watch. My picks are often horrible compared to who actually wins, and many times I’ll go back and watch some winners again just to figure out what I missed.

This reminds me of back in the day when I working at AMC/Chrysler and Gene Decker and I used to make our Oscar picks and discuss the movies, giving everything a “star” rating from one to five, a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, Siskel and Ebert-style. Roger Ebert’s picks were also heavily discussed (and very often disagreed with), and everything eventually always came back to “What’s The Best Movie Ever Made”? If you didn’t say “Citizen Kane” you were an idiot, you didn’t know what you were talking about and certainly weren’t a movie buff. We always laughed at that. Citizen Kane put me to sleep. I think it had a similar effect on Gene too. For it’s time I’m sure it was Epic. Maybe you had to have seen it when it was first released to really appreciate what it meant, the story and how it was told, but it certainly wasn’t what I thought it would be going in. Maybe it was just the fact that it was in black & white, but I can usually dismiss this if it’s a good story. And it was, don’t get me wrong, but I just didn’t think, after watching it, that it was the best movie of all time. I could go on and on about that one, but I’ll stop there.

Let’s get back to this year’s nominees:

“Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood“. There are a lot of nominations for this one. I only made it halfway through this one and I got bored and moved on to something else. It just didn’t grab me. Now that I see all of these nominations for it, I’ll have to go back and watch the entire movie before the Oscars.

“1917” – I haven’t watched it yet, but I plan to.

“Marriage Story” – I watched this one with Sandy. It was good, we enjoyed it. It’s a divorce story though–not a happy outcome. I wonder if it’s much better for those who haven’t gone through a similar situation, or worse. Sandy’s been there. I was with her through the second half of hers. It basically just ends open-ended, probably in the best light it could have, as everyone is just sort of trying to move on after the divorce issues are all settled.

“Joker” – This is a really good, intense movie. Don’t mistake it as being a super-villian comic book movie. It’s an “origins” story about The Joker from the Batman comics. Very dark and depressing, but well-acted and filmed. It gets deep into how the Joker came to be and how he evolved into The Joker.

“Pain & Glory” – one of those foreign language movies. Lots of subtitles to read. Might be worth it though, I might try to watch it.

“Parasite” – Another foreign language film, but a horror movie. The reviews say it’s really good though, definitely going to watch this one.

“Ford v Ferrari” – Watched this one. Excellent movie. I just wish the ending was a little clearer. I had to look up more details on the web about what happened in real life at the end, and it was pretty horrifying. I think they played it down way too much in the movie with very vague details. Other than that though, it was a great movie.

“The Irishman” – Excellent movie on Netflix. Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino… You can tell just by the main cast members what kind of movie it’s going to be, and it didn’t disappoint. It was really long and epic, as it should be. It’s the story of Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino) and the crime families involved. Good stuff.

“Jojo Rabbit” – I watched about 30 minutes of this one and was pretty confused, so I stopped and did a little research. I’ll go back and watch the whole thing before the Oscars, now that I see it’s nominated in several categories. It’s about a German kid, around the time of World War II, who has Hitler as an imaginary friend. Yes, you read that right. Silly sure, kind of an awkward comedy of sorts. Now I’m very curious though.

No, not bad movies. Movies that, after you finished watching them you said “oh shit!” and went back and watched it again to pick up everything you missed. That was a post I recently found on Quora. When I catch one of these good questions I immediately start sifting through the hundreds of responses and write down a list of what I find. (All within Google Keep of course – no trees were harmed) This one made for a great list of movies I need to either watch or re-watch. Here’s what I came up with:

The Usual Suspects
Fallen (1998) *
The Truman Show
The Matrix
Memento *
Donnie Darko
Shutter Island
Arrival
The Sixth Sense
12 Monkeys *
Inception
Parasite *
Interstellar
Moon
The Prestige *
Ex Machina
A Scanner Darkly *
Pan’s Labyrinth *

* = Haven’t watched it yet. The rest I’ve watched, but plan to watch again, thanks to this list.

We watched “A Dog’s Purpose” tonight thinking it was “A Dog’s Journey”. We watched “A Dog’s Journey” several weeks ago, and then watched it again with Haylie and Connor when they were here, so you’d think I would have known. We were all a bit confused. Haylie and Kevin insisted wasn’t the right movie, but I pressed on, insisting otherwise. It had Josh Gad as the dogs’ voice and the dog went through many different reincarnations, but halfway through the movie I realized Dennis Quaid hadn’t shown up yet, and I thought he had been in it really early on. But then I thought about and knew the little boy would grow up to be the Dennis Quaid character, but MAN, it was taking a lot longer than I remembered. Then Dennis Quaid appears and the movie just starts looking like I remembered it…and the credits roll.

Holy crap, “A Dog’s Journey” is a SEQUEL! Couldn’t someone have mentioned that when I previously posted on my site and on Facebook that I watched that movie?! A Dog’s Journey picks up immediately after A Dog’s Purpose. I never knew.

I didn’t enjoy A Dog’s Purpose as much as I enjoyed A Dog’s Journey though, I must say. I think this is one of the rare times that a sequel is better than the first movie. I did enjoy it though, and knowing I’m not completely losing my mind now, it’s pretty satisfying knowing the “whole” story, even though I experienced it backwards. I bet it probably would have been more satisfying having watched them in the proper order, but totally not knowing A Dog’s Journey was a sequel and not even thinking “something is missing” at any point says even more about how good it was. It stands on it’s own pretty well.

Now don’t even get me started on “A Dog’s Way Home”. THAT movie wasn’t even in the same league as either of these two.

I just finished reading The Institute, Stephen King’s latest novel. Awesome book! The book starts in a simple little town where a ex-cop passing through takes a job as a night knocker. There’s a kid, a really smart kid, whose 12 years old and already getting ready to attend MIT because he’s gifted. That’s the setting. From there it gets chilling. Even without King’s usual ghosts, monsters or boogeymen. The “monsters” in this one are people.

The kid, Luke, is kidnapped in the middle of the night. His parent are murdered in the process. He wakes up at The Institute in Maine in a room that’s just like his, except no windows. There’s other kids there and he learns from a young girl in the hallway, seemingly smoking a cigarette. Turns out it’s a candy cigarette. Remember those from when we were kids? She tells him that they “do stuff” to the kids, injections-flickering lights-dunking, but at least they’re in the Front Half. You don’t want to go to the Back Half. No, that’s like the roach motel. Kids go in and don’t ever come out.

This story is about the all people throughout history who have told themselves that the horrible, hideous and atrocious things they do are for a “greater good”. This book is intense. Mainly because everything seems so believable and real. You start to wonder if there’s something similar really going on throughout the world and it’s being kept a secret. Could that even be possible with how everything seems to end up on the Internet these days? It was a very good story, good writing, and very relevant with everything that’s going on in the world today.

Well, after a series of disappointments with Tidal, I have ended up cancelling our accounts there and sticking with Spotify. I actually found a decent widget in the app store that provides even more functionality than the embedded Spotify widget did. That widget was my biggest beef with Spotify, and what triggered my desire to seek something better.

As it turned out, at least from my experience with it, Tidal’s claims at having millions more songs is a bit deceiving. Sure, they do have more songs, but from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly because they offer most of the same albums and artists’ but add multiple versions of their albums in several different languages as well as the “US/English” versions. This will easily pad their “song count” numbers and I don’t think that’s right.

Tidal’s app and web interface are also a little harder to work with than Spotify, and I don’t have any friends over there either, so the social aspect was lost for me. Like Facebook, there’s advantages to having “everyone” on the same platform, even though this is probably only a minor factor, it does matter.

Kevin was also not a fan of Tidal. He grudgingly accepted the trial, but struggled with how he would get all of his music and playlists onto Tidal.

The “Hi Fi” option, which were included in my trial, was very nice, so I actually noticed little difference between the highest quality setting of Spotify songs on my devices compared to the Hi Fi versions of them on Tidal on the same devices. I’m sure true “audiophiles” can tell, or have much better audio hardware to play it on that reveals the differences, but I just didn’t notice much difference myself.

There are more factors, but I’ll stop there. We kept Spotify–the family plan–and we’re sticking with it. I still just don’t understand why they would drop the widget from their app… just to make the download smaller? To ease the amount of code the programmers had to work with? How much updating is needed for a simple widget that plays your music and playlists? I wouldn’t think it would add much more work, but then again I have no idea what features Spotify has planned for the future… Maybe there’s some new and amazing technology they’re working on that would make the old widget such a PITA to work with or update that they had to make this early cut to focus on what really matters most. I can’t imagine what that might be though. I’ll guess we’ll just wait and see.

I am currently reading Stephen King’s new book “The Institute”. It’s great, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s about a bunch of kids that were kidnapped and taken to “The Institute”, a building complex located out in some remote woods. I’m not sure exactly what state it’s in at this point in the book, but I’m guessing, since Stephen King wrote it, it’ll be in Maine. The details are so rich you actually care about the kids. I’m about 35% done with it, mostly listening to it to and from work, but I’m going to start listening to it on the treadmill, as it’s getting to the point where I keep wanting to drive “just a little further” to listen a bit more.

We’ve had some nasty thunderstorms the past couple weeks, so there’s been a lot of flooding in the area. Nothing at home though, our sump is working well and keeping us dry. The puppies aren’t phased one bit by the storm either. We’ve conditioned them early, giving them treats for tolerating loud noises. Now they look at us like they’re begging for food during thunderstorms.

Kevin and I went to see “IT: Chapter Two” last weekend. We loved it. Quite different than the miniseries, but that was expected. It was much closer to the book than the miniseries, and with the actors they cast in the adult versions of the kids for the second part, they made it much more amusing than the first part, but I think that lightened it up just enough. Stephen King even made a cameo appearance in the second half, completely confirming that this version has his blessing. Much more work of Stephen King and Joe Hill (his son) is coming too, and I’m looking forward to all of it.

On the geeky side, Google recently removed “Google Photos” from “Google Drive”, which is disappointing. Their Google Photos service allows you to backup every single photo and video you take automatically to the cloud, and I have used it for years. And since all Google Photos showed up in Google Drive, it worked out perfectly for me, because this way I was able to use my full backup of my Google Drive, which I have on my PC at home, to access any photo or video I’ve ever taken in one place on a single drive. This is great, especially if you’ve only accessed photo online for awhile. It’s just super-quick for everything this way, with all photos and videos “local”, right there on a hard drive. So, when they separated Google Photos from Google Drive, my local copy of Google Photos on my Google Drive hard drive no longer updated. No more simplicity. Thanks Google. They claim too many users got confused about the two services. I don’t believe that. I’m thinking there was something much more technical (or legal) involved, so they had to completely separate the two services. Anyway, it sucks, so I’m trying to work around it now.

My main use for a local copy of my photos is to copy them all to my SD card on my phone. I have 1TB of space on my phone (512GB internal, 512GB SD card), so I have plenty of storage and plenty of room to copy all of my photos to my SD card–I’m talking close to 60,000 photos I’ve taken over the years and even those I’ve scanned from photo albums. Even every screenshot. Anything and everything saved as an image, actually. I just found something that works pretty good too. It’s called Bulkr. It works exclusively with Flickr to allow you to very easily backup your photostream, or any group of photos individually. Since way back when I started using Google Photos, I’ve also used Flickr. I bought a “Pro” subscription of Flickr, which offers unlimited photo & video storage, giving me a alternate/additional backup for all of my photos and videos, which are also backed up automatically from my phone just like Google Photos does. Maybe it’s overkill, but if you come from an IT background from “way back” like I do, you know the pain of permanently losing something as a result of data loss, and having multiple backups provides a lot of peace of mind in the area.

Bulkr will simply “Backup My Photostream” with just a click of that button. It looks at your Flickr account in its entirety, then looks at the folder you want to copy your photos stream to, and it instantly knows what’s already there backed up and copies only new photos and videos it finds. This makes it really smart and simple, which I haven’t found with any other tool or app I’ve tried to use. So what I did was create a “Flickr Photos” in my local Google Drive folder, then I run Bulkr’s Photostream backup and it backs up to my Google Drive. This makes it work pretty close to the way it was with Google Photos worked, except that I have to periodically open and run Bulkr to update my Flickr backup. If I could further automate that part to run weekly, or even once a day, that’d be awesome. I’m looking.

Spotify recently removed the widget from it’s Android app, and this really ticks me off. No warning, no notification whatsoever, they just took it out. So when my phone updated the app the other day, my widget on my home screen stopped working and the controls disappeared. After a bit of frustration troubleshooting the issue, I searched the web and found this article:

https://www.slashgear.com/spotify-retires-its-android-widget-for-some-reason-13587148

So it wasn’t a mistake, they took it out with no notice or explanation whatsoever and have no plans to put it back in. After reading this I am very frustrated, and now I’m talking a much closer look at Tidal. Tidal’s app still has a widget, but it also has 20 million more songs than Spotify. Spotify sits at 40 million tracks, Tidal at 60 million. Sheesh, I remember when 20 million was ALL that Spotify had. Anyway, Tidal also offers a “Hi-Fi” option, which provides much better quality tracks than Spotify, for those really picky audiophiles. It costs more, but at least it’s an option Spotify doesn’t have.

I was on a Family Plan with Spotify, so I’ll do a trial of Tidal’s Family Plan and I’ll have Kevin try it out too. Tidal really looks like a serious contender, and I think Spotify just made a huge mistake pulling the widget from their Android app. This could result in a lot of users switching to something else!

We watched “A Dog’s Journey” tonight. Awesome movie!! We all loved it. Even the puppies barked at the screen a lot during many of the scenes with dogs in them (which was pretty much ALL of them).

This is a difficult post. We’ve been busy recently, and literally, “around the house.” We installed some security equipment this month after Sandy’s car was broken into and some things stolen from it last month. I would love to go into just what awesome tech is now actively working to protect us, but I’m always worried that giving out too much information could possibly come back to bite us down the road, so I won’t. Believe me, I’d really love to post about it, but I just can’t. That’s what makes this post difficult for me. I’ve been mulling it over for awhile too, which explains a little about the delay in posting anything for a few weeks. I’m supposed to be posting more frequently, I keep telling myself, but that’s been my focus lately. There are other less-critical things happening though, so I’ll have to post about those instead.

The puppies had their “triple procedures” a couple weeks ago and are recovery nicely. They both got neutered, chipped, and had baby teeth extracted, all at the same time. They were pretty sleepy and sluggish the first couple days, on several medications, and really hated their “Elizabethan Collars”, aka “The Cones of Shame”. We only needed to use them a few times, and only for brief periods of time when they insisted on licking. I think they learned very quickly that if they kept licking their wounds they would end up with those cones on, which pretty much made them freeze completely, not knowing what to do or how to move around. They continuously bumped into things, knocking themselves over or startling them quite a bit the first time they had them on, and quickly learned to dread them, so the licking became very minimal. And as a result, they’re healing very well.

The only problem we’re seeing now is that since their surgery, both dogs seemed to have completely forgotten all of their house training. They are back to literally peeing and pooping anywhere they want. Maybe this is their payback for what we’ve done to them. It reminds me of an episode of Rick & Morty where their pet dog is turned into a cyborg – part dog, part robot, and can now talk. In anger he asks his master “Where are my TESTICLES?” I found it hilarious at the time. Now, not so much. We’re re-training them now and controlling their feedings much better to get a handle on it.

Kevin and I had a nice Independence Day this year. Sandy had to work, so Kevin and I went to Emily’s 4th of July party at her house. It was pretty nice. The food was awesome, and they had a few little fireworks for the kids. It was pretty hot and humid though, so a bit uncomfortable, and it even drizzled on us a bit as we sat outside. Their plan was to walk to the Racine Fireworks following the party, but Kevin and I weren’t interested in that, so we headed home awhile after we ate.

The puppies had to stay penned while we were away from home, so it was also good to get back home sooner so they could get out. Not that they were stressed from people in the neighborhood setting off fireworks though–they’re pretty used to it already. In fact, we used Zak George’s techniques for conditioning them to loud sounds, so now they’re pretty much indifferent to loud noises and even get excited at times, thinking they’re going to get a treat. When they do this and we notice, they do get a treat too. It’s kind of funny to see them get excited instead of scared when there’s a loud BOOM though, and they come running and stare at the treat container. I also watched Black Hawk Down last night, which had plenty of explosions and loud noises of it’s own, so I don’t think they could tell the difference anyway. It also helps that I listen to my movies and play my music pretty loudly at home (when Sandy’s not there), so they’re pretty used to all that noise.

Speaking of movies, “Shazam!” just came out on digital this week, so Kevin and I watched it. We had been looking forward to it, since we missed it in theaters. We both thought it was pretty well done. I think DC is learning a lot from the success of Marvel’s movies and using a lot more humor in their stories, which is nice. We also watched “Little” last week, at Kevin’s request. It seemed a bit childish, with a premise that has been well-used in a lot of other movies: A successful business woman who is really really bossy and used to getting everything her way is taught a lesson when a spell is cast on her so she wakes up as a 13-year-old the next morning and struggles to get through life trying to convince everyone that she’s still a successful business woman and not a 13-year-old child. Remember the movie “Big” starring Tom Hanks? Yeah, it doesn’t compare.

I watched “Batman and Robin” just to see the only Batman (George Clooney) with nipples. That’s right, nipples. I only planned to watch it up to that point, but it became so over-the-top and ridiculous that I couldn’t resist seeing it through to the wacky ending. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s one-liners were oh so bad. In fact, everyone’s was. It was like they were trying way too hard to be a comic book instead of a movie.

I watch “After Earth” too, thinking “It’s a Will Smith movie, it has to be good.” Whoops, my bad.

Lastly, I watch “Mercury Rising”, an old Bruce Willis movie from 1998. I hardly remembered what it was about at all, so it was fun to experience it again and I liked it.

You might be wondering how I remember everything I watch so well, especially at my age. I must confess, I don’t. Plex does. I’ve noticed recently that Plex keeps changing for the better, embedding more and more great features. But its ability to sort movies by “Date Viewed” is pretty handy for jogging my memory. It’s other nice and very cool features include the display of the ACTUAL time your movie or show will be done, once you start playing it. This seems like a pretty simple thing, but I haven’t seen any other service or player do this and it’s pretty handy, I must say. You instantly know, the first time you pause your movie, when it’ll be done (if you watch it straight through without pausing from that point forward). Then there’s the in-depth statistics–I can see all of the users who have played our movies, TV shows, music, and videos, what they’ve watched and for how long, since forever. I can rate each movie and TV show we have and sort movies and TV shows by those ratings or sort them by many other criteria. The Plex interface is very much like many other movie interfaces such as Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Movies Anywhere, etc., except for the fact that everything is local–meaning all of the movies and TV shows are on my local Plex server itself–it doesn’t have to stream anything over the internet (unless I’m playing a movie or TV show remotely). And since most home Internet services don’t support streaming FROM a home very well, Plex uses “syncing” of specified content to help resolve this issue. This lets me choose the movies and TV shows that I want to “download” to my device (phone, tablet, etc.) and Plex automatically syncs them with the server. That way they play as easily on my phone as they would if I were playing them from home where my server is.

That was a bit more detail than I intended, but you get the idea. I love Plex. And movies.

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!

I drink a lot of water. I always bring a bottled water to work, I usually freeze a few bottles, then move them from the freezer to the fridge for a day or two so they melt about halfway, then I drink them. This provides ice-cold drinks of water for a good portion of the day, as the ice block inside continues to melt.

I am also currently going through a “bubly” phase. I tried a few 12-packs of bubly recently when they were on sale pretty cheap and I liked it, so I brought a case to work. Since then I’ve been drinking about a 12-pack per week at work, along with my frozen bottled water. It sure beats drinking from the tap. I don’t have a preference in the flavor of the bubly, I think I’ve tried them all. They have very little flavor anyway. I guess it’s more the carbonation that I like about it. Bubly has one of those “all-zeros” nutritional labels, so there’s basically nothing in it, or at least nothing that’ll effect my health numbers at all.

At home we also enjoy a lot of Sparkling Ice. This is another water with an “all-zero” nutritional label, but it has a nice flavor. Not just any flavor though–there are several, but I like the Strawberry Watermelon flavor the best. So much, in fact, that we get this flavor only, whenever we find it on the shelf, and often take several cases, leaving nothing left of that flavor on the shelf. None of their other flavors taste as good to me as that one. Sandy and Kevin like a few other flavors and buy those as well sometimes. I’ve tried them, but I always come back to my Strawberry Watermelon.

Exciting story, isn’t it? How’s it going to end? Well, all this water has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? I have to run to the restroom constantly throughout the day at work and at home. This results in more steps, as I’ve come to realize, but it can also be a nuisance at certain inappropriate times. I can’t sleep for more than two or three hours at night before I have to get up and go. I might be able to fix that issue just with timing though–no water if it’s too close to bedtime. That’d certainly be a better solution than taking another pill I think. During my walks it can also be an issue. I always have to be sure to plan out my walks–if they’re going to be of any significant distance–so that there is at least a restroom along the way or at either end of the walk so I can take a pit stop if needed.