Havasimy

I'm writing this at the bar on my lunch hour, so I'm going to write this quickly. This is my annual list of goals for the coming year. Most are the same or similar to goals of years past. Last year was a failure in most, if not all, of the goals, but this was a unique year dominated by a new job and a second move when I hadn't recovered from the last move.

So here's the list:
1. Not let my mind keep turning constantly on subjects that negatively affects my life. Yeah, this is still a problem. My mind can't get off of thinking of certain things that are problems in my life, which makes them more of a problem than they really are.
2. Get in better shape. Another one that has been a failure this year, although during my layoff, I did exercise regularly around the apartment complex in Delaware. The problem isn't my weight, which is a problem, but it's my energy level. I need to get into better shape so I have time to get other things done. Time I currently spend sleeping/resting.
3. Go to atleast one state I've never been to before. Missed this one in 2009, although I was tempted to do a roadtrip to Michigan on Christmas weekend. The closest two states are Michigan and Kentucky. Both are states I've been to, but only to the airports, which doesn't count. This year, a friend is moving to southeast Ohio, so a side trip to Kentucky would be definitely doable.
4. Go to atleast one away game for a Pittsburgh team. Got this one last year. I've decided the spirit of this goal includes neutral site games outside of the western PA area since the object is to see one of the teams in a venue you normally wouldn't. This year, I saw the Steelers play the Cardinals in the Super Bowl in Tampa.
5. Make a trip to Vegas. FAIL. Maybe this year. Anyone interested in making the trip with me?
6. Make one trip to visit friends in Jersey. In the past, this was to go to the Jersey shore, something I never did enough of when I lived in Jersey. Now that I'm back in Pittsburgh, just getting to Jersey is enough of a goal.
7. Do three things I've never done before or go places I've never been. This does not mean ordinary things like going to a normal store that I've never been to before. In the past, Spelunking and going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art satisfied this goal. In 2009, I'd say going to the Super Bowl definitely counts. I could count sleeping on a boat, which I also did in 2009. This year, I'll be on the lookout for things to satisfy this goal.
8. Go on more dates this year than last. This should be easy cause with the layoff, the move and the new job, I did not go on a single date this year. So let's say to accomplish this goal, I need to go on three dates with at least two different girls or have a relationship of atleast two months with a single girl.
9. Get my apartment in good shape. On the plus side, moving twice as made be throw away alot of stuff. Especially stuff that accumulated with being in the Jersey apartment for over four years. However, my apartment is a mess from not being unpacked. So this goal includes unpacking and making the living be in good enough shape to have guests over.
10. Get a full time employment position. In the past this has been a wild-card goal that has changed every year. It has been to "watch 150 movies and read 5 novels" which was a fail and "fill out the 25th anniversary Hooters passport", which required taking the passport to 25 different Hooters location, which was a success. This year, I am a contractor. Instead of a fun goal here, the goal here is for me to work and have a fulltime position either at my current job or at a new company.

Those are my goals. Feel free to give suggestions or help with any of them.

Updated 9:19PM
I forgot two other goals that I had intended to include into my goals for 2010, but forgot about them. So I list them here as bonus goals. A sort of extra credit goals.
First extra credit goal: Have a date for next New Years Eve. This should need no explanation.
Second extra credit goal: Meet at least one person from my facebook or plurk friends list. I've been keeping Facebook friends mostly to people I know personally. There are currently only four Facebook friends I haven't met, but considering this year, I've met three of my friends who I previously hadn't met, meeting one of them isn't unreasonable.

Labels: 2009, 2010, goals, review

I saw Avatar recently. I saw it on IMAX 3D, but got there late and ended up sitting in the front row. I do ot advise this. Since the glasses you have to wear do limit your range of sight to a small degree, sitting in the front row means having to move your head to see the entire action on the screen.

On to the review. This is a movie worth seeing. It is a amazing movie on a visual level. At no time did the compuer-generated world and images seem like cartoons. In fact, I kept forgetting that the blue creatures that inhabit the world were computer generated and not actors in makeup. Much has been made of the budget of this movie, but alot of it was spent creating new technology. Technology that can be used in future movies without the price tag of inventing it. Much the way technology had to be created when Star Wars was filmed, the same is true here. Even if the movie never makes a profit, it will be judged a success based also on how this technology is used in the future.

Despite this movie being known for it's visual effects, it does have a plot. James Cameron has never been one to leave out the plot in his sci-fi. In Avatar, the plot might not be completely original, but it's done well. The plot is basically the same as any politically correct movie about Europeans settling America. Think Disney's Pocahantas in space. The earthlings have big spaceships that requires an element that can be found in abundance on a planet. The planet has a race of people that are in tune with the planet and nature. Their god is a tree and they can attach them selves to horse-like animals via plugs in their long hair. The earthlings have scientists that want to be peaceful with the inhabitants of the planets, but mainly they have soldiers whose sole purpose is to fight and destroy. Leading the soldiers is a executive at the energy company who is only concerned with profits. A soldier is assigned to the scientists, gets exposed to the inhabitants' culture, falls in love with them and,.. well, if you can't figure out what happens next, then you'll probably enjoy the movie even more.

But the big thing is, there is a plot. It makes sense with relatively few holes for a movie that is two hours and forty minutes long. And for a movie that long, it doesn't seem like it is that long.

And some people might be turned off from seeing a movie where the buzz is about the budget and the visual effects, but at least it was a risk taken. It's a high budget movie that is not a sequel, a remake or an adaptation of a popular book series. I saw the trailer to the Karate Kid remake recently. Everytime a movie that takes risks fails, it makes the studios less likely to take a chance in the future and more likely to go with something like the new Karate Kid. If you haven't seen the new Karate Kid trailer, find it online and ask yourself if a lack of originality and risk taking could be the problem with movies today and not big budgets.

Ignoring that motivation to see the movie and judging just on the basis of the movie itself, I give it a rating of "Worth paying full price" with an additional rating of "worth paying extra to see it in IMAX".

Labels: Avatar, movies, review

Yesterday was new episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory.

HIMYM had a funny episode about "The Window", referring to the window of time when the girl of your dreams become available. The girl has to be so special that she never stays single for long. I know more than I care to about "Windows". So this episodes hit some familiar nerves for me. Also Joanna Garcia is an actress who is perfect for Maggie, the girl next door of Ted's dream. I loved her in Reba and wanted to watch Priviledged because of her. Barney is overalls trying to pick up women and the rest of the gang trying to keep guys away from Joanna's character while Ted is teaching class was top notch, except for Robin's acting desperate for an uninterested guy to keep him away from Maggie. Whenever Robin acts desperate, I cringe. Usually the more together she is, the funnier (and hotter) she is.
On BBT, Howard's girlfriend gets interested in Leonard's work causing Howard and Penny to get jealous. Howard because he's afraid he'll lose his girl to Leonard and Penny cause she can't talk to Leonard about his work. This causes Penny to convince Sheldon to teach her about Physics. This leads to alot fo Penny/Sheldon scenes. Penny/Sheldon scenes are among the funniest scenes ever on the show and this week didn't disappoint.
Both shows had quality episodes this week. But BBT had less weakness (Howard>Robin) and more laugh-really-loud-out-loud moments. The season standing is once again tied: HIMYM:5-BBT:5.

Labels: BBT, competition, HIMYM, review

I just got back from watching the Super Bowl at a local bar. Not only did the Giants win as I had hoped and predicted, but I won a flat-panel tv during a drawing at halftime.
One thing I've been meaning to post about is rules for sports fandom. I wanted to do a long post about how a person can only have one primary favorite team per sport/league and can have secondary favorites they can root for when they're not playing the primary favorite team. Well, don't know if that long post will ever come, but the discussion came up today when a guy who is known for being a big Redskins fan came wearing a Patriots hat and calling the Pats his team. The Giants fans immediately called him out on this. And there was a lot of trash talking back and forth as the game went back and forth. But when someone suddenly starts claiming to be a big fan of his team only after his real team is out of the playoffs, then he should be called on it. And maybe he caused bad karma that worked against the Pats tonight.
The only thing that didn't go my way tonight is, while I did pick the Giants winning a close game, I had both teams scoring in the 30s. So I totally blew the over/under which likely cost me making the top 3 in my football pool's final standings this year.

On a totally different subject, I saw the new Rambo movie today. It is not cartoonish like the other sequels and it has scenes whose violence is on a level with the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. (And yet there were kids in the theatre. That's a post for another day.) It doesn't try to lighten up Rambo's mood or personality. You could say that Stallone can't act in this movie, but I think he could have acted better, but in reality, anything different would have been wrong, too drastic of a change from the previous movies. Also, I wasn't quite sold on Julie Benz getting Rambo to take action. It worked, but just barely. And I'm glad they didn't try to force a romance there. Anyway, it's a violent action movie. As for most action movies, some suspension of belief is necessary. I give it a rating of worth full price admission.

Labels: football, movies, review, Super Bowl

I swear I'm going to start blogging more regularly. Christmas was not a good time for me. Following the holidays, I made two trips out of town. And for the most part, I don't usually turn my computer on at home. I tried to sign up for the mobile blogging, but I don't get any response when I send the email from my phone to sign up. I'm going to have to figure this out. It'd be alot easier to blog from from my phone, especially now that I have a cellphone with decent internet and typing capability.

I guess I should do a 2007 recap. I didn't do as well on the goals I set last year, but it ended up on a optimistic note. My goals results were:
1. Complete failure, but so far it's been better the first month of this year. I'm holding this goal over for this year.
2. I'm in as bad of shape as I was at the start of last year. I have cut back on my Mountain Dew and pop in general intake. Also, I'm feeling more motivated after spending time hanging around a marathon. I'm also holding this over for this year. I thought about making this a more specific goal for this year, like being able to run a 5K, but I'm keeping it general.
3. This was completed. I only went to one new state, Delaware, which is only minutes away from my new job. But I did go there for the first time and I've actually been there a few times since for various reasons. I'm going to keep this goal again and I won't have a easy nearby state to fall back on. And all of my planned trips this year are to states I've been to, although I might be able to sneak up to Kentucky when I'm in Tennessee.
4. This one was also completed. My trip to see the Pirates play in Philly didn't count because I've been there before, but my trips to Arizona to see the Pens play the Coyote and the Steelers play the Cardinals. I'm keeping this goal for this year. I'll be aiming specifically for the Steelers game against the Eagles here in Philly this fall.
5. Didn't make it to Vegas. For six months in the middle of the year, I was a contractor meaning I didn't get paid time off. By the time I was offered a full-time position, it was too late to make plans. Besides, I just had too much crap going on in December to rush a Vegas trip. This goal is being pushed off to 2008. I'm already making tentative plans to tack on a Vegas stop to a trip out to the west coast for other reasons.
6. I did go to the Jersey shore the week before Labor Day. So another goal officially completed. So I'm changing this goal for 2008 to more trips down to the shore, including Atlantic City. I made one trip to AC last year, which means two trips total to the shore. So for 2008, I'm thinking three trips to AC or any places along the north Atlantic shore. So I'm including even Delaware and Maryland shore.
7. I never really worked on this. I couldn't even come up with three new things. The only I could think of was walk across the Ben Franklin bridge. And I didn't do that. If there was any new things I did last year, they wouldn't be anything I would talk about. So this goal gets carried over til next year.
8. This goal I actually completed easily. Completed this goal, in fact, on my birthday. And got to the point where I stopped keeping track of number of dates. So for this year, I can't make a goal be more dates than last year. So for 2008, this goal is to go out on dates with more women than last year. So I'll consider this goal complete if I go out on dates with three women. I'll also consider it complete if the first or second date ends up becoming a relationship, thus eliminating a need to go out with more women.
9. Another complete failure. My apartment got better, if only slightly, when I was seeing Megan. Then went to complete hell during the Christmas time. So, yes, this goal gets carried over.
10. I did finish 5 novels. More so if you include audiobooks, which I do include. However, didn't make 150 movies. I even stopped documenting the movies I watched. But the main reason was that when I was home, I was always watching tv shows on dvd. If you counted the dvds I watched and converted them into the movie equivalent, then I would have hit surely 150. For 2008, I'm scrapping this goal completely. I'm replacing it with trying to achieve the last paragraph on this page. That's right, I'm going to try and visit 25 different Hooters this year before December 25th. I'll replace the current movie list on the side of this blog with the status of this quest. I'm currently at two, which is right on the necessary pace of one every two weeks.
Anyway, an unofficial goal of mine is going to be to blog more. So hopefully there will be more updates and, in return, more comments.

Labels: 2007, 2008, goals, review