infinite improbability

I'm giving away Gmail invites

I've got six gmail invites to give away, and since I'm not seeing anything interesting to get from gmailswap.com, I'm offering them here. If you have a great sob story, or something cool to trade for an account, post it here, and in a week or so, I'll put up a poll so people can vote on who the invites should go to. Make your stories interesting, but keep them clean.

Hero

Saw the movie Hero last night, and it's one seriously awesome film. I know a lot of people have seen bootleg DVD's already, but this is one of those movies that really needs to be seen on a big screen. The cinematography is stunning, the fight choreography is breathtakingly beautiful, and overall, the film is a visual treat. I sort of think that the story itself is kind of a nationalistic, communist Chinese propagana piece, but probably most of the 18-29 year old male target audience in the US isn't going to notice that, and even if it is, it's still a got majorly beautiful fight and action sequences.

The changing of the guard in international basketball

I'm sitting here watching the men's basketball medal ceremony, and I've got a feeling that it's going to be a while until we see the Americans back on top of the podium. Not because the US is sending lousy players, but because the rest of the world has finally caught up to the level of basketball in the US. The focus is on why the US team is so bad, but people need to give the rest of the world props as well. Once they started sending pros to the Olympics and other countries could compare their programs to the best in America, they had something to shoot for, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world could be competetive.

And, in other news, there's another hurricane out there heading for Florida. Oh joy.

Los Estados Unidos losing to Argentina

The USA men's basketball team is currently down 13 points to Argentina at the start of the 4th. Unless they get their act together, they're in big trouble.

I feel old

I know it's not terribly rational, but I feel old. My birthday was the 26th, and in another year, I'll be a quarter of a century old. Plus, my little brother started college this week, and that's making me feel really old--he's my baby brother, he's not supposed to have college girls chasing him and thinking he's hot. Though, I guess it's not as wierd as having your younger sibling coming to the same school you went to with some of the same people you knew like Josiah.

Star Wars 7,8, &9?

Rumor has it (site currently undergoing slashdotting), that Lucas just might be going back to his original plan to make sequels to the original trilogy. I don't know whether to be happy or sad.

Ulitmate Frisbee is a dangerous sport

My brother played hockey for years, and never once got any sort of injury. Plenty of bruises, but he never got hurt. Since he gave up hockey for Ultimate, he's ended up with a herniated disk because somebody fell on him as they both were coming down after going up to try to catch the frisbee, and yesterday he sprained his wrist and fingers landing on them after making a leaping acrobatic play. He should go back to hockey, he'd have fewer injuries.

My prediction: John Kerry just lost Florida because of response to Charley

People in Florida are hopping mad that the Kerry camp is being critical of President Bush for visiting the areas hit by hurricane Charley. Democrats are accusing Bush of being political because he decided to come here when he did. My response to them is, to quote Teresa Hines Kerry, shove it. Whenever there is a major natural disaster, whoever is president always visits the area. We had a visit from Bush the elder after Andrew, and when killer tornados hit central Florida during Clinton's presidency, he was down here practically before the dust even settled. By coming to Florida on Sunday, George W. Bush didn't do anything out of the ordinary, he didn't do any election year grandstanding, he did what we've come to expect every president to do.

I can almost guarantee that those voters who were sitting on the fence or who were leaning toward Kerry but not totally decided are going to move over into the Bush camp because one thing you just don't do is play politics with things like hurricanes, especially when you are saying that the President of the United States should stay away and act like nothing much happened. Basically, I think that Kerry just lost Florida and it may very well be what costs him the election.

Amazing what can be done without fear of torture

The Iraqi Olympic soccer team won again today, beating Costa Rica 2-0, improving their record in Olympic play to 2-0, first upsetting Portugal 4-2 several days ago. This is a team that did absolutely nothing worth noting in international play for years, and now, in their first major international competion without fear of torture, with a team that was thrown together by a post-Oday Olympic committee, they're knocking of impressive teams.

The lesson is, torture is not a very good motivator. Playing for national pride is a far superior form of motivation.

Charley's aftermath

As I watch the TV coverage of Charley's path of destruction, all I can say is that I am so incredibly thankful that it missed us. When I woke up Friday morning, it looked like we were going to get the big one, and if we had, not only would I not be blogging now, I probably wouldn't have much of a house left. I just can't believe what sort of destruction Charley caused, and that it made it all of the way across the state as a hurricane. A cousin in Punta Gorda lost most of his roof and his house is mostly trashed. My cousin in Lake Wales had a large tree limb go through his car windshield, and they are very lucky that was the biggest damage they had. And, as bad as I feel for the people who got a direct hit by the storm, I can hardly even imagine what it would have been like if it had stayed over water any longer than it did--if it had kept on it's original path, we could have gotten a direct hit by a category 5 storm, which would have then roared into Tampa Bay and put all of downtown under water. As it was, they clocked wind gusts as high as 180 mph down in Punta Gorda, and if it had stayed over water any longer, it would have been an Andrew making a direct hit on a major metropolitan area.

The following photos say it all:

aftermath slideshow(tbo.com)

(photo from sptimes.com)

The one funny storm-related thing was that yesterday, this guy at my church who's from Brazil got out on one of the beaches to take photos because he still had his (expired) press pass from when he was a camera man in Australia. He waved his press pass and told the cops stationed at the bridge that he was press, and they let him right through. Having a press pass really can get you anywhere.

Dodging bullets

Dude, we seriously dodged a bullet with Charley. The early footage from Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte is showing a lot of devastation, and if it the storm had followed the expected track, that would have been us.

All I can say is, if we're facing the possibility of a direct hit by a category 4 storm again, I'm leaving.

Well, I guess it all should be ok for us

Charley appears to have made landfall around Charlotte Harbor, which isn't good for them, but it looks now like we'll have nothing worse than tropical storm force winds here. The camera shots from Port Charlotte are looking pretty nasty--stupid reporter from some station is out on the beach getting blown around.

It's sort of funny because the one station's weather guy is getting hyper and turning pessimist, saying that the storm is practically a Category 5, which is an exaggeration, because it's just barely a 4.

The one thing that's somewhat annoying is that we aren't going to get sustained winds that are much of anything, and while I don't want to get hit directly by a Category 4 hurricane, after all of the preparation, it would be nice to have something.

Charley Update: oh crap, again

Not good. Charley is starting to shift from a northeasterly track and is, for the time being, heading due north. That means that we could still get hammered pretty bad. Right now, we're only getting minor rain, but if it keeps heading the way it's going, we could be in bad shape.

We're looking at another Andrew hitting somewhere on the Gulf coast...the only question is, where???

The storm turned

The good news (for us): Charley turned and is going to hit south of us (unless it turns again). That means that instead of downtown Tampa under water looking like a disaster movie, all of the water from Tampa Bay could very easily all be blown out of the bay and into the Gulf.

The bad news: It's now going to be hitting south near Port Charlotte, where they aren't nearly as prepared, they're barely above sea level, and they're going to be getting hit with a Category 4 hurricane.

Holy crap, it's "The Big One"

Pretty much as long as I can remember, I've been hearing about how we're overdue for a direct hit by a hurricane--the last direct hit was 1921. Well, it looks like we're about to get hit by "the Big One" that we've been afraid of, and it's not going to be good. We're looking at the barrier islands, which are little more than a foot above sea level getting hit by a storm surge of upwards of 10 feet, which means that some of the most expensive real estate in Florida may not be there by the time day breaks on Saturday morning. Pinellas county is likely going to be turned into an island, and downtown Tampa will be submerged. The worry isn't so much the windspeed, but with the shallow Gulf of Mexico and the even shallower Tampa Bay, you end up with major storm surge. Anyway, it's not good. Not good at all.

This reporter sure has his priorities straight

So, this afternoon I'm watching the news conference held by the head of Hillsborough county emergency operations, and he's talking about the storm evacuation plans and all that serious stuff that you think about when you're about to get hit by the worst storm to hit the area since 1921, and some reporter asks, "Are the Buccaneers still playing on Saturday?" That guy really has his priorities right. Odds are, all of downtown Tampa will be under several feet of water tomorrow, I seriously doubt that much will be left on some of the barrier islands, and people are asking about preseason football. Whether or not we have a game on Saturday is the least of our worries at this point.

At the moment, the track of the hurricane has where I live in the direct path of the eye, so I may be incommunicado after tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to try to blog through the storm and post photos as the storm is going on, but I don't know how long we'll have power, and after the power goes out, precious laptop battery time shouldn't be going for blogging.

What's this you say about calm before a storm?

I had to go run errands this afternoon, since I can't exactly put it off till tomorrow, since we're getting hit by a hurricane tomorrow. Anyway, it's madness out on the roads and in the stores today, what with everybody running out at the last minute to get all of their hurricane supplies. I stopped to get gas, and by the time I left the gas station, there was a long line of cars along the road waiting to get into the gas station. Another gas station that I passed on the way to the store had run out of gas by the time I passed it on the way home. K-Mart wasn't as looney as I thought it would be, but the shelves were fairly empty and they had sold out most of their flashlights and batteries and were trucking in bottled water. People are definitely taking this one seriously. Some friends of ours had a table saw sitting outside their business and a guy pulled up and bought it from them for $200--I guess there aren't any saws available in any of the stores.

Plus, in addition to everybody running around going nuts getting ready for Charlie, we're currently under a tornado watch because of Bonnie, even though the only thing we're noticing from that is that it's a bit more windy than normal. Charlie though, could be the storm that they've been telling us for years that we're overdue for--they're saying it could be the proverbial "big one." Depending on where it makes landfall, it could have massive devastation and blow all of the water from Tampa Bay on to land in 14' storm surge, or, it could blow all of the water out of Tampa Bay and into the gulf, so that the Bay is totally dry.

Aaaak! Hurricane Charlie is heading right at me!

The folks are running around buying stuff, because, as usual, we never have our hurricane preparedness done ahead of time. The last direct hit by a hurricane in the Tampa Bay area was back in 1960 with hurricane Donna, so we've been seriously overdue for a storm for a long time. It's not so good because the current track is to make landfall just north of us, which means that we'll be on the side of the storm that has all of the storm surge. So, IF YOU LIVE ON THE BARRIER ISLANDS (Anna Maria, Longboat, etc) AND YOU ARE READING THIS, EVACUATE, OR YOU WILL GET WASHED AWAY. Basically, some of the most expensive real estate on the Gulf coast is in serious danger due to the storm surge.

Little brother is certainly getting quite the send off for college. He was supposed to leave Friday, but with a major storm on the way, the folks don't want my sister and me riding out the storm by ourselves. Hopefully, it will miss us though and be yet another storm that fizzled out.

While I'm at it, here's why I didn't like The Notebook

I said I was going to post a review of The Notebook after Holton got a bit testy with me for dissing it, so here it is.

To start with, I'm not a big fan of movies that treat the audience as though they are stupid. The movie starts out with an elderly man reading out of a leather notebook to an elderly woman who is clearly suffering with dementia. Cut to the story in the notebook, where we see a young man first meeting a young woman. Now, unless you've been living under a rock in outer Mongolia or something for oh, the last hundred years, it should be totally obvious to you what the relationship is between the elderly couple and the young couple. But, does the movie show any respect whatsoever for the intelligence of its audience and admit that the two couples are one and the same? No, it keeps dragging you along for the entire film, trying to keep you guessing, so that then when you find out, you are supposed to feel an outpouring of emotion for how wonderful the guy is for sticking by the woman for all those years, even when he thought he had lost her. Problem is, unless you've been living under the aforementioned rock, it's not a suprise, and I don't particularly like films that not only insult the intelligence of the audience, but that use the very thing that is insulting the intelligence of the audience to manipulate the emotions of said audience.

If that's not enough, rather than try to create characters that are truely compelling, they expect us to relate those characters to elderly couples that we know, and to transfer our emotions about those real people to the characters in the movie. Both characters are cardboard cutouts who fall flat on their own, but once we transfer our emotions about real people to those characters, and start seeing the characters not as the cardboard cutouts that they are but as the people we know and love, then the movie is capable at tugging at our heartstrings. The whole time I was watching The Notebook, I was sitting there feeling like the director was trying every trick in the book to yank the right strings to manipulate my emotions so that I would cry, and while I have felt like crying in movies, it's never been in one where the director is so blatantly trying to make me cry. I can think of hundreds of ways that the story could have been made to be truely compelling, but rather than bothering with a real story, they relied on a cardboard stock framework. There were a few genuinely touching moments, but those moments were cheapened by all of the emotional manipulation that went on around it. Besides, I don't think that they gave us sufficient reason to like the young version of either half of the couple, and as a result, I had a hard time getting into the story. It would have been better if they had done flashbacks of the whole course of their life so that we knew how the young man and woman came to be the people they were at the end of the movie, because it's not a few years of a couple's youth that shapes them, it's the events over the entire course of their lives.

Hurricanes (and I'm not talking about any football teams)

Well, I'm now under a hurricane watch for Hurricane Charlie (what's up with the lack of imagination from the National Hurricane Center? If they've got a Bonnie, they should have Clyde), which is sort of exciting, because despite living my entire life in Florida, the only time there was a storm with any sort of punch that hit anywhere near where I'm from, I was up at school and missed it. I've been watching the Weather Channel because it's quite entertaining the weather people are so giddy with the thought of covering two hurricanes at the same time, and they're having a hard time trying to contain their glee. Just so long as a tree doesn't get blown on our roof or the street doesn't flood up to the house, it's all good with me, though it will get kinda annoying if the power gets knocked out and I'm disconnected with the outside world. Oh well, at least my cell phone has internet.