Remember When 203 Had a Blog?

So the 203 Blog is dead. It was sad to see it go, but it pretty quickly became a Matty Cakes and me production (which would make for a great production company name, I should copyright that) and even that fizzled out eventually. That being said, I guess it would be good to give a quick rundown of the legendary 203.

So Jefe went and got married. Yep, it's done. It was a fun reception and a fun wedding day. One of my favorite parts of the day was listening to the father of C. recount the whole experience of her dating from his end. He's over in the UK so he would only hear much through phone calls and kept notes on a spreadsheet. Basically Jefe was the only normal one and eventually he became the only one.

Jimmy graduated and is now doing an accounting internship out in the San Jose area for KPMG. He's living with his parents and he sounds like he's having a lot of fun. KPMG took all the interns out to Disneyworld for a week earlier in the summer and he's made himself a nice little purchase of a new 2010 Prius. Pretty sweet. In the fall he's getting his MAC at Utah State so he won't be our roommate anymore. It definitely brings a tear to my eye.

Jordan (I need a decent nickname for him) is off in Chicago doing a PR internship. I haven't heard much from him, but he sounds like he's doing well and it must be an incredible internship.

Psycho T is working as an athletic trainer for sports camps on campus. He really sounds like he's enjoying it, but we don't see him too much because he's always pretty busy.

Matty Cakes is still working and hanging out. He's become my new buddy to run around town with. Of course he gets to leave town for a while this week, so I get the place to myself for the most part.

As for myself, I started a new job recently at APXAlarm in the Licensing Department. Basically I make sure the reps and techs in California and Canada are licensed to sell and install. It's been a fun job and I absolutely love my coworkers. It's been a good experience.

In the fall 203 is downsizing by moving into a 4 man apartment now that were out Jimmy and Jefe. I've never lived in a 4 man place so that should be interesting. It's right next to campus which is interesting since that really doesn't make a difference for me now that I'm graduated. I'm looking to work for a while before I begin law school. Life is good though.

Ode to the Remote Control

You were never there for me were you mother? You expected Mike and Carol Brady to raise me! I'm the bastard son of Claire Huxtable! I am a Lost Cunningham! I learned the facts of life from watching "The Facts of Life"! Oh God!
- Chip Douglas The Cable Guy

So early in the summer my beloved TV bit the dust (it was an Akai, DO NOT EVER BUY AKAI! one of the worst purchases I've ever made). So for a little while we braved the times without it and that was definitely a pain for me. I absolutely love movies and sports, so not having a TV was unbearable. Thankfully, my roommate, Mr. Potter, brought us a TV so now we're able to watch TV and movies again. Of course the thing I've noticed is I still don't watch quite as much as I used to, especially TV. And I think I know what the reason is for this: The TV Remote. This new TV does not have a remote. I've found it's really annoying to get up even just to turn it on, not to mention changing stations and controlling the volume. I know it's all so pathetic, but when you grow used to this convenience it really is such a sad thing to be missing it. And so what have I done in response? Just not watched much TV. I still watch movies, which I have a remote for the DVD player (although I obviously still have to put the DVD into the player) and a remote for my surround sound (which only works with the DVD player).

But appreciate your remotes people, they are indeed wonderful devices. I think back to the TV's that used to have knobs (which I have used on occasion) and it's just amazing how somebody didn't develop something like the remarkable remote control sooner.

I look forward to the day that I get a new TV and get a remote once again.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

So I went to the midnight showing which was definitely a lot of fun. There were all sorts of people dressed up in various goofy outfits. The theater had even labeled the different theaters as though they were different classes at Hogwarts. I was kind of surprised the employees weren't dressed up. Obviously this movie is going to be huge, I mean the theater was having showings at 3 in the morning because so many people wanted to go see it.

That being said, here's my review: It sucked. Now I can imagine I'm going to have a lot of people screaming at me for that and I'll give my reasoning, but I suppose first I should give my Harry Potter background. I have never cracked a single one of the books. It seems like any time there's movies made from books, that's the first question you get from somebody. So I can imagine I'll get berated for that one already. Now, I have seen all of the movies, most of them multiple times. I'm not sure how many times I've seen The Order of the Phoenix, but I know it's sparse compared to the rest. That being said, my favorite one is the 4th movie, and I liked the 5th a lot too. I think you'll be hard pressed to find a bigger proponent of the movies than myself though. Most people I know that have read the books constantly lament that they just don't live up to expectation. Movies and books are different forms of communication, people need to just get over that. But seriously I love the movies. They're fun, exciting, they have good morals, the characters are very likeable and interesting. Maybe they're not masterpieces as far as a lot of directing and acting, but they're enjoyable. It's almost like I'm a kid again when I watch them as my imagination runs wild. Seriously I love the movies a lot, so I'm not a Harry Potter naysayer or anything like that. I'll admit, I'm probably being a bit harsher on this movie than maybe I should be, but when the bar has been set and the movie just does not live up to it, that's a serious problem. And I'm not necessarily saying this is about expectations that this movie would be great, but that the other movies had been so good that it seemed out of place. So take my firm evaluation with a grain of salt.

Now I'll give my spoiler free review of the movie. First it kind of bugged me that a lot of the lighting seemed a bit odd. It almost reminded me of something like 300, in that it had this hazy computer graphic tint to it for a lot of the movie which just seemed weird. There are portions of the movie in which Harry is looking at memories and this effect is exaggerated, and at those times it's sensible. However, the tint that seemed to exist during most of the movie just seemed weird and unnecessary.

The cinematography is gorgeous. Of course, like it is with a lot of newer movies, I often wonder what is real and what is simply CGI. It's really impressive to see the scenery, both in world landscapes and the details of the different rooms. I can't believe all of the miniscule details they have worked out as far as different elements of all the different rooms and such. The costumes are still great as well.

As far as the acting goes, I think the majority of the characters give pretty similar performances to what they've given thus far. If you thought the acting was good recently, you'll enjoy it now. And for the most part, I'd say the acting was quite good. However, there were a lot of things with humor and such that really seemed forced, especially early in the movie. They just seemed like they were trying too hard for a laugh. Also, Dumbledore seemed like his acting was a bit different this time around and almost out of place. It just seemed odd.

Now, why did I trash this movie so hard? The plot. I'm not going to go into the specifics right now for the sake of anybody that may not be familiar with the Harry Potter storyline, but frankly I felt like I watched a movie that was two and a half hours of not much of anything really relevant until the end when, BAM!, there's a rather dramatic change. It just seemed rather odd and so disappointing. There was very little advancement of the main storyline of Harry versus Voldemort and it just seemed really odd. This movie just didn't have the same sort of fun or excitement of the others and didn't seem as interconnected as the others.

I guess a lot of it was I felt more like I was watching a drama than the Fantasy/Adventure movies that the others have been. This movie just did not follow suit and I'm sad that it turned out so poorly. Hope the next two redeem themselves.

Titles: You Thought This One Had a Point, Didn't You?

So I read the White House Blog. It's an interesting read because of the fact it gets information out so promptly about what the Obama Administration is doing. Plus they post the Weekly Address, which I think is great because we should know what the President has to say. So recently I ran into a couple of interesting posts that mostly what I found a little odd were the titles and their relation to what was actually being said. The first was entitled "$100 million there, $100 million here". Now when I saw that I just kind of scratched my head, because with all of the spending that the government has participated in, it seemed like that was just a terrible endorsement of handing out even more cash. Really what it was about is President Obama's budget because he is seeking to slim it down by $100 million or so, which is a great thing and I hope they can accomplish such a task. Being more efficient with money is certainly praiseworthy and I applaud the administration for taking on such a task. However, this really didn't seem like a good title for this blog post. I'm all for clever, fun, witty titles but you have to make sure they convey proper messages and this particular one seemed to fail a bit with that.

The other post I found of interest was entitled "What Makes the United States Special". In this post they discuss President Obama's recent release of the "torture memos" and quote him in a speech he gave to the CIA. I found this title to be interesting; it drew my eye immediately when I saw it on the list of my RSS feed. However, I wasn't expecting it to be about the memos first of all and secondly, I didn't think their way of jumping into their post was necessarily wise. This post begins by acknowledging the release of this information, so my first thought was "So they're saying the U.S. is special because we release this kind of information," which is somewhat of a special thing so I was able to buy it. However, then it proceeds to talk about how the memos spoke of interrogation techniques, which really sent my head for a spin, because it almost seemed like they were saying "The U.S. is special because we torture people." The eventual outcome was speaking of how we're special because we don't resort to the same level as many of our enemies. However, yet again, it didn't seem like a wise use of title to text.

Quick Vids

A couple of videos I came across recently and found entertaining.

A really creepy Lionel Richie music video. Enjoy!

Mythbusters rocket sled. This is freaking awesome!

Tool Time

So maybe I should just start going by Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor. Lately I feel like a tool, straight up. Of course it's really a funny circumstance. So roughly a month or so ago, it started becoming pretty apparent that very few individuals seemed to really care all that much about anybody in my apartment. Yes, I know that's a rather cruel and harsh way of phrasing it, but it's largely true (and yes, I realize if you're reading this, you probably care about me [unless you're some random person who stumbled onto my blog] and believe me, I greatly appreciate it). Frankly it just seemed like people stopped contacting us for a large part. And this was kind of midsemester, so I understand people start getting busy and such. But it's the persistence that's concerned me. It seems like this has been a continuing theme.

Around this same time I started noticing that a certain person I had at one point considered a friend only would call me if this individual needed something (I'll remove gender to blur the identity of this person a bit more, even though if you're reading this blog, it's probably not you I'm talking about). Seriously, it's bad. This person doesn't seem to hesitate and only comes in contact with me when they need something. I've printed documents,  given the person a ride, invited them to different events, and other random things. Basically I've done a lot of the things that I figure friends should do. Well, as I said, it became apparent that this individual really doesn't seem to care all that much, which makes me sad. We have had some decent history and decent conversations, but there's just been so few instances I can think of that really fit this person extending a hand of friendship. When I finally came to this realization, it peeved me a bit. And look, I mean no ill will toward this individual, that's why I'm trying to keep identities secret, a lot of this is me: a) venting and b) trying to analyze some sort of potential flaw in my own character.

So this kind of got me to realizing that I'm a bit too much of an enabler for these kinds of people. Now I will say, I can't really think of pretty much any other time that I've run into this kind of situation, at least not to this degree. Maybe I've been used before, but if I was it wasn't quite so blatant and/or repeated. But seeing the way this has played out has definitely helped me see that I do put myself out there too much. I really will do just about anything for just about anybody that asks me. It's kind of a funny quirk of mine, especially since I usually abhor asking others for anything. A perfect example of that is the fact I walked to my job early on a couple of Saturday mornings last summer because I didn't want to trouble anybody by asking for a ride. It wasn't a short walk either, probably 7 miles and I had to get up quite a bit earlier than my 7 AM shift for that reason. But I really do bend over backwards for people when they ask me to. It's kind of interesting. I don't know where I got it either, but for as long as I can remember I've had it. On the plus side, I think I'm pretty good about following King Benjamin's admonition to "not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain." (Mosiah 4:16)

So I guess it's time for some spunk as far as this. I don't know, it's a hard thing to reconcile. I know King Benjamin admonishes us to wisdom in how we help the beggar. But then again if we have the ability to help we should. I guess that's why I continue doing what I do. But frankly "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I guess I probably picked that up at the Tea Party. So I guess the key is though, I really don't know what to do. I mean it's not like I can demand a person be my friend since that would be the most ideal outcome. And frankly I don't know that this individual realizes this is going on. But if I call the person out or start refusing I just don't know how much I can stand that on my conscience. Such an interesting dilemma. I do know I was having a conversation recently with a friend about a different circumstance and I brought up an old Albert Einstein quote. It says, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

So I guess I have some related background stories to this situation but aren't necessarily directly involved. Basically they're some other ventings that I wanted to get out but with the flow of this post being what it is, I couldn't really express it except in this way:

• So I've started joking with my roommates quite a bit "Hey you remember when we used to have friends?" Look I don't mean this as a plea "I'm a friendless loser, please be my friend!" But it is sad when people aren't sincere friends maybe or you seem to fall out of touch for silly reasons. The sad part is, this is a bit of a standing joke around the apartment because it rings so true. We used to get visitors to our apartment, but now, not so much.
• The other day I had a friend come over asking me to print something (different friend than the original circumstance). Unfortunately nobody in this person's apartment was able to help this individual out, but without hesitation one of the roommates says "Go ask Scott." To some degree this is a bit flattering, but at the same time it is a bit disconcerting that there's no hesitation to ask me to help them so promptly. Nevertheless, this reminded me of my feeling of not having real friends (no offense to this person who asked for my help on the off chance you read this post and realize it is you I'm talking about, I really think no ill of you, you're a very kind person) outside of my roommates and a few select other individuals. And it reminded me of my feelings of being a tool. This friend did promise to repay me in some way immediately after the exchange which is far more than I can say about the original person.
• There is a certain young lady that we had a bit of something more going on at one point. She's a wonderful individual and I think the world of her. I've often considered her one of my best friends. However, ever since things kind of fell apart it's been an interesting experience since she stressed so heavily she wanted to keep me as a friend. I'll be honest, I don't feel like we're even friends anymore. I feel like I'm the tool in this case too. I pretty much am not contacted at all anymore, which I guess isn't quite the typical tool circumstance. But it seems like if I am, it's because something is wanted. Frankly, the things that made us such good friends aren't there anymore and we don't do the things friends do. I guess part of the reason this vexes me so much is because it seems like if there is such a stressing of keeping a friendship alive, there should be some real effort to do such and it just hasn't seemed to be there to me. Of course I understand, she's in a hard circumstance as far as that. But as one of my friends recently said to me, friend is a verb. Just talking to somebody in mostly empty ways in passing isn't really being a friend. Guess we'll see where things go from here shortly. And on the off chance that this young lady does happen to read this (and realizes that it's her I'm speaking of), I'm sorry if this offends you. I don't feel like I've put out any personal attacks and I feel like I've been pretty mature in my discussion about it. Don't hesitate to talk to me if for some reason you feel like this might be overstepping some bounds. (Sorry, I often defer to these kinds of disclaimers because while I don't necessarily feel like my speech is inappropriate, it doesn't mean others don't. I ran into a problem with that once before so I figure it's safer to just put these kinds of things in here because I would like to still be able to really express myself and my circumstances.)

So there it is. I guess now I get to figure out what on earth I'm going to do to not be such a tool. But I know one thing, something has to change because the "insanity" is going to be too much.

Provo Tax Day Tea Party

So I went to the big Tea Party today. It was an interesting experience. The rally was decent sized, they announced an estimate of 500 but the guy said he figured it had to be well over a thousand (which I think was probably more to accurate). I could definitely tell people were coming and going regularly. There were plenty of entertaining signs and interesting speeches. My roommates and I just kept giggling regularly at all of the terrible logic that was thrown out. So many things were just about getting the crowd going and motivated. I honestly think most people weren't listening hardly, they just waited for the proper moments to clap or cheer. I wish I could recall some of the good sings or had pictures of my own to show, but alas, I do not. Here's some photos my sister took:

Some of the random signs and such. "Caesar Obamius you're taxing my patience"

"Tired of paying too much in taxes? Become an Obama cabinet member"

"My piggy bank is not your pork barrel"

I must say it was a pretty entertaining experience, not only because of my satirical nature, but it was just interesting to see people rally like that. One of the funny things was the fact that there was a lot of praise for "our troops" (meaning the actual military) which I can't imagine happens too often at your typical protests. But I think the thing that really disappointed me was when they started praising Glenn Beck. I have voiced before that I am definitely not a Beck fan. Frankly I think he's kind of a moron. I know that sounds awful. I recognize he's a member in full fellowship with my Church and he's highly revered by many different individuals. However, he just seems to do things in such a dumb way. He does a great service for a lot of people and such, but I just don't get his logic in how he does pretty much anything. It's sad really and just a downright shame. I just don't get why he masquerades as a journalist but is so biased in everything he says. I realize there are plenty of others out there that are similar and some that I could go off on more (e.g. Keith Olbermann) but a lot of these individuals at least know how to separate the fact from the opinion. Beck doesn't seem to know how to do this (neither does Olbermann, he would be my liberal "news" guy I'd pick on). Anyway, I don't mean for this to turn into a rant about Beck, but it just really disappointed me because they were so highly touting him and his 9/12 thing.

I don't know how I feel about the whole Tea Party thing and such. I'm glad that individuals are voicing these concerns because my concerns are similar at the very least. I really enjoyed Rick Santelli's tirade when it first occurred. However, I didn't like some of the scope of the protest since it seemed to go to avenues that I didn't enjoy as much. For example, I don't like Obama hating. Sure, I didn't want the guy in office either. However, I'm willing to accept that he's the President and try to work with what we've got. He isn't destroying the world and there are certain things we need to take a stand on, but we'll be okay. Being that kind of extreme (and hating in general) is just going to make you look ignorant. I hope some change can come about from these protests. At the very least I hope consideration for the voice of this portion of the population is given. However, I'm a bit more cynical than that and I don't think this is really going to amount to much of anything. The money will keep pouring out of Washington and I'm not sure there will be nearly the accountability there needs to be. Either way, I'm going to keep my hope.

Here's an article from Slate about the national movement.