Movies

The Story of The Office Space DVD

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Back when I was doing a more operational support role in New York, many years ago, late nights in the office were a regular thing. We’d be doing maintenance on call centre equipment, phone systems, or routers. Later at Thomson Reuters, it might have been after an incident, a big release, or some other late-night work. The difference from today is that back then you were mainly physically in the office. At Partsearch especially, we had to be on site to plug into things and get the work done. At Redcats, we did plenty of late-night releases and I likely had the DVD with me, though I don’t recall ever actually using it there.

When we worked late, it wasn’t all bad. We’d order dinner, build up for the work, and there was a kind of social element to it. Somewhere along the way, I started keeping a DVD or two in my desk. Yes, actual DVDs. No streaming, no downloads. One of them was always Office Space. It just felt appropriate. Not that the movie was really technical, but it resonated. Every now and then, if we had time to kill, we’d put it on and watch together. It became a kind of techie ritual.

When I moved on to Thomson Reuters, the tradition came with me. Office Space lived in my office alongside my work gear. Eventually, we took it a step further and started planning actual movie nights. It wasn’t tied to late-night activities, we planned the movie nights just for the fun of it. We’d grab a conference room, order snacks, and watch something together. For a few months, this became routine: we would wait for those working the shift to finish at 8pm, then we’d grab dinner and head back to watch a movie. The first one, of course, was always Office Space.

Looking back, it was a fun little ritual that made the grind easier. Nowadays, it wouldn’t work the same way. My laptop doesn’t even have a DVD drive, and everything’s streaming so I do not know were that DVD is now.

The Story of My First Movie

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It’s pretty likely that the first movie I ever saw wasn’t actually the one I’m talking about today. What I’m going to talk about is the first movie I remember seeing. I don’t even recall being in the theater for the entire thing, but I know I was there because I have one vivid memory from it. Based on the release date and my approximate age at the time, I must have been pretty young. Looking back, the fact that this movie is the first one I remember says a lot about me.

If you know me, you might have guessed that the first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Star Wars: A New Hope. It came out in May 1977, which would have made me a little over three years old. I’m not sure how long it was in theaters, so I can’t say exactly when I was taken to see it, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume I was about three. Was that a movie a three-year-old should see? The short answer: probably not. And, in full disclosure, before writing that sentence, I looked up when I first took my own daughters to see a Star Wars movie in theaters—it was Solo, the Han Solo film. They were five, so I think it’s safe to say that three was probably a bit young. (I’m not a hypocrite on this!)

I don’t recall if my mom was there. She isn’t in my memory, nor is my sister. That’s why I think my dad might have taken me by himself. All I really remember is getting up—or maybe sitting down—during that scene where Darth Vader is choking the general who, frankly, was being a bit cross with him.

That’s it. That’s all I remember just that one vivid moment. But I have a pretty good feeling that it set the stage for my love of the genre. With me wanting to write more recently this was one of those topics I wanted to write about. It also should come first before me talking about other stuff about me slightly older anyway.

The W Sisters and the Story of Watching Star Wars For The First Time

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Saturday I got a box of old toys from my mom that she had been storing for me.  Now that she gave me my lego’s earlier in the week she wanted to clean house and give me the rest of the toys she had of mine.  I was happy to take them.  Last night I started introducing some of them to the girls. There were some new matchbox cars as well as some small matchbox car sized fighter jets. Among the stuff was also my old metal star destroyer and the millennium falcon. I explained that the millennium falcon is the ship that Chewbacca flies in.  The girls are both into Chewbacca so that got some interest.

Yesterday morning the girls were talking about either the millennium falcon or Chewbacca when MC suggested I watch Star Wars with them.  We needed a distraction while she cleaned a bit around the house. I had wanted to introduce them to star wars the actual movies for a few weeks now. I had previously showed them the trailers of most of the movies and we read the little golden books a bunch of times.  That is how they started liking Chewbacca so much.

As a purest we started off watching A New Hope. We watched about half of the movie. We stopped when they found out the princess was in the Death Star with Han & Luke. That was over an hour for them and it was plenty. I was glad that neither of them got too scared.  There were some scenes that Teagan got a little bit scared but handled it a lot better than she did with finding Nemo last year.  The asked a bunch of questions like they do with any video or book however I think they liked it.  Teagan did continue to mention Star Destroyers periodically throughout the day so that is a good sign.

Next up is to finish the movie and then hopefully move on through the first trilogy.  After that I need to figure out how to introduce them to Doctor Who without scaring them.

Dinner and a Movie

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MC’s parents are staying with us for a few days  since they are without power due to the storm.  It has been a bit cramped since I am working from home due to the storm but it is nice to have them.  They help with taking care of Teagan, and MC doesn’t get to see them as often as I can see my parents since hers lives about an hour and a half away.

Since they are here and they dont know when they will have power, MC had the idea that they could watch the baby Friday night and we could go out and grab some dinner and catch a movie.  We haven’t done that alone since Teagan was born so it is almost 7 weeks.  We were both excited since we would love a night out and we have wanted to go see Argo.  Up until her parents came to visit we figured we would never get to see  it in the movies and would catch it on DVD.

We opted for an early movie and dinner afterward.  The movie was great.  Probably one of the best stories I have seen in a long time.  It was very well done and worth it as our first date out.  We went to the theater on Austin St and then went to a Sushi Yasu place across the street from the Theater   We wanted to try a new place and we were in the mood for sushi.  The restaurant was nice but the sushi was not as good as our favorite place in Woodside (TJ”s) or the more upscale Moca Asian Bistro around the corner.  After dinner we went to Martha’s for coffee and desert before heading back home.

It was a nice quick night out.  We were both glad to get away even though MC talked to her mom 3 times while we were out.  We might go out again tonight but we aren’t sure.

Why an I a Sucker For Time Travel Stories?

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I don’t know what it is about time travel stories.  I am a science fiction fan in general but there is something about adding a twist of time travel to a story to make things more interesting.  Since I was a kid I have been fascinated by them.  I think I started thinking about this earlier this week after the new season of Doctor Who came on.  I also have thought about what things I like that I can introduce to the baby once she arrives and is old enough.

One of my favorite movies of all time is one that I remember watching as a kid was The Final Countdown.  What little boy could resist it?  It had aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and time travel.  Even today I still think it is a pretty neat plot and I will watch the DVD every now and again.

I started watching Doctor Who in middle school, around 1983 or so.  I think I just stumbled upon it changing channels.  I started off at the end of Tom Baker.  I think I saw bits and pieces of episodes and then the first one I can completely remember was the Warriors Gate.  I didn’t understand why soon after the main character changed.  i would figure that out later, but to this day I was hooked.  Recently David Tennant’s portrail as the Doctor is probably one of my favorites  but Peter Davison is also still a favorite.  That is most likely because he is the one I remember most growing up since he was what was on the air.

Other shows with a bit of a time travel twist that I couldn’t get enough of were Lost, Journeyman (it got canceled way too soon), and Life on Mars,  I am also a sucker for the genre getting drawn into watching stuff that is really bad.  I wanted to watch Terra Nova for the premise alone and I haven’t been able to watch more than a handful of episodes.  Just because you have good effects does not mean I or anyone else will like something if it doesn’t have a good plot.

Maybe Our Last Weekend of Rest For a While

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This weekend we have tried to stay low key.  MC spent most of the day yesterday and today on the couch with her feet up.  We did a big batch of laundry today.  Yup, it was that exciting of a weekend.  Amazingly there was still some baby stuff that needed to be washed.

We (MC) perfected our pot popcorn making.  We do it old school, and MC is pretty dam good at it.  Very delicious.  Saturday night we ordered in from Bearburger as a treat.  Tonight we ordered Italian.  We also had a freshdirect delivery.  lots of getting food stores ready in case it is hectic once the baby arrives.

I went out to get waffles again today for breakfast.  The waffle truck was in Forest Hills again.  The line was super long today.  I am glad they are getting business in the area so they will be back regularly but it was a long wait!

The rest of the day (and a big chunk of yesterday) for me was taken up by me tinkering around with my website.  I will write about that in another post soon.

We watched Jeff Who Lives at Home tonight.  It was not as funny as I thought it would be with the cast that was in it.  I would say it was OK, but nothing special.  Other TV watched this weekend was some more episodes of The Layover with Anthony Bourdain.  We have finished all our Top Chef episodes till a new season comes out and we have been trying that show out as a substitute.  So far it has been pretty good.  I have bookmarked some places to  try the next time I am in London, and MC and I did the same thing for if we are ever in San Francisco.

 

Plex On AppleTV

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I have had an AppleTV since the first generation one came out years ago. When the second-generation one came out I pick that up and sold the original on eBay. I have loved the idea of an AppleTV for years. I have even made my own homegrown media center on several occasions. If you read this blog you’ll read about several of those iterations. The problem is in practice I really haven’t had huge luck with the AppleTVs. The second-generation AppleTV I currently have has been replaced with a Mac Mini running Plex media center. That has been my media center of choice for a while. I have tried the Boxer box, and the Roku. with both of those I was hoping to plug into my media centers the a library, and with the Roku to use it as a front end for Plex. neither of those options worked out very well. All along the AppleTV has been powered on but not plugged into my TV. I would plug it in to music, but not really using it for TV. I have been generally lazy and didn’t want to jailbreak it. The Mac Mini has functioned generally well so I was in no rush to try anything different again. since my move I have had some more buggy experiences with the Mac Mini then the previous two years or so I’ve had it. It wasn’t enough for me to go making drastic changes, that is until I read that the Plex team had made a front end for the jailbroken AppleTV. So I gave jailbreaking a shot. At first I thought I had bricked the AppleTV, but after about two days of leaving it plugged in and I forgot about it. I turned on my TV and it had worked. I got really lucky.

After the small drama in jailbreaking, it was trivial to get Plex installed. After it was installed I ran into some problems with choppiness of the video. I fixed that by tweaking some of the bit rate settings. Since then it has been working perfectly. I got even luckier when less than a week after I had configured Plex Apple announced that Hulu is now available on the device. I covered that in another blog post.

For right now the AppleTV is now my main media center. I still have my Mac Mini. It’s needed to run the Plex server, and host all the videos and music on my Drobo. it is just not plugged into my TV anymore. It has been an pre-smooth experience so far. MC likes it that she can stream music again directly to the AppleTV without me having to plug it in or read it up since it is now always attached to the television.

We still have a TiVo, and use it for a DVR. Longer-term I would love to find a way to use Hulu, the Internet, and my AppleTV to replace TiVo and and really expensive cable bill. We are not quite there yet in trying that out.

Date Night

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Today MC and I had originally planned to go to Jason and Gretchens house. It would’ve been the last chance we had before the baby came. Unfortunately last minute issues came up last night that I thought it was best not to go. Jason and Gretchen understood, so that was cool. The downside was we didn’t get to see them, and now we had no plans for today. MC and I decided to do some work around the house and generally try to relax most of the day. We did want to go to the movies, so we decided to head out for dinner and then catch a movie.

We didn’t realize how little time we had before the movie, so we ended up at Johnny Rockets. We like that place, it just wasn’t where we were planning on going for a date night. We were originally going to go see the campaign, but when we went to buy the tickets at the theater on Austin Street the ticket lady did not think we should see it. She saw the MC was pregnant and said the air conditioner wasn’t working the way it normally should. We agreed with her assessment and decided to try a different theater.

The other movie theater in the neighborhood on Queens Boulevard is actually a lot nicer, but he did not have the campaign playing. Luckily we did want to see the Bourne Legacy, and it was playing at the same time we were going to see the campaign at the different theater. I walked ahead and got tickets and we were able to find seats without any problem. The movie was pretty good, it kind of intertwined itself with the last Bourne movie in the trilogy. We both liked it.

Hulu Plus

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With Netflix annoucning that streaming movies and TV shows will now cost extra I decided to check out alternatives.  I have been skeptical about Hulu plus just because if i am paying for a streaming system I would hope that there is no commercials but with the ability to watch content via a Roku or iPad on Hulu won out and I signed up for a free trial.

Now I am in the middle of my first paid month and I will say I haven’t used it too much but when I have used it I was glad i had the service.  Tivo failed me a few times and just going to an online library was nice.

Having Hulu Plus alone to me was useless since I don’t want to watch stuff on my computer.  At the begining of the month I bought a Roku 2.  The main reason I got one was to use it as a front end to Plex, but Roku offered a Hulu client so I figured why not try it.  Together Hulu with presentation on the TV makes it worth it.

Of course the main reason i bought the Roku was to use it with Plex.  Unfortunately the Plex client for Roku is very basic.  I love the Plex media center but using it on the Roku was not as good as it is on my Mac Mini.  I need to figure out what is wrong with my Mini that the HDMI connection is flakey.

Saturday at the Movies

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Today was generally low key. I got to relax a bit from my travel week. I went with a friend to see Alice in 3D. It was better than I expected, of course I had low expectations. I also saw the preview for Tron and the new Shrek movies. I want to see both of them.

It was an early night since the dam 7 train isn’t running by my apartment so I needed to take the shuttle bus. Once it gets really late they don’t run that often. During the day they seem to be pretty good.