wolverine

Another movie made for Bret's generation. We went to see it with Kathy. It was just okay. I thought it would be more like Batman Begins, where they explain how and why he becomes Batman. They did explain the how part in this movie, gross and painful, I must say.
A lot of fighting, a few naked butts, and not even much of a love story, although she was cute and I found myself liking her character the best.
I suppose Bret is now waiting for GI Joe.
Why don't they do a Barbie movie while they are at it? :)

My new sleeping bag!

scripture question

Mormon 6:10-15

I suppose you all have already figured this out. How do they justify the numbers in these verses? That is lots of 10's of thousands to live on and by that tiny hill Cumorah.

Elmo being tech savvy

I was watching Fox news this morning, and Elmo and his dad, who just came home from spending time in the military overseas, were on. They are starting a cool website that helps families,esp kids, keep in touch with military, and you can send pics and videos and audios, etc.
The cute thing was how they discussed it, just so real, like a father and son talking.
It was adorable.
At one point, the news guy says to them something about twittering, and Elmo's dad says, "oh, I don't know how to Twitter", and Elmo says, "Yeah, I twitter". and his dad says, "you twitter?"
You would have to see it, it was very clever and sweet and real.
I have not twittered. Should I learn to twitter, or at least try to twitter at least one thing?
John Sikora invited me to twitter. What does that mean? Does that mean with just him?
I don't want to be technarded.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

We can talk HP6 now. We have all seen it. I sent out a review which pretty much sums up my thoughts (though didn't send to Webbs since I didn't know if they had seen it yet - here is the link). To sum up my thoughts:

- Enjoyed the first 85% of the movie. I liked the scenery and acting was not bad, either. I was particularly touched by Hermione's acting - especially the scene when she ends up sending the birds at Ron.
- It seemed a little slow from time to time: too much snogging with Lavendar.
- Too much Draco, not enough Order of the Phoenix
- Loved the effects
- Not sure why they changed the ending! Why did the director think it better to have Harry cowering below as he watches his father-figure get killed! The book makes Harry out to be so much stronger - and he can't do anything because he is petrified! How is this better?
- They give away too much by including some of the conversation between Snape and Dumbledore before the trip to the cave. Why??
- Why did they leave out the funeral? And what's up with the rock-ballad lighter tribute, er, wand tribute?
- Where was the battle? Why did they take this out? How will they start book 7? Hogwarts hasn't been changed - no evil has taken place except for the death of Dumbledore. In the end they take a key and shocking piece in the book and leave me not caring in the movie.
- And what is up with Harry falling into the lake in the cave???? A great scene made cheesy by making it look like Gollum's sister came to kidnap Harry underwater.
- Um, and the love story between Harry and Ginny? No chemistry whatsoever - possibly worse than Padme and Anakin.

This is the second movie in a row (Transformers 2) that I am annoyed for the filmmakers making 2 huge mistakes: 1 - not developing the story enough that I really care and 2 - changing things enough to blatantly spit in the face of fans and prove it is "their" show. I am sure GI Joe will do the same (but I will still see it).

To be fair, I liked the movie and was moved at times. But as most of us know, there was much fan feedback last year in early screenings about the end - AND THEY STILL KEPT THAT ENDING! I'm not sure why they think this made a better ending. It could have been a great movie with the real ending. I got zero sense that evil was building except for seeing some flying pillars of smoke (Lost?) and hearing Bellatrix cackle now and again. I don't feel any of the characters are ever in danger. I don't feel there is any buildup to a great battle. All of Draco's sniveling to just get in 3 deatheaters and Fenrig? After a fantastic ending in the movie HP5, i feel they really messed up this one (the ending).

Remember, this book was FANTASTIC! It was amazing. It is one of the best of the series. There is so much in there. The movie missed so much of it. The horcrux theme is passed over too quickly. The battle is removed. And Harry is made to seem a coward - which he is not. He would not have stood and watched that happen, especially with Snape up there threatening Dumbledore.

End of rant.

when can we talk H P?

Google Voice gets better

Today Google announced an app for Google Voice on Android and Blackberry. What does this mean (for me, who has a blackberry)? It means even better service. Since my BB is my work phone I did not hook it up to Google Voice as I didn't want to confuse it with an extra number. But with this new app I get the following advantages:

- Makes it easier than ever to call people using my Google Voice number from my BB - thus they never see my work number. My Google Voice number shows up in their call log.
- Google Voice already gives me the flexibility to limit when my BB receives calls to my Google Voice number (I have it set to ring any time outside of 8 - 5 weekdays)
- The app allows me to send (and receive) SMS (text messages) via my data plan as opposed to my SMS plan. This means the texts go through data (internet) and not my plan's text plan. My phone actually gets charged 20 cents for every text it sends/receives, so I limit my texting (which I really only use for business purposes from time to time since my employer pays for these). I can now text ANYBODY using my Google Voice number and since I don't have the replies set to come to my phone, I won't get charged for the replies since they don't come to my phone, but I can still see them in the app. So I am saving my company money AND adding ability to use text from my Google Voice number using my BB.

This is actually really cool and will start to affect the way these phone companies sell plans. At this point, why would I ever need an SMS plan for a smart phone? I just need unlimited data. And, when either the Skype app comes to BB (already available on Google Android phones) or GTalk follows suit, I will be able to CALL people using my data plan and NOT my phone plan. This means I can call anyone who has skype for free from my phone and NOT USE ANY MINUTES!

These things make me excited - and give me hope that Google Chrome OS can truly be a threat to Microsoft.

End of Europe - Smart Phones

I will finally end my Europe log. After getting back to the UK there really wasn't much that happened. I was in the office a lot. The best part was being able to see an old friend for dinner. We talked for hours and it was fun getting to catch up. I was supposed to see another old friend the night before I left, but she ended up getting in a car accident the night before and so I wasn't able to visit her and her husband. Instead I went out to dinner with the head of our company for all international business. Overall the trip was great, though very busy. The flight home was fine and I have now gotten back into routine.

One thing that I seriously loved having while on this trip was my Blackberry. I came to realize the power of a good smart phone. I used it for everything. My laptop didn't work in the hotels as the wi-fi was spotty and it cost a fortune in the one hotel. So I used my BB. I used it to chat with Tevia and family and friends using the Google Chat app. I used it to check my work emails. I used it to check my Gmail with the mobile app. I used it to listen to music using Pandora. And what I used most was the Google Maps app. Since my phone has GPS I could always see where I was on a map and determine where to go. If I wanted to go to the Eiffel tower, I would just plug that in and it would show me how to get there (and give me options like by car or by foot!). When I got hungry and couldn't find something nearby I could type in a food I was looking for and get a map. I used this feature a lot and it made me avoid the typical look of a tourist by avoiding to have to take out a map. The map was on my phone and it would show me even as I walked along the path it routed for me.

I realized that in reality, if you are not a gamer or programmer, you might not ever need to buy a computer again. The smart phone could replace most of what you do on a computer. The only drawback is typing long emails or blogs. But this can be done on an old computer with ease. For everything I normally do (outside of work), which would basically include email, blog, searching the internet, maps and calendar, I can do quite effectively on my phone. I'm still not sure I would pay for a smart phone (as my company pays for mine at the moment) since I have a compy that works great. But I now would be much more tempted.

Birds for Bort

I took this video on my cell phone (not the best quality) last month at our ward's father son camp out. Jacob and I went in the morning to make breakfast and there were all these humming birds! They reminded me of you Bort!

It's not just me...

All kinds of things have happened lately that are blog-worthy, but I've been too lazy to blog about any of them. Maybe I'll get around to it sometime - who knows. But I thought my short trip to the library this afternoon was blog-worthy enough to get me on here.

So today is July 3rd. Those of you who ever lived in Provo on or around July 4th probably know that Provo goes nuts. Seriously. Leaving aside all of the races, the 3 days of hot air balloons and the fact that most of Center Street gets blocked off for tons of random stuff for 3 days, there's the parade. It happens the morning of July 4th and goes down most of University Avenue into downtown Provo. And people will camp out overnight to get a good seat for said parade. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, people used to camp out up to several days in advance to get good seats until the city passed a ruling that people couldn't start camping out until 6 pm the night before. Well, considering that I was down there around 4:30 the night before and both sides of University were packed, people obviously aren't really paying attention to that.

Back to my trip to the library, which happens to be right on University Avenue, hence the connection. I had completely forgotten what it would mean in that part of town that today is July 3rd. I started noticing when the traffic was really heavy - worse than a normal Friday afternoon at least. Then I pulled up to the light to cross University at 500 North. Doh. So I try to be careful to not hit any people as I drive one block down University and then pull into the library parking lot. I almost hit a dog whose owner was nowhere in sight. Then I had to leave the parking lot and go park on the street because there were no spaces that weren't occupied by regular vehicles, police vehicles, or random people just standing there who wouldn't get a hint.

Of course, this now means I'm parking Pink Five on a busy side street in Provo. Eww. So I cart Hazel inside (she was the reason I wasn't in the Honda - only one car seat and all), drop off the stuff I had due, pick up the hold that had come in and go to quickly check through the DVDs. Hazel was being her adorable self and several people told me how cute she was (that seriously happens EVERYWHERE we go - I'm not exaggerating). One woman also asked me if I knew what was going on outside. I just smiled and told her people were getting ready for the parade. She politely asked when that was and I told her tomorrow morning. She was shocked. She asked if it took place very early in the morning - I told her it started around 9 am. She was more shocked. I was a little surprised she hadn't heard about it until she explained that she was from out of town and seriously, were people going to camp out all night for a parade? I just smiled and told her that people who lived in Provo were crazy. So there you go - it's not just me that thinks that people will camp out this close to civilization for a better look at a parade are completely nuts.

Valkyrie

We netflixed it, and watched it last night. We had heard that you had to pretend that Tom Cruise was German, which was true. He didn't fit the movie well. We knew the plot had failed, so we thought it would be a waste of time movie. In the end, it was okay. I didn't know there were so many attempts on Hitler's life. I also was glad to know that there were lots of high ranking Germans who did not believe in what Hitler was doing.
Of course, even though it was based on a true story, we don't know how true any of it really is. According to the movie, they almost pulled it off. I wouldn't bother watching it again, but we had a nice evening watching it.

Ginger's wedding

We drove up to Boston early enough to do a session and do 13 sealings. I felt the spirit very strongly, and the Bishop and Lisa helped us do the sealings, plus 3 guys from Brazil.
Br. Edmonds performed her marriage. He was nervous, but he did great. Ginger looked beautiful. Her hair was the same as normal, and no additional makeup, yet, she just glowed and was radiant.
It was rainy and cloudy out all day, but it stopped long enough to get a few pics.
We were worried about Daisy, as we left the house at 7am, and got home at 6:30. She was fine, what a good dog.
Tonight is the reception, at the same place Kathy had hers. Warren Woodward's parents or mom are driving in from Ohio. Michelle Conrad flew in from TX.

hike to Black Creek Preserve

Dad decided he needed to practice hiking with his new backpack on, in preparation for his August trip.
We had heard of a place over the river in Esopus, so we tried it. It was great! You could hike all the way down to the Hudson. We saw a mother deer and her 2 babies, a muskrat, heard a frog, saw lots of little newts, or salamanders, and sat and had a picnic on the river's edge.
Dad kept saying he didn't know we had these things so close by, for free. I love to hike, and knew we had them. I am glad he finally will go with me.