Weekend Wrap-up

The longest month of the year finally closed out with warmer temperatures and some neighborhood roads still tricky to navigate. We had no big outing plans for the weekend, but enjoyed the ability to live normally after the blizzard. On Friday night, we tried out a service, Blue Apron, that delivers a 3 pack of interesting meals with just enough ingredients for two people. We started with a shrimp and pineapple rice meal paired with a riesling that Rebecca picked up on her way home.

On Saturday, I hit Costco to replenish our low winter supplies of red meat and grains. In the evening, my parents came over for a late-late Christmas and a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. We talked about the 8 million TV shows they've watched in the "Nordic Noir" genre recently and then ended the evening with Kingsman: The Secret Service, starring Colin Firth as an action hero.

Sunday was a quiet recovery day, with Rebecca off at her penultimate yoga teacher training classes for most of the day. I puttered around the house, charted the drastic loss in our mutual funds since last month, and then learned how to navigate my new phone. For dinner, we ate Blue Apron meal #2: Chicken Pot Pies (review to follow when we've eating all 3).

How was your weekend?

Impressions of a New Phone

I've never really seen the point of having a smartphone. I'm on the Internet all day long anyhow, so why would I possibly need a device that puts me back on it when I'm away from my desktop and laptop? Even so, it made sense to finally upgrade because of the discounts I was eligible for through Verizon, who were desperate to get that old equipment off their network. In fact, my monthly cost is now $2 cheaper, and will be $20 cheaper once the phone itself is paid off.

My previous experience with smartphones consisted of sending texts from Rebecca's iPhone on her behalf in the car and then complaining that my fingers were too meaty for the on-screen keyboard and horrible auto-corrections. I chose the Samsung Galaxy S5 because it was Consumer Reports' top pick in 2014, far cheaper than an iPhone, and boasts a pretty rugged exterior for someone like me who drops everything all of the time. I also figured that having an Android device leaves open the possibility that I can make $0.00 per month as an app developer someday in the future, without being locked into the Apple ecosystem.

Activating the phone was painless, and I immediately set to work uninstalling all of Verizon's bloatware apps. I have previous experience in this arena, having bought HP computers for years. One I had slimmed the device down, I set up a custom ringtone from my vast quantity of MP3s (Minor Changes by the Hi-Los) and called it a day.

I'm not a fan of mobile UIs, which unnecessarily restrict the things you can do while providing poor iconography on the things you can do. I also dislike how many different permissions various apps require, although I understand that the next Android update will allow you to selectively turn certain permissions off -- why does Facebook ever need to send a text message? I also started an Instagram account so I can see all of Rebecca's pictures, but am worried that I'll accidentally trigger an unexpected Like or Share as I swipe and grope my way through the UI.

Of the past six days, my new phone has sat on the desk at home pretending to be a landline for four days. I doubt I'll become a phone addict, but will update you all if I ever decide to fully embrace the 21st century and actually keep the phone on my person. You will know it's happened when I become the only person in the world "checking in" on that new hip app, Foursquare.

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken in March 1980. My mom and sister are settling in to eat cotton candy while watching the Ringling Brothers Circus at the DC Armory. As I was only 6 months old at the time, I was abandoned with a babysitter for the duration.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Tom Segura: Mostly Stories:
This stand-up special is occasionally funny, but struggles to maintain any momentum. There's also only so many times you can make a fat joke about yourself and then chuckle before it gets really old. We stopped about halfway through after Rebecca fell asleep. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: C-

Everest (PG-13):
A disaster movie at its core, Everest plays out about how you would expect, and shows the real-world consequences of poor decision making and bad luck. The characters are pretty one-dimensional, which is fine for this type of movie, and the mountain is the main star. Best watched in your personal IMAX theater for the grand vistas.

Final Grade: B

Kingsman: The Secret Service (R):
This is a tongue-in-cheek take on James Bond movies featuring Colin Firth as a proper British spy and Samuel L. Jackson in a surprisingly un-scenery-chewing villain role. The action is over-the-top and cartoonish, but the movie succeeds because it has its own cohesive plot -- it never degrades into simple parody (The Austin Powers series is sufficient for that role).

Final Grade: B+

Margin Call (R):
There's only so much tension you can put into a movie about the mortgage crisis of 2008. In spite of the star power and good performances, this is ultimately a talky, cerebral affair that doesn't satisfy. Free on Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: C-

Review Day: Blue Apron

On the recommendation of Annie, Rebecca signed up for a trial of Blue Apron, a service that delivers the fresh ingredients for 3 recipes to your doorstep once a week. The service works out to about $10 per person for each meal, and we quickly cancelled as soon as we got our trial week to avoid auto-renewing subscription hell.

The box contained the ingredients and recipes for 3 separate meals: Shrimp and Pineapple Fried Rice, Chicken and Sage Biscuit Pot Pie, and Italian Beef Grinders (apparently you get new recipes all year long without repeats). Ingredients were individually packaged and measured so there'd be no leftovers after the recipe, and the recipes were full of pictures and easy to follow. They assume that you own pots, baking sheets, oil, salt, and pepper, but provide everything else. With two people cooking together, each meal had an average of about 20 minutes of prep and 20 minutes of cook time.

All three meals were tasty, thanks to fresh ingredients, although Rebecca felt that the Grinders were something we could have just made on our own. Overall, it was a fun little experiment and a nice way to spice up our dinner routine, but too costly and time-consuming to do on a regular basis. I can prepare a good meal with fewer ingredients and effort for about $5 per person (thanks, Costco meat department), so if I'm paying $10 per person, I don't necessarily want to also devote an hour of cooking. 3 meals per week is also a little overwhelming -- I might like a routine of 1 meal every other week better.

Final Grade: B, a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live here

Weekend Wrap-up

On Friday night, we stayed in with some Domino's pizza (one cheesesteak and green peppers, and one mushroom and red peppers), Devil's Backbone Kilt Flashers, and the new Hannibal Burress comedy special. The latter third of this combination was underwhelming but the rest hit the spot.

On Saturday evening, we finally got around to seeing the new Star Wars movie before it vanished from theaters forever. We went to the Alamo with Amanda and found it surprisingly packed for a movie that's been out for two months now. In spite of the fact that it essentially rehashed plots from previous movies, I enjoyed it far more than the original trilogy.

On Sunday, Rebecca passed all of her tests to become an official yoga teacher, which means that she can reclaim her weekends and give people private yoga lessons, while I can tell everyone that I'm married to a yoga instructor. While she was doing that, I went to Jack and Kristy's for the Super Bowl and caught up on all of the news since the last time I saw them back in May 2015.

In the cracks between events, I played some Fallout 4 and started brainstorming my next programming side project. I'm thinking of something geospatial, perhaps related to mapping local open source data in some way.

How was your weekend?

Questions Day

It's time for another Questions Day. Want to get a second opinion on something? Ask anything you want, be it about myself, snow, politics, or something you don't understand. Need some recommendations? I'll answer all of your questions next Tuesday!

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: 20 Years Ago

Twenty years ago today, on February 10, 1996, it was a low-profile Saturday between major bouts of snow. In the morning, my dad upgraded the family computer with a brand new Pentium Pro P6 60MHz chip and I immediately put that raw processing power to work playing Warcraft II over the modem with Jack for most of the morning.

When he finally got kicked off of the landline (sisters, am I right?), I switched gears to composing using Finale 3.2 (long before they started bleeding their customers for money through yearly releases). I was working on Bubba's Fried Chicken Stand, a song that would go on to be the most-performed song in my portfolio despite its absence of any serious musical thought.

In the evening, I drove out to the Masonic Temple in Alexandria for my sporadic side-job: stage foreman for the Alexandria Symphony. Concerts at the Temple were really easy to manage, as we didn't have to tear the chairs and stands down each night like we would at a school. We also got to poke around the creepy halls in search of kidnapped transients and human sacrifices (none were ever found though).

On this particular night, my job was even easier, albeit a bit dull. I was in charge of instrument room security, which meant that I stood in front of a room with a single door in and out to ensure that no one stole any musicians' empty case during the concert. Time passed very slowly, although I was greeted by former Mayor Kerry Donley during intermission, wondering why I was standing alone so far from the main event.

For the next day's matinee concert, I was "cue person", which meant that I had to give the Maestro 15, 10, and 5 minute warnings before the concert, while making sure not to open the door after knocking because his wife was also in the dressing room "helping him prepare".

Review Day: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

There are no major spoilers in this review.

As many of you are aware, I've never been a big fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, which ranks up there with Super Mario 64, Half-Life, and the movie, Birdman, on the list of things where the over/under is overrated and underwhelming. I also tried watching Episode I twice and fell asleep both times during a pod race so I have no opinion on the remainder of that trilogy.

Rebecca, on the other hand, grew up watching the original trilogy with her cousins repeatedly on VHS, so I got her the movies on DVD for Christmas in preparation for Episode VII. With sixteen years of distance since the last time I saw them, I was finally able to distill what exactly I dislike: the movies are just a hodge podge of transitional scenes that inevitably melt into something nearly resembling a plot, like chocolate on a shelf obeying the laws of gravity.

It's as if an intern accidentally threw away all of the real footage and they had to make due with only the scenes from the cutting room floor. They could have called Episode IV "Stormtroopers walking down the hall and turning around a corner" and it would have been a truthier title. Coincidence is heavily employed as the primary storytelling technique to get people into the same room to further the plot.

It also doesn't help that John Williams' musical score never shuts up, but I've previously established my expert distaste in that area (source: highly-paid music major).

All of this background material (like 20 minutes of C3PO and R2D2 walking in opposite directions in the desert only to reappear on the same junk ship) serves to lend dramatic weight to the reveal that I actually enjoyed Episode VII. It's not the greatest movie of all time and it essentially cherry-picks the most interesting plotlines from previous movies and rehashes them with a fresh coat of paint, but it was very entertaining. (It also goes well with a beer at the Alamo, where we caught the movie three days before they stopped showing it, like the trendsetters that we are).

Episode VII has a modern sensibility to it, given room to be overtly humorous without camp while almost (but not quite) overdoing the sentimental callback "winks to the audience". The music was a good mix of old and new that did well at supporting the visuals without getting in the way. I also appreciated that this was a tightly-edited 2 hour affair which didn't put my ass to sleep via an unnecessary montage of Hobbits, Horcruxes, or pirates coming back to life.

The new actors, consisting of a fake Keira Knightley (do British actresses ever close their mouths?), a fake Dennis Haysbert, and a fake Mark Ruffalo, stand up well against the returning actors, and are all interesting enough that I'd watch a couple more movies about them. Greg Gunberg manages to sneak in a cameo as well, like he does in all JJ Abrams productions. There are several plot gaps that could become plot holes if not addressed later, but they didn't diminish my enjoyment. I presume they'll be filled in during the next movies, unless someone hires Damon Lindelof on as a writer.

Overall, The Force Awakens succeeds at the visceral popcorn level, which is all that I needed from it as a Star Wars-hating philistine. It won't change your life, but it's worthwhile as a fun diversion.

Final Grade: B+

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

5:10 AM: Showered and ready for work, with a much better camera than last month.

5:32 AM: Arriving in the office.

9:00 AM: View from my desk.

11:33 AM: Driving home for lunch.

11:48 AM: Welcomed home by cats.

11:57 AM: Leftover corned beef for lunch.

12:24 PM: Back to work for a bit, while Booty licks stuff.

2:01 PM: Trying out the beta of the new game, Overwatch.

2:30 PM: Time for a catnap.

4:23 PM: Sydney admires my vacuuming job.

6:02 PM: Fried chicken for dinner.

8:30 PM: Installing and playing around with the new Amazon Lumberyard game engine.

Weekend Wrap-up

Indoor Activities

• Played around with the Amazon Lumberyard game engine.
• Started learning about geographic information systems (GIS).
• Started watching Season One of Mr. Robot.
• Sat in front of a space heater with cats.

Outdoor Activities

• Costco run for burgers, lamb, and yogurt.
• Late lunch at Sweetwater as a going-away party for one of Rebecca's yoga friends.
• Safeway run for the fixin's of a bean chili.
• Meetup with Rebecca's parents at Panera.

How was your weekend?

Answers Day

The sequel to Questions Day

"When should I retire?" - Doobie

When the tread on your existing tires is down to 4/32" or less. You can cut it closer in Arizona because of the paucity of snow, unless it's an El Nino year.

"What's the funniest thing you've ever experienced, whether a comedian's joke or just something weird that happened that you found hilarious?" - Mike (and Ghost Chompy)

The funniest thing that has stuck with me through the years would probably be one of these:

1. Nutrigrain Commercial
2. David Blaine - Street Magic Part 1
3. Mildred Queen and the Dips on The Moonlight Special by Ray Stevens

There are probably many things far funnier that are just too ephemeral for me to pull out of memory on demand.

"Do you think we (NASA, America, people in general) should work toward sending an actual group of humans to Mars, or just stick to machines and robots? Would YOU go to Mars?" - Mom

We should focus on reprogrammable machines instead of fragile humans. I have no interest in going to Mars myself, unless we can terraform the planet into a nice, tropical climate and get there in under six months.

"Barf-b-cue chips, right? Blergh." - Doobie

Barbeque chips are the worst type of chip in the Lays sampler box and are as bad as any of the themed chips like "Salt n' Vinegar" or "Chicken n' Waffles". I would not be disappointed if they stopped making them completely and made more Sour Cream n' Onion chips instead.

"Is sending a staged photo (that hints at possible pregnancy) to a relative who keeps tapping their foot awaiting the day to hear some kind of news too much for an April Fool's prank? " - Evil Mike

I would say that it's the perfect level of prankiness, although I'd recommend doing it in a slightly more sophisticated way. On April 1, go on Facebook and "Like" dozens of pregancy and baby-related links and groups. Share one of those stupid advertisements that will save you $10 on diapers if only you'll "like and share our company page!". Your relative will see all of these actions in their stalker feed, and immediately get excited without any direct contact from you.

You can also take this to the next level by not responding to anyone's requests for more information on the first day. On day two, "Like" various adoption agencies and then "accidentally" post "how much can i sell a kid for" on your Timeline, followed by the comment, "oops meant to google. how do i erase?".

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken twenty years ago, on February 23, 1996, just after the annual Band Banquet (and long before the popularity of portmanteaus would have turned it into a "Bandquet"). I'm wearing the denim shirt that counted as my "formal wear" (and which I owned as recently as 2010) and holding a trophy that says "Drum Major" on it. On my left is band director, Richard Dill, who commuted in every day from Amissville to teach us the finer points of performing McBeth's Chant and Jublio far too many times.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

The Lego Movie (PG):
This movie is great as a visual spectacle and full of witty one-liners for adults, but less effective as a kid's movie. It's too visually chaotic and with a so-so plot that resonates more with people who played with Legos in their youth. If six-year-old me were watching it, he'd think it was pretty cool but lose interest after about 20 minutes.

Final Grade: B

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (PG-13):
Having never read a single Tom Clancy book, I went into this movie knowing nothing at all. It's ultimately a harmless action movie with a few good sequences held back by a bit too much of an "origin story". Keira Knightley costars as a needy physical therapist who starts dating her patient, which Rebecca tells me is a big no-no. Free on Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: B-

Black Mirror: White Christmas:
This 70 minute "Christmas special" from the Black Mirror series was a perfect blend of creepy and thought-provoking. Where each of the previous episodes explored a single near-future concept, they somehow managed to tightly coil 3 separate, strong ideas here. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: A

Canon Powershot SX270 HS:
This camera satisfies all of my hobbyist needs. It has a profile similar to the ELPH series (so it still fits in my pocket), but is denser than lead and features substantially better image quality and stabilization. Changing from Auto to P is restored to a mechanical wheel on the back of the camera, so I no longer have to waste hours tapping through software menus. This is a slightly older camera, but its 12.1 megapixels look much better than the more recent 16 megapixel options I've compared to. The only thing holding it back is that it requires yet another Canon battery size, making it the 4th type of battery in the past 4 cameras. Also, I had to purchase the international version because Canon has retired this line in the US, but the only difference was the lack of a printed manual in English.

Final Grade: B+

Data Day: Real Estate Assessment

Loudoun County real estate assessments continue to tick back up, but don't get too comfortable. Financial trends often mimic patterns found in the natural world and it looks like we're long overdue for another decline, if the Matterhorn can be trusted:

Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend, we made another journey south to see our exurb friends, starting with lunch at Sammy T's in Fredericksburg with Rebecca's family friend, Catherine (the elder of the two). From there, we drove to Colonial Beach to visit Anna and Becca and their combined set of seven children under the age of 10. We played "Hedbanz" with the girls, in spite of the unnecessarily misspelled name that teaches improper pluralization techniques. Ben came down later on for a spaghetti dinner and the game about gargling Christmas carols.

On Sunday, we ate two pounds of bacon and then drove north in the rain to feed starving cats on the homefront. Rebecca went to yoga while I started my next tech project of learning Apache Spark. In the evening, we finished the movie, Inside Out, and watched a really awful episode of Mr. Robot. Dream sequences are never worth including in any show or movie, especially when they last for over 20 minutes.

How was your weekend? Happy 222 Day!

Quiz Day: Me Me Me!, Part VII

Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI

How much you know about me? Hover your mouse over the right column to see the correct answers.

Time-lapsed Blogography Day

BU at multiple data points

• 26 years ago today, on February 24, 1990, my sister took her eighth grade science project "Does Listening to Music Affect Your Ability to Think?" to the local science fair at Hammond Jr. High. I would repeat this study with equally clueless test subjects 4 years later.


• 22 years ago today, on February 24, 1994, I finished my second sculpture in art class, a wizard in blue.


• 21 years ago today, on February 24, 1995, I was at my Junior Band Banquet and took home an "Outstanding Contribution" award, proving that there's room for all races in marching band.


• 20 years ago today, on February 24, 1996, I was on the TC Williams Science Bowl team that came in third place overall but lost to TJ, greatly exceeding expectations.


• 18 years ago today, on February 24, 1998, I was heads down coding Augmented Fourth.


• 17 years ago today, on February 24, 1999, I stayed home and worked on the second movement of The Hero.


• 16 years ago today, on February 24, 2000, I went to a brass concert with Shac, Kelley, and Liz.


• 15 years ago today, on February 24, 2001, Anna and I went to a party at Gammy's house with nearly everyone else in the marching band.


• 13 years ago today, on February 24, 2003, I finished work on a Java-based XML file reader that could read student progress files from Dr. Spencer's Lingo/Shockwave music theory application.


• 8 years ago today, on February 24, 2008, I played poker at James and Diana's house, and then had my parents over for corned beef and Hot Fuzz to celebrate my dad's upcoming birthday.


• 4 years ago today, on February 24, 2012, I was working overtime writing 149 pages of examples of the Universal Core specification shown bombers flying over a veterinary hospital in Atlanta.

• 2 years ago today, on February 24, 2014, I had Mediterranean pizza and leftover Wegmans pulled pork for dinner, one of which led to 3 days of stomach flu.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Dreamland, Season One:
Originally called Utopia, this is a fun, light-hearted comedy about government bureaucracy. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, but feels fresh because it takes place in Australia. It has some similarities to The Office, but focuses more on the ridiculousness of situations, rather than exploring the characters themselves (who are mainly ciphers for eliciting the ridiculousness). Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B+

Comedy Camisado by Hannibal Buress:
I really enjoy the comedy of Hannibal Buress, but this new comedy special was awful. There were too many pauses and less momentum than a rolling pyramid. About twenty minutes of downtime and reaction shots could have been trimmed and replaced with funnier jokes. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: D+

Parks and Recreation, Season Seven:
I enjoyed the finale of the sixth season, and felt like it would have made a perfect series closer. That said, this abbreviated season is a harmless way to laugh with your favorite characters one more time and has a nice, if forgettable, final episode. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B

Top Boy, Season One and Two:
This British series about drug trafficking in the council estates has vague echoes of The Wire, but lacks the same socioeconomic impact -- it merely uses ideas as a setting for a passable, occasionally exciting tale from the streets. Each season is four epsiodes long and the early episodes tend to drag a bit, but the final episodes of both seasons are well done and vindicate the slow burn. The music is uniformly awful and sounds like something Trent Reznor would write for the video game, Quake. Watch with subtitles unless you're up to speed on your bruvs, your food, and your innits. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

This post was not sponsored by Netflix -- it's just slightly easier to stumble upon things to watch on Netflix than Amazon Prime.

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2016 album.

• Events
  • Finally saw Star Wars on S 2/6.
  
  
  • Rebecca became a yoga teacher while I went to a Wilmer Super Bowl party on S 2/7.
  
  
  • Went to a yoga-friend going away lunch on S 2/13.
  
  
  • Iced in for a couple days on M 2/15 - T 2/16.
  
  
  • Visited friends in Fredericksburg and Colonial Beach on S 2/20, hopefully starting a monthly tradition.
  
  
  • Planning to have a birthday dinner with my parents on S 2/28.


• Projects
  • Had a productive distraction-free month of Python coding at work, free of proposals.
  
  
  • Bounced around between several new personal project ideas, including working with the Amazon Lumberyard game engine and writing a mapping web application using local open source data, before finally settling on a new project related to Apache Spark.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoying the final season of Justified.
  
  
  • Finally burned out on Fallout 4, and am now playing the closed beta for Overwatch.

February's Final Grade: B+, a pleasant month with nice amounts of snow that went by surprisingly fast in spite of the extra leap day.

Weekend Wrap-up

I spent most of Saturday working on my new personal project, which should be released sometime this week if I remain ambitious and stop playing Overwatch so much. In the evening, we went over to the Cranes in their new home in north Herndon. We played games and had personal pizza from Pie 5 on Route 7, which Rebecca dubbed "Chipotle for pizzas". The pizzas were definitely good and we'd go back.

On Sunday morning, we took our first hike of 2016 along the Bull Run - Occoquan trail. We did about 7.5 miles and only slipped a few times in the endless marshes of blizzard mud, then grabbed lunch at a little deli in Chantilly. In the evening, we went over to my parents' to celebrate my dad's 71st birthday (he is two of me in both age and height).

How was your weekend?