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At some point in June, I decided that cross-posting to both blogs was a pain. (I was constantly forgetting and then posting days later.) My neighborhood here is mostly populated with people who also read my LJ, and that is my primary blogging platform/community. Until 6A gets around to adding an option to cross-post to VOX automatically from LJ (the other way around is possible, but it just doesn't work for me), my posts here will be spare.

I should update this to say that I got married on August 25, and I went on honeymoon to Hawaii (Kauai and the Big Island) shortly afterward. Otherwise, nothing of note has happened anyway!

I survived a weekend of movies (barely).

Friday
La Vie En Rose - I really had no strong interest in Edith Piaf's story, but this movie was quite something. The lead actress's range was pretty stunning; she portrayed Edith, a sort of weird-looking woman, between the age of 20 and 40-something (she aged a lot in the last few years of her life). She really made the movie quite engaging; I was always waiting for her to do something crazy. And although I didn't really know much of the music, they used her original recordings for the songs and they were great. Recommended.

Saturday
Big Rig - Another winner, this documentary about long-haul truck drivers was great, not only as a portrait of these men and women and their world but also as a way to see America. The director used shots of the open highway, natural spots, and man-made monuments to great effect as the movie traveled across the U.S. My only complaint (and it's pretty minor) is that the sound mix wasn't good enough to make the CB chatter clear enough to understand. The visuals deserve a big screen (depspite being filmed on video), but it's definitely going to make a good rental someday -- if they get a distributor, and they really ought to soon.

The Cloud - I guess this is supposed to be Germany's version of a big Hollywood blockbuster. Frankly, it didn't seem as ridiculous and over-the-top as one might expect a disaster movie from America to be. It sort of starts out as this teen romantic comedy thing, and right when the romance starts to kick in, sirens signaling a nuclear accident sound and the couple is separated for nearly half of the movie. I thought it worked pretty well as a political (anti-nuclear power) film, and the lead actress, through whose face we experience most of the events in the movie, was excellent (and only 18 or something like that). It came out in 2006, so I suppose it's available in good video stores already.

Sunday
Fever of '57 - This was a great one, maybe one of my favorites of the festival at this point. Starting with the launch of Sputnik, the movie explores not the effect on space exploration that followed but rather the effects the space launch had on the Cold War. I can see now how easily this news could be (rightly or not; mostly rightly) interpreted as a sign that the U.S. was behind the Soviets in weapons technology. One cool interviewee was the son of Nikita Kruschev. Well, well worth a viewing. It's not as much about science as about the Cold War, so if you're not that into space stuff it's worth seeing anyway.

Nanking - Talk about a downer. This excellent, if incredibly sad, documentary focused on the Japanese attack on and occupation of Nanking, China, in 1937. The story was told through interviews with survivors and actors portraying others through readings of their letters and diaries. These others included a number of Westerners who were in the city during the occupation and did their best to stop the killings and the rapes. For the most part, it worked, because most of the actors were excellent B-list character actors who became their roles. However, I was a little jarred out of the moment every time Woody Harrelson appeared on screen as the American clinic doctor. I just could never quite buy it. However, the story is so compelling that you get sucked right back into the narrative, as tough as it is to hear about what happened in Nanking. It's probably not an easy one to see unprepared, but it was definitely well done and worth a viewing if you can.

Woman on the Beach - So far in this festival, the movies have been pretty good, and I've also been lucky to have the director appear at more than half of the screenings I've seen. This is one screening where I wish the director was around, because I think he has a lot to answer for. The SIFF programmer who introduced the film said that this director's works consistently place in the bottom 10 for SIFF audience scores. Still, they keep putting him in the festival for some reason. Maybe they should take the hint.  It's not that the film was all bad. I thought the actors were quite good, and the characters for the most part had some interesting quirks and such, the kinds of elements of a movie that make you want to stay. (I might also mention that this screening was 9:30 on a Sunday night, and the movie was two hours long.) The direction, however, was a bit listless in places. And the plot... well, I think there was some sort of moral or point that was lost on me. I could see a lot of places where a better editor could have livened things up just a tad. And at the end, the movie pretty much just stopped. I was glad, because I was tired and it was late. But it didn't really resolve a thing. Maybe my friend Chris will see something that I didn't, though.

I get a two-day break before seeing a movie on Wednesday night, and then I get another break until the weekend sometime. It would have been nice to have a little bit more non-movie time to do stuff this past weekend, but I'll take what I can get. 

So as an addendum to my last post, when I brought my PC back home and plugged it in, the problem started happening again.  Neither hard drive was accessible.  I opened up the box and plugged in only the primary (boot) drive, and although I still get an error when I boot up, I can read from the drive and run Windows.  I wish I could get at the files on the other drive, though! The DVD burner burns CDs like a charm, so I spent some time this morning backing up my latest photos. These include photos from three Flickr Meetup events and Sasquatch, so it took a few disks.

Last night, I went to another Flickr Meetup event at Victrola's new roastery cafe. I didn't stay super long because Elizabeth arrived after her movie for a ride home, but it was fun. I took a bunch of photos, too.

Hole in the head

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Tonight starts the six-movie weekend with La Vie En Rose. I get the feeling this weekend's going to busy, especially if I try to fit in a trip to Fry's to buy a new power supply or IDE cables.

Well, now I've done it. My CD burner just upped and stopped working a couple of weeks ago (right after Elizabeth burned a mix CD for the mixclub), so I ordered a new drive (a DVD-burner, since even the better ones are around $30).

Today, I tried to install it.

Somehow, when I was in there replacing two plugs, I messed up something major. Now, the hard drives aren't recognized upon bootup, and I've checked all the connections. I'm really worried that I didn't ground myself well enough and I damaged the hard drives. I haven't been incredibly diligent with the backups lately, although most files don't change much. I would lose photos from the last 3 weeks or so, any minor file changes (including our wedding spreadsheet), and many MP3s that I downloaded legally over the last few months.

As I do use this computer as a backup for my work computer, my employer's tech guru is currently trying to diagnose the problem. So far, he hasn't had much luck (he can't even get the PC to boot from a USB floppy device so that he can flash the BIOS).

I guess the worst case scenario is that I lost all my data and the computer. If I didn't lose the data but the box itself is useless, I guess I can get a new PC and an external IDE case to read my old files. Not that I can necessarily afford that right now...

Edit: Somehow, he got the thing to work. He flashed the BIOS and gradually added the drives, primary (boot) first, then the second one. He's going to add the DVD burner while he's in there, and I guess it's good to go. His theory is that either the BIOS was having some trouble with one of the new components or the power supply could use some help. I guess this means I'm about to be in the market for a new PSU.

Not much happened this weekend. We had a full weekend.

Saturday was Sasquatch. It was both hot and then quite chilly, depending on the time of the day. The drive home was pretty tough because while I was wired a bit on caffeine, my body still would rather be sleeping. But we made it back in one piece.  I took some photos, almost none of which turned out that great. That's par for the course, though. The music was pretty darn good. The artists I saw:

• Mix Master Mike - He started things out with a short DJ set that was pretty good.  We probably didn't have to get there as early as we did, but it was cool to see him do a set.
• Saturday Knights - A local hip-hop/rock type group, they were actually better than I thought they would be based on their description. The mainstage acts need to fill the space, and they seemed to deliver.
• The Hold Steady - I have heard a lot of their songs hear and there, but I haven't sought them out. They put on a solid set and I was entertained.
• Two Gallants - I only caught about half of their set, but I liked what I heard for the most part. Not necessarily my thing, but they are definitely a talented duo (with a talented friend joining them for the set).
• Mirah - The sound mix wasn't very good, and I could hardly hear her vocals. From what I understand, it's the vocals that are a major reason to hear her, so I gave up after a handful of songs.
• Neko Case - Hey, I love to see Neko perform. Unfortunately, her setlist doesn't seem to vary anymore. I've seen her three or four times in the last three years, and every time she's done pretty much the same songs. This lack of surprise in her act is really disappointing; I could just watch her Austin City Limits DVD over and over again if I didn't want variety.
• Visqueen - I've never taken the time to look into this band, and now I'm a little bummed I didn't discover them earlier. Luckily, they're apparently working on a new album and still performing, so I should get more chances to hear them play.
• The Long Winters - I was looking forward to hearing the MIA M.I.A., but I do like the Long Winters so they were a welcome substitution as far as I was concerned.
• Manu Chao - is a big fan and I'm somewhat less so, but he was pretty darn good live. He had the crowd really into it, too. The unfortunate thing was that he played way past the proper end of his set, saying "Thank you, Sasquatch" about 5 times before finally leaving the stage.
• The Arcade Fire - This performance was incredible. They have so much damned energy and passion when they perform. Maybe the emotions are a bit manufactured, I dunno, but the music was great as always.
• Björk - This was pretty late when she finally took the stage, so we ended up staying for only about five or six songs. She wore a dress that resembled a mop (observed Elizabeth) and had a brass band dressed in brightly colored mu'umu'us. She played "Earth Intruders" and played "All Is Full of Love" right before we took off. Apparently, the set got even better later once the brass band really started being used in the songs. However, I was very glad to be back on the road sooner rather than later.

Gorge Amphitheatre panorama

On Sunday, SIFF started for us. I saw probably two of my favorite movies of the festival on Sunday: In the Shadow of the Moon and King of Kong. Both were good for different reasons. When King of Kong comes out in theatres, you really need to see it. It has some of the best documentary characters (the best villain, especially) that I've seen.  Today, we saw Doubletime, an excellent documentary about competitive jump-roping and double-dutch teams, and Battle of Wits, an epic about generals and kingdoms in ancient China. This last film was a bit hard for me to follow in parts, but that may have been the fatigue finally setting in.

This week, I go into the office to do some training, and I take a few days' break from SIFF. Starting Friday, it begins again. 

We finally bought our tickets for the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) last night.  We're seeing a lot of movies.  I'll bet Elizabeth is not looking forward to May 31-June 8 when she's seeing one or more movies per day. For me, it's next weekend when I see 5 movies in two days.

See our full schedule in my LJ.

We've got a lot going on. Tonight, Elizabeth's going out to see a non-SIFF movie with a friend, while I prepare for tomorrow. Tomorrow, we get up too early to drive 160+ miles to the Gorge. We bake in the sun and hear some good bands, and then we drive back after the show. I see a movie at 1:45 the next day, so I won't be able to sleep too much. SIFF takes over for a while. And next week, I also have to drive to work Tuesday through Thursday for some in-office training.

Also, I'm looking at a rental house at 11 a.m. today and another at 5 p.m. And if Elizabeth has trouble picking up the tickets tonight, I may have to run down to Pacific Place before the box office closes at 7. Whew.

I forgot to note here that I took a few photos at the Norwegian Constitution Day parade in Ballard last Thursday. Although I think most of my photos weren't all that great, I do like this one, which I pretty much caught by accident:

Band

Also, talk about the Circle of Life:

Silly lions. (Be patient. Once the action starts it pretty much doesn't let up.) 

Not me, I'm doing fine. Instead, I'm dealing with a couple of other injuries:

• Linus got in a fight sometime late Sunday morning, or at least I think he did. He lost his collar in the process, and he had a few small wounds, mostly around his neck. He was acting pretty mopey all of yesterday, not jumping up to higher perches and taking it easy. But today he's acting happier, so maybe he fought off any infection. I hope so!


• My CD burner may have just crapped out. Either that, or I'm having a string of bad luck in getting it to recognize blank discs. I just burned a music CD yesterday afternoon, and now that I want to back up some photos, it's balking. Boo. It won't even read existing (burned) discs, and I know they're OK because my work laptop opens them. I've restarted the computer with no luck. Shoot. Adding a hard drive was one thing. Replacing the only CD-R/W drive I have is a little more daunting. Good thing I have an external HD for temporary backups.

On Saturday, I did another Flickr photostroll with the Seattle Flickr Meetup.com group, and it was a pretty good time. This time, I stayed a little (OK, a lot) later, and I got a few OK night shots as a result. See the photoset here.

Escape

On Saturday, I did another Flickr photostroll with the Seattle Flickr Meetup.com group, and it was a pretty good time. This time, I stayed a little (OK, a lot) later, and I got a few OK night shots as a result. See the photoset here.

Other than that, it was a pretty forgettable weekend. Coming up is SIFF (we need to buy some tickets before I can post our line-up) and the Sasquatch Music Festival on Saturday (Björk, The Arcade Fire, Neko Case, a bunch of other folks).