Family Movie Night - Snow White

We watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [IMDB] this evening again. Grumpy always reminds me of Mark from back at Randolph AFB. I should get back in touch with him.

(written 11/4/2005; back-dated to 10/29/2005)

Survivor, Apprentice, ER

Survivor Logo (screen capture)

Survivor: Guatemala [official site] is just not captivating me like the previous seasons have done. I'm mostly rooting for Stephenie, Rafe or Lydia.

The Apprentice [official site] was a bit of a shock. The guys over-did it with the batting cage when they had dome so well the last two tasks by remembering branding. And the firing of 4 contestants was unbelievable.

ER [official site] was a rerun from last season. It was one featuring Ray Lolitta [IMDB] who is quite a good actor after all. I was still picturing him from Turbulence [IMDB] back in 1997. I think I saw that on HBO back in my Detroit days with Oracle around 1998. Looking over his IMDB entry, I was amazed to see that he was Shoeless Joe Jackson from Field of Dreams [IMDB].

(Written 11/1/2005; back-dated to 10/27/2005)

Grave of the Fireflies - AZN-TV

Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru No Haka) [IMDB] was on AZN-TV, formerly the International Channel tonight. (Checking the website after the fact, it was on at 8 PM, 11 PM and 2 AM on the 26th. I turned over to it just after it started at 11 PM and as I thought, it was full screen and dubbed. I didn't want to put myself through trying to watch the film that way.

GOTF needs to be watched in widescreen and in Japanese with subtitles. Plus, when I have time to think about it. I have had it on DVD for a couple of years now and I think I've only watched it twice. It's just so sad.

(written 11/6/2005; back-dated to 10/25/2005)

Chinese Class and Dinner

We headed out early to breakfast at Bob Evans and then to the book store to look for a gift for the host family for Director Zhu and for the director himself. We also wanted to get to Chinese class early to meet him and his translator as he was going to have a walk through tour of school. Yesterday he had a brief tour of the COFCC KCAP classes.

We picked up a book on Chinese art for Trevor and Amy, the host family. Then Gail picked out the perfect book for the director. It was A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces [Amazon]. These were gifts for after class at dinner.

We drove over to Amy and Trevor's house and helped her finish getting things ready. It was a different menu with spiral-sliced, honey-baked ham, salad, strawberries and two types of pizza.

The director was very pleased with the book and we also gave him print outs of the Chinese Wikipedia pages on Shenzhou-5 and Shenzhou-6.

At one point Director Zhu expressed his regreat at not being able to speak any English. And I wish I'd remembered to say, was that I too regreated that I did not speak more Chinese.

(Drafted 11/1/2005; back-dated to 10/23/2005; posted on 11/17/2005)

East Meets West Conference

The wife went out very early for the conference and so the daughter and I had a nice relaxing morning. We painted a few watercolors and she practiced her flute.

We went downtown for the conference and finally found a good place to park. The street where the wife suggested parking was having the surface stripped off when we arrived! Lucky, we parked only a short block away.

The conference was good even though the daughter had to use the bathroom four times while we were there. My wife was working, so I took her each time. I got to speak with Director Zhu a few times briefly. I was told he had first gone to New York and then to Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was formerly in the Chinese Army and enjoyed a tour in a Navy museum in New York. I told him through a translator that I wished there was time in his schedule to go to the US Air Force Museum. But there is not time as he has a full schedule tomorrow.

(Drafted 10/29/2005; back-dated to 10/22/2005; posted 11/17/2005)

Dinner with Director Zhu

The wife's East Meets West Conference was this weekend. The guest of honor, as it was, was the director of the Yi Yang orphange in Hunan. The first meeting was at the Chinese restaurant where we had dinner with the wife's Chinese class last year, over near campus. There was a group of more than 40 people as we filled 4 tables that each seated 10 and a couple of booths. I was hoping to sit with the director, but there were a few familes who had adopted children from his orphange and so they were seated at his table. He recognized many of the children.

The dinner was fantastic - 5 or 6 different courses.

(Drafted 10/29/2005; back-dated to 10/21/2005; posted 11/17/2005)

Hurricane Wilma Watch

Wilma & Hurricane Wilma
Animation Art Gallery & NOAA

There are some incredible and ominous photos of Cancun with the approach of Hurricane Wilma out at Yahoo's Most Emailed Photos and Slideshows. These wire photos normally only stay out there about a week, so check soon. Wikipedia has articles on Wilma individually and as part of the larger article on the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also has an individual page on Hurricane Wilma along with other good information. The above image is from 10/21 at 1245 UTC (0745 Eastern time).

Animation cell from the Animation Art Gallery.

I have yet to understand how blogger or hello or picasa is resizing the images. The above image was sized at 691 x 240 but the linked image is 640 x 222. It must be cutting down to either 320 for small or 640 for bigger.

Bueller? Bueller?

Finally got around to watching the Ferris Bueller's Day Off DVD that I received for my birthday. It's amazing that Matthew Broderick was 24 when this came out. Just like Ralph Macchio, 23 when The Karate Kid came out and and Michael J. Fox, 24 with Back to the Future, Broderick seems eternally young.

I still have the button and mini-poster from FBDO. I thought I'd lost the poster for certain, but it was with many other posters of mine that I just don't have wall space for right now. At one point, I'd even found it on EBay and was thinking of bidding on it.

Watched the whole movie and then watched about 15 mintues with the director's commentary. Sadly, this doesn't even have a single trailer for the film on the DVD.

(written 11/4/2005; back-dated to 10/19/2005)

Finished - The Kite Runner

I read to the end of The Kite Runner this evening. Khaled Hosseini will have another book about Afganistan out in 2006 and I want to read it.

(Written 10/21/2005; back-dated to 10/18/2005)

Two chapters left - The Kite Runner

Read last night for a couple of hours. Just two chapters left of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner [Amazon]. The story is moving swiftly and has become somewhat predicable, but I am still enjoying it. This is a good story to learn to write from, I think.

Reading - The Kite Runner

I read about 16 or so chapters of The Kite Runner [Amazon] by Khaled Hosseini. This was for the book discussion I missed back on October 12th. It's quite a good read. It flows well and has kept me interested. I only hope to write something this good.

Shenzhou-6 launches successfully

Shenzhou-6 launch
AP photo from BBC

Fei Junlong, 40 and Nie Haisheng, 41, have become the second and third Chinese nationals in space with today's successful launch of the Shenzhou-6 Chinese spacecraft. The craft, atop a Long March 2F rocket was launched at 0900 Beijing time, 0400 US Eastern time from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest Gansu Province in the Northwest of China. This is the same launch facility and pad as the October 2003 flight of Yang Liwei aboard Shenzhou-5.

Welcome back, and best of luck.

• Wikipedia article on Shenzhou-6


• Xinhua News Agency - in English (Chinaview) main Page


• Xinhua News Agency Shenzhou-6 page


• Xinhua News Agency Shenzhou-6 photos


• China Daily main page


• China Daily Shenzhou-6 page


• PLA Daily of the Chinese People's Liberation Army


• PLA Shenzhou-6 page


• People's Daily Home


• People's Daily - Shenzhou VI


• Rabbit and Crow blog with a post on the launch


• Shenzhou-6 FAQ at Mark Wade's magnificent Encylopedia Astronautica


• SPACE.com article


• Space Facts


• Shenzhou-6 page at Spaceflight Now


• BBC Coverage


• CollectSpace message board on SZ-6 patches
• MSNBC stories with streaming video of launch

Gail Force: Eternal Story

I stayed up past midnight watching some anime on AZN Television (formerly the International Channel). Turned out the show was Gail Force: Eternal Story (AZN list, IMDB entry). The story borrowed many ideas from Alien. The design of the corridors was very similar. I was a bit surprised how the female captain of the all female crew was showering so frequently. There was more animated nudity than I was expecting.

(Written 10/12/2005, back-dated to 10/11/2005)

Amazing Race 8 - Huntsville AL

We watched CBS' The Amazing Race tonight. The teams raced to Huntsville, Alabama to the Space and Rocket Center. Phil, the host was at the pitstop with an astonaut. You can see both of them in this photo.

I noticed the Mach 25 patch and he's been on two space shuttle missions, but I can't ID the flights right now. I'll post both patches when I find them and ID the astronaut.

(Written on 10/12/2005; back-dated to 10/11/2005)

Amazing Race 8 - Shuttle Patches

STS-29 & STS-38 emblems
from Wikipedia

The two patches were for STS-29 [wikipedia] and STS-38 [wikipedia]. The astronaut was Robert C. Springer [wikipedia]. He flew on two largely DOD missions in 1989 and 1990.

(Found it on 10/13 and just now posting)
(Written 10/30/2005; back-dated to 10/11/2005)

Yahoo self-corrects

Yahoo's better photo (screen capture)

I dont' think it was because of my post, but the Yahoo story [Yahoo] on news searching that includes blogs has a photo of Yahoo's headquarters now. Perhaps I should search for my blog entry?

More importantly, why did the first image with the google sign below get sized smaller? Maybe there's a setting in in Picasa/Hello that I didn't set correctly.

Welcome Home Soyuz TMA-6

Last night, Soyuz TMA-6 [Wikipedia] departed from the Interational Space Station bringing the Expedition 11 crew of Sergei Krikalev, John Phillips and Gregory Olsen. It was launched April 15, 2005 with Krikalev, Phillips and Robert Vittori. (Vittori returned to earth in Soyuz TMA-5 with the Expedition 10 crew Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov back on April 24, 2005.)

Yahoo adds blogs to news search - and wrong photo

Yahoo: blogs and news side by side
screen capture from Yahoo

There is an interesting story [Yahoo] on Yahoo's Most Popular News. It was number 4 of the Most Recommended News items this morning. It talks about how Yahoo starting today will offer an expanded news search that will yield not only wire news stories and photos, but also list people's blogs, user-contributed photos and links. Cool! Hopefully it will all be related content.

But strangely, the photo accompanying the item shows the sign out front of Google headquarters, not Yahoo and Google is only mentioned once in the article.

I don't think that my blog entry here will show up in this expanded news search. Not until Yahoo changes the photo. Hehehe.