2009 saw the release of a movie starring relative newcomer Jesse Eisenberg who is a quiet, quirky college student who has no luck with girls but later falls in love with a rebellious brunette. The love story is a subplot but the main plot of the movie, which involves his life being derailed in the beginning of the movie, never really goes anywhere. There are also several other subplots and hints of storylines that were never followed, possibly to allow for a sequel. The main cast is small, and the rest of the cast mainly walks around and occasionally mumbles something. There is really more character development around the theme park featured in the movie than most of the characters.

The movie I'm describing is Adventureland.. no wait, Zombieland.. no wait..

That's right, in 2009 two completely different directors, producers and crews made two very similar movies in many respects although they attracted two completely separate audiences.

Oh, and only one of them was worth watching...

Take the outline in the first paragraph of this post and then add the plotline of his family being dead, and most everyone else turning into zombies trying to kill him. Add in a few good comedy actors and give them everyone good dialogue and you have a very satisfying movie called Zombieland.

Take the same outline except this time the kid's parents lose some income so now he doesn't get to go on vacation or to grad school. (seems kinda tame compared to zombie attacks) Add in a few comedy actors and give them almost nothing to do as well as "that girl from twilight" who has the acting abilities of household blender, and you have a completely unsatisfying movie called Adventureland. Oh and the entire time the main characters are "falling in love," the girl and Ryan Reynolds are going at it like a screen door in a tornado. By the time you get to the ending which you guessed 15 minutes in, you really just don't care anymore.

So if anyone ever asks you, "Do you want to see a Zombie movie or an Adventure movie?" Bet on Zombies.

Details have been removed to protect the innocent, guilty or otherwise.

One morning, about 5am, I was driving through a neighborhood when I was suddenly started by what appeared in front of my headlights. A man, dressed in business casual attire laying down in the middle of a yard. I jumped, as much as one can in a mid-size sedan. The man didn't stir from the sound of my vehicle or from my headlights pointed directly at him which bothered me more. I am aware that there are very few reasons people are outside at that time of the morning, the majority seem to be either workers, or people up to no good. Assuming the man in a button down and khakis had not discovered a new career in "lawn sitting," I first assumed he was either up to no good, or had a run in with someone who was. Although if he was up to know good, he would have been one of the best dressed and most underdressed criminals I'd seen, since it was only about 10 degrees above freezing.

I turned and drove down the street a bit then swung around and so I could see what, if anything, he was doing. I purposefully stayed far enough away that if he suddenly leapt up with a tire iron, I would have enough time to urinate on myself and make a hasty retreat. After no signs of movement for almost two minutes, I concluded that this wasn't going to resolve itself and there was no way in hell I was going out there to poke a body with a stick. I didn't hesitate to call 911. Who put me on hold. That's another story.

During my time on hold, and talking to the operator, I did see some slight movements so I assumed either the individual was alive, or I was living out a bad zombie movie. The operator kept asking for more details, but he was laying on his side, back to the street, so it was hard to tell much else. I got the location and details relayed and finally ended my call with 911. I watched as the individual rolled, or more likely fell, over on to his stomach. At that point there was some more movement and I thought he may have been trying to get up, but it looked more like he was getting amorous with the lawn. By amorous.. well.. you know what I mean. Luckily, in less time than it took on the phone with 911, three cruisers arrived.

Apparently police cruiser headlights have the ability to raise the nearly dead as what appeared to be a drunken frat boy suddenly sat up, and everything appeared okay. One of the officers told me "looks like someone didn't have a good night" and I tend to agree. Probably having officers wake you up because you're laying face down in a yard at 5am in the bitter cold, it's time to do some self-reflection.

This entry is post-dated to the date of the City of Tulsa primaries. As most anyone who knows me already knows, I ran for City Council in my local District, number 8. As the race progressed I knew my chances were slim. Defeating an incumbent is hard and as I joked to people, I was running against an incumbent AND Santa as someone who runs a very large foundation was also running. That foundation gives out millions a year in the city so that is why I jokingly referred to him as Santa.

The race was time consuming, energy draining and hard. I think it wore harder on my opponents who were going back and forth with each other while I just focused on my views and ideas on the issues. After I got past the first debate, the rest was a hoot. I got the best campaign contribution ever, $4 and 2 pairs of socks. I had some great support from people like Blake Ewing who helped with the campaigning, fundraising and marketing, Angie Brumley who did my logo, Chris Matthes who was my top financial contributor (but still not enough to break the $200 mark for reporting) and many others, not the least of which is Krystal, Natalie and Logan who were with me for every doorbell I rang, copy I made, etc.

See you in 2011?

Make sure and check out VoteGrizzle.com!

(note: this post is backdated because I'm behind on blogging)

Since August of 2004 I've been driving a 2003 Dodge Ram Quad Cab, with 5.7L Hemi known by it;s license plate, CHEMIGO (See Hemi Go). I've dressed it up, modified it, and taken it to shows. It was a daily driver but it still impressed many. The hundreds of hours of labor and likely thousands that had been spent on babying it and spiffing it up, all went down the drain. A storm drain in this case.

So on the morning of July 21st we had a pretty big rainstorm. I was on my way to work hitting puddles left and right until I came across a large one. I know not to drive into standing water, but this was basically a glorified puddle that occurs everytime it rains, due to poor stormwater management at this intersection. As I approached I passed some vehicles who had just gone through the intersection in the opposite direction and I proceeded through cautiously, making sure the water never got deep enough to reach the underside of the truck or worse. What I could not foresee is that at some point in my drive my passenger side wheel well liner had come loose. Now basically resting upon my tire, it was pushing water up into the engine compartment and on top of the engine. Also unknown to me was the fact that this also likely loosened the air intake, which is above this liner, causing it to come loose where it meets the newly wet intake manifold. So while my air intake and filter never even got damp (keep in mind I use an oil/fiber filter that repels water), this odd chain of events caused water to seep into the intake manifold and kill my engine. Dead.

Fortunately for me, my insurance company covered the incident, although they were not willing to pay enough to make acceptable repairs. It was enough to pay off the remaining loan balance and by selling CHEMIGO for salvage, I was able to get into a used car that is not as testosterone-producing, but gets double the gas mileage.

The day after the accident, I spent a good part of it on the phone with repair shops, insurance companies, and scouting what would become my future ride. That evening I got to forget about it for awhile thanks to a surprise birthday party at my regular restaurant, Joe Momma's, complete with peanut-butter-filled Star Trek cupcakes, created by my wife.

March 4th we launched an all new redesign of TulsaNow.org incorporating a reworked design and coding (by me) an all new forum (with data conversion help from Tulsaconnect.) Then later in the month, Constant Conceptions refreshed the site design on DowntownLive.org which looks 100% better and was done to time the release with the April Issue of TulsaPeople magazine which I'm in (page 11,) although they put my name as "Scott Drizzle" everytime and got the URL for TulsaNow wrong. They did correct the online versions, but by the time anyone knew it was too late to do anything about the printed ones. I've been working hard to update the records on DowntownLive but I've had memory card issues, meaning I'd get ready to download my pictures and it's be empty, and then the touch screen got broken. So I can take pictures, but I can no longer control ANY settings on the camera.

We had the heaviest spring snowfall on record in Oklahoma. as you can see here:


When my deck is about the disappear, (seen on the left, the top is about 8" off the ground) the snow is pretty dang thick.

So I'm in the process of ridding myself from Bank of Asshatrica. Their practices are one (tiny) step above that of alleyway thugs. A few months ago I was out close to $2,000 when someone used my account fraudulently and BoA refused to block out the hacker (and in fact they even refused to shut off overdraft protection, so it was taking money from other sources to give to the hacker.) It took about 2 months to get my money back from them.

The latest was when I was charged overdraft fees for overspending my checking account. Sounds simple? Well, they overdrafted BECAUSE of overdraft fees I was charged. To make it better, money was in the account the entire time and the original fees were based on charges that had never even hit the bank yet and didn't hit until the second round of fees. Confused? Follow this fictional example. Amounts in parantheses show (check register balance/BoA's version)

1. Account has $100 balance ($100/$100)
2. Make "instant transfer" of another $100 ($200/$100)
3. 3 days later, make 4 charges totaling $112 ($88/-$12)
4. Bank withholds $112 out of account (making you $12 negative) but still hasn't posted $100 "instant" deposit. ($88/-$12)
5. Bank CSR assures you this is just perception and everything will clear fine and you will incur no fees ($88/-$12)
6. You "instant" deposit another $200 ($288/$88)
7. You make 5 more transactions totalling $140 ($148/-$52)
8. Bank withholds $140 in fees (for charges in step #3)($8/-$192)
9. Bank withholds another $140 in fees, then posts deposit (-$132/-$132)

So even though they say deposits are posted and they say fees won't be charged, it happened and I'm the only one held responsible. Ironically, when my account was stolen they used overdraft protection to cover's the hacker's withdrawals but in this situation they told me I didn't have OP and never did.

*sigh*

Off to a bank run by humans who understand math.

I've owned an iPhone since the day they came out. The world seems divided into two groups, those who roll their eyes at the previous statement, and those who are right there with me. This post is meant for the latter.

With the release of the iPhone3G and iPhone 2.0 software, the iPhone expanded it's horizons immensely with the addition of the App Store. Less than a year later, there are over 15,000 applications available for the iPhone. Why? Because it is easy to code for and very versatile. There are some great games for the iPhone but for now I will just talk about those apps that I find extremely useful:

• Evernote(free)- Whether it is a simple grocery list, word document, picture, web page, whatever, evernote is tha app to store and organize them with. There is an iPhone app, a desktop app (for Windows and Mac) as well as a browser plugin and a web-based version. It means you can literally access your notes from any device or anywhere with an internet connection. Another bonus is that it recognizes the text ini anything you submit and makes it searchable. Especially helpful if you are scanning old documents or receipts.
• Yahoo OneConnect(free) - Will likely overlooked as just an instant messenger application, OneConnect actually ties all of the social networks together so you can post and look at updates all in one consolidated view. I use it to post to Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and Friendster simultaneously. It is not meant to be a fully-featured client but it does link to the mobile websites of all the major social networks. If you do a lot with any of these networks, you should also seek out a more full-featured program.
• Weatherbug (free) - The iPhone buit-in weather app is decent, but weatherbug gets you weather in your neighborhood as well as direct links to radar, cameras, etc.
  
• WunderRadio (5.99) - Almost every radio statiion now has a way to listen online and with WunderRadio you can now access almost every single ronventional radio and weather radio station in the US. It's especially good if you're a traveller wanting to listen to your home stations or you just like adding some variety to your daily listening.
  
• Weightbot (1.99) - There are a ton of weight loss and exercise related applications. I find it quite hard to track calories (unless you eat TV dinners every meal) and track exercise (unless you live and work on a running track) so all I wanted to do was track weight. Weightbot does just one thing and does it well, track weight, so that is why I picked it. Put in your height and goal weight and then it's a snap to post updates. Open the app, scroll to enter your weight (it defaults to your last measurement) and close the app. That's it. Turning the app sidewya gives you multiple graphs showing your recorded weight over time, progress towards your goal, and estimates when you'll reach that goal.
• WinAdmin (11.99) - If you have a need to remote control Windows systems, whether it be for work, or just want to connect to your home computer, then this is the best app to do it with. It's a bit pricey, but many IT nerds can justify it.
• Byline (4.99) - There are a plethora of RSS readers out there, but if you use Google Reader on your desktop, you'll want Byline on the iPhone because it is fully integrated with Google Reader and also offers offline use.
• Myspace/Facebook/LinkedIn (free) - All three have free iPhone apps which offer a decent experience. Of the three, the facebook is probably one of the best designed.
• Shazam (free) - One of the neatest ever mobile applications, Shazam can listen to the music around you, whether it be on the radio or in an elevator, and then tell you the artist, title and even gives links to buy the song, read the lyrics and watch a video.
  
• Box.net (free) - Lets you store PDF files, pictures, documents, etc. on the internet from any PC and access them from your iPhone. Good place to store commonly used spreadsheets, password lists, etc.
• Slacker/Pandora (free) - Both are internet radio apps allowinig for you to listen to station you customize (Pandora) or one of thousands of existing internet-only stations that cater to every taste(Slacker.)
• Google Docs - While not an app per se, Google has a great web-based document and spreadsheet tool that can be accessed from the phone or any other browser. Pretty good if you're not a fan of Evernote.
• Nuevasync - Also not a real app exactly, website www.nuevasync.com allows you to synchronize your google contacts and google calendar directly with your iPhone automatically over the air. If you're a google-head, you may need to visit this site.
  

Okay, so I'm fmiliar with "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and am willing to go along with the idea of a large subterranean area with dinosaurs. Strangely I have more trouble believing Brendan Fraser as an adventurer. Because of that I didn't watch the 2008 incarnation of this title. Luckily (or unluckily) for me, there are actually 3 versions of this movie released in 2008. One for the big screen, one for TV and one went straight to video. Since I'm camping on the couch with a stomach bug, it seemed like a good time for bad TV and the Sci-Fi channel didn't dissapoint with not the movie version, not the TV version, but the straight-to-video version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth." I even had trouble finding it on IMDB (you can find it's glorious 2.7 rating here.) Some of the highlights of the film include:

• A "Military Detail" just happens to be all women.
• That same detail makes a point that they need "'full combat attire" which means tank tops.
• While creating a transporter may be a multi-million dollar project, all of their communication equipment has the quality if old AM radio.
  
• The secret code that saves the day is 867-5309.
• Any scenes of animation are a few frames long, on repeat, so you pass the same things over & over.
• They are able to drill 600km down, but never address what happens to the material they drill.
• They build a drilling rig meant for going 600km through the earth, but don't design it for subsurface voids(air pockets.)
• 600km below the surface, they have sunlight.
• Major plot points (what happened to the drilling rig, where did the laser come from, what is that machine falling from the sky, how does typing Jenny's phone number make oxygen) are never mentioned in the dialogue.

So yeah, it's a true bad sci-fi. Since I'm sick I apparently don't have the brain power for good sci-fi considering I somehow managed to mess up microwaving soup.

Apparently there was an internet meme I missed out on.. then later it was mentioned on an episode of Big Bang Theory that I also missed (great show by the way, pay close attention to the production credits.) Not until it his a t-shirt at thinkgeek did I find out about it. It's called "Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock" and is designed to keep people from consistently getting in a tie as seen in lesser forms of "Rock Paper Scissors." The rules are:

Scissors cut paper.
Paper covers rock.
Rock crushes lizard.
Lizard poisons Spock.
Spock smashes scissors.
Scissors decapitate lizard.
Lizard eats paper.
Paper disproves Spock.
Spock vaporizes rock.
Rock crushes scissors.

Check out the video I linked above for the clip from the show and if you want to try your hand, here is a Javascript version. If you think it's too complicated, there is always this.

P.S. Ripped the arm on my leather jacket today. Bah I say. Bah.

How many Louie commercial do we need to explain that.. well.. if you snare you truck in power lines, DON'T CLIMB ON TOP OF YOUR TRUCK TO TRY AND FIX IT!

This person sadly learned the hard way



Also, just got a new assignment at work. My feelings are reflected in the picture above.

Not that I've been away from the internet for more than a few hours but I haven't had time to write much on here. Just a quick update for life as it has been.

Christmas was severely delayed in my household. Grandmother got sick right before the holidays and it turned out to be nothing too serious but it did have her out of commission for a few weeks. Everything worked out in the end. I became vice president of and helped form a neighborhood association, write the bylaws, got everything going, the had to quit because I became president of TulsaNow with which I have even bigger things planned. I'm halfway through my class of Leadership Tulsa and really enjoy it, especially since it forces me into social situations I would not otherwise be in. Plus I get to learn a lot about Tulsa, which I also really enjoy.

Finally gave in and bought a Nintendo Wii. Have to say I like Wii Sports which is included and gives a much needed break from reality. It's not often me or my wife can get away from responsibilities so if we can do that at home occasionally, it's worth what many would call wasted money. Speaking of, we are planning on finishing some painting and decorating that we never got done on move-in. Including our hallway, our master bedroom and re-painting the dining room. We're also going to finally fix (replace) our master bedroom toilet that our kids somehow sabotaged. Yeah, toilet!

I found myself doing a lot on Facebook after initially not having it and spending less time with Myspace. (Links on the right so I won't repost)

Oh and my best friend from high school is getting married in just a few days! I wish I could be there and wish them the best of luck.

After seeing NIN at the Ford Center in OKC 4 months ago I was hesitant
to go again but I went with a larger group this time and it was worth
it. The sound was much improved over the Ford Center concert and I
liked the much more club-like atmosphere with lots of mingling areas.
Everyone seemed much more relaxed and enjoyed every minute. Bonus is
that you're standing on ice so it never got too stuffy/hot.

This is a no-zoom phone picture. We were 5-6 rows back on the floor.

So the Makers of Knight Rider, the 2008 version, were apparently unaware of certain failures of the previous incarnations. That being everything on Team Knight Rider, almost everything on Viper and the 1980's KITT's "Super Pursuit Mode" (which, well before tuners started doing it, stated that adding wings to a car makes it go much faster.)Those shows found that when you diverge from believable science too far, you diverge from your viewers as well.

Okay so, here is the new KITT. Like the 1980's version, a lightly modified production vehicle. I'm with ya so far.


Instead of "Super Pursuit Mode" new KITT gets "Attack Mode" which changes wheel color, grill, and adds TWO spoilers on the back. My they couldn't meld the two "modes," no-one knows. I can't imagine wheels have to be black to go fast but chrome to camouflage yourself. I, for one, HATE anything with two spoilers, but I'm willing to follow you.. so far..


Now after the TV Movie was turned into a series they decided "Tuner" Attack Mode sucked and came up with "Dragster" Attack Mode. This version does actually look faster and opts for one giant spoiler instead of two. It seems like they wanted to seperate the two "versions" of KITT more so they created this. I'm following, but getting confused.


Now, here is where they accidentally mixed their medications. Now the nanites which previously could change color or bend a panel or two are able to turn into a Friggin' truck. Different seats, windows, the whole nine. They can flip a switch and just turn a mustang into a truck, but they can't make a form without the bright red lights on the front. How weird is that?


Oh, and it goes underwater too. Really, are you intentionally trying to lose people? What does it turn into for sweeps week? A Cuisinart?