Pink Vinyl Axfighters

I've been enjoying some 'lost' musical gems lately - on vinyl records. They include:

Emanuel Ax - Beethoven's "Waldstein" Sonata & Eroica Variations
Glenn Miller - The Best of Glenn Miller
Al Hirt - Cotton Candy
Nat 'King' Cole - 10th Anniversary
CBS Special Products - Pipe Organ Spectacular
101 Strings - "The Sound of Henry Mancini"
Boston Symphony Orchestra - Mozart: "Jupiter" Symphony & Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Plus other gems found at local thrift shoppes. =)

Becky, also, has been taking advantage of our new record player, an Audio-Technica AT-PL50, that Heather got me for Christmas. Becky found some short kid's stories on 45's that come with a book, and she's been enjoying the likes of Jack & the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Peter Rabbit, Curious George, etc. Good stuff. =)

We viewed a few films over the past couple of weeks, including "The Pink Panther" (2006; Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Beyoncé Knowles) on DVD, and "Joseph: King of Dreams" (2000) on VHS.

I've also knocked out a couple of audiobooks recently, as well - "Star Wars: X-Wing - Starfighters of Adumar", and "Thought Patterns of High Performance People," a 1981 seminar by Louis E. Tice on audio cassette.

As for recent supplement products, I've recently tried some new Diablo Ice energy strips, Solaray L-Glutathione, some Nature's Way Turmeric, and a trial size bottle of iForce Nutrition's Amplified Thermoxyn fat burner.

Becky's got quite the green thumb, it turns out. Here's a status update photo of Becky's Paperwhite Narcissus flowers (just 3 weeks old):


At work, I've been busy trying to stay up-to-date with both of my blog teams on the 2007 Iron Man Blog & the 2007 Transformation Blog Contest. That's a lot of blogging! =)

Rumpole's Snicket Map Fiasco

We enjoyed listening to "Rumpole à la Carte" by Sir John Mortimer, as read by Frederick Davidson, an excellent narrator, on Blackstone cassette audiobook - one of the best audiobooks I've had the pleasure of listening to (ever)! The reading in an excellent British accent really made this series of stories believable and entertaining.

We watched "Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events" (2004; Jim Carrey, Emily Browning, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Coolidge, Cedric the Entertainer, Catherine O'Hara, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall) on widescreen DVD a few nights ago. A great film, especially if you had already read the book (as I had), and the all-star cast made this film truly excellent.

Google Maps has gotten depressingly worse over time - so much so, that it's almost impossible to print anything anymore, especially in the latest browsers. It's a shame, too, because it used to be so good and easy to use, but now it sucks so bad.

It's gotten to the point where the most efficient way to get a printed-out map is to first get the map the way you want it, then take a print screen (take a screenshot), save it to your desktop (as an image via Photoshop), then use the built-in Windows Photo Printing Wizard to actually do the scaled printing (as nothing even comes close to printing images as well as it does). A few extra steps, yes, but the results are always better than trying to fight with the scaling issues presented by the browsers themselves and/or by Google's scaling options.

The problem is that Google and the browsers are fighting against each other over who is going to try and scale the images onscreen to your printer's sheet of paper. The browsers by themselves can print regular webpages scaled pretty well (sometimes), and Google maps - in a older browser - used to be okay, but when you have the two of them both trying to do the scaling, it's a retarded mess.

Since the browsers aren't going to change anytime soon, it's up to Google to remove (or improve) their scaling and print logic, otherwise I'm afraid it's pretty much unusable.

In brighter news, we helped a family move into our ward on Saturday, and we also attended a baptism for a new sister in the ward. Overall, a great day (except for the map printing fiasco which sparked the aforementioned rant)! LOL

Movies and Blogs

Yesterday, in between blogging, errands, shopping, grazing, and bowl games, we took the kids to see "Open Season" (2006; Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise) at the $2 cinema, and also viewed "Mission Impossible 3" (2006; Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan, Maggie Q, Laurence Fishburne) at home on DVD. Great stuff! =)

I switched over from the old version of Blogger to the new version, and luckily, most everything works. I've noticed a few bugs with blog links going to the wrong locations, etc., but it still works for the most part...

BSU Wins the Fiesta Bowl!

Congrats to Boise State University on beating Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl in an amazing overtime win, 43-42! Great game! =)

First Boring Post of 2007

As I sit here eating a luke-warm bowl of Chocolate Malt-O-Meal, yet listening to some wonderful classical music from the Magnatune Mozart podcast feed, I've decided to kick off the new year with a short blog regarding a few new items of general interest.

First off, college football: it seems that any time that UNR has had anything to do with Boise recently, they always lose, including last night's MPC Computers Bowl loss [results]. LOL

And, of course, BSU is also playing Oklahoma tonight in the Fiesta Bowl in just a few short hours. BSU is only the 2^nd non-BCS school (after University of Utah in 2004) to be in a BCS (Bowl Championship Series) bowl game.

Yesterday, we enjoyed some wonderful Sam's Choice White Cranberry Peach flavored juice cocktail, as well as some Chocolate Malt Ovaltine. This was in addition to the DareDevil Energy Drink that I also had enjoyed the previous day after inventory at work.

This morning, Becky and I planted four Ziva Paperwhite Narcissus bulbs using an indoor growing kit. 4 to 6 weeks from now, we should have some nice fragrant flowers assuming Becky remembers to water them each week... LOL

Today is also the official start of the BodySpace 2007 Transformation Group Blog Contest. Check it out!