Chore Wars

Do you ever get into those "discussions" with your family members about who has done what around the house and who feels they have been working overtime on the chores while the other has just put off taking out the garbage for too long? Well now you can settle these disputes with Chore Wars. It's a nice little role playing game where you are rewarded points and other things for completing household tasks or any tasks you choose to create. Ben and I have joined the Clang clan and began checking off our completed chores for the last week. I am Ms. Sparkles and he is Elkton. Since I am busy with homework today I think Ben will far surpass my current Level 2 Cleric with 320 experience points (and a DSW certificate treasure).

http://www.chorewars.com/index.php

The children sensed his weakness once Kirsten mummified him...

Bug Cakelets for Johnny and Kirsten's Birthday

Johnny & Kirsten's Birthday Party

Johnny and Mitch rocking out on Guitar Hero.

Papa seems to be enjoying himself.

Lighting candles on each bug cakelet.

So did they plan their hair to match?

Grandma and Kirsten

iPhone

06/29/2007 - Well I'm in line for the iPhone. About 70 people in front of me and about 20 behind. We've been told that we shouldn't have a problem getting one so that's great. It's actually a nice day to wait out. Got a nice chair and wireless. Unfortunatly only about a 10% battery charge.

So you wanna talk to a live person ay?

Have you ever sat on hold or tried to navigate a complicated phone system when all you want to do is get a person. I've been through some systems that are so complicated and the option I need isn't there that I get kicked out. Well here is a website that lists the customer service number, offers a cheat code to get a live person, and gives you the opportunity to grade the company on their service.

http://gethuman.com/

Let us know if you try it.

Interesting article on how illegal immigration came to be...

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20070507-chinese-exclusion-act-california-chester-a-arthur-immigration-san-francisco-earthquake-of-1906-paper-sons.shtml

I bet I know this kid's father, friend, or relative...

While driving home tonight I was listening to NPR. Not an unusual situation. On "The World" they featured a kid from Novosibirsk, Russia that creates 80's-ish pop electronica songs. Also not an unusual topic for NPR. The crazy part is that a LARGE majority of our Russians at work are physicists or summer kids (kids of the physicists at work) from Novosibirsk. This kid's father is a physicists at one of the local universities in Novosibirsk. I bet someone I know knows this kid personally or at least his father.

With that said, I'm a sucker for 80's electronica. Some of my favorite all time bands include Depeche Mode and New Order. This kid's music was an instant hit with me. Check out his MySpace page.

http://myspace.com/romanrevutsky

Next

Ok this one is a bit easier for me to write about. I went to see this movie just to kill some time before Spiderman 3. I really hadn't heard much about the film with the exception of seeing a relatively bad 33% on rotten tomatoes and one commercial. But it was playing and it was that or sitting in Starbucks.

I'm actually really glad that I decided on this over tasty drinks. The movie is about a man who can see two minutes into his own future. Once he looks ahead he can decide to change it. Where it gets tricky is that he can then wait a split second and look ahead again and see if that change was a wise move and change it again. He can keep doing it until he gets what he's trying to do right. The movie revolves around a girl (Jessica Biehl) who he sees months before he actually meets her. He proceeds to wait in the same dinner every day at the same time that was on his watch until he meets her. She's both a love interest and a catalyst for the plot (and she's not hard on the eyes :). There also is an FBI agent played by Julianne Moore who is trying to track him down because terrorists have smuggled a nuke into Los Angeles and they need to track it down before it goes off. Because of the FBI's interest in him the terrorists want to kill him just in case he can do what they think he can. He doesn't want to be found by either because if he helps the FBI he'll be a slave to them forever. If the terrorists find him...well he'd be dead and that's not good.

The real interesting aspect of the movie is where he uses his powers to plan out how to get out of situations he gets into. He can see where bullets are coming from so he can dodge them. He can search an entire building in a blink by viewing each potential outcome of walking down each hallway. It's really a nice trick and I would love to see it expanded on.

Unfortunately there are some weaknesses in the script most particularly in the ending. It's certainly not a bad ending but it's kind of a cliffhanger for a sequel which probably won't happen (The movie has only made 10 million so far). The critics really didn't like it, of course they didn't like his last movie National Treasure either and I really liked that one. I don't know I'd recommend it for viewing in the theater but it's definitely one to see on DVD.

3 stars (out of 5)