“… his was the most human”

February 28, 2015

Jim Reeves geek, Personal , , , , Leave a comment

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Interstellar – a short review. Matthew McConaughey saves the world, but not in a Lincoln

February 14, 2015

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It’s a long movie.  I mean, really long.  At 2 hours and 49 minutes, it requires you devote a lot of time and attention to a story line that does not move quickly.  The unfortunate thing with that is there are enough plot holes that are large enough to fly a spaceship through, and the science is murky, at best.  With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

A quick synopsis: Continuing crop failures on Earth predict the collapse of human civilization.  Our only hope?  A secret plan from a NASA in hiding.  Send exploratory missions through a recently discovered, and not natural, wormhole, to another galaxy to find planets capable of supporting human life.  (they might have reasonably called the movie “Intergalactic”, since the new worlds are in some unspecified galaxy, far far away.  I suppose it didn’t test as well as “Interstellar”. Pity.)

The hero of the story is a former NASA engineer-turned-farmer who, after a convoluted story that leads him to the secret NASA facility, must go and find out what happened to the exploratory missions.

Worm holes, black holes, snarky robots, time dilation, relativistic issues, and love all work their way through the story, mostly killing people.  But in the end, our intrepid hero saves the day, saves humanity, and then steals a spaceship to join the woman he didn’t realize he loved on a desolate planet in another galaxy.

If you can ignore the glaring science fails, like a space station in Saturn’s orbit that is way too small for a 1g environment as shown, and too far away from the Earth to be as big as it is, and the seemingly random use of relativistic time issues while ignoring them elsewhere, to list just two, and focus instead on the story, then you’ll enjoy “Interstellar”.

Unless you’re really a sci-fi geek, however, I’d recommend waiting until it’s on DVD, Blu-Ray, or a streaming service to watch it.  That way you can take a break or two, and not feel like you’re a prisoner of doomsday.

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine.

Three and a half stars (or galaxies?).

Throwback Thursday – Jimmiejoe from a long time ago.

February 12, 2015

Jim Reeves Personal, Pictures , , , , , , 1 Comment

jim_MKB_late_70s

Mineral King Bowl, Visalia, in the late 1970’s.  The whole fam damily is here for someone’s graduation, but I’m not sure whose.  Possibly my sister Sherry’s, which would place it in June, 1977.  Maybe someone later, I’ll have to check and see if anyone else recalls who we were there for.  I’m about 19 or 20, and that ball cap is my REACT hat, back from my CB radio days.

If I had been out to myself at the time, let alone anyone else, I think I would have qualified as a “twink”.  Assuming the term was around then, I don’t know the history of that label to be sure. (I just checked, it started about that time, so I would have been one of the first! 😉 )

At any rate, a lot of water under the bridge since this Polaroid was snapped by one of the cousins that evening.  I wonder if I still have that watch laying around in some box somewhere?

Update from my bed. Rated ‘G’

February 7, 2015

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mattress_new

The new mattress sits nicely in the waterbed frame.

So, after about 40 years of waterbeds, I took the ‘plunge’, so to speak, and bought an actual mattress.  Even with the occasional stays in hotels, I wasn’t quite sure whether this idea would float or not.  I had really been spoiled by my waterbeds, and wondered if I would find a regular mattress comfortable enough to stick with.

I first acquired a water bed back in the mid 70’s, while I was in high school.  My first was a California King, with plush white ‘leather’ padding on the headboard, footboard, and side rails.  One of our cats at some point decided to ventilate the headboard by sharpening her claws on it, but fortunately never tried that with the mattress.  I had that bed for 15 years or so.  I bought the bed you see here next, another California King, and have had it ever since.

Now, I’ve loved my waterbeds through all these years.  Soft, warm, and comfortable as anything I’ve ever slept in, it was a huge decision to give it up.  The time had finally come, however.

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Draining the bed.

I had been thinking about getting a regular mattress for some time, as I had been noticing a tendency to some lower back pain if I stayed in bed too long.  As I really love lazing around in bed before getting up to start my day, this was proving to be a problem.

There are some other considerations that factored into the decision as well, but lets just say that waterbeds can sometimes be a challenge in romantic relationships and leave it at that.  It seems it was time to make the change.

I did some online searches and found a Sealy California King on sale at Sears, for $1,000 off the ‘suggested’ retail price.  A quick online form was filled out, my credit card took a hit, and a delivery was scheduled.

I’ve had the bed for just over a month now, and I think I’m pretty satisfied with it.  The biggest problem I experienced with regular beds during hotel stays was keeping warm, but that hasn’t yet proved to be an issue with this bed.  While I do miss the gentle rocking of the waterbed, the firmness of the mattress is more comfortable than I expected.  Hotel stays, with only one or two exceptions, had seemed like sleeping on boards, or on the floor.  I’ve not felt like that with this change.

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Empty waterbed frame waiting for the new mattress.

New sheets added to the adventure, and I’m becoming more and more acclimated to my new sleeping arrangements.  I still find myself sitting on the edge of the bed, sometimes, and unconsciously trying to adapt to the expected wave motion that is no longer there.  Also, rolling over in bed is a new experience, and has taken a bit of adjustment to get used to.

So now waterbeds are a thing of my past, and will probably remain so.  I’ve kept the mattress, liner, and heater, though, just in case.  You never know when I’ll wax nostalgic, and decide it’s time to get all retro and hipster, and fill that puppy back up.  Groovy, man.