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"Hitch" & "Must Love Dogs"
Just finished watching [Hitch] on DVD. The movie stars the likeable Will Smith as a matchmaker for men. Hitch puts his clients in the best possible situation to succeed in having the women of their dreams fall in love with them. “The rest is up to you”, he says.
The movie has some pretty good pacing the cast (Smith, Kevin James, Eva Mendes, and Amber Valletta) are very likeable and funny in their own way. There are predictable portions of the movie, but they are pulled off well.
[Must Love Dogs] on the other hand has two likeable actors in a poorly scripted movie. We find Diane Lane playing a recently divorced woman who is being pushed by her family into the dating scene. To help her along, one of her sisters posts Lane’s character’s profile on an online dating service. It is through there she meets a slew of men, including the recently divorced John Cusack. From there the fun begins.
What doesn’t work in this movie is the writing. The actors are likeable enough, oozing charisma off the screen. If only they had some smart words to say, as they would in real life, and not the dribble that pours out of their mouths, it would make this film a much more pleasant experience.
Hitch: B+
Must Love Dogs: D-
Things This Weekend
Farrah and I went to San Francisco this morning, going to [Paper Source] to look at paper products (of course). While there we had breakfast at the local [Noah’s Bagels] on Fillmore. I’m not a big bagel person, but I had the Egg Mit with Turkey Sausage. Not too bad.
After spending time at Paper Source, we headed down the street to Japantown to look at the [Nihonmachi Street Fair]. We arrived just in time to catch the taiko drum performance by the [San Francisco Taiko Dojo Rising Stars]. A quick walk around, then after some malasadas and a chicken rice bowl lunch, we headed back home.
Very nice day.
At It Again
As you can see, I’m at it again. I’m changing site pages here and there, trying to keep up with some technical skills. I am hoping it helps me on my next job.
Next job?
Yeah. If you don’t know already my time at my current position is short. In about three months and a week I will be in the unemployment line. It seems it’s cheaper to have a customer care workforce out of state then it is in state. I understand it was a business decision, but it sucks nonetheless. Suffice it to say I need to brush up on some Internet skills in hopes of landing another technical/Internet job. We shall see.
I’m back to the rotating header bit. Refresh the page to see what’s up! My [LiveJournal] page will still be up, serving as a backup to this site now. As I think I stated before, I enjoy the community aspect of sites like [LiveJournal] and [Yahoo!’s 360]. The only thing that turns me off is the lack of customization, though LiveJournal has more of this than Yahoo!
I may be trying some other new layouts here at [Janella.com]. If the page changes suddenly while you are on site, from one look to another, it’s just me f-ing around.
What Else
Since I haven’t posted much of late I’ll recap some of this weeks events.
Monday I found myself recovering from a long weekend of…shopping?!?! Farrah, Yen and I went to the [San Francisco Giftcenter & Jewerlymart]. Let me just say this: if you aren’t interested in jewelry and other gifts you won’t like the place. Well, let me rephrase that: they don’t have any cool electronic/computer stuff! It was a total of about 8–10 hours of me watching Farrah and Yen look around. It’s ok though. I’m pretty tough (just as long as I had my coffee). I took a couple of pictures and was able to try a new portable hard drive to transfer images to in the field. I think it will come in handy on long trips, like to Hawaii.
Tuesday [Madden 2006] came out. I’m not sure I’m going to buy it this year. I mean are the improvements that great to justify the $49.99 price tag? (Yeah, I ask myself that question every year). Luckily Fry’s has it on sale until the 16th for $36.99 just in case I change my mind.
Two of the guys are work, Evan and Bert, got me watching [24]! I mean really watching 24! I rented, watched and finished season one in less than a week. I’m almost done with season two which I find more interesting than the first. If you don’t know what 24 is about pick up an episode and check it out. BTW - Farrah will tell you how sick she is of hearing the title music from the DVDs for 24.
My other time has been spent working on getting the photo gallery back up. It’s almost there. Hopefully all will be well with it by the end of the month.
July - End of Month Rant
I haven’t written anything of too much substance this month. So let’s see what I can pull out of my butt right here.
First off, I added two new albums to the [Flickr] page. The first is a long over due album from Skylar’s birthday celebration in May. The photos were taken with the Sony T-1, before I got my Nikon:
I’ll need to go down and take some more photos of the kids, as well as Scott and Stefanie. The other album added was during a Yahoo! Music on the Green. The artist who was performing was [Brandi Carlile] She did a fine job. I’m not particularly happy with the photos I took of the event, wishing I was more aggressive, but that is something I need to work on.
This weekend not much happened. Today Farrah and I tried the new [Lori’s Diner] in Cupertino. We had a late lunch. The service was a little slow. Farrah ordered the Chicken Fried Steak (good) and I had the Southern Fried Chicken (good as well). Our waitress did notice that our orders were taking a bit long, as the dreaded ’large party ahead of you’ was getting all the service. So she gave us dessert for free! We enjoyed a nice hot fudge sundae for a nice summer’s day.
I also managed to finish season one of 24, watching it because Bert and Evan couldn’t stop talking about it!?!?!? Overall, season one was a satisfying season. The characters and storyline does make me want to continue onto the next series, so season two of 24 is in my Netflix queue.
What else? Well, a site update when sour when I tried to upgrade the Gallery application used for the site photos page. I’m still recovering from that because I didn’t have a ’latest backup’ of the web site. This should teach me to back up every week! So those photos will be inaccessible for a while.
I guess that is it for now. I’m going to head to bed.
#1 on Yahoo!
I know it’s difficult to tell in the image above, but when searching for ‘janella’ on Yahoo! this web site is the first result now! This makes janella.com the #1 result on Google and Yahoo! now. Who was ranked #1 before on Yahoo!’s search engine?
The item currently listed as #8
"[ I Will Only Love You ] Open this result in new window
... Best Viewed In 1024 x 768. Name: Janella_Lee. Age: 19. ...
www.sweetangelmissyou.blogspot.com - More from this site - Save - Block"
Dave's Headshots
Met up with Dave yesterday to do our weekly coffee talk. I had a chance to test out the replacement 50mm since I needed to get headshots of him for a web site. Well, here they are:
Overall I think they turned out well. I had to remember to enable the flash after the first shot, to fill out the shadows. I think it worked out. Man, I never noticed how much I like the 50mm.
Governor Arnold and Y!
The Governor of California visited work today to make a little speech. We waited in line, hopeful to get in, but fell about 50 people short of the door. Oh well, I didn’t vote for him (or the recall) anyway.
Here’s some photos from outside (with a few more @ my Flickr page):
Esthero @ The Filmore
Thursday was one of the times I was glad I checked my spam email. I get the weekly email from [Ticketmaster] about concerts. I guess I missed the one earlier about [Esthero] coming to town, and only found out on Thursday when she was playing on Friday?!?!?
I called Farrah to quickly confirm we had nothing plan, and was able to purchase some general admission tickets online. Finally, we get to see Esthero after missing her so many years ago.
Esthero in Seattle. Photos taken by [OptimusCrimeDeux]
Esthero came out full of energy. Her vocals were strong, her manner confident, and her energy contagious. She was chatty with the crowd, taking requests for a song here and there. She was wearing a black strapless number that posed problems for her during the show (having to continually pull it up to hide the goods), but otherwise danced around like there was no tomorrow. A great show.
Her set was a little under 90 minutes. Some of the songs she sang (in no particular order) were:
- Wikked Lil' Grrrls
- Breath from Another (just an a cappella tease)
- OG Bitch
- Superheroes (a cappella - by request)
- Gone
- My Torture
ENCORE:
- Joey
- Wish You Away
- We Are in Need of a Musical Revolution
Welcome Emmalia Rose!!!
“I was born Wednesday, June 29, 2005 at 8:24am. I weighed 7lbs 3oz and measured 18.5 inches. My turn-ons include nipples, balmex and pink onesies."
Congratulations to Mark and Ivria
July 4th Weekend - Pretty Quiet
It’s been a pretty low-key weekend. I have just been trying to recover from this cold-thing. Saturday I spent most of the day in bed, hoping I could go out and about on Sunday and Monday. And so I have been able to do so.
Yesterday, Farrah and I just hit the malls - Valley Fair, Vallco then Fry’s - to do a little window shopping for the most part. Coming back from a late breakfast we ran into Mitsuki and her father on their mid-day walk. You can see pictures either on my Flickr account or soon to be posted on the photo page:
Today we went over Farrah’s house for a BBQ lunch. I didn’t take any pictures, probably because I was upset with the fact that I might have lost a lens. Yeah, I can’t find my 50mm lens. I’m not sure when I had it last - I think during Kayla’s dance recital a couple of weeks ago. But I’m sure I had it in my bag. I’m thinking I simply put it down when I was changing the lens and left it behind somewhere. Luckily it is not a really expensive lens, but it still irks me that I lost it. Ugh.
Oh well, that’s the weekend wrap-up for you.
Mitsuki and Sunny 16
Farrah and I ran into Doug and Mitsuki on their mid-morning walk. I had the camera with me and started to take some photos of Mistuki, which I haven’t had the opportunity to do. I went to manual and forgot the sunny 16 rule, so few of the shots here have way too much light:
Luckily I could look at the LCD and quickly remedy the situation to get a couple of good shoots as well:
New Albums Posted
These new albums now available for viewing:
Photos from Yen’s birthday dinner.
Photos from Lotte’s birthday dinner.
Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
Still, there are plenty of early Peas-heads who remain disgruntled about the group's leap to the pop world. But go ahead and call them sellouts. Lead lyricist will.i.am doesn't mind. "It's cool. It makes me feel good because that means they really liked our first record."
I wouldn’t say I’m disgruntled, I just liked their old sound better. Not sure I’m getting into their new album. It’s pretty much pop, with a lot of contributing artists (Jack Johnson, Sting, Justin Timberlake…). It’s can be catchy stuff - which pop is supposed to be right?
For more on how B.E.P. feels about their changing sound, [read this CNN article].
Father's Day and Aloha Kitchen
Today we had Father’s Day breakfast/brunch at Aloha Kitchen in San Jose on 1041 East Capitol Expressway.. Uh, the food was so good. I had the Samin with BBQ Chicken and it was delicious!!! Farrah’s dad had Samin as well, her mom Portuguese Sausage and eggs, and Farrah had Hawaiian Pancakes.
Farrah’s dad struck up a conversation with another customer. The talk started off normal - How you doing? Where you from? The guy talked about what street he used to live on. Funny thing was that Farrah’s dad new exactly where that was and the neighborhoods’ residents specifically! So the guy would say, “Yeah, there is this short guy who lived in a house down the street…” and Farrah’s dad would reply, “Oh, you mean at 1084?" Amazing.
Later that day Farrah and I took my mom to visit my dad’s grave. It’s been over ten years, but still…
Dance Recital Rehearsal
I went to Kayla’s dance recital practice to take some photos, because there is more freedom to use a tripod or move around during the practice session All of these photos were taken with the aperture wide open to f/1.8 using the 50mm lens. Average shutter speed hovered at 50 so I got some blur here and there. Take a look at the photos and make any comments you’d like.
In order to see photos of Kayla herself you will need to have a Flickr account and be on my Friends or Family list. It’s easy to sign up for an account. Just [go to here]. After signing up do a search for me, sith_kicker, and add me as a contact. If you need help, just email me!