Avatar (2009)

Sam Worthington is my new favorite actor. He looks great in 3-D, too.

Okay now a few words about the movie. The story is quite good, keeps you riveted despite the length (2:42), in a way similar to Titanic but with significantly less love story and more Al Gore story, but in a good way. Versus Titanic, Avatar has even more incredible eye candy.

As everyone says, the 3-D starts a bit gimmicky but soon becomes more subtle and very pleasing. The world is beautiful. I couldn't suppress any of my gasps and murmured 'wow's in several scenes. Avatar is one of the few movies that I would go to see again in the theater. I don't know how or whether the 3D can be done well on DVD, but I kept the glasses just in case.

I did notice that at points the 3-D imaging with some particular camera lenses resulted in strange sizing effects with things looking out of proportion. Some people in the center of the frame looking much bigger than those at the edges. Hopefully this can be fixed in future 3-D films.

Outing Riley (2004)

After the film, I thought Pete Jones, the actor playing the protagonist (as well as writer and director) must be gay, but it turns out he has a wife and kids. I suppose he must have some great gay friends because the film turned out well. I'd read some criticism on imdb of the film that it wasn't gay enough. But actually I thought it was pretty well spot on and rang pretty well true.

Star Trek (2009)

Finally saw it beginning to end on dvd. I'd previously only seen the second half on a plane. How excellent!

The dvd has some enlightening extras including a part in the "making of" about lens flares when in fact during the movie, I noticed that these were nice realistic lighting effects that I had never seen before. It also talks about the camera shaking, mirrors and miniatures. J.J. Abrams is brilliant.

But what was the deal with the 20th century crashbar on the door and the concrete block design of the Delta-Vega outpost manned by Scottie (Simon Pegg)? One might think they would have changed from two century old Earth-based design elements by then?

I also just noticed that Vulcans are the elves of space. They have the same pointy ears as the LOTR elves, are 'wise' in a certain way, live up to 250 years, and are always in danger of extinction. They even have special powers like mind meld and nerve pinch. Perhaps this is why Vulcans weren't given night vision and the males don't have long hair. It would be too much of an obvious thematic copy.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

A few minutes in, I thought about leaving the theater. I only went because the person I went with seemed interested in it, but of course I'd forgotten that this person is quite uninformed about movies. And damn that Google movies website with it's 4/5 star rating. I'll never trust Google movies again. (I just checked imdb now, and it gave a more accurate 4.5/10 rating.) I had thought that this was going to be an action flick, but action flick, it definitely is not. This is really a teen chick flick.

Almost the only redeeming value is the eye candy later in the film in the form of Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black. Wow, what a body, and he has a pretty face, too. (For some reason, from looking at his nose, I was guessing that he might be part Asian.)

The movie assumes you've seen the TV series and know who everyone is. So dropping into this Twilight story cold is quite jarring and makes you think you're missing out on all the inside jokes, and you've made a serious mistake in coming, which you basically have.

Another serious negative for liberal/atheist movie-goers will be the references to human souls, and the brief but 'what-have-I-done,-have-I-come-to-a-red-neck-movie-but-I'm-in-California-dammit' Glenn Beck ad/preview which made my blood boil. But actually these agonizing moments are pretty fleeting, and surprisingly the story did take shape and have drama, if only in disconnected moments. I think it would be a reasonable film to watch on DVD, where you can gaze at some shirtless torsos for a bit longer.

There are at least a couple very strange and counter intuitive casting choices: the hairy chested guy plays the vampire, and the smooth chested guy plays the werewolf.

Fateful Choices by Ian Kershaw

I heard about this book while in Paris on CNN Int'l. It's a 2007 book which basically goes back to WWII and reviews ten choices made which altered the course of the war dramatically. They are all fascinating. A couple which I had no idea about were the choices of Japan at that time to continue its aggression against China and the rest of Asia -- it was at the time highly dependent on American oil -- and Germany to go back on its agreement with Russia and actually attack Russia, the two front war decision. But besides these there is also the decision by Great Britain to continue to fight Germany despite expectations of a near destruction of its army (expeditionary force, it was called) in France near Dunkirk and the imminent surrender of close allies Belgium and France. A really thick tome, but exceptionally well written as it considers the thinking at the time and the egos of the personalities involved in making the decisions.

The Rating Game by Reba Toney

Leave it to a woman to figure out a workable dating method. But it seems surprisingly sensible. Boiled down: what usually works is if both people bring -- not necessarily the same thing -- but something equivalent to the table. First off, if a person is a real loser in every way, that person would never rate a winner in any way. Since people value different things, perhaps the author's innovation is not to focus on just the obvious aspects: face and body. There's also personality and money (latter is euphemistically termed "life situation"). As she says, this seems key to the success of hetero: supermodel/rock star couplings. I.e. the man's ugliness is canceled out by his attractive personality, status, friends and money through a simple averaging function. One key of course is to be honest on one's own rating so one doesn't date outside of one's rating class. The author even tosses in some semi-helpful hints on improving one's various categories. Perhaps this is a more detailed look at what it means when people say: "he's way out of your league".

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins

My favorite (warning: spoiler) passage:

Shooting the messenger is one of humanity's sillier foibles, and it underlies a good slice of the opposition to evolution that I mentioned... 'Teach children that they are animals, and they'll behave like animals.' Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality, that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false. It is quite astonishing how many people cannot grasp this simple point of logic. The fallacy is so common it even has a name, the argumentum ad consequentiam - X is true (or false) because of how much I like (or dislike) its consequences.

I would add in the case of the hypothesis of God (a name for religion), the life after death or 'Heaven' is the consequence that people so want to be true that they ignore all other contrary information including evidence for evolution.

I've learned a few things from this book despite having some knowledge about evolution already:

1. Evolution has been observed to happen in experiments conducted on bacteria and animals. That bacteria has been observed to evolve should be expected. Bacteria grow very quickly and have new generations over a short period of time. But animals generally reproduce more slowly. In experiments, lizards were brought from one island to another, and guppies from one stream to another. Both animals were observed to evolve to better adapt to the environment even over the relatively few generations compared to those observed in bacteria.
   
2. In embryology, how do cells which are dividing specialize into different parts of the body? The answer is simple, they don't divide evenly. One daughter cell gets certain parts of the mother cell and the other daughter cells gets other parts. How does this relate to evolution? It shows how the DNA recipe is used to determine ultimate shape and function of an animal's body. I.e. relating to genetics and passing of characteristics from one generation to another.
3. How continental drift works is by creation of rock generally in the middle of oceans and consumption of rocks usually at the other side of the continent. (Actually, I knew this, but forgot some details.) This relates to evolution by explaining why South America and Africa have similar fossils because they were once attached.
   
4. Using radioactive decay of several different isotopes, scientists determined the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. (I knew that scientists had determined this, but didn't remember how.) This relates to refuting creationist belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
5. There is substantial fossil evidence linking humans to apes, but fossils are not required to prove that evolution happens (see item #1).
   

But while this book is written to preach to the choir, I would like to think that a relatively open minded non-dogmatic moderate religious person could open this book and be somewhat persuaded. I could be wrong about that, but to my religious friends I propose my usual experiment, read the book and see if you found the needle moved in any way towards belief of evolution.

Henry's 12th Street Tavern, Portland

Portland is the US beer capital. This place has got a gazillion different ones. If you're confused when confronted by the menu, it's worth trying the chocolate beers.

Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)

It's an in your face message to men, including gay ones, about the incomprehensible need women have for 'romance', the perversely increasing desirability of a man when he is already loved by another woman, and womens' disregard for men's looks. Let's just say Bardem is quite far from the gay male ideal. I didn't get this movie. Perhaps, I just don't want to. This is a Woody Allen film, no wonder. I've never liked his films, except maybe Match Point (and that one just a little), sorry to say.

Gran Torino (2008)

The midwest neighborhood is extremely volatile with teenage thugs around every corner in gangs of all races, seemingly egged on in testosterone filled quests to display dominance and carry out violence. The movie does a good job of side-stepping the need to explain this lack of chill behavior by focusing on old Korean war veteran Walt played by Clint Eastwood. A fascinating, direct, seemingly racist, somewhat tortured and crusty old man who just lost his wife, now seems disconnected from almost everyone except his barber perhaps. But violent happenings in the neighborhood come to pull him out of his isolation. A great story, and of Eastwood's recent films as an actor, actually I liked this role the best.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

It could otherwise be entitled, something like: the strange and unhappy things that happen when you marry a strange person. Both DiCaprio and Winslet are very good in this film about a tumultuous marriage. The movie does surprisingly well at allowing the viewer see this from both points of view. Later it becomes clear to the practical and realists in the audience, that one of them is a villian and far more strange than the other.

The Proposal (2009)

Several years ago, when there were sitcoms and I watched more tv: 2 guys, a girl and a pizza place had Ryan Reynolds in it. He was easy on the eyes back then. In this movie, he's in as good a form. The story has the usual romantic comedy contrivances, but overall funny and engaging, and pleasant to watch. Actually, it's too bad I saw it on a tiny screen on a plane.

I Love You, Man (2009)

The mysterious male bonding ritual as portrayed here is actually at points shown at its most powerful, where a male friend can be a great ally, sounding board for ideas, fun. Of course, we all know this, but its interesting in this story of a man who never found it interested him enough to try to develop such friendships until his fiancee worries that he'll be groomsmen-less at the ceremony. Nicely done.

Male clothing shopping in Paris

Department stores in Paris are generally very expensive and don't hold sales except twice a year. This seems very stupid, but it's the way they work. So generally I suggest not to waste time in the department stores unless you don't mind paying more than what you would pay in the US. There are a few standalone clothing store chains, not boutiques, which had men's clothing for more reasonable prices. These were:

• H&M, a Swedish clothier, is in the Forum Les Halles and on Rue de Rivoli. Of course, H&M now has many US locations.
  
• C&A, a chain started in the Netherlands, is on Rue de Rivoli
• Celio, a chain started in Paris, has several locations including Forum Les Halles and Rue de Rivoli
• Jules, a French chain, is in the Forum Les Halles

Actually, I'm sure these chains have other Paris locations, too. These were just more convenient for me.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Very interesting book. It discusses the instinctive versus thinking mind. There are pitfalls of the 'thinking' brain such as loss aversion and difficulty with high complexity. The book highlights that very experienced people, quarterbacks, poker players, have instincts which can be correct and these have to be relied upon in some brief decision window situations rather than the slower 'thinking' process. Nevertheless, other people in more life/death situations need to be mindful of pitfalls of their instincts and override them or disregard them, for example, in panic situations. In a way this book is a lot like parts of 'Blink' and 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell, but somehow it seems more cohesively written.

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A few people coming to this post are asking if Lehrer is gay. Though he's somewhat cute, I believe he is married to a woman. Besides on his latest book jacket, he's obviously straight, wearing the horrific fashion faux pas of two tone plastic glasses frames.

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Lehrer has since had a big downfall because of made up information in his more recent book Imagine and rehashed/reworked blog posts.  This book How We Decide has been pulled by the publisher because of similar inaccuracies.

SFMOMA: Avedon and Adams/O'Keefe

You might think Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keefe would be more exciting than Richard Avedon. You'd be wrong. I'd seen Avedon's American West at the Cantor (Stanford) exhibit a few years ago, and I knew he was good. But the SF MOMA exhibit has those as well as some photos from other times and with famous people, including Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, Truman Capote, and an ensemble portrait of Andy Warhol and Members of the Factory. As it happens some guys are nude in that last one. There's also the photo of Twiggy with the massive and awesome hair all in the air. The photos are all from large format film and large prints.

If your strapped for time, I'd almost skip the Adams and O'Keefe which wasn't terribly new and was horribly crowded.

Paris, Je t'aime (2006)

The city is lovely on film. My favorite vignettes are the one Elijah Wood is in, Gus Van Sant's piece, and the last one.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)

Seems to have been written by someone who is good friends with gay people. A mainstream flick with nothing gay in the main storyline, but lots of gay side material. There are even attractive gay guys in this movie who are not basket cases and actually they're the good guys of the film. Kind of amazing how Hollywood has evolved.

Is the story believable though? Ah well. Not really, but it's entertaining all the same. The music is good, if inoffensive.

One funny line is where Cera's character, Sal, says most believeably on suffering from his breakup: "It's tough being a straight guy."

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

A nice watchable film. But I think a little overrated considering the 8 Oscar wins.

What drove the kid? Love of a girl, who is now lost. How to connect with her? Become famous! Not a little idealistic and crazy, but perhaps just an exaggerated version of an occasional truth of the human condition: boy wins girl through dogged determination and courageous acts.

With other occasional truths (requiring less effort) being boy wins girl through having a job, being a prince, having good looks or having fashion sense (similar to being a prince).

Terminator: Salvation (2009)

I had a good conversation about meta-physics and science fiction genre after seeing this film with a friend. It seems to me the Terminator shares quite a bit with the Matrix. I found this Terminator a mildly intellectual exercise and one which manages to satisfy. I.e no major holes in the story, though there are obviously paradoxes. One weird thing which isn't giving anything away I don't think, is seeing your own father as a young kid. How weird would that be? (And then of course, how much weirder, as I was reminded by my buddy, later sending him off to die -- without telling him perhaps -- to make it with your Mom to have you?)

Doubt (2008)

The universal signifier of a gay boy: he wonders if he looks fat? This could have been a much shorter film it seems to me. I was able to get through it using some FFwd in about an hour without really missing anything. I read through a few reviews before writing this. They pretty much pan Streep's performance. I actually liked it. I thought it was good and had a lot of good gaffuws at how impressively and stylishly her character, despite being so one-note, actually makes progress in her investigation.

The Reader (2008)

Kate Winslet and the boy protagonist, Michael Berg, spend a lot of time naked in this film. This definitely improved Winslet's chances I think for the Oscar, and the crossover appeal. Ralph Fiennes seems a bit off here following the boy's mostly exuberant performance, else the boy had really changed in demeanor quite significantly having grown up greatly. I found exceptional and strange compassion for Winslet's character, perhaps it was a good understanding of one of her weaknesses, I guess. [Hey, the actor playing the boy is probably in his late teens, early twenties.] Winslet's was a very worthy performance.

The Living End (1992)

Made in the middle of the devastating peak of the AIDS crisis, the movie muses on the nihilistic themes of death. The death sentence leads to a road trip and love, sort of.

Louis C.K. "Chewed Up"

I watched this comedian on Comedy Central last night. He was hilarious. I thought strangely amusing (but no, not exciting) his little bit on date rape: a woman he dated who wanted him to force her to have sex with him. But he touched on a lot of topics, including what it's like being a white male (difficult to complain) and why his own kids are so annoying.

The Boys in the Band (1970)

Not to be confused with And the Band Played On. It's a play from the liberation days about gays which was Off Broadway and successful and was later made into a movie. It's actually quite a good one.

The Ecologist (magazine)

I only just found out about this British magazine which has a lot of excellent articles about saving the environment by reducing your carbon footprint, etc. As it happens, in June, the magazine is going completely online and dropping their print edition. Man that's not very convenient, but perhaps more ecological.

The Man of My Life (2007)

A story with an interesting premise which goes to the question of whether men are more compatible with other men as friends. Seems obvious probably this is true. And then goes on to the deeper question of whether they would bond rather more intimately, while it still being a platonic interest. This happens while one man is happily married and straight with kids, and the other is a swinging single gay guy. The men in the movie bond to the extent that it even disrupts the married man's sex life. This is taking it a bit far I think, but overall it held my interest. The movie is in French and has a very French tone. It is a very intellectual movie and -- being written and directed by a woman -- not macho or homophobic.

The NYTimes review provides more background and interpretation.

Zinwell HDTV converter box

I have an old vcr which still works fine. Of course, I could buy/subscribe to Tivo, but I just want to tape a few shows. So I bought the Zinwell box from Amazon which has a programmable timer and of course I had to buy a UHF splitter for my antenna, since my TV has an HDTV tuner already. The cost of the box exceeded the $40 gov't coupon, but just by $10. The tuner is actually more sensitive than my TV tuner, and it flips channels more quickly and also shows the program information. Picture quality from the box only SDTV, but after saving to VHS format, it looks about like something from that old tape technology. One great thing is that the box only uses max of 1.3Watts in standby. (My TV is like 40Watts in standby, so now it's on a wall switch.) Okay, so it takes a programming degree -- something I pretty much have from school -- to get the whole thing to set up, but now that it's done, VCR and box turn on at the same time. Presto, I now have completely *free* time shifting tv watching. But I still have to watch the Daily Show online. Oh well, you can't have it all.

Jay Leno is moving to 10pm, but until then I can get him on tape. One less reason to stay up late. Perhaps I'll be watching more tv now?

An Army of Ex-Lovers by Amy Hoffman

I'm not much of a fiction reader, and so it's great when a gay writer decides to write non-fiction. Amy Hoffman worked as an editor at Gay Community News in the middle of the Gay Rights movement in America, and fills in a little more about to beginnings of the work to equality.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Good, if a bit long movie. Pitt is perhaps the Achilles heel in way because he plays himself, the pretty boy, and the movie over-emphasizes this conceit. I'd say the story falls apart a bit at the end where it needed a bit more craftsmanship. Still, a pretty diverting and enjoyable movie.

Something strange about this movie is that everyone in it loves in a very selfless way. This seems unrealistic.

Eagle Eye (2008)

A surprisingly good action flick. I think I'm kind of warming up to Shia LaBeouf. The movie made me wonder a bit about the science of identical twins. Do they have identical fingerprints? I did a Google search on this and the answer is no. Could they have very different personalities? I think the answer is yes. (There are identical twins with different sexual orientations.) But the story is well done and meets my plot self-consistency criteria.

The sexual paradox : men, women, and the real gender gap by Susan Pinker

A book which attempts to explain the backsliding on gender equality which has happened. I.e. where women seem to actually be hitting a glass ceiling and fewer women go into previously entirely male dominated fields than one would expect by simply assuming the only barrier previously to women doing these jobs was discrimination.

The books basically says men and women are different. They have different goals. You will probably never have the same number of women interested in jobs dealing with competition and 80 hr/week jobs with huge pressure because women just don't enjoy that kind of job as much as men do.

Really it seems obvious, but for those having grown up with the ideal of absolute and interchangeable equality, it's a bit of a reality check.

Eternal Summer (2006)

A surprisingly good film from Taiwan about a gay kid and his nominally straight friend. It also gives a little flavor of life as a high school student in Taiwan, which seems a little less full of homophobic machismo compared to what one might encounter in the US. Still I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to have gone to school there.

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***Major spoilers***

The straight characters are a little too perceptive of what's going on with the gay character. How would they know what's going on with him? And what I would call pity sex seems rather unlikely to happen, though without it, the story doesn't quite work as anything except a tragedy.

Saturn in Oppostion (2007)

The replacement family: a movie partly about the friends of the gay couple and their problems. The protagonist is played by a real pretty guy. But otherwise a more pedestrian drama, at times focused on age differences and love.

Milk (2008)

I was amazed by the moving and well tuned portrayal of Harvey Milk by Sean Penn. He was able to take up some of Harvey's mannerisms, seemingly pretty naturally. The movie serves double duty by filling in a lot of the background of the story of gay rights, Anita Bryant, and Prop 6 which many today don't know unless they are history buffs or into reading about the topic. There is also a fine, if placid, soundtrack by Danny Elfman.

A few straight friends have said the movie was boring (actually they said they fell asleep watching it). I wonder if I wasn't gay if I would say (have done) the same thing. Perhaps. Hey folks, a forewarning: this is not an action flick.

All-American Rejects: When the World Comes Down

Not as full of hits as some previous albums, but some great melodic tracks like: I Wanna, Breakin', and [Untitled].

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Pink: Funhouse

Not as good as her previous album, but a couple nice tracks: Please don't leave me and It's all your fault.

The Duchess (2008)

A story with an unexpected lesson on the devotion of mothers to their offspring. Being based on a true story, it's all the more surprising. Keira Knightley doesn't seem terribly attractive here. Dominic Cooper doesn't raise my blood pressure either. The acting and story carry the movie along well though.

Society without God by Phil Zuckerman

The author spent some time in Scandinavia where belief in Christianity would seem to be strong with nationalized Christian churches. Actually, Denmark and Sweden are the world's most secular nations. Despite this, they consistently rate as the happiest nations in the world.

The author has some interesting theories on why it turned on this way. The Danes and Swedes national religion actually has little in the way of competition. Supported by the government, the church is somewhat complacent compared to the heavy marketing, including Us vs Them message of the American churches.

An interesting question delved into by the author is the question of fear of death. The secular Danes and Swedes seem to have a healthy attitude towards death. They do not fear it, and understand it to be simple ceasing to exist similar to animal death. The author then makes the point, that this is probably a better attitude than the fear and uncertainty caused by the 'question' of heaven or hell.

[It's actually one hell of a crazy marketing tactic: create something which cannot be verified called a soul and say that it survives in another plane of existance where it's immortal, but it can either suffer forever or take it easy forever. In fact, it plays on the human aversion to loss. Does one accept this next to impossible explanation for existance or accept a more mundane one that the end is the end, and lose out on the possibility of heaven? Diabolical. And if it works on a community, it makes the population hugely more piable for enforcing norms. I.e. thou shalt not covet they neighbors wife or risk hell, etc.]

The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green (2005)

This is probably not a crossover hit, I don't think. The sex scenes aren't really explicit, but straight guys might still not find its generosity of male flesh something to go out of their way to see.

But as a gay film, I really liked it. The idea of romantic relationship self-sabotage is intriguing, though it obviously has nothing to do with my relationships. (Those don't need self- or any other kind of sabotage.)

The comic which the movie is based on isn't pretty to look at, but the movie is, with a number of young, cute, believably gay acting guys in the cast. Gay movies typically are low budget: and some can have horrific acting (Regarding Billy comes to mind), but the acting here is quite good and the story moves along well.

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A reasonably good movie with a similar (romantic self-sabotage) theme, but completely different story line: Boy Culture.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)

I actually found this movie funny, and I was surprised it got such a bad rating on imdb. It does have a point of view: leans towards Israel. I am guessing that Adam Sandler is at least part or entirely Jewish. The Israeli directness is entirely truthful, at least based on my very small personal experiences and from what other people say. I didn't know that recent Jewish immigrants to the US run electronics stores in NYC.

Burn After Reading (2008)

Another Coen brothers movie with a fast moving/multi-point of view plot/action line. A big ensemble cast with lots of big names. Still, I found the film dissatisfying. The goal -- which is similar to all Coen films -- seems to be to take all that big starpower and put it into as ugly and shocking a wrapper as possible. The story is ugly and so are the characters. A bit of a waste to have pretty boys Brad Pitt and George Clooney in such an unattractive movie. Okay, well it is darkly funny in parts.

[Actually though, Pitt and Clooney are getting old, so actually this movie might be a good choice for them.]

The Dark Knight (2008)

There are quite a lot of visual effects in this film, most of them done well, but some fall a little short and look clearly artificial, especially in the two-face villain. An extreme but diverting application of Prisoner's dilemma in one plot point to very memorable effect -- "I'm going to do what you all should have done ten minutes ago..." Heath Ledger does an fine, almost unbelievable, job as Joker. He breaks the spooky/crazy meter with his voice in delivering the line: "Whyyy sooo seeerious??!"

Kings of Leon: Only by the night

I must be getting old: I like this group's very mellow and relaxing sound. They're so mellow they hardly qualify as alternative ("rock") which is listed as their genre. 80's classic rock would probably be a more correct classification. My favorite songs on this album: Sex on Fire, Manhattan and Notion.

Windows 7 Beta

Beta download link (until Jan 24). So far okay. I'm not sure how long I'm going to be saying that, but it hasn't crashed yet. 7's Aero is prettier than my el cheapo but low graphics requirements Vista Home edition. It did force me to uninstall (not just disable) McAfee before upgrading. You can also install the Beta on an empty partition instead of upgrading from Vista (i.e. multiboot on XP system). Had a little problem with my Microsoft Intellimouse Optical where it would periodically stop taking input from it, but unplugging it and replugging it seemed to make that problem disappear.

Microsoft is onto something with the included desktop themes. I wonder why previous Windows was so light on nice pretty backgrounds. It shouldn't cost much to buy rights to some nice eyecandy. It makes a big difference, I think.

Desktop preview, which hides your windows temporarily (actually makes them transparent, but keeps an outline) is also a good idea.

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I'm just now realizing what I'd been missing as far as Windows Premium/Ultimate versus Basic. Premium has Windows Media Center with the fancy Chess and Mahjong games and music player with cover animation. It's slick. I was able to win at chess on easy and with several undo. Okay, yeah, that's cheating, but it still feels like an accomplishment.

Jesse McCartney: Departure

I have no idea who Jesse McCartney is, aside from some baby faced guy I had vaguely heard of on the web. I had to do a search for him on Wikipedia, and even then nothing rings a bell: All My Children? But anyway his third and latest album, Departure, has a number of catchy tunes on it. My favs: Leavin' and How do you sleep? That said, his high pitched voice can be a little rough on the ears.