Life: Magical and Realistic

Your online presence

I used to work as the privacy guy at Yahoo!, and was generally pretty concerned about my privacy.  I am a very private person, or I should say, I used to be.  A friend of mine introduced me to Twitter, and here I am writing this blog, so I can't say that I am that private a guy anymore.  But I do control my online presence, and what I say here and there, as I would in any open dialog in a restaurant, where I am surrounded by strangers.  Surrounded by strangers who somehow know my name and can google me, but you get the idea.

And I recommend you control your online persona too.  Because, you know, we all have heard stories about "that Facebook picture" someone saw and laughed about as it was emailed around the school/office/you name it, or something a boss read that made "someone" lose their job.  And so on and so forth.  But it all seems a bit unreal, kind of unlikely in fact.  Or so I thought, until today.

I have been emailing with the nice folks at an email marketing company.  Yesterday, I had to get an email answered right away, but as it turns out the person I was dealing with was not available (which is a whole other rant, for another day), so I emailed with someone else, who was very nice and seemed very professional.  Since I like to put a face to a name, I googled her, to see if there were a LinkedIn profile, or something like that, so I could see who I was dealing with.  Her LinkedIn profile did not have a photo, but I noticed her college, Hope College, and had realized there was another link on the search results page that included the words Hope College and her name, and that there might be a photo there.  So I went back and took a look.  Plus, to be honest, at this point I was just curious.

The second link had a photo of her and her sister, and their names.  Most of the other links on the search results page were irrelevant, but there was one link to a TV show called "Amazing Race," which I had never heard of... could this be the same person?  Was I emailing with an actress?  It seemed unlikely, but I followed the link, and sure enough, it was her!  (I deduced this as she was on this TV show with her sister - you guessed it, the one from the second link I described above). 

I was still intrigued, so I checked out some of the other links, including one to Naked Wiki, and the subcategory Mooning.  And there was the following entry:

During The Amazing Race 8 (Family Edition), <name redacted> mooned the Linz family, whose car was driving next to theirs. The mooning was obscured by pixelization.

I had to laugh!  At that point, I figured I knew just a little bit too much about this stranger, in fact, some things more intimate than I know about my real world friends.  Not that any of it was bad, or even something I might not do myself.  But it changes the whole way I would ever deal with her, and it kind of reflects on the company (in a way I didn't even expect, to be honest).   I am sure within the company or her group, none of this is a big deal.  But the degrees of separation between me and her are enormous, and yet I feel I know her quite well.  Weird.

I am not sure where this story is going, or why I even wrote it, aside to provide a real life cautionary tale to all of you out there who go around mooning people on TV shows.  It may just come back and bite you in the ass.

Back on the Saddle

I have decided to train to do a century ride this October.  I had been inspired by seeing a bunch of SF to LA Aids Ride bike riders on a recent trip down Highway 1 from SF to SC.  I once did the same ride, back in '99, when I was definitely younger, and certainly a lot more fit.  But, for some reason, even though I have not been working this entire last year, getting up the motivation to get out and ride has somehow escaped me.  Too many choices here in SC of things to do, other than riding, I guess.

But in the winter I really got back into it, even going out and getting new cold weather biking gear, gloves, etc. and pedaling like crazy.  I started exploring the Mt. Biking trails behind UCSC, going down Wilder Ranch through some scary shit terrain (to me anyway), and back home.  And was feeling pretty damn good about myself.  Well, till my first (no, make that second) bike accident ever.  It was a silly one, really.  I was riding my cross bike down a steep hill, coming to a T-Junction with a car stopped at the stop sign on my left.  As I went through the stop sign, after slowing down a bit, I thought I saw the car inch forward.  Did it?  Was it my imagination?  I will never  know, but the result was a skid, crash, and other embarrassment, resulting in a broken wrist (left hand).  Since I had never broken anything I had no idea it was broken till the next day when I went in for x-rays.  I did notice that if I tried to put any pressure on it, it hurt like hell.  For those of you out there who never broke anything, that is your tip-off.

So, that pretty much stopped me in my tracks for awhile, and then getting back on the bike again took some time.  Even when I got back on the bike my wrists still bugged me, and it took some time to really get going again.  But I did, and it makes me very happy!

But in mid-May I started up again, and then was trying to think of some kind of motivational ride that would keep me focused (and riding) through the end of the year.  A friend of mine sent me a link to the New Surf City Aids ride, and so it goes!  Now I am trying to convince some of my old cycling buddies to come with me so I don't have to ride alone.

But no matter what, I will be out there, rain or shine.  It is good to be back.

Movie: What Happens in Vegas

I was bragging yesterday to some friends as we were sitting on the beach near Half Moon Bay that I get to watch a lot of movies these days and that I kind of review them in this blog.  So that reminded me of the fact that I saw the movie What Happens in Vegas the other day with my wife on our date night, and that I hadn't reviewed it yet.  I guess the reason why I hadn't reviewed it yet was because it was a pretty uninteresting and unmemorable movie.  In fact, I needed to look up the name online to even remember what I saw!  Not an auspicious start to any review...

Now, don't get me wrong:  I love the concept of this movie, and I love Las Vegas.  I was introduced to Las Vegas late in my life (post 33 years old, in fact), and on my way there with friends of both sexes was told to pinky swear (also a new concept) that what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas.  And Cameron Diaz is kind of a babe, so there is that too.  But the movie didn't really move me, and at the end I walked away thinking I should have just waited till it came out on DVD.  But since I have been on this movie roll, I had to go, and so that was that.

The movie starts by introducing us to the two main characters, a likeable but unworldly Cameron Diaz and her foil, Aston Kutcher (who I also just looked up since I could not remember his name) who have misadventures in NYC and wind up in Vegas to let their hair down a bit.  The funniest bits take place in their initial meetings in the hotel room, and subsequent night out on the town.  Lo and behold, they get married in a drunken misadventure, and wake up the next morning with one of those "who the hell is this next to me" feelings - you know the kind (if your honest, and me).  So, they immediately realize they are not right for each other, decide to annul the marriage, but end up winning $3 million dollars in a progressive slot machine and need to stay together.  The rest of the movie is full of the usual "getting to know you scenes" in which they hate each other, then learn to understand each other, then finally figure out they are actually perfect for each other in a sappy, Hollywoodesque type of long drawn out ending.

I guess I would sum it up likes this:  what starts out as a guy movie, ends up (somewhere less than halfway through) as a chick flick.  So, I guess everyone wins, kind of, although what I really think is everyone goes away half-satisfied.  Kind of like going to Vegas and winning a lot of money at the very end once you have pretty much busted out the first few days, so that you end up "even."  So you leave Vegas with this unsatisfying feeling because if you had won earlier, you could have really lived it up, but since you won late, you are just happy to get out of there "alive." 

And that is how this movie made me feel.

Movie: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

It was a beautiful, sunny day yesterday, the kind of day you want to just wander around aimlessly on the beach picking up sea-shells and contemplating things worth contemplating while eating a very melty ice-cream cone, chocolate preferably.  But the two kids were at school till 5pm, allowing Claudia and me to go out and actually do something together, sans kids.  So we chose to go to the movies and indulge on popcorn, diet coke, and Indiana Jones instead of aforementioned walk on the beach.  Yes, we do love movies, and Indiana Jones has been one of those "must see" movies of the summer.

A caveat lest you think we are nuts for leaving sunny outdoor balminess and moving toward cold indoor clamminess:  In years past, we have opted to wait to see the big movies due to children, timing, and other issues.  The problem is, our movie theater choice here in town is smallish, and once a movie moves on, we are doomed to wait for it to come to DVD and watch it on our home screen.  Which usually is not a big deal, but this is Indiana Jones!  Having grown up (kind of) with Harrison Ford and his whip, it is hard to say "I will leave this viewing to the movie gods."  No way.  So we went.

And we were not disappointed!  The movie does what I think movies should do:  transport you to another place where you become almost a part of the story because it grabs you so...  and maybe it was just because it was some familiar characters, and maybe it was because I identified with the whole "getting older is not necessarily a bad thing" theme, and maybe it was just cause it was a damn engaging movie.  I dunno.  I just think it was money well spent.  And the tub of popcorn, even though I had to share since Claudia also did not eat lunch, was fabulous as always.

To talk about the plot is a bit pointless, since it is kind of formulaic (bad guys do bad things, good guys, namely Indy + girlfriend + son + crazy guy, do good things).  But the plot devices, the timing, and the scenery could fill pages.  Highlights for me include the ants swarming, the sword fight on moving vehicles through the jungle, the waterfalls, the actual kingdom, the wacky monkey-men who attack, fight and disappear without any real rhyme or reason other than to show Indy still has moves, and the spaceship.  Oh, and the Russian bad-guy (Cate Blanchett), who gives a whole new meaning to icy-hot blue eyes.

Harrison still has the moves and looks very good.  You could call him weathered and scruffy (like people at Facestat.com did to me here although he is  years older than me), but he still looks great.  And the old adage that men age more gracefully than women is especially evident when his old girlfriend from previous Indiana Jones movies comes back onto the scene.  Although physically she is his equal and is evidently in great shape, her "scruffiness and weathered-ness" makes her just unattractive, especially if you remember her from the previous movies (when I actually had a crush on her).  And yes, I do feel it is OK to comment on her physical attractiveness since she is a movie star.

I guess the only distracting part of the movie (and God, I love that theme music!) was in the audience where a mom had brought her 5 and 4 year old to "enjoy" the movie too.  So, the ant swarming scene mentioned above was intense:  someone is actually carried off by swarming ants and sucked into a giant ant-hill (yuck!).  It was so intense, I could hardly look at it without cringing.  But the poor kids!  They were terrified, hanging on to mom and dad and hiding their faces for that scene and much of the scarier parts of the movie.  What is it with parents who would do that?  I think it is a type of child abuse - mental abuse, if nothing else.  But then again, that is only my opinion: I think some kids are less sensitive than me or mine.

So yeah, highly recommended and then some.  But don't bring the kids.