I should warn you- it's been my experience that sequels are generally not as good as the originals. I share a home with at least 3.0 videots... um, the math and logic get really fuzzy here, as I am video-challenged in comparison to the others in our home. Our oldest son is truly "the little professor" when it comes to all things video; his areas of expertise include anime, action films and the weapons in these movies, as well as soundtracks and is an almost on a par with The Oracle of Bacon when it comes to connecting actors, actresses, producers and directors. Jennifer's film knowledge is more mainstream, and includes a lot of small-screen (television) knowledge as well. Mr.T reserves his Sunday nights for video entertainment. In selecting his video entertainment, he will consider suggestions from his interwebz posse as well as the three of us. He has one overriding rule: if it's a series- movie or television- he will not watch it out of order.
Me? I want to enjoy a movie- I like explosions, gunplay and special effects, as well as clever dialogue. I love parodies, and every time I say "Part Deux", its my homage to Hot Shots! Part Deux, which was probably the finest sequel ever produced. Period. Hot Shots! was an excellent example of a parody, but somehow Part Deux eclipsed it. In the realm of movies that had only one sequel (that is, not being a trilogy or a "franchise"), Part Deux stands head and tail feathers above the rest (*movie reference). Of movies which were trilogies, Part Deux blows away The Empire Strikes Back, steals the thunder from Back to the Future Pt 2, and ... The Two Towers? Really! I'm a Tolkien fan, and while the movie is beautifully done, it is STILL a second. Our daughter was reading the trilogy, and I asked her what book she was reading. "The Two Towers," she innocently replied. Nonchalantly, I swooped in for the kill and asked, "Are you at the part where they're walking through forest*?" "YES!," she replied, "how'd you know?"
(*For those who have never read it, it seems that approximately 50% of this book is spent walking through the forest).
So here I sit, writing a Part Deux to a blog.
The original blog did quite well, but it strangely enough was actually a commentary on an earlier blog. I just took a look at the numbers, and the last two blogs are getting slightly better numbers than previous blogs, and I've received a relatively disproportionate number of hits from China and France, but to be painfully honest, I've never written a blog before about implied sexual escapades, and I'm not sure I could even do a reasonably entertaining sex blog. The only stab in the dark I can make about the increased views from China and France is that sex sells bigger there, Or not... after all, this IS the interwebz,
It's a good thing for me that this blog's unifying theme is data.
On the blog side of data, I just wanted to reiterate that sex does seem to work. In all honesty, I did enjoy the wordplay, but I don't see myself writing another piece like that anytime soon.
Getting back to data, it's autumn here in North America, and Jennifer and I separately came to the conclusion that some cleaning and organization were long overdue. A couple weeks ago, I moved some file cabinets from the basement to a more strategic location, and yesterday we discussed updating our filing in earnest. We picked up some additional supplies at Sam's, and are now officially loaded for (filing) bear.
In the database part of data,I just finished updating the Media_Title table with a couple shelves' worth of data, bring the Media_Title count to nearly 1K. That's not hugely impressive by most standards, but I'm pleased for a couple of reasons. First, I'm getting back to putting time into the care and feeding of the database, and second- the database is helping me to better organize the physical media that I'm cataloging. I've cataloged approximately 40% of our known digital video titles; once these are done, I'll tackle the VHS, and then its time for music, and then Daniel's anime.
And then games. Ugh. To paraphrase Kurtz' most excellent soliloquy in Apocalypse Now, "I've played games, games that you've played. But you kave no right to call me a gamer."
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Showing posts with label interwebz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interwebz. Show all posts
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Sunday, October 5, 2014
The October Sexperiment and Blogger's Rules
It's high time I coined a word, and "sexperiment" seemed like a good one... except it turns out I didn't coin it. There's a book that was written a few years ago by Ed and Lisa Young with "Sexperiment" being the main word in the title. I've obviously not read the book, so I am not equipped to comment on it. My sexperiment is my previous blog, "My Night In a Cage with a Hot Woman", in which I sought to see if a suggestive title and a bit of teasing, along with accompanying keywords, would boost readership by a significant amount. As of right now- a little more than a day after publishing it, the answer is a guarded "maybe".
The numbers have not been huge, but there's been a bit more geographic diversity than I've seen of late- France, Poland, Canada and a country in Africa (the country in Africa has experienced some unrest over the past few years, so I won't be giving it a shout out). Before I forget Jennifer corrected me on a particular datum from that post- our anniversary is in a few days, not a few weeks. It's not that I don't know the date; I'm not the stereotypical husband when it come to that, at least. Then again, in the U.S. date convention, October 10, 1987, is rendered 10/9/87, so there is absolutely NO reason for me to forget it. Of course 10/9/14 falls on a Thursday this year (it was a Friday when were wed), so chances are good we won't be doing anything special on our "special" date, as Thursday night is our busiest night of the week, and I work nights, so we'll try to do something special on Saturday or, more likely Sunday.
I should also mention a couple of rules I try to follow in blogging. I try to avoid writing anything that may be morally questionable. This is generally not difficult to do, as I generally filter my writing and have no natural inclination to expound on salacious themes. Whenever I write on a topic that causes the hair on my neck to rise, I ask Jennifer to proof it before publishing. I'm certainly not a prude, but I write under the understanding that- I.R.S. assertions about emails aside- nearly everything that happens on the interwebz is stored somewhere. And I do not want my writing to come back and bite me. I also do not want to embarrass her. I'm also fairly certain that I've never used anyone's name without their permission. Jennifer, Anna and Ryan, for example, have all given me verbal permission to use their names. And apart from Ryan, I never use last names. Ryan D. Reynolds is a special case- he's an aspiring comedian, so this is publicity for him. Mr. T is also an exception of sorts: he's our youngest son. When he was first mentioned in a blog, he was under eighteen (the age of majority in the U.S., a.k.a. "adulthood"), so I felt a certain amount of anonymity was required. He is now eighteen, but his persona of "Mr. T" has been established in this blog, so he remains to be known as Mr. T.
I've also always had a very compact, terse writing style, so I try to keep my blogs relatively short and readable, although as I look at this particular blog, there are atypically large chunks of words. My writing style has pushed me to the brink in the past.
I've never been a model student, but have always had an interest in history. In high school, even though I was in the top third of my class, I had to beg, plead and petition to get into the senior Advanced Placement European History class (and for the record, I also applied for the A.P. English class, but my high school cancelled the class because they had decided that the incoming seniors' writing skills were deficient). Near the end of the school year, I took the AP History test, and decided to take the English test- even though I had absolutely no idea of what to expect. The AP classes not only taught the subject, but prepared the students for the test. At the time, the tests were graded on a scale of one through five, with a three generally guaranteeing college credit. I scored a four on the history test. On the other hand, I "only" scored a two on the English test. I should mention that I got this score with zero prep or mentoring, and I was the ONLY senior in a class of approximately 330 that even took the test.
Flash forward to freshman year of college. My then-girlfriend Dolores (sorry, Dolores, I couldn't find you on Facebook) and I were sitting in the Student Government office one day, and she casually asked if I had a term paper that was due soon. I looked at my planner- she was correct.
I had a paper due the next day.
The thing that I often forget to mention in this story (which has been told a number of times) is that the instructor was quite the feminist, so much so that she was know to grade males harsher than females, The college had been, until quite recently, an all-women's institution.
When the assignment was first given, I immediately had an idea for the topic. Each member of the class was to pick a Renaissance leader and show or prove how they fit the criteria as defined in class. The problem was this: the leader I had picked was Napoleon Buonaparte (as I write this, I have a red squiggly line under the word Buonaparte; however, this is not a misspelling- when he first joined the French army he was a Corsican and only in his mid-twenties changed his name to the more French-sounding Bonaparte). Discounting the popular feeling that he was not particularly "enlightened" and that he came to power at the dawn of Romanticism I felt I could successfully argue my case.
I had my work cut out for me. And the paper was due tomorrow.
Now, in my defense, when the paper was first announced, I hauled myself over to Rebecca Crown Library, and as was (and still is) my standard practice for doing research, I pillaged the shelves for anything related to the subject. Because of my daily ritual of visiting The Sutlers' Wagon, I had a good background in the Napoleonic period. However, because of my as yet undiagnosed ADHD, those books ended up sitting in a rather tall stack in the Student Government office. What happened next was the stuff of which legends and epic songs would be written.
As this was in the days of prehistory (that is, before computers), my paper needed to be typed out. I had an outline in my mind, and wrote as I found information to support my ideas. When I finished a page of handwriting on a looseleaf page, Dolores would type it. We labored for several hours, and in the end I had eight and a half pages of double-spaced text- Sister Kaye Ashe's minimum was ten pages.
To summarize: I wrote a paper the day before it was due, a page and a half short of the minimum, well outside the specified period, and handed in a rough draft which was submitted to an instructor who was known to be a rough grader.
The paper got an "A". Like I said, I'm a terse writer.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
The numbers have not been huge, but there's been a bit more geographic diversity than I've seen of late- France, Poland, Canada and a country in Africa (the country in Africa has experienced some unrest over the past few years, so I won't be giving it a shout out). Before I forget Jennifer corrected me on a particular datum from that post- our anniversary is in a few days, not a few weeks. It's not that I don't know the date; I'm not the stereotypical husband when it come to that, at least. Then again, in the U.S. date convention, October 10, 1987, is rendered 10/9/87, so there is absolutely NO reason for me to forget it. Of course 10/9/14 falls on a Thursday this year (it was a Friday when were wed), so chances are good we won't be doing anything special on our "special" date, as Thursday night is our busiest night of the week, and I work nights, so we'll try to do something special on Saturday or, more likely Sunday.
I should also mention a couple of rules I try to follow in blogging. I try to avoid writing anything that may be morally questionable. This is generally not difficult to do, as I generally filter my writing and have no natural inclination to expound on salacious themes. Whenever I write on a topic that causes the hair on my neck to rise, I ask Jennifer to proof it before publishing. I'm certainly not a prude, but I write under the understanding that- I.R.S. assertions about emails aside- nearly everything that happens on the interwebz is stored somewhere. And I do not want my writing to come back and bite me. I also do not want to embarrass her. I'm also fairly certain that I've never used anyone's name without their permission. Jennifer, Anna and Ryan, for example, have all given me verbal permission to use their names. And apart from Ryan, I never use last names. Ryan D. Reynolds is a special case- he's an aspiring comedian, so this is publicity for him. Mr. T is also an exception of sorts: he's our youngest son. When he was first mentioned in a blog, he was under eighteen (the age of majority in the U.S., a.k.a. "adulthood"), so I felt a certain amount of anonymity was required. He is now eighteen, but his persona of "Mr. T" has been established in this blog, so he remains to be known as Mr. T.
I've also always had a very compact, terse writing style, so I try to keep my blogs relatively short and readable, although as I look at this particular blog, there are atypically large chunks of words. My writing style has pushed me to the brink in the past.
I've never been a model student, but have always had an interest in history. In high school, even though I was in the top third of my class, I had to beg, plead and petition to get into the senior Advanced Placement European History class (and for the record, I also applied for the A.P. English class, but my high school cancelled the class because they had decided that the incoming seniors' writing skills were deficient). Near the end of the school year, I took the AP History test, and decided to take the English test- even though I had absolutely no idea of what to expect. The AP classes not only taught the subject, but prepared the students for the test. At the time, the tests were graded on a scale of one through five, with a three generally guaranteeing college credit. I scored a four on the history test. On the other hand, I "only" scored a two on the English test. I should mention that I got this score with zero prep or mentoring, and I was the ONLY senior in a class of approximately 330 that even took the test.
Flash forward to freshman year of college. My then-girlfriend Dolores (sorry, Dolores, I couldn't find you on Facebook) and I were sitting in the Student Government office one day, and she casually asked if I had a term paper that was due soon. I looked at my planner- she was correct.
I had a paper due the next day.
The thing that I often forget to mention in this story (which has been told a number of times) is that the instructor was quite the feminist, so much so that she was know to grade males harsher than females, The college had been, until quite recently, an all-women's institution.
When the assignment was first given, I immediately had an idea for the topic. Each member of the class was to pick a Renaissance leader and show or prove how they fit the criteria as defined in class. The problem was this: the leader I had picked was Napoleon Buonaparte (as I write this, I have a red squiggly line under the word Buonaparte; however, this is not a misspelling- when he first joined the French army he was a Corsican and only in his mid-twenties changed his name to the more French-sounding Bonaparte). Discounting the popular feeling that he was not particularly "enlightened" and that he came to power at the dawn of Romanticism I felt I could successfully argue my case.
I had my work cut out for me. And the paper was due tomorrow.
Now, in my defense, when the paper was first announced, I hauled myself over to Rebecca Crown Library, and as was (and still is) my standard practice for doing research, I pillaged the shelves for anything related to the subject. Because of my daily ritual of visiting The Sutlers' Wagon, I had a good background in the Napoleonic period. However, because of my as yet undiagnosed ADHD, those books ended up sitting in a rather tall stack in the Student Government office. What happened next was the stuff of which legends and epic songs would be written.
As this was in the days of prehistory (that is, before computers), my paper needed to be typed out. I had an outline in my mind, and wrote as I found information to support my ideas. When I finished a page of handwriting on a looseleaf page, Dolores would type it. We labored for several hours, and in the end I had eight and a half pages of double-spaced text- Sister Kaye Ashe's minimum was ten pages.
To summarize: I wrote a paper the day before it was due, a page and a half short of the minimum, well outside the specified period, and handed in a rough draft which was submitted to an instructor who was known to be a rough grader.
The paper got an "A". Like I said, I'm a terse writer.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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