November 19, 2006

Belle and Jingle

Posted by Scott at 10:03 PM

Cats - Saturday afternoon we decided to take a different tact on the feline search. We decided to head over to The Humane Society for Greater Nashua. The had a good selection and we found two cats to adopt. Neither of them is a Maine coon cat. The first is a girl who reminded us of Cali. Originally named "Gabby" we decided to call her "Belle" because "Gabby" caused too much confusion to our daughter Abby. The second is a grey and white medium hair male. Originally named "Mr. Lillie" by the caretakers, we call him "Jingle". (No offense to Alyssa and Tom's neighbors…) Both are about 1 1/2 years old, so we don't have the high maintenance of young kittens to deal with. They are both spayed/neutered and have been "chip"ed with an embedded ID in case they are lost. I'll get a few pictures of them soon but they've had such a time getting adjusted to their new environment (much more space, 5 little children bursting to smother them with affection), I didn't want to scare them further with a camera flashing in their face.

AMD - There've been a few news stories going out about how AMD has had a layoff. (see here or here) Compared to the huge cuts Intel has announced, the AMD cuts have been quite small. AMD is roughly 15,000 people and 375 were let go. Nevertheless, 2 co-workers of mine got their notice on Thursday. I pray for them and their families. I'm sure it came as a shock to them because it certainly surprised us.

Thanksgiving - Thanksgiving is soon upon us. Depending on circumstances, I may take the Wednesday before it off as well. As is becoming a tradition of sorts, I plan to take the kids out to a movie. It looks like this year's selection will be Happy Feet. The trailer looks good and the lineup of actors is impressive. If anyone has any feedback about the movie (rumored overtones of environmentalism?) let me know. There's always Flushed Away as an option.

Wonder Woman - This weekend we started into Season 2 of Wonder Woman with our girls. It's been long enough I didn't remember the discontinuity between the seasons. In season 2 WWII is over and it's now 1977. Steve's Trevor's son, also named Steve Trevor, is an Inter-Agency Defense Command (IADC) agent, still played by Lyle Waggoner. Diana, who hasn't aged due to her Amazon nature, comes back to help fight crime. Just as campy as always, it now re-emphasizes the 1970's even more. I loved seeing the computer room with Ira, the agency's super computer. It was funny seeing that classic "big computer" look: refrigerator sized computers with reels of tape flowing back and forth. When Ira "talks" random LED lights blink. This was just a couple of years before hobbyists started to buy "home computers" so who knew what to expect a computer to look like? Just two episodes into the season and Wonder Woman has already stopped the acquisition of nuclear secrets, stopped a clone of Hitler, and defeated a robot. Very 1970's! And somehow Steve Trevor Jr., an (ahem) intelligence official, never notices that his assistant's name is Diana Prince, exactly like his father's assistant?

Comments

Congrats on the cats- I bet the kids are thrilled!
Lys

Posted by: alyssa at November 20, 2006 12:32 AM

Hi Lys,

Yep, they are. And when Claire and Abby's girlfriends come over, look out. It only amplifies!

I forgot to mention two films which come out in the next month that I'm excited about. One is The Nativity Story. See the trailer at:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/thenativitystory/

and the other is Children of Men. See it's trailer at:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/childrenofmen/

I listened to that last one as an audio book about 10 years ago. It was an interesting concept -- what might happen to society if women suddenly stopped being able to have children. They never really discuss why it happened. It just looks at how it transforms societal attitudes when you know that collectively you're at the end.

Posted by: Scott at November 20, 2006 06:13 AM