So let’s see… this weekend we had some more Ultimate Frisbee action… Ryan returned from Cincinnati, Ohio… and… I can’t really think of anything else.
Oh, Chad, Viraj and I watched The Mighty Ducks and Rookie of the Year last night instead of The Dark Knight. That was pretty sweet. Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!
I’ve also decided I am going to end my blog posts, whenever possible, with a webcam shot. Dine thy eyes on the beauty of my face!
Oh, you thought I’d grace you with my whole face, eh? Well, you’ll just have to visit back for more!
So I got bored Sunday and “somehow” managed to finagle myself into getting a 27” iMac. I talked to Ryan about it as I contemplated it after a few hours of surfing around researching it and the conversation quickly went from “what in the world do you need an iMac for?” to “well, you might as well get the big one.” In the middle of our discussion, I called Chad saying “he’d understand.” He did, of course, and also suggested I get the big one. =)
Well, the thing has a pretty big beast of a screen and it’s pretty zippy with its Core i5. It’ll serve me well in photo editing (and hopefully video eventually).
On Saturday, we had our usual Ultimate game, but my leg was cramping the entire time so that made it tricky for me to run. It’s still feeling cramped, so I’m thinking I may have actually pulled it because I don’t think it can cramp for over a day or two…
I’ve gone through and reread the entirety of MrTechHappy.com and found it really amusing. There was a while there where we were really on a roll (even if the jokes were many times inside ones) and I actually really laughed out loud at various times. Those were good times. I’m seriously considering trying to get Mark committed into giving a web comic another go, if only to provide myself entertainment in a few years.
Alright, so here’s my review of Avatar. First, I’ll start by saying my expectations for this movie were high. Really high. I wanted epic. I wanted to be awed and I thought there was a good chance of that. Maybe that’s where I went wrong, but I thought (contrary to what seems like popular opinion on the internet) that it was a good movie. It wasn’t great.
I think the CG was really good and impressive. However, regardless of how good the CG was and how far ahead it was from any other CG flick, we’re (in my opinion) still not at the point where you can quite capture the emotion that a human can convey through pure CG. To me, Avatar was a display of the “uncanny valley“ in respect to emotion. I’ve seen comparisons between Zoe Saldana’s performance in Star Trek vs Avatar and I’d take the emotion she conveyed in the scene with Spock in the elevator over any scene with her in Avatar.
There were two things that ultimately led me to feel disappointed with Avatar. Character development and not quite nailing it when characters were supposed to be emoting. For a movie that was over 2.5 hours long, I would have liked to know and feel the characters more. Death scenes in Avatar? They were okay. Compare them to the death scenes in a Lord of the Rings. LoTR hands down.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was good. But, it wasn’t great and if it ends up “disrupting the movie industry,” I hope it doesn’t send the message that all people want is eye candy. I see movies primarily for a good story and a great one does that by establishing great characters. I think that’s where Avatar fell short and here’s my vote for more money/time spend on characters and story versus eye candy.
I saw Avatar at the Drafthouse. If you can, I would recommend making the most of its eye candy and seeing it in IMAX. I’ll probably try to catch it in IMAX at some point and see how well I enjoy it then. On a “regular size” digital 3D screen, I didn’t feel as immersed as I was led to believe I would. Again, that’s just me. =)
Our Meatcation finale was smoking a whole suckling pig which we purchased from Whole Foods. It weighed about 26 pounds. We started by sticking it in the smoker around 4AM and I also started slow cooking some more oatmeal to be ready later in the day. We took shifts attending to the smoker’s temperature and smoke levels with Andrew going first and me taking over at around 7:30. In an attempt to keep the smoker hot, we got bricks which we wrapped in foil to place inside the smoker and we ghetto rigged it with some insulation.
When it was my turn, the temps had seemingly dropped to an abysmal 120F, which was far from our goal of about 200F-220F (I think that’s right). On top of that, our utility lighter ran out of juice, so I had to run to Walgreens to get a replacement. I eventually got new charcoal going and heated the smoker back up. When it was Mark’s turn to take over, he discovered that our thermometer was placed in the wrong area and was reading inaccurate temps… turns out it was about 50-80F hotter than it was reporting, so we probably accidentally went over our desired temperatures thinking we were far under.
Mark and I ate some oatmeal, and then we all went to our customary ultimate frisbee game at 1PM. We returned and Andrew and Mark prepared the sides/sauces, watched Florida lose to Alabama, and then finally broke into the pig at around 6:30PM.
Al, Ochs, Weishan and her family, Chad, Sam, Ryan and Angell came over (or were just around) to help us conquer the mass amounts of meat we had. Success!
Now for some pics…
Our pig, brand new out of the box… his name is Wilbur.
We stuffed Wilbur with various types of apples (and I think an onion as well).
Ryan fell asleep.
Customary apple in the mouth and the pig wrapped in banana leaves:
Checking up on the pig temps:
Almost ready to take out!
Preparing the table for Wilbur:
Wilbur’s head was one of the first things to fall off:
It’s go time!
And thus concludes Meatcation. =)
As a bonus, here’s a video of Andrew gouging out Wilbur’s eyeballs. Enjoy!
And here’s one of stuffing an apple in Wilbur’s mouth:
Day six was a bit of a day off… we decided to do something a bit exotic and got some sweetbread which we grilled.
Then, we chilled a bit until Ryan and I went to III Forks for our Bazaarvoice Technical Services team goal celebration. I continued the meat eating and got a filet mignon which was acceptably good although I wouldn’t say amazing.
After II Forks, we went to Chancy’s to celebrate the Nancy/Ochs bdays and hung out for a while. Now, it’s suckling pig smoking time for our finale! Stay tuned…
Meatcation day five consisted of chili and steaks. (some shots taken by Sam)
We made corn bread with the chili and sweet potatoes with the steaks. We also picked up our suckling pig. Woo! Tomorrow, we’ll start smoking it… and hopefully finish for Saturday. =)
Yes, day four of Meatcation. Today is the day of the elemental bacon. Bacon = bacon of the earth, scallops = bacon of the sea, and duck = bacon of the sky.
The day started with preparing the duck for smoking:
After it was cleaned, we started on a whole black drum fish for lunch, which we baked in a cast of kosher salt.
We also made plantains:
The fish is done!
Back to the duck…
The fish is gone.
It’s smoking time:
Andrew made dessert - a lemon almond tart.
As an aside, I also received my tauntaun sleeping bag! Woo!
It’s bacon + scallops time:
Elyse, Heather, and Steph joined us as we neared completion:
Woo! That was awesome. More pics in the flickr Meatcation set.
