OK, so I’m not Prince Charming but she did agree to have her picture taken with me.

I’m going to Disney World soon.

I’ve never been before so this should be a real adventure. My kids are four and five. We are spending a few days on our own and then meeting some friends for a few more days. We are hitting four theme parks over the course of the week and taking a few days to spend at the pool relaxing.

My wife was explaining to the kids about the costumed characters like Mickey and Goofy that they might see at Disney World. My daughter listened, thought for a while and then asked “Will Jesus be there?” That amused me. I’m sure if Disney thought they could procure a license for major world religious figures they would do it. Disney is a special kind of temple isn’t it? The priests look like more like mice.

I can’t wait to see the sun, feel the breeze and be warm at the same time.

If you have any Disney travel hints for me please drop me a line.

I have been completely hooked on Craig’s List recently. It’s not the “furniture” or “sublets” section it’s the “Missed Connections” section. These little notices amuse me to no end. They ads are a little stalkerish, more than a little self centered, quite shallow and occasionally very amusing. Most recently I was amused by the post where someone is looking for their lost youth. I find it both creepy and endearing that people think they can find love in the want ads after seeing someone for a few seconds at a stop light or at the deli counter of the local Kowalski’s.

This week’s theme for the annoyance of the week is things that leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Annoyance Number 1 – Bad Coffee

I love coffee and prefer it strong and black. Since I’ve been out of tea for the last couple of months I’ve drank a bit too much crap coffee. The coffee I was drinking was dreadful, but I didn’t realize it until I had cleansed my palate with a few days of tea drinking last week. After a few days of tea I went to a local coffee shop and came to the conclusion that not only was the crap coffee bitter and nearly tasteless — it was slowly robbing me of my ability to taste. Once I had weaned myself off of the crap coffee for a few days everything tasted better including decent, but not amazing, coffee from the local coffee shop. Crap coffee will deface your taste buds, coat your tongue in tar, make you think Lindsay Lohan is important and eventually turn you to the dark side of the force — avoid it at all costs.

Annoyance Number 2 – The Senate and Judge Alito

I captured some of the proceedings from the confirmation hearings for Judge Alito and played it backwards to determine the true content. Here is an exceprts from the transcribed results.

The hearings are a farce. The process seems to exist to give us candidates who are adept at not saying much. It’s a “no show trial” meant only as entertainment — no actual judges will be harmed during the filming. Seriously, can’t we have a process that even pretends to be enlightening?

My favorite commentary came from Adam Felber in his blog post titled “Politicians are from Mars, Judges are from Jersey” who pointed out sagely that judicial activism generally means judges doing what you don’t like.

Glory Road

The unfortunate truth of sports movies is that at some level they all seem to be derivative of the Bad News Bears. Bad News Bears or not I still enjoyed Glory Road. The movie tells the story of the 1966 Texas Western basketball team who won the NCAA championship. The story is about more than just a game, it is a story about race in America. You can read a bit more about the story behind the movie on the wikipedia entry on Don Haskins .

It’s a pretty good movie, it is predictable, but it told a great story without glossing over all the details. I give it three and a half stars out of five.

I’m so glad to not live in the “good old days” America depicted in this movie.

Saved!

by MGM (Video & DVD)

I watched Saved! last weekend. Having grown up in church it all seemed eerily familiar. I loved the movie even though it’s a dumbed down teenie-bopper movie and it’s plot is pretty thread bare. So why did I love the love the movie? It’s because this simple minded movie contains a great commentary on modern, evangelical Christianity, it explores the dichotomy between appearances and reality and most importantly the characters reminded me of the best and worst in myself.

Best of all, the movie really brought one simple message, what really matters in the end was people who act in love without reservations.

So this person data mined a bunch of amazon wishlists. (Apparently the hard way, by web scraping rather than by using the easier and more efficient amazon web api.) He was able to then do some matching on book titles to determine which wish lists were more or less subversive. Then he used google maps to figure out where people lived.

You can bet the next time I interview a job candidate I’m going to check out what is on their amazon wish list. (Note to self, clean up amazon wish list next time I interview for a job.)

The best part is that this little experiment shows how data privacy issues often involve people voluntarily giving up their private information for a reason, in this case the reason is getting better presents. (BTW, I’m still waiting for that New Yorker Cartoon book.) So much for worrying about the FBI going to the library to figure out what I read.

[Link courtesy of Dave's Picks]