Babies babies

Early yesterday morning around 2AM my youngest cousin and his wife had their first child, Keziah. From the reports she's a cute and calm little baby girl. With our little guy due in another few weeks, this is just the year for newborns in our family.

The Lady and I did the maternity ward tour of Holy Cross hospital a couple weeks ago. The place is practically brand new so the whole set-up looked really nice and modern. Very impressive operation. We'll be taking some classes soon to prep us for the upcoming event.

We've finally settled on a theme for the nursery. The place is about stripped. I'll just need to move a few furniture pieces out of there. We'll have to wait on a some wall decoration samples before we can choose paint colors. In the meantime we'll take measurements and put the order in for the nursery furniture we've selected.

The house is just about finished in terms of reorganization which is a good feeling. I was up late last night so I puttered around the house and did a few things, that I'd been putting off. My sleep has been really odd lately, either I sleep like a log totally exhausted or I can't sleep at all. I didn't finally doze off until almost 2:45am last night. I'm not really focused enough at that hour to draw too much unfortunately, I got a little writing done last night though which was good. I usually play video games or watch TV. Last night I had the pleasure of enjoying Smokey and the Bandit for the umpteenth time on AMC... an American movie classic indeed.

Its Not a Clubhouse

For those who don't know me or may not know me too well, I'm not a mean or unkind person. However, I'm not that sociable naturally, I do make an effort when at work to keep up a certain level of chit-chat when I'm not busy. I say "hi" or "Good morning, how was you weekend" to c0-workers in the hallway or in the kitchen. Carrying on enough chit-chat to keep people from thinking I'm a total office hermit.

But, when I'm taking a leak or attending to some paperwork in the men's restroom I don't need the witty patter. I've just always thought when in the men's room, nothing beyond a "hey, man" or "wassup" is necessary. It's not a clubhouse or a lockerroom, I'm not chilling out. I just need to unload my cargo and carry-on with my day.

Ususally the men's room is such an unsavory environment of smells and noises that I want to get out of there as soon as possible. The idea that I'm going to take a little extra time to discuss the previous weekend's game that I probably didn't watch with a guy in the men's room is just not ideal.

I don't know if I'm alone in these feelings. Judging by the amount of chatty guys I encounter that I'm in the minority.

New Batman 4 part Graphic Novel - Wired Magazine article

I know the MRR blog has been kinda comic book heavy, but hey I dig the funny books. Check out this article from Wired magazine on the topic of new Batman limited series.

The Dark Knight Returns: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/pope.html

Comic Store Wars - Battlefield: Georgetown

A few weeks ago I was giving a run down of some of my preferred comic stores in the DC Metro/Maryland area. Well two of them it seems are getting wrapped up in a legal dispute.

Read this article from the current Washington City Paper, submitted to by my brother the Code Monkey: 'Big' Problems

Personally I think the legal action taken by Big Planet is baseless. I've been to both stores and I'm familiar with both logos. The couldn't be more different, there isn't any confusion possible by even the most casual of shopper. It gets back to sour grapes on Big Planet's end, they haven't been happy about any comic book shop residing in their part of Georgetown.

All I do know, from now on I won't bother visiting Big Planet at any of its locations. This new nonsense of attacking competing store helps make the decision that much easier for me. With a great shop like Big Monkey in Georgetown who needs to waste time at Big Planet. Big Planet may sells loads of great trade paperbacks, but honestly I don't see the need to pay full price for those books when I can buy them online at a considerable discount. So for my comics and toy fix I'll stick with Big Monkey, though I don't go down to that store too often, maybe I'll make the effort now to give them some additional support.

Other Links:
Big Planet Comics: http://www.bigplanetcomics.com/

Big Monkey Comics: http://www.bigmonkeycomics.com/

Big Monkey Blog: http://richmondstore.blogspot.com/

Friday evening

Finally had a good Friday night. Things got finished up early enough at work for me so that I could enjoy an evening out with friends for dinner. Six of us, three couples, met at Tauraso's in Frederick. I like the restaurant alright, but I was more looking forward to the company. One of the couple's will be getting married this coming May, between that event and our upcoming new addition to the family there was plenty to talk about and plan for. Their wedding day should be an interesting one, since we'll witness both a Jewish ceremony and a Hindu ceremony. A fun and rare experience I'm sure it will be...we've been told not to expect the day to finish until at least midnight.

My friend John and I were hoping to get the Bananas Foster for dessert, basically just to get the flame show at out tableside. But that got nipped in the bud when the waitress gave us the news that they were out of bananas. They were actually out, couldn't believe it. Either the dessert is crazy popular, or they don't think anyone is going to want it so they don't keep the nanners in stock. Anyway the food was alright, believe it or not. I was hungry, but not really in the mood for anything in particular. A very rare day, since usually my meal choices are important decisions in my day, today I just didn't care.

I'm lying here in bed now watching Dr. Strangelove, I just happened acrossed it while flipping through the channels. My wife and both of the dogs are asleep, so I'm the only one stirring...which is often the case. I'm guessing in a couple of months here I'm going to have some late night company depending on the kid's sleep patterns.

Rumors-a-gogo: True Video iPod

Wow the tech blogs & rumor sites are all a buzz this week about the possible Video iPod making a debut in April just in time for Apple's 30th anniversary.

• Think Secret
• Engadget
• deviantART
  

I've already seen a couple different Photoshop artists interpretations of this thing. The idea of a touch screen control pad is a cool idea. A great way to maximize the screen space without straying from the original form of the iPod, which is the perfect size. There a lot of concerns about fingerprints, but honestly that's nothing a little screen protector film can't fix, as long as it doesn't effect the functioning of the touchscreen. They work great on PDA's why wouldn't they work on this thing.

Personally I'm not interested in buying one. I'm more than happy with my 5G iPod and I dig watching video on my PSP. I'm curious about the battery life on this video Ipod. With that kind of screen and more focus on the gadget being a video player, I would hope Apple would amp up the battery life somehow.

I also wonder if this would replace the 5G or simply become a higher priced option like the iPod Photo when it first came out.

Apple keeps it interesting, that's for sure.

Comic Book Entry: Here's Why I Don't Read Spider-Man

I have a love/hate relationship with Marvel. I love the characters they've created over the years. It's a rich group of original concepts and personalities with endless potential for creative stories. And sometimes they actually do have creators that come up with some cool storylines for these characters. She-Hulk, The Thing, X-Factor and New Excalibur are four Marvel titles I'm loving right now.

But then I see an article on a new Spider-Man costume and a new direction for the webslinger and I get a case of painful deja vu. This feeling is then quickly followed up with an eye roll and me shaking my head. How many times does Marvel have to lean on this crutch with Spider-Man. The guy has had more costume changes then I can remember, its such a non-event since they never become permenant and usually there is a lame storyline attached for the reason behind the change. I haven't read any of the Spider-Man comics in a long while specifically for the reason that I just don't like what they do the with the character most of the time. If I read any of his stories they are the old ones from the 60's through the mid-80's that have been reprinted or that I have in my own collection.

This new costume, dubbed the Iron Spidey, is apparently an Iron Man inspired armor/costume. I was afraid this kind of crap would happen when Spider-Man was made a member of the Avengers. What doesn't help the case is this these new costumes always look like crap. There is only one Spidey redesign that I liked and that was his first, the Black/White costume from the Secret Wars mini-series. Now that costume had style, really slick. Personally I like it better then his red&blue original.

All of this is aside from the point. What I'm getting back to is, how many times is Marvel going to try to pump interest in Spidey with a new costume? What I'm even more curious about is, does this even work? Do sales jump every time Spidey changes his duds?

I guess it's just a let down for me. Mainstream comics are suffering from the same recycling of ideas that movies, video games and television are suffering from. I can excuse it when it's done in away that still provides some escapist entertainment, but from what I've read of this I couldn't be less interested. With Spider-Man as an Avenger they could've gone in so many other directions with his character, an underdog hero finally joining with the major league. Marvel is dropping the ball.

So far so good

This has been a better than decent week. I'll actually go so far as to say it's been a good one. Tuesday was the anniversary of the day I proposed to my Lady, she brought home dinner from PF Changs and dessert from Cheesecake factory, so we had a great dinner that we didn't have to prepare.

Wednesday morning I got to see some pretty good ultrasound images of my son. They were done at one of those 3-D imaging places that can take an ultrasound and then computer enhance to provide a 3-D image. Last week the kid was facing the wrong way, but over the weekend he was evidentally very busy getting himself turned around the right way. He gave us some good looks at his face. I'll refrain from posting any images, my wife has got that covered. It won't be too much longer until he's here, April is coming closer and closer.

Super Bowl... meh... Brown and Bubbly..yech

I really wasn't into the Super Bowl this year. I kinda half watched it while I was trying to catch up on chores around the house. So in-between sweeping and polishing my floor I caught the new Diet Pepsi commercials. Okay already a stupid concept from the beginning with Diet Pepsi being treated as a celebrity with an agent..so I went back to working on the floor. I looked up again briefly when I caught the tale end of the "song" and saw the web address for the ad campaign....Brownandbubbly.com? Are you kidding me? Some marketing jerk actually got paid for cola campaign with the tagline of "Brown and Bubbly." That is horrendous. Honestly it couldn't be a more accurate but unappetitizing tagline. When I think of brown and bubbly, a delicious cola beverage (which Diet Pepsi isn't) is the last thing that comes to mind. Actually the first thing that comes to mind is this experience .

Kudos to the ad group that got away with that one. I'm sure they are literally laughing all the way to the bank.