Computer Woes

Our desktop computer has decided to take a vacation of undetermined length. It seems to be stuck in hybernation mode. The little green power light keeps flickering, it won't respond to any attempts to wake it up. Even turning it off and on just results in it continuing to flicker once turned back on.

Our old Dell is a few years old, ancient in computer years. The sad part is that even if we replace it, if the repair guys can't pull the data off this one, we could loose a lot. Stupidly we didn't have a backup. We didn't think we needed one on the family computer. We did. All of Z's pics, my writing, lots of things of import are on that hard drive.

I have my flash drive with what I'm working on now, but it would be horrible to loose copies of my published books, the original manuscripts, etc. Worst of all, the pics of Z since he was born. We've kept up his baby book, but not kept up with hard copies of pics in photo albums.

All I can say folks is cross your fingers we can fix this puppy and spring for a backup.

Movies

Second day of catch up with the movies and I went to see Avatar. I saw the 3D IMAX version and I have to admit it didn’t live up to the hype. It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. The effects, the technology was definitely awe inspiring. The story however, wasn’t. Oh it was a nice plot, but the action—not explosions or fighting, but plot action—was a bit thin on the ground during the first two thirds of the movie. And even worse, it was not all that inspiring from a science fiction/fantasy point of view..

This isn’t a story I will remember as long as I remember the movie. It was predictable and preachy. Colonialism is bad. The rape of the natural world is bad. It’s more of a matter of someone turning the art department loose with an unlimited budget while skimping on the writing. Yes, I know Cameron was at least partially wrote the screenplay. But the result is an A+ visual with a C+ script.

Snow

While those along the mid-Atlantic are probably so over the snow, but here in Georgia we finally got a real snow fall. Our front yard ranked up 1.5-2" Z was having a blast in the snow until he stepped off the driveway into the real snow. It was cold, wet and up over his shoes. After falling in it he decided he did not like it.