Friday Lit Review: The Chronicles of Prydain

The Chronicles of Prydain is a 5 book series by Lloyd Alexander that few people probably know by name, but many more will recognize the 2nd book in the series, The Black Cauldron.

The books in the series are:


The Book of Three


The Black Cauldron


The Castle of Llyr


Taran Wanderer


The High King

The main character in each of these books is Taran, Assistant Pig Keeper whose main task in live is taking care of a prophetic pig named Hen Wen. At least until one day the pig runs away and he sets off in search of her. So begins the tale of Taran who while young finds himself thrust into a battle between good and evil against the evil Arawn, possessor of the Black Cauldron that can create armies of the Undead.

Taran collects a crew of companions throughout his journey: Eilonwy, a girl with a few magical skills who tends to be the typical easily offended woman for the most part. Fflewddur Fflam, a bard with a harp whose strings break when he overexaggerates things, which is fairly common, and Gurgi, a hairy creature from the forest who is always eager to help out.

Taran's adventures provide a nice arc that include his growing up and seeking for the parents he never knew, along with the constant battle against the dark lord Arawn, all the while coming to know many of the magical and mystical peoples of Prydain. The High King, the culmination of the series won the 1969 Newberry Medal (given for the most outstanding book for children each year), and is a wonderful read, enhanced of course if you've taken the time to enjoy the first 4 books in the series. As you'll find is common with me, I was very sad to see this series come to an end.

The Book of Three and the Black Cauldron served as the basis for an animated Disney film titled the Black Cauldron.

From the Draftbin: Dreams that seem real

In the draft section of my blogs I have a few topics that got started but never finished, or just titles for blogs that haven't happened yet. Among these, I had this title, "Dreams that seem real" and decided to tell you about it.

Do you ever have a dream that seems so real that you wake up and know it was a dream, but are uncertain if the things you were dreaming about were actually something that happened, but as a result you want to verify what the real truth is? This happens to me a few times a year, but the most memorable time in recent years was about a year and a half ago. It was early January and I had just returned from a New Year's trip to the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona. I was in the middle of my first year of graduate school, but the new semester of school had not yet.

I dreamed that I had signed up for a semester-long internship doing informatics research in Brazil, and for some reason I really, really did not want to go. I don't remember the exact reason I didn't want to go, maybe something about not having a good project idea? I don't know. The point is, I was desperate to get out of going, and I was talking to my mom (the thing about dreams is that people seem to show up pretty randomly) about not going, and she was adamant that I go, because "you bought non-refundable plane tickets, so you have to go." And I was trying to get her to let me not go and just eat the cost of the tickets.

Now, I know that not all of the dream seemed real. For example, as we were boarding the plane, one of those planes that lands on water, there was a tiger in the water that was trying to eat me. I know that that never happened to me, and I know that the conversation I had with my mom wasn't real, but when I woke up I was feeling really stressed out that maybe I had signed up for a semester in Brazil and had completely forgotten about it. This dream is also a classic example of the kinds of dreams I have. Pretty much they are normal, everyday situations but with some kind of element of stress added in for fun. I don't dream of scary monsters or abstract symbols of my inner-psyche (as far as I know). Rather I dream that I've made some kind of social faux pas or have made a fool of myself, or somehow have been irresponsible regarding something under my stewardship.

Does that ever happen to you?

The Friday Literature Review

As promised, today marks the beginning of a new Friday feature. I'm not sure that anyone actually cares about this or not, although if anyone is out there, you probably prefer that I write something as opposed to writing nothing, and if nothing else, having a weely feature helps me remember to keep writing.

The new feature will be a Friday Literature Review (FLitR?), and my original thought is to focus mainly on series of books that I've enjoyed over the years. I should mention that growing up I had a pretty voracious appetite for fiction and would plow through most books in a matter of days. Now that I'm older I can still find this happy place, but time constraints and a more developed set of social skills tend to limit my reading time. Also, its been harder for me to find books that I like as much these days, so feel free to recommend books I might enjoy as you begin to see the kinds of things I've enjoyed to date.

That said, I haven't put a lot of time this week into blog prep, so lamentably (for you the reader) I'm going to hold off on a review until next week. But I will leave you with this quick meme (one of the most common ones I see) as a bribe to keep you coming back:

4 Things About Me

4 jobs I have had in my life:
-McDonalds crew chief
-College of Pharmacy Receptionist
-Computer Science T.A.
-Programmer/Analyst 2 (my official title) in the Temple Department at the COB.

4 movies I would watch over and over:
-Oceans 11
-O Brother Where Art Thou?
-Dumb and Dumber
-Newsies

4 places I have lived
-New Orleans, LA
-Grantsville, UT
-A large portion of southern Argentina (Patagonia)
-Salt Lake City, UT

4 TV shows I watch
-The Office
-Lost
-Arrested Development (sniff)
-Umm...I don't have cable any more, so I don't watch much TV. Can I count Diggnation?

4 places I have been on vacation
-SoCal
-The Oregon Coast
-Washington D.C.
-Tempe, AZ (Fiesta Bowl, baby!)

4 websites I visit daily
-MyYahoo
-Flickr
-McSweeneys
-ESPN.com/Page2

4 favorite foods
-Steak
-Cafe Rio Pork Salad
-Ham and Cheese Empanadas (fried if I can get someone else to make them, otherwise baked cuz they're easier to make)
-Wendy's Monterrey Ranch Chicken Sandwich (only available as a specialty sandwich)

4 places I would rather be right now
-Eating lunch
-Playing with my niece
-Someplace cooler (temperature-wise. How could anywhere else be cooler than SLC?)
-Argentina

Classic Cartoon Countdown #1: Transformers

Well, I can only drag this thing out so long. If it seems as though I've been neglecting this blog lately, its only because I've been out of town so much lately, first to California and then this week to Nashville. And while I had visions of cranking out a few more honorable mentions, I can't justify putting the actual countdown off any further, so they'll have to go mentionless. Without further ado, I give you the #1 Classic Cartoon of my childhood: The Transformers


Transformers! More than meets the eye!


The Autobots were mainly cars and were the good guys.


The leader of the Autobots was Optimus Prime a big rig truck who in his robot form was only the main engine part of the truck. Where the trailer portion of his truck form came from I never knew. Just when he would transform it would come out of nowhere.


The Decepticons were the bad guys and were a bit more versatile in their forms, although they had a large fleet of jets that was probably their core transformation.


The leader of the Decepticons was Megatron, a robot that transformed into a gun that was like a hundred times smaller than his robot form. He would transform into the gun, and one of the other Decepticons would shoot the gun. In addition to the jets there was also a guy who changed into a tape recorder (Soundwave), and he had some little mini-decepticons who were the tapes and would come out and turn into a dog or a bat and attack the Autobots.

Soundwave

Somehow these robots came from outer space and were here on the earth battling each other. There were always some humans around for us to relate to, and I remember learning from this show that being inside a car during a lightning storm is good because the rubber tires keep you grounded.

Eventually, to keep the interest of the viewers, some new subgroups of robots were introduced. The ones I most remember were the Dinobots, who were autobots who turned into dinosaurs; the Constructicons, decepticons who transformed into construction vehicles, but also could merge all together in Voltron-like fashion to make one super robot; the Aerialbots, Autobots who were jets, and who also formed some uber-robot; and the Insecticons, Decepticon insect robots.


The Constructicons


Transformers was a great show and I really enjoyed it until perhaps they got too successful for their own good. At some point, a Transformers movie was made for theatrical release. I remember we were really excited about it, but never actually went to see it. (We usually only went to 1 or 2 movies a year when I was growing up.) I've still never actually seen this Transformers movie, but there must have been some huge plot points, because after the movie came out, the entire cartoon changed a ton. Most notably Optimus Prime had been replaced by a robot named Rodimus Prime, but also there were some new weird space robots and we never could really figure out what was going on and who everyone was. So we lost interest and stopped watching it. I'm not sure whose idea it was for the movie to completely change the plot of the TV show and leave some of us lost and bewildered.

As I've been reliving this memories from my childhood, I find that a lot of the shows I used to watch were thinly veiled commercials for the toys that were affiliated with the shows. But apparently the veil was thick enough that I never really felt that way about the show. In fact, I always felt that the toys were just a way for us to relive our favorite moments from the shows. That said, the Transformers were by far the coolest toys ever associated with a cartoon. Toys that transformed from robots into jets, cars, guns, tape recorders, even dinosaurs and insects.

I remember one year making a list of Christmas gifts I would like that included probably 20 different transformers. Not that I expected to get them all, just that I would have been happy with any of them. The only drawback I can remember to the toys was that you had to put all the stickers on yourself, and it was no easy task to get them all lined up in the right spot without them getting stuck misaligned. Getting those stickers right could make or break the look of your Transformer and it was a stressful first 30 minutes of having the toy as you got it all set up. I remember my older brother got the whole set of Constructicons one year, and one of the pieces was kind of tricky to transform, at least tricky enough that I broke it once and had to pay to replace it.

The Transformers truly were a great show with a great line of toys associated with it. And for that they have earned the #1 spot on my Classic Cartoon Countdown.

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Here's the final countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends
#6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics
#5: Voltron
#4: X-men
#3: Looney Tunes
#2: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
#1: Transformers

Stay tuned next week for a brand new Friday feature.

Random Thoughts from I-15

I'm briefly back in town, having arrived late last night from family vacation to California, and I'll be leaving Monday for a brief academic trip to Nashville. Watch for pictures on Flickr and what not, but I thought I'd share some of the random musings I had during my 12 hour drive home.

-If gangs really want to be taken seriously, they should start graffiti-ing things other than mirrors and stalls in public restrooms. I mean seriously, when did this become the place to mark your territory?

-There's such a thing as an Old Navy outlet store. How do you get cheaper than regular Old Navy? Do the cargo pants come with dollar bills tucked into the pockets?

-When there's a big row of cars in the passing lane all going 10 under the speed limit, somewhere in the front of that row, there's someone with open road in front of them. What is that person thinking? Are they thinking? What's it like to be that person?

-I was impressed and pleased by the presence of dedicated slow lanes for trucks west of Vegas, but can't we go a step farther and create a special lefthand lane that you can't drive in unless you are doing at least 5 over the speed limit? I know that this is how the "fast" lane ought to work, but there are way too many people who think that they are too good for the "slow" lane, even though they aren't even approaching the speed limit. I think making it explicit would really help things along.

-How would I know where the Starbucks is in Baker, lady? I've been here for about 20 minutes, and all of them were spent in the Arbys I just walked out of.

-Diary Queen is pretty much the place to be in Scipio.

-I like to sleep with a cone of silence surrounding me. Some people seem to drive with a cone of blindness surrounding them.

Classic Cartoon Countdown #2: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

I am Adam. Prince of Eternia and keeper of the secrets of Castle Greyskull. This is Cringer... my fearless friend.


Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword...


...and said... By the power of Greyskull!


Only a few others share this secret... The Sorceress...

...Man-At-Arms...

and Orko.


Together we defend Castle Greyskull from the evil forces of Skeletor.






I'm really not sure that much else needs to be said. I think the intro speaks for itself. But maybe I'll just say that He-man was a show that I loved to watch every afternoon. This cartoon is just recently becoming available on DVD, so maybe I'll have to check that out sometime. He-man always had plenty of chances to get rid of Skeletor. Pretty much every week, he'd have Skeletor hanging off a cliff or something, only to let him go.

He-man had some of the coolest toys of all the shows out there. Every action figure had its own unique feature it seemed. There was the cobra guy who shot "acid" (I guess if you had some kind of acid you could use that instead of water), I had a lizard guy with a tail you could whip around, there was a two headed guy, a guy with three different faces (Man-E-Faces, I believe was his name), Ram Man, who had a spring inside so you could launch him just like in the show. The Orko figure I had had a little zip cord thing to make him move around on his own, plus it came with a magic trick. There was even a line of He-man figures that featured a rotating chest piece that showed battle damage! There were tons of unique figures to get. Of course there were a few lame ones. Our neighbors had a Prince Adam figure, and someone I knew had a Teela figure. Who wants a girl action figure? Girls?

And we haven't even got to the castles yet. You could get the Castle Greyskull or Skeletor's castle and they each had some cool features. I especially remember Skeletor's castle had a microphone that you could use to change your voice to sound kind of Skeletor-ish. How cool is that?

The success of the cartoon inspired a theatrical released movie that was a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge disappointment. Basically, He-man and Skeletor came to our world and did some stuff, but they were the only characters from the cartoon who even showed up. Not sure who thought this would be a good idea. Maybe Los Angeles (or wherever it was set) was easier to get to for filming than Eternia. Whatever the case was, I'm sure children across the country shared a collective, "huh?" upon viewing this film.

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One quick note regarding the countdown. In American Idol-esque fashion, you'll have to wait a little more to find out what is #1. I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a family vacation to California (Oceanside) and will likely be without internet for approximately 8 days. I can only imagine the number of emails I'll have in my Inbox when I return (2? 3?), but I'll also be unable to post to the blog. And I'll only be in town for 1 day before I leave for a conference in Nashville, so I can't promise that you'll know the winner until two weeks from today at the earliest. On that note...Big Digital, out.

***********************************************

Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends
#6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics
#5: Voltron
#4: X-men
#3: Looney Tunes
#2: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Classic Cartoon Countdown #3: Looney Tunes

In the grand scheme of cartoons, the looney tunes crew really deserves their own special category. So many classic characters and classic cartoons with a huge portion of success coming on television as opposed to the feature film route that Disney has gone. Sure, the Looney tunes have had their theatrical moments (Space Jam, Looney Tunes: Back in Action), but they pale in comparison (in my mind at least) to the classic cartoon plots that kept us rolling every Saturday morning. The fairly large cast of Looney Tunes, some of whom never meet each other include:

Bugs Bunny - the star of the cast, who has run into most of the characters in the course of all the toons, he's always the smartest (and a real smart-aleck), and wins in the end, although sometimes things look bleak for our hero.

Daffy Duck - Bugs' rival, especially in the sense of the whole duck season-rabbit season debate. Daffy always seems to get his bill blown around to the back of his face. I love it when that happens.


Elmer Fudd - Fun with speech impediments. Awesome. "Be Vewwy, Vewwy, Qwiet. I'm hunting wabbits."


Sylvester and Tweety Pie - I'll be honest, not my favorites, but still crucial members of the team.


Yosemite Sam - for some reason we always called him 'Semite Sam when I was growing up. Usually faces off with Bugs Bunny and gets really mad, shoots his guns, etc. Somehow became a popular mudflap icon.


The Tasmanian Devil - tears things up, usually interacts with Bugs Bunny. Somehow became a popular T-shirt icon along with Bugs and some of the others in the early 90s. Not sure how that happened. Of course, I'm not sure how wearing clothes backwards became popular back then either. I mean, I know it was because Kris Kross was doing it, but I don't know how that made it popular.


Speedy Gonzalez - Andale! Andale! Arriba!


Pepe le Pew - Always chasing that cat with the stripe down her back. Does he even do anything else? I love how she's always running at top speed, and he just hops along and always catches up.


Porky Pig - More fun with speech impediments. Does this guy have a job besides stuttering through the whole Th-th-th-that's all Folks?


Marvin the Martian - Always getting ready to destroy Earth with a death ray or chasing Bugs Bunny around, and talking in his funny voice.


Foghorn Leghorn - I-I-I-I say boy, let me tell you...


Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner - I've saved my favorites for last. I love to watch the Coyote with all his schemes and how they all go awry in the most impossible ways imaginable. I think my favorite Looney Tune of all time is the one where he's got some kind of boulder catapult set up to launch a boulder at the roadrunner, but somehow the boulder or the catapult itself end up on him every time, in ways that completely defy physics. He must get smashed like 15 different ways.

Some of my other favorite Looney Tunes, aside from the aforementioned Roadrunner, and the whole Duck Season-Rabbit Season bit, include the singing frog who only sings when no one else is around ("Hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime gal"), the Barber of Seville, the other opera looking one where Elmer is dressed like a Viking and sings "North wind blow, South wind blow, thunder, hurricane, typhoon,....smog!", the one where Bugs is visiting some castle and some guy gets "The Nose in the Book penalty", when Bugs takes on the bull as a matador,and I'm sure there's others that I'm forgetting right now. If not for Looney Tunes I would never have heard the phrase "one lump or two", and even know I'd be more likely to associate it with getting hit in the head with a large mallet. I remember hearing how violent the looney tunes were, but c'mon how many people have access to dynamite.

But seriously, Looney Tunes put out some great stuff. Better than the Tiny Toons, and anything else they've come up with lately. Just give me the classic shorts.


Th-th-that's All Folks!

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Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends
#6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics
#5: Voltron
#4: X-men
#3: Looney Tunes

1 Year Anniversary Extravaganza

Today, June 6th marks the 1 year anniversary of me beginning this blog. This post is, by my unscientific count, #95. In honor of this special anniversary, I invite you to check out the post that started it all, and here's the story about how the blog got its name. FYI, the title was going to be "A Life More Ordinary", before Chris made his whole "Big Digital" comment. I'll offer you some fun facts about the blog. For example, since I started tracking site visits back in late February, there have been 1415 hits on the blog, averaging approximately 14 per day.

Some of the search terms that bring people here most often are ones related to the McDonald's characters, gaucho pants, milk going bad, and more recently Voltron searches.

I've made several friends who I only know from their blogs, or perhaps their blogs and their flickr/myspace/etc accounts.

I've had two weekly features -- the Friday Featured Fast Food Favorites and the Classic Cartoon Countdown, currently at #4, I'm a sucker for alliteration, can't you tell?.

Some of my personal favorite posts include: Gaucho pants, What Bonnie said, Why I Hate Catch Phrase, What I Learned in History Class, and the Underwear Shopping story.

Two posts tied for the most comments (8). Those were the end of the Friday Featured Fast Food Favorite, and the post about Superfriends.


Thanks to everyone out there who reads. While I would probably keep writing even if no one was reading, its still nice to know that someone is enjoying what I have to say.

Classic Cartoon Countdown #4: X-Men

If only I'd made the X-men #5 on my list I could have coordinated this entry with last week's huge opening of X-men 3: The Last Stand, which I saw on Monday by the way, and thought was pretty entertaining.

Movies, aside, I'm pretty sure the only reason that I am even a fan of the X-men is because of the Saturday morning cartoon that used to come on. It introduced me to the likes of Professor Xavier, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Jubilee, Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey, along with such badguys as Magneto, Mr. Sinister, Apocalypse, and the ever present sentinels.

There were several different plotlines explored during the run of the show, and I never was able to follow one of them, but I remember parts of the stories of the Phoenix, the X-men going to some island where there were dinosaur people living, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Wolverine going to Japan, and even one where Magneto had teamed up with the X-men, at least I think I remember that.

I think the coolest thing about the X-men is that they are like the other all-star shows I've already mentioned (Superfriends, Laff-a-lympics) except that they were designed that way from the beginning, so they are more likely to compliment each other in terms of personality and abilities.

And beyond anything else you might say about this cartoon, it was just so freakin' cool. I'm sure that a large portion of the recent film trilogy's success can be attributed to the fact that this cartoon was one of the sweetest ones that ever hit the airwaves.

Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends
#6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics
#5: Voltron
#4: X-men

Summer of Productivity Weekly Update #1

Hello again,

As I stated last week, this has now officially become the summer of productivity here in Big Digital-land. Its now been a week since I set some goals and parameters to guide me through the summer. And we'll call this week the "Proof of Concept" week, i.e. while the last week was far from perfect, I did prove to myself that it can be done. A large part of this past week's lack of productivity will be credited to the holiday weekend (my schedule only applies on weekdays), and yesterday's post-holiday ramp-up. On the positive side, I did get up at 7:30 3 days last week (4 if you count Sunday when I was at the church by 7:30), and was in bed by 11:30 or midnight nearly every night.

Just yesterday I made myself a spreadsheet on which I could track my compliance, so look forward to more quantitave data and perhaps even some statistical analysis further down the road (I have to put my prestigious education to use somehow, right?).

And don't worry, there's still 4 more cartoons left in the countdown along with some honorable mentions I need to get out before the countdown is done.

Classic Cartoon Countdown #5: Voltron

Among the classics cartoons of my childhood, a special place belongs to Voltron. For any of you who somehow aren't already familiar with this show, basically there were some evil space bad guys trying to take over the universe, and Voltron was a robot designed to defend the universe against these kinds of threats. Then, somehow this robot was broken up into 5 pieces (lion-shaped robots) that required someone to drive them and put them together to form Voltron.



5 space explorers were sent to the planet where the lion robots were to be the ones who would put Voltron together in time of need. The explorers were:

Keith (Red suit, black lion). He was the leader of the Voltron force and also the pilot of the black lion that formed the head and torso of Voltron.

Lance (Blue suit, red lion). He's the wiseguy of group, cracking jokes and what not. He pilots the red lion that forms the arm of Voltron that holds his Blazing Sword.

Pidge (Green suit, green lion). Pidge is the little kid of the group. I personally, was never sure whether Pidge was a boy or a girl. The clothes Pidge wears often feature some kind of fringy trim, and Pidge is often shown with some kind of headband or barrette holding his (her?) hair in place. The green lion forms one of Voltron's arms.

I'm supposed to believe this is a boy?

Hunk (Yellow suit, yellow lion). Hunk is the strongest member of Voltron force and pilot of the yellow lion that forms one of Voltron's legs. Spends a lot of time hanging out with Pidge.

Princess Allura (pink suit, blue lion). Princess Allura is the reigning royalty on the planet where the Voltron robot is. Originally, I'm not sure for how long, the blue lion was piloted by a guy in a black suit named Swen who was injured in an attack which forced Allura to take over piloting the blue lion, and also resulted her being the token female (we're still not sure about Pidge) on Voltron force. She often talks to some mice who live in her castle. Oh, the blue lion is one of Voltron's legs.

Note: You can see Swen in this picture. He's in the black suit.

Pretty much each episode consisted of the evil space people coming up with a plan to stop the Voltron force from forming Voltron, then sending a giant space monster down to the surface of the planet in a large coffin shaped landing pod. This giant would then get ready to wreak havoc, which would spur the Voltron force to enter their lion robots -- each of which came from a special color-themed location on the planet. The blue lion was under water, the red lion was in a lava cave, the green lion was in the woods, the yellow lion was in the desert, and the black lion was disguised as a statue in front of the castle.

Then, in their separate lion robots the Voltron force would attempt to defeat the monster, unsuccessfully of course. Then they would, wisely, decide to join together as Voltron, which resulted in this impressive checklist of technical jargon:


"Ready to form Voltron! Activate interlock! Dynatherms connected! Infracells up! Megathrusters are go!"

Then the lion robots all came together to form Voltron, who then proceeded to use a variety of again unsuccessful attack methods (shooting lasers, launching limbs at the monster, etc.) before finally deciding to "Form the Blazing Sword!" which was the ultimate weapon in the universe and always successful in dispatching anything that dared to defy it.

Some thoughts about Voltron:

-Why didn't they just always go straight to the full-on Voltron with Blazing Sword attached mode? Seems like it would have saved them some time.

-Why would the people who wanted to control the universe always attack the planet Voltron was on? He didn't seem to be capable of space travel (maybe I'm wrong) so why not just move on and leave him alone?

-The "live action" children's show Power Rangers was such a blatant Voltron rip-off that the first time I watched it I predicted the appearance of a blazing sword and was shocked to be right. The only real difference between these two shows was that the Power Rangers had different kinds of animal robots that went together to form the big robot.

Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends
#6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics
#5: Voltron

And so begins the Summer of Productivity

Lately I've been feeling a little unproductive. I'll be honest, I'm far from the best person to motivate me. Self-starter I am not, at least not on the things I think I need to do. If all I needed to do was surf the web and organize my iTunes music library, pencil me in as self-starter of the year. Unfortunately there are things that I'm not so good at getting myself to do. But all that has changed, starting yesterday. I've made myself a daily schedule with things that I need to do on it that looks like this:

7:30 Get up, exercise
8:30 Shower, Get dressed
9:00 Eat Breakfast
9:15 Read Scriptures
9:45 Leave for "work"
10:15 Arrive at "work"
4:00 Leave for home

11:00 Get ready for bed
11:30 Go to bed

In addition to the fixed items, I've also made a goal to each day pick some task that needs doing and get it done. Maybe I can make 4:30, when I get home from "work" my daily task time. Yesterday it was grocery shopping. Today its folding the laundry I washed on Monday that been sitting in the laundry basket since then. Tomorrow -- I've got some bills that need paying. I'm also going to need to dedicate time most days to my new church calling (Executive Secretary for my bishop) as there appears to be a limitless supply of people who need to meet with him, but I'll probably get a better handle on that as time goes on.

As far as "work" (my research project) goes, I figure that if I at least am here at my desk for nearly 6 hours a day I can't help be manage to be productive. I realize that may be a stretch, but considering all the other changes on the above list, I don't want to try to do too much at once. I have some other things I'd like to improve on as well.

So far (1 day) I'm batting 1.000. I'm sure I'll face some challenges along the way, most likely in the form of things that I'll have to do early in the morning some days that will throw a wrench into my schedule. I'm not sure what I'll do on those days, but I think the key is not to let it mess up my schedule for the other days. I'd like to say I'll worry about that when it comes up, but I think its probably a good idea to have a plan in advance. Any ideas?

I'm planning to post a weekly update, more for me than for you, as a way of holding myself accountable. Feel free to skip over those updates if you like. Not sure what day they'll be coming. Maybe Monday, maybe Wednesday. We'll just have to see.

Classic Cartoon Countdown #6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics

Similar to last week's entry (The Superfriends), this week's entry is another all star cartoon of sorts. Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics was a show where in each episode 3 teams of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters would travel the globe participating in Olympic style competition. At the end of each episode, one team would be declared the victor and get the gold medal.



The three teams were the Scooby Doobies, the Yogi Yahooeys, and the Really Rottens. The choice of who went on each of the first two teams seemed fairly arbitrary, and of course the Rottens were made up of bad guys and villains from a variety of cartoon shows.



I can't recall everyone on each team, but I know the Scooby Doobies had Scooby Doo, Shaggy, Scooby Dumb, Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, Hong Kong Phooey, and Captain Caveman. Yogi's team included Yogi Bear, Booboo Bear, Cindy Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, Augie Doggie, Doggie Daddy, Wally Gator, and the Grape Ape. The Really Rottens were made up mainly original characters including such baddies as Mumbly Mutt, the Dread Baron, an evil magician named the Great Fondoo and his magic rabbit, and Orful Octopus.

For each event, each team would pick a team member or two to compete. The Really Rottens, shockingly would usually try to cheat to win, but more often than not would get caught and lose points as a result. The other two teams seemed to win fairly often, although the Scooby Doobies won more than the Yogi Yahooeys.

Overall I thought this show was a lot of fun to watch, as each episode had a brand new variety of events and it was always interesting to see who from each team would participate in the event and how their specific abilities would affect their performance.

Some credit for this entry is owed to Wikipedia and this page.

Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends
#6: Scooby's All Star Laff-a-lympics

Classic Cartoon Countdown Honorable Mention: Star Wars Droids

Star Wars Droids: The Adventures of C-3PO and R2-D2 is a cartoon that I remember as being exciting because anything to do with Star Wars back then was exciting. Basically this cartoon was set in the time before Episode IV and after the yet to be made Episodes I-III. C-3PO and R2-D2 basically were on their own looking for someone to be their master. They'd find someone and spend a few episodes with that master before circumstances led to their moving on to finding a new master.

Not much stands out to me from this series, other than somehow through this series I was informed that C-3PO and R2-D2 were characters in each of the Star Wars plots that George Lucas had written, even though at this point I don't know that Eps. I-III had even been green lighted for production.

Also of note, Anthony Daniels,the actor who voiced C-3PO in the movies, was also his voice in this cartoon.

Got Lame?

Apparently the Got Milk? ad campaign is the single most awesome, creative advertising campaign in the history of advertising. Because if not, then why in the world would everyone else be just ripping it off for their own Got Something? campaigns. I mean c'mon. Got Milk? has been around for years, can't we come up with something else?

A little searching led me to this page, where the Got Milk? folks have rounded up 100 of their favorite Got Milk? ripoffs. I'm sure they love to see people keep on reusing their oh-so-creative slogan, since it makes the original look that much better by comparison.

Just last year the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) the academic society to which I belong unveiled their new Electronic Health Record promotion campaign, with a super creative title: Got EHR?

Its getting pretty ridiculous people. I expect better.

Classic Cartoon Countdown #7: Superfriends

The Superfriends cartoon was, in my opinion, pretty much one of the coolest ideas ever in cartoon history. Get all the superheros together as one all-star team of heroes and pit them against all their individual arch-enemies and some collective enemies. How could this fail to work? If you ask me, it didn't.

Basically, you've got the Justice League of America (Good thing America is always there to save the world and even the universe at times. You can't tell me the UN could put together a team like this.) consisting primarily of:

Superman
Batman
Robin
Wonder Woman
Aquaman
Green Lantern
Flash
Hawkman
Apache Chief
Black Vulcan
Samurai



They are based out of the Hall of Justice


Their enemies go by the name of the Legion of Doom and include such baddies as:

Lex Luthor
Brainiac
The Riddler
Scarecrow
Bizarro
Cheetah
The Toyman
Sinestro
Black Manta
Captain Cold
Giganta
Grodd
Solomon Grundy



They hole up in a little place that looks like this:


While logic might imply that someone like Superman would be sufficient to handle any number of bad guys, but luckily logic doesn't need to enter into the argument when cartoons are in the mix. Each episode allows different superheros and supervillains to take center stage and often allows them to team up with exciting results.

The lists above do not include some heroes who also appeared in some of the other seasons. I remember the Atom, Green Arrow, and some kind of girl that hung out with Green Arrow. A large number of these comic book heroes (and villains) I would probably have never heard of if not for this show. It allowed these lesser known supes to get their day in the sun, while drawing in those of us who'd never heard of the get to them know them along with folks we'd already heard of before.

Here's the updated countdown:
#10: Underdog
#9: Thundercats
#8: G.I. Joe
#7: Superfriends

Classic Cartoon Countdown Honorable Mention: Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a Saturday morning cartoon that does not seem to have had the syndicated success that some of the other cartoons of its era enjoyed, but was certainly an interesting show. At least to my and my brother. I'm sure some if its popularity with us was due to the fact that our favorite babysitter happened to be familiar with the whole D&D scene and even ended up leaving us his multi-sided die collection (He left us with 4-, 8-, 12-, and 20-sided dies).

The premise of the show was that a group of kids were on a Dungeons & Dragons ride at an amusement park (don't ask me why an amusement park would have a D&D ride) and somehow got teleported over into the real realm of Dungeons & Dragons with each kid being assigned to a certain character class (Ranger, Thief, Acrobat, Barbarian, etc.)



Their main goal always was to return home again, but each week they needed to achieve some other objective either as a step towards their return home or as some kind of side quest that resulted from their desire to help everyone in their path or avoiding one of their several antagonists. Each week the Dungeon Master popped up and gave them some cryptic advice on how to try to get home next, only to disappear just as magically.



One of their enemies were Venger, a fairly evil looking dude who looked like the bad guy in Legend but with only one horn.


Another was Tiamat, the 5-headed chimera dragon with different heads that each spit different bad things (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Acid, and Toxic Gas).


I distinctly remember one episode where the kids managed to make it back to the amusement park, but one of their friends had been turned into a Merman of sorts, so they returned back because they didn't want him to have to remain a merman in the real world.

Why shoot the 3 when you are only down by 1?

Its a rare sports-related post from me, but I guess I just want to ask the world at large a question, inspired two of the Cleveland-Washington games in this year's playoffs.

If you are down by just 1 point with a chance for one last shot, wouldn't you want to try to get a shot close to the basket? I mean, this might be going out on a limb, but it seems like shots are easier to make when you are closer. That's why you get an extra point for making one that is far away. But if you are only losing by 1, then you don't need to make a 3 pointer to win. A regular old 2 pointer will give you the victory. And I'll concede that it might be harder to get an open shot in closer, but even when these guys had some room to get closer without going right into the defense, they made sure to stop behind the 3-point line, as if they need to make sure its a 3 pointer. I mean I think I'm pretty good at math, and last I checked 2 points would have put them 1 point ahead.