Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Mythbusters LIVE!

Well, I should say *THE* Mythbusters live. I got an e-mail this morning about a special show at The Moore that will feature Adam and Jamie talking about behind the scenes stuff that happens at Mythbusters HQ. Even though they won't do any actual mythbusting experiments, hey, it's Adam and Jamie live on stage.

If not for the fact that the show is on October 4th, which is when I'll be on vacation in Hawaii for Christie and Nick's wedding.

Oh well. For anyone in town who might be interested:

http://www.themoore.com/artists/?artist=811

And if you're interested in pre-sale tickets (starting today at 10am) at 10% off, here's the link. Use promotional code "stg".

Monday, May 26, 2008

Crazy Weekend

There will be a short and long part of this report. The short is my weekend report. I was down in San Jose, California for a summer curling bonspiel. Despite the fact that we won 1 and lost 3 games, we had a great time. One of the advantages to losing out early was that we had the whole day Sunday free to do what we wanted. We decided to drive down to Monterey, visited the aquarium (which for my avid blog readers, is on par with the excellence of the Tennessee Aquarium from my last trip), did some shopping down Cannery Row, and then drove down to Pebble Beach and checked out the golf courses and scenic drive.

Flash back to earlier in the day... I get a call from a family friend who has been looking after my parents' house while they were on vacation... their house was broken into. My parents were in Turkey, without any way to contact them until they got home today, and with me down in the Bay Area, I was fortunately able to get a hold of my sister eventually and she went down to help take care of things at the house.

After further assessment, these were decidedly amateur crooks. They broke a bedroom window to get in, after not being able to find an easy way in. They didn't really ransack the place like you'd typically expect... however, they stole some jewelry, silverware, two TVs and a laptop computer. Oh, and to top things off, they took my mom's minivan too (they probably needed something to haul away the stuff in). So after the police to wrote up the report, and CSI:FW processed the crime scene and got some nice fingerprints from the window, they cleaned up a bit of the mess around and the police put out a stolen vehicle alert on the car.

On to today... my parents got back and we told them about what happened. They made it home and took inventory of what was missing and worked on getting things back in order. The insurance folks will call tomorrow to take care of everything.

But wait, there's more! About 9:00pm, less than 30 hours after the incident was reported, they get a call from the FWPD: they've found the stolen van parked at the Denny's on 320th (all of about 3 minutes from my parents house) and asked them to come over to take a look. Apparently these crooks ARE as stupid as they seemed to be. After arriving, they found 3 or 4 police cars surrounding the parking lot and apparently they had two suspects in custody. Unfortunately, most of the loot was no longer in the van, but they suspect it's all close by. After some waiting around for CSI:FW to process the car and get any fingerprint evidence they could, they actually drove the car back home. The car seems to be in good shape, though apparently the police found a crack pipe among other things in the car, and recommended they get it professionally cleaned, which insurance should take care of. In the meantime, the police apparently have already recovered a few things (mainly jewelry-type stuff) off the suspects.

As of the last update, one suspect is in jail being interrogated, one suspect is at the hospital, probably handcuffed to the bedrail, after an untimely run in with one of Federal Way's four-legged finest in the FWPD K9 unit. It sounds as if justice may be served afterall.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Another reason to go to Disney World

As if anyone *needs* a reason to go to Disney World, here's one anyway... the opening of yet another new and thrilling adventure: Toy Story Midway Mania.

Designed as a carnival in Toy Story's world of toys, Disney has taken rides into the 21st century once again and made things interactive. Looks like loads of fun.

There's a great MiceAge Review of the ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Disney World. An identical ride is being built in California at Disney's California Adventure, but I'll take my original assessment and use this as an excuse to go to Orlando instead of Anaheim sometime.

My last WDW trip was all the way back in September 2005... it's hard to believe it's been 2.5 years. I still haven't made it back there since their last big attraction Expedition Everest opened. I suspect within the next year or so it will once again be time to plan another sojourn to Florida.