Welcome to adulthood

Andrea is now officially Mrs. Seth Holloway. The wedding was a beautiful, small affair in the hills overlooking Lake Travis. I hope all the guests had a good time–I know I did! My apologies if I did not get a chance to talk to you, or if you were not invited (space was limited).

We just got back from a short honeymoon on Canyon Lake. Thanks to Justin at the Lakehouse Bed and Breakfast for a wonderful stay. I highly recommend this destination if you want to get away from it all without traveling for hours or breaking the bank.

We’re now trying to organize everything, merge old and new items, and establish some semblance of normalcy.

The Happening

We saw The Happening last night, the movie’s opening night. Given M. Night Shyamalan’s body of work, I had no idea what to expect; I went in with an open mind. The movie was bad; it was ever so thinly veiled trite scare tactics about humanity’s effect on the Earth. The actors did a great job, but the story was lacking. Several objects seemed to be important, but they never panned out. Examples include the mood ring, the child, the hot dogs, the old woman. Any one of the aforementioned items could have led to a more cohesive story. Basically, any other ending would have been an improvement. Here are some options I thought of:

1) Make it a love story – the main characters could have saved humanity with their pure intentions.

2) Make it a horror film – whew! Almost any change in plot would have made The Happening a horror film. I think the old woman controlling the destruction would have been a grand climax.

3) Make it a dream – the ultimate cop-out in endings; however, The Happening could have wiped away at least some of the bad if the entire scene took place in a dream.

I was most disappointed at the fact that the movie was shallow and unfinished. Documentaries are en vogue currently, and the objectives of this movie are better served with a factual production.

Better luck next time M Night Shyamalan!

Fixing American Health Care

After watching Sicko I have been more interested in the American health care situation. I don’t trust the government to provide high-quality health care coverage. Moore speaks highly of the English system, but a common perk for jobs in the UK (private health care coverage) suggests that the system is less than perfect. Benefits of America’s quasi-privatized system are a wash: a person can receive care, but insurance rarely covers the entire cost of operations and medicine. There are a number of other issues at work (governmental regulations, the patent system, market competition, a lack of care for mentally-ill, …); however, my intent for this post is not to cover any of these complex issues, nor is it to enrage people or debate over the advantages and disadvantages of private health care. Instead, I simply want to share a solution that I find very clever and achievable: Let Wal-Mart Fix American Health Care.

If they can roll back prices on so many everyday products, they should be able to hardball health care providers and pass the savings on to the consumers. I’ll worship the Church of Wal-Mart if it saves me any of the $3,600 a year I pay for health care (for two).

The resolution of human vision

What is the resolution of unaltered human sight? Computers are slowly pushing their capability higher: from 800×600 to 1920×1200 and beyond. I’m left wondering “When will the screen resolution catch our innate capabilities?”

The answer is not simple and estimates differ on the resolution (324 megapixel, 576 megapixels to 15 million megapixels). In any case, our eyes will outperform technology for at least another year or two That’s when genetic engineering can save the day!

A few interesting links

After an excellent weekend that went by in a fast, I’m watching some Battlestar Galactica and reading. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know! Definitely some interesting reads today…

There are some very interesting articles on economics of technology, growth, free products, and the Internet.

Hackers and evil-doers continue to innovate; ransomware is now using advanced encryption. As hackers get more sophisticated the personal computing landscape will change–as will laws on cybercrime. Terminal computing, here we come! A number of groups are providing free kits for a variety of hacking tasks. It amuses me that anyone would trust malware as evidenced here.

Andrea’s been looking for a program to edit her digital photos. Photoscape looks like a promising option. We’ll have to try it out.

Wedding showers bring May flowers

Mike, Tahra, Andrea, and I drove to New Orleans last weekend for a Mire-Holloway wedding shower. Overall, it was a blast: great food, great music, and great company.

The food
The trip could be defined by what we ate–New Orleans is definitely a food town. There were amazing meals at Acme Oyster House and the Bon Ton as well as our wedding shower.

The music
New Orleans is full of street performers tootin’ on a horn or bangin’ on a drum–all while begging! Luckily there was a good live band at the shower with no strings attached.

The company
I enjoyed meeting/seeing my future in-laws. There are lots of fun memories from the family and a few uniquely New Orleans characters. Wolfman Will sang some scat (read: spoke gibberish) before telling me he was the Woooooooooolfmaaaaaaaan Wheeeeeeeeel. Then there was the old guy who let us hold his trombone. And the bum yelling obscenities then asking for “tree fiddy!” Wait, that was the Loch Ness Monster! Long story short, I’m a few dollars lighter but rich in social currency and karma.

To cap it all off we received a pile of great presents. We should get married more often, or at least celebrate our anniversary with everyone else buying us presents