Dave Mancuso dot Com

2006 promises to be very interesting. I hope you and yours have a very happy year.

Oh, and get this. You’ve heard that you should eat pork and sauerkraut for good luck on New Year’s Day? Oh, you didn’t? Neither did I until I moved to this area.

But yesterday at the post office, the clerk swore that you should never eat chicken, turkey, or any bird product on January 1. Why? Because you’ll be “scratching for money all year.” She told all of us in line to even be careful of hot dogs, because they sometimes have chicken or turkey in them.

Huh. Man, I must have been eating chicken every New Year’s Day since I can remember–it would explain the scratching for money part…

So you might dig Primer?

It was made for a scant $7,000. It impressed Roger Ebert, though. The official movie site is here, and I guess you can buy it from Amazon for $20.99.

So what am I up to? Getting ready for parties? Making up some cool snacks and dishes for tonight?

Nope. In typical Dave fashion, I was troubleshooting my broken vehicle and replacing the alternator.

Maybe someday I should buy a car that has less than 98,000 miles.

If you’re thinking of starting a business, look no further than the IRS.

Seriously. Here’s the link for all you need, the “One Stop Shop.”

By the way, this was from a Particle Tree post by Chris Campbell. Good Stuff.

Yes, use BitTorrents legally, to download these gems that no one cared enough about to keep out of the public domain…

Note that the quality of entertainment may vary among the selections. (grin)

Although, I recognized a bunch of movies from Dr. Shock’s Saturday afternoon horror shows in Philly in the ’70s (I can’t remember the names of the shows, but I bet Kevin can). Hey, Kevin, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe is there, every episode of the serial. Cool.

(here’s the site)

If you need a Torrent client, the one I’ve found to be good on Windows and Mac is Azureus. I took a fling at the beginning with downloading a few TV shows (shame on me), but I only use it with legal downloads, and the number of them seem to be growing. I use it for the video of the TWIT shows, for instance. Interesting technology.

OK, here goes…

A Elbereth, Gilthoniel!
Silivren penna miriel.
O menel aglar pelennath!

Hm. Nope, you can’t write Elvish without feeling, um, fairylike.

Besides, I’m not really angry about the last year. It’s more of a paradigm shift. Once you realize how things really work in your environment, you simply take the steps you need to in order to change the situation. You plan your life and live the plan.

I’d be more specific, but there’s really no need to. It’s just that if you aren’t happy with the way things are, then you take responsibility for your part in it (you always have some responsibility for your environment, because you always have the choice to stay with it or walk away–or anything in between). Then, if you want things to change, you just change them, including changing yourself if your personality is at fault. By that I mean that if you’re, for instance, always getting yourself into situations where you’ve overcommitted yourself, then change the part of you that keeps getting you into hot water. Learn a new groove for your behavior, and stick to it.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

🙂

And we listened to Dark Side of the Moon in 5.1 surround sound.

It was. So. Freaking. Awesome.

And I didn’t even have a chance to tune the system properly yet. That’ll wait a few weeks until I’m in the new house.

I’ve heard it said before, but it really was like listening to the album for the first time again. I know that SACDs seem to be fading in popularity, but DualDiscs (with the CD on one side and (usually) DVD-Audio 5.1 surroung on the other side) are growing in sales.

I know that the Talking Heads are redoing their entire catalogue in surround. I know that the Foo Fighters’ In Your Honor came out in DualDisc format. I wonder how soon REM or the Beatles albums come out in 5.1?

So, yes, I took a personality profile on the Internet last month. You can take it here if you’d like. Superficial as always, but interesting to note my score.

(Here it is).

Is it a surprise to anyone that my Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness are almost off the charts, while we ignore the fact that my Conscientious percentiles are, shall we say, somewhat lower?

My wife’s scores are almost the opposite of mine. Maybe that’s how we complement each other. In fact, I’d say that’s how we avoid (mostly) driving each other crazy.

Or maybe she’s just a saint.

(grin)

For your viewing and downloading enjoyment, click here. Thanks to blogsip. Nice.

One of my favorite podcasts, Cinecast, runs through various marathons where they examine a genre of films with five representative samples. It’s a bit fun, because they listen a lot to viewer feedback, and their chosen samples are always subject to some listener controversy.

I liked their marathon on Westerns (although Kevin recommended The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly over their choice A Fistful of Dollars–thanks to him, I’ve got the DVD now). Right now, they’re doing Hitchcock. An obvious choice of film study, but these guys make it fresh. I’ve always wanted to see Notorious, but I tend to find North By Northwest on TV instead (one of my favorites, at least).

At any rate, if you ever want to look at the marathons and “play along at home,” here’s the Cinecast marathon link. And here’s the link to the podcast, if you have iTunes (it’s all free, so why not?).