Badgers #1

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For those living in a cave today, the Wisconsin Badgers Men’s Basketball Team is now ranked #1 for the first time ever. For further reading, check out the “What I’m Reading” section of my blog. There are numerous articles to read about this event.

You’ll also see that because of Bielema’s inspired coaching (purposely going offsides on a kickoff to run out the clock) the NCAA is considering un-doing the rule change that allowed this.

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Breach

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I’ve actually been anticipating the movie Breach just a little bit. More than any other recent movie. Looked like a good spy type movie, although it is difficult for me to be excited about any movie staring Ryan Phillippe.

The movie is pretty good. Nothing special, not award winning, but it tells a good story. And that is all I expected from it. A good story.

The movie tells the story of a breach in US security, the biggest breach in US security and this tells of the last few months of the ongoing breach. It would have been a bit more interesting to see more about the back story, see how he was brought in, how he worked, what damage he did. The story the movie did tell, was well told. Although you should know the outcome, I’ll leave the details of the story to the movie.

Finally, it was just a little creepy that the dates in the movie corresponding so well to the current dates, just off a few years. Hanssen was arrested Feb 18, 2001, 6 years and 1 day ago.

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Ghost Rider

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I caught Ghost Rider on the opening day. Not because I was that excited for it, but because the movie time fit my schedule. Seems Marvel has gotten into the habit of releasing new comic book based movies right around Valentine’s Day. It didn’t work very well with Daredevil (2/14/03) or Electra (1/14/05). Both were mediocre movies. Ghost Rider was just a bit better, and surprisingly, actually did pretty good at the box office.

Based on what I know of the comic book character, they stayed pretty true to the original story with just a little simplification, but nothing materially different.

The move was alright. Nothing special, but not really bad either. If you like comic book type movies or action movies, you’ll probably enjoy this one, once. Action sequences were decent, effects OK, but the rider did look a little fake at times. A little too CGI.

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Mark Cuban May Have Seen My Blog

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I read Blog Maverick which is Mark Cuban’s blog. He own’s the Dallas Mavericks and is, well lets just say he is a very enthusiastic owner. He tends to have some interesting points of view about technology and business. I don’t always agree, but it makes for interesting reading. A while back he posted about this site called YouMinis.com. Basically sounds like fancy way to make up a personalized home page. Well today, I started gets referrals from Cuban’s YouMinis’ page.

On Thursday I wrote my little review about a Whitesnake concert which was on his channel and now my posting is showing up on his feed that searches out things about his channel. Still waiting for the hit from Dallas to show up on Site Meter.

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ESPN.com Showing the Badger Football Team Some Love on Valentine’s Day

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With the NFL season officially over and the college season now a distant memory and college basketball everywhere, Badger fans, you may have missed this nice article about the football team over on ESPN.com. In case you did, here’s a link. Mainly, it talks about can Bielema maintain the high expectations he has set for himself since he started with a 12 win season. Regardless, it is nice to see the football team getting some national press.

Meanwhile, the basketball team doesn’t get any love. The Badgers (#3 in the nation) playing a rival, granted a pretty bad rival, and what do they talk about… the fact that Duke is unranked and has lost 4 in row. Duke gets all the love while the Badgers are left out in the cold. Only good thing is I didn’t need to listed to Dickie V announce the game.

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Whitesnake

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As some of you know, I have an HD TV now. Works great. DirectTV carries HDNet and HDMovieNet, both great channels. I have found one thing that shouldn’t be shown in HD.

Old school metal hair bands.

I’m not picking on Whitesnake in particular. I saw that they had an hour long concert airing on HDNet, so I recorded it. The songs of their’s that I recognized, they did a really good job with. They nailed their power ballads “Is This Love” and “Here I Go Again” and jammed out to “Still of the Night”. There are just some things that don’t need to be seen in HD.

First off, style wise, I don’t think they’ve changed since the 80’s in regard to their dress. Like Jerry Seinfield said (paraphrased), they found a look and they’ve stuck with it. But underneath their big hair, they have old wrinkly faces. It just doesn’t look quite right. You think they’re 20 somethings and they you see they’re not. And HD makes it very evident.

The band isn’t the worst part. Just like the band, the crowd looks like the are all dressed from 80’s and they don’t look nearly as good. Some looked done right scary. Remember how when old people would try and dress up like rockers from the 80’s back in the 80’s, well these are the rockers from the 80’s and now they’re the old people.

If you want to see them in all of their glory, go check out the video for “Here I Go Again“. Guys, it has Tawny Kitaen in it. Gotta watch it.

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6 Weeks

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Last year I hit the water on March 23. It is February 12 now. That is about 6 weeks away doing some quick math. Today’s weather: about 10/20 degrees out, roughly 3 inches of snow. And the lakes? They’re frozen. Solid. Not completely through (top to bottom, that would kill the fish), but all the way across at least. I did find out that water has a very unique property that make it freeze top to bottom instead of bottom to top. To get the most support out of water, it needs to be 39 degrees. That is when it is most dense and offer the most support… a benefit of cold water footing.

That leaves 6 weeks for it (the weather) to warm up to the point that it is no longer freezing and the lakes thaw. Everybody, throw open your windows, let’s get this global warming thing going. If we get enough furnaces going, it’ll warming up. I’ve got cabin fever and the only thing to cure that will be a ski set. These arms of mine are ready to hold onto a rope so I can drag myself across the water. Describing it like that just doesn’t sound like fun, but it is.

I like to search for random crap on the web while I’m posting to try and add a little something to the post. Well, I learned a few things researching this one so… Challenge: What sentence in this post is a reference to one of the links and why is it a reference?

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Hannibal Rising

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I’ll warn you now… this review of Hannibal Rising contains spoilers… they’re after the poster… you’ve been warned…

So this is the movie that is suppose to tell the beginning of Hannibal Lecter (don’t read too much here if you don’t know anything, you’ll ruin the movies.) If you don’t know who he is, go watch Silence of the Lambs… trust me, it is worth it. Then go crawl back under the rock you came out from under because that is one of the best movies out there and Lecter has been voted the #1 villian in movies of all time.

For me, I’d almost rather not know why he became a psycho, but when there is money to made, lets come up with a reason. Obviously that is what the author did since this book came out so long after the others. I’m curious to see what Lecter’s Wiki page looked like before the most recent book/movie.

***** If you don’t want spoilers… stop NOW!!! *****

Anyway, the movie is entertaining, but forgettable, nothing you’re going to want to see again and again like Lambs. To me, it looked like they needed to come up with a really good reason for Hannibal to be so sick and twisted… let’s have him witness war crimes from WWII as a kid. Now why is he a cannibal? Let’s have the war crime be some “people” ate his little sister. Yes, that is what they did. I guess that is what it takes to make someone go crazy. This all takes place in the first 10 minutes or so of the movie, so I didn’t ruin much. He witnessed this as a kid and like the poster says… he wants revenge. And the movie documents the revenge.

I think the director or author was a fan of the Kill Bill movies because they figured out a way to write him in a sword in the movie and it all goes down hill from here and turns into a rather predictable catch a killer movie.

No memorable lines and the fact that they couldn’t turn back the clock on Sir Anthony Hopkins to make him look 20 means you get a very run of the mill movie. Manage to make Hopkins look 20 something and have him in the role and maybe they would have had something. Random guy playing Lecter just isn’t the same. Average movie, nothing special to make it Hannibal worthy, but it is watchable.

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Words to Live By

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I was watching an episode of Iconoclasts that featured Laird Hamilton and Eddie Vedder. For those who don’t know, Laird is a really good surfer and Eddie is the lead singer of Pearl Jam (one of my favorite bands).

I mainly watched it to see an interview with Eddie, but ended up learning a bit more about Laird Hamilton as well. Laird is regarded as one of the best surfers ever even though he has never surfed on the professional tour. He helped come up with the idea of the tow in to catch the really, really big waves and butchered an air chair to come up hydrofoil surfing (as seen in Step into Liquid). He’s also an accomplished water skier as well, so I’m hoping he won’t mind me tweaking a quote from him on Iconoclasts.

Laird was talking about his surfing philosphy, but I think it also applies to water skiing just as well.

[Water skiing] “…like art or music, the great thing is there’s no wrong way to do it. The only wrong way to do it is if you’re not having a good time.” – Laird Hamilton

This is something I’ve long thought. Whether you just finished your first run on skis, nailed your first front flip off the ramp, or just taken another of countless barefoot runs, everyone ends with a big smile on their face. My niece had to compose a song on the piano about one of her favorite memories this past year. Her inspirational memory… her first time skiing.

Granted this quote is more often phrased “If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right,” but I think Laird’s version puts a much more positive spin on it though. It implies that whether your skiing for your first time ever or just nailed a trick that has rarely ever been done by anyone, if you had fun, that is all that matters.

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Pursuit of Happyness

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Saw the Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness. Not much to say about it other than it is feel good movie that will inspire you to work hard in to succeed at both work and family life. As part of the inspiration, you’ll see Will Smith starring in a movie with his son Jaden Smith playing the roles of father and sun. Will plays a father named Chris Gardener who is working hard to make ends meet but just can’t seem to get caught up. Then he catches a cab ride with a HR person for an investment firm and solves the Rubic’s Cube right in from. At the time (1980), many believed the puzzle to unsolvable. Needless to say, the HR guy was intrigued by the genius of Chris and thought he had a lot of potential. And that is where the movie takes off.

The pacing at time is a little slow, but the movie is good. Check out this real life inspirational movie when you get a chance.

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