Movie Review: “We’re the Millers”

by   •   What I'm Watching
 

This post is over 12 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Last week, I watched the 2013 comedy film We’re the Millers, starring Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, and Emma Roberts. My decision to watch this movie came from its relatively high rating on IMDb, as well as its inclusion in IMDb’s most popular comedies.

The main plot features David, a drug dealer who, due to unfortunate circumstances, is ordered by his boss to travel to Mexico to pick up some marijuana and transport it across the border into the United States. David is sure that if he does this by himself, he will get caught by border patrol.

David realizes that happy families are never questioned. Although he’s single and doesn’t have a family of his own, he decides to create a fake family with others in his everyday life to portray himself as a father, rather than a drug dealer.

Upon arriving at Mexico, David has something unexpected waiting for him. However, due to improbable and humorous luck, he manages to successfully complete the job – or so he thought. David and his “family” begin running into problems that delay their trip.

One particular thing I liked about this movie is how it brings together two seemingly contradictory themes – drugs and family – into a humorous plot. Although a lot of the events are unbelievable, the movie does a great job taking some particular conflicts and somehow making them seem realistic. Overall, the comedy is witty and relateable, and it makes you realize how much of a great time you can have with your family.

 

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“We still need more parts.”

by   •   General
 

This post is over 12 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

For those of you curiously keeping up with the unfolding of the epic tale of my laptop repair, I have another update.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I received a phone call from Dell. As a side note, they were supposed to call me the morning following my complaint at 10 AM, which they definitely did not do, but the call still came eventually.

Dell ordered some parts to their repair facility – parts that they originally thought would fix the problem. When those parts arrived last week, the technician apparently installed those parts, and my laptop was still not fully fixed. According to the new customer service representative who called me today (who claimed to be some sort of supervisor or manager), after replacing those parts, my laptop still would not turn on.

So, they had to diagnose the problem again, and came up with some more parts that they would be able to replace. This time, it is supposedly some cables that might be defective. Dell claims that those cables were also out of stock, have been ordered, and should be arriving at the repair facility before the end of this week. However, the arrival time was an estimate, and could possibly take longer.

I was told that I would be receiving a phone call around October 2 with another update.

So now we wait.

(Again.)

 

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Re: “Daily Post: Celebrate Good Times”

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 12 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

You receive some wonderful, improbable, hoped-for good news. How do you celebrate?

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/daily-prompt-celebration/

Because of my somewhat utilitarian and opportunity-based style of living, I actually don’t really celebrate much, even when I receive great news. When it happens, I generally accept it, feel happy for a bit, then move on and continue with what I was doing. If anything, my way of celebrating is to leave some time out for later so I can do some thinking and planning about how this great news will affect me.

Some people wonder how I manage to get along without having any parties or celebrations, but that’s where my opportunity-based style of living comes along. It’s not that I don’t celebrate, it’s more that I let celebrations come to me and I don’t take any extra effort to make them happen.

In terms of my own parties, I don’t have actual parties, but moments of relaxation everyday – I guess you could call them micro parties. Each evening or night, I rest, relax, do something fun, and eat some ice cream and other snacks. I’d rather do this and split up my fun among all days of the week, rather than have a huge party at the end of the week.

Yes, this also means that I also don’t have parties during times most other people do, like my birthday. Instead of meeting up with all my friends at once during a party, I’d rather meet up in smaller groups when the opportunities arise. Some people like to buy themselves gifts when it’s their birthday; I, on the other hand, buy myself “gifts” whenever I see something I need on sale.

 

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Re: “Daily Post: Non Sequitur”

by   •   Daily Post, Highlights
 

This post is over 12 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Note: for this Daily Post assignment, I decided to put the prompt at the end rather than at the top, because I feel reading the prompt before reading the post will act as a spoiler.

Jonas entered the library with a skip in his step. Earlier that day, his teacher complimented him for being a great reader, and encouraged him to keep reading. Jonas took his reacher’s advice to heart, and sprinted straight to the library after school. He wanted to get the biggest, thickest, hardest books so he could become the best reader in the world.

While scanning the shelves, he came across a 2,000-page encyclopedia. He instantly knew this was the one. Even the name of the book was beautiful: Britannica. Jonas and Britannica – it was meant to be. He brought it up to the circulation desk to check it out.

“I’m sorry, young lad, but you cannot check out reference materials.”

Jonas stood there thinking about what the lady had just said. Then it clicked. He knew what was happen­ing. He had seen it in movies before. It was a forbidden love. The love between Jonas and Britannica was forbidden.

Jonas knew exactly what to do next. The movies he’s seen taught him well. He had to run away with his true love. He had to run away with Britannica.

He carefully looked toward the exit. There was an obstacle blocking the path to freedom and true love. There was a young girl standing by the door, looking out. Jonas sized her up – only about four feet tall, not much larger than he was. He made the decision. He believed in himself. He could do it.

He dug his heels into the ground, then sprang forward. He began sprinting head-on towards the exit. The lady at the check-out desk began calling out for him, but he didn’t care. She just wanted to hold him back from his destiny.

The obstacle got closer and closer. “Britannica, we will get through this together,” Jonas whispered. He held the encyclopedia at head height and charged forward. As he approached the obstacle, the book collided with the back of her head, causing her to topple over like a bowling pin. She shrieked out in pain and confusion, but Jonas didn’t care. The noise was just another attempt at the world trying to stop him from achieving his ultimate fate.

The path was clear. As Jonas charged through the door and the book passed through the magnetic sensors, sirens started going off. “Wow, this love must be REALLY forbidden if even the police and FBI are after me,” Jonas thought to himself. He began the sprint back home. He never looked back, not even to notice that he had accidentally dropped Britannica in the parking lot on his way out.

Five minutes later, Jonas arrived back at his house.

“How was school?” his mother asked.

“It was great, my teacher made me really happy today!” Jonas replied.

“What did he do to make you so happy?” she asked.

“He tried to hit me with a forklift!”

Write a post about anything you’d like, but be sure to include this sentence somewhere in the final paragraph: “He tried to hit me with a forklift!”

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/daily-prompt-nonsequitur/

 

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“We need to protect the data on your hard drive.”

by   •   General
 

This post is over 12 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I have another update about my broken laptop.

Before last Tuesday, my laptop’s repair was on hold because Dell was waiting for a replacement part to come in stock. The part arrived last Tuesday, so my laptop was released from hold and the repair process began again.

Since then, I had no updates from Dell, neither through phone nor through the website’s status check interface.

I called Dell earlier today to ask them what was going on. The woman who answered the phone claimed that my laptop was still on hold. I let her know that my laptop was released from hold last Tuesday and the repair had already begin, so I was calling to find out why it’s taken six days to fix my laptop so far with­out any success.

She said that the laptop was forwarded to the escalation crew, and she would speak with her supervisor to find out the reason for the long repair time.

When she said “speak with my supervisor,” I think she meant to say “ask my supervisor for help with coming up with an excuse so this customer stops complaining.”

She came back.

“The repair is taking a very long time because it is an in-depth and complex repair, and we need to take extra precautions to ensure that the data on your hard drive is safe.”

Well, that’s great.

But I already know that my data is safe.

Because I took out my hard drive before sending my laptop in to Dell.

My hard drive is literally sitting right next to me, on my desk.

After sharing this information with her, and accusing her of blatantly lying to me, she began profusely apologizing (which I didn’t care for, seeing has her apologies have no significance to me), and claimed that they need 24 hours to find out what’s really going on with my laptop. She says somebody will call me back tomorrow at around 10 AM.

Probably not the best idea to lie to me about computers, seeing as I was a former computer technician myself, am still qualified enough to be one, and could probably fix my own laptop in half an hour if I had access to all the replacement parts.

So now we wait.

 

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Scare Tactic: “_____, the same ingredient found in _____!”

by   •   Psychology
 

This post is over 12 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Back when I was in junior high school, I read about Twinkies and supposedly how terrible they were for your health. One of the reasons they gave was that the Twinkie contains ingredients that are found in rocket fuel.

Even at that time, my young mind was able to laugh at the terrible logic used to claim Twinkies were unhealthy. I never disagreed that Twinkies were unhealthy, but if you want people to believe you, you need to use valid justification.

Unfortunately, I realized not everyone was bright enough to identify the huge flaw in that claim. I came across adults who avoided Twinkies because it shared ingredients with rocket fuel, rather than legitimate reasons such as its absurdly high fat and cholesterol content.

So, I decided to present a few analogies similar to the Twinkie ingredient claim to help people see why this “reason” is so bogus. Basically, what I’m trying to prove is that, just because an ingredient is used in something that is inedible does not automatically make everything else containing that ingredient inedible.

Let’s start with something very simple: salt. Salt is put in almost all your favorite foods. For example, the tomato sauce in pizza contains salt. During the winter in colder regions, trucks spray a substance on the street in order to decrease the freezing temperature and avoid icy, frozen roads. This substance is clearly inedible (unless you enjoy feeling sick and ingesting toxic substances). A primary ingredient in this substance is salt. As a result, according to the Twinkie logic, because anti-freeze road spray contains salt and is inedible, pizza is also automatically inedible, because it contains salt.

What about food coloring? We all know food coloring is used in many foods, and is non-toxic and safe to eat. Let’s say we added some green food coloring to some eggs, as a tribute to Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham.” During the process, we also accidentally spilled some coloring on our little sister. Now, both our eggs and our sister contain green food coloring.

According to Twinkie logic, you should avoid eating Twinkies because it contains the same ingredient as rocket fuel, so eating Twinkies is pretty much just like eating rocket fuel. Well, you better avoid those green eggs, because it contains the same ingredient that’s currently on your little sister, so eating those green eggs is pretty much just like eating your little sister. You don’t want to be a cannibal now, do you?

As we were able to see by making these comparisons, the logic used to discourage Twinkie consumption is invalid. If anything, it is a psychological scare tactic, taking advantage of the human brain’s tendency and desire to form connections and jump to conclusions when discovering two pieces of similar information, in an attempt to fit everything into a bigger picture.

It’s easy to avoid falling into these traps in the future. When you encounter problems with unfamiliar topics (such as unknown ingredients and rocket fuel), substitute in things you’re more familiar with (such as salt and food coloring) to make understanding the big picture a lot easier.

 

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