Currently right now, I’m in Portland at OSCON. So far, it’s a blast! Took in a Ruby tutorial as well as a tutorial on Scaling Internet Architectures. Ruby seems more easy on my eyes and brain than the Visual Basic stuff I learned last year. Good thing that I’ve purchased the Ruby on Rails for Dummies book. And the second tutorial will do so much good for my final capstone class at Ivy Tech.

Yesterday, I’ve met some spiffy people, and I ended up chatting up with one of the Mozilla guys regarding the Protestant Reformation. He is giving a presentation about parallels between the Internet age and the Reformation. We chatted about theology, especially our personal influences. Agnostic with Buddhist thought. One thing that stuck with me was that he said that although he questions the divine presence, he believes that one must do good regardless. We both agree that we’ve seen in our lives too many unethical people…and that eventually, they will have to answer for themselves. Nice, civil chap.

I’ll be writing more stuff later on, and will publish piccies of OSCON and a special section on one Guinness World Record broken at Pioneer Square.

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Regarding the in-flight movie The Last Mimzy: It is a “Peice of Crap”. (The misspelling is intentional– the movie’s so crummy it does not deserve correct spelling.) You take two kids, Yuppie parents, throw in New Age silliness, and Homeland Security hysteria…and puke it out. The result is The Last Mimzy.

A movie so cheesy deserves the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. It took all my strength to resist snarking out loud.

Some notable stuff:

-Science teacher wearing Pink Floyd shirt, complaining about how we are ZOMG SKREWING UP TEH ENVIRONMENTS and our DNA. Complain to China and its poor record of keeping the Kyoto Protocol, although you smug blankety blanks are just as bad with your mind pollution. That movie has created huge quantities of Hollywood smug.
-The obvious New Age/Buddhism-lite principles. Listen buddy, a trip to Nepal an enlightened creature does not make. You dreamt of lottery numbers, fool.
-The science teacher’s live-in fiancee, granola as all git out. And palmistry as Science? Ooooh, you guys are subverting the old archaic ways, but we have no medal for you to offer. What chances does that hippie couple have in regards to their bond? Just as small as an actual kid hitting a 300 foot putt on the first try.
-How the frell did the Homeland Security blokes have the technology to track down the power outage?! They still have not find Bin Laden! And the dramatic arrest? Excuse me, Elian Gonzalez is in Miami, not in Seattle…
-And speaking of Seattle: “Seattle Elementary School”? “Seattle Laundry Service”? “Seattle Research Center”? If only you guys can spend less time with teh pot you can think of something more creative besides the ooooh special effects.
-When the mother threw out Mimzy. I was utterly disappointed that the kid did not pull any Carrie White stunts in retaliation.