Pandering.

The Oscar nominees were announced today. In the running for “Best Picture”: Avatar.

…along with nine, count ‘em – nine other films.

Point 1: ten nominees for “Best Picture” is pretty ridiculous to begin with.

Point 2: Avatar – shiny and pretty though it was – doesn’t have any business being on that list.

In more interesting news, the Razzie nominees were announced yesterday.  How many of them are you ashamed to admit that you paid money to see?  I saw two – other people rented them, thankfully, so I don’t have that on my conscience.

A few of us found a surprising secret about Fort Collins on Sunday night.

The secret is both mysterious and tasty.

It’s a restaurant that has good microbrews for $1.50 – every day of the week, every hour that they’re open.  And the food’s pretty decent, too.

Matador Mexican Grill – 1823 E. Harmony Road (Harmony and Timberline, next to Coldstone Creamery).

Other people need to start eating here so that they don’t close!

This week has both flown by and dragged its feet miserably. I’m glad to see it come to an end.

I get to watch Avatar again tonight and spend time shopping with Lia tomorrow before we go to dinner with my coworkers for a project-completion party.

Also: two weeks from today is my LASIK appointment. I’m excitedly nervous. I alternate between browsing for guide dog services and nice non-prescription sunglasses.

XKCD makes me feel sad for an inanimate object.

So aside from being easy prey for tasteless jokes, I really don’t see anything… um… “exciting” about Apple’s just-announced “iPad”. It’s a large and absurdly expensive iPod Touch.

And that’s it.

Apparently Steve Jobs spun it as the death of the Netbook in the release. For a device that won’t let you Twitter and surf the web at the same time I think that’s just a wee bit optimistic.

…especially when it costs as much as it does. $829 for the 64GB version with a 3G connection? No thanks – I can spend another $20 and get a refurbished MacBook and a 3G card from any carrier I care to name _and_ be able to use the word-processor and send email at the same time.

I don’t get it. Neither, thus far, do any of the tech blogs I follow (even the ones that are traditionally drooling Apple fanatics).

Everybody’s got some piece of gear in their closet that is exceptionally good at what it does but is embarrassingly ugly.

Mine’s a Hi-Vis Yellow Buff with retro-reflective striping.  It keeps my neck warm and bug-free on the motorcycle, keeps my neck from getting sunburnt on the motorcycle, keeps people from running me over on the motorcycle, keeps my nose and mouth warm skiing, can keep sweat out of my eyes playing softball, but it’s godawfully hideous to anyone around me.  When I got done skiing and was waiting around for Lia and the rest, I had it pulled up over my neck, ears and face balaclava-style and several people referred to me as “the traffic cone”.

I did have one in a much less obnoxious “black” color over the summer, but lost it somewhere.

I’m sure everybody’s got something like this – a piece of gear that they wouldn’t be caught dead in if it didn’t actually work as well as it does.  That’s mine, so what’s yours?

I did, in fact, survive my ski lesson on Saturday.

We left Fort Collins for Copper Mountain around 5:30a – all five of us snuggled cozily into one car.  By 9am I had my lift ticket and was on my way up a lift with Lia for one “couple” run before my actual lesson.  That run went about as you’d expect – I snowplowed my way down the entire thing and fell down a lot.  This was, for the record, my fourth ever time on a ski slope (and that goes back to Junior High).

It took me an hour to make it down that one green  run ( Woodwinds/WW Traverse/Easy Feelin’  off of the High Point lift, for those who care), just in time to drop in for the start of the lesson.

Since I knew how to use the lift and snowplow, that got me moved up one group in the skill levels, so we started right off hitting the lift and learning about parallel turning at the top of a run (Roundabout from the Kokomo lift).

A lot of the body motion in skiing is a foreign idea to me and speed scares me when I don’t have anything even remotely resembling brakes.  That said, I survived, made it to the bottom and by the 2nd and 3rd run down that little green slope I was doing ok – no falls!

Before lunch the instructor took us up to some “steeper” (finger-quotes there for the “real” skiers amongst us) terrain (Roundabout from the Lumberjack lift).  When we got off the lift it was snowing and blowing pretty decently.  “Steeper” means you go faster and going faster means I forgot all the lessons I’d learned about turning in the previous three hours so I crashed.  A lot.  My legs were done by the time I got to the bottom around 1:30p.

I met back up with everyone else for lunch and two of us called it quits – my legs were not holding me up, and Lee’d taken a good rib-bruiser crash – so we schlepped our gear back to the car, changed into sensible shoes and went back to the bottom of the slope where some Bloody Marys were on the menu.

By this point the snow that’d been flitting in and out throughout the morning had decided it was there to stay, so the rest of the group finally called “done” at 3:30.

I pretty much slept the entire ride home – including dinner at the Dillon Dam Brewery.

My calves and thighs have just about forgiven me by today, but I’ve got a really whopping bone bruise on my interior ankle bone on one foot from the rental ski boots.  Hurts.

I’ll do it again – mostly because Lia skis and I enjoy spending time with Lia – but “again” is going to wait until after my eye surgery next month.

I got a letter from my homeowners’ association over the weekend regarding our trash coverage – a city ordinance has impacted it in some way.

Their proposed change to How Things Work is not a good change.  Here’s the history of my trash service:

• Private contract with Gallegos Sanitation: $11/month for a 65-gallon container and a recycling bin.
• A year ago, the HOA says that they’ve contracted with Gallegos as the trash service provider for the neighborhood.  Trash is now included in the HOA dues which are raised ~$11/month as a result.  I keep my existing bin.
• This weekend: HOA says they’re now only paying for a 35-gallon bin as part of the service; my 65-gallon bin will be another $8/month.

Initially, I thought my HOA was screwing me over on the rates so I called Gallegos to find out what the private contract cost was.  Gallegos informs me that said City Ordinance requires that a 65-gallon container cost 2x the 35-gallon price and a 95-gallon container cost 3x the price.

Dear City of Fort Collins: You just doubled my trash rates.  I’m not happy with you.  Expect this to impact my votes in any upcoming elections.

I’m not feeling up to responding to one of my emails at work and it’s a Friday, so the only thing I accomplish today may be getting my desk re-organized.

I moved my computer around, zip-tied some cables, added another power strip on the other side of my desk, shredded a ton of papers and threw away a bunch of napkins. My workspace is improved on an overall basis.
I’m also trying my mouse on the LEFT side of the keyboard so that I can sit centered on the keyboard instead of slightly offset because there’s not enough room for the mouse next to the number-pad if I want to keep the keyboard centered on my work surface.
We’ll see how long it takes me to go insane.