Category Archives: Opinion

Officially Graduated

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Well. The title says it all: I’m done.  I’ve actually had my diploma for quite some time (since I graduated in December), but I am just now getting to walk at UVU’s yearly graduation.

 

I might not look the happiest in the picture, but I sure am glad I don’t have any more homework to burden my fun-loving lifestyle.

It was a long, hard, and sometimes a boring road- but totally worth it.  A few thoughts on my education, specifically about the IT degree that I received:

  • The atmosphere of UVU is, bar none, the best.  The students are friendly, helpful, non-judgmental and you really can be yourself at all times without worry.
  • The professors at UVU are excellent. They care about what they are teaching, they want students to learn, they teach outside the scope of the curriculum but inside their domain of knowledge, which makes for an exciting, entertaining, enthralling, and very engaging classroom.
  • On a related note, some of the professors at UVU are terrible.  I don’t know all the politics that goes on behind closed doors, but there are some people that just need to be fired and replaced by people with more ability and experience.  This part might apply to all higher education institutions: PowerPoint is not a very effective teaching tool and should be banned.

I loved my educational experience and would recommend it to anyone.  I loved my school and would recommend it to anyone.

For a little more information see my other post, made earlier this year.

As a follow up to the last post, I was offered a full-time job and am currently employed at MoneyDesktop as their IT Operations Manager.

Movies- April 2011

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Alright, we have no excuses this month. We just didn’t watch that many movies.. Sorry everyone!

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010)
Watched on: 7 Apr 2011
Rated: PG
Three actors: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina
Reaction: Jilleun- I had higher hopes for this one, it was a very kiddie movie.
Kelvin- Kids movie. Total kids movie. I didn’t know much about the story going into it, but now I kind of wish I would have avoided it. Kind of lame plot. Kind of lame love story. The “graphics” were okay, I guess that’s one good redeeming quality. Oh, and of course Nicolas Cage was excellent, along with Alfred Molina (Dr. Oct in Spider-man 2) but the rest of the acting was so-so.
Rating- 3/5

Tron (1982)
Watched on: 9 Apr 2011
Rated: PG
Three actors: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan
Reaction: Jilleun- I never liked this movie and never will. Its such a man movie and super blue ( meaning that blue tint because they’re in the game or computer or whatever).
Kelvin- hahahahahahaha!
For real though, this movie hurt my eyes and brain. The acting was pretty bad, the sound effects/music were pretty bad. The “realism” was off-the-charts bad. I am glad, however, that we watched this movie right before we watched the other Tron (Legacy).. some of the jokes and a little bit of the story made some sense because of that, otherwise I do not recommend it in any way.
Rating- 3/5

Tron: Legacy (2010)
Watched on: 9 Apr 2011
Rated: PG
Three actors: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde
Reaction: Jilleun- I thought it would be better honestly with all the hype. It did look pretty awesome though.
Kelvin- I really liked this movie, a lot. Acting was pretty good, the effects were incredible, the music was excellent-awesome. The story could have been spruced up a tiny bit, but I still enjoyed it fully. I don’t think that it got the best reviews, but I don’t care, I thought it was good.
Rating- 5/5

Chicken Run (2000)
Watched on: 23 Apr 2011
Rated: G
Three actors: Julia Sawalha, Mel Gibson, Miranda Richardson
Reaction: Jilleun- This is a good mood movie, its cute and quirky. Totally enjoyable.
Kelvin- Total kid movie, again, but at least this one was good. I am a really big fan of the Wallace and Gromit films, so this is just showing a continuation of my love for them (made by the same people). This has a nice upbeat story, and it’s told in a very entertaining way.
Rating- 4/5

The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Watched on: 30 Apr 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three actors: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez
Reaction: Jilleun- I actually didn’t realize it till we started watching this movie, but I hardly remember it. I thought Paul Walker is a little bit cheesy with the whole white guy tough attitude. But it was entertaining.
Kelvin- I don’t know if we can technically count this as being watched this month since we didn’t start the movie until 11:57pm on the last day of the month.. but oh well. I have not been keeping up-to-date on all the other Fast and Furious movies, but I do like this one.  It shows fast cars doing crazy things, what else do you need in a street racing movie?  There are some scenes that are a little bit racy (in the sex way, not the speed way) but they are basically few and far-between. Overall, I’d call it a keeper.
Rating- 4/5

Some stats
5 movies
PG-13- 1
PG- 3
G- 1
Favorite movies this month-
Jilleun- Chicken Run
Kelvin- Tron: Legacy

Blogging.

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Let’s blog about blogging.

Something that I LOVE to do—that is a little bit embarrassing—is read other people’s blogs. Blogs about crafting, food, fashion, photography, life and whatever. Something that’s kind of strange is that I read tons of blogs written by people that I don’t even know. Sure I read blogs of our friends and family, but a complete stranger…

I never really thought it was weird until Kelvin’s brother, Chase, was at our house when I was reading one. He kept asking questions like- How did I know her? Who was she? I told him that her name was blank and she’s married to this guy, she lives here and blogs about these thing, and likes this and that. I don’t know her and probably never will know her. But yes, I learned all these things from reading her blog.

Chase was just so confused about why I would read about this girl that I didn’t even know. It is a little bit odd. On one of the blogs I read, Story of My Life, Jenni blogged about something similar, about what draws people to read blogs in the first place. It was interesting to think about. I can’t really pin point what exactly I like about it so much though.

Our friend Natalia has said before that reading blogs, for her, is like reality TV.  I feel the same way, honestly if I don’t read my blogs for a day I feel like I’m missing what’s going on, which is totally silly. To give you an idea of the blogs I read:

• 15 blogs of people I personally know

• About 10 of famous bloggers (famous normally meaning they make money from blogging, they have a big following, and they’re just kinda famous on the internet)

• About 10 other blogs that I just randomly stumbled upon, all different kinds really but mostly girls’ just blogging about their lives with the husbands and such.

I know some people blog about how great it is to have an internet community like blogging; it can bring people together which I think is awesome. But, most the time I sit back and let others do the talking and commenting. I heard some statistic somewhere that said something like: for every 1 comment you get, 5 others are reading it too (I can’t remember). It’s kinda of interesting that people are so open on their blog… for some it’s like a journal (that’s actually one reason why we have one), or just a place for pictures. Really there are a million reasons people could have blogs, and a million things to blog about.

A creepy thing is that I could tell you where one of the people, whose blog I follow, went for the weekend and what food they ordered at a restaurant, but if ask me what my co-worker did this weekend, I’d have no idea.

So I wonder what makes me feel so inclined to read a strangers blog and be intrigued by what’s happening in their life, yet I’m not bothering to talk to people I see in my own life. Just kind of thinking out loud and blogging about it.

Movies- March 2011

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First, we have to defend ourselves a little bit.  Instead of watching movies, we decided on watching Dollhouse instead.  Only after we had watched both Season 1 and Season 2 of Dollhouse did we really start watching movies again.  That’s why the number of movies is pretty low, in comparison to other months.  Dollhouse, by the way, was pretty excellent.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Watched on: 18 Mar 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie
Reaction: Kelvin- We had not heard anything about this movie, other than it was good, before we watched it.  What a pleasant surprise! I don’t want to give any major parts of the movie away, but it was very well done.  The story was good, the plot was cool, the music was nice, the acting was believable.  Overall, a very good movie.
Jilleun- I loved this movie! It might be one of my new favorites. You don’t need to know anything about it before hand, just go see it.
Rating- 5/5

An Education (2009)
Watched on: 20 Mar 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper
Reaction: Kelvin- That stupid brat got what was coming to her. I was bored out of my mind the entire movie.  Would not recommend, in fact… I wish I had never seen it in the first place.
Jilleun- This is a slow movie, but I really do enjoy it. I think it was well done, and Carey Mulligan did a great job. Maybe it’s more of a girl movie, but it has a good moral.
Rating (Kelvin)- 1/5
Rating (Jilleun)- 4/5

Limitless (2011)
Watched on: 26 Mar 2001
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro
Reaction: Kelvin- Interesting idea, pretty good execution.  There were a few parts that really disturbed me (can you say hypodermic needle?), and the overall theme wasn’t that positive.  You can do drugs and get away with it!
Jilleun- I thought it was ok. I pretty much have the same thing to say as Kelvin.
Rating: 4/5

Cool Runnings (1993)
Watched on: 27 Mar 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: John Candy, Leon Robinson, Doug E. Doug
Reaction: Kelvin- Who doesn’t love this movie? Some of the humor is a little bit geared towards children, but what can you expect from a Disney movie?   The story was very good, even if it is a little modified compared to the true story the film was based on.  This movie gives a good “get back on the horse” type of message, and I like that.
Jilleun- This is such an awesome movie. It’s hilarious and inspiring, perfect combination.
Rating: 5/5

The Green Hornet (2011)
Watched on: 29 Mar 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz
Reaction: Kelvin-  For all the negative things that I heard about this movie, I was actually quite impressed.  It was funny and actually pretty good.  I never read the comics or listened to any of the radio programming based on this character so I can’t judge in that department, but I found it to be very entertaining anyway.  Seth Rogen’s character could have been less of a sexual predator towards Cameron Diaz’ character, but such is life.
Jilleun- It was a lot better than I expected, it was entertaining and amusing. Not necessarily original though, and it had quite of bit of swearing, just fyi.
Rating: 4/5

Some stats
5 movies
PG-13- 4
PG- 1
Favorite movie this month-
Kelvin- The Adjustment Bureau
Jilleun- The Adjustment Bureau

Movies- January 2011

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So I’ve decided to do something new. “Record” all the movies that JR and I watch together; mostly to see large brush-strokes in our watching patterns and also to document some of the films that we see.

For clarification, I am using the same rating conversion system that Netflix uses for Stars, that is-

1 Star = Hated it
2 Stars = Didn't like it
3 Stars = Liked it
4 Stars = Really Liked it
5 Stars = Loved it

Evan Almighty (2007)
Watched on: 5 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Good and funny movie, but definitely for kids. A little far fetched, even for a God movie. I liked Bruce Almighty much better, although… that one was much more blasphemous.
Jilleun- This is an okay movie, it’s kinda weird that it’s a squeal to Evan Almighty but… they’re really not similar. The wife kind of bugged me because she didn’t believe him at first, other than that it was an alright movie.
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)
Watched on: 8 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn
Source: Netflix DVD
Reaction: Kelvin- I hate Angeline Jolie. I like Brad Pitt. Movie was okay, but most action scenes were overly fake. Maybe I’m just picky, but he whole plot of two spies/killers not knowing that they were married to each other is… stupid.
Jilleun- This movie is entertaining enough, it had some pretty funny parts. It’s not one I need to see again, though.
Rating: 3/5 Stars

The Last Song (2010)
Watched on: 11 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear, Bobby Coleman
Source: Netflix DVD
Reaction: Kelvin- Holy crap, this is the worst movie I have watched in a long time. Miley is a pretty bad actor and her (speaking) voice sounds like a man. We actually didn’t even finish the movie because we were laughing so hard and the movie was basically terrible.
Jilleun- What Kelvin said.
Rating: 1/5 Stars

Rain Man (1998)
Watched on: 11 Jan 2011 (after we couldn’t finish The Last Song)
Rated: R (we didn’t know it was R at the time)
Three Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- We went on a stupid movie watching streak for today.  Rain Man sounded cool, but in reality it was not.  There were wayyyy too many “F” words coming from Tom Cruise’ mouth and the story just wasn’t that good. Dustin Hoffman did a fantastic acting job in his autistic role, like Leonardo DiCaprio did in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, but that was really the only good thing about the movie.
Jilleun- I really didn’t see what point this movie was trying to make. Basically they took a story that could have been told in 30 minutes or less and made it into a two hour movie.
Rating: 2/5

The Social Network (2010)
Watched on: 18 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- I really liked it. I have seen this one before, but I still really liked it. I don’t know (or even really care) how true the story the story about Mark is told; it was good. Jesse Eisenberg played the role really well and the movie was “technically accurate” enough for me, right down to the wget magic that Mark does in the beginning of the Facemash project, cue antiquated-yet-legit KDE 3.
Jilleun- This movie is good, I do wish it was accurate but not much I can do about it.
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Watched on: 22 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Excellence. So they really trick you at the end, but it was excellence anyway.  The acting was good, the story was great, the music was sweet, and the cinematography just topped off the excellent cake.
Jilleun- I didn’t remember this movie at all, and it was great. I loved the story, I like Brad Pitt’s character best (and no, it wasn’t because I thought he was hot).
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
Watched on: 23 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario
Source: DVR
Reaction: Kelvin- The story might have been good-ish, but the acting just really threw me into a whirlwind of “meh”.  Kind of like Harry Potter 1, I can’t stand watching that movie anymore because the kids are just such terrible actors, especially Harry Potter.. and he’s hard to get away from, since he’s the main character. Speaking of… Chris Columbus directed both of these films… maybe that has something to do with it? He can just put up with crappy kid actors.
Jilleun- This movie was worse the second time around, its still an OK movie. The idea of it is really cool, Greek gods but the movie was just kind sloppy.
Rating: 3/5 Stars

Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Watched on:  26 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Excellence again.  I did not like the role that Julia Roberts played, but that can be minimized (in my mind) out of the picture.  They sure showed that stupid French guy who’s boss, that’s right. Americans!
Jilleun- This one was equally good. Only complaint is I kinda feel like they cheated, but then again they make a living out of stealing things so…
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)
Watched on: 28 Jan 2011
Rated: PG-13
Three Actors: Al Pacino, Elliott Gould, Don Cheadle
Source: Local Library
Reaction: Kelvin- Not as good as the first and second of these movies, but I still really enjoyed it anyway.  They trick you AGAIN! What with the swapping or non-swapping of Mr. Banks’ diamond necklaces, how am I supposed to keep track of what is going on if they keep pulling the switcheroo? The acting was great, as usual; the music was basically the same, sweet; everything was awesome, I suppose maybe I just got tired of the trick-you-till-the-very-end genre.  On the other hand, it all three of the movies must have had extremely creative writers behind them.
Jilleun- This one was my least favorite mostly for the cinematography. I thought it was kinda cheesy.
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Up (2009)
Watched on: 30 Jan 2011
Rated: PG
Three Actors: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai
Source: DVR
Reaction: Kelvin- I’m thinking that pretty much everything Pixar touches turns into solid gold. Up was such a good movie, you couldn’t help but fall in love with grumpy old Mr. Fredricksen; and you couldn’t help but laugh at Dug and Russell. The first time we watched this was in the theaters when it first came out, we saw it in 3D (a technology that I hate, btw).  It was great then and it’s still great now!  It has a slightly serious tone in the beginning and end because of Ellie and her role, which would make me not want to recommend it to children under a certain age. Superb movie!
Jilleun- I love this movie, but who doesn’t? :)
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Some stats
10 movies
R- 1 (oops)
PG-13- 5
PG- 4
G- 0
Favorite movie this month-
Kelvin- Up
Jilleun- Up

Veronica Mars

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Veronica Mars was awesome.

How we got involved

We recently finished all three seasons per Luis and Natalia‘s suggestion.  Right after we got married we went to California, and on our way back we stopped at their place and chilled out for a day or so. We had just finished watching Lost; now that we are married we had a “bunch” of time to be together and do things. We like watching TV shows that are already wrapped up, for a few reasons:

  1. We do not have TV, so watching on Netflix is much easier
  2. I hate hate hate ads, especially TV ads
  3. It is much easier to pound through a series if you can watch two to three episodes at a time, instead of having to wait for one episode per week
  4. This is a sub-point to three, hulu usually only stores the last few episodes and that’s not cool
  5. Watching stuff is in our time-frame, not the Network who makes the show

Since Lost was over, we needed something to fill out some of our spare time.

Cue Veronica.

About Neptune, CA

For those not familiar with Veronica Mars, and for those who didn’t follow my Wikipedia link… The show is a about this girl named Veronica that lives in Neptune, CA; she moonlights as a private investigator, helped greatly by her father who is a licensed PI.  At the beginning of each season a mystery is imposed upon the viewers, season one features the murder of Lilly Cane–Veronica’s friend–and the remainder of the season is spent discovering the murderer.  Each episode finds little clues about the larger mystery, but each episode also has a mystery of its own which is generally solved by the end of that episode.

A genius had to have written each of the episodes to make it interesting enough to watch, all the while leading the viewer to both the end of the mystery that is the Lilly Cane murder and the episode-specific mystery.  When the last episode is finally reached the murderer was NOT expected and caught my own sleuthing totally off guard.  In my defense, Veronica does have an advantage, she’s in the fictional universe and I’m just watching her, but she sure does solve that mystery in a very creative, and somewhat serendipitous, way.  There are so many red herrings throw in the mix that we practically had fish for dinner the night of the last episode.

Cast

So, everyone knows that TV shows are scripted from start to finish and the actors generally stick to their lines; Veronica was a smart cookie and very quick to respond to any sort of riposte. She had a strong personality and I liked the way she handled most situations.  Sometimes we would scream at the screen “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” because she was being such a noob or doing something just plain illegal; especially when it came to many things involving interpersonal relationships.

Logan Echolls was freaking cool. Most of the time he was a giant tool, but I always really liked him. He had spunk, reassuring confidence and the girls tell me he was cute.  I am on the fence of whether I like his flip-flop attitude, sometimes really sweet and nice, other times a jerkface.  Ever since we started watching Veronica Mars regularly, I have been seeing many more Yellow Nissa Xterra’s. That is the kind of car he drove and I swear he has got to be driving at least one of them here in Provo/Orem.

Yellow Xterra

Yellow Xterra

Wallace Fennel was a good friend to Veronica and I always liked his upbeat attitude, although I hated that stupid girlfriend he got in the second season.  He made a good co-pilot for Veronica in a predominately man-driven society.

… there are others but those are the three that I liked the most.

Thanks Wikimedia for the picture.

Summary

I (Jilleun too) really liked Veronica Mars and would recommend it to anyone that can get their hands on it easily.  Excellent acting, although I was skeptical of it in the beginning. Great story overall and clever inner-stories that penetrate the individual episodes. With a fun cast it makes a very engaging TV series.  Yes it takes place primarily in a High School setting, but that doesn’t mean the characters are portrayed as immature.  Sometimes I got a little bit overwhelmed with the teenage drama, but it was also used as an excellent plot-shaping device.

I’d give it a solid 5/5 stars for seasons one and two; 4/5 stars for season three since they jacked up the formulaic plot a little bit.

For those of you that have Netflix, I’ll make it even easier to start: Veronica Mars: Season 1  (2004) at Netflix, every episode in every season is streaming there.