Finally, a movie I can get excited about

I pretty much assume I'll be disappointed by movies made out of books I love. History is on my side. "Marathon Man" is just not the experience it should be--there's absolutely no sense of the main character's transformation--the astonishing evolution that makes the book so thrilling. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was just a mess, despite the inspired casting. Don't get me started on "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (but I bet Bram Stoker would like his name taken off of it) or "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (Ken Branagh's getting two demerits here--dude, what were you thinking?).

There are good ones--I'm not saying there aren't. "The Princess Bride," while it doesn't capture my favorite bits (I'm a sucker for a bitter romance, what can I say, and the book's flavor is a little more pleasantly tart), is definitely a good film and true to the spirit of the original. I think Branagh's "Henry V" is a masterpiece (of course, adapting a play is sort of cheating, but cutting in scenes from Henry IV as flashbacks to support his interpretation was genius). And clearly Emma Thompson was stopping him from screwing up, because after she left him he made "Hamlet" (oh, yeah, there's something rotten in Denmark, all right--yuck to this star-studded failure) and she went and did "Sense and Sensibility," which is probably the best Austen adaptation anywhere--thrifty, economical, and sensitive, which I'm sure Austen would appreciate. "Tom Jones" is the ultimate adaptation--it captures the bawdy, defiant humor and indiscriminate sex appeal of the book perfectly.

There are qualified successes. "Tristram Shandy" felt exactly like reading the book--it stretched its medium and had that special brand of satire that is really only funny if you're on its side to begin with (assuming you can tell that there are "sides" and that you can tell which one you're on--the labels are sort of slippery, and you'll get made fun of for being on the wrong side of the fence at some point, even if you don't know how you got there). It's an interesting experience. It's probably not going to achieve the popularity of "The Little Mermaid," but I'm pretty sure it's okay with that.

So when I see that a book I love is becoming a movie, I have this continual triumph of hope over experience--I get all excited, and then I remind myself that I should really try to be realistic. Stardust isn't my favorite Neil Gaiman book or the one that inspires my imagination the most, but I have a lot of affection for it. I've been finding it harder and harder not to be hopeful about the upcoming film. Especially now, because the trailer just looks amazing.

My Former Employer

My former employer has opted not to pay out my vacation. Apparently it is well within its rights to do that, because I was salaried and did not live in CA or MA, but that wasn't especially evident in the reams of paperwork I was given when asked to set my resignation date. Whatever. I'll look at the paperwork again, and if I think it's egregiously misleading, I'll write a letter, but frankly it's like my divorce--I just want out, and money is no object.

My message, dear readers (at least, I think there's more than one reader), is this. Your employer doesn't love you. Your employer doesn't want you to be happy. Your employer wants you to help it make money, and once someone (either party) has lost interest in that facet of your relationship, your employer just wants to do whatever protects it from legal action. Think of that the next time you're slaving late into the night because you want everything to be fair and perfect. (You know who you are.) Your employer's perfectionism ends with your last paycheck (or maybe a little before). So why does yours end at one in the morning?

Next entry I promise a new, improved blog that's at least 30% less bitter.

Air Mattress Says, "Hsssssssssssss!"

I got back from a business trip last night, and the air mattress was getting a little low. Not unusual after two days unattended, I figured, so I pumped it up...and immediately heard the most depressing sound ever. I thought maybe it would at least be a slow enough leak that I could sleep on it tonight and wake up on the floor, but it turns out that the air mattress is a crafty devil. First, it keeps you awake with its hissing, and then it gently deposits you on your hardwood floor. Luckily, I was just too tired to cry. And in a gesture of human kindness that's far better than luck, a gallant human with a bed took pity on me after only a few minutes of making fun of me. Still, the world of air mattresses is never going to be a rich or compelling world for me. I plan to run away from it as fast as humanly possible.

9 more days you little bastard. 9 more days.

The Gobbler

Okay, my friend Natalie posted this in a comment to the post about the Grand Canyon monstrosity. Because I was moving 2500 miles, I neglected to visit it until today. The page Natalie linked to has to do with James Lileks's visit to the Gobbler hotel. James is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. His commentary on the Gobbler is funny--very funny, like those Weight Watchers recipe cards. You must visit. Right now.

Go here to view James's story about the Gobbler and how his interest began, and to browse in a comfy way.

Go here to have James guide you through the Gobbler, which is by far the funnier choice.

And if you're curious about the guy, you can take a look here.

And, not that you should squander all this hysterical content in one evening, but you should also check out the Institute of Official Cheer, which includes such bounty as a 1977 Frederick's lingerie catalog.

OneNote Rocks

People I work with are sick of hearing me sing the praises of OneNote. Back when I had a Mac, I tried DevonThink, which is like OneNote on steroids and which has the sexiest search features known to man (fuzzy logic--vastly superior to OneNote's search capability). I think of DevonThink like the Beta to OneNote's VHS. It is unequivocally a better product, but OneNote is just too damn easy to use, and it has the Microsoft power ring behind it. Also, I can use it at work, where all the machines are Windows. Sorry, DevonThink. I've been forced to abandon you.

Explaining OneNote's usefulness is next to impossible. I keep explaining it to techhies at work, and they give me things like SnagIt. SnagIt is cool for capturing screen shots, but OneNote is good for that too, and for oh so much more. For me, it replaces the hole where my memory used to be. I can record information about transactions there. I can have a page for every transaction and add to it when users have issues. Every time a user has an issue, I can consult my page and find whether I've seen the issue before, or I can search my whole notebook for the transaction code and pull up every reference to it. I know my memory should hold all that crap, but the memory, she is weak and fragile. And after my recent move, she's also stumbling around trying to remember things like where to find the grocery store.

One of the things I did with OneNote is to take notes and screenshot diagrams from the multitudinous piles of crap that allegedly help you study for the PMP Exam (I haven't passed yet, so I'll keep you posted). It was terrific. I could have a big old sheet in my PMP section on, say, Scope, and then I could add notes on scope from each and every pile of crap that I studied. And, because I was trained on the Cornell note-taking method, I created a column for key words, test questions, and cues on the left. The problem? The darn column moved around like crazy, and it was very difficult to go back and add things and keep everything organized. If I added text on the right, I needed to add spaces in the column on the left, and getting it all to line up was sometimes more trouble than it was worth.

The solution is here. Microsoft (yes, yes, the devil) has provided a OneNote template for the Cornell method. See, it doesn't take much to make me happy. Was that so hard?