July 5, 2000
Dear Everyone:
Everyone seems to like my new amethyst earrings,
compliments of Company and ARMA.
But it turns out that my $8500 bid was not the highest one of the
evening. Two women (good
friends) both wanted a pair of crystal candle holders and one of them
blew her whole wad of $9600 to get them.
The loser has already stated that she’ll just borrow the candle
holders when she feels the need for them.
In other news…
One thing I’ve been working on, when I can find the
time, is creating new report formats for Box reports and Search results.
Search results have proven to be particularly difficult as no
matter what fields I put into the report format, I always got an error
message. The message is
pretty generic, but suggests the problem is that there is a field that
needs to be in the report that isn’t there.
I finally got around that issue when I realized
that I could take an existing report, one which already works, save it
under a new name, then go in and delete what I don’t need and insert
what I do need. I’m still
stumbling around in the dark, of course.
“When all else fails, read the directions.”
But the directions (the manual that came with the report writer
software) are so general that I don’t always see the connection between
what the book says and what I’m trying to do.
Nevertheless, by end of day yesterday, I had a
report format that would include the extended notes, which is what
everyone has been clamoring for.
It only needs a little more tweaking to get it Ready For
Prime Time.
So, naturally, this morning began with one of those
“drop everything”, Top Priority things that always seem to come up just
when you’re making progress with something else.
Ah, well. But enough
about that.
Last Sunday, “Jeannie” and I went to see
The
Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
This is a combination of live action and computer animation,
based on the
TV
show from about 40 years ago.
Somehow, Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, and Fearless Leader (Jason
Alexander, Renee
Russo and
Robert De Niro) have escaped from the world of cartoons and are
running amok in the Real World.
They plan to turn everyone’s brains to mush by broadcasting
Really Bad Television.
(Evidently, they haven't checked the
TV Guide
recently.) It’s up to Rocky
and Bullwinkle to foil the nefarious plot.
Which they manage to do in under two hours.
It’s cute, although still not as clever as the original.
De Niro must regret by now having made the “You
talkin’ to me?” scene, since it gets dragged into everything.
I spent much of
Independence Day at the local movie house, watching
Mel Gibson in
The Patriot.
Mel plays Benjamin Martin, a widower with seven children to care
for (something Mel can relate to) during the
American Revolutionary War.
Having served in the
French and
Indian War, Martin has no desire to fight the British.
But the British are depicted as such sods that everyone is
inclined to hate them.
And soon, Martin (who is ever so loosely based on
Francis Marion,
aka “The Swamp Fox”) is pulled into the carnage.
But he’s too smart to fight the
Redcoats
on their own terms. He knows
how to hide behind bushes and run circles around the British
“gentlemen”. This doesn’t
prevent a lot of people being killed however.
There are numerous battle scenes which show that if
people are dumb enough to stand elbow-to-elbow and fire at another line
of people from twenty feet away, it’s a mathematical certainty that
someone’s going to get hit with a musket ball.
Ditto for canon balls.
What these scenes do depict in generous detail is just how
wasteful war can be.
The movie drags on for almost three hours,
culminating in a final showdown which, like
Mission:
Impossible 2, goes on far too long.
These directors need to learn that sometimes, less is better.
Of the two films, I’d recommend
Rocky and Bullwinkle.
But if your movie allowance is tight, skip them both and go see
Chicken Run
instead.
Love, as always,
Pete
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