TheFranciscos.Net

The Hornets

The Charlotte Hornets will be moving to New Orleans soon. That should be a good draw, especially for players. It must be so boring living in such a small city like Charlotte. I wonder if you can throw beads at the cheerleaders so that they’ll show their breasts?

Cynthia (from Cynthia Inside) posted a link to one of the funnier websites I’ve seen in a while – Dialectize. Check out our website in the following dialects:

Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin, and Hacker

I’ve been feeling a whole lot better today… the world seems nicer, the people are friendlier…. it really must be because of the weather. Today is nice and sunny – what the spring weather SHOULD be.

Someone sent me a bunch of really funny sports pictures – come check them out here.

Various Non-sensical Blurbs

• OPM – There’s a good article today about piracy of Pinoy music. Check it out here at Philmusic’s site. It tells of an interesting dilemma that artists face regarding piracy. On one hand, it’s good that their music is being heard by the masses, on the other hand, that success doesn’t necessarily translate to making more money. The sad fact is, if the labels that publish these artists’ work don’t make any money, they’ll simply stop producing them, then that will be the end of the story.
• Sandman – Yay! According to this interview with Karen Berger (DC/Vertigo editor-in-chief) at Newsarama, it looks like Neil Gaiman’s going to be writing another Sandman series of stories. It’s entitled “Sandman: Endless Nights” and is about the different members of Dream’s family. It also boasts a stellar line-up of artists. Sonds like a can’t-miss title for me.
• House-Hunt – The seller’s basically agreed to install a new Radon mitigation system before our move-in. So it looks like everything’s a go from that end. The next step is to gather all the documents we need for our loan.
• Depressed – I’ve been feeling rather depressed lately . I still don’t know why. It could be because of the strange weather we’re having – warm & sunny one minute, then the next it’s so dark & rainy that it seems like the apocalypse. Or maybe it’s because I’m just bored with my day job. I think two months of vacation should do the trick…. yeah right, dream on Edu. More than likely it’s just one of those downswing moods.

Radon Tests

The Radon tests for the house on Whitney Chase came back at a 5.55 pCi/L (or picocuries per liter of air). The acceptable level is 4 pCi/L. While I don’t think this will be a showstopper for us, if the sellers don’t get a Radon system installed, we might have to think about backing out from the deal.

Car Trouble

So my car (a 1998 Dodge Intrepid) broke down yesterday – I’ve been having a hard start in the morning for the past few days, but I’ve still been able to get it to start after a few tries. Then finally, my car just gave up on me. I called up AAA (thank God for those guys), got it jump-started, and then proceeded to the nearest Dodge dealer (Norwin Dodge). Turns out I needed to get my starter replaced and in addition to that, my “brake booster” has gone bad. I dunno what the world a “brake booster” is, but I do know it costs $400.

What bothers me with this repair is that I just got that goddamn starter replaced last November because of the same exact problem! My car was under an extended warranty and the starter should have been covered from the start, but the dealer I took it to (Cherry Hill Dodge) sure took their time to find out what exactly the problem was. After leaving my car with them for 2 days, they said they didn’t find anything wrong with it. Then the next day after I took it home, it was hard-starting again. I took it in the shop for a second time, this time for a few days (keep in mind that I’m paying for a rental car every time I drop my car off to have these idiots check it), and kept on calling to see if they found anything wrong with it. Each time they said that “it’s fine, no problems we can see”. I decided to drop in for a surprise visit and show them exactly what the problem was, and voila, the car was hard-starting. They replaced the starter in a couple of hours. Needless to say, the service I received from that stupid dealer was the absolute worst.

Anyway, my car has really been abused since I got it anyway – my first consulting job in the States was at Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard, which was around 40 miles a day from where I live. After that, my next client was Comcast Business Communications (CBC), which was pretty good since I got to use the train going into downtown Philly. Then after about a year of work there, CBC decided to move to Moorestown, NJ which was about 60 miles away from home. So I did that commute for six months. Now, since moving to Pittsburgh, I work at WJU in Wheeling, WV which is about 60 miles away. Needless to say, something in this car was going to give sooner or later.

It’s now almost at 75,000 miles and I’ve used it to go to a LOT of places. I still plan to keep it though, even if it’s starting to have some problems. I still enjoy driving it, I still like the way it looks, and the last, but most important reason, I don’t have the funds to buy a new one (especially with a mortgage to think about soon).

Yeah, I’ll keep it and It’s going to be my “commuter car”. Then the next car I buy will be my leisure car. Besides, even if I decide to trade it in, It’s value probably won’t be enough to cover downpayment for a new one. The whole experience with my Intrepid taught me a couple of things though –

1. DO NOT buy an American car (for a number of different reasons – they break easier, their value decreases as soon as you step on the gas pedal, and the feel of the car is cheap)

2. Forget about buying an extended warranty – the car’s always going to break AFTER the warranty expires

3. DO NOT buy an American car

4. Make sure to find a mechanic that you can trust and who’s not trying to rip you off

5. DO NOT buy an American car

The NBA Conference Semi-Finals

So the conference semi-finals have started and I’m only 75% right in my picks of teams to make it into the second round. Oh well, nobody’s perfect anyway. So here are my predictions for this round.

Western Conference

– The Kings overcome the Mavericks in 6 games

– The Lakers bowl over the Spurs, 4-1

Eastern Conference

– Celtics over the Pistons, 4 games to 2

– Nets defeats the Hornets, 4 games to 1

Spider-Man

To make it simple: This movie ROCKED! Going into this movie, I (as well as every comic fan in existence) had very high hopes for this movie. There was a lot of hype surrounding this movie, which was good because it made everybody aware of this film. The problem with that though is that everybody’s expectation is so high that it’s very rare that the actual thing will live up to it. Well, I’m glad to say that Spider-Man is the exception to this rule. The movie was more than deserving of the hoopla it’s received.

The acting: Tobey Maguire was excellent as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. He played the meek boy-who-has-a-crush-on-the-incredibly-hot-girl-next-door role very effectively. Of course, we all knew he could act – see Cider House Rules and Wonder Boys for further testament on that. But what was surprising was that he could pull off a lot of the action sequences with a great degree of success.

I’m also a big fan of Kirsten Dunst. Some of the movies she’s been in are some of the best that have come out in the past few years. The films she’s starred in, like The Virgin Suicides, Crazy/Beautiful, and even Bring It On, show that she has versatile acting abilities. How was her acting as Mary Jane Watson in this movie though? Well, as usual it was an excellent performance from her, but my problem with her being cast in this role is that in the comics, MJ is a model. Kristen is definitely not the model type, and so this is probably the reason why they changed the role of MJ from being a model to an actress. It’s just a minor thing really, but if you’re a hardcore comic fan, these things tend to bother you.

By the way, if you’re a Kirsten Dunst fan and you’re a guy – make sure to look out for the rain showers sequence…. ooo-la-lahhhh! Nice!!!!! Whoever thought of that particular scene should be give a huge raise!

The rest of the cast was pretty good – Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin was good, even if his acting was a bit over-the-top. JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson was excellent and he played that role perfectly. Bruce Campbell’s bit part as the ring announcer was great as well (Bruce has been working with Sam Raimi since the Evil Dead days).

The CGI work was also excellent – only in CGI could Spider-Man really work. The swinging around the buildings, the webs shooting out of Spidey’s hands, the acrobatics – all these things would not have been possible to show without the use of CGI. They also did it in a way that it looked very natural. There were only a few times where the animation seemed a bit too cartoony. Sam Raimi did an excellent job in making the transitions from CGI and live-action seamless.

So what did I think of the film overall? It was excellent. Although I still think that among superhero movies, “Superman” and “Batman” are still the best, “Spider-Man” is in that league. Well-acted, well-directed, and great story combine to make this movie a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

The Weekend

Aileen, Zoe and I had a pretty good weekend. We got the house inspected on Saturday morning, had lunch at Eat N’ Park (which incidentally is Aileen’s new favorite restaurant since we moved to Pittsburgh), and then rested in the evening (Aileen was coming off a 24 hour duty so she was really tired). On Sunday, we woke up earlier than we usually do on the weekends (around 9 AM), went to church at St.Bernadette’s in Monroeville at 10 and since it was the Cinco De Mayo (May 5 in English) festival, we went to Don Pablo’s and had a nice Mexican lunch of fajitas and burritos. After getting stuffed, we went to Destinta and chipped in our share to Spider-Man’s record $114 million opening weekend. We capped off our weekend by doing our long-overdue chore of doing the laundry.

All in all, it was a pretty restful weekend.

House-Hunt Update – The Inspection

We got the house inspected last Saturday morning and eveything seems good to go. The house is in good condition, with only some cosmetic problems. It was good to go around the house and check out the electrical, plumbing, and structural features of the house. At least now I know where to find the circuit breaker and furnace (not that I would know what to do if one of them breaks down). The pest inspector also didn’t find anything. Of course, it was a pretty cold day and the inspectors said that the carpenter ants usually don’t show up in that kind of weather (I guess they have enough brains to stay indoors when it’s cold). The owners are going to have the house treated for the ants before they leave anyway so that takes some load off my mind. Anyway, barring any show stoppers like having a high Radon count or (God forbid) not being approved for the loan, we should be getting the house in about 2 months time.

It was kind of strange going around the house with the owners around at the time. We kinda felt like it was an invasion on their privacy. When we got in, they were just having their breakfast (bacon & eggs), and the kids were just waking up. In fact, when we were checking out one of the rooms, one of the kids was still there watching TV. It’s just a strange feeling of invading their home since we could tell that they really didn’t want to move out, and this was just being forced on them by the company that the husband works for. In a way though, it was good that they were there. We were able to ask questions about the house, like how much they pay in monthly bills, the property boundaries, how to work the hot tub and things like that. Besides they did seem like really nice people…. and they also said that they’d leave one of the playground sets in the backyard for Zoe 🙂