Best of 2009: Movies

Here are the 10 best movies I saw for the first time in 2009.

#1
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)



The only movie we saw in 2009 that was either 1. rented with money, or 2. viewed out of town with someone else. Although I found it to be a very frustrating movie, plot-wise, I can't deny that it is really the greatest movie I saw for the first time in 2009.


#2
Ordinary People (1980)
Pretty much an amazing movie. It is not the type of movie I typically like (family strife, etc), but I really enjoyed it.




#3
Chariots of Fire (1981)

A true story about guys training to sprint in the Olympics and overcoming life obstacles during the process.





#4
Annie Hall (1977)

It's a funny movie, and creative in the way it was written.






#5
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)



Despite being a little dated from the special effects standpoint, Close Encounters is entertaining and interesting.



#6
Gandhi (1982)
Gandhi the movie is educational and inspirational, and even though it is around 3 hours long, it kept my attention the entire time, and doesn't drag.


#7
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

There are some good tunes in Fiddler, and good characters, and a message that makes you think about tolerance and change.


#8
The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Although I didn't care for the acting that much, I guess I still like a good old fashioned action movie.





#9
Bullitt (1968)
A good detective/action/mysterious movie.





#10
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Even though family/courtroom dramas are not my favorite, I can still call this a good work of art.

Restaurant Review: Stone Canyon Pizza

This is in Parkville, MO. What brings us up there, you ask? Two things. Gluten free pizza and Devin's magic.

The gluten free pizza greatly competes with Waldo Pizza in both price and taste. And Devin did a few magic tricks for us.

It was New Years Day, and it was a slow night, so Devin was able to hang out with us a bit.



We also hung out with our Indian friends that day.

Movie Review: Young Frankenstein

A parody of previous Frankenstein movies that I assume were easy to make fun of. I haven't seen the old Frankenstein movies, so I have to take this one by itself.

Several of the characters are funny, and lots of funny things happen. Some stuff is "inappropriate".

Gene Hackman makes an appearance as "Blind man"

Memorable things - I'll take a chance that someone has seen it.

"It's Fron-kon-steen"
"Elevate me. Right here, right now?"
"What hump?"
"Behind ze bookcase."
"Yes! Yes! Say it! He was my BOYFRIEND!"
"You know, I'll never forget my old dad. When these things would happen to him... the things he'd say to me. "
"What knockers"
"Could be worse. How? It could be raining"
"Abby. Abby Who? Abby Normal."
"You haven't even touched your food. There. Now I've touched it. Happy?"
"SEDA-GIVE? "

SQL Server 2008 Administration, by Ross Mistry

This book is more of a reference book than a teaching book, but that didn't keep me from reading it! My company paid for it so that I could study for my certification exam coming up.

SQL Server 2008 has a lot of sweet features.

• Resource Governor. Create limits for the amount of CPU that user connections can use.
• Policy Based Management - set constraints on "Facets", such as names of objects. This would have been useful when I was obsessed about prefixes on tables at my last job!
• High availability options, which were also on SQL Server 2005!
  Clustering - On failure, the server automatically fails over to a different server. The disk space is shared between the two servers, and a virtual server manages the name of the server.
  Mirroring - Each database transaction is also sent to a different server to be recorded to its database as well. A high safety mode can be enabled, where the first database can't commit any additional transactions until the second one has reported back with success
  Log Shipping - similar to Mirroring, except the transactions are sent in chunks (called logs) at scheduled times.
  Replication - a publisher sends updates on objects to subscribers

Some very nice things about the book are the "What's New with SQL Server 2008" at the beginning of every chapter, and the bullet point summary at the end of every chapter.

It will be good to have this book around as a reference.

Movie Review: Invictus (2009)

In a rare occasion, we saw a movie in the theater. The last one we saw was Prince Caspian on June 19, 2008. So if I had SQL open, I could do my datediff function to see the number of days we went between theater visits. But roughly that's about a year and a half.

Haven't missed it that much. The theater was nearly empty, but a perfumed lady sat down two seats away from us. But we got used to the smell or it was just an initial waft.

Anyway, Invictus appealed to us because two of our pastors are from South Africa, and this movie is situated in South Africa. It is about Nelson Mandela and his efforts concerning the rugby team after his election to the Presidency. To the many Black people, the official rugby team was a symbol of apartheid, and wanted to dismantle it. But Mandela convinced them to keep the team around. And they ended up winning against all odds, and both races of South Africans were unusually united around the event. So the point is that Mandela saw something that many others didn't. The movie portrays Mandela as really distracted while doing official duties, because he was so concerned about the rugby team.



Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon plays the captain of the rugby team. I didn't think Damon was great for the role, but they obviously wanted two stars in the movie, so that is ok. It was directed by Clint Eastwood.

I thought it was a nice movie to see, but not a must see.

blogging?

With the new year, I haven't been able to document the 3 movies I've watched, and other things I've been doing. The new year might be a good opportunity to turn my blog into something different. But I don't know what.

Happy Birthday Courtney!

In honor of Courtney's 29th birthday, here are some January/winter pics

Late 2002 (SBU graduation)


Late 2004 (in Israel)


2006


2007




2008



2009

Best of December 2009

Pic of the month: This frosty picture is on our desktop, and it islike we are looking through a window.

Best Movie That I Saw for the First Time: Gandhi

Best Book I Read: TrueFaced

Best online video I watched for the First time: The Jesus Christ Lizard

Happy New Year!

I really enjoyed my New Years weekend. Mostly because we paid someone to take care of a few home renovations . I didn't have them "hanging over my head", figuratively or literally. So we went out and did things that people tell us to "do before you have kids", such as eating out and seeing a movie in the theater.

We saw Invictus. We didn't see a movie in the theater all of 2008. But we are poised to see at least two in 2009, as we are planning to see Avatar in 3D.



We ate at Stone Canyon pizza in Parkville, MO, and saw Devin do some magic there.


And we hung out with my friends from India. Continuing my grandparents legacy of being friends with international students, (but not for that reason, I haven't even talked to them about it - I just wanted to help people in need), I became a partner with ISI (International Students Inc). These guys are the most fun people from India imaginable, it seems. They also bought us a toy for our baby coming up. I will post a picture of all of us.