Alex

The day has come! Starting now I am no longer blogging on LiveJournal. All my blog posts will be on my website, www.alexburr.com.

You can still read my posts on your LJ friends page by adding the syndicated feed from my site: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/pokealex_blog/

Thanks guys - happy reading.

This weekend Sarah and I (and many others) hit Toronto for Steve and Caitlin's wedding celebration. Or is it Caitlin and Steve's wedding celebration? Well, either way. There were some peeps I haven't seen in quite a long time (Peter, Skye, the Winns, Steph, Julie, Hilary...) as well as some good dancing. Just enough dancing to make me feel happy about dancing and tire me out completely due to lack of recent frequency.

Also we had a fantastic dinner for which I paid far too much. Ask me about it sometime and I'll elaborate. Sunday's trip back included a stop-off at Niagara Falls with the peeps, which was very very cold and icy. I'm sure the thunder god He-No wants us to visit his waterfall during the summertime.

Some interesting things happening lately. To start, there were two deaths recently at the Seneca Park Zoo: first the baby elephant that had been due for two years now died in delivery. Then the adult male orangutan mysteriously dropped dead. The clips on the news are absolutely heartbreaking, and I choke up a little when I see the dozen of children hanging signs they've made and flowers they've brought. One particularly tearjeaking sign simply said "Sorry Jenny C" in purple crayon with a backwards J (Jenny C is the mom elephant's name).

On the dancing front, Groove Juice Swing just finished our best ever four week Intro to Swing series. Twenty students, most of which were very enthusiastic! We had great participation, lots of laughter and clapping, and high spirits all four weeks. Several of our students approached us to tell us how much fun they had and couldn't wait to come back. Now we'll see if they all actually keep dancing...

There were a lot of people at Friday's dance, actually, and I did see quite a few of our students. So far so good...

Also, this weekend Dick Cheney shot someone. Is was really just a matter of time, wasn't it?

In the web world, it looks like dictionary.com is going to be getting a new design, courtesy of Happy Cog Studios. Technically this is old news—like, November old—but it's the first I've heard of it so I'm posting it here. I for one am excited. I use dictionary.com regularly and have always felt it was abysmally ugly. Hint, hint, Google...

I haven't had a blog post in a while. It's been a long and very busy week on more than one front. I'm looking forward to it being Saturday.

I almost never do these things, but why not. Courtesy of Mugsy

• A - Accent: Fairly neutral Upstate NY, although I'm slowly acquiring the Western NY/Buffalo/Rochester accent that makes the word "pants" come out like "peeants".
• B - Breakfast Item: Today? Frosted Flakes. They're Grr... well, you know.
• C - Chore You Hate: Hm. Washing dishes probably, but just because the sink is always so low, and I get icked out by hunks of wet food floating around. Bleah.
• D - Dad's Name: Robert.
• E - Essential Everyday Item: A belt. I'm not letting THAT happen again.
• F - Flavour Ice Cream: Vanilla. Or something with caramel in it.
• G - Gold or Silver?: Silver.
• H - Hometown: Rochester, NY. Formerly Clifton Park, NY.
• I - Insomnia: Not really. I rarely have trouble sleeping.
• J - Job Title: Production Manager.
• K - Kids: None yet.
• L - Living Arrangements: Crammed into a teeny studio with Sarah. We're moving up and out this summer.
• M - Mom's Birthplace: Buffalo NY.
• N - Number of Significant Others you've ever had: Three.
• O - Overnight Hospital Stays: Twice, I think. I had my tonsils out as a kid, and in high school I had a tympanomastoidechtomy. I had tubes in my ears several times, but I think that's all outpatient.
• P - Phobia: Spiders.
• Q - Queer?: I liked Brokeback Mountain but I don't think that means I'm queer. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
• R - Religious Affiliation: Hm. I think I was baptized Lutheran, and confirmed Methodist. But my heart was never in it at all. Today I remain happily unaffiliated.
• S - Siblings: Two younger sisters.
• T - Time You Wake Up: I wake up around 6:30. I get up around 6:40. Unless it's Saturday.
• U - Unnatural Hair Colours You've Worn: For a month or two in high school I had it bleached.
• V - Vegetable You Refuse to Eat: Brussels sprouts. Bleah.
• W - Worst Habit: Jeez, where to begin. I guess I should say that I bite my fingernails, and I pick my nose. Sometimes I do both in rapid succession. Gross, right?
• X - X-rays You've Had: Head, Neck, Teeth.
• Z - Zodiac Sign: Libra.

Well, it's a little later than I promised, but I'm a busy man. The 10th Anniversary Cheese-A-Thon was great! Ryan and Mike put some video clips together commemorating the movies and people of Cheese-A-Thons past, and I helped with printing out the official programs and the various awards we gave to attendees.

The movies were all past 'Thon favorites (save one), and are now retired from the repertoire.

First up was the classic Plan 9 From Outer Space directed by Ed Wood. It was no better now than when we watched it at the first Cheese-A-Thon, but it's still hilarious. Notable points include the consistent switching between day and night, the obvious replacement of an actor at several spots in the film, the flimsy cardboard sets and props that bend and buckle under the slightest breeze, the horrible horrible dialog, and the complete lack of plot coherence. Oh and the pie plate UFOs.

Next up was the perennial disaster known as Mac and Me. This is a pretty blatant E.T. rip-off that features, among other things: Giant sea-monkey aliens that suck Coca-cola out of the ground, a rubber dummy little girl being flung around a room by a vacuum cleaner, a little boy in a wheelchair going over a cliff, a dance scene at McDonald's, and the same little boy in a wheelchair perishing in a massive gas station explosion. It's got everything!

Then we suffered through Manos: The Hands of Fate. I'm still trying to figure out why.

The fourth film on the roster was one of my personal favorites, Troll 2. I think this is pretty much the best movie ever made. From the terrible acting, to the ridiculous plot, to the cliched camera trickery, to the awful costumes and effects, to the Mormon cast running around in burlap sacks, to the young man suffocating under popcorn, to the complete lack of trolls in the movie, there isn't a minute of this masterpiece that doesn't bring me ecstatic joy. Seriously.

And finally, we all mostly slept through Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy, which was basically made as an excuse to get young Jane Fonda to float around a room naked in zero gravity. This one has it all, too, but despite that it's still pretty tough to watch. It's not one I'm sorry to see go into the Cheese-A-Thon vault - ne'er to return.

So there you have it. I believe there's some photos out on Flickr from Ryan and Melissa, and Mike posted the video clips online too. Enjoy!

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the Somewhat-Annual Cheese-A-Thon - and I am super super super super super super psyched.

For those that aren't familiar: Cheese-A-Thon is an event begun by my friends and I in college when we discovered we not only loved cheese the food, but cheese the filmic entertainment as well. So (for some reason) we had that idea that a marathon of cheesy B-movies should go hand-in-hand with a gastronomical engorgement of cultured dairy products, and Cheese-A-Thon was born! Five movies + dozens of cheeses + a gaggle of friends + a few gallons of Tang = a Helluva Good time.

This one will be big: We rented out the Tango Cafe for the night as well as a giant projection TV. Stay tuned Sunday or Monday for the recapitulation.

From Al Gore last night:

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

It's about time somebody put it this way. I hope this is the first step in an all-out and much needed revolt.

Rochester's new mayor Bob Duffy has started his term by doing the best possible thing he could have: He cut the funding on the Fast Ferry fiasco.

For the non-Rochesterians, a little history:

A few years ago, some local business-types and politicians decided it would be a good idea to develop plans for a ferry between Rochester and Toronto (across Lake Ontario). Many in Rochester took up arms for this holy cause, as the general consensus was that it could only promote economic growth locally as businesses cashed in on that sweet, sweet tourism money.

The first problem quickly became apparent: while a boat ride on road-trip to Toronto sounds like a great idea, very few people *in* Toronto are really in all that much of a hurry to get to Rochester.

As such, the general response in Toronto was "meh." Somehow, with minimal support from the other side, Rochester went ahead with the plan anyway. In fact, there was some outright negative feedback from Toronto media, but that didn't crush the wills of the indignant Rochester political community. What followed would have been a comedy of errors if it hadn't been so damned expensive:

• First Rochester spent a buttload of money to build a really pretty terminal in Charlotte (which isn't really Rochester at all. Rochester is several miles south from the lake).
• The boat was built in Australia for another buttload of money, prompting Toronto to say, "This is really happening? Well, okay..."
• As the ship made its journey to its new home, it damaged its hull in New York City and had to stop for repairs.
• When it finally got here, it need more engine repairs.
• Soon after, a surprise discovery was made of additional costs for border services imposed by the Canadian government.
• Then, just as things were about to get underway, Toronto went, "but we haven't even built a terminal yet!" Voyagers for the first few weeks arrived to basically a tarp and a big pole.
• Rochester, by this point, had already put giant "FERRY" signs all over the highways across the county.
• However, still nobody rode the damn thing for four months, so the original company went bankrupt and the ship was seized for resale.
• Right around this time Toronto finished building their terminal and gave Rochester a collective "What the hell is going on with this thing, eh?"
• Not yet convinced of the entire idea being a bad one, the city of Rochester itself bought the ferry at auction for yet another buttload of money.
• A few more repairs and general shenanigans later, they finally got it running again - and once again, nobody rode it.
• They finally suspended running the thing indefinitely until Duffy pulled the stopper out of the bottom.

Find more of the story at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ontario_I. Thank you Mayor Duffy. I certainly hope he's not the only person working downtown with a brain in his skull.

Well, it's been a week since my last post, so it's quick catch-up time:

New Years was spent at Frank's party, which was fun except for when he grabbed my girlfriend's tush. Then I received word from the entertainment store that they would like me to stay on after all, so I've decided to keep working a couple extra nights per week. A little extra cash never hurts anyone.

On the dance front, the next series of Groove Juice classes are starting in a couple of weeks. They should be fun, but mostly I'm glad at how streamlined we're finally able to get some of our curricula. We definitely all need to be involved in the process for each class session - it doesn't work so well when one or two teachers mold the curric. themselves.

I went to Lindy Jam this week for the first time in Who Knows How Long, which was the first time I've danced in about two months or so. I've definitely lost a lot of endurance.

I've also made my first purchase on iTunes this week! I spent my money wisely: A digital copy of the 1971 T. Rex album Electric Warrior. I really should be wearing something glittery but that might cause them to rethink my promotion at work.

Over Christmas I received a new 30GB iPod Video from my parents. Already I've decided it's just about the coolest thing ever made. Of course, I have some issues with it, and some confusion on its working habits, but overall I love the thing. So now I'm one of those guys who goes around all over the place with those little white headphones on.

Some reasons I love it:

1. Its size. The thing is so small and shaped just right so that it fits neatly into just about any pocket on my person. Despite its size the screen is ample and the control wheel is just the right proportion. Plus I can bring it with me into my car (or back out) so I don't interrupt my listening pleasure for more than a few seconds when traveling around.

2. Its easy I/O. Plug your headphones or output source into the little hole on the top. Plug the USB cable into the hole on the bottom. And that's all there is to it.

3. Its "HOLD" switch. This is pure brilliance. If you don't have an iPod, one thing that is noticeable is that the control wheel thing is very pressure sensitive - this means a jostle in your pocket could suddenly jolt the volume up to eardrum-tearing loud, or even skip ahead a song or something. The HOLD switch, the only other feature on the top of the unit besides the phones jack, effectively switches off the control wheel. I can't tell you how many times I've wished I'd had that feature on an old-school Walkman. (Was my grammar on that horrible?)

4. Its... Appleness. Appletude. Applocity. One thing I've always found frustrating about Mac computers is Apple's insistence on making the interface simple to the point of starkness. One button mouse. One application focus on the screen. It's like they're afraid of giving their users anything but a big plastic white box with a single "DO COMPUTER STUFF" button on the front of it (also in white). I get easily frustrated by the lack of options when everything is so... unavailable compared to the potential.

But on a handheld device, the Apple approach works beautifully. There's never going to be a time when I need the wheel to scroll through a menu and raise the volume, so it's great to have one control for both. There's no need for a full Stop button on a digital player, so the single Play/Pause button is all one needs. The GUI does everything it needs to and nothing else: Cycle through a couple of menus to choose your media a few different ways, and that's about it. No need for flashing whatchadoos or anything fancy: Text and a few meaningful icons handle everything. The screen is small physically, so trying to do anything fancy would be a waste of space.

Of course, I do have some things to get used to. Maybe some of my Pod-Savvy friends can help me out here...

Synching with iTunes? As it stands now, I haven't downloaded anything but a couple of podcasts. The rest of my music is MP3s of my CDs that I've backed up on the hard drive (then I play them through iTunes). My question is, will it be ok to delete the MP3 files from my hard drive once I've ported them to the iPod? I'm afraid either A) they'll wind up copied back into iTunes once I hook the iPod up again or B) the iPod will just sync to what's in iTunes, and drop those tunes.

I ask this because I'm doing all this on my work computer. My machine at home is pathetically old and slow, with laughably-sized hard drives that could never support a music collection - but my machine at work should be relatively clear of space-wasting music, too, so that I can use it for... you know, work stuff.

Volume consistency? I know I have iTunes set up to compare the volumes of all the music files. But, listening on the go, the volume from song to song seems to jump around - especially on shuffle, since I have a fairly even distribution of contemporary pop, classic rock, classical, and jazz, all of which usually have drastically different levels from one another (classical is typically much lower, for example). Is there any way around this, or is it simply a hard fact of recorded music?

Playlist shuffling? Say I only want to listen to hard rock songs for the day. I can create a playlist in iTunes with all songs that qualify. When I listen on my iPod later, will I be able to shuffle on just that playlist? Or am I stuck shuffling through the entire library and playing a list from end to end?

I hope everyone out there is having a safe and happy Christmas, whether you celebrate Christmas or not. :-)

I received some excellent news on Friday. Although my time at the entertainment store will be coming to an end, my day job at Cazbah has taken a turn for the better: I am being promoted to the position of Production Manager!

The new job will mean a lot of new responsibility, in addition to maintaining my current duties and projects. It also means writing a lot of documentation. I am slightly intimidated, but much more excited and grateful. I'm glad they've included me as such an important part of the company's growth and direction.

A big part of me can't wait to get my hands dirty. Another big part is thinking about hiding under a rock.

Not too much going on lately. The job at the entertainment store has been taking pretty much all of my free time (I'm working from 8am til 11pm three days this week), but apparently that will be going away December 26th.

Anybody know of someplace in Rochester that will be hiring part-time after Christmas?

I'm looking forward to a nice (if brief) holiday visit with my family. I'll miss Sarah but hopefully I can make it back quickly and with little incident.

Also I have a couple of potential freelance web projects coming up in the near future. I'm looking forward to those, especially considering the forthcoming loss of night job. Thankfully I love my day career.

Today is a big day for someone very special. If you see Sarah give her warm wishes. Don't actually use the "b" word, though. Or any numbers beginning with "3". Just tell her you appreciate her. Or tell her how beautiful she is or how much luckier we all are to have her in our lives.

I love you sunshine!

Well if anyone hasn't seen it, the official teaser trailer for X3 is now available. Seeing it has eased a few of my fears but has cemented a few others.

Overall it was decent. There are some things that are turning me off. For one thing, it's Juggernaut. He looks really really really dumb. Really. In my last post about X3 I said I hoped they do him right if they were going to do him at all. He'll probably be a mutant, which is good, but he looks like Bane from Batman & Robin, which obviously is bad.

Beast looks meh.

Finally, it's pretty clear that the rumors I'd read about the very dumb plot choices are true. There's nothing in the trailer that says to me that they aren't going to do the dumb things I've feared that they'll do. And there's no Nightcrawler of course. (I mean, why include the coolest character from either of the previous X-Men movies when you can just as easily drop him and introduce Callisto?) Basically the film is a mess, but hopefully it will shape up to be a well shot mess.

For the record, I think it sucks that Singer got booted from this project, but I'm not bitter about Brett Ratner directing. All the failure is in the script.

I seem to like making quick style updates to my website. My most recent is a dark gray and lime green one that I think looks pretty sharp.

The CSS specifies the typeface Futura for all the titles, though. Could anyone who doesn't have Futura installed let me know how it looks on the Helvetica/Arial substitution?

The last couple of weekends, Sarah and I have been to the movies twice. Last weekend it was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I really enjoyed it. So far I think it was the best of the Potter flicks, and it had the best pacing. But still it suffers from the same problem that all the other movies had: a random-feeling storyline. That's the fault of the books mostly. They always do have a consistent storyline, but it's always in the background, and sometimes left completely offstage so that random trivial events can occur. I've always felt the stories feel kind of "stumbly" and thrown together and it makes for a sort of incomplete feeling when everything is said and done.

I should mention that the teaser for Superman Returns was on the Potter film. It is hands down the single most beautiful movie trailer I've ever seen, and it ramped my excitement for the film by about 9000%. Thank you Bryan Singer! I hope the industry takes a note or two down and starts putting some actual craft into trailers sometime soon.

This past weekend we went to see Rent, which was about 525,600 minutes long. Actually I liked it a lot - I've never seen the stage production but have always wanted to. I really like the characters and the story, but there's something about the music that bugs me.

Now, don't get me wrong, I actually really like quite a bit of the music, particularly "Out Tonight", "I'll Cover You", and "La Vie Boheme". But there's just something about musicals in general that bug me, and it's the speech-song stuff that they always interweave. I think songs are good as songs, and dialogue is good as dialogue, and maybe *one* or *two* quick lines in the middle of a song are ok. But when they interrupt a song, or use an entire verse of a song, to have a literal conversation? I find that cheesy. Like, eye-rolling calibre cheesy. I guess I can't really blame Rent itself for using that convention, but come on. I'd rather have a full song from start to finish, then go back to dialogue, rather than sticking something in the middle that goes:

GIRL:"Oh crap!"
BOY: "What is it?"
GIRL: "I forgot my keeeeeeeeys"
BOY: "You forgot your keys? Where did you leave them?"
GIRL: "Over on the table"
BOY: "On the table?"
GIRL: "On the table!"
BOY: "On the table!"
GIRL: "On the table!"
BOY: "On the table!"
BOTH: "On the taaaaaaaaaaaaable!"

Yeah. Not so much.

Do you ever wake up with a song in your head? How about a completely random song that you haven't heard any time in recent memory, with no obvious connections to anything and no real reason for it being there? I've got one of those today.

And it's the theme from Green Acres.

It's such a dreary morning. The sky is dark and rainy and cold and everyone is quiet today. I'm having trouble keeping my head up despite plenty of sleep and no real activity last night. It's going to be a long day.

Yesterday was my first day off from the entertainment store since I started there. It's been going well but it is a little boring. I'm sure that will all change this Friday.

It looks like my trip home for Thanksgiving will begin late (and I mean late) Wednesday night. I'll be working til 10 and then making the three-and-a-half hour drive - which I would've done Thursday morning, but the weather is predicted to be very not good. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

Last night was my first night at the new part-time job. On the surface, I instant liked it better than the party store. I'm working in the movies department, so right away I derive more pleasure from helping customers search for a copy of Platoon than I do from helping them search for a stack of turquoise paper plates. And the POS system will be a little easier to navigate once I'm used to it.

That being said, there are some downsides. Yes, I will be working crazy hours until after holidays, but I expected that. The thing that bugs me is the huge number of days that are "blacked out" for time off requests from now until January. Some of these days include the day before Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, the day after Christmas, and Sarah's birthday.

Now, I can put up with a mad dash to the parents' and back over Thanksgiving and Christmas - so long as it's just this year. But I will be damned if I have to work Sarah's 30th birthday. I realize that it's a policy handed down from the corporate headquarters, but I'm bringing it up to them when I go in tonight. I'm not the kind of employee who misses work or calls in sick constantly, but if they schedule me on that night, I'm not showing up.

One thing I can't stand is companies that don't treat the employees like human beings. Retail is like that constantly. The people in the home office in the suits and ties make all the money, and they hand down policies to the grunts in the trenches, in many cases only actually setting foot in the stores to point out what's being done wrong. Hey, I realize store sales performance provides these people with their livelihood, but that means nothing to me, frankly. If they want people working the stores so badly, put on some khakis and a name tag and come on in.

This past weekend was Rochester's eighth annual Steven and Virginie Lindy Hop workshop. Although I sat out for a lot of the classes, I do have to say Steven got me excited about dancing again.

Saturday evening was a great 45-minute/hour discussion time with Steven, when we got to pick his brain about the past, present and future of Lindy Hop. It was quite enlightening. Among other things, he finally cleared up the Great Misconception for me: He and Erin Stevens didn't travel to New York to find and learn from Frankie Manning - they went looking Al Minns.

It was also the best party ever at the Lindy Compound. If Lindy Hop events were that energetic, that exciting, and that LOUD all the time, I would never do anything else with my time.