But, of course there are those who do not use Twitter wisely and get themselves in trouble. There is the infamous story of the person who got a job offer from Cisco and tweeted about it and, seemed to lose the job. It went down like this:
Even after this, you still see an amazing number of people post negative comments about their work place and other situations on Twitter. I think part of the problem is that people don’t realize how big Twitter is becoming and they don’t realize how public Twitter can be if their profiles are not set to private.
Well, now we are getting to a point where people are being sued over their tweets. I guess this was inevitable, but we entering into a new dimension of the Web 2.0 world. Here is the summary of the story:
Now, we know that Horizon is a “sue first, ask questions later kind of organization,” so I don’t want to get in trouble with this post. (Although this philosophy makes me think the tenant probably was in the right here.) But rather I’d like to talk about the idea of being sued on the internet.
Since this company filed a suit, I looked up what exactly what libel is to see if this was justified:
So, technically it seems this lawsuit would fall under this category. One aspect I am unsure of is if a company can file a libel suit. The FAQ above mentions when a person is wronged, but maybe it can go either way. In this case, the comment was made about a company. But, in this case the statement was definitely made to more than one person and it was clear who the comment was about. The question I guess would come down to whether or not there was mold in her apartment and if Horizon did anything about it. (Was the statement false or not?)
I think what blows my mind is the mindset of the management company here. Now, this tweet happened on May 12th, and the lawsuit happens two and a half months later. That seems odd. Why bring it up now?
Next, this news story, and their law suit is doing more damage, in my mind, to their company’s name than that tweet, that I never saw, ever did. I got the impression from the story that Horizon doesn’t even really care or want to address if there was mold in the apartment or not. Maybe this tweet was necessary and accurate. Continue Reading…
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Well, Isaac is now 15 months old. He continues to master the control of his muscles and his body. He can now control his face muscles pretty well. He can also make funny faces. Here is a video really showing this off.
Over the past few days, Gina and I have embarked on a quest to change the front of the house by updating the landscaping. The main tasks include:
Replace Black Plastic Flower Bed Lining with Bricks
Remove the Three Bushes and Tree from the Right front of the house
Remove the rest of the red rocks from the flower beds
Trim the bottom six feet of the tree to the left of the driveway
We started by pulling out the black plastic trim that used to sit in between the flower beds and the grass. The first half of the trim was still pretty well buried, so that took a little more work to get out, but it was pretty easy. While I did that, Gina started to dig a small trench for the bricks and started to put in the bricks.
While pulling out the second half of trim I started to also remove red rocks and place them into a garbage can. They end up being very heavy after a while. We found some little fire ants in the soil in front of the house and put down the insect killer where ever we saw the insects. We then added some bricks we picked up at Menards to the front of the flower bed.
Once the trench and the bricks were finished, I started to trim back the bushes so we can start to think about removing them. I had one little accident and I got a little careless and ended up cutting through the extension cord. Oops! The hedge trimmer I have was insufficient for the job and I think I will have to borrow a chain saw from someone.
There is an old saying attributed to William Shakespeare, “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.” Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Harry Potter fits all three of these categories. Harry was born the chosen one, we learned that in The Order of the Phoenix. Harry has been achieving greatness ever since he arrive at Hogwarts, but he has always been the reluctant hero. Now, in The Half Blood Prince, Harry finally has no choice but to fulfill his destiny with the death of Dumbledore.
In short, I found the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to be everything I could have wanted from the film. The movie covers the major plot points and is enjoyable to watch as well. The scenery is beautiful and the acting is, for the most part, very good. This movie is more light hearted than the first five which I thought was an good choice. Order of the Phoenix was very intense and The Ghastly Hollows will also be very intense, so this movie being a little lighter is good.
On some levels I don’t know that you can fully appreciate this film unless you are surrounded by and used to high school teenager antics. The awkward moments between Harry & Ginny and Ron & Hermione are really amusing. The way that Cormack goes after Hermione in his overblown jockey way and the way Lavender fawns over Ron is equally amusing. One of my favorite scenes early in the movie is when Harry and Hermione are commiserating with each other in a corridor after Ron snogs with Lavender for the first time. Harry asks Hermione what is wrong and she asks Harry, “How does it feel when you see Ginny kiss Dean?” Hermione then launches several charmed birds at Ron and Pavarti who come wandering by and Harry says, “about like that.” The movie shows them growing closer as friends more than any other two.
Jim Broadbent plays Professor Slughorn and does a good job playing the part. He captures the egotistical side of the character as well as the flawed side of the character.
There are many decision that have to be made regarding what scenes to take from the book and put in the movie and whether or not the story can be changed for time. Some of the plot the movie makers and stuck with because of the book, but in other cases, they had to make conscious choices and, while I can appreciate how difficult that is, I don’t understand or agree with some of them. One, for example, is the scene in the Burrow. The scene doesn’t happen in the book and it doesn’t really advance the plot at all. Yeah, you see Tonks and Lupin in the Burrow which is fun, but the scene could have been cut in favor some time between Ron and Hermione or Ginny and Harry.
The movie really focuses on Harry’s story and you are left to fill in a lot of the other relationship gaps on your own. The Ron & Hermione relationship is kind of developed, but again you are supposed to put together a lot of those pieces on your own. I think they could have cut out a few other scenes and spent some more time developing that relationship and possible the Ginny & Harry relationship. A friend pointed out, and I agree, that the movie spends more time focusing on Ron and Lavender than it does on Ron and Hermione. I can’t say I fully understand that choice.
Unlike the first five movies, I did not re-read the book before I saw Half-Blood Prince. I think this let me appreciate the movie more as a movie rather than as an adaptation. Usually I sit through a Harry Potter movie and think about all of the scenes they had to cut. During this one, I was little more at ease. My only real disappointment was the end of the movie. After Harry and Dumbledore go for the horcrux in the cave, they return to Hogwarts and Dumbledore basically sacrifices himself to Malfoy. Somehow Malfoy knew right where to find Dumbledore and he just waits. I also was disapointed that they didn’t have the big showdown fight in the castle. I think leaving out the big fight scene leads to two flaws in the movie.
The first, and perhaps it won’t be a problem in the next movie, is that because Harry wasn’t immobile & invisible during Dumbledore’s death (as he was in the book) and was able to chase Snape and Bellatrix out of the castle. Snape or Bellatrix then have a chance to kill or capture him, but don’t. I would think they will have to explain this to Voldemort later on.
The other exception I take with the ending is that it seems to take the two main characters completely out of character. In every other case we see Dumbledore he always fights until the end. In Order of the Phoenix when they try to arrest him he does not go easily and now, in the end, we are expected to believe that he is just going to let himself be killed. I suppose there is a chance that he is offering himself up as a martyr in order to inspire others, but I don’t think that is in his character. Maybe he does it because he knows that Snape has to kill him in order to maintain Snape’s cover. This I could possibly buy, but I don’t think so. In the book he is killed more suddenly in the middle of battle which is a scenario I find much more plausible.
By the same token, I find it hard to beleive that Harry would just stand there silently and watch this happen. Harry has consistenly shown himself as an impulsive hot head in these types of situations. Early in the movie they show an out of place scene at the Burrow which could only exist to remind us that Harry is a hot head. Belatrix just shows up at the Burrow, and Harry starts running after her before she even does anything. But when Harry watches Snape kill Dumbledore he just stands there? I don’t think that is a proper display of his character.
All in all, this is another great addition to the Harry Potter tradition and I am anxiously awaiting the first half of the next book’s movie. Hopefully with the expanded format, they will be able to fully develop some more of the relationships as well as the plot.
Today I was trying to network between mine and my wife’s laptop. This was easy when we both had Windows XP. Now, she has Vista and I still have XP. I thought I had set up the networking properly, but alas, it wasn’t working. I enlisted the help of my good friend Google and found the blog of the Proud Geek. The Proud Geek had a great post about just this issue and after following the instructions, I was good to go.
What was tripping me up was what user to use on the sharing screen. I ended up setting the user to Everyone. This seems dangerous, but I have a WEP on my network so neighbors can’t get on and modify our files, so it was all good.
Today I was driving behind a truck, I believe the truck said Brad’s Heating & Cooling – Mechanical Contractor (perhaps it was Matt’s). I can not find an actual reference to this company other than this link. If that is a different company I apologize.
Anyway, while waiting at red light on the corner of Washington & Lake (pointing south) street another van, an electrical company, turned south onto Lake Street. Well the driver of the Van from Brad’s Heating and Cooling attempted to flick off the driver of the other van. I found this to be wholly inappropriate and made his company look very bad. I don’t know if maybe it was his friend and he was just being a guy and that was his way of saying, “Hi, how are you,” or if it was a bitter rival, in any event I took issue with his action for two reasons.
The first was the reason stated above and the second was the he didn’t give an actual flipping of the bird. As an example of what I mean, here is a photoshopped picture of President George W. Bush with the fake bird.
You see how the thumb is extended on the side. I get annoyed when people do this. If you feel the need to go through with this obscene gesture, Continue Reading…
The hedge trimmer I have was insufficient for the job and I think I will have to borrow a chain saw from someone.
