Everywhere on the net that I go where any discussion of media takes place, people get upset whenever someone takes a critical look at the roles the women play in any one piece of media. But Caroline Siede has the perfect explanation in her most recent AV Club article titled, If you like Return of the Jedi, but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism:

“ Return Of The Jedi is great, but the Ewoks are so annoying.” That’s a pretty common refrain from Star Wars fans. In fact there are whole fan edits dedicated to removing the little fuzzy bears from the film’s climax; I can only assume they’re made by the most hardcore of Star Wars lovers. The idea that a movie can be good despite its weaker elements is one of the most basic tenets of film criticism. Yet when it comes to dissecting films from a feminist viewpoint, we seem to have trouble keeping that in mind.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thanks to insomnia this morning, I am now done with book 2. Ms Rowling has hit another one out of the park. While the beginning seemed a bit repetitious for a series that I doubt would have had many readers who hadn’t read the first one, the pace quickly picked up and we were off for a new adventure.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? This is a good middle grade book that hits a lot of topics that are important for children and resonant to adults: fitting in, feeling different, when courage and bravery serve one well and when it can get one in trouble, adults are flawed but most of them are trying their best, and, finally, admitting that the world can be a dangerous place. I think one of the hardest things about being a parent is finding the balance of hope and realism to impart to your child as he or she gets older. Too much of either sets the child up for an unhealthy view of the world.

Alternity by Mari Mancusi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are a few things in this book that are a bit on the nose - for example, there’s a distinct Moon theme going on with a bunch of things and the main characters are Skye and Dawn. However, the deeper you get into the book, the more these things make sense. There are similar themes are Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz that are referenced via the names of things. At first I found it slightly annoying, but eventually it just seemed like a crazy meta commentary on how there are no truly original stories and everything is borrowing from the stories that came before it. So what starts off clunky ends up being much more seamless at the end.

This is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death by Ryan North

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was more than just more stories in the Machine of Death world. It was also the Machine of Death in fantasy worlds and science fiction worlds and all kinds of creative new worlds. It was a lot of fun and a great followup to the first book.

While it’s generally not needed for a general purpose Linux computer, when editing large RAW files it helps to have lots of RAM. But the biggest reason I upgrade the RAM  on SuperMario was that Crashplan requires about 1GB of RAM per 1TB being backed up. With me moving everything but gaming over to SuperMario, I have 4.8TB of data to back up! It had been failing its backups and now, with 24GB of RAM it works quite well and I’m getting close to having everything backed up! Plus, there’s a lot less swapping of programs in and out of RAM!

Civilization 5 (14 hours):

Dan and Dave finally started playing their multiplayer turns again. YAY!

The Witcher (14 hour):

Finally was able to find some uninterrupted gaming time. Here’s the video!

https://youtu.be/iw8LjKofqU0?list=PLEJrELYLxNgUtl5L7oM52YnJj9Jt4c5yp

If you’re interested in watching, it goes from session 25 through 40 (or more if I forget to update this section before I publish)

Super Mario 64 (3 hours):

Scarlett kept asking me to play until I found the princess.

This year happened to contain one of the driest summers the Pacific Northwest had seen. There were lots of fire raging, some intentionally set and some caused by nature. On the way to the Bachelor Party caving trip, I saw this immense plume of smoke from a fire.

I’d been to lots of caverns before, so that’s what I expected from this bachelor party trip. I first suspected I was wrong when I couldn’t find a sign for the place. My suspicions grew when Dave arrived (along with other attendees) and we just started walking into the woods. As we arrived at the entrance Dave told us that one can be sure he’s arriving at the entrance to a cave by spotting mosquitoes. Turns out we were going into a lava tube. I thought that meant we’d be walking in a cave that was fine as glass. Instead it was as if someone had chosen a cave to dump a bunch of rocks. We did see some baby stalagtites, though.

A while ago I went to the Pacific Northwest for Dave’s wedding. I finally am getting caught up with my photos from back then. It was a fun trip because we’d lived in Oregon for a few years when I was a kid so I was able to revisit some fun areas.

First up was Multnomah Falls. It is the second tallest falls in the US and it’s a really neat hike. Because of timing and Scarlett being 3 (and unlikely to be able to hike back and forth) we only went up to the lower level. But it was still neat to be reminded of the great outdoors areas in Oregon.

1. I “lost” my optical drives. I had to mess with a registry key to get them back.
2. Here’s one I didn’t realize until I went to play Civ 5 and my saves were all gone. Because I have my main OS on a small SSD (and originally had my games on a regular hard drive - now they’re on their own bigger SSD), I had My Docs and My Pictures pointing to another drive. The Windows 10 upgrade lost those settings. I had to open up Windows Explorer and right click on each of those and change the location on the location tab.