Chuck in 3D

Flash Traffic!

I'm posting this out of my usual 7:08 reporting time in order to give you time to run to the store this weekend. I just found out that

Monday's episode of Chuck is in 3D!!!

Here's the trailer for the show:



It turns out, they're leveraging off the fact that 3D glasses are being distributed everywhere in preparation for the Super Bowl special 3D movie trailer during half-time.

So get thee to your nearest grocery store and pick up your 3D glasses for Chuck on Monday!

Saturday Evening Stew

A smattering of odds and ends to tell you about tonight.

Snow... er... Carpet Angels

After seeing the patterns that the vacuum cleaner leaves on the carpet, YS decided to improvise a Hawaiian version of snow angels. He calls them [YS]-Angels. It's funny watching him waving his arms and legs back and forth on the carpet. I wish it actually left an observable impression like snow angels do that I could photograph.

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Latest Technology in Making Pillow Forts

The Lucky Wifey wrote a post about building forts as kids. I know, I know, I had fun building forts when I was a kid, too. As a parent though, it's frustrating to not be able to find a place to sit in the family room with all the dining room chairs, sofa cushions, blankets, and miscellaneous other stuff all piled in heaps to make forts.

This morning, I woke up and came downstairs to find a new variation on the pillow fort...

That's LW's laptop and my laptop side by side making one wall of the boys' new "video game fort."

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Chuck Rationing

With the writers' strike putting a big damper on our favorite TV shows, LW and I were really excited to get a double-dose of new Chuck episodes this week. We decided given the overall lack of new episodes to watch though that we should ration ourselves and not watch both episodes in one night. LW checked and double checked to make DARN sure the DVR was going to record both episodes though.

During the first episode, I saw an ad for the Chuck spy games on the NBC website. The games are okay, nothing to rave about. The Nerd Herd car is pretty hard to drive, but maybe that was the point of the game. I think the "I Spy" game was the hardest (find the four things that are different between two VERY similar looking pictures of Buy More store shelves).

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Another Bullet for the "Con" List for Staying in Hawaii

Bugler, sound taps please. (If you live here in Hawaii, you may want to get a tissue box before you read any further). I sincerely regret to inform you that the ONLY Einstein Brothers Bagel Bakery here on Oahu has closed. That said, there aren't ANY places around here to get a good bagel.

Friends of ours who were stationed here previously tell us there used to be Dunkin Donuts here, but they closed before we even arrived on the island last summer. When I got up Friday morning, I was starving, but I refrained from eating so I could go to PT. I got to the gym and was running on the treadmill when they showed a Dunkin Donuts commercial on the TV that seemed to last forever. [Cue stomach noises: gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.]

That's one of the disadvantages of getting satellite TV here in Hawaii... You have to endure the homesickness induced by commercials for Target, Dunkin Donuts, Olive Garden, etc...

On a positive note though, LW did find Dunkin Donuts coffee at the store this week!

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4-Year Old Birthday Party

Today we had YS's birthday party. It was controlled chaos as you would expect. I thought it was pretty funny that YS announced to LW and I a day or two ago that he wanted ONLY BOYS at his birthday party. LW was like, but YOU invited J, can she come? Oh, yeah, J! And you asked C to come, do you still want her to come? Oh, yeah, C! The list went on and on... Off the top of my head, I think there were 7 girls and 3 boys on the guest list. YS and ES evened out the boy-girl ratio to 7:5, but the boys were still outnumbered. I just found it odd that he came up with this "only boys" proclamation when so many of the kids he enjoys playing with are girls.

LW got the "cake" from the Commissary, and it was REALLY GOOD! I say "cake" because it was really a whole bunch of cupcakes, but they were all frosted over the top to make it look like a regular cake (see picture below). It turned out to be quite messy as LW and I were pulling the wrappers off the cupcakes before putting them on plates, and the abundance of frosting was getting all over our hands. Even so, it was delicious!

You probably can't tell from the picture, but it was a Backyardigans cake. One of the other dads and I were commenting on how frustrating it can be to have the Backyardigans theme song stuck in your head all day at work.

YS quote of the day: "I'm four, so I can jump high now."

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Bedtime Stories

Every Friday, ES goes to the library at school and gets to check out two books. He ALWAYS picks out at least one military book. I've been surprised by the wide selection of kids' military books they have. They've got first-grade level books on just about every type of military aircraft or vehicle you can imagine.

One of ES's current library books is on the Army Rangers. I've been very impressed with what a good job ES is doing in reading. He blew me away tonight when he read the sentence, "Usually this means solving difficult problems in stressful situations, such as simulated combat conditions." No help from me, he just read it. His spelling word lists for school are like "was", "does", "goes", "their." It's a lot easier recognizing words and reading them or sounding them out than it is to recall their correct spelling form memory I guess.

We got to a hard word that ES didn't know: reconnaissance. He asked what that was. I explained to him it's just like a reconnaissance satellite takes pictures of where the bad guys are (he's familiar with this concept from my last shore duty job at the NRO). Rangers go out on reconnaissance missions, not to fight, but just to take pictures or observe where the bad guys are and report back to the generals so the generals can decide where to send the Army. This lead into a discussion about how the Rangers have to be stealthy and quiet so they can sneak behind enemy lines, close to the bad guys to see what the bad guys are doing. ES giggled and said, "So the Rangers aren't allowed to laugh." I asked why not, and he said they would want to laugh because they were able to sneak up on the bad guys without the bad guys knowing the Rangers were there watching them, but they can't laugh because then the bad guys would hear them and know they were there. Ya know what, son? You're absolutely RIGHT, they CAN'T LAUGH. I suppressed a laugh myself and continued reading the story.

Chuck

It's nice being back in a regular routine at home (as opposed to being on deployment or our hectic preparations for interfleet transfer or driving the boat halfway around the world, etc). I'm catching up on some old shows and picking up a new one - Chuck.

I thought it was pretty funny when I Googled "Chuck" the top two links that came up were to this new TV show on NBC. Chuck is a regular geek who works at "Buy More" for the "Nerd Herd." I missed the beginning, but somehow he is in an accident that results in the contents of some super-secret national intelligence computer being downloaded to his brain. Now the NSA has put an agent in as a "coworker" of his, and the CIA has put in an smokin-hot blond agent at the nearby Weinerlicious as protection for him. There's all sorts of spy-story action, intrigue, explosions, gun-fights, etc, but all with a geeky sort of slap-stick to it. It's like a geek version of Alias. (I was never a fan of Alias, although LW was an Alias addict). Chuck is actually a pretty darn funny show - check it out!

My other addiction right now is Heroes. Thanks to Bubblehead raving about it, and reading a WIRED magazine article about it while we were on deployment, I decided to pick it up season one on DVD. I've been watching about one episode per night, and LW is being so kind as to set up the DVR to record the new season when it starts.

We've also got the DVR recording our other favorite show, How I Met Your Mother. I'm dying to watch season two on DVD. In case you haven't seen it before, HIMYM is narrated by the main character, Ted, telling his kids about his love-life and how he met their mother. Sounds odd, I know. It's actually really funny. LW sent HIMYM Season One with me on deployment, and we watched it in the wardroom in the evenings after dinner. I got the whole wardroom hooked on it. It became required viewing for newly reporting officers (including the PCO) so that they would understand our vocabulary - for example: "suit up!", "high five!", and "legendary!" Or, when someone is consciously deciding to procrastinate a project, "Let Future-XO and Future-CO worry about that." Then later, when the previous procrastination came back to bite us, "Darn it Past-XO and Past-CO!" Anyway, I was out at sea while season two was on, and it just came out on DVD. I've got it in my hands now, but I'm being good and waiting until we go out to sea this week so we can watch it together in the wardroom (LW already watched season two while we were out at sea). After we get through season two though, I'm not waiting around on the rest of the wardroom to watch season three on the DVR.

Aside for HIMYM fans (skip ahead if you've never watched before): Incidentally, if you are already a HIMYM fan, the DVD has some really cool special features on it. For example, there's one video-collage of Barney's many variations of the "high-five" in rapid succession. High Five! Phone Five! Low Five! Little Five! I was surprised how many there were. There is, likewise, another video collage of all of Barney's different "Suit Up!" moments. In the interviews with the cast, they said that the "legendary" thing was totally unintentional. It looks like they have some similar things on the CBS website for season two, but I'm not going to watch those until I finish watching season two.

Oh, here's a great little 2 minute sample of HIMYM (and some of our wardroom vocabulary):

You gotta love YouTube!

Speaking of DVRs... What on earth did we do before the days of DVRs??? The first time I really realized the impact in had on our lives was when LW flew up to meet me for a port call in Bangor, WA a couple of years ago. My eldest son's favorite cartoon back then was called Max and Ruby (about two rabbits). It came on at like 6 o'clock in the morning, but it didn't matter because the DVR was set to record it, and our eldest could watch it whenever he woke up and whenever else he wanted to during the day. Well... fast forward to us sitting in the Navy Lodge in Bangor. Eldest says, "I want to watch Max and Ruby." LW and I tried to explain to him that it just wasn't on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. This was just a totally unfathomable concept to the poor boy. "Just push the buttons!" he would say, holding the remote control out for us to do the magic that made Max and Ruby appear on his demand. We quickly learned that when going on trips, we have to bring DVDs of the kids' favorite shows with us.

I must admit, it's rather nice not having to watch commercials anymore... most of the time anyway. There are those annoying times, like tonight, when you catch-up with a live show and can't fast forward anymore, then you have to sit and wait. LW and I have been known to hit the pause button and go do stuff around the house and come back a few minutes later to resume watching time-late so we can fast-forward through the commercials.

We're finding that we miss our Dish Network. LW wasn't sure if it would work in Hawaii, or if Navy Housing would allow us to put up a satellite dish, and thought the local digital cable would be fine. I do NOT criticize her at all for her decision to sign up for the local digital cable while I was gone. Unfortunatly, the cable service here is totally LAME. The DVR is very non-user friendly. It won't auto-tune to the shows you tell it you want to watch, it only flashes a reminder to tell you something is on. When you hit the channel guide, it just shows ALL the channels that exist, regardless whether you subscribe to them or not, and it won't let you set up a short-list of your favorite channels to quickly browse. So I'll skim down the channel list and say, "Oh, I wanna watch that!" and click the button, and an error message will pop up that we don't subscribe to that channel. Gee, thanks. Plus, we have separate DVRs in each room and have to set up each one individually if we want to be able to watch a show in any given room.

So I'm going through the process of getting Navy Housing to approve putting in the Dish Network satellite dish so we can get back to having a favorites-list and a dual-tuner / dual-recorder DVR that'll feed both the family room and the MBR TV. I think the housing office's rules on applying for installation of a dish violates the FCC rules and constitute an "unreasonable delay," but I'm going to try and get it approved peacefully / without raising a ruckus.

It actually comes out to be about the same price per month as the digital cable here, but with so much better functionality. There are some sunk costs in terms of the installation fee for the digital cable, but there was no way for us to know in advance how bad the cable service was here.

I wonder how many states are changing their official "state flower" to the satellite dish? I know I heard the joke in California when we lived there. Then I heard the same joke in Virginia when we lived there. Now we're about to help the "flower" infest Hawaii.