Sometimes, some of our favorite actors and/or entertainers surprise us with roles that seem so far out of left field that we’re left speechless. One such role that always comes to mind is Robin Williams’ performance as Seymour Parrish in One Hour Photo.

As such, I went in with high expectations of Octavia Spencer in Ma. Unfortunately I ended up disappointed.

I don’t know what disappointed me more – the fact that the movie simply fell flat, or that it had so much potential that it simply didn’t live up to. There are so many points in this movie that start to lead up to something, but then end up being nothing. In fact, I’m not really sure why this movie has the Horror category tacked onto it because there simply isn’t anything scary about it all. And the only mild spine tingle occurs when an almost incidental character (Ma’s daughter Genie, played by Tanyell Waivers) is seen creeping around in the background when two of the teen-aged leads wonder into a part of the house that Ma told them not to go into. And for that to make sense to you, I suppose I should explain the plot.

Erica (Juliette Lewis) has to return to her Ohio hometown with her teen aged daughter Maggie (Diana Silvers) because of a failed career out west. Maggie quickly befriends a small group of party-loving teenagers whose biggest challenge is hanging outside of a convenience store trying to convince adults to buy alcohol for them. Fortunately for them, along comes lowly Sue Ann (who is later affectionately nicknamed “Ma” by one of the kids – a name that quickly catches on with the reset). Not only does Ma help them out the first time, but upon subsequent visits she convinces them to hang out at her house as opposed to the local teen hang-out-and-drink spot.

Along the way, we learn some of Ma’s dark secrets – from her Veterinarian boss who treats her like a dog (pun intended), to her damaged adolescence that has lead her to this longing to want to fit in with what she views as an “in crowd” of teens.

But again – there is simply no “horror” in this movie. It simply plods along aimlessly from cliche to cliche until it reaches its overly predictable climatic end. There is perhaps but one other slightly chilling moment to mention, in which Ma has drugged the core group of teens and sews the lips of Haley (McKaley Miller) shut because earlier Haley told Ma that she “needed to get a man!”

To be honest, this movie seems to blatantly borrow so much from other movies that it appears writer Scotty Landes was merely trying to create some sort of a mockery mash-up. Perhaps that’s truly the point, and I overlooked it somehow. Maybe this movie isn’t intended to be taken seriously? In either case, this movie is simply as I described earlier – a story that is filled with what it could be, but never becomes.

I decided not to stay logged into the Facebook app at all times a little while ago.
Now whenever I log in I’m greeted with the “we’ve noticed unusual activity” message.
I find it funny that Facebook considers logging out to be “unusual”.

🤷‍♂️

After bed leveling (which was a lot easier that I initially thought), Bryson and I were finally ready to make a test run. We decided to run one of the pre-loaded projects that came on the SD card included with the Comgrow Creality Ender 3 Pro

And we were pleasantly impressed with the results:

We had watched a video that indicated printing this little dog would take 5 hours. However, our’s only took about 2. We the realized that the video we watched was of a run on a previous model.

Next we’ll try a custom design run. We’ll start off using Ultimaker Cura since that’s the default software used with the printer. We may move on to something else later on, but for now – so far so good!

Yesterday we took a boat out with Blue Dolphin Tours.

We had a great time!! We’ve done other tours on other vacations, but I think this one was the best – the captain was great, and everything he said we would see came true! From swimming with dolphins, to snorkeling, and getting up close with Sea Turtles!

Next time you find yourself in Panama City Beach, check them out!

In May, I wrote the piece Make Facebook Great Again, in which I pointed out that it would be great for users who have grown weary of Facebook’s general “news” feed to still have a way to use Facebook’s useful services independently.

I pointed out that, of these services, the one that would be particularly useful to me would be one for Events. I had said that Facebook’s app Local was not entirely fitting as (I thought) it’s only for pointing out local events in your area.

As it turns out, I was wrong. Fortunately, Local does just that – all of the events your family and friends have organized through Facebook, local events, as well as events organized by groups and organizations you follow or are a part of. All there! There’s also a local guide, a list of places you’ve been, a full calendar, as well as a section for you to provide recommendations to others.

Simply put, it’s a full functioning event planner and calendar!

Those of you already aware of this may say to me, “well, duh!” And I deserve it.

Love it or hate it, chances are most or all of your family and friends use Facebook for event planning – some use it exclusively. If you don’t want to miss such events, but also don’t care for the general feed of the Facebook app, check out Local for Android and iOS.

Also keep in mind that you don’t have to use the regular Facebook app to use Local. Like Messenger, you only need a username and password. Thus, conceivably, you can use these two Facebook services without ever seeing the general feed.

As for this mistake, I give myself a Fred Sanford – “You big dummy!”

On July 4th, 2019 at 3:01AM EDT, Season 3 of one of my favorite Netflix series was upon us. Stranger Things returned.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that this would have been referred to as “Stranger Things aired“, but these shows (especially Netflix Originals) don’t actually air in the traditional sense. Instead the entire season – all episodes – are literally dropped in our laps all at once in one lump sum.

As such, by the morning of July 5th, I was already seeing posts discussing the entire season:

“Wow! What a great season!”

“This was definitely the best season yet!”

Yep. As I’m sure it is of no surprise to anyone reading this, there are millions of people who’ve watched the entire season in one day. And if you haven’t been paying attention over the past few years (or simply wasn’t sure), this is Binge Watching.

To be completely transparent here, I’ve done my share. In fact, I binge-watched the majority of Season 1 of Stranger Things. I was a bit late to learn about this show (a close friend had brought it to my attention), and I wanted to be up-to-speed as Season 2 was about to be made available. But over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that I simply won’t binge watch any series. In fact, I don’t even like binge watching. Here are my main reasons why.

Time

This is without a doubt the first and foremost reason. I simply don’t have time. As a husband with a full time career, and father of 3 plus a two-year-old foster child, I simply don’t have time to spare glued in front of a television watching Netflix. And with what free time I do have (which is usually later at night), I honestly rather spend on hobbies or reading. Sure – there are evenings, especially on weekends, when I just like to veg out on a show or two. But still not hours upon hours consuming an entire season of a show. Some may say, “Since I barely have time, Binge Watching is the only way I get a chance to see anything.” But does that mean you have to watch the entire season at once?

Defeats One Of My Cord Cutting Reasons

Years ago when making the decision to Cut The Cord, my wife and I decided that one major factor would be to cut down on the amount of TV time spent by both ourselves and our children. By its very nature, Binge Watching is completely counter intuitive of this. Some may argue that if you don’t watch TV throughout the week, but Binge Watch a show in one day, you’ve achieved this goal. To that I say “hours spent are hours spent”. When you watch a bunch of television doesn’t justify how much television you are watching.

It Cheapens The Experience

Admittedly, this one is more of a matter of opinion or personal taste. However, when I was younger, few things about TV were more exciting than watching an episode of a favorite show, and then waiting in anticipation of what was going to happen next the following week. Binge Watching is more of a “cheap thrill” approach, in my opinion. There’s no waiting. There’s no anticipating. There is no thrill. It’s like buying your favorite flavor ice cream and gulping it all down at once without your tongue touching it so that you don’t even get to enjoy the flavor.

Nothing Left

I see this post often from people:

“I’ve watched all of [insert show title]. Can somebody recommend something for me to watch?”

It seems that I know many people who may have possibly consumed everything on Netflix in a very short period of time by Binge Watching everything. As such, they find themselves in the position of having nothing left to watch. By not Binge Watching, I’m literally guaranteed to have something to watch, for weeks or months to come, during those times that I feel like watching TV. By not Binge Watching Stranger Things 3, for example, I have plenty of entertainment to look forward to.

If we were to be completely honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is an element of FOMO involved when it comes to Binge Watching. In this Social Media age, with people posting memes based on jokes pertaining to specific episodes of a show, we want to be sure we “get it”. Or when work colleagues are talking at length about entire seasons of a show we claim we love, we want to be sure we’re up to speed on it. Sure – there are rules of etiquette that apply here. Specifically, the universally accepted rule of NO SPOILERS. But don’t we prefer being the potential spoiler as opposed to being the potential victim of a spoiler?

What about you? Do you still Binge Watch?

😁 Now booking for AJ!

Ok, so he’s not really a DJ, but I love his channel! He does a great job reconstructing songs (his Prince tribute is the bomb!), like this Teddy Riley production!!

#NationalDJMonth
#NDM

So I finally got a Pixel Pen.
Did I spend $100 for it? Absolutely not. One of the worst priced items in Google’s hardware history. In fact, when I saw Apple’s ridiculously priced monitor stand, I thought of this. Instead, I got it off eBay.
Is it cool? Yep. It’s got some good tricks up its sleeve, and it does well behaving like an actual pen.
Do I now think it’s worth $100? Still, absolutely not

What exactly is happening right now? Was Elon Musk’s Twitter account compromised, or is here truly making a change?