The month started off strong with not only Spring Break, but a total solar eclipse!
Kolt took a fantastic picture of the eclipse:
Tara and I rode bikes out to the fairgrounds so we didn’t have to deal with traffic. Although there were a couple hundred people there, traffic wasn’t a problem. It seemed like most of the people there were from out of a town, with a bunch from Virginia for some reason.
It was an amazing experience, a lot longer than The 2017 eclipse we went to in Kentucky.
I also met another Ryan to bring into the Ryan Meetup group.
Standup and Dance
I got the chance to go to two of Rochelle’s stand-up shows, while Tara and I traveled to Akron for Grace’s dance recital.
Geekin’
Created a view scripts on my website to make it easier to share pics and text.
status – I give it the blog and the text of the message and it posts the message to the mentioned blog
sharepic – I pass it a pictures, the name of the blog, and a caption. The script overlays the caption on the picture, publishes it on the mentioned blog, and sends it to me in Telegram so I can post it to Instagram. Next, the script makes an 8 second slow zoom movie of the pic and sends it to me in Telegram so I can post it to TikTok.
I’ve been working on a way to self-host videos, my first set up is using MediaCMS hosted at video.goz2.us. Works well, except that I need to figure out storage of the videos.
Movies
Godzilla X Kong: It was ok, not nearly as good as Godzilla Minus One
RRR: What a great movie. This is my second watch and very well worth the three hour runtime. Unfortunately, the original Telugu language version isn’t on Netflix. I recommend watching it in Hindi with English subtitles.
The Secret of My Success: Always a Classic.
Gone With the Wind 85th Anniversary: This was my first time watching it, and I can see why it’s a classic. Plus I learned that the director also directed Wizard of Oz IN THE SAME YEAR!
Civil War: I went in ready to be blown away and left it pretty meh. You can read more of my thoughts here. It basically boils down to, I saw Gone with the Wind a couple of weeks earlier, and it’s a better movie.
Footloose: Julianne Hough did a good job in the 2011 version, but I watched the far superior original with Kevin Bacon. What is lost in the 2011 version is that the story is about Ariel and her father overcoming loss, not some new kid wanting to dance.
Limitless: I rewatch this every couple of years. Bradley Cooper stumbles onto a wonder drug that changes his life.
TV
Cheers (4)
King of Queens (2)
Krapolis (1)
My Life with the Walter Boys (6)
Rules of Engagement (5)
The Big Bang Theory (1)
The Great North (1)
The King of Queens (1)
The Neighborhood (1)
The Office (1)
The Simpson’s (1)
Tracker (2)
Wings (1)
Health
Average Steps/day: 16,085
Most steps in a day: 26,063
Min steps in a day: 12,037
Resting Heart Rate: 63
Average Time Asleep: 5h 38m
Miles walked: 172
Miles ran: 17
I did a number on my back because of my Heelys. Fell flat on my back in the KES server room, it happened so quickly that I didn’t even try to catch myself.
I lied there for what I think was about ten seconds before I realized I stopped breathing. I took a breath while in intense pain and slowly got up. Took my breath away, literally and not in a good way.
I slept in a recliner for the first couple of weeks, it was the only place where my back didn’t hurt. After awhile my back felt fine while sitting, but not when transitioning in or out of the seated position.
It took about 6 weeks until I felt well enough to run again. At ten weeks I only notice it when I sleep, if I’m on my side there will be a pain.
I was asked if I was going to give up my Heelys, in which I replied with a solid “no way!”. My mom didn’t raise a quitter!
The month of March started out with a bang! I drove down to see Animaniacs in concert with Jeff & Jen at The Murphy Theater. It was a great show, I’m so glad I got a chance to go and catch up with Jeff & Jen.
The next day Tara and I traveled to Teays Valley High School to watch the KHS Top Twenty, KMS Dinensions, and Ada Varsity Singers perform.
Afterwards I talked Tara into going Easton, mainly because I wanted to go to Pins and play some arcade games.
Tara and I headed off to Akron to visit Grace and eat out at Panera. A few days later I headed back to the Akron area to present at NEOTech 2024. It was also BAUD DAY, 3/12/24. The next one won’t be until 12/24/48, so I have 24 years to build the excitement.
Near the end of the month I got to go to Camp Ohio for the counselor retreat. It was a lot of fun but I had to leave early for St. Ryans Day in Chicago!
It was a 6 hour drive to Chicago, and without cruise, it wasn’t the most fun, but I didn’t care, it was another Ryan Meetup! I got to catch up with some Ryans I met last September plus meet a whole lot of new Ryans. The meetups are such a surreal event, you just walk up to anyone and say, “Hey Ryan, where you from?” or “Hey Ryan, what do you do?”
My Instagram account is a ton of Ryans now, which is also a whole lot of fun.
I finished out the month heading to Centerville for Emo Revival Night. The genesis of this trip started only a few days before when TikTok showed me a video from a band named Matthew Lee and the Standbys. What made the video stand out was it was a pop punk cover of Defying Gravity. I was intrigued to say the least, and then I came across their cover of Someone like you from Jekyll & Hyde and If ever I would leave you from Camelot. That was my senior song for Cabaret, so I wanted to know more about the band. And then I found out they were playing with four other bands in Centerville a couple of nights later.
Tickets were $15, but VIP tickets were only $30, so I bought one and got in early and meet all of the bands. It was a great night with great music! I wholeheartedly recommend the other three bands:
Page 9 – The headliner and a great group of guys. I was so glad I did the VIP.
Say Goodnight – I about lost it when they came on stage in the hot dog costumes.
Big geekin’ project over the last couple of months is switching to TickTick for my to do lists and other notes. I’m using it for tasks, repeating tasks, and also to hold on to little bits of information that I collect. Yes, I am a digital packrat.
This month I also create a script, ics2journal, which will grab each day’s events and append them to my journal. I also wanted my completed tasks from TickTick put in my journal. I start with trying to learn the TickTick API, but it doesn’t offer me a way to pull completed tasks. What I ended up doing was using IFTTT to put completed tasks into a Google Sheet. I then download the sheet using rclone and parse it to get the day’s completed tasks and append them to my journal.
The coolest thing I did was get nginx working as a reverse proxy for Backblaze b2 storage, which makes allows basically unlimited storage of files for me.
Since I use a lot of screenshots in my work, I wanted to make them look better even with my limited artistic skill. I wrote better-screenshot.sh. It will take a screenshot, round the corners, overlay it on a larger background, and add a slight drop shadow. The result looks like this:
Dune 2: This one snuck up on me, so I didn’t get a chance to rewatch the first one, but it was phenomenal. I’ve gained a lot of respect for Timothee Chalamet.
Josie and the Pussycats: This was a rewatch, and it was a little disappointing. It shared the same creators as Can’t Hardly Wait which is a favorite of mine. Plus how could a cast of Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosaria Dawson, and Tara Reid do wrong? They couldn’t save it either.
Labyrinth: This was my first time watching it, and the imagination of Jim Henson was prevalent. I loved the set design, but it was David Bowie that stole the show.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: So much better than Afterlife, and so many Easter eggs for the first time Ghostbuster movies.
Anyone But You: The sleeper hit of the year, this was a re-watch.
I left the theater after watching Civil War with a gnawing feeling that I couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t until the middle of the night when I realized what it was.
This was me as I left the theater
Alex Garland’s Civil War
The movie is not about another America Civil War, the politics and meanings behind why a Civil War would take place are implied in parts, but never fleshed out for the audience. This, I believe, is because that’s not what the movie is about.
In the movie with have Kirsten Dunst’s Lee, an experienced war photo journalist who’s been disenfranchised by her life’s work. She had the belief that what she was doing around the world, showing America the horrors of war, would have an effect on American’s appetite for war, and she now realizes that she was wrong.
That’s it, that’s the whole movie.
Ambiguity reigns supreme
There are no reasons, no politics, and no motivations given for the actions of each “side” of this civil war. And that is the problem. Without knowing the why, it’s hard for us to care. This unknowing extends to the characters, who are barely fleshed out. Lee is joined by Joel, who drinks away the horrors of what he’s seeing. Sammy, an aging reporter who still wants to be involved. And finally Jessie, a wannabe photojournalist who just happens to be at the same place as one of her idols, Lee, at the beginning of the film.
Character development takes a vacation. We do get one scene of Lee and Jessie providing a little back story on themselves. There is also the absence of any sort of character arc for anyone. Jessie is the only one to develop into more of a full-fledged charater by the end of the movie.
I had no reasons to care for anyone in this movie, or for the state of the nation. There were no stakes, no high tension, nothing. The ending felt like a forgone conclusion from the opening frames.
Jesse Plemons was amazing though
Pales to the greatest Civil War movie of all time
So what was causing my unease when I left the theater? As luck would have it, Tara and I saw the 85th Anniversary showing of Gone with the Wind last Sunday. While some of it has not aged well, it shows us what Civil War is missing, character development. We began to know who these people were, what there motivations, aspirations, and dreams were, and what they were capable of.
I was also reminded of 1917, the World War I movie from 2019. Since the people fighting WWI really had no idea what they were fighting for, it fit right in with Civil War.
In summary
Maybe I went in expecting too much. I wanted a commentary on what a civil war could be like in today’s day and age, and how others may react. Instead I got a cookie cutter travel movie with characters I barely cared about. There was no suspense, no surprises, especially in the end.
I believe the goal was to show the horrors of war. We know that war is terrible, but a war where we don’t know the why is not a way to do this.
The Colorado trip continues with watching a production of Kiss Me Kate at the Central City Opera House. This was one of the productions that Delaney worked on as a costumer. I bought the tickets online before we left, and I messed up paying way too much on them because I was on the wrong website.
Well, even though I spent too much on them, there was a mistake in the tickets and we got moved to the third row, so it sort of worked out. Sort of. The performance was fantastic!
Rocky Mountains
After the performance we went to look at the Rocky Mountains. This was an experience due to us needing to be there early so we could get in to the national park. To make sure we were there early, we slept in the car in Estes Park. This was not fun, but we survived. After a little clean up at McDonalds and some breakfast we were off to the Rocky Mountains!
It’s was a very cool drive, which included a visit to the Alpine Visitor Centre, the highest facility of its kind in the National Park Service.
Afterwards we visits Estes Park, which had a ton of people walking around. So many people that each crosswalk had a police officer directing the walkers. Of course I wasn’t paying attention, so I got yelled out for crossing out of turn.
We ate lunch at The Sandwich Mafia, a little out of the way shop.
Central City Supper
That night we went back to Central City to eat supper with Delaney, Aunt Elia, and Tara’s cousin Rick. The pizza was good at Dostal Alley Brew Pub.
Railroad
On the third we rode the Georgetown Loop Railroad, which was a pretty cool ride. We finished that up with a meal at Cooper’s On The Creek, a fancy restaurant in Georgetown.
4th of July
We spent the morning of the 4th of July going to downtown Georgetown’s parade. I rained a little bit, which didn’t really damper the parade.
Later on we went to Kashif and Karen’s house to visit with the family. Grace got to meet her (2nd?) cousins and we all got to catch up on things.
Time to fly home
Alas, all good things must come to an end. We had some time to kill, so we visited the Park Meadows Mall before dropping off the rental car.
Wedding in the Smoky Mountains
The traveling for 2023 continued with a drive to the Smoky Mountains for Kolt’s wedding. The venue was the fantastic Foxwood Manor, and Kolt was married with the Smoky Mountains in the background. After the ceremony, the reception moved inside with some great food and good dancing. The festivities continued a week later with the Hardin County reception out at the community building.
The next morning I ventured out to get some steps in, and downtown Gatlinburg was an interesting place. Tons of places already opening on an early Sunday morning. There are a multitude of activities and food places to take advantage of, a little something for everyone.
On the way home we stopped at a Buc-ee’s in Richmond Kentucky. Our first visit was a little overwhelming! There were a million gas pumps and a million people inside, with some great bathrooms. The service was so quick, I don’t know how they did it.
Buc-ees reminds me of the riots during the zombie apocalypse
Other July activities
New tires on the Fit on the 10th and then a meal at Salsa’s on the 11th.
Unfortunately, we had a funeral visitation on the 13th with Jenny’s dad passing away. But, we also had Jerry’s 80th birthday party, along with a whole family visit at Caesar Creek State Campground. The rain didn’t slow us down.
I ended the month with another great year at 4-H Camp, and the 4-H festivities didn’t end because Grace had her last state 4-H judging at the Ohio State Fair.
On the 27th I got to go see Rochelle’s sketch comedy at the Cafe Kerouac.
Movies
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Solid movie, it just seemed like it was lacking a little charm. I liked it better than the Crystal Skull though.
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising: Underrated movie.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One: One of the best movies I’ve seen this year!
Barbie: Mattel really went all out with this one, spotlighting failure after failure of the Barbie line. I was quite surprised at how honest they were. The movie is really, really good, you should watch it.
White Chicks: I never watched this when it was first released, and it was surprisingly good.
A very good month for movies!
TV
TV I watched (number of episodes in parenthesis):
Caroline in the City (2) – Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were in one of the episodes. They are the geniuses behind Clone High, The Lego Movie, and more.
Cheers (9)
Freaks and Geeks (1)
King of Queens (1)
Parks and Recreation (2)
Rules of Engagement (1)
Star Trek (1)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1)
The Neighborhood (2)
The Office (2)
The Office Superfan (5)
Wings (2)
Health
Average Steps/day: 14,906
Most steps in a day: 20,832
Min steps in a day: 12,077
Resting Heart Rate: 53
Average Time Asleep: 7hr 25m
Miles walked: 114.9
Miles ran: 113.3
Potpourri
I don’t think we’ve ever traveled as much as we did in July, 2,251 miles by car and 1,152 miles by air.
First up for the month was my niece Rachel’s wedding! It was held at the Perry Community Center, a very cool place. The wedding was great, from the ceremony and violinist to the reception and DJ. And by DJ, that was me and I turned that mother out.
I presented at the CREATE conference on the 8th at Maumee High School. It was great catching up with people that I haven’t had a chance to talk to in real life for over 3 years.
My BIL Craig was in town on the tenth, and we took him out to 101 Smokehouse. Three days later was Tara’s and my 25th Anniversary dinner with Tara at Ralphies. I know, such a romantic spot.
This summer I decided to dye my hair purple. Why? It’s all about no regrets. I don’t want to be bald in my 80s thinking, “I should have dyed my hair in my 50s”.
If I had know the Barbie movie was going to be so popular I would have gone with pink, but there’s always next summer.
Mom had a check up at The James. Everything is looking good, and we got Culver’s!
In sad news, Jeff Rickenbacher passed away. I have such great memories of 4-H club meetings at his house, along with our many video game sessions throughout HS. He was able to do one last trip with the family.
4-H Chicago Trip
I am very thankful I was asked to help chaperone the 4-H trip to Chicago. It was a fantastic trip. The bus drive seemed to fly by, and we started our outings in Chicago with some Chicago deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria. The next day was a trip to 360 Chicago and some spectacular views of the city. There was also The Tilt, a “ride” which tilts you over the side of a skyscraper. It didn’t agree with some people, but I thought it needed to tilt out farther!
Afterwards we all went to Ed Debevic’s. The name sounded familiar, and then I remembered I ate their when I came to Chicago from college for a Music Conference.
Our waiter was not impressed
That afternoon we had a fantastic tour of Chinatown, taking the train down and getting a walking tour. We painted kites and ate authentic Chinese food.
In the evening was our river cruise around Chicago. The cruise was very cool, although the fireworks were a little underwhelming.
The next day was a trip to The Bean. I’ve seen it a couple of times, so it’s lost a little of it’s luster to me, but the kids really liked it. After the bean was a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley field! Although they lost against the Orioles, 6-3, the first hit of the game was a home run by the Cubs! We had awesome patio seats with free food. My only negative for the day was troubleshooting some network issues back home, but luckily Kolt was available to run up to the high school and get everything working.
That evening was the “walking ghost tour” of Chicago, which I wasn’t too psyched about, but once we got there it was amazing.
Our guide, Baylor, was amazing. What I learned was that a lot of people died in rather senseless ways, usually in a fire. I also learned that Al Capone did more by the end of his thirties then I have done now!
Out last day was some shopping, a visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and then off to the Chicago School of Shoemaking. I made an awesome leather belt!
Colorado Trip
We flew out to Colorado to see Delaney and one of the productions she worked on at the opera house in Central City. Unfortunately, we got going a day late do to a ton of travel delays. Our flight was supposed to leave from Columbus and return to Columbus, but due to the issues we switched to flying out of Cleveland. This was going to be a pain except we’re grateful that Joel offered to drive us to Cleveland. This meant that we could take the Pilot down to Rochelle’s before we left, and when we returned she could pick us up at the airport and we could drive home from her place. Anything to save on parking!
Our hotel was in Georgetown, a really cool town a little over 30 minutes west of Denver. However, the airport is on the extreme east side of Denver, so we had over an hour drive to get there. Picking up the rental car from Thrifty was an experience. Basically, they just point you to a car and register you on the way out. The funny thing was this huge barricade that comes up out of the ground to stop you from just driving away with a car. I don’t know if people steal from rental places a lot, but they act like it does.
The rental car was a Kia Forte, which was a pretty nice car. It had lane assist, which was cool. I assumed it also had adaptive cruise, but I couldn’t figure it out and I was too lazy to look it up.
On the way to Georgetown we stopped at Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre. Tara and I had been there before, but Grace hadn’t. After a brief rain, we were all set to go look but unfortunately there was a concert that night and so we weren’t allowed in.
Our first stop at Georgetown was the Georgetown Visitor Center. Your typical visitor center. After that we checked in and headed over to Cabin Creek Brewing for supper.
By this time I was starting to feel lightheaded. Denver is around 5,000 feet and Georgetown is even higher at 8,500. I figured I wouldn’t have an issue with all my running, but I was wrong. The first morning I went out for a run, and the first mile felt… Wrong? Different? I toughed it out, but I didn’t break any speed records. It didn’t really get any easier either.
Next up was a visit to Garden of the Gods and the Visitor Center. We do not have geological formations like this in Ohio. It felt like it could be a planet on Star Trek, I was ready for a Gorn to pop out.
After the Garden of the Gods we bought a timed pass to climb Pike’s Peak. We had some time to kill before we could go, so we stopped at the North Pole, Home of Santa’s Workshop which is on the way up Pikes Peak. If you are under the age of 7 that place is great. It was free admission that day so we walked around. The magic show was way better than you would think. Also, the map hadn’t been updated. It showed an arcade, but the building now looks like it is used for storage. There seemed to be some games inside, but nothing we could play.
Finally, it was time to climb Pikes Peak, and oh boy, what a drive it is. There are no guardrails as you are driving up, and if you went off the road, it was a mile or two straight down. On the way up we saw our first marmoset crossing the road. The temperature on the way up dropped 40 degrees, getting down to the 30s at the top. It was snowing a little bit! The oxygen level at the top is 50% of what it is at sea level, so I was not doing well. We did hear the best conversation though, a man was on the phone and he told the caller “just here watching a marmoset lick a rock”. It looked like someone had spilled a drink, so the marmoset was cleaning it up.
While we were up there the rangers came in to the center alarmed, telling us that if we drove up that we needed to leave NOW! The weather had totally changed since we got there, with the clouds rolling in and visibility dropping down to 20-30 feet. We started our descent, using the GPS and the lights on the car in front of us to help. They warned us not to ride the brakes, but as we were going down I started to smell them. About four miles down is a stop and the rangers check the temperatures of the brakes. The smell was coming from the car in front of us, their brakes were over 400 degrees! That car had to stop and wait, while our brakes were at a cool 160 and we were allowed to proceed.
We stayed out there into July, so you’re going to want to read the July checkup to see how the rest of the trip went!
Movies
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse: Visually amazing, story is amazing, being part one of two was a bummer.
The Little Mermaid: Pretty good, I like how they tried to make Ariel more a part of her story. But, having her sing “Part of That World” instead of “Part of your World” because she hadn’t met Eric yet didn’t really work for me.
Moonfall: I expected this to be more fun and outrageous. It was just ok.
Date Night: Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, of course it’s good.
Adventures in Babysitting: Rewatching a classic.
The A-Team: Better than I remembered.
The Flash: It was ok. I liked how they just decided to burn down the whole DC movie universe since it’s going to be redone by James Gunn.
The 40 Year Old Virgin: Another Stever Carrell classic, and it’s pretty good.
Happy Gilmore: Adam Sandler movies are like comfort food, when you can’t think of something to watch, put one on and veg out for 2 hours.
TV
TV I watched (number of episodes in parenthesis):
Cheers (11)
Everybody Loves Raymond (2)
Family Ties (5)
The King of Queens (1)
Wings (2)
Health
Average Steps/day: 16,705
Most steps in a day: 28,640
Min steps in a day: 12,049
Resting Heart Rate: 58
Average Time Asleep: 7h 3m
Miles walked: 171.2
Miles ran: 31.8
Potpourri
I don’t think I’ve ever traveled more miles in a month then I did in June. There were 2,133 miles driven (which includes the bus ride to Chicago) and 1,199 miles flying, for a total of 3,332 miles traveled.
Back on the first of May, Tara and I got to haul a trailer to Akron because not only was Grace moving home for the supper, she had then acquired a couch for us to store for the summer. And now that couch has become the cat’s couch in the garage. At least I got Chipotle!
The very next day was something that I had been looking forward for a couple of years, the chance to see the stage production of Spirited Away. The production and filmed and distributed to movie theaters for a limited run. And it was amazing.
We took mom & dad out to an anniversary supper at Salsa’s on the 7th. Katie and Grace L. Joined us.
On the 15th I traveled to Sandusky for the ITIP Ohio Google Summit. It was nice to attend a conference without the pressure of presenting. Stephanie H. remembered me from the February Ohio Educational Technology Conference because of my name tag.
End of year festivities for school took place at the end of the month with Cabaret, Carly’s grad party, the senior cruise, and graduation.
On the 28th we attended church at the Church of the Nazarene for Dave Dooley’s last sermon there. He’s such a great guy, he will be missed.
Movies
The Stage production of Spirited Away!!! – Spirited Away is a fantastic movie, and the stage production is amazing. I loved how they figured out how to portray the larger than life characters on the screen.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – So much better than 2.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – One of my dirty pleasures. Don’t bother with the second one, that one is like they forgot about what makes the first one great: a simplistic plot along with cool gadgets, cool fights, and overall fun scenes.
But I’m a cheerleader – The cast excels in this movie, I mean, how could you doubt RuPaul?!? A great movie about a girl coming out which doesn’t exactly wow her parents.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga – I didn’t know what I was getting in to, but this movie was excellent.
Dirty Grandpa – Hilarious movie about getting older and making the most out of what you have now.
Fast X – It was ok, 9 was better. However, it’s only part one! I didn’t know I was getting into a two parter when I went to see it.
TV
TV I watched (number of episodes in parenthesis):
Andor (2)
Beavis and Butt-head (1)
Cheers (9)
Jury Duty (1)
The Neighborhood (1)
The Office (3)
Wings (3)
Health
Average Steps/day: 15,981
Most steps in a day: 31,445
Min steps in a day: 12,045
Resting Heart Rate: 51
Average Time Asleep: 7h 15m
Miles walked: 194.8
Miles ran: 16.6
Potpourri
For my Thursday morning playlist I added I2I from the Goofy Movie, a song that slaps more than you think.
After the bean was a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley field! Although they lost against the Orioles, 6-3, the first hit of the game was a home run by the Cubs! We had awesome patio seats with free food. My only negative for the day was troubleshooting some network issues back home, but luckily Kolt was available to run up to the high school and get everything working.
