Friday, November 23, 2007 by Alexandria Harper.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

I had a great time with my friends. The food was great! We watched “Live Free or Die Hard” and marveled at the crazy, over-the-top effects and that-would-never-happen moments. That being said, I still loved it. Justin Long is great with the one-liners and you can’t go wrong with Bruce Willis.

I also got a chance to try Guitar Hero 2 for the first time on PlayStation 2. For those of you who don’t know, Guitar Hero is a video game that uses a guitar shaped controller with which you “play” along with the music by hitting five colored buttons on the “fret” and then strum using a button that acts like a pick. This is harder than it sounds. Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child Of Mine” kicked my butt! The song that I thought was the most fun to play was “Surrender” by Cheap Trick.

I tend to stay away from video games because I remember how many hours I wasted in my early 20s playing video games. My problem is that I don’t like not being good at something. This game awoke my normally submerged competitive nature. My first score was just over 7000, which the kids say is higher than they got on their first crack at it. Maybe they were just trying to make me feel better. My highest score was about 25,000. Not only was it hard, but my left arm is killing me today! I used muscles I didn’t know I had. Mmm, maybe Guitar Hero could constitute a work out…

It is fun, but addicting. I might have to break down and buy a game console just so I can beat it. I think it’s more frustrating because I used to play the guitar. I think that created a different level of frustration for me because I was trying to play like you would a real guitar. On another note, if you haven’t seen it, you should check out the Guitar Hero South Park episode. I highly recommend it!

I’ll leave you all with a reminder that the much anticipated Battlestar Galactica: Razor premieres this Saturday on the Sci-Fi Channel. Follow the link for more info and to check out the Razor Flashbacks they’ve been showing during Flash Gordon.

Also, let’s pray that the writer’s strike ends soon because Sci-Fi has announced they’ve stopped production early for the holidays on next season’s Battlestar episodes because of the strike (see “Strike Idles Bionic Production” here). Most shows have already stopped production or will soon because they have less than six weeks of material left until they’re out of scripts.

The writer’s have agreed to go back to the table for talk to end the strike on November 26. Let’s hope for the best! You can see complete coverage of the strike here at Yahoo! News.

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Sunday, November 18, 2007 by Alexandria Harper.

I have every intention to keep my personal life and my professional life separate with this blog. That’s not always easy, especially for me as my work is a big part of my life—it’s sad, I know. It’s just good practice to keep work out of the picture in my cyberexploits. I will be omitting some details on situations that concern work. This is deliberate to CMA. It’s a necessary evil. I’d like to keep my job—I’m sort of fond of it and paying my bills on time in general.

That being said, I recently went to Seattle on a business trip and I have to say I love that city. First of all, I can breathe there. There’s something in the air in Las Vegas that makes my sinuses unhappy on a regular basis. I didn’t have any of those issues up in the Emerald City. Second of all, they have water (which is probably a factor in my First-of-all). Most desert dwellers get punch drunk over seeing water and trees and I am no exception to this rule. Third of all, it’s just a beautiful city. Seattle has lots of great old buildings, rolling hills (which I was not aware before going there) and loads of things to see and do.

You can’t go to Seattle and not see the sights. It would be a travesty not to visit at least some of the attractions that downtown Seattle has to offer. When I got there on Sunday it was lunchtime. After checking into the hotel we went to Rock Bottom Brewery. I had Salmon Fish and Chips. I didn’t even know you could get that anywhere! The food was great and they had Root Beer Barrels instead of mints! I haven’t seen Root Beer Barrels in years. I grabbed a handful for the road.

The first place I went after lunch was the Seattle Aquarium because I love otters. I can watch them for hours; they’re some of the most graceful creatures on Earth. Unfortunately it was getting dark when I got there and the otters are outside (obviously, because they live in water and that’s where the water is). I did get to see them but it was too dark for photographs. I liked the Seattle Aquarium immensely; they really have some great exhibits.

For instance, they have an exhibit where you can actually pet some of the animals there. I got to touch a starfish, something a land-lubber like me was unlikely to do anytime in the future. They also had puffins which I had never seen up close.

What’s a trip to Seattle without going to Pike Place Market? Unfortunately I got there too late to see any fish-throwing but it was still neat to see where they filmed “Sleepless in Seattle” and look at some of the vendors wares even as they were pulling up shop for the night. This is something I’ll have to check out again at a later date.

I had to go to the Space Needle too. The Space Needle is the Seattle skyline. It was so great to see the city from 500 feet up. I, of course, had dinner at the Sky City restaurant because I was a wide-eyed tourist. It was REALLY expensive and not worth the price but your paying for the view, I suppose, and that was really great. I could see Qwest field where the Seattle Seahawks were giving the San Francisco 49ers a beating Monday night.

Tuesday night I had dinner at Anthony’s Pier 66. It’s a beautiful restaurant with a terrific view of Elliot Bay. Their salmon chowder is excellent. After that I was treated to a ride through Capitol Hill which is a really neat part of the city. Very hip and trendy. Some of the houses there are huge! They also have several beautiful churches there, which is ironic since this is a counterculture hotspot of Seattle.

I had to leave Wednesday night to come back to Sin City. I wasn’t in Seattle as long as I wanted to be and I wish I was still there (breathing is highly underrated). I will be going back next month on another business trip. I can’t wait!

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Thursday, November 8, 2007 by Alexandria Harper.

So, Tuesday night I was watching last Sunday’s “Robot Chicken” episode and in one of the skits I’m positive that it’s Nathan Fillion’s voice I’m hearing. I figure either I’ve eaten some bad mushrooms or he truly is one of the coolest guys in Hollywood.

Turns out I’m not suffering from food poisoning. He really did the voice over for the “It’s the Law…” skit. Anyone that does voiceovers for Seth Green and Co.’s comedic masterpiece must not take themselves too seriously and are therefore the cream of crop in my book.

For you dyed in the wool “Firefly” fans I’m going to post the link so you can experience it yourself with a disclaimer. “Robot Chicken” is not for the feint of heart, my friends. It is rude, crude and socially unacceptable but also freaking hilarious. If your not easily offended, click the link. If you think swearing, clever dialogue and stop-motion animated people getting billy-clubbed can’t possibly be entertaining, keep on reading and forgot I even mentioned it.

Here’s the link: http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25c39215fcb0f90115fcfa634200a3.

Speaking of Nathan Fillion, my friend Rani and I attended Creation Entertainment’s “Firefly/Serenity Salute” October 27 and 28th in beautiful Burbank, CA.

Nathan crashed nearly everyone’s appearance. He sure likes to talk and I have to admit I love to listen to him. He is one of funniest actors in Hollywood and I’m sad to say underrated. Someday he’ll be more than a household name to we faithful “Browncoats”.

Check out the ”Firefly/Serenity Salute 2007” page for photos from the convention.

The convention was my first trip to the greater Hollywood area and I now am a SoCal convert. I totally get why people live there despite experiencing every natural disaster known to man, power shortages and a tax structure only a schizophrenic could possibly agree with.

We had a celebrity sighting in Studio City. We ate lunch at this great little pizzeria called Ciaotti Pizza Café. While we were waiting for our food to arrive, Rani noticed a little girl who had come in with her mom. She’s asked me if I recognized her and I surely did. It was Adair Tishler who plays Molly on ”Heroes”. She was dressed in her little Judo outfit. So adorable!

That’s all for today kids. Keep it real!

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Monday, November 5, 2007 by Alexandria Harper.

I saw “Dan In Real Life” yesterday at the Red Rock Regal Theater. My stomach literally hurt from laughing so much. Steve Carell is a wonderful actor and comedian and I’ll watch pretty much anything that Dane Cook is in. Juliette Binoche was so great. Her performance was so true to life and you couldn’t help but fall in love with her character right along with everyone else. I highly recommend it.

On a completely different topic, I went to SEMA last Thursday. For those of you don’t know SEMA, stands for Specialty Equipment Marketing Association and is the convention of choice for gear heads from across the nation. There are some perks living in the Convention Capital of the World.

First, let me say that I am not a gear head. I can, however, appreciate the beauty and majesty of well-built shiny car.

SEMA has something for everyone: aftermarket products, restored cars, new models and, oh, yeah “Booth Babes”. I’m not so interested in the latter but I did notice there were a lot less of them than in previous years and they were less scantily clad. A few years ago you could walk through the show and see a few of the models dressed in nothing more than the shortest pair of boy-shorts known to man and a few gallons of body paint. I’m certainly not complaining (I’m sure there were a few disappointed males roaming the aisles)– just making an observation.

Now, my sole reason for attending SEMA had nothing to do with aftermarket products or restored cars. There was only one booth that I wanted to visit and that was GM’s booth. Why, you ask? BUMBLEBEE. Yes I went to a car show simply to see the Camaro concept car from “The Transformers” movie. They put a barrier around the car like they didn’t trust people to keep their hands off. Sheesh! I admit I wanted to run my hand over its slinky, cool hood too, but had to be placated by just being near it.

I did take a photo of Bumblebee with my phone.
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I also took a photo of a Chevy SS because it was purty. Me likey, likey!

My co-worker, Audrey, went with me and we had a marginal fun looking at everything except for the hordes of people. It seems like the show was packed, which is good for business, but not my idea of a good time We checked out the North and Central Halls quickly and skipped the South Hall.

Well, that’s all for today. I’m going to watch “Robot Chicken” and “Torchwood” that I DVR’ed this weekend and then “Heroes” is on. See ya!

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Sunday, November 4, 2007 by Alexandria Harper.

Yes, I know. It’s not the most creative title but it’s descriptive so I’m going with it. This is my first attempt to join the world of blogging. I’m normally an early adopter of technology but for some reason I’m a late-bloomer when it comes to the Web Blog craze.

I’m also realistic in thinking that perhaps two or three people will read this blog if I’m lucky. However, I need to exercise the writing portion of my brain before it atrophies so here I am!

For those of you who don’t know me here’s a little info. I used to write a newspaper column about technology called “Wired World” in the late 1990s, back when wireless technology was barely burgeoning and I was apparently fond of alliteration. I’ve decided to keep this name for two reasons, the most obvious being nostalgia and the other is that it’s a play-on-words, something else I’m fond of.

I live in Las Vegas, the strangest place on planet earth–at least in my opinion and the opinion of nearly everyone that I know living here, so I stand by my statement. Vegas, the non-stop neon city-that-never-sleeps, is pretty wired in my opinion and it feels like another world. This otherworldly city requires me to consume large amounts of caffeine on a regular basis just to keep from falling down comatose because of information overload. The increased caffeine intake could have something to do with the fact that I’m now a web developer and stare at code all day now, but the other explanation is jazzier.

I’m also a bit of a movie and TV buff–well an entertainmentoholic might be a better way to describe me. I’m the person that people phone up and say, “You remember that guy that was in that movie?” and I usually know the answer. My favorite genre is sci-fi. Yes, I know that makes me a nerd but I’ve come to terms with that and wear my nerd badge proudly. I’m not such a nerd that it interferes with social interaction and prevents me from having interpersonal relationships. I can have a conversation that does not involve references to “Battlestar Galactica” when necessary.

I’m sure you’ll discover more about me as time goes on. For now, I’ll plan on posting some photos from trips I’ve taken recently and discuss random things that I think are cool or important.

Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

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