Some Interesting BBall

Tonight, as I have done regularly for about the past 23 years, I attended a Hawkeye basketball game. It happened to be the Iowa State game which always adds a bit of excitement, the crowd was the best I have seen in a few years, and Iowa happened to play a great game and pretty much had their way with the 'clones. Follow that up with the traditional playing of "In Heaven There is No Beer" and all in all - a most excellent experience.

It turns out I also got a nice little celebrity sighting out of the deal. Ashton Kutcher, being an Iowa native and former U of I attendee (I actually had 2 Engineering classes with him the sole year he was there as an engineering student), came back to the state to do some benefit work to provide money for flood recovery. Both he and Shawn Johnson (Olympic gold and silver medalist from Des Moines for those not paying attention) had events throughout the week to help raise money, which I think is very cool of both of them.

Ashton and his wife, Demi Moore, both sat at the scorers table about 10 rows in front of our seats along with Shawn Johnson. I was impressed that along with the good they were doing this week, they did not simply show up for the game, make their appearance, and then duck out. They all stayed well past the final buzzer, and generally seemed to be into the game and all of the events. My craptastic cell phone pictures aren't worth posting, or I would add them here.

There was a screening for Ashton's new movie, Personal Effects, at the Englert theatre in Iowa City tonight as well. I'm not so sure about the movie - it may have had a bit too much pandering to the Iowa fans for even me to stomach, but I'll probably check it out as a rental at some point.

Needle in the haystack (aka the ballad of strstr)

Slashdot over the years has degenerated to the point where I expect nearly no value any longer. However, I keep it around just for the rare times where it finds a gem. This is one of those cases.

Any readers of this blog should already have a pretty good idea what I think about Digital Rights Management (DRM). (sidenote - what a nice spin of words to try to make it sound like something non-evil, was Digital Handcuffs (DH) already taken?).

This blog post, courtesy of Slashdot, is just about perfect. Fantastic read. Macrovision sucks.

Father's Day in Reverse

Today was Father's Day. Most of you knew that, some might not have, since it doesn't have nearly the push of other Hallmark holidays. It did seem to me that it was a bit more publicized this year than others though, or maybe I was just paying more attention.

In any case, what I did today would seem odd to many. The stereotypical day is doing something that dad wants, or letting him sleep in and watch TV, etc. Instead, I spent my day working on the family vehicle (because I had to, not because I wanted to), painting the kids playset, and then taking them to their favorite pizza place, and finally to a movie they had been wanting to see (Cars).

Yes, I also love Happy Joe's, and I wanted to see Cars as well. However, it was still essentially a day of getting things done for the kids. I thought about this a bit and wondered why that would surprise anyone. Why shouldn't the day also be about helping out the kids, and doing things that both enjoy. That seems to make the most sense of all to me.

Cars is definitely another hit for Pixar also. Especially for a car/race lover like me. As I was properly warned, make sure to stay for the credits, they may actually be the best part of the movie.