Like many others, our family switches into Christmas mode at Thanksgiving. On Black Friday we shop and over the holiday weekend we usually decorate the tree. Last year we were a bit early with the tree ritual, but it’s usually around Thanksgiving time that the tree gets put together.

We used to go buy a real tree, but switched to a fake tree in 2005.

Holiday music and movies
This is also the time to start watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas music. Among my list of favorite holiday movies:

- black and white version of Miracle on 34th Street. The color version is ok, but not nearly as good as the B&W version. Kind of like how Twilight Zone in color never quite worked. The dialogue is getting a bit dated now, but still works.
- Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer

Last year our son received the gift: Twisted Christmas CD (affiliate) which gives a nice twist to listening to traditional holiday music.

I see Dee Snider and the gang have the Twisted Christmas Live DVD (affiliate) this year:

Twisted Sister’s A Twisted Christmas Live DVD captures the band’s holiday 2006 show at New Jersey’s Legendary Starland Ballroom, featuring performances of their greatest hits as well as Christmas songs from last year’s holiday breakout album A Twisted Christmas. Twisted sister’s …Live DVD release will ignite the passions of the press and fans again - expect more madness this holiday season!

Something about transitioning from “Stay Hungry” to “Let It Snow” that is so wrong.

Like most of the rest of you, I’ll be growing tired of holiday music and movies soon, but when the decorations go up and the tunes and movies start playing for a short time I’m transported back to those magical, mystical childhood days when anticipation of Christmas day was almost unbearable. What are your favorite holiday movies and music and when do you switch into Christmas mode?

On the 12 days of Heavy Metal Christmas my true love gave to me …

Just got back from the store and picked up Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. $43.79 at Costco, not too bad.

I remember fondly how Nintendo used to come out with a new Mario game with each new system launch. That pattern went away, but who doesn’t love these Mario games? I’m looking forward to breaking open the package and getting lost in the gameplay. Some of my favorite gaming memories are with that red hat plumber. Super Mario 3 is my all time favorite Mario game and on my top five videogames ever list.

Also on tomorrow’s to-do list, work (it’s hump day!), reading a new book I also bought tonight on Flash CS3, more work, blogging somewhere between, and in the meantime filling up this shelf with CDs:

We were out of shelf space to keep our CD collection in order. I’ve spent the last few weeks going through our collection and re-ripping to MP3 at 320kbps. We’re up over 4,000 songs and there still is over a rack full of CDs to go through. Some of the CDs, I’m learning are scratched and need to be repaired if possible.

According to iTunes, which is the primary tool being used to archive the collection, we’re up over 30GB. I’m pretty sure we’ll be under the 80GB limit of my wife’s iPod fifth generation. After the CD ripping is done I have to go back and finish inventorying our DVD collection. We need another shelf for those too. I’m still using the handy program Delicious Library on the Mac (review) with the iSight camera to keep our CD, DVD, games and to a lesser extent books in order.

Have you been keeping up with your inventory duties? Remember, if you have a fire or loss, your homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance policy requires an inventory of the items. Might as well be proactive instead of reactive.

Listened to music on the Zune most of today but never did figure out how to get my plays to register on my Zune profile on the official Zune website? Seems from the Zune forums like I’m not alone.

Dinner calls. See you on the other side rested and refueled.

Being a horror movie fan and especially since it’s Halloween I’d just love to encourage readers to get out to the theater this witching time of year and see Saw IV in the theater, but can’t.

The movie [Saw IV official website] has raked in over $30 million already and is #1 in the theaters as I write this. My wife and I went last night.

Saw IV opens with a gruesome autopsy scene and devolves from there. I’m still trying to figure out what happened in the end. Jigsaw puzzle? Indeed.

After seeing Saw III I wondered how they could contract Jigsaw for five movies when his head was almost chopped off at the end of his cancer ravaged body. Jigsaw can only live on in backstory logically — and guess what, that’s what we get in Saw IV. Jigsaw’s ex-wife seems only to be in the story to relate the backstory of what drove Jigsaw into being the brilliant, mad scientist of traps and gadgetry.

By the time the end credits rolled I was even more confused about who was the bad guy? An essential component of horror is understanding who the bad guy is so you can sense FEAR. I sensed more repulsion than fear with Saw IV. More shock about the visuals and what I was seeing than being legitimately fearful. Lionsgate needs to go back to the sawhorse for Saw V because IV lost its edge. The only thing keeping this horrible horror flick from total failure is the inventive, yet sadistic traps. Grade: D+

Checking out the official Iron Man trailer and wishing it was already here but alas, we need to wait until May 2, 2008. Note from the screenshot below that Apple made sure to make versions for 420p, 720p, 1080p and yes, yes, yes, the iPhone.

Iron Man was my favorite comic book as a kid, followed closely by The Incredible Hulk and X-Men. Hat tip to Ami-Chan.net (your husband has good taste!). Here’s how I rank the Marvel movies I’ve seen to date:

1. Spider-man 2
2. X-men
3. Spider-man
4. X-men 2
5. Spider-man 3 C+
6. Fantastic 4 Rise of the Silver Surfer
7. Ghost Rider
8. X-men 3
9. Hulk
10. Fantastic Four
11. The Punisher
12. Daredevil
13. Howard the Duck
14. Elektra
15. Blade

Haven’t seen: Blade: Blade II, Blade: Trinity

I’ve got high expectations for Iron Man, although must admit I’m worried about Robert Downey, Jr. being able to pull off the part. He’s a good actor, but I don’t see him as a superhero any more than Ben Affleck (Daredevil) worked. Would like to see Iron Man make my favorite top 5.

What’s your top five Marvel superhero flicks to date?

Transformers on HD-DVD set a single day next generation DVD record selling 100,000 copies on the first day and selling another 90,000 the first week. Paramount reports that 20% of the purchasers connected to online content through the Transformers HD-DVD as I outlined doing myself a couple days ago.

Transformers which was an HD DVD exclusive didn’t beat the first week of the movie 300 which sold more than 250,000 copies (166,000 in Blu-Ray and 83,333 HD-DVD). And when compared to DVD of Transformers the numbers aren’t even close points out reghardware.co.uk:

The Transformers DVD sold 4.5m copies on its first day: almost 24 times as many as the number of HD DVDs sold.

Encouraging to see a positive sales response, especially the geek factor playing a part in the web-enhanced features. Hollywood should be spending more time and energy developing more web interactive movies. Gaming studios should be more involved. Maybe someday we’ll be able to play something like Dragon’s Lair in the movie theater, perhaps with alternate viewer screen glasses or HUD (Heads Up Display) like in Second Life. The theater experience could give us so more for the extra $dollars$.

Checking over Digital Leisure I see the HD DVD version of Dragon’s Lair is now available to match the Blu-Ray version. Both are $49.95. I’m going to wait for these prices to come down. Would like to see Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace in HD too. Looks like they are on the way.

Wanted to get to the theater to see the well received Transformers movie but it didn’t happen. Went to buy it from Best Buy the other day in HD-DVD format — sorry Blu-ray fans, Paramount is HD-DVD only — but they were sold out. So yesterday afternoon we searched other stores.

Fred Meyer had it for $34.99 which is more than I’d liked to have paid but the 24 hours of special features including enhanced web feature sucked me in. I’m happy with the purchase. We would have spent that $35 in the theater after the tickets, popcorn and drinks. If you can be more patient than me, Amazon has Transformers HD-DVD (affiliate) for $27.99 as of this writing.

So as soon as we got home I fired up the Xbox HD-DVD drive and loaded the first disc. The first load took awhile while as it loaded feature and check out the screenshot — asking for permission to put a cookie on the HD-DVD drive! Something not normally seen with the regular DVD watching experience, huh?

Once it loaded I needed to register at Paramount’s HD web content site with username, password, email, age and whether I wanted to receive future offers from them. Worked flawlessly, although typing with the controller UI is slow. I should have used our USB keyboard instead or go buy that cool looking Xbox 360 Text Input device (affiliate).

Note: you can skip this step if you want to jump in and start watching the movie, but I wanted to watch it the very first time with the web enhanced features. You can’t get that experience anywhere else but the HD-DVD which I was excited about seeing.

Once registered, you’re automatically logged in, so click the ‘play’ button in the Intelligence Center and the Transformers movie loads with a matte around the screen containing information about the health status of each of the Transformers. They are dark until the Transformer(s) appears in the movie.

As each Transformer takes damage, similar to a fighting video game, the health bar goes down from full health (white) to dark red (almost dead) to off the chart black (dead). Along the way little bits and pieces of movie backstory popup in the bottom of the screen. Sometimes humorous snippets like asking why the main character isn’t kissing the girl.

The plot of the movie for those who haven’t seen, no spoilers, revolves around a struggle for a powerful alien cube that crashed to earth. The bad Transformers, known as DECEPTICONS are trying to recover the cube while the good Transformers known as AUTOBOTS are trying to prevent that from happening. Cliched: a covert division of the military knows about it and has frozen the DECEPTICON leader.

The leader of the AUTOBOTS is Optimus Prime who takes the form of a Semi-truck. The guard AUTOBOT is called Bumblebee who doesn’t have a voice and thus uses songs on the car radio to utter phrases (neat idea!). Bumblebee protects the main character, Sam Witwicky, who has a pair of broken glasses with the location of alien cube. How to the Transformers know about Sam possessing the glasses? He’s trying to sell them on eBay, of course.

AUTOBOTS will not hurt humans while DECEPTICONS have no problem wiping out mankind. A classic, albeit fun good vs. evil story.

Sam is a quirky younger guy who looks a little bit like Wil Wheaton (Star Trek Next Generation Wesley Crusher) and has a love interest in a hot girl being played by Megan Fox. And yes, Megan looks terrific at 1080p, start drooling on your remotes now. Also notable in the cast is the guy who plays Danny (Josh Duhamel) in the hit TV show Las Vegas. Duhamel plays a military commander with a squadron sort of caught in the middle of the battle.

The acting overall wasn’t outstanding, but the real fun is the Transformers and various battles which do not disappoint. Great special effects, easily among the best I’ve ever seen which has the bar set pretty high by the ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) team.

The end battle is rewarding and teases sequel. Since Transformers grossed pretty well in the theater (#19 all time per Box Office Mojo) and deserves to sell a ton of HD-DVD and DVDs, we can probably expect a Transformers 2.

As I write this I’m itching to watch it again. If you buy or already own an HD-DVD player, Transformers is a must have for the collection. Finally an HD-DVD movie experience that offers something engaging during the movie experience besides behind the scenes commentary (and yes, it has that too). This is easily my favorite to date animated to big screen adaption and HD-DVD experience. Think I’m going to put the animated Transformers on my wish list. The only thing that prevents Transformers from having a higher grade is the acting. Keep in mind that my grade is for the HD-DVD experience, not the DVD or theater experience. Grade: A-.

Where can you buy and live in a Titan 1 Missile Base here in Washington state? eBay, naturally (also described at themissilebase.com), if you’ve got an extra 1.5 million bones laying around.

Or rather $300,000 USD down and the rest within 3 years at 7% interest. There are 16 buildings to choose from, according to the eBay ad Q&A text:

The Power Dome alone is 125′ in diameter with about a 65′ center ceiling. That’s more than 12,000 square feet of open space. You could literally build any type of typical house INSIDE the Power Dome - if that was what you wanted to do. OR You could remodel all or part of the Control Dome, which itself is a 100′ diameter two story dome containing over 7800 square feet in the first floor alone. OR you could decide to live in one of the THREE, four story equipment terminal buildings that contain about 1200 square feet of floor space on EACH floor!! OR you could build an apartment in the AIR INTAKE BUILDING, which OVERLOOKS the Power Dome so you could have an UNDERGROUND APARTMENT WITH A VIEW!! The Air Intake Building is 60′ in diameter with about a 20′ high ceiling!! That works out to about 2800 square feet of living space. OR you could choose to live in one or BOTH of the Antenna SILOS - They are 30′ in diameter with about a 40′ ceiling ON THE FIRST FLOOR! The lower level is also 30′ in diameter with about a 20′ ceiling. ADDITIONALLY, if you chose to live in one or both of the Antenna Silos, you could retrofit the ANTENNA SILO - SILO DOORS - each weighing about 50 tons - with a new hydraulic opening system and then you could have your own push button 100-ton opening skylight. And if you really wanted to go whole hog, you could live in the bottom of one of the 155’ tall MISSILE SILOS and retrofit the 150 ton SILO DOORS so you could push a button and open them up – 155’ above the floor!!

As I perused the ad, I thought about the movie War Games with Mathew Broderick. Greetings, Professor Falkin.

Don’t get too excited now, most the 1950s era equipment has been removed when it was declassified and decommissioned and the ad admits some work would be needed. Unlike other Titan facilities which are badly rusted or under water, this one is dry.

View Larger Map

This was the former Larson Air Force Base Complex 1A Titan ICBM Facility and is located between Moses Lake and Ritzville. No address is listed in the ad but the Google map above shows the general surrounding area. Hat tip to thinkorthwim.

Last night Google added support for presentations to Google Docs. Nathan’s on top of the game and offers a solid walk-thru with screenshots and along with some help from Matt Cutts shares how to embed presentations in your webpages using IFRAME.

Remember September 18, 2007 as The Day The Earth Stood Still for Microsoft Office non-enterprise customers.

For those who haven’t seen the 1951 black and white sci-fi flick, it’s about an alien named Klaatu that comes down to deliver an important message to earth about the importance of maintaining peace. As with many alien encounters with earth in movies, Klaatu is met with suspicion and is shot by a scared soldier. A robot with amazing, unworldly powers called Gort appears to protect Klaatu. I won’t spoil the ending, but the movie is so good that it’s being remade for release in Summer 2008.

Now what does this movie have to do with Microsoft Office? Let’s put Microsoft in the role of the skeptic and overreacting military and politicians. They are holding onto a model with one of their two cash cows: Office as an overpriced suite of applications for non-enterprise customers. Google appears to be the benevolent Klaatu, offering all of us the ability to use Office-like applications online for ‘free’ (ad-supported): Word vs. Google Write, Excel vs. Google Spreadsheets and now Powerpoint vs. Google Presentation. And who are you and I?

We are Gort, the powerful robot army of the future, able to choose to enforce document peace here on earth and the internet. Able and willing to choose Google over Microsoft or vice versa.

Ok, yeah, I’m stretching with this analogy but the underlying idea is that while the Google Office suite isn’t an Office killer (I’m not saying that), it is a strong warning that Microsoft needs to do something to compete on the non-enterprise front against Google with Office. They need to get off their butts and offer an Adcenter ad-supported version of Office to compete to a new era of documents creation, management and collaboration that Google continues to grow.

As someone who owns Google stock, you’d think I’d be in favor of Google domination, but I’m not in favor of any company too far in the lead. Competition breeds excellence and I’m hoping today’s sober reality that Microsoft is fading fast from being Joe Consumer’s friend will be the wake-up call. Vista adoption isn’t what Microsoft hoped for no matter how they spin it, the Xbox 360 is now looking at the Nintendo Wii bumper stickers, Zune is a distant second place and Redmond’s soldier of fortune Office is seriously wounded.

My biggest criticism for Google Docs to date — and that is their new official title, BTW — has been the lack of offline connectivity. If you don’t have internet access, it disables the value of most web-based applications. Wise beyond their years, Google continues to work on and refine Google Gears. I wouldn’t call Gears a success yet, more like a work in progress. The day when omnipresent internet exists, Google appears to be in a stronger position than Microsoft for non-enterprise customers.

For the non-enterprise readers, how many are using Gmail more than Outlook? Google Docs and Spreadsheets more than Word and Excel? Do you even see the text ads?

It’s important to separate enterprise customers from non-enterprise because that’s an area where the tables are turned. Google’s suite doesn’t compete with Office for enterprise customers. Before telling me, I’m all wet in the comments, please keep this context in mind.

Does Microsoft doesn’t want to deal with non-enterprise customers any more? What are they doing to prove that? Maybe us Gort should freeze Redmond campus for a day to prove how powerful we are. Google seems to be going for the masses, while Microsoft focuses on the classes. To that strategy, Microsoft best heed the following immortal words:

Klaatu barada nikto [reference].

I had lofty hopes for Dragon Wars which is in theaters everywhere starting today. From the web traffic gravitating toward my original Dragon Wars post, I wasn’t alone. Others were stoked too about the possibility of an old school Godzilla type movie. Something better than Hollywood Godzilla. Something like the Godzilla battles we used to lay on the carpet and watch on TV. Watching bigger than screen monsters tear up cities is juvenile pleasure. The characters and plot don’t have to make too much sense as long as there is plenty of destruction and carnage.

Dragon Wars holds a scattered few minutes to these expectations and the rest is a mess.

My son is writing and reviewing movies for his school paper and needs to turn in two movie theater reviews each month. He has his eyes on Mr. Woodcock and Dragon Wars. After seeing the latter, we should have gone to the former. Or maybe not, stay with me as we ride the dragon’s tale through this review.

The plot, the backstory
The basic plot of Dragon Wars is that every 500 years this woman needs to be sacrificed. A bad dragon, some evil dude who can turn from human form to Skeletor on command and an army that can materialize out of thin air are pursuing this woman. There is a chosen one with some sort of protective medallion that is trying to keep the woman from being sacrificed and some friendly wizard guy who keeps rambling about getting to a cave. Dragon Wars spends way too much time at the start of the film trying to tell a boring backstory only to fast forward 500 years in the future where a young TV reporter is the modern day medallion wearing savior and the wizard pops in and out of scenes inexplicably.

That’s about it for plot — that we can understand. If that doesn’t make sense, relax, you’re in Dragon Wars territory now. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Barely coherent acting, from the human actors, not the CGI ones
The characters are there to either be playthings, appetizers or caught hopelessly in the middle of the bad dragon and the army of skeletor-like dudes marching to defeat the US of A army all over the city. Acting? Achingly bad, including the TV reporter’s sidekick who is a bad Bernie Mac wannabe. About the coolest part of the movie is the real army fighting the dragon army but by then you’re caring more about your popcorn and drink running low. Hey look, it’s the semblance of the movie we wanted to see. About 45 minutes too late!

I found myself wanting the dragon to just gulp down the woman with the mark of the tattoo and burp proudly. Aliens vs. Predator this is not, not, not.

Summary and grade
After seeing this and writing the review I checked out Rotten Tomatoes. The critics are slaying the dragon too (14%), and Mr. Woodcock isn’t faring much better (15%). Maybe we need to wait for something better to come out next weekend or the weekend beyond?

Save your money, friendly readers and movie fans, Dragon Wars is worse than a case of dragon-sized indigestion. It would be a complete failure if not for a scant few cool effects. But you can see those in the trailer on the web for free. Grade: D-

Checked out the Dragon Wars trailer in theaters everywhere September 14, 2007 yet? Nothing like a couple dragons tearing up a major city. If it’s not too CGI bloated, it could be good. Or it could be Godzilla theater bad.

After a very bad prediction about how well The Simpsons Movie would do, I’ll stay away from crystal balls for this one. The success of a movie based off a website or a trailer means nothing at the box office. Still, if you bring the dragons to the big screen. I’m there, popcorn in hand. Doubtful my wife will be interested in this one, but maybe the kids will go with me.