Brandy and I sat down last night to watch a movie, something we do with decreasing frequency due to the demands of a two child household that is also inhabited by an adult dependent. It’s tough to find time to squeeze in two hours for passive entertainment.

But last night, we did it. We found the time. And we used it to watch Rachel Getting Married.  At 1:53 in length, it was going to run right up until Gareth’s nurse arrived, so time was precious if we hoped to finish the movie before having our evening interrupted by yet another outside influence. With that in mind, we loaded in the Blu-Ray disc.

And waited for the progress bar.

And saw it start to play BD promos.

And discovered we couldn’t stop the promos. Or open the menus. In fact, my attempts to do so inexplicably resulted in us being dumped out to the PS3 crossbar interface. We went through this process four times before I relented and decided we were just going to have to sit through the promo.

Once the promo ended, the trailers started. In the immortal words of Will Smith in all of his action films, “Oh HELL naw!”

Menu still wouldn’t work. Stop didn’t work. So I tried Next. That worked! It… skipped to the next trailer. I had to do this several more times to get through the trailers and finally get to the damn menu!

Once there, everything was fine, but I turned to Brandy and said, “You know who made us go through all that crap? Somebody in marketing.”

The lesson here, folks, is that you aren’t going to sell stuff by annoying your consumer. So stop annoying them.

Bonus tip for marketing folks: If your customer is already in the process of consuming your product, you don’t need to remind them how great it is. Putting an ad for Blu-Ray at the start of a Blu-Ray disc is relatively pointless. The viewer had a choice to watch a standard DVD, but chose not to - you have them, they don’t need to be beat over the head with it.

Have to hand it to ThinkGeek.  They know their audience.  What would make this perfect is if it were framed and double sided so you could just flip it over to a picture of Mt. Fuji or something.

I was out on a bit of ride today and nearly got plowed by a driver who couldn’t be bothered to look to see if anyone was crossing the intersection.

Fortunately, I was also playing with a new acquisition: an Oregon Scientific ATC2K helmet cam (though mounted to the front of my bike, not my helmet). There’s nothing entertaining about some shaky video of me nearly getting hit, so here’s a slightly modified version:

This is quite stunning considering her absolute disdain for the comic book/superhero genre.  It helped, though, that she loves Robert Downey Jr. and that the movie was mostly him being a smartass and less about him fighting bad guys.

Which does not bode well for the sequel, at least for Brandy, since the discovery phase is over and any follow-ups will be mostly in armor.

Movie kicked ass, by the way.

As I’m not known for being emotional, it may surprise you to know that emotional moments are not foreign to me. In particular are what I call the “Dad” moments - those times in fatherhood when you’re so happy you could (and nearly do) cry. Unfortunately, all of my dad moments are rather odd, but here goes:

Reading “The Hobbit” to Gareth in the hospital - This one almost doesn’t count since it was Gareth’s second day of life and he was largely unresponsive, having just the night before gone through his traumatic entry into this world. Still, it was something I really wanted to do, so I headed into a little bookstore in Danville, grabbed their last copy, and got back to the NICU to proceed with the narration. It was something I had always pictured doing as a dad, even if I didn’t picture having to do it in those circumstances.

Introducing Gareth to Quake 3 Arena - Holding him with one arm and gaming with the other, I sat Gareth in my lap so he could see what his dad did for fun. We’ve revisited Q3A a few times since then when I was adapting joysticks for his use as input devices. Since then we’ve moved onto other less bloody games.

Gareth’s first trip to a movie theater - For Shrek 2, of all things. Years have been spent honing the sharp edge of my movie snobbery. I am intolerant of chatter, children, phones, and comedians in my theater environment. As such, I was always very concerned about taking Gareth into a theater with his suction gear which consists of a small suction pump connected to a canister and tubing. When you kick it on, it makes quite a bit more noise than one would imagine, which does nothing for a normally quiet movie setting. After Shrek 2 had been in theaters over a month, I took Gareth to a show I thought would be largely empty. It sort of was, but there were enough other attendees that I started feeling self-conscious. But when the lights dimmed, the trailers played, and the opening of the movie started to run, I forgot about everybody and just marveled that I was sitting in a theater with my son. Seriously, I teared up. Then, about 10 minutes into it, Gareth lost all interest and started crying like crazy. We left shortly thereafter.

Gareth discovers that the soul still burns - Due to the various joysticks I have for console games, we eventually gave up on PC gaming and moved to the basement where Gareth discovered Donkey Konga, Taiko Drum Master, Dance Dance Revolution, and Soul Calibur. After just a little time with Soul Calibur, Gareth picked up on the fact that movement was handled with the joystick and attacks were handled by the buttons. He quickly learned to move his hand to the stick to position his fighter and then move that same hand to the buttons to kick, punch, and throw. How could I not be proud of that? He has now added Wii Sports Baseball to his list of regular games. He also has an insane love of video game theme songs - I have only to whistle the Donkey Konga theme or hum the intro to Taiko Drum Master to make him burst into instant laughter. No, he does not know the Mario theme.

Gareth faces down Darth Vader - I spent so much time worrying about taking Gareth away from his support staff (nurses, doctors, therapists) that I spent no time contemplating how great a vacation could be, so imagine the 180 I did when we arrived at DisneyWorld and almost instantly ended up on a stage with lightsaber on hand, swinging at Darth Vader. Holy shit. From that moment on, we all had a great vacation, and I had another dad moment. That one became a Gareth moment, too. He enjoyed telling everybody he knew that he fought Darth Vader and that daddy dropped the lightsaber.

Gareth gets his first bike - And probably his last.  About the time I decided to get back into bicycling, Gareth decided he loved nothing more than to pedal a trike around his preschool playground. From that moment, I planned for us to find a way to ride together. I got three dad moments out of this event: a first moment when he sat on his bike for his fitting; a second moment when we rode it for the very first time even though it was raining and in January; a third moment when we rode together in the RBR rally. Our ride in the Colyer 4th of July parade comes close, but that wasn’t emotional enough to qualify under my “Dad moment” rules.

Walking Gareth to school - This is the moment that inspired today’s entry. This morning, I walked Gareth to his second day of kindergarten, meeting one of his classmates on the way, hanging out while we waited for the crossing guard, and dropping him off in his classroom. On the way back, I just realized how great it felt to do that, to be an honest to goodness parent of a child old enough, smart enough, and lucky enough to be going to school like any other kid when his whole life has been stacked against him.

I’m bound to have plenty more dad moments in my lifetime, but these are a good start. Here’s a prediction, though - my next major dad moment will come when Gareth is able to express himself without the help of others. I’m going to be a blubbering mess when that happens.

And then I’m going to worry about all the stuff Brandy and I have said in front of him over the years. There are some words he definitely knows that shouldn’t be repeated in polite company.

The Bike-in Movie is happening again tonight at the top of the Beaver parking garage. Don’t show up before it gets dark or else you’ll be sitting up there all by yourself.

Tonight’s movie is… E.T. Anybody attempting to fly their bike off the top of the garage will suffer the very obvious consequences.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it tonight since I didn’t quite plan for it. If I do go, I’m taking a much smaller bag of popcorn this time.

No long intro for this is necessary.  Here’s a vid of what happened when Hitler’s Xbox 360 was banned from Live.  Take that, Nazi!!

Since our morning is going to be consumed by Gareth’s gifts and the arrival of my family for breakfast, Brandy and I exchanged our gifts this evening. Here is the haul:

• Pink Floyd The Wall, CD and DVD
• Call of Duty 3 for Xbox 360
• Monty Python desk calendar
• Battle for Middle-Earth II Rise of the Witch-King expansion pack
• NRS kayak paddle leash
• NRS Farmer John wetsuit

I was really gunning for that last one. It’s the thing that will make cold weather kayaking feasible. Yep, I tried it on. If you can imagine a black Michelin Man, then you’re pretty close to knowing what it looked like.

So I went and submitted two photos to the CDT photo contest. Well, what the hell do you know … One of them actually got published.

I’m not sure what that means for the contest. And, uh, I don’t know if there’s even anything to win. But hey, whatever, it’s still fun to have a photo credit in small local paper.

Went to the newly reopened State theater today to see A Christmas Story. You know, as many times as that film is on TV, it’s still a very different experience to see it in a theater and laugh along with 100 other people. If it weren’t for the fact that today was the only day the State was showing it, I’d recommend everybody run over and see it. Oh well, maybe next year.

Ah yes… Going to see Monty Python’s The Holy Grail at midnight tonight. My wife has goaded me into wearing one of my many Python t-shirts, but I’m still unsure as to whether or not I should take my coconut halves for appropriate clopping.

Thank God I don’t still have my King Arthur costume from last year.