Wanderings and Wonderings

So after our crazy storms last night, the temperature here is now 65 degrees.

It's almost warm enough to wear shorts, and yet I'm wearing long khakis and a button down long sleeve shirt.

... at least he's not ronery anymore.

As a reminder, I have a few Dreamwidth invite codes available on a first-come, first-served basis if anyone would like them. 

I've been having a lot of dental work done recently.

It started way back in August, when I noticed something feeling really weird in the back of my mouth. Like one of my teeth had cracked in half. But there was no pain. So I figured I'd go to the dentist and have it looked at. But I decided not to go to that same dentist I went to last time around. They were expensive, for one, and it seems like they wanted to drill my entire mouth out. So I picked a different dentist.

Glad I did that.

This new dentist seems to take a more cautious approach. Whereas the previous dentist was like DRILL ALL THE THINGS, this dentist is more along the lines of "let's try this less invasive thing first and see if that works."

Unfortunately, it didn't work out right just off the bat. They tried to fill that tooth, but the filling caused pain so I ended up with a root canal back there. Then, while doing the root canal, part of the file broke inside my tooth. Fortunately, it broke at the bottom of the canal, so there are no complications from it.

Went back again today for my checkup and to have them look at something that has been causing pain on my lower right side. After all that was said and done, they took X-rays of my entire jaw, as I mentioned that the previous dentist thought I should have my wisdom teeth out OMFG RIGHT NOW. After looking at the X-rays, she told me she really didn't see any reason why I should have to have them out.

So yeah, glad I got that second opinion. And, short one minor filling, a clean dental bill of heath. Surprising, considering where I was a couple years ago.

Revolutions are a dirty business in every country they occur in. Libya is no exception.

Moammar Gadhafi was a terrible human being. He was a thorn in the side of 5 US Presidents. He actually did pursue a WMD program, only giving it up in 2006. Under him, Libya was a state sponsor of terrorism and was behind the destruction of Pan Am flight 103. At home, he brutally repressed his population and ruled with an iron fist. In short, he was not a nice person.

According to a report on the BBC that I was listening to on the drive home, he was found hiding in a drain pipe in Sirte. He begged for his life, and was shot in the abdomen and again in the leg. Supposedly he "died" en route to a hospital, but at least one report mentioned an execution-style shot to the head.

Now, is this what happened? There's no way to know, and I suspect we never will for sure. And yet, I find myself having some difficulty taking any "joy" in his death, especially a death such as that. No man who begs for his life should be killed, especially without due process. I would much rather have seen him turned over to ICJ authorities and tried for crimes against humanity.

And yet, it may have been the best possible outcome. Libya is not a stable country at this time and probably lacks the facilities to hold Gadhafi securely. There would be months of negotiations that would have to happen before he even got to a trial. All that time, his continued defiant existence would continue to empower his dwindling base. With him out of the picture, the rebels / new government should have little problem establishing itself as the new legitimate government of Libya, thus drawing a close to this whole thing even faster.

Revolutions are a dirty business. 

Unlike Steve Jobs, unless you're in the tech industry, there's a pretty fair chance you've never heard of Dennis Ritchie.

However, to those of us who make a living writing software, Dennis Ritchie was well known as the creator of the C language (considered by many to be the "mother tongue" of computer programming languages - the language from which many, many others were derived). He was also one of the key developers of UNIX, which underpins the majority of computers on the planet (directly including OS X, indirectly Linux and many others - here's a "family tree" of everything descended from UNIX).

Considering that PHP, the language I primarily work in, and Objective-C, my current favorite language both derive from C, I'd say I owe Dennis a pretty significant debt. I raise my glass to you, Mr. Ritche. RIP.

When I first heard that Disney was going to re-release Lion King in 3D, I was a little concerned. This is one of my favorite movies and was a huge part of my childhood / adolescence, and I wasn't a big fan of the idea of it being butchered. But all the same, how could I turn down the chance to see one of my all-time favorite films in the theater again for the first time since I originally saw it in 1994, especially seeing as how I missed the IMAX release a few years back?

I'm not going to review the content of the movie. If you haven't seen it already, there's something really wrong with you. It was one of the biggest films of the 1990s.

As for the 3D version, well, I can now assure you that none of the magic was lost. This was an extremely well-done version of the film that kept everything intact while tastefully adding depth with the 3D. It was just as good as I remembered it being. Right at the beginning, during the Circle of Life scene, at one point in the film Zazu comes flying into the picture. In the 3D version, he literally seems to go flying right over your head. This earned several "oohs" from the crowd. There were only a few moments where the 3D seemed gimmicky.

In short, I was literally smiling the entire movie. It was so good. And yes, I cried when Mufasa died. If it's wrong to cry then, then I don't want to be right.

The only possibly complaint I could have about the 3D was that, in a few scenes - it was most notable in the fight scenes - the low frame rate became very noticeable. But it only lasted a couple of seconds at a time.

I know a lot of people are probably like, "why bother when you can watch it on DVD?" These are probably the same people who say "eh, I'll catch it on DVD later" for every new film that comes out. There's just something to be said for actually going to the cinema to see a movie. The whole exercise of getting a ticket, sitting in the theater and being around other people just can't be reproduced in the theater.

In this case, the crowd was half the fun! I knew this was going to be a special movie when, after the opening scenes (the Circle of Life) and the big Lion King logo shows, the crowd was already clapping and cheering. Someone in the back yelled "boo!" when Scar's paw slammed down on top of the mouse. The crowd again clapped and cheered after Rafiki convinced Simba to go back, and the film got a standing ovation at the end. I love it when that happens. That totally made the evening for me.

But I also realized what was happening when I looked around the theater. We went to the 9:20 showing at the Monaco, so there were only a few kids in the theater. Most of the people in the theater were 20 and 30-somethings like me as Sarah. People who remember seeing it as kids now getting the opportunity to see it again. For those people, it was (like me) a chance to "be a kid again." And there were some people who probably saw it in the theater as kids were now sharing that same experience with their kids. I know that had to be special.

So yeah. It was very well done. I may try to catch it again one more time before it goes out of theaters again in 2 weeks.