Happy Mother's Day!

For all the moms (and moms-to-be)... Happy Mother's Day!

Went to visit my parents' grave today... something I hadn't done in quite some time. There isn't really any excuse either... it's either been due to being extremely lazy or being very tired. It's not that I don't want to go, but it's one of those things that never gets done unless I put my mind to it... like cleaning the house, but that's another story. :P

I remember once thinking that I would sorely miss my mom if and when she passed away, but that hasn't been the case. I still miss her, but I now look upon that with a sense of nostalgia and -- especially today -- reflect on how she and my dad raised me and how I turned out (what happened?) Seriously, though, I've been able to hold my own ever since I left home -- and Hawaii -- back in 1992. Now that I'm back home, however, I think it'll be tough(er) to leave again since not only is there no place like home, you really can't beat Hawaii's beauty and its culture (though the latter is changing to become more like the mainland).

Perhaps having adopted a cat 2.5 years ago (December 2005) has helped change my perspective too. When I was growing up with 3 cats (Kitty, Tiger, Fluffy) and one dog (Snoopy), I was never fully responsible for them since Snoopy and Kitty were already around when I was born, and Kitty was Tiger and Fluffy's mom. The cats were easy -- only one cat (Fluffy) ever saw a vet, and the dog only required periodic baths and scooping up his leavings. But now that I have Lani, and am fully responsible for seeing to her well-being, which includes providing food, water, clean litter and even playtime, perhaps I can appreciate (a little) more what it feels like to be taking care of someone.

But I digress and ramble. Hope everyone has/had a good Mother's Day!

Iron Man, Speed Racer and a MacBook Air

Yes, I'm going to address all of the above in the subject line in this post, but not in the order listed.

The first thing I'm going to post about is the MacBook Air, which I picked up a few days ago. It's intended to replace the Sony Vaio, which though okay, has become significantly slower (I think partly because I'm running Windows Vista on it now). The MacBook Air is extremely lightweight, which makes it nice and portable (and considering how heavy the other laptop is, I wanted something light). Ironically, I had thought I had sworn off Macs completely after the experience I had with the PowerBook 180c, but I'll have to admit that OS X Leopard isn't too bad. The only issue I have right now is that I can't connect to a networked drive (which is on a D-Link DSM-G600) because it keeps prompting me for a username and password. Trouble is, the D-Link only has one username and password but it doesn't work when I try to access it from the Mac. I saw a posting detailing the exact same problem on one of the Mac discussion forums, but nobody has (yet) provided any solutions.

Second, I saw Speed Racer last night and Iron Man last week... two great movies to kickoff the summer movie season. If the rest of the blockbusters coming out this summer can at least match up to those, then I think we're in for a pretty good summer.

Speed Racer is based on the anime series. My mom used to tell me that I really liked the show when I was growing up, but I don't have any early memory of that show. I may have watched it with my brother but I don't remember. Ironically, I was probably most like Spritle and my brother is/was probably more like Speed. And no, nobody else in the family would have compared to any of the other characters in the series or the movie. There's definitely a lot of CGI and special effects in the movie, though, but it was a bit on the long side, meaning that there were probably a few parts that dragged out that could have been left on the cutting room floor. Still, though, it was entertaining and the colors were pretty vibrant even on the analog side. The digital version would probably be significantly better.

Iron Man, which came out last week, is definitely one you want to see in the digital theater. The movie has been tuned to correspond with a more modern scenario, location-wise, but from what I've heard it has otherwise stayed pretty true to the original story. And like all Marvel movies, there is a gratuitous Stan Lee cameo (and if you don't know what Stan Lee looks like, just watch Spider-Man 3). Oh, one other thing... if you're the type who gets up and walks out as soon as the end credits start rolling, stay in your seat for Iron Man. There's a scene at the very end of the movie that becomes extremely important for the sequel.

Hopefully I haven't spoiled anything for those who haven't seen either movie. My recommendation is to definitely go see 'em... both of 'em... and to see them in a digital theater if you can. I'm pretty sure you won't regret it.