The Incredibles is the newest Pixar animated movie. It stars Craig T. “Coach” Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson playing the voices of the world’s greatest Superheros. Until people started suing them for all the damage they cause saving people’s lives. Typical huh? The voice acting was great and the animation is spot on perfect, but what do you expect from Pixar? They always get these things right. I think this would be more of a review if there was something wrong with the movie.

Taking in more than $40.5 Million on the opening day, spurred on by an estimated $5 Million from midnight showings, Spider-Man 2 beat Spider-Man 1 for second place in opening day ticket sales. Number one is Shrek 2 with about $46 Million. Ticket sales do not normally relate to how good the movie is unless you take into account the drop from first week to second week sales. Usually word of mouth kicks in on the second or third week to help sales.

On Monday morning above a beautiful California sunrise SpaceShipOne lit its rocket for a historic rise to 62 miles above the Earth’s surface. Advanced Composites, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built the SpaceShipOne that has achieved the milestone of being the first privately funded craft to reach the edge of space. However, many in the media are skeptical saying such things as, “62 miles is not space,” and my least favorite, “but it didn’t go into orbit.

Movies are made to entertain people. I have said it numerous times that if you only go to movies to find the secret to life you will be disappointed. Dodgeball is an entertaining movie, but it will not win any awards. If you have seen the movie Zoolander then you may think that most of that character is duplicated in Ben Stiller’s act here. You would be right. Most of the nonsensical things that Ben’s character says sound like clips picked off the cutting room floor from Zoolander.

One of the New Years Resolutions that Leanne and I have is to see more concerts than we did in 2003. Since we only went to 5 concerts last year this should not be too difficult of a task. Last night we went to our second concert, and it was great. Phantom Planet, whose claim to fame is the theme song for Fox’s “The O.C.” TV show, opened at just after seven o’clock.

I have in my possession what I like to call my bachelor vacuum cleaner. It is a little Dirt Devil that you could mistake for a small twig from a tree. Since Leanne moved in over a year ago she has been asking me to get a new vacuum cleaner. I think mainly because my bachelor one does not do a good job. This week I was shopping on Amazon looking for a CD that my sister wants, and I found that the Dyson, that I know Leanne secretly wanted, was in the Gold Box special.

Six long years ago I walked away from Montana State University with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. I promptly got a job in the Silicon Valley writing programs that nobody has ever heard of or used. What have I been using my degree for then? Aside from the occasional DirectX video game (linear algebra truly is important in this hobby along with classical mechanics) I use my degree for tricks at parties.

The year is 1969 a young filmmaker is an editor on a Science Fiction movie based in the year 2001. When the director is fired because the ending sucks (I wish this happened more often) a new director takes over. This new director quits and the young editor gets his chance to direct. The main concern in the movie is how will he end the movie. Once he figures it out someone takes an exposed can of film.

Roughly twenty years ago Coke decided to make New Coke and remove the Old Coke from the shelves. This resulted in pretty much every evil act of the mid to late eighties. Coke got the hint and removed New Coke and replaced it with “Coca-Cola Classic.” For those of you not from the US, that is why we have Coke Classic and you have just Coke. Now Coke is getting on the diet bandwagon and it isn’t happy with having Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Diet Coke, Lemon Diet Coke, Lime Diet Coke, Lemon Caffeine Free Diet Coke, and Lime Caffeine Free Diet Coke.

I have never watched the Jimmy Kimmel show, but it has a rich tradition of controversy. I believe this was the show that ABC got rid of once before because some people complained that he had audience members drinking beer during the show. I think that was just a publicity stunt to get more viewers. This time, though, he went too far. Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian, made a joke at the expense of other people.

Eddie Van Halen is arguably one of the greatest guitarists to ever pick up an ax. At a very young age he and his brother Alex would play together inspired by their father who was a classically trained musician. Eventually Alex and Eddie met up with a bassist named Michael Anthony and an ego named David Lee Roth. Together they changed guitar rock forever. You can hear their influence in just about all Rock and Roll today.

The first show on Wednesday nights moved to Friday nights. This is a sure sign that a broadcaster wants a show to fail. Instead of petering out, Ed ends gracefully. After four years Ed finally ends up with Carol. The story began with Ed returning to Stuckyville to ignite a flame with his high school crush. I will miss this show. It was one of my favorite parts of the week for many years.

Bored with the games that I currently have for the GameBoy I went in search of something new. I had seen a review of Rayman 3 for the PlayStation 2, and it was very positive. However, nothing was said of the little portable version of this game. The screen shots included on the reverse of the box looked incredible. I bought it and plopped it into my GameBoy Advance SP. The screen shots that are included on the back of boxes are not usually a good measure of what the game is actually going to be like.

After being totally disappointed with the new 7-up drink I set out to find at least one redeeming feature of this drink. I simply poured the drink out into an ice tray and froze it with a couple of tooth picks floating in them to give me something to hold on to. After freezing for a couple hours I pulled one out and tried it. It was great, wonderful, and very very good.

dnL or a flipped version of 7-up. Is another soft drink what we really need? How far did they go when they flipped it? Sitting on the shelf of my local grocer that finally got a decent stock of Mountain Dew Code Red was a bottle with the label of a 7-up bottle only the label was upside down. Very interesting. Then the magical word that I dream about popped out to me, “caffeinated.

The one major flaw with the Nintendo GameBoy and more so with the GameBoy Advance was that a person had to be in direct sunlight to see what was going on in the game screen. The image was so dark most of the time that you were forced to squint to see the image. This problem was lessened with the scores of lighting options that plugged into each of the GameBoys.

Mountain Dew in an effort to glean a little more money out of consumer’s pockets has come out with a new flavor for the Summer of 2003 only. I quickly snatched up a few bottles of this beverage to test at home. I didn’t do the same number of tests on it as I did to 7-UP:dn-L. That’s because I didn’t like dn-L and was trying to find a way to make it work.

I was anticipating that when Leanne moved to America that she’d bring with her some food from England that she cannot get here. Nestled among her candy bars were several boxes of a candy that just started appearing here in America. These were of course the After Eight mints. Curious I tried one, and at room temperature these little mints are just okay. They are not up to par with Peppermint Patties, but still really good.

Sly Cooper is the story of a raccoon burglar. The game is played out in a comic book type cell shaded paradise. Well it is not exactly paradise but it sure looks great. Jumping from ledge to ledge dodging the bad guys and sneaking around are just more fun when you are playing a raccoon. The puzzles in this platform game range from the ridiculously easy to the absurdly hard. There was one puzzle where you had to jump and duck in the right order at the right time, and let me tell you I am ashamed of the fact that it took me a couple of very frustrating hours to get past that.

The Legend of Zelda has a great history of games, starting with the Nintendo Entertainment System. The Wind Waker is the 10th game released in this series and we are taken to a land covered in water with a few islands scattered around here and there. The hero, classically named Link but that name can now be customized, find himself searching through these islands to find and free his sister who was kidnapped in the opening of the game.

A long time ago, I had a real job. A real job with real responsibilities. One of this job’s real responsibilities was to attend a weekly engineering meeting. One day a fellow software engineer brought these little red sticks in for people to munch on while new tasks were dolled out. From the moment my nose caught a whiff of them I knew that these would be a great treat. Make sure to keep these in an air tight container though.

A Walnut Whip is one of those candies that Nestle will not sell in America because it may cause spontaneous cooperation and equality for everyone. In other words, it would cause wide spread chaos if it were available here. These little treats are one inch in diameter at the base then form a puffy cone. Finally they are topped with a walnut. The cone itself is made of milk chocolate with a thick base of chocolate.

The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle is a book of cookie recipes. There are over 250 recipes from every type of cookie imaginable. The book is laid out into chapters of the different types of cookies with the first five chapters reserved for some great tips on equipment, ingredients, techniques and storage. There are two sections of full color photos with a listing of the cookie displayed and a page number with the recipe.

Before we get too far into this, let me start by saying this. Yes, I know. There is a bus that would have taken me to the studio. I’m TheTodd. I had to find a more independent means of getting to the studio. The Screen Savers is a one-hour live television show that is on TechTV. Why are you surprised? If you are reading this web site, you know Im a geek.

So let us start with the stopping of the name-dropping. We know who built the film and who acted in it. Why don’t we just get to the guts of the matter? Was this film any good? Yes, it was. It was based on a true story, but I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying it. The characters were charismatic and loveable. The supporting actors were incredible, and the story flowed very well.