Weblog

Last weekend, I embarked on another road trip through some of the Southwest. We went to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, repeats for me, and also to Petrified Forest National Park, a place I have not been to since I was quite small. I naturally took many photos, and they are now posted.

Besides myself, some friends from work also went on the adventure: Steve, Eric, and Chi. Chi also flew his girlfriend to meet us in El Paso, which was our first stopping point on Thursday night. From there, we went to Carlsbad the next morning, but not before passing a border patrol station. Apparently they have these within the U.S. now. The border agents asked for the three Asians' IDs, but neglected to request the IDs of the two white guys. Clearly racial profiling at its finest.

After Carlsbad, we headed back west to White Sands, but we ran into a very nasty rainstorm on the way. I could barely see the road. We did eventually make it though, and just in time for sunset. We then drove the rest of the way to Albuquerque to spend the night.

The following morning we drove the few hours to Petried Forest National Park, where we spent most of the day completing most of the scenic hikes the park has to offer. We left just as the park was closing and made our way to Show Low, a town of just under 12,000. Despite its small size, it was host to the largest Hampton Inn I have ever seen. The following morning, we made our way back to Tucson.

Watchmen

I found this film to be good, but certainly not great. I did greatly enjoy many aspects of it, especially the backstories. I really enjoyed Rorschach and also Dr. Manhattan, but I felt that the other characters could use more work. I liked the Nite Owl and Silk Spectre (daughter) characters, but they needed more development. Silk Spectre (mother), though, was terrible, from her makeup to her acting. I also didn't really care much for the ending either; it felt very forced.

I went into the movie with no expectations, having not read the comic, but I have to say that I didn't leave the movie wanting to go pick up the comic. I also left the movie wondering why the couple in front of me thought it would be a good idea to bring their two young children of perhaps 5 and 7 to see this very, very R-rated movie.

Taken

I saw the movie Taken today with my dad, and we both really enjoyed it. It was one of those very few movies that you go into it knowing exactly how it will progress, but still manages to be entertaining. Liam Neeson delivers a great performance, as usual, and he manages to show a much darker side than I have seen from him before. No punches are held in taking down the bad guys.

I just lost yet another hard drive. This time, it's in my desktop, so I lost my RAID 0 array. This is only a few months after building it, and it was just in time for me to come home and try out the new scout update for Team Fortress 2. I replaced the two Seagate drives I had in there with a single terrabyte Western Digital Caviar Black, reinstalled just about everything, and I did get to play TF2 today. I think I might be done with Seagate; they need to get their act together.