My wife is a fan of the Shopaholic series of books and one of her favourite moments is when the heroine decides she’s going to get control of her over-spending. She decides that she’s going to write all of her spending down in a notebook and analyze where everything goes. In order to do that, she goes out and buys a fancy new notebook and a beautiful, and very expensive, pen – thus going further into debt. We had to giggle when we talked about building my office because we were spending what seemed like a ton of money in order to make the money back – to pay for the office!

Well, after only a few days nights in the new space I can already see that it’s going to be great.  The lighting, the tunes, the white board, the dual monitor, the filing cabinets.  I finally have a place to work – and my wife has her dining room table back.

I read it somewhere relating to studying but you really do have to have a space set aside specifically for working.  Doing any kind of job in an inappropriate environment just leads to sub-par results…

Here’s to awesome results, CHEERS!

Let me start by saying, I love movies. I’m quite willing to sit through 90 minutes of boring for a final 10 minute payoff. I’ve been burned but I’ve also been surprised. The best example of being surprised is Primal Fear, a 1996 drama/thriller starring Richard Gere and Edward Norton (his debut). That movie bored me to tears until much after what I thought was the climax. The payoff was great – a The Usual Suspects sort of payoff. Now that I’ve told you that you’ll be expecting it… oh well. If it gets you to rent the movie then it was worth it.

This past weekend, while my three year old Ella was on “bay-cayshun” with Grandma and Fishing Papa, my wife and I decided to buy her Happy Feet for when she gets back. We also decided that it would be fun to watch it first, together, since we rarely get to watch Ella’s movies in their entirety. After drywalling and priming was finished we finally sat down and popped it in. All of the previews were for Christmas movies, which I found strange, but it got me stoked about seeing Fred Claus. Love that Vince Vaughn. See Clay Pigeons for a different side of a great actor.

The first thing that struck me about the movie was the music. The penguins in Happy Feet are taught that music is what makes the world go ’round, and as such, all of the penguins can sing and spend most of the movie doing so. I really liked how most of the songs were medleys of great tunes I knew all of the words to. Some were really timely and put a big grin on my face – Leader of the Pack comes to mind. Although the tap numbers were very fun to watch for me, I’m pretty sure that Ella would prefer less complicated, copyable numbers. That’s my minor quibble.

When you’re putting together an animated feature, casting Robin Williams in at least one role should be a law. In HF he plays at least two characters but is given a much shorter leash than he was in Robots or with his mold-breaking Genie in Aladdin. Hugh Jackman channels Elvis for his character, Memphis, and Elijah wood plays a Frodo in feathers as Mumble, Mr. Happy Feet himself. Steve Irwin (RIP) has a brief cameo as an elephant seal. The “crikey!” grabbed my attention but I wasn’t able to place the voice until I was watching the special features.

Now here’s the meat of my review, the reason why Ella won’t be watching this movie for a year at least. The “scary” parts of Happy Feet are really quite realistic and truly terrifying. I was immediately reminded of the second chapter in Finding Nemo (where the barracuda eats Nemo’s mom all of the fish eggs except for Nemo). I guess they feel that if they don’t make it scary enough they’ll miss out on the teen market, or something. I don’t know. What I do know is that the harp seal and killer whale parts were enough to make me cringe. The teeth, music, and pace of action all combine to a moment I’m sure would, at the very least, cause Ella to run from the room yelling “Isi, it’s too scary!”

You know, there’s a reason why Shrek 2 set all kinds of records at the box office (3rd on the all-time US domestic gross behind Star Wars and Titanic): it wasn’t scary. Parents had no hesitations about taking their little ones to see the ogre because the first Shrek featured action scenes, not horror scenes. Even the busiest scenes in the first two movies featured upbeat, fun music. [Don't get me started on Shrek 3 - what the heck happened there? Shrek's creepy nightmares were out of place. Although... Eric Idle was fantastic.]

You might point out to me that Happy Feet is rated PG and not G. Well, the rating is appropriate, I can’t argue with that. The problem is that the film is clearly marketed at young children. I almost felt offended as I watched the harp seal chasing Mumble, trying to tear him to shreds. The killer whales and the harp seal served no purpose other than to scare the viewer. At least the sharks in Nemo were amusing. Scaring kids is a disturbing trend, but one that was started before my time as a parent. All you have to do is go back and watch a kids movie from your own youth to know that filmmakers have seemingly always forgotten the youngest of viewers (um, Bambi anyone? No? How about Annie with the alcoholic Miss Hannigan or Rooster trying to kill Annie!).

Oh well, I guess there is a lesson in the whole thing. If you’ve got the time, preview the movies yourself, before you let the little ones see them. Failing that, watch it with them the first time so that you can answer any questions. I’ll never forget the look on Ella’s face when I left her alone with The Incredibles for a few minutes – that movie is probably a few years off too.

I love DVDs because I can skip chapters that I know my Ella will be afraid of. Here’s my list of scenes I regularly skip in films that were clearly marketed towards young children:

• harp seal and killer whale ultra-violent chase scenes – Happy Feet
• barracuda eating the whole family – Finding Nemo
• grasshoppers torturing ants to within and inch of their lives – A Bug’s Life
• sabre-toothed tigers attacking humans – Ice Age
• sea creatures attacking the ‘herd’ – Ice Age 2
• Syndrome dropping baby Jack-Jack from 5000′ – The Incredibles
• Rooster chasing Annie up the bridge – Annie (1982)

Feel free to add to my list by leaving a comment. I’d be interested to know what other seemingly innocent movies have truly terrifying moments. jj

Oh yeah, and after she sees Happy Feet, going to the zoo is going to be a lot different. Yeesh.

So I’m finally nearing the end of my office project.  It was a bit of an afterthought, building my office, but it has turned out very well (if I do say so myself).  What was originally going to be a playroom for Ella has become my very cozy, very beautiful office.  I was going to add ‘very high-tech’ but this room is decidedly low-tech, save for the wireless devices, which have nothing to do with the room.

Much to the chagrin of my father-in-law, I’ve boxed in the plumbing and heating with drywall.  To me it makes it look very finished and classy.  I’ve added recessed lighting in exactly the places where I think I’ll need it (over filing cabinets, the keyboard, my reading chair and over the white board).  I pushed the heating down to where my feet will be.  And I’ve chosen an oversized door – not for me but for my desk.  I could have built the room around the desk but I might, some time in the future, want to get the desk back out and, ask my friends who helped us move, the desk is a tight fit (and effing heavy).

With the exception of the taping and mudding, this entire project has been very fun and rewarding.  The taping and mudding is hell.  So, onto my top 9 tips to make drywalling less of a nightmare (Why 9 and not 10?  I only have 9.  Send me your 10th and I’ll try it and add the best submission.):

1)  Make your corner joints tight.  If your corner joints aren’t tight, taping becomes troublesome at best and really, really annoying at worst.

2)  Make your butt joints loose.  If the butt joints are too tight then you’ll have trouble fitting the boards to begin with but then you’ll also end up with a mound when you’re mudding.

3)  When it comes to the tape itself, the mesh stuff works great for the non-corner joints because it goes on dry, is self-adhesive and easy to work with.  For the corners, find something that is creased down the middle.  I’ve heard that there is a type of tape that works great for inside corners because it is creased and has metal in it to make it stiffer.  You pay a premium at the cash but it sounds like it’s worth it.  (For outside corners use corner bead – easy peezy.)

4)  As for how much mud to put on… the screw heads will need two coats.  The first coat shrinks and you end up with pits but the second coat appears to be perfect.  For the inside corners, USE AN INSIDE CORNER TOOL.  This thing is worth it’s weight in gold.  I read somewhere on the Internet that I could get away without one, just using the 4″ tool on one side then the other – THIS IS A HUGE LIE.  I had to call my wife down to watch me with the corner tool because I was so happy with how easy it was.  Anyway, put on enough that you can’t see or feel the tape.  Your first coat will go on really heavy to make a nice inside corner and then your second coat just fills any obvious gaps or valleys.  For outside corners, you will not believe how much mud goes on.  For the first coat, load it on.  When you go to the 10″ or 12″ tool you’ll see that there’s still more gap to fill.  For the joints where tapered drywall meets tapered drywall, it’s quite obvious how much you need.  Two coats are a must and the third goes on to fill the gouges and tool marks from the first two.

5)  The premix compound that comes in the tubs is a bit too thick for second and third coats.  You can thin it with water (and mix it with a drywall mixing bit for your drill) but don’t mix in a lot of air – air bubbles look like little moon craters on your wall.  I read that a proper consistency is like creamy peanut butter.  I was pretty worried about thinning it too much so I probably never got there but I still saw a huge improvement with how the mud went on, post thinning.  Before thinning it I found that the mud stuck to the backside of the tool and didn’t go on nicely at all.  Aftwards it was easy to make smooth strokes and not leave giant gouges.

6)  Clean your tools immediately after.  You’ll thank me when you start your next coat.

7)  Don’t bother with sandpaper – it makes a huge mess.  Just try to use a bit of skill when you’re mudding and then sand with a drywall sponge.  They’re rough on one side and smooth on the other.  I tried sanding with the sandpaper and had dust everywhere and ended up roughing up the drywall paper in a few places.

8)  Have patience.  Drywalling, at least the taping and mudding, is a long process.  Each coat requires 24 hours to dry in normal climates.  Don’t expect to get it done in one weekend.

9)  If you don’t have patience, hire a professional.  They are fast (likely 4 days at most), efficient and quite good.  I find myself looking at the rest of the house wondering how the heck they hid all of the joints.  It seems like a lot of money but when you consider the value of your time, not to mention the cost of the specialized tools, it’s probably worth it.  Don’t undertake learning to drywall for just one room.  If you’re going to be doing a lot of rooms, go for it, but it’s not worth it for one room.

Well, I’ve got to get back at it.  Another tip I read on the Internet was to use the best possible primer for drywall you can get.  That’s the next step – and I HATE painting.  Ohhh, Lesley?

I’m pretty handy with a chunk of code. Within a couple of seconds I can parse just about any regular expression with a reasonable amount of success. What I can’t seem to do is write the darn things when switching between JavaScript, PHP, VB.NET and VBscript. That’s where RegexBuddy comes in.

RegexBuddy is a little, but powerful, program written by a company called JGSoft (Just Great Software – catchy, no?). I was already a supporter of EditPad Pro, which is a replacement for Notepad that allows regular expression find and replaces, tabbing, line numbering and tons of other features, but I’m downright evangelical about RegexBuddy. You can build your expressions by hand or use the helpful “Insert Token” button, you can have your expression explained back to you in plain English, you can test your expression against a string you insert, but best of all, you can have the program build the entire script you need – in the coding language of your heart’s desire!

Being that I’ve just jumped into SQL Server 2005 with both feet, my knowledge of VB.NET is not nearly as complete as my knowledge of PHP and VBscript. Even once I had my expression, and was confident that it should return the proper results, I didn’t know that I had to import a library to use it. RegexBuddy knew.

Long story short, there’s a text file I’ve been procrastinating about parsing and cleaning up for almost 3 years. Using RegexBuddy I built, tested and implemented a housekeeping function in just over an hour. A 500KB files was reduced to under 30KB and made importing into SQL a breeze. Yay RegexBuddy! Now I just need to find my credit card to pay for the program…

If you’re curious about the expression that made my life so easy, here it is: “^.* (\d?\d/\d?\d/\d{4}) to \1.* (\d{4}[BMR]|\d{7}).* \d?\d:\d\d:\d\d.* \d?\d:\d\d:\d\d.*(\d?\d:\d\d:\d\d).* \d?\d:\d\d:\d\d.* (\d?\d:\d\d:\d\d).*$” which I then used in a replace with “$1,$2,$3,$4″.

So the Briere sweepstakes are over. The Flyers signed Daniel Briere to an 8 year contract worth $52 million. Yeah, it’s a ton of money but for a marquee player who was his team’s co-captain and leading scorer of his team last year, probably not unreasonable – monetarily speaking. 8 years though? It left me shaking my head.

It seems like the trend this year is to sign your big players for long contracts. My guess is that they’re thinking that their caps are going to increase each year and make these signings bargains in the future. I’m no Kreskin but the last guy to last 8 years in Philadelphia was… anyone? Eric Desjardins. Ok, that didn’t have the impact I thought it would. I thought the last guy was Eric Lindros – he was the next 8 yearer after Desjardins. Anyway, a quick check of the Flyers’ roster shows that longevity is not management’s strong suit. How long before Briere is made the goat and traded like Lindros was? Well, that’s a tough question.

Briere as a “no movement” clause. If it’s anything like Bryan McCabe’s, in Toronto, it means that Briere has to remain a member of the Flyers for the full term of his contract – unless he waives the clause in the [likely] event of a total failure by the team.

But Briere’s agent is no dummy. If things should fall apart in Philly, and Briere waives and moves, his contract could end up being significantly less. So how do you protect against that? Briere’s contract was front-loaded with a $5 million signing bonus. He’ll be making $10 million in the first year. Not bad at all.

Too bad Briere can’t save Philly.

Best team, post UFA frenzy day three? The New York Rangers. Hopefully they are able to hang onto Brendan Shanahan but even if they don’t, Lundqvist, Jagr, Gomez, Drury, Ozolinsh, Dawes, Hossa, Orr, Malik, Montoya… Great team.

My prediction for 2007/2008 Stanley Cup? Either the Rangers or the Penguins. They’ve both got teams full of talented, and energetic teams. And I stress the word teams.

Buy my predictions aren’t worth the ink on this web page so send me yours and we can giggle about them together next April.