These pictures might have been doctored, but this is hilarious.

The models at our new condo, Chatelaine, opened for a special event for owners on Saturday, so Jamie and I headed out to Playa Vista.  The lobby, waiting area, conference room, reception desk, and great room are all completed and furnished.  It looks awesome!  In the great room, there are a couple of couches, some tables and chairs, a fireplace, and a big flat-screen tv.  We didn't have time to go through all of the models, but we went through the Plan B, which is what ours is.  It was great to see it completed.  While the flooring choices for the model weren't our favorite, the appliances were in, and it was helpful to see what the rooms looked like once some stuff was added.  It's starting to become real now.  Our home presentation date is scheduled for March 8th, and we close on March 15th.  In anticipation, I've added a little countdown up in the header, just for funsies.

Jamie and I did a bunch of our Christmas shopping today.  We left Best Buy and headed down the escalator.  Coming through the doorway was none other than Topher Grace, whom I just mentioned in my Ocean's Twelve entry.  We kind of juked each other trying to figure out who would go left and who would go right.  This gave me the time I needed to decide whether I would actually try to start a conversation with him.  Once we had gotten out of each other's path, I started my conversation brilliantly with, “Do you know Steven Cooper?”  See, Cooper was best friends with a guy that Topher had roomed with in college.  Unfortunately, we couldn't remember the roommate's name, and Topher, though the name sounded familar, couldn't place Cooper.  Topher ended the conversation just as brilliantly as it had begun with, “Is Best Buy just right up here?”  Yup.

Oh, another thought, I don't typically feel sorry for celebrities who have to suffer the masses because of their fame, but I kind of felt bad for Topher knowing how freakishly long the line was that he was going to have to wait in at Best Buy, and how in that line they were selling his Win A Date With Tad Hamilton at a drastically reduced price.

We saw Ocean's Twelve this weekend.  I found it to be enjoyable, though maybe not as enjoyable as Jeff found it.  My favorite scene was the one with Topher Grace, which is all I'm going to say about that for now.  Before the movie, they played an ad from MPAA & RespectCopyrights.org.  They don't have the one I saw up on their site, but you can get the same idea from watching this ad.  It didn't strike me right away, but I realized the next day that they were trying to teach us in this 45 second ad that downloading or buying a pirated dvd is stealing, and stealing is wrong.  Then, we watched a two-hour movie which glorified stealing and never once intimated that stealing is wrong.  Now, I don't advocate downloading movies or buying pirated dvds, but I think that the people who don't want their movies stolen need to realized that they are the same people who have been teaching us through their movies that there's no such thing as right and wrong.  Am I right?

Number one on my wish list is that I want someone to start selling PCI CableCARDs.  For those who don't know what CableCARD is, it's a card that you can get from your cable company that slides into various 'digital-cable-ready' devices, and eliminates the need for a separate cable box.  Some TVs have this built in.  There are supposed to be some personal video recorders coming out with it soon.  But for me, I want to have an HTPC, which means that my computer needs to be able to work with this technology.  That's where the PCI part comes in.  Currently, no one is making this.  If they do, I will buy one.

UPDATE:  So I was thinking about this some more, and I realized that since the cable companies are the ones that have to supply the CableCARD, they aren't likely to supply one in PCI form.  So, what I really need is a PCI card that accepts a CableCARD provided by the cable company AND has a coax input that together will allow the computer to capture cable HD.

Oh, and here's Tony doing press at Big in '04.

I forgot that I actually took a picture of the Some'Mores bar that I blogged about earlier.

I stumbled across this blog in which the author puts up bad query letters that he has received.  In case you are like me, and didn't know what a query letter is, it's a letter that writers send to people to get them interested in reading and/or purchasing something they've written.  I can't remember if I found this via someone else's blog, or I'd give them credit.

I've had a couple of computer scares the last couple of days.  Yesterday, I returned home to find my computer rebooting itself, but it seemed stuck in an XP startup progress screen.  I turned it off, waited 10 minutes, as I'm apt to do, then started it back up again.  Unfortunately, it was really noisy on the reboot, and I knew it was time to take a look inside.  I mean, it had been too noisy for awhile, but this was ridiculous.  So, I opened it up, and it was full of dust, so my first attempt was just the basic clean up.  I took it outside with my compressed air duster, and blew out a lot of the dust, especially from areas containing fans, as they were the most likely culprit for the noise-making.  I took it back inside, plugged it back in, and still there was the noise. 

With the cover off, I put my ear near the inside to try to track down the source of the noise.  The power supply!  This was a good thing I thought, because I've replaced power supplies before, and they are failry cheap and easy to replace.  I took the power supply out, and gave it its very own air duster treatment.  I decided I'd take it apart, too, which voided the warranty on it, but like I said, they aren't that expensive.  I wanted to test it now by itself, so I plugged it in and turned on the switch.  Nothing.  This is because, it turns out, it's controlled by the power button on the computer via the motherboard.  So, I decided to plug the power back into the motherboard in order to use said power button.  Doing so also powered the fans on the CPUs, and now with the power supply separated from these fans by more distance, I realized that the noise was coming from one of the CPU fans.  By alternately turning the computer on with each CPU fan plugged in by itself, I discovered which fan was the problem.  I took it off and could tell just by spinning it with my finger that it was not in good working order.  So, I walked down to the neighborhood Radio Shack, bought a $10 fan, and installed it.  Problem solved and a quieter office to boot!

Then, this morning, I came in to my office, and was greeted by a hard disk failure error message.  Yikes.  But I didn't panic, because I know that whenever I get inside my computer and start messing around and moving it around, cables and such are likely to come loose.  Sure enough, I hadn't firmly plugged the power back into that hard drive, so it was just not turning on.  I plugged it back in and now my computer has lived to blog about it.

Clinton called tonight and asked me, “What do people do on a Friday night?”  He vaguely remembered that in his not-too-distant past he would go out and do stuff on weekends.  So, we piled into the car, sans Doug, who doesn't know what he's missing, and headed to the Grove for a little dessert at The Farm.  It...was...awesome.  I started off with a perfectly temperatured hot chocolate with whip cream.  Soon to follow was The Farm Something Or Other Brownie Sundae and an order of S'mores.  They bring a flame out to the table with marshmallows on sticks, a Hershey's bar and some homemade-style graham crackers.  Wow.  Being at the Grove and eating s'mores reminded me of the last time Jamie and I were there at Sur La Table, and they were selling a s'mores candy bar called “some'mores”.  These people either didn't get the etymology of the word s'more, or they have no idea what function an apostrophe performs.  It still tasted good.

Jamie and I got to go with Tony & Martel to VH1's Big In '04 awards show last night at the Shrine Auditorium.  It was quite a production and a lot of fun.  We got to their place about 5:00 pm, which gave Jamie a chance to get her eyes done by Martel.  We were dressed “hiply”, and Tony was sporting a designer sport coat from a designer whose name he could not pronounce.  The limo driver, Milos, came to the door to pick us up about 5:30, and we piled in and headed our way through the traffic to get to USC.  Traffic has never been so nice.  There was a wide array of beverages for our enjoyment, and we got to catch up with the Hale's as we hadn't hung out in awhile.

We arrived at the drop-off point, where we received our credentials: a “Talent Guest” card and a ticket.  Jamie and I got out of the limo first, exiting on the side of the limo furthest from the crowd.  They couldn't tell who we weren't from that distance, and when they saw the back of Jamie's blonde head, I heard someone yell out “Paris, Paris!”  The setup was basically on a street corner which was full of onlookers.  The red carpet, which was actually a yellowy-beige, led us past the onlookers into the press tent.  Jamie, Martel, and I walked behind the press, while Tony and his publicist navigated through the photographs and interviews.  We watched as others showed up, including Joss Stone, Jeffrey Tambor, Alia Shawkat, Black-Eyed Peas, Maroon 5, Ron Jeromy, Joe Rogan, Kathy Griffin, and others that we didn't recognize.

Once Tony was done going through press, we went through security, and then headed on into the green room.  This was a pretty sweet spread.  The bar was open and the food was plentiful...and free.  We hung out mostly with AD cast, including Alia, Tony, and the girl who has played George Michael's girlfriend in the last couple of episodes.  After a little while, we were joined by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler.  This was my biggest got-to-meet-a-celebrity moment of the night.  Will is on AD, and Martel knows Amy from her SNL days.  Martel introduced us, and I admitted that she is my favorite cast member at the moment.  We also talked with Tony's publicist, who has skydove-skydived-skydiveded over 500 times, and does it at the same place where I jumped.  Before the show, in the green room, we saw Nikki Hilton, Chad Muska, Jason Bateman, that's all I can remember.

We stayed in the green room until the show started, and they made us leave.  We weren't sitting with Tony & Martel, so we went to enter by another door.  On our way, we came across the guys from The Lonely Island, of 'Just 2 Guyz' fame, waiting to get in their door.  We struck up a conversation and got along really well.  Jamie hooked them up with her backstage pass for use while we were watching the show.  I talked to them several times as the night progressed, and I'm hoping that I can connect with them again soon to do some video nonsense.

The show itself was pretty pathetic.  I booed Michael Moore when he won some award, but at least his speech didn't mention Bush and didn't sound bitter, so I didn't have to boo his speech, too.  Nick Lachey was the host, and I can only hope that the Segues did a better job of hosting Baylor events than he did.  (Yes, even Diadeloso, though we weren't hosting.)  In his defense, the jokes didn't suit themselves to play to the live audience.  Perhaps it will be better on TV.  The low points were Anna Nicole Smith's acceptance speech, and Brigitte Nielsen & Flavor Flav's award presentation.  The musical performances of note were Maroon 5 and Green Day.

After AD accepted their award for Big Family in '04, we met Tony & Martel back in the green room, where the entire group of Lonely Islanders had all managed to get in.  We enjoyed some more food and beverage, while watching the likes of Ron Jeromy, Brigitte Nielsen, and Flavor Flav mingle with the crowd.  We headed out to go home, and while we were waiting for our driver, Jamie spotted the Hamm brothers and went and introduced herselft.  That was her highlight of the night.  OK, I think that covers just about everything.

UPDATE: Fixed spelling of 'sporting'.