Michael Crichton passed away yesterday, after a battle with cancer. I’ve written about Michael Crichton books and movies more times in this blog than probably any other author, most recently my rants about the terrible disaster that was the Andromeda Strain miniseries. His writing always managed to perfectly hit the things I adore reading about, medicine and law mixed in with science fiction. Others have come close, but he’s always been the absolute best at that.

While I’m saddened that such a wonderful mind is gone, I am at least brightened by the fact that these are books that stand up to re-reads, and movies that stand up to deeper analysis. Even though I hated the miniseries, I still watched the commentary from the DVD’s (I had to know WHY they went so far away from the book. Now I know.). My favorite way to spend a weekend is still to curl up with one of his books, and read it cover to cover. It doesn’t matter if I’ve read it before. The story’s still there and still solid.

If you haven’t ever read any Michael Crichton, now is a great time to start. Check out a full list of his stuff at Wikipedia.

If you’re on the east coast, I hope you already voted, as polls there are closed.

If you’re on the west coast, please go vote if you haven’t!!

Me, this was my first election voting in the rather large complex I live in, and I had no idea what to expect. My complex has around 20k people, and voting here included four districts…all the surrounding complexes came here as well.

I was initially going to vote this am, and went to the polling place a little before 9 to check it out. I’d been thinking I was going to miss the morning rush by going then.

Not quite. There was a line wrapping around the block (further than I could see), and I was promptly told they were guestimating a three hour wait. I absolutely love that so many people turned out to vote, but I waited four hours to vote in Virginia during the last election (8am - 12pm) and didn’t really want to do that again.

I left, went to work, and went back to vote around 3:30. It was still slightly crowded, but the only problems I could see were due to the terrible process they were using. Every person had to go to a security guard type person who then looked up our apartment building on a map to figure out our district (we’re all in the same zip code). I saw him easily spending 5 minutes per person.

After the district was all figured out, we were shuffled into colored lines. Each district had about four voting booths inside, and a poll worker person would come out and call for more people as they were available. I was pink, which had a short line. Green had a huge line, and the other colors had no line at all.

Couple things worth mentioning:

- You could find out what color line to get in if you looked for your polling place online, but the letter sent in the mail only included district number. If you hadn’t looked online, you had to talk to the dude.

- The places for us to line up were marked by pieces of masking tape on the ground with the name of the color written on it in ballpoint pen.

- Districts are supposed to have the same number of people by census, but
not necessarily the same number of registered voters. Some thought should have been given to the number of machines used per district, it made no sense to have machines sitting idle like that.

- There was no exit. People would have to either smush past people online to walk out the door, or walk around tables, past another district’s voting machines to get out.

Make copies of that stupid map so one person wasn’t the hold up (people really can find their own apartment on a map), make big colored signs to mark where to stand, and massively speed up the process right there. Have signs saying which numbers were which colors, since a ton of people brought their letter. Let people find their own way, and only deal with the dude if they couldn’t read the map.

Obviously, the silly process isn’t important in the long run, but it did astonish me how little thought seemed to go into it. I mean…how hard is it to buy green cardboard. Or at the very least, a green marker.

The complex was great about notifying people about voter registration,
but didn’t mail or post a thing about actual voting - I was amazed there wasn’t at least one sign telling us where to go. How about posting something, and telling everyone to look up their color online before going? Not everyone would, of course, but it couldn’t hurt.

Anyway, once inside, it was the usual. One person looked me up, had me sign, another person looked up my address, checked it off. I was handed a ballot, and waived to the first empty machine.

I voted, making sure to make big strong punch holes in that thingy (no hanging chads for me!). After, I handed the ballot to another person, who made me watch them scan it to see the light turn green (this part was new to me).

I was seeing a high number of people being told they couldn’t vote - I’d previously only seen this happen once before in NY (which didn’t have provisional ballots). I’m not sure of the reasons, at least once person simply “wasn’t on the list,” but it was a little weird, especially since it wasn’t that crowded. 3 people out of the 50 or so in there really is a large number.

Voting is a big deal to me. It’s a right every American citizen has, and needs to exercise. Nobody ever gets to know how I voted. I’m sure everyone could guess my vote for president, but I have a feeling not everyone would agree with me on some of my votes for propositions (of course I voted no on 8). And that doesn’t matter one bit! My vote is my secret, and nobody gets to know anything about how I feel.

To once again use one of my favorite quotes… “the personal is political.” Today, more than any other day in the year, it’s very, very true. The results of this election will effect your life in one way or another over the next few years. It could also drastically effect the lives of other people. Complaining later means nothing. Voting today is what will mean something.

Sure, the process isn’t perfect, and there was a lot of stupidity going on today. At least the process exists, though, and we have that chance to vote…even if it takes hours to do it.

You have a right to make your opinion heard. Use it.

I always tend to go a little overboard with the self-analysis around my birthday, and nicely manage to depress myself. Because, of course, no matter where I am in life, there is somewhere else I could be.

Not that I’m saying I SHOULD be somewhere else. I just could be. Like everyone, my life has taken lots of turns and missteps along the way to getting here, and although I try not to look back very often, I always do around my birthday.

I don’t feel like doing that today. Today another year starts for me, and I’m looking forward to a good one.

And it has to be said – tomorrow starts another four years for the US, so please…everyone who can, get out and vote!!

We had weather in LA yesterday. Really! Actual, normal weather. The sky opened up, and it began pouring, complete with thunder and lightning.

This is really not news, but here it’s pretty funny. Nobody is ever prepared for rain. People don’t know how to drive when the roads get slick, and since it never really rains, there’s always a ton of stuff sitting around outside. Everywhere you looked yesterday people were scrambling trying to pull down halloween decorations, or for one poor unfortunate soul on my street, thanksgiving decorations! So much for being a little early with that turkey - it’s kind of waterlogged now.

Personally, I find it very ironic that it should rain, and in November at that. One of the entries I wrote last year in November was about my irrational fear of lightning. In that entry, I said (direct quote) “I’m not so sure I have to worry about huge thunderstorms in LA.”

HAH!

Ok, this was one thunderstorm in allllll the time I’ve lived in LA. It still makes me laugh, though. Nobody expects “normal” in Los Angeles. This was very normal. People didn’t know how to react, but LA is still standing nontheless.

Now, if I could only get some snow…

I feel like I should say something profound, it being November 1st and the beginning of this whole “blogging for 30 days” month. I’m not good at profound, though. So some ramblings on blogging.

I’ve been blogging for a long time. My LiveJournal creation date is in early 2002, but I’d kind of started a bit before that in a different form. Like many people, whatever personal webpage I was working on at the time had an “about me” section. The “about me” would turn into a personal blog, entries in reverse order and all, and was updated almost as regularly as the rest of the site.

Before that, I had a .plan file on my VAX account. The updates there were closer to status updates on Facebook/MySpace, or Twitter blabberings, but even there, I would put basic info like “in class.” I didn’t keep the old entries, though (which is technically required to hit the definition of a “blog”).

Over the years my blogging has become much less personal, I’m sure in large part due to the fact that just about everyone’s online these days. I mean…my mom reads my Twitter. Weird, right? Not bad, just strange. The Internet was my world.

The majority of the entries in my former blog would be locked to friends-only, and would be extremely personal at times. I was a master of friend lists, and would post to different people depending on the topic. I trusted that privacy. I don’t anymore.

I very rarely see people blogging like we used to. It’s a necessary thing, of course, we were regularly talking about things we didn’t want the world to know. Not a good idea to put private information online these days.

I do miss it, though. I was friends with every single person who read my blog, and truly valued their comments and feedback. These days, I have nearly 1,000 followers on Twitter, and damn if I know half of them.

Our tiny Internet community exploded. It’s different, sure, but I’m very happy to welcome everyone on board. This is just the start - the next five years online are going to be amazing. And I for one can’t wait to see what happens.

Tomorrow is November 1st, which marks the beginning of NoBloPoMo, aka, National Blog Posting Month. The idea is to write a blog entry a day for the entire month of November. It’s a little nutsy, but I did this last year and really enjoyed it.

So, the warning. A blog entry a day means a lot of writing. I did write some pretty good, substantial blog entries during November last year, but I also wrote a lot of, well, junk. I’m sure I’ll end up doing the same this year. I do, however, want topic suggestions, which I didn’t do last year. Any topic, no matter how random, feel free to suggest it, either by emailing me or in the comments (or dm on twitter).

I’m going to have a lot of fun, and I hope everyone reading will too – talk to you all tomorrow!

I decided it would be fun to pick a series I’d never seen, watch each of the movies, and review each as I went along. I was curious to see if my opinion of each movie would change once I’d seen the entire thing. I also was silly enough to think I could do this in one weekend. Well, um, a month after starting…

I picked the Omen series since it’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to see at some point or another. I think everyone has that list of movies to watch “sometime” that they never get around to seeing.

I should say - I do think a fair amount of my critiquing is due to the time period in which these films were made. Horror has to terrify people these days, and computers really have done wonders for special effects. So here goes!

Omen I - Not “scary” or “spooky” by any stretch of the imagination, even by the standards of the time - Rosemary’s Baby and the Exorcist are far and away scarier than this. I wouldn’t even place this in the “horror” genre. Gregory Peck seemed out of place in a horror-typish movie, and the little boy seemed more mentally disturbed than the child of the devil. Choir music singing in latin is always spooky, but when that’s the only spooky thing, it’s not enough.

Damien: Omen II - I found this much more entertaining than the first one, probably because a lot more stuff actually happened, and less of people just staring at each other attempting to seem creepy. There was also a surprise twist at the end that I truly didn’t see coming, which is always fun. And, unlike the first one, this one has left me looking forward to see what happens in the next chapter.

Omen III: The Final Conflict - Without a doubt, this is my favorite one so far. Sam Neill as Damien was absolutely classic, it was very entertaining to see him try to make some really weird writing sound normal. I am also a sucker for fictional retelling of the events from Revelation, and I love how nearly every fictional retelling of Revelation makes the Antichrist a politician. Focusing on Revelation finally gave the script writers something to talk about. There were also lots of references to various signs of the apocalypse, very few of which were covered in the actual dialogue (sometimes exposition can be a good thing!), which was…strange…but it’s always fun to pick up on things like that. So, while not a movie I’d recommend you run out and rent, if it happens to be on TV and you like the good vs evil kinda thing, it’s worth watching.

Omen IV: The Awakening (otherwise known as, “the final FINAL conflict”) Meh. First off. A story that is about the book of revelation shouldn’t rewrite it. Part III was essentially wiped off the grid. Second, It took me about 4 hours to watch this 1 1/2 long movie, because I kept getting distracted by other things. I think that says a lot about it. And third, it’s very strange to have a movie that’s part 4 to end screaming for a sequel when it already ended in part 3.

It feels like there must be some producer out there somewhere who sees this as a great story, and is determined to get it right. I fully agree. I think Revelations is a fantastic story just screaming to pulled into fiction, but the plot of the Omen just doesn’t hit it right.

I’m intentionally not watching the remake quite yet. I want to have forgotten enough of the movie that I can’t do scene by scene comparisons in my head, but I don’t want to forget the major points. So, in a month or so, one final review of the remake.

Now, to hunt for another random series to watch…

I’ve been on a quest the past few months to figure out the recipe for the world’s best chocolate chip cookies. Why? Because it’s fun, and just like my bread-making experiments, even the “bad” results are still pretty good.

I also wanted to have a general “go-to” chocolate chip cookie recipe that wasn’t a massive amount of work, and wasn’t from the back of a box. Previously, if I needed to make cookies I’d make toll-house. Which aren’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but I did want to make some improvements.

These cookies are big, chewy in the middle, and crunchy along the edges. They are sweet and kind of butterscotchy, but have a little salty taste that works really really well with dark chocolate.

This recipe is based off of a ton of recipes I’ve read from various
places. Due to that, I can’t claim it’s “original,” every technique was
swiped from somewhere, but the combination is all mine. The recipe is
very specific with just about everything, but given that I’m talking
perfection with these cookies (or as close to perfection as I can
attain), the devil is in the details.

Ingredients:

2 sticks of unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour (King Arthur recommended)
1 tsp sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1 tsp baking soda (FRESH! Not the stuff that’s been sitting in your fridge for a year.)
1/4 cup white (cane) sugar
1 1/4 cup well-packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 yolk (fresh eggs separate better)
2 tbl whole milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups dark or white chocolate chips (recipe works well with either)

You can also use all white sugar (and kosher salt - don’t use sea salt with all white sugar). The result is a sugar cookie with a slightly crunchy, very chewy texture. It’s a little strange, but they do taste good, and are best served straight from the oven. I prefer the brown/white mixture. The recipe doesn’t really work with all brown sugar.

Sift flour, salt (it is very much worth an extra step to grind fresh sea salt. People may laugh at me for it, but test it yourself - it does make a difference.), and baking soda. Set aside.

Melt the butter. Stove top is always recommended, but I usually just stick it in the microwave.

Add sugar, brown sugar to the butter. Cream. Cream means continue mixing until the texture is smooth and even with air bubbles popping up. It really is important to mix everything well.

Add egg, yolk, milk and vanilla. Be very, very careful not to scramble the egg at this point. I often have to let the whole thing cool down a bit.

Add flour mixture. I generally add half, mix, then add the other half. The idea here is to not overmix the dough, that will make it tough. Stop when it’s all well combined.

Add the chocolate chips, mix. The dough will not be mixable once chilled, so the chips must be fully incorporated.

Chill the dough in the fridge for at least one hour, preferably overnight. 24 hours is always recommended, especially if grocery store vanilla is used. If you’ve never done this before, split a batch. Make half after an hour, save the other half until the next day. The difference is obvious in the way the cookie looks and the flavor, there’s an almost chemical tartness that the cookies lose after the 24 hours. I never noticed the tartness until I tested this, now I can’t ignore it.

When ready to bake, scoop the cookies onto a parchment paper or silpat lined baking sheet in large round balls at least an inch apart. I use a non-stick ice scream scooper. Do not forget to line the sheet, the cookies will stick to a non-stick pan, and this recipe does require multiple batches to be cooked. I can’t fit more than 9 cookies on a single pan. Line the pan = no washing in between batches. Using a hot pan will result in thinner crusts on the cookies, which I don’t mind. Yield is 20-ish, it’s always different for me, since I make the cookies as big as feasible.

I have never tried to make regular toll-house sized (tablespoon) cookies out of this recipe. It would probably work, but they may not be as chewy in the center.

If desired, sprinkle the tops of the cookies with a teeny bit of sea salt. It’ll result in a nice little crunch.

Bake the cookies in a well pre-heated (pre-heat for at least an hour) 375 degree oven for 9-13 minutes. Baking time will depend on how long the dough chilled, the cookies will brown better (and faster) if the dough sat for at least 24 hours. Rotate the baking sheet once.

Do not overbake the cookies, they need to be watched carefully to make sure they don’t get too brown. The taste changes if they’re baked too long. I’ve had them take as few as 8 to as many as 14 minutes.

Remove from oven, let cool for 5 minutes. Gently separate any cookies stuck together with a knife or spatula, then move to a cooling rack with the spatula. They should cool for at least 10 more minutes. The cookies will break if not properly cooled. Guaranteed.

The cookies have a pretty decent shelf life (up to two and a half weeks or so in a fridge), and get better with time. I really like the way they are straight from the fridge, almost hard but very chewy, but they’ll be softer if warmed to room temperature. They’ll be very soft and almost fall apart if quickly microwaved, which is also yummy. They can be stored in a sealed container at room temperature for a week.

If you try these, let me know what you think, and if you think any improvements can be made. These are the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve come up with, but any recipe can almost always be tweaked further, and I’m always ready to play some more.

I’m always being asked for links to people to follow on Twitter. This is often phrased as “gimme some things to follow, because I don’t understand why I should bother.” So, here you have it - my list of fun Twitter stuff.

First, learn all about twitter here:  A Newbies Guide to Twitter (http://twitter.zappos.com/start ) – this was written by the CEO of Zappos, (who you should also follow http://twitter.com/zappos ) and is still to date the best explanation I’ve seen.

Now that Tony’s taught you all about twitter, add these “people” who I find really entertaining:

Sockamillion http://twitter.com/sockington - Yes, this is a cat. But I think this is easily the funniest “person” on twitter – I adore seeing him update. I think my cats are jealous.

CobraCommander: http://twitter.com/CobraCommander - remember GI Joe?

SARAH http://twitter.com/_S_A_R_A_H_ - Sarah is the house in Eureka (tv show). Gotta love a twittering house.

Whole Foods http://twitter.com/wholefoods - Yummy.

Captain Hammer http://twitter.com/captainhammer - from the singalong blog, of course.

Darth Vader http://twitter.com/darthvader - needs no explanation

I Can Has Cheezburger http://twitter.com/ICHCheezburger - Cat pics, what else!

Donna Noble http://twitter.com/DonnaNoble - not so active these days, damn that amnesia

Martha Jones http://twitter.com/MarthaJones

Southwest Airlines http://twitter.com/SouthwestAir

Stop the Spam http://twitter.com/stopthespam Twitter spammer updates. Always fun to get a new follower update, then see that person reported by Stop the Spam within the same minute.

FreebieAlert http://twitter.com/FreebieAlert

TechInsider http://twitter.com/techinsider rumors, gossip. Not always correct.

The Coop http://twitter.com/andersonscooper FAKE Anderson Cooper.

Anderson Cooper http://twitter.com/andersoncooper REAL Anderson Cooper

Pirate Bay http://twitter.com/tpb News about IP and the internet

El Gato http://twitter.com/el_gato And another cat.

Twitter http://twitter.com/twitter Twitter news, status updates

CNN Breaking News http://twitter.com/cnnbrk

Mars Phoenix Lander http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix - if you were watching this guy a few weeks back, you would have seen the “wee, we found ice!” update. Cutest thing ever.

NASA News Feed http://twitter.com/NASA

For real people…search Twitter for your friends, for celebs, for websites you like - you never know who or what you’re going to find there. Another way to find people to follow is to look at who your friends are following.

You can also reading Twitter easier by hooking up sms or getting a client ( http://twitter.com/downloads or check google to find some, there are TONS).

There ya have it – the basics of twitter. If you do decide to join in on the obsession, leave your twitter name here, or shout out to me so I can follow you - @stephaniebambam. Just remember - 140 characters or less!

Enjoy!

I always get reflective when I watch the Olympics. I remember where I was the last time there was an Olympics, who I watched it with, what was going on in my life at the time. Like a lot of other people, I bet, I also remember my own experiences with the sport as I watch.

It’s always the Summer Olympics that stir up the most memories for me, and this Olympics in particular provided a number of fun flashbacks.

Swimming was a huge part of my childhood, and I was on multiple swim teams at any given time. I was on a dive team for a while as well….although, I guess a more accurate description would be that my swim team wanted a dive team, and a few of us tried it out. But as soon as a friend of mine did a face plant into the board during a backflip (ala Greg Louganis), we were told to stick with swimming.

I was a damn good swimmer, if I may say so, although how I did depended on which team I was swimming for. At summer camp, I pretty much always placed first. At home, I swam for second, no matter what event it was. Relay, solo, I always placed second to someone on my own team. Nice that my team always went one-two, but still… The only time I placed first at home was in butterfly (which is an evil evil stroke that I think I was only forced to swim because I was the only one who could do it), but I was disqualified for having a “left inverted pinky toe.” I didn’t understand what it meant then, and while I kinda think it had something to do with my foot pointing the wrong way, I still don’t get the inverted toe reference now.

I loved swimming, though, and nothing could keep me out of the pool, not even a cast on my broken wrist that wasn’t supposed to get wet. The cast sure did come in handy during camp color war, though! I looooved color war, and it all always came down to the last day, when we had a full day relay race with baton passing and all. I was given the swimming event, of course, which just happened to be the final leg. The baton caused some difficulties for other swimmers, since they couldn’t figure out how to hold it while swimming. Me? I shoved it into my cast! I did ultimately pay for swimming with the cast when I got it off (my arm was a wreck), but I don’t think I would have given up that moment for anything.

I did the AYSO (kiddie league soccer) thing, although I was terrible. I may be the only goalie in history to score a goal for the opposing team by drop kicking the ball straight over my head. Still not sure how I lived that one down…if I ever did. But every time I see a goalie kick a ball away in a soccer game I remember that moment.

Basketball, well, I’m tall, and my dad loves basketball. Wasn’t it a given that he would be my basketball coach when I was a kid? I hit high school, played one year on junior varsity and quit. Wasn’t my thing.

But volleyball? That was my thing. I still wasn’t very good - the only sport I was ever really good at was swimming - but I was decent enough to play. And I’m competitive as hell. My volleyball team had a pretty fun rivalry going with another school, and when we met at tournaments, it was a crazy thing. Spikes to the face, the whole bit.

(here’s where I date myself) I was in high school, playing volleyball, the last time the US men’s team won the gold. My team became obsessed with the Olympic team. Every day, we would charge into practice, all excited to emulate those amazing men. We would be slightly bleary eyed from watching a match live the night before - from Korea - but we were still driven to be like those guys. We even dubbed each team member with a counterpart on the Olympic team. Me, I was Steve Timmons, although I had a crush on Karch Kiraly. The men won the gold, and we beat our rival team. It was a great year.

The men won the gold again this year, and all the games were narrated by none other than Karch Kiraly. It was a blast to watch, and the memories came flooding back. I’d watch someone spike, remember someone else who’d done that. Watch another person set a ball, think back to our setter (who was, without a doubt, the best player on our team. She was awesome.). Watch someone serve a ball out, remember myself doing that. Hey, I said I wasn’t very good.

I loved everything about sports then. Winning, obviously, was best, but even practices could be fun if you were in the right mindset. Those practices during the Olympics are probably my fondest memories of volleyball. Swimming endless laps in a pool gets boring. But pretending you’re an olympian? Now that’s fun.

I may not be Michael Phelps, but I still have a huge box full of ribbons and trophies all my own. And every four years, it’s just fun to look back.