Vacation Day One

Which dumbass forgot to reset his alarm, causing him to wake up way too damn early the first day of his vacation? This dumbass! Oh well. I guess anticipation would soon wake me anyway. After a haircut (a necessary evil, as my ear hair is driving me fucking nuts), it's Family Day! I'm taking my Mom & nephew Jordan to see The Lion King in 3D. I think I'm looking forward to this more than Jordan. I hear the 3D effects are actually worth the theatrical experience, so I'm a bit excited to see the movie in a different way. Plus, I'm just a giant kid. After the movie, I'm going to my sister & brother-in-law's place. I haven't seen baby Jason for a few weeks (outside of pictures, but they're damn cute ones, like this):

 So, yeah, that's Vacation Day One. The rest of my vacation is coming together by a series of very happy coincidences. I have a lunch date on Monday, and later the midnight launch of Gears Of War 3. On Wednesday, Millennium Films is hosting a private screening of Trespass (Nicole Kidman, Nicolas Cage) for my company. The trailer was enough to muster up interest - besides, if it sucks, it wasn't on my dime. The rest of my time off will be spent playing Gears and more Dead Island (which I'm still playing the shit out of), and starting to watch Lost, which PP2 was awesome enough to introduce me to (by the way, the guys at work are telling me same thing you did, about the Pilot).

I really do need this downtime, because work will get "interesting" once I return on the 27th. We're in the middle of a departmental realignment (schedule, supervisor, shit like that). Unfortunately, we found out about further delays in the pending automation of our ticketing & reporting systems also. I've been very curious about the automation process - not just in work, but other areas. Like last night, I read a really cool in-depth article on the construction of the animatronic dinosaurs used in Jurassic Park III. Being into Sci-Fi, I've read the stories & seen the movies: the technology eventually takes over or is somehow directly responsible for societal downfall. It got me thinking about the responsibility & limitation we need to have in automation - finding the balance between humanity and technology. I managed to come up with a list of a few things that shouldn't be automated:

• Blogs:  As a creative outlet, an autoblog would lack the individuality, subtle nuances, and sense of self (essentially the "soul") a human author possesses. A computer can construct sentences given the mechanics & rules of a language, but not the emotion or spirit imprinted when composed by an actual person.
• Stock Trading: Errors made within algorithm programs have shut down the London Stock Exchange & temporarily paralyzed the New York Stock Exchange. Given that 70% of trades were completed through the use of automated algorithm programs, a major system error could mean major cluster fuck.
• Driving:  Jurassic Park comes to mind... and remember, for every one KITT, there are a thousand Christine's.
• Sex:  Terminator 3's Terminatrix? Austin Powers' FemBots? Nuff said.

These last two are best described through their visual aids:

Pet Washing

 
Confession