Out of the Frying Pan - Movie Review

The Hobbit - 4.5 Stars

So I have now seen this movie twice. Actually never thought I would do that, but I am glad I did.

PeterJackson has done it again, folks. The Hobbit was an extremely enjoyable movie. I had been a very long while since I read the book so I barely remember any of it. It was well done for a prequel. I felt it ran strong from the beginning to the end.

There was a lot more comedy than LOTR and just about as much action. I does make you see the dwarves in a different light.

Martin Freeman (The Office and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) was great as Bilbo. Funny as always and never disappointing. It was also, of course, great to see Ian McKellan, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis.

I is definitely a must see in the theaters if you love Lord of the Rings.

Looking forward to the next movie.

Until then.......

Step One Complete

So I have done it! I have finished my final semester for my AA in Teaching Degree. I will officially walk on graduation day in May because they only do it once a year.

Pretty excited to make it this far and stoked I did so well. I finished with a 3.5 GPA! I also became a member of 2 honor societies: Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society for Education Students and Phi Theta Kappa, International Honor Society for 2-Year Colleges. Feels very good.

Now I am on to the University of North Texas at Dallas to pursue my BA in Mathematics with a Secondary Teaching Certification. I hope to do as well as I did at Tarrant County College.

Wish me luck!

Final Week of FFL Regular Season

Well we have reached the final week of the season. Overall my season has not gone to well. 5 leagues and only 3 of those teams at or slightly above .500. I have decided that after this season I will drop down to 2 maybe 3. Not saying which ones I'm dropping yet.

So for this last week, the Syndicate (6-6) will be taking the the 2nd place team. This is in league I value the most (BYOV). I'm still taking a big risk and continuing to start Kaepernick over Eli. Still shaky about this one, but reguardless of the outcome I will make the playoffs.

As for my other leagues, the league at work I will take on the team who is at the top of the league, but whom I destroyed week ago. How will I do in the second week? It all depends on Rodgers' performance. With Jennings back, it could be big. Oh and I'll make the playoffs because they voted to have everyone in the playoffs. WHAT? SMH! And this is a paid league first paid one I did. Regardless how I do this season, this league will be on the bubble. So I guess i did tell one league I may be leaving. Oh well. Going to do some heaving thinking this off season.

My other leagues are no es bueno. So I'm done with them. Alright. Off to the games.

Go BYOV!

Riddle #1 - 11/25/12

Level of difficulty - 3 points

White bird, featherless,
Flying out of paradise,
Flying over sea and land,
Dying in my hand.

Riddles 11/24/12 - #2

Die without me, never thank me.
Walk right through me, never feel me.
Always watching, never speaking.
Always lurking, never seen.

Riddles of the Day - Riddle #1

Please click the blog link (the title) to post your guess.
Leader Board is on the blog site.

People are hired to get rid of me.
I'm often hiding under your bed.
In time I'll always return you see.
Bite me and you're surely dead.

Riddles and Trivia Game

So I decided to try something fun and do some riddles and/or trivia towards my friends and maybe family.  I started some riddles on Facebook and got some folks very interested participating.  So far for about a week up to Wednesday, November 23, 2012 the standing are as such:

Riddles Leader Board
Kris Pickard - 3
Mark Howard - 1
Mark Lockard - 1
Mindy Rosado - 1
Heather Van Ess Rotolo - 1

I will continue these riddles on this blog site starting today and I will keep a leader board off to the side.

The way this will work is I will post a Riddle and the first person answer it correctly will gain a point.  Some riddles may be 2 or 3 points base on level of difficulty.  I will post riddles at least 2 a day and maybe a trivia question here and there, which will have it's own leader board.  So subscribe to this blog and try out some riddles/trivia.

Good luck.

The Night of September 24, 2012

I will start off with this, I love American Football.  I really do!  To witness what I saw tonight place such a bitter taste in my mouth, it is horrible.  Now putting the officials aside, Green Bay's offense was bad.  Really, really bad.  Especially in the first quarter.  Seattle's defense seriously owned the Packers.  Green Bay's defense did very well, too, but the final pain was the officiating. 

For almost three weeks I have been giving these replacement referees the benefit of the doubt.  I like a lot of sports pundits would say that we would see the same amount of mistakes with the regular refs, but as the season been going more and more forward, it has been getting worse and worse.  Tonight, I feel was the final straw.

I am irritated with the NFL administration and the regular referees.  They need to put this to bed!  Will it be better when they come back?  Who knows, but I do know that these replacements are getting worse!

Will I continue to watch football?  Yes, but my enthusiasum is starting to fall and it's not because my team is now 1-2, but that doesn't help.

Oh well.  Moving on.

Later.........

Fantasy Football '12 - Week One

So, it is time for the season to begin, well it actually started on Wednesday with the Cowboys victory against the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants, which was an impressive game and happy for the Cowboys win.  Nice work to Mr. Ogletree with 2 TDs for the night and great work to Tony Romo. 

Anyways, I went insane and signed up for 5 FFLs.  I don't know what I was smoking.  The leagues include, my former job (which may be my final year with them), my new job (on ESPN, which I have to get use to), a good friend's league (which I joined when my other leagues seemed to not be happening, but ended up happening), my favorite league (commissioner was just to busy, but still got it going) and my favorite league's defensive league (an interesting look, but it a lot of fun).  I think I'll be able to keep up, but it will be tough with school going on.

So I tried to keep my teams pretty consistent, but is hard to do with drafts, but in most of my leagues I have Eli Manning, Ahmad Bradshaw, Jordy Nelson and Wes Welker.  I think this will be a great season from some of my leagues.  I will talk more on this on Tuesday.  Good luck to me!

Later.......

Podcasts

I know this may sound pretty behind the times, I have now been exposed to the world of Podcasts.  It is a pretty awsome medium.  This best thing about it is that it makes the time past very, very quickly especially at work.  I listen to various types of podcasts including news, education/how to, sports and of course comedy.  Some of my favorites are The Rachel Maddow Show, ESPN's Mike and Mike Show, Nerdist, some of the Smodcast shows (Kevin Smith) and 60-Second Casts (Tech, Mind, Science, Earth etc.). 

My absolute #1 favorite show is the Ten Minute Podcast with Will Sasso (Mad TV and The Three Stooges), Bryan Callen (Mad TV and Hangover) and Chris D'Elia (Whitney and Celest & Jesse Forever).  These guys are extremely hilarious.  It can get a bit out of control, but it wouldn't be great if it didn't.  This show, like its title, is only 10 minutes long.  I kind of wish that it was much longer, but then the title would be pointless.  They would also feature guest including, Shawna and Chank Smith, which makes the show even sweeter.  As you can tell I thouroughly enjoy the podcast and I think you should check it out.

The tool I usually use to listen to these podcasts is Stitcher Smart Radio, which I discovered through advertisement on Hulu Plus I think.  I downloaded the app and I got hooked.  Again, it helps make the day go by quicker. 

Thank you very much folks! 

Keep them coming!

Trivia Game

I want to try a entertainment trivia game.  It is pretty much for fun.  A test to see how many of you entertainment junkies like me are out there.  The way this game goes is as follows:

Each week I will post 1 to 3 questions on entertainment.  The categories will be in Movies, Music, Television, Gaming and maybe even Books (I say maybe because I don't read as much as I would like). 

The question of course will vary.  For example, I could do a series a question on one TV show or a movie (one per week).  Or each week a question could be on something different.  Kind of hard to explain, but you should be able to catch on.

Now I know there is the power of information on the internet so most likely you will find the right answer, so the winner will be the first to answer correctly.

I will post a leader on my website (address coming soon).

You down?

Sweet!

Starting Sunday, July 22 2012.

Dr. Jackson and Lois Lane!

So NBC drops a new summer show called Saving Hope. Starring Michael Shanks (Stargate SG.1) and Erica Durance (Smallville) this shows centers around the Chief of Surgery, Charlie Harris who fall into a coma after a bad accident that he and his fiancé Dr. Alex Reid were in on their way to their wedding.

While in a coma Dr. Harris' spirit moves around the hospital observing things as they goes and especially keeps an eye on his fiancé. Each day he encounters other spirits of folks who are near death either in the surgery table or when coding in their admitted room or ER.

This show is pretty fascinating, but like most shows it makes me wonder what will happen when he comes out of a coma? How will they keep the show going? It's like Prison Break, Lost and other shows that makes you wonder what will happen when the major goal is met. The recent episode a saw was when he meets a guy who like him, falls into a coma, but unlike him comes out of it quickly. Charlie's spirit is baffled and wonders if he is fighting strong enough.

I feel this show will do well, but how long will it last. Too bad I can see how they are doing in the ratings. I'll just keep watching. Check it out if ya like. Thursday nights on NBC.

Until next time...

Stubborn Scots!

So my mother, my wife, my sister, my niece and me went out for lunch then checked out a movie of my choice. See my mom felt she owed me a birthday gift so she wanted to treat me to that.

My movie choice was Brave by Disney/Pixar. Pretty much a story where a young princess becomes very defiant in the way of her kingdom and wished not to be part of an arranged marriage. There was definitely a lot more to the movie than they showed in the trailer, which is how I like it.

Overall I felt this movie was great and hilarious as most Pixar films are and I look forward to the upcoming flicks from this company including Finding Nemo 3D and Monsters University.

Check it out if you like animation.

3.5 stars.

Later...

There He Is!

Just checked out a new show via Hulu called "The Soul Man". This show will premiere on TV Land on June 20th, but Hulu had a special glance at the pilot episode on their site.

This show stars Cedric "The Entertainer" (Original Kings Of Comedy) and Niecy Nash (Reno 911). It's about a former soul singer who left his singing career and pursue his true calling, Man Of God. The church he preaches at used to be ran by his father, played by John Beasley, who decides to retire from the ministry.

After checking out the pilot, I felt that Cedric and Niecy may be on to a good thing. They are very funny and their supporting cast are great. This show falls in like with TV Land's other shows with more or very seasoned actors doing the old school quirky sit-coms.

Other original TV Land shows include: Happily Divorced w/ Fran Drescher (The Nanny), The Exes w/ Donald Faison (Scrubs) & Wayne Knight (Seinfeld), Retired at 35 w/ George Segal & Jessica Walter (Archer) and their big show, Hot In Cleveland w/ Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time), Jane Leeves (Fraiser), Wendy Malick (Just Shoot Me) & Betty White.

The Soul Man could turn out to be a good show depending on how well the writing continues. Good luck Cedric and Niecy!

Later.........

Deadman Wonderland

So a new anime has entered my world. Of course this is the English Dub version and is on Toonami/Adult Swim/Cartoon Network. I know many anime fans hate this, especially the young ones, but I feel they are just too sucked into this world. "I only like the original Japanese version", they would say and I get that, but some of you don't need to be so snobbish about it.

Anyways.......

From what I gathered so far Deadman Wonderland is a place where convicted felons are used for entertainment for the world's twisted enjoyment. It features, Ganta, a 14 year old kid who is on death row for the murder of his classmates. He claims innocence and I'm sure we'll see. He is friends with a weird girl named, Shiro. It is unknown why she is there.

This show has the most profanity I have ever seen in an anime of course with being on cable TV you can imagine the amount of beeps that happens. Like most recent amines it is very twisted. Interested to see how it goes.

Later........

Kali-Ma!

I know I may have spelled that wrong, but anyway. We have just finished seeing Snow White and the Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart (Twilight Saga/Into The Wild), Chris Hemsworth (Thor/Star Trek) and Charlize Theron (Monster/Hancock).

I will say that this movie was much darker than I expected. Charlize did a great job as the wicked queen and Hemsworth did as expected as the Huntsman. As for Stewart, she did pretty well. Kept the film flowing in my opinion. I'm sure that those who hated her before this movie will continue to hate her because I don't think she did well enough to convince her critics otherwise.

Overall I felt the movie was well done. Like I said a bit more darker than expected and the slow scenes almost put me to sleep. Check it out is you want. No pressure to see in theaters.

3 out of 5.

BTW, the queen's brother is very creepy and a pretty good fighter.

Later........

Maymester

So for the first time I took my first mini-semester in my college career.  The school year has 2 of these mini-semesters; Wintermester and Maymester.  This maymester I took US History Since 1876.  It was a 3 credit hour course that pretty much covers from Reconstruction after the Civil War through modern times.  We only got as far as the end of War World II.  That's fine because there was a lot to cover and little time to do it in.

I will not reveal the name of my instructor on this one because there is really no need to, but may she was an interesting character. She was great when I first spoke to her via email. I asked pretty much what will her class be like and for the most part it was lecture based.  The class was about 4 hours long per day, 11 days long (Monday - Friday) and went for a little over 2 weeks. 

There were going to be no papers, no presentations and no projects through out the semester.  I was sold, but I was still not sure what this complete lecture based meant.  We would start out the class with 2 hours of lecture, she talked and we took notes as well as we could.  There was no PowerPoints and no points placed on the board only the topics she was covering.  Very rarely would she repeat what she said and she spoke pretty fast.  I get it though, she had to cover a lot and like I sad before, we only got up to WWII. 

The last 2 hours of the day we watched a chapter from the series, Band of Brothers (a great show BTW and definitely an owner).  After seeing a chapter we would get a 3 to 6 question quiz and the points would be used to help boost out exam grade.  Oh and we had 6 exams during the semester, pretty much every 2 days.  I know! 

The first week was rough, well at least half of it.  She showed up for about 4 of the first 6 days of class.  One of the days she was 2.5 hours late due to a 4 car pile up that held her back (this was on a test day).  Most of the class left that day leaving 3 of us waiting to see if she was even alive.  She finally showed and was going to still issue the exam to us who remained, but she then discovered that the copy folks didn't prepare the test.  So our day was done, SMH.  The second week went much better, she would show pretty early this time and we and to take 4 exams that week. 

I finished with an "A" in the class and I really don't know how I achieved that.  The great thing was that the exam were done on scantron.  I usually do pretty well on those, especially when spelling was a factor.  I think I have now been exposed to pretty much every style of class room structure except Instructional Television (ITV).  To this day, I still don't know what that is all about and am a bit afraid to try it.  Oh well.  So that was my first mini-semester and I think I can do it again, depending on the class.

On to Summer!  I will be doing 10 credit hours with my second Math/Teach class, General College Biology w/ Lab and US History To 1876.  I know, I took the 2nd part of History already, but I prepared my summer semester before deciding to do the Maymester. 

Onward...........

Fun Semester

Spring 2012

This probably was the most entertaining semester I have had ever since returning to school.  I only did 10 credit hours this spring.  Elementary Spanish II w/ Lab, Math Teaching I, and Intro to Teaching II.

The best out of this bunch was the Math course.  It was very intriguing and the teacher/professor was great. Probably the best I have ever met.  If you are ever attending Tarrant County College (TCC) and have to take a math course look for Alan Cazares.  Anyways, this class show you some ways of teaching mathematics to students in 1st through 8th grade.  I have always loved math in school, but this definitely broadened my view in the subject.  It makes since because I probably would have been hard to teach math to kids with the knowledge I knew before this course.  He helped show us the simplest way to teach it, but the biggest struggle most of the students had was way over thinking the concepts.  Finished with an "A".  I'll be taking the second part this Summer.  Will be pretty busy, but I'm sure will be fun again.

Elementary Spanish II was the continuation of the massive amount of work I did last semester.  It has just as much homework, 2 Charlas, 4 writing assignments, 8 quizzes and 4 exams.  I was a lot to do.  I did learn a lot with the both classes, but I doubt I will continue Spanish in the fall.  I need to finish school with as little stress as possible.  I may finish in the future or just buy Rosetta Stone.  The instructor, Belia Freedman was a pretty nice to have.  She was tough, but very reasonable.  I definitely made you put in the work.  Some students were cool with her methods and others were none to happy.  I finished with a "B" and that's all good with me.

The last class (but not least) was my second teaching class called , Introduction to Special Populations.  This class was very great to be in.  The instructor, Ms. Elizabeth (Lisa) Self, was a probably the most energetic teachers I have ever met.  Her methods were pretty interesting like Mr. Cazares.  There was a lot of reading involved in the class, but when we went to the class sessions, instead of going through a lecture on the subject, she had us do activities on the subject including class discussions, group activities, book reports and presentations.  Now these were as tough as I thought, but you still had to put a great deal of work in it and you had to be used to working in a group, because you worked with the same individuals in your group every class time.  The challenge to was keeping up with the reading and retaining all of the information for the exams (not one of my strong suits), but I must have done well enough because I finished with an "A".  Way better than I was expecting.

To top this semester off, I was invited and installed in an organization called, Kappa Delta Pi.  It's an International Honor Society In Education and like the profession of teaching has a women majority and I was honored & proud to join them.  I was one of 2 men installed in a class of 20 this pass spring.

So that is my update from this pass Spring.  A semester to remember.

Later...

Early Childhood

So I'm attending this conference on Early Childhood and we had two great presenters. One talked about Magical Moments in Music and brought up this great quote: "All children are gifted; they just open their presents at different times". It does make since in some way. We also sang some old songs we had sung when we were kids.

The second presenter talked about art and how science plays a big part in it. We took part in doing some art activities that uses the following process skills: observing, comparing, organizing, communicating, measuring and predicting.

It was a good conference and I may check it out again next year. We'll see.

New Addiction

So, I would like to thank those close to me for forcing a new addiction on to me.  I don't know if you heard of this show, but it's called The Walking Dead.  I heard about this show before it premiered last year and thought, "Seriously?  How can this develop into a show?  How can you make anything about this?  It's just about zombies!" 

I didn't hear much else after the first season, which was only six episodes long, but I guess it gathered quite the following.  I'm sure starting with your normal zombie movie loving crowd, who probably got excited about a TV show on it.  The thing that really caught my attention was when my close friends were talking so much about it. I was realizing that this show was becoming a phenomenon like Lost and Heroes (sad to see both of those go), along with a panel talk show called Talking Dead followed each episode. 

Eventually I was going to check it out, but I was busy with school and catching up on my own favorite shows.  Then the second season had a winter finale and folks were already crying about how they have to wait until February.  Well I had still had not checked it out and peer pressure was pushing strong on me so I decided to start checking it out.  I saw the first season on Netflix.  And I had to do a marathon of the first part of the second season.

I'll admit this show is great and I'll continue to watch it, but more so to see how far they can take it.  I'm sure very far again like Lost and Heroes, but like every phenomenon show there is a drop off point.  Curious on when that will be.

Good luck on the show, Frank Darabont.

Later.........

Less Stress

This is pretty much my mantra for the year 2012.  Will I be able to eliminate it?  Naw, not really, but I can bring it down to a more tolerant level.  I'm just trying to not sweat the small stuff so much.  My tolerance level had become very low (almost zero) and noticed how it was effecting things, including home.  So, I am working to raise that and get healthier.

I have been noticing just a few people making some changes in their life and it is helping reduce the stress in their own lives.  Some are eating healthier, working out more, dropping unhealthy relationships (including on Facebook and Google+) and even changing jobs.  These folks so far are already looking happier. 

So folks, if there is something you really want to work on, try reducing as much stress out of your life.  You'll be amazed how it will help just about everything else.

Later.......

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.2

Pretty excited!!!

So I haven't told you guys how I did in the Fall of 2011 so here it goes.  Man was that a challenging semester.  2 classes with constant homework, 1 class with a paper due every week, 16 hours of classroom observation with one district being difficult until the last minute and workouts for 6 straight weeks (once a week).  I ended up doing very well with an "A" in College Algebra, "B"s in Elementary Spanish I and Intro to Teaching and a "C" in Concepts of Physical activity, which should have been the easiest class.  Oh well.

Choosing classes for the Spring semester posed some hurdles including deciding if I wanted to continue with espanol.  I ended up registering for it.  My other two classes were no brainers where I will be taking Intro to Special Populations, my second teaching course, and Foundations of Math/Teach I.  I had my first class today in Foundations and it was cool.  The teacher was very interesting and seems like this class will be fun.  The only other major hurdle, that is going on, is financial aid. I hope it gets resolved very soon.

Oh well, like I said before my first class tonight was fun and I am looking forward to more sessions.  Friday are my Special Populations and Spanish 2 classes.  Kind of glad the semester has started.

More soon............I promise.