It’s hard to imagine a time in Alan Moore’s career when he wasn’t turning heads. He began writing in the UK, working on science fiction comics for a brief time, before taking over Marvelman and his own series, V for Vendetta. Both of these attracted instant critical attention, particularly Marvelman, in which Moore explored the implications of a near-omnipotent Superman-like hero existing in a realistically complex world—a theme that would recur in much of Moore’s later work. His writing during this time won awards in the British comic book industry, and attracted the attention of DC Comics in America. They hired him on as the writer of Swamp Thing, a comic about a heroic man who has been transformed into the figure of a monster. The series was facing cancellation due to lagging sales, which explains why they would take the chance of assigning it to a new, unconventional writer—they had nothing to lose.

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Never buy a Philips product. Ever. Erika and I bought a flatscreen 27-inch TV from them in December. Today it simply stopped working. It's completely dead. Naturally, the full warranty is expired, but it's still under a parts warranty. Erika called the company to see if somebody can come to Kirksville to fix the TV for us. The woman she talked to said that they may even be able to pay for the labor, which is nice. Erika pointed out that it's unusual for such a new product to break so quickly, and asked if they've had any other problems with this particular model. The customer service rep claimed that they have not.

I decided to do a little research of my own, and found this list of reviews for our TV set on Amazon. There are no less than 33 people (excluding myself) stating that they have had the exact same problem with this product, each within 4-6 months of purchasing it. Apparently, Philips has yet to acknowledge that they are selling a defective product, or to provide compensation to those who have purchased it.

The moral of the story: Never buy from Philips and always read customer reviews before making a purchase.

Steve Jobs had this to say at a commencement speech and I really dig it, especially since I'm still on that pursuit of contentment. I think a lot of us are.

You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

According to yahoo, this was the "first true Spaghetti Western." Wow. Okay, didn't know that. Also, it's a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. I guess I'll have to move that up on my queue to compare the two.

The funny thing about watching this movie with my sister was that we finally got a lot of jokes from Back to the Future 3. Heheh. Marty's version of Clint Eastwood definitely seems to come from this movie.

I enjoyed it. It's a new genre for me, so I'm going to have to learn to get past some of the distractions, such as crazy dubbing and some sub-par acting coming from the Rojo family, but it's fun, it's cool, and I'm interested to see more films like it.

I don't think I had posted about it, but our house in AZ has recently been vacated because the tenants were moving into a newly built home. With the out-of-state investor market gone crazy out there, we were wondering how it would all play out with getting a new renter.

But thankfully, God always provides! We just got a call confirming that we have an application, it looks good, and apparently we're getting some college nerds with perfect as new tenants. They seem pretty eager to move in, which is fine with us. It's so amazing to see so many good things happening lately. God is constantly providing us with new opportunities and ways to save money for our future. Maybe one day we WILL be able to buy a home that we can have kids in. :)

Also, I put in the final order for the MINI. I'm keeping the color a secret for now. It was torture to choose, but really, I knew that either color would make me happy, so I'm satisfied with my choice.

AND as a bonus, we think we've got a taker for the Miata, which we have been wanting to kind of "keep in the family". If everything goes well, we'll be able to give it away to someone who really needs it.

Wow. Now I know why people have so much time to comment on blogs during the day. I've had plenty of time in between finishing SubQuad lists and entering TPS reports. Yep, TPS reports. I got the memo.

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth