Observations over Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving has passed and so will Black Friday soon (that’s a phrase the news media has been saying to describe the day after Thanksgiving shopping). I don’t know why, but this feels like the time just write a bunch of observations down, sit back, and think about them (yeah I’m lazy).

-My cousin, who I’m staying with this Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle in SF, drives a newer model Toyota Corolla. On one of the stickers, it says “partial zero emissions vehicle”. What does that say? Partially zero? I know it means a fraction, and it’s close to zero, but it doesn’t tell me much. I suppose it is better to say partial though than any of the other synonyms I pulled from thesaurus.com: fractional, fragmentary, half done, halfway, imperfect, limited, part, sectional, uncompleted, unfinished, unperformed.

-I think I only managed to see one “I’m thankful for…” on my friends page (granted I don’t have that many friends for my friends page to display, but still). What should I make out of that really? People want to keep it private? People don’t have much to be thankful for? People are away at home without their high speed net connections and can’t blog now? I’ll take that one. Hehe.

The Incredibles is a great movie. Awesome premise, really funny, great action sequences. This is definitely not a typical kids movie, since the plot revolves around so many adult themes. If all superhero movies were made this way, they’d all be awesome. I would say it should get nominated for Best Picture like the LA Times article said (link expired, sorry), along with Shrek 2. However, only Beauty and the Beast is the only animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, and it may not change any time soon.

-Sleeping in a room without windows, you can’t really judge what time it is. I mean there’s no sun, so there’s way to discern night from day. Kind of eerie when you think about it.

-I would just like to remind everyone this holiday season that while shopping, take some time and do some comparison shopping. Not just on prices of goods (remember Amazon offers books at way lower prices than any book store), but remember there are substitute goods that while not exactly great, can be pretty good. Take the Creative Zen Touch, a 20 Gig Mp3 Player that has gotten pretty good reviews and is $100 dollars cheaper than an Apple ipod. Sure the Zen doesn’t have the cool design, but it’s just as serviceable and has better sound options, and a $100 dollars less, holds the same amount songs.

-By the way, I think everyone should be putting up their Wishlists online via Amazon, Half, Froggle, or whatever. It’s very interesting to see what people want, like, and are into. And besides, someone might just buy you that gift. I’ll post mine’s up soon. Hope to see your’s too.

-Still talking about shopping, I normally don’t buy things that offer huge rebates but it seems really bad that I missed this (found via this Gizmodo post): Best Buy offers MPx220s for $50–$349.99 retail, minus a $300 mail-in rebate. With features like:

# MPEG4 Video Capture / Video Clip Playback with sound
# Integrated 1.23 megapixel camera
# Bluetooth® wireless connectivity

I can only say “dang it.”

With that note, I guess I’ll end there. Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.