The Dobrindt Family

Pictures of our new house

If you are interested, <a href="http://www.dobrindts.com/housepics-1.htm">click here </a>for pictures of our new house. And keep in mind the pictures are the <i>before</i> shots and the outside shots were taken in the rain.

Movie Review: Reign of Fire

When <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0253556">Reign of Fire </a>first came out, I thought ?Is this what Matthew McConaughey?s career has come to?? But after getting some pretty good reviews from trusted sources, namely my buddy <a href="http://www.2aldgate.net">Paul Beaulieu</a>, I thought I would give it a shot. After all, I had a Friday night alone with Patti and Emily in Colorado, sausage and peppers cooking on the stove and a free Blockbuster rental. So I rented and watched.

Surprisingly, I was very happy with this movie. Sure, it had more holes than an Enron tax return, was pretty silly in main parts and was beyond belief, but it was pretty freakin? cool. I am a fan of the Mad Max, Waterworld, future scenes from the Terminator, post Apocalyptic world theories, so I was into this thing from the getgo.

It starts with the release of the dragons, and quickly enters the world of a band of survivors who are met by a para-military group who have a plan to end the madness and save the world. Or at least what?s left of it. This all may sound routine, and seeing a truly original movie is very rare indeed, but the movie does a couple of things that kept me interested. First, it takes place in England. Too often we are forced to watch a post-war NY City or LA, or some other major American city. Second, it keeps things simple and, well, not sure how to say this, but macho. The scenes were written with a ton of testosterone. Finally, it was pure entertainment. It was a little predictable but in this case, it worked. I was routing for the dirty, scared and beat up survivors using sling shots and spit balls to try to kill the evil, bad dragons who breathe fire and hate tomatoes.

The movie did have its bad points. It had a major military-type character played by a chick to add a stupid romantic element that would have been much better with a dude playing the part, the movie had a bunch of scared, shaking, frightened hobos doing something every military in the world was unable to do, and they could have used a comic presence like Hudson from Aliens. And I could have used a much better ending.

But overall, it was entertaining. If you are in a sci-fi mood, feel like sitting back and watching pure entertainment with no cultural or artistic benefit, and want to see s**t blown up, rent this movie.

My rating: Free Night (?Free Night? is defined as if you have a free night, see or rent this movie, there are worse things to do with your time).

Finally, our wedding pictures

I posted some of the pictures from our wedding (and a couple from the honeymoon). I will add more pictures when I have time, but thought I would post what I do have. <a href="http://www.dobrindts.com/weddingpics.htm">Click here for the pictures. </a>

Movie Review: Insomnia

As some of you know, I am a pretty big movie fan. I really love watching, reviewing and talking about them. Even really bad movies offer something beneficial; they give the viewer a baseline to compare good movies against. Along the same lines, I have pretty strong opinions about music, books and a few TV shows. So considering the viewer base of this site can fit into the back seat of a small car, I thought I would start writing reviews for movies, books, TV shows, music, and weather, whatever I feel like. I might write a review for a presidential appearance at a news conference if the urge hits me. My reviews won?t be regular, timely, current or consistent. But hey, this is my site and I can do whatever I want.

So taking a page from the Siskel and Ebert book, two guys who took something as complex as reviewing and judging a movie and turned it into something as simple as ?Thumbs Up? and ?Thumbs Down?, please allow me to begin.

<a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0278504">Insomnia</a>
Insomnia, the cure for itself, plods along at a pace as fast as the waiting room in my dentists office. Al Pacino is not bad, I hope he looks the way he did in the movie because the part called for it, but there is not much else redeeming about this movie. It is slow and depressing, two traits that can make a movie good but not in this case, and is predictable, something I hate in a movie. Robin Williams, despite giving a strong performance, gives it only a slight edge as a bad guy. I would recommend taking a shot of Nyquil, have a glass of milk and watch a blank wall, it will leave you feeling the same way I felt when the credits finally rolled.

My rating: Refund (one of my ratings will be ?Refund?, meaning ask for a refund from the movie theater or Blockbuster).

Phoenix Trip Pictures and Info

In early November, Patti, Emily and I flew to Phoenix to see my family. My sister Lori and her husband Craig live there and my other sister Dora and her husband Brent would be there visiting, so our parents and my mother's mother (Grandma Gest) decided to make it a little family reunion. It was a great trip. Click on the image below for pictures of the trip. <div align="right"> <a href="http://www.dobrindts.com/PhxGroup.htm"><img src="http://www.dobrindts.com/pics/Arizona Trip/Grand Canyon/GCGroup-110902-01-web.jpg" title="Phoenix Trip" name="DavePatti" alt="Phoenix Trip" name="Phoenix Trip" width="110" height="102" border="1"></a>

Emily's cold

Emily just got over a cold. If you have never been around a 6 and ½ month old with a bad cold, allow me to convey the feeling.

First analogy. Image having a smoke detector. One of those round types that have that really high pitch warning signal. Now image that the smoke detector starting going off in the middle of the night even though you knew there was no smoke. The only way to keep the smoke detector from going off is to carry it around. But this is no ordinary smoke detector. It weights 25 pounds and if you drop it, it will go off for a long, long time. Now image having to pass the smoke detector, which you are holding to keep it from going off, from you to your spouse for three straight days. There are times that you take a chance and put it down, and it doesn’t go off. But a short time later, when you think you are in the clear, it starts up again. Nothing you do to it, other than carry the thing around, will keep it from going off.

Second analogy. Image running full speed into a brick wall. When you regain consciousness, you run back into the wall.

People are stupid

There are six elevators one can use in the building I work in. This morning when I got to work, 5 of the elevators were not working, so there was a little bottle neck to use the one good elevator. Small bottle neck, no big deal. That's not the point of the story. There were about 6 of us waiting around the one working elevator when this woman walked up and started to go toward one of the non-working elevators. The security guard told her only one was working. The woman, and keep in mind there are five open elevator doors and 6 people standing and staring at the single closed elevator door, asked “Which one is working?”

I miss having a dog.

My trip to Phoenix

Patti and I spent a week in Phoenix with my sister Lori and her husband Craig (they live there), my sister Dora and her husband Brent (just moved back from England and will be living in Virginia), my parents (live in Atlanta) and my grandma (lives in Ohio). We had a great time. I am going to put up a section on this site with pictures and information once I crawl out of the deep pile of work I have at IBM.

Sad day for Northern Exposure fans

Peg Phillips died last week. She played Ruth Ann Miller on Norther Exposure. <a href="http://home.attbi.com/~mcnotes/phillips.html">Click here for picture. </a>

Our first home

It's almost official - we bought our first home. Well, technically that is not true, the bank bought it and we are living in the home, but we will finally be living in something that will <i>eventually</i> be ours.

The town is <a href="http://www.townofmilton.org/">Milton</a>, just south of the city. I'll update later with details.