Richard's Blog

Today I heard that actor Leslie Nielsen passed away at age 84 due to complications from pneumonia. I think most of us remember him for his role as the deadpan doctor from the 1980 movie Airplane! . I grew up thinking that this movie was an original, but later found out it was a parody of a 1957 movie called Zero Hour! . After having watched both movies, I realize now that it was Leslie Nielsen's performance that was the glue that held the movie together. I can't watch the original movie without laughing and thinking of the parody because most of the dialogue is the same. Check out this YouTube video comparing some of the scenes. Whether playing characters like Dr. Rumack or Detective Frank Drebin, he always delivered the laughs with a straight face. His talent will surely be missed.

Found this post on reddit while cleaning out items in google reader.  The picture is of a door to the launch control room for an ICBM (which I found kind of funny). Some of the comments in the thread are very interesting. It's interesting what you can find out about our nuclear launch protocols on a site like reddit.  Who knows, maybe the 1983 movie Wargames was more true to life than I imagined. Check out this opening clip from the movie with Michael Madsen and John Spencer. I also found some links to a 1979 PBS documentary called "First Strike" which are pretty interesting. According to the wikipedia article for First Strike , some of the footage made it into the popular made for TV movie, The Day After (which coincidentally came out the same year as Wargames). During the Cold War, the fear of a full-scale nuclear war was palpable. Movies and TV shows like the above examples were common. The entire world feared that the doctrine of mutually assured des

I don't have any real plans this year for Thanksgiving. I think I'll spend the day trying to get three stars on every level of Angry Birds . That is unless the birds and the pigs can work out their differences before turkey day.

Kinda random and offbeat, but I was checking my site stats and saw that I got a visit from Farmville yesterday. And I don't even play Farmville.

Then head on over to http://www.firstpersontetris.com/ and try it. Mind = Blown :)

Don't you just hate it when you have to fish around the cooler and freeze your hand off trying to get a beer? Problem solved!