The Oscar's: The Year the UK Won

I'm only joking about the UK, well sort of. Being in the press room we see all of the winners come through and a large number of them were British. They have lots to be proud of across the pond. They are very talented and creative. They did some amazing things and deserve all of the acclaim they received last night.

Okay, for those of you who want to know what I do there. Well, the company I work for is in charge of all the audio/visual elements of the press room. This is where all the press sit to hopefully have the chance to ask the winners a question at the end of the night. Let me list for you some of the interesting things I saw and heard.

• Christian Bale said something I found totally hilarious. He was talking about all the body transformations he goes through for the roles he takes. He said about his role in the fighter, "Have you ever seen a fat crack addict?" I thought it was a great line.
• Then later while I was waiting to hand my mic to a reporter I suddenly heard a guy next to me start talking loudly. Turns out he was going live on the radio right there from the press room. It was odd and cool at the same time.
  
• Natalie Portman was super cute and hardly looked pregnant in her dress. However, she kept holding her statue under her pregnant belly pulling her dress tightly under the belly. It was so cute. She is tiny, but adorable.
  
• At the end of the evening Tom Hooper came in after winning for best director of "The King's Speech" which is an amazing movie. I know it's rated-R, but really this is the least offensive rated-R movie I've ever seen. Less offensive and more hopeful than many PG movies I've ever seen. Anyway, there was a military reporter there and he talked about how the King overcame a physical problem in this movie. And he asked Mr. Hooper what troops in the field could take from this movie. He responded that the movie was about friendship (between the king and his speech therapist) and that it was through their friendship that the king was able to get better. He said that the troops should turn to their friends to find the strength to get better. It was of course much more eloquent, but it really touched me the way he said things.
• Finally, a special moment for me. The evening was over, I had gone to the rest room and as I was leaving I passed Baz Bamigboye, a UK reporter. He said to me, "Thanks for everything." This after I had provided him with a mic for his final question. He also happens to be the reporter Kate Winslet ran to and hugged while I was standing right next to him 2 years ago. Very special moments indeed.

Okay, so I think that about sums it up. Below are some pictures of Eric and I there together. They provided him with a tux for the evening. Very cool!









This is him in his tux. So cute huh? He looked even better in person.
Now this is us in the hallway outside the press room. It was the only safe place for us to take a picture. No photos are allowed in the press room. They actually kept throwing people out of the press room for taking pictures. It was crazy. Such a good time. If you want to know about anything else just leave a comment and I'll be sure to answer it. Thanks for being interested in my silly little excursions.

Watson the Brain

I'm not sure how many of you watch Jeopardy, but I do. I was obsessed during Ken Jennings run. He is remarkably intelligent. Well, this week he and another guy competed against an IBM computer creation. Of course, the computer new pretty much everything and kicked their trash. Ken did come in 2nd place though. It's amazing how smart they made this computer. It could understand Trebek's voice and questions. It responded properly and gave proper responses. It was just amazing. It was cute when it would mess up.

I enjoyed this article written by Ken Jennings since the taping. He's a very funny guy with a grounded sense of humor. He spoke highly of Watson and the computers programming. It also made me think about what is to come of artificial intelligence. I think it's awesome, however I do worry about what might happen. I don't think it will be terminators and the like, but what about an elimination of jobs. Factories are needing less people due to the ease and efficiency of programmable machines. Will that happen to us? What about the jobs we do everyday?

And seriously? Is there anything worse when calling tech support than to get a guy across the world to try and help you? I would say getting a robot to try to help me would be worse. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds for us.

Any thoughts?

Forever

Yep, it's been forever since I've posted. I just got really busy going through some things. I didn't forget about my blog, I just didn't have anything positive to say. Life has been good, but challenging at times. We're just fine though.

We had very lovely holidays. We went to Mesquite to visit Eric's family for Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful time, but Wal*Mart was insane at midnight. Good fun, good food, good times.

We spent Christmas here in LA. It was a surprisingly wonderful time. Okay, not surprising to us, but to all of our families that missed us. We were able to see several movies, some great, some kind of crappy. On Christmas day we also visited a little old lady in our ward that was in a rehab center. She was so sweet and charming. We just love our sweet Antine. We spent New Year's Eve watching movies and our friends, the Champions, came over for pizza making, games and ringing in NYC new year's eve. LA new year's eve was just happening to late for us all to stay up.

Now we're back to normal life. Eric is looking for a new job, but all the while focusing on his writing. He's a very talented writer and we have great hope for this new year and the possibilities that exist, but we just can't see yet.

I am patiently waiting out my time to see what is to come next for me. The possibilities are limitless.