The 21-Word Review: Nim’s Island (In-Flight Video)

I imagine even children targeted by this film would question the plausibility of the plot. (Shame on U2 for “Beautiful Day”.)

The 21-Word Review: Music and Lyrics (Hotel HBO)

This time he's a washed up ... athlete? No. Musician! And she's his maid? No. Plant waterer? Yes!

Who keeps paying for these?

Opryland v. Las Vegas

In a previous post, I made a statement that could be seen as disparaging to Nashville in general and the Opryland Hotel in specific. I have now spent several days at the Opryland. Below is a scientific comparison showing the benefits of each location, provided for your use in determining where to celebrate your second wedding.

Advantage Vegas is indicated via the Elvis icon.
Advantage Opryland is indicated via the Johnny Cash icon.

Vegas	Opryland	Advantage
Large, complicated hotel layout that requires a map to find your way from your room to the lobby.	Check.	Neither
Scads of scantily-clad women running around ignoring the conventioneers.	Check, but that may have been due to the Victoria’s Secret convention being held in the hall one level up.	Neither
Obsequious and helpful employees obviously working on a larger tip.	Same, but more subtle. Score one for southern hospitality.
The slim chance of winning a few dollars at the ubiquitous casinos.	No gambling. This is the Bible belt.
The enormous chance of losing many dollars at the ubiquitous casinos.	No gambling. This is the Bible belt.
Tourists in sequins going out for the evening.	Tourists in sequins and boots going out for the evening.	Let's call that a draw.
Poor television choices – they want you in the casinos.	Adequate television choices, but all of the country music stations are at the top of the dial.
Incredibly expensive room rates and punitive tax adders.	Incredibly expensive room rates and punitive tax adders.	Everyone but the tourists.
Numerous shops inside the hotel complex selling high end items that you can’t afford.	Numerous shops inside the hotel complex selling everything from high-end to junk touristy tchotchkes for the kids.	Singles and DINKs Me
Very fancy and overpriced restaurants throughout the complex.	Not fancy but still overpriced restaurants throughout the complex.
No way to see the outside world so you completely lose track of the time of day.	The occasional window to the outside world.
Pulsating screens advertising night clubs for people much younger and more attractive than you.	Pulsating screens advertising one night club for people much younger and more attractive than you.	(People younger than me and voyeurs.)
Walking on the strip is its own entertainment.	They closed the Opryland Theme Park next door, but the mall is interesting.
Have to fly and take a cab to get to a Vegas hotel.	Within driving distance of my house.

The 21-Word Review: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Always entertaining, occasionally inexplicably profane, often hilarious, somewhat informative. I hope my first book is half as good as Bryson's worst.

The 21-Word Review: The Forbidden Kingdom (DVD)

The Jet Li / Jackie Chan fight comes about 30 minutes in. That's what you're watching for, isn't it? (It's a draw.)

The 21-Word Review: The Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer (DVD)

Have you ever watched something entertaining, but then later discovered that you learned nothing? A Barack-Obama-speech kind of movie.

The 21-Word Review: Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton

Among others, there's a photograph of an engagement that's not in the text. A great autobiography crying for a great biography.

Speaking at the FTTH Conference

I will be speaking at the Fiber to the Home Conference in Nashville, TN next Monday. Last year was Vegas, this year it's the Opryland Hotel. Moving on up.

The topic of my presentation is "Next Generation PON: What is Beyond GPON?". It promises to be a thrill-a-minute ride combining pyrotechnics ripped from a Michael Bay production, heartwarming characters straight from the mind of Tyler Perry, and a stunning twist a la M. Night Shyamalan.

Seriously, though, the presentation should be quite good (in my humble opinion) with some very useful information compiled into an engaging format (no longer humble, but still an opinion). And, the last time I checked, there are about 8 other competing events at the show in the same time frame. So please come by.

If it's only the two of us, I'll spring for doughnuts.

The 21-Word Review: Bee Movie (DVD)

Ignore the buzz, it isn't not a honey of a movie. Why could it not bee funnier or more entertaining? Hives.

Wilkinsons per Million

An update to the Wilkinsons Genealogy page:

According to the World Names profiler, which uses publicly available telephone directories or national electoral registers, sourced for the period 2000-2005, the Wilkinson name is most popular in the UK with nearly 13,000 Wilkinsons per million (Wpm). [Wpm is my new favorite acronym and new favorite metric.]

Australia is second with just over 850 Wpm. New Zealand comes in third at 816 Wpm. The U.S. is fourth at 232 Wpm. Wilkinsons are most prevalent in the northern region of the UK, where there are a whopping 3402 Wpm.

The World Names profiler also reports that the most popular first names for Wilkinsons worldwide are (in order) Timothy, Wayne, Eric, Caroline, Amanda, Dennis, Harold, Darren, Claire, and Anne. [I'll have to take their word on that one, since I don't have any Wilkinsons in my family with any of those names.]

The 21-Word Review: A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

The man has done his homework on geography of my city, but why must all of these books start with race?

The 21-Word Review: Meet the Robinsons (DVD)

My son is absolutely convinced that this movie is a prediction of his future life (except the orphan part, I assume).

The 21-Word Review: Flight Plan (DVD)

Three fourths of a great movie. Over an hour of riveting plot and intense acting blown by a gigantic implausible ending.

The 21-Word Review: Cloverfield (DVD)

An old fashioned monster movie. No cheap scares, no gratuitous gore. Add some bad Japanese lip-synch and it's a classic.

The 21-Word Review: World Without End by Ken Follett

If you liked the first one, you'll like this one. If you found the first one simplistic and pedantic, same here.

The 21-Word Review: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (DVD)

Affleck the younger is terrific, but surely a group of professional writers could come up with a shorter title (and film).

The 21-Word Review: Into the Wild (DVD)

In his haste to canonize Saint Christopher, Spiccoli neglected to include the passages where Chris was willfully ignorant and criminally selfish.

The latest addition to the Famous Wilkinsons page

I have added a new entry to the Famous Wilkinsons page at the tragically neglected Wilkinsons on the Web site. This could be the most famous Wilkinson yet.

More famous than General James Wilkinson, commander of the army under George Washington (and rumored to be a traitor by various contemporary scallywags)? Yes!

More famous than Laura Wilkinson, diver extraordinaire and star of the opening ceremonies in China (watch when the U.S. enters)? No doubt!

More famous than Tom Wilkinson, star of "Batman" and more other high-quality films than I can list here? Of course!

More famous than Nobel Prize winner Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (Chemistry, 1973)? Way!

I am speaking, of course, of Kendra Wilkinson - reality show star, Playboy Playmate, and Hugh Hefner "girlfriend". Check out her impressive biography and be awed.

In all seriousness, she's gorgeous (as are all Wilkinsons) and has probably made more money in her short 20 years than I will make in all of mine. So, props to you, Kendra. Glad to have you in the family.

Ford Explorer Gas Mileage 2008

It's been a few years since my very early post on gas mileage and the feasibility of converting to a hybrid, so I think it's time to revisit for my reader(s).

As a certified numbers geek, I record all of the mileage and gas information every time I fill up my car (a 1997 Ford Explorer with very little else to recommend it unless you count "character" dents). Every few years, to the chagrin of my loved ones, I sit down and type all of the numbers into a spreadsheet and make pretty graphs.

Like this one, showing the price of gas over the last few years.


Ah, but everyone has seen those graphs before on the news ... every night ... ad nauseum. What's more interesting for the "trade in for a hybrid or keep the SUV" analysis is how that translates into dollars per week. That one looks like this:


The big spike is from the weekend that we drove a few hundred miles to my 20th high school reunion (old I am indeed). Usually we take the family minivan/mobile restaurant/garbage collector on such trips, but this one was taken sans offspring. The mobile entertainment unit was left behind so that the grandparents could tote the kids around in our absence. Long trips in the Explorer are few and far between due to my wife's insistence that it is "as comfortable as pine bench seats at a Pentecostal tent revival" (paraphrasing).

The conclusion that the spike is due to miles and not a sudden increase in the cost of fuel is backed up by the miles per week graph, included here to increase the amount of time that you will have to spend downloading this entry:


What is interesting to see in that graph is the effect of moving closer to work at the beginning of 2007. The weekly toll is down from the 150-200 mile range into the 75-125 mile range. If it weren't for those ubiquitous 30 mile trips to the airport every few weeks, the number would be even lower. (Yes, there's a train to the airport. No, I don't take it anymore. Driving is faster. I trade 45 extra minutes with my family for a few microdegrees of global warming. I'll plant a tree.)

Of course, the graph that gets me in the most trouble with the local Green Mafia (they still rough you up, but with organic blackjacks made from recycled tires) is the miles per gallon graph:


That highway-only reunion trip made for some great MPG numbers. The other spike is only explainable by my writing down the wrong mileage numbers one time or by a secret conspiracy by the Ford Motor Company to exaggerate the capabilities of obsolete vehicles. Over the last few months, I've been trying out some of the hypermiler techniques (not the crazy things like turning off the engine or drafting behemoths, but the coasting and slow acceleration stuff), which is why the mileage goes up towards the end. Or it could be a statistical anomaly. I'm sticking with the former, as the latter implies that I'm aggravating other commuters unnecessarily.


Now for the analysis. As before, the two models considered are a low-end Toyota Prius and the much more desirable Acura. According to Kelly Blue Book, the current numbers are:

Model	Price	Net Price + Tax (6%)	MPG
Acura	$30,240	$32,054	30
Prius	$21,340	$22,620	60

I'm using the high-end MPG estimates here to get the most favorable pro-hybrid results. KBB claims I could get about $2000 in a trade-in on my Explorer, but I seriously doubt it. Let's use $0 for the trade-in and assume I'd just keep the truck for hauling supplies to various charitable functions and lugging 2x4s to build play structures in the backyards of unsuspecting neighbors.

Since the last analysis, there have been some major changes. Gasoline, of course, is more expensive. However, due to demand the price for a hybrid has also risen - exacerbated by my now worthless trade-in. Also, I drive about 75 fewer miles a week than the last time this exercise was attempted.



As a result, it now makes even less sense to buy a hybrid for the fuel savings. Even if gas rose to $9 a gallon, it would still take over 10 years to make up the price of the cars through fuel savings. In fact, gas would have to rise to over $42 a gallon to pay off the Prius in 5 years - at which point the country would be in flames and driving to work would be the least of my worries.

I agree that gas is too expensive, and I'll probably be one of the first on my block to buy an all-electric vehicle. But it won't be for the gas savings alone. Those numbers still just don't work out.

The 21-Word Review: Prince Caspian (In-Flight Movie)

The Peter Jackson version was better. The Ents were more interesting, Gimli was funnier, and lusting after Arwen wasn't considered creepy.