Mandy Patinkin leaves Criminal Minds

I know this news is a couple days old but it's something I really wanted to talk about. One of the shows I really enjoy watching is Criminal Minds on CBS. Mandy Pantinkin asked to be released from his contract and has left the show. He cited 'creative differences' but one of the head honchos at CBS said that is nothing but a euphemism for personal issues. Add this to a PBS panel he backed out of on July 11 due to illness. Does this mean that my dear Mandy is sick? Not just *cough cough* sick but sick enough to back out on a starring role on a popular series? A lot of people are comparing this to when he left Chicago Hope. Except he left Chicago Hope to spend more time with his family. Since Mandy hasn't come out and said exactly why he's leaving Criminal Minds, no one beyond the network people know if this is another family issue or what is going on.

I started watching Criminal Minds because it had Mandy Pantinkin in it. Yes, I came to love the other characters, especially computer geek Garcia, but I always felt that Mandy's character was the driving force behind the team. Unless the writers can come up with a character who can be as much of a mentor to the younger agents as Gideon was, I don't see this being a good thing for the show. Last season the team was going through a lot of difficult, emotional times and it was Gideon that was the light of hope that helped them figure out how to handle their situations. I really hope that the writers don't ruin this by tossing in a younger agent. The show needs the older, wiser mentor character in order to survive. Hire an older actor. Make him an ex-agent that the team needs as a consultant. The new agent doesn't have to go into the field. After all, look how much the team needs Garcia and she almost never leaves her office. Just give the already young team the guidance they need to stay a good team.

Mr. Rogers is a BAD GUY?!?!

When I was a kid, I, like many other kids, watched Mr. Rogers. Well now Fox News is telling everyone about a a professor from Louisiana State University is claiming that Mr. Rogers ruined an entire generation. What's that? Let me make some quotes here:

The semester was ending, and as usual, students were making a pilgrimage to his office, asking for the extra points needed to lift their grades to A's.

"They felt so entitled," he recalls, "and it just hit me. We can blame Mr. Rogers."

He is saying that today's college students have been told my Mr. Rogers that they are special and therefore entitled to whatever they want. Let's think this through a bit:

Mr. Rogers was broadcast nationally from 1968 - 2001. His peak was from 1985 - 1986. If we assume that a freshman college student is 17 years old, that means that they were born in 1990. He could very well be talking about senior students though. Those students were born around 1986, just as Mr. Rogers' popularity was starting to wane.

I watched Mr. Rogers and I don't think I'm any sort of entitlement queen. My sister watched Mr. Rogers (and actually she was more of a fan than I was) and she doesn't think she's entitled to anything. A lot of people in my generation watched the show. It's not fair to us or to the memory of Mr. Rogers to say that he ruined an entire generation. If that was true, not only would my generation be messed up but so would the generation before us.

It's really sad when people, including Fox News, feel the need to attack a kind man who spent his days caring about kids and trying to teach them how to do the right things in life. Shame on you, Fox News, for spreading this viciously mean story from a professor who is obviously tired of his students. No one wants a bad grade. That doesn't mean they feel they are entitled to it. It means they want to pass the class and, of course, they are going to do whatever they can to get the better grade, the better GPA because it looks better to people in the "real world." Don't blame Mr. Rogers for something that every kid has been doing since they started handing out letter grades in school.

PC-girl going Mac?

I've always been a PC girl. My Windows machine has always done pretty much what I wanted it to. Now I've run into somewhat of a snag. I do quite a bit of amateur voice acting and lately it's been a lot of singing parts. However, I can't get my Windows-based laptop to mix music properly. So I will be looking into getting a MacBook. I'm currently using Audacity for my voice recording needs. And it does a good job at recording. However, when you go to mix tracks, you can't manipulate one track while you have the other tracks open. Meaning: if you want to mix two vocal tracks with one instrumental track and one of the vocal tracks needs the volume raised. Audacity won't allow you to change the volume on JUST that track. You need to close the other two tracks, try to get the volume on the first track correct then reopen the other tracks to mix. It's time consuming and annoying. I end up with tracks that has the instrumental part too loud most of the time.

After talking to some friends that own Macs, I really like what GarageBand has to offer. I can have a bunch of tracks open and manipulate each track however I want. Of course, the main problem is the price. We purchased our Dell laptop just about a year ago so we're still paying that off, which makes a Mac a bit unaffordable at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to scratch together enough money to buy one soon. It would be nice to be able to work on the music stuff properly.

Granted, I'm not looking to change everything over to Mac. I still enjoy video games, which my PC does very well. But I'm not elitist. I know that certain machines do certain things better than other machines do. I'm OK with that. I just need to find which machine does what I want and does it well. And maybe I can branch out with some other media-based projects with it at the same time.

Dream Day Honeymoon

I enjoy playing hidden object games. Tonight I gave Dream Day Honeymoon from Big Fish Games a try. This is a sequel to Dream Day Wedding. In the wedding version, you are helping Jenny get ready for her big day. The game mixes the traditional hidden object "find these things in this picture" game with a little bit of Memory and a little bit of Choose Your Own Adventure. The honeymoon version of the game is basically the exact same game, only you are helping Jenny with her honeymoon instead of her wedding. It's still a fun game and I really enjoyed it. The Memory and Choose Your Own Adventure mini-games change the game up a little bit. I've found that a lot of hidden object games tend to get boring after the first few levels. The scenes don't change a whole lot, just the list changes. So after the first few levels, it gets easier to find things instead of harder. Dream Day keeps you on your toes by tossing the mini-games in every couple of levels.

If you enjoy hidden object games, I think you'd really enjoy both Dream Day Wedding and Dream Day Honeymoon.

Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix

On Sunday morning, the family went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I haven't read any of the books but my husband has so we tend to walk away from these movies with two completely different opinions. To me, this movie seemed a bit jumbled. There was a lot going on and it didn't seem like anything really truly got explained. Things seemed to happen suddenly then they ended just like that. There were some very good and very entertaining parts (the Weasley twins just need an entire movie dedicated to them) but I'm hoping that this movie sets up a lot of stuff for the next one. I think I'd like it a lot better if I thought of it as a prequel to the next movie instead of a sequel to an already established world.

Jump Start World

For those geeks out there with small children, there is now a computer game that is a perfect learning tool for the youngsters. Jump Start World is an educational game that starts with Kindergarten and goes up to Second Grade. Since my daughter will be going into kindergarten in the fall, I'll be talking about that particular version of it. The game encompasses 12 "Adventure Packs" with the first two packs included in the purchase of the game. (The additional packs are purchased at $8 each. Your credit card will automatically be charged each time your child finished a pack.) As your child progresses through the game, his/her status is updated via the internet to a parental tool. Now, the child is not actually playing on the internet so there are no worries that something bad will get downloaded.

When you click on the Parental Tool icon, which is separate from the game icon, you'll get a variety of options. From something as mundane as picking which holidays the game characters celebrate to the terrific page that tracks how your child does on each activity. For that part, you'll get to choose which pack you want to check on. Then you will get a list of what activities are contained in that pack, such as counting from 1 to 10 or matching lowercase letters with the uppercase letter, and a percentage on how well the child did in that area. It's a wonderful feeling to see the 100% pop up everywhere. It also lets you know which areas your child needs to work on so you can help them offline if necessary.

My daughter truly loves this game. Almost every night she asks me if she can play it and I have no problems letting her play it for a little while each night. And she knows that she can tell me when she's having a problem with a particular area so I can help her work on it. While this shouldn't replace a formal education of some sort, it is a great addition to help reinforce concepts. I would recommend it to anyone with small children and a computer.

Finding a place in cyberspace

I'm not really sure what I want to do with this space yet. I already have a ton of different blogs for different things. I have a music blog and a jdorama blog and a personal blog. So what do I want to do here? I suppose I can post about geeky type news things but that is kinda boring and you can get news in a ton of other places. I guess I'll just play it by hand until I get a good feeling for this place.

On the geeky news front, Sony has dropped the price of the PS3 by $100. We still don't plan on buying one. Maybe if it were to drop a bit farther or if something truly amazing came out on it. As it is, we are really happy with the Xbox 360 and Wii we currently have.

Movie Stuff

On Sunday, the family went to the movies to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. It wasn't an amazing film but it was pretty good. Though I'll admit that I had some problems with Sue's hair being too blonde and her eyes seemed weird too. I know Jessica Alba is wearing contacts but these contacts seemed different from the ones in the first film. The Silver Surfer was awesome. Overall, not a terrible movie. Last night, the husband and I saw Transformers. This movie was amazing. I think a lot of people were expecting too much from it though. The Transformers cartoon was made to sell toys. If you think that there is "more" to them, you are definitely looking for something that isn't there. The live-action movie (since there is a cartoon movie, I'll make the distinction) doesn't have any deep meanings hidden in the plot. Heck, the plot itself is pretty much "Find the cube before the bad guys." It has wonderful graphics, some really good acting and a great soundtrack. Despite what many people think, it's not going to "rape my childhood" and I wish people would stop using that phrase.