JeffMilesSays.com | Let’s make the world a better place! | Faith, Family, Fitness, Fun, & FunctionsJeff is a husband, father and computer programmer who loves to read, work out, watch movies, and spend time with his family.
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Carrie Anne Miles was born at 12:10 am on 10/2/2009. She weighed 6 pounds 3 ounces and was 19 inches long. Mommy and baby are doing great!
Be warned, the pictures are full size once you click on them so you will have to scroll around to find the close button in the bottom right corner of the popup.
In Love Happens Burke (Aaron Eckhart) has made lemonade out of lemons by writing a book about how to cope with losing a loved one after his wife dies in a car accident. The movie picks up roughly 3 years after the loss of his wife. He is on a seminar tour that brings him back to his old home town of Seattle, Washington (a place where he does not want to be I might add) where he meets Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) a flower shop owner who leaves random large words behind the hotel art that brushes him off by pretending to be deaf. Throughout the course of the movie Eloise forces Burke to come to grips with his lemons and a romance blooms.
I really liked this movie. Aaron Eckhart & Jennifer Aniston had really good on screen chemistry and the storyline was put together very well. There were points in the movie that I thought conversation would have gone quite different in real life, but the raw emotion displayed by Eckhart is refreshingly good. I was also pleasantly surprised that for a romance there was no skin shown. Dan Fogler provides a great supporting role as Burke’s agent (Lane) and makes things light when necessary but you can tell from the way Burke and Lane interact that they have a lot of history and Lane really is looking out for Burke and wants the best for him as evidenced by a last minute meeting before the executive meeting that he has been trying to setup for Burke. Judy Greer brings a solid performance in her usual role as second chair. In Love Happens I would like to see Judy Greer in a leading role, she is funny enough and a solid enough actress that I think she would be able to pull off a leading role. Time will tell though, if she does though, you heard it here first. Finally, Martin Sheen plays the ex-Marine father of Burke’s deceased wife and he knocks it out of the park. I don’t want to give too much story away otherwise I would tell you how, I can say that there is a reason he has been in the business as long as he has.
Grade: B+
Notable Movies for each actor/actress: (I’m going to try listing movies I think are worth seeing, please let me know if you find it useful)
Aaron Eckhart:
Jennifer Aniston:
Dan Fogler:
Judy Greer:
Martin Sheen (as of this writing he has 218 movies and tv appearances on imdb.com but I haven’t seen a lot of the movies, I have mostly seen him on TV):
Please let me know by adding a comment if you found this review helpful or if you would like me to change the way I do reviews. Also, if you did like the review, please use the share links below to share this blog entry on Facebook, Twitter, etc…
Do you like to cook? So do Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Julia Child (Meryl Streep). Julie & Julia is “based on two true stories” and follows the lives of two women who as Julia Child “love to eat”. In parallel it follows the lives of Julia Child who is forced to find something to do while her diplomat husband is posted in Paris and Julie Powell who is a cubicle dwelling phone operator in New York who by day answers phone calls in the aftermath of 9/11 that feels her life is going nowhere and she needs to do something to add meaning. As part of following the two women and their adventures the movie chronicles the lives shared with their husbands and really shows a parallel between the husbands as well played by Stanley Tucci & Chris Messina.
There are several laugh out loud moments in this movie which was exactly what my wife and I needed as we watched it. One of the best things about the movie for me was the interaction with the husbands and how they were just great guys. In this movie they also explore the inevitable “make it or break it point” that comes with doing anything of value and how anything worth doing is worth pushing through that point and persevering.
Grade: B+
Notable Movies: (I’m going to try listing movies I think are worth seeing, please let me know if you find it useful)
Meryl Streep:
Amy Adams:
Stanley Tucci:
Chris Messina:
Please let me know by adding a comment if you found this review helpful or if you would like me to change the way I do reviews. Also, if you did like the review, please use the share links below to share this blog entry on Facebook, Twitter, etc…
What difference do it make? is a conversation that tells of the relationship between a well to do man with a rough family history and a homeless wise man and how a book has changed their life. It is a conversation about hope, restoration, and how one person’s decision can change the course of history. It tells of how two men from completely different walks of life can have their lives irrevocably intertwined for a cause definitely worth fighting for. Interspersed within the story of Ron and Denver are stories of hope about people who have been affected by the first book Same Kind of Different as Me.
I wish I would have read Same Kind of Different as Me, because I feel like I am catching the game in the second half of the championship game after a blockbuster of a first half. Conversation is swirling around me about events that I don’t have access to but wish that I did. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the book and think that Denver Moore is probably one of the wisest men I have ever read while at the same time having a refreshingly simple outlook on what the Bible actually says. I love how he relays his understanding of the Bible and how we are supposed to live according to it without pulling any punches. He is not afraid to tell it like it is and I love it.
Grade: B+
Related Reading:
The 4-Hour Workweek blew the top off the charts because everyone wanted to know how to get the most out of their day. In this book Timothy Ferriss explains how he went from hopping from unsatisfying job to unsatisfying job to unsatisfying business ownership then into his first mini-retirement. He then goes on to explain how you can outsource your life to live the life you have always dreamed of living.
If I would have started this book at chapter 1 I probably would have liked it. The problem is that through the introductory material you get to know the author and I didn’t like him very much. Actually that is probably not fair, I don’t agree with his outlook on life. I came to this book because I saw all the 4-Hour workweek (p.93) email signatures on other business owner’s emails and thought they might be on to something in terms of increasing productivity. The author has a very selfish goal when it comes to his life, it is all about me, me, me (I will give him credit he does mention that you should help other people in one of the last chapters of the book, but the methods he uses to get to the point where you can help people kind of defeat the purpose in my mind.) Aside from our different outlooks on life he does give some good suggestions on how to manage your time more effectively and I have taken to heart some of them such as periodically asking myself throughout the day if I am being productive or just active. Asking myself that question 3 times a day has definitely helped increase productivity. My outlook is that if you propose a solution to a problem it should at least benefit as many people as it possibly can, but Timothy’s methods are not scalable, someone has to do the work and in my opinion the author’s viewpoint is to use as many people as possible to make your life easier. If everyone tried to use the methods in this book, no one would be able to use the methods in this book because someone has to do the work.
Grade: D (I did find some redeeming things to implement otherwise it would have gotten an F).
Related Reading:
I read an article today on facebook while I was browsing through status updates that the government is thinking that the recession is finally over. They gave the concession that life is still going to be hard for people affected by the recession.
I also read different blog posts postulating what it would have been like on 9/11/2001 if we would have had twitter, facebook, and all the other social media that we have today…and in the light of what happened with the recent recession, the thought scares me…
My status update on my facebook profile caused a discussion where I felt like I might have offended some people and that was not my intent, I didn’t express my opinion very well so this post is an attempt to clarify what I meant. Carin, I’m sorry if I in any way made you feel like the recession is over for everyone and that people are not still being affected by what happened in our economy.
Did our country just go through the largest recession since the 1930’s? We did, some would argue that, but that is not my point with this post. My point is asking the question, did it have to be this way? My answer is no, but with the combination of the national news networks and social media proliferation a situation that could have been turned around was blown way out of proportion and people started reacting out of fear which is never a good thing.
Let me make a confession, I haven’t watched CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or any other national news station since January. Before the election last year I did watch the news because I wanted to stay informed about the candidates and have as much knowledge about who was running so that I could do my civic (and biblical I might add) duty and in the most informed way that I could possible. In my mind there really wasn’t a good candidate, both of the major party candidates had some things right, but also had some pretty major things wrong, but I voted the best way I could. Anyway, back on track. After the election, I shut off the news because I was sick of hearing about the economy. I turned the TV on for about half an hour while I was working one day in January and shut it off after about 30 minutes because I still didn’t want to be hearing about the economy, the national news networks were feeding the fear.
Let’s look at the national news networks for a second, what are they in business for? Take a second to think about it…
They are a business, which means they are in business to make money, regardless of what your product is (in their case it is reporting the news) a person goes into business to make money. They sit around tables planning how they are going to make money and what will make them money. If this wasn’t the case, then the news networks would be non-profit organizations. How does a news network keep people watching their news network? They make people afraid. That’s it.
My mother in law gets my wife a Reader’s Digest subscription every year for Christmas and the issue covers just make me laugh. If you are a RD subscriber, participate in an exercise with me…grab your stack of RD magazines…now ask yourself the question, what sells magazines? Look at your RD covers…
8/1/2009 – Brad Paisley “I’d like to beat up the guy who says…”, The best way to avoid scams… (playing on fear)
7/1/2009 – 50 Secrets your Dentist Won’t Tell You (playing on fear)
5/1/2009 – not too bad, but there is the cancer risk you can switch off…(playing on fear)
4/1/2009 – the shocking truth about cancer tests (playing on fear)
2/1/2009 – keep more of your cash! 29 tips to put YOU back in control (playing on fear)
1/1/2009 – Beat the Cheaters! 9 new scams to avoid. (playing on fear)
12/1/2008 – another not too bad one…maybe they took a break from the fear for the holidays.
11/1/2008 – election issue, health care related…another fearful subject for a lot of people (playing on fear)
10/1/2008 – 13 things your pharmacist won’t tell you (playing on fear)
9/1/2008 – Election ’08 Who’s best for our future, on the bottom 13 things your computer guy won’t tell you…(playing on fear)
8/1/2008 – TEEN DRIVERS AT RISK, Smart Fixes That Save Lives (playing on fear)
7/1/2008 – 41 (WOW) Things Doctors Never Tell You (playing on fear)
Hmm…fluffy the happy dog didn’t make any of the covers…
The point is, news networks make their money by scaring people…that’s what keeps people watching…I remember back in October, Ali Velshi on CNN was backpedaling because people were starting to freak out about the economy. He was telling people to stop freaking out, the problem is he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. On one hand he was talking about the financial collapse, preaching doom and gloom…by the time he told people to stop freaking out, it was too late, the snowball was already rolling.
My theory is that if people would have shot their TVs and stopped littering (I mean twittering) their fear, things wouldn’t have gotten nearly as bad as they did. Dave Ramsey said on his Fox Business show (I don’t know where he got his numbers) that only 4% of the US was affected by the housing “collapse” and it was primarily in areas that were already too inflated to begin with. He went on to say that 68% of the US population thought they were on the verge of losing everything. A 64% gap between reality and perception…where in the world did this gap come from…any guesses? You got it, the national news networks (and everyone facebook and twittering their fear to all the people around them). So now we have 64% of the American population making decisions based on fear, which is never a good thing…Other companies just used the recession as an excuse to trim things they should have trimmed a long time ago. But the end result was panic in the American population because a majority of the population was thinking they were going to lose everything and twittering and facebooking it to everyone they knew causing even more panic.
So now we are dealing with recovering from a recession where too many people lost their jobs because of fear. America will do it, we always do. I just hope we learned our lesson. We’ll see.
My answer to the question what would it have been like on 9/11/2001 (and following) without belittling how bad it was is that it would have been hell on Earth. The fear would have been overpowering. To use a social marketing term, like it did during this recession, fear would have gone viral, but the degree to which it would have gone viral is horrifying…you thought this recession was bad…
Let me make a confession, I haven’t watched CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or any other national news station since January. Before the election last year I did watch the news because I wanted to stay informed about the candidates and have as much knowledge about who was running so that I could do my civic (and biblical I might add) duty and in the most informed way that I could possible. In my mind there really wasn’t a good candidate, both of the major party candidates had some things right, but also had some pretty major things wrong, but I voted the best way I could. Anyway, back on track. After the election, I shut off the news because I was sick of hearing about the economy. I turned the TV on for about half an hour while I was working one day in January and shut it off after about 30 minutes because I still didn’t want to be hearing about the economy, the national news networks were feeding the fear.
I heard today that the government is saying that the recession is over…that’s good to know…it will be a long recovery but America will do it.
I don’t know when the official start of the recession was, but I started my business right before the recession hit, so I have weathered the recession. If you want to see my thoughts on the recession and how I wonder if it needed to be as bad as it was, head on over to my personal blog. In this post, I am going to discuss lessons I learned while weathering the recession.
one of the ideas that I like in his book is the idea of automation. While I don’t feel like people should take things to the extremes that he takes them. Automation is a good thing. Don’t do things you don’t need to be doing and make things as efficient as possible.I learned a lot more than this during the recession, like how I have an amazing wife and family that has stuck with me through some really tough times and for that I am forever grateful. I also learned that I have some great friends and colleagues who have helped me along the way. I also have some great customers and I hope we can continue to help each other make our businesses the best they can be.
Now it is time for your thoughts. What have you learned during this recession?
If you have been following my Facebook or Twitter updates then you know we went to the hospital today because we thought today was the day for little Carrie to arrive.
To get the full story we need to actually back up to last week, here is what has happened up until this point…
Some time in January…just kidding…we won’t go that far back.
Last Wednesday (9/2/2009) Mandy began having contractions to the point where they were about 5 minutes apart. We are advised by the on-call physician to head into the hospital for monitoring. After running around and getting everything ready to go we head towards the hospital. We take Caleb to a friend’s house and another friend stops by to pick up Buster. When we arrive at the hospital we are sent to the OB triage unit for monitoring. After a couple hours they decide that the contractions are not productive and that the cervix is completely closed. So we go pick up Buster and head home (Caleb was already asleep so we leave him at the friend’s house). The next morning we pick up Caleb and go about our merry way. All during this time Mandy is having sporadic contractions.
On Tuesday 9/8/2009 Mandy has an OB appointment and she is dilated to 1 cm and we are told that the Dr. doesn’t think that this baby will go the full 40 weeks (Yay!).
Fast forward to today (I guess it is technically yesterday at this point, but I haven’t gone to sleep yet so for me it is still today). Around 9 am, Mandy starts having more contractions. At 10 am, she is to the point where the contractions are 5 minutes apart and lasting around 60 seconds apiece…so according to our handy dandy discharge papers from last week, it is time to call the doctor and the doctor said no more monkeys jumping…(oops, that’s what Caleb would say) anyway, the doctor says that it is time for Mandy to head to the hospital. I do the stupid thing and alert the whole world via Facebook and Twitter that today is the day….then we finish packing and head to the hospital all the while making arrangements for our two boys (similar setup to last week with a couple different characters thrown in). Once we get to the hospital we head to triage again (we know exactly where to go this time) and are checked in for monitoring. At this point the contractions are still pretty regular but after about two hours (about the time it takes to watch 13 Going on 30
and it is decided that we will head home for the night since the contractions are gone. Mandy was also advised to take the rest of the week off from work, but we will see, she wants to see how she does tomorrow. We’re not happy at this point because we just want to meet our daughter and had gotten our hopes up and then nothing, but we head home anyway (making arrangements for us to get Caleb and Buster back). We get not even 5 minutes from the hospital and the contractions start back up. So the short and skinny is that no one really knows what is going on, but we don’t have a baby girl in our arms yet.
Hopefully you are still around after my long winded telling of the story. I will try to keep people up to date via Facebook and Twitter as much as possible.
So, if any of you are still out there reading the blog, you will notice that I have updated the theme. I was waiting for something to finish copying and I have a new tool that lets me generate basic themes really quickly so I built the new theme quickly one night and have decided to debut it.
For those of you who want to keep closer track of what we are doing, Jeff is on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and Mandy is on Facebook.
For the photo people…here are a few pictures…be prepared, there are a lot of them…enjoy! (no, there are not two pictures missing, WordPress screwed up the alignment.)
I think I have mentioned this before, but Caleb’s first sentence was “I need a puppy.” Well, while we were in St. Louis for Mother’s Day we found the puppy we had been looking for. His name is Buster and he is a soft coated wheaten terrier. Take a look at the boy and his dog below (click the picture to see the full size image).
