Considering there is no chance that I will ever work for Barack Obama’s campaign (again) I’ll start my disagreement.

Did the surge work? Well, yes and no. When you put more people in a location to ’secure’ a place, obviously things are going to get more ’secure.’ If there is a solider walking down every street every six hours instead of once every two days the street is going to be a bit safer, because you simply will not have time to do anything malicious. Did the ’surge’ bring ‘peace’, yes, I think that was pretty inevitable.

Now, the question should be: Was it necessary to put more American lives on the line? That is a matter for debate. Obviously it seems to have at least helped our situation somewhat, but there is no proof that the progress that was made was due to an increase in troops. It would take a political solution to slow violence and insurgency, which was made before and during the ’surge.’

So did it work? Well, it obviously did help.
Was it necessary? I don’t really know, and I don’t think anyone really can say for sure what would happen had we not gone in with more troops.

What is the correct, real, non BS talking point? “Any time we put troops into battle they are going to do the job we ask them to, and in this case we asked them to increase the peace in Baghdad and they did that job. Was that increase necessary is a matter for debate, and I feel we would be at the same place today without that ’surge’, but the discussion now should not be what worked and what did not, the discussion should be focused on how we move forward. And, ultimately, how we leave Iraq.”

Simple.
Never going to be said.
But simple.

I was a Netflix subscriber many a year ago and signed up for this class action lawsuit that somebody filed against them. The lawsuit was for changing the queue length (or ‘throttling’) so it would take longer to recieve new DVDs for those who rented a lot of DVDs in a month (and thus cost Netflix more money in postage than they made in the monthly subscription payment.) This would have been OK, and they still do it, but at the time they didn’t actually tell anybody they did it. Instead, they advertised “One Day Delivery” and “Unlimited Rentals” when, in reality, you could not get “One Day Delivery” and “Unlimited Rentals” if you had already rented x number of movies in a month. Pretty simple false advertising.

Oops.

So, as a long-since-discontinued subscriber I still qualified for part of the settlement awarded to early subscribers. That settlement: A free month of Netflix, without having to actively cancel my subscription afterwards.

This got stuck in the appeals process for a few years and just yesterday I got the email I had been waiting for:

Dear Nick,

As a member of the Chavez vs. Netflix settlement class, you are eligible for a free month of Netflix on your choice of the 1, 2, or 3 out at-a-time plans.

Only plans with up to 3 out at-a-time are eligible for the free month. If you choose the 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 out at-a-time plan you will receive a discount equal to the cost of the 3 out at-a-time plan (currently $16.99).

At the end of your free or discounted month, your account will be automatically cancelled and you will need to return all Netflix DVDs.

To claim this benefit please click on the following link:
http://www.netflix.com/remedy

To claim this benefit, you need to:

[1] Choose a plan
[2] Verify your information
[3] Start your free or discounted month

This benefit will expire one year from today.

Learn more about this settlement at:
http://www.netflix.com/settlement

-The Netflix Team

SRC: 20080717IFSETL
(c)1997-2008 Netflix, Inc. 100 Winchester Circle, Los Gatos, CA 95032
This message was mailed to [xxxxxx@gmail.com].

The moral of the story? Don’t advertise what you know you don’t provide and then not tell your customers you are withholding service.

I went to Six Flags Great America yesterday and bought a season pass with parking. Cost me $160 after all was said and done. And I promptly went to go on their new “Wild Mouse” coaster “The Dark Knight”

I waited 120 minutes in line for a short 3 minute video presentation of Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent saying he is going to clean up Gotham and then ‘The Joker’ ‘hijacks’ the feed and you are let out a door to the loading area of the ride.

As you walk in you see yourself on a LCD screen that has a fisheye camera right above it, and a computer puts a joker mask on your face. It is a cool bit of face recoginition and real-time 3D rendering, but it got kinda annoying quickly.

Then you get to the ride. You enter a car that has 4 seats (the coaster is on a continuous loop, the cars are always moving) and you immediately go up a hill to the top of the coaster. You do a bunch of tight turns with things that have ‘joker’ grafitti on them, like mini school busses and walls and such, and after being annoyingly lurched back and forth you go down the first hill. It is about as steep and dramatic as a kids ride. You get back up to another level where you go by more set pieces with grafitti that light up as you go by them, but the car is going so fast that you can’t really tell what the items are. You go down and up one more time and you do a few more turns at a high rate of speed until you are finally slowed down and sent back into the station. Total time on the ride had to be less than 2 minutes, with the total time outside of a chain-lift or break felt like 30 seconds. You went so fast you cannot see the set pieces, which I would imagine is the entire point of the ride. And when you can see them, they look unoriginal.

Think of it like Disney World/Land’s Haunted Mansion, only the HM is slower and has WAY better designed set pieces (which are actually rather fun to look at.)

The Dark Knight is by far the worst waste of 120 minutes in a line that I have ever had at a theme park. It is a kids ride. I wish I could stand outside the line of that ride and tell everyone how absolutely horrible it is. If you want a ‘Batman’ ride, go over to Six Flags Great America’s crown jewel, Batman: The Ride. It is one of the first inverted roller coasters ever made, has great loops, and is just a joy to ride on. It has some of those ’set pieces’ too, only you are having so much fun on the ride itself you don’t really need to notice them.

I was about ready to go and demand my $160 back. Thank god Six Flags has so many other good rides like Superman and Raging Bull which are worth waiting for.

I decided to go to Target and pick up a PS3. It was an impulse buy, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m not keeping this thing longer than 90 days so it really isn’t going to cost me anything in the long run.

I also picked up Grand Theft Auto 4: Liberty City. Let me say this: That game is phenomenal, especially on a 50″ Plasma TV at 1080P.

GTA is pretty simple: Steal cars to complete missions. In the new version you need to get girlfriends to complete the game.

Well, I decided to go all out this time, just to impress this virtual girl. I hijacked an ice cream truck and took the girl to play pool while children’s music came out of the ice cream truck’s speakers. There is nothing quite like running over people in an ice cream truck while trying to impress a girl, in HD.

I went and watched The Dark Knight in Evanston at midnight. Good movie. I think Ledger’s performance is a little too hyped up for its own good, and that Aaron Eckhart’s performance was way ‘under-hyped.’

I think that, had I gone into it not expecting to see a ‘great’ performance I would have probably enjoyed Ledger’s character a lot more.

I did enjoy how Nolan used Chicago in this film. He didn’t fake it up like he did in Batman Begins but rather used Chicago as… well… Chicago. I like how they took a CTA bus and filled in the C part of the logo with a G. I must have been the only person who sorta chuckled at that in the theatre.

As a whole I wasn’t all too impressed. Maybe it was just that I had been excited for so long that nothing could match my expectations. Anyone who says ‘Best Picture’ or ‘Best Supporting Actor’ is crazy. It is hardly a ‘Best Picture’-worthy movie, and as for the Ledger performance… it was good, but it was more that I enjoyed where Nolan and Ledger took the Joker character than just that Ledger was ‘amazing’ in it. I think Best Adapted Screenplay is a given for TDK, and maybe Best Director to Nolan, but to be honest I just don’t think it is worth being considered for best picture. Generally if I want something to be nominated for Best Picture, it needs to be because it has a legitimate chance at winning the damn thing, not just because they need to have x number of movies in the category.

Honestly I think the biggest disappointment I had with the film is that Ledger’s death really overshadowed so many other good things about it. I know, I know, he is dead. And that is really sad, he really was a good actor. But does that mean we should focus our attention only on his character and performance and ignore the fine performances of Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman? No.

Next up, Navy Pier IMAX… although it may take a few weeks for me to get a good seat down there.

Oh, and the joker has a good pen trick. You’ll have to see it.