The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Quote - Douglas Adams

"Captain, sir!" cried Number Two - for he was their leader - "Permission to report, sir"
"Yes, Number Two, welcome back and all that. Find any hot springs?" said the Captain despondently
"No, sir!"
"Thought you wouldn't"
Number Two strode through the crowd and presented arms before the bath
"We have discovered another continent!"
"When was this?"
"It lies across the sea..." said Number Two, narrowing his eyes significantly, "to the east!"
"Ah."
Number Two turned to face the crowd. He raised his gun above his head. This is going to be great, thought the crowd.
"We have declared war on it!"
Wild abandoned cheering broke out in all corners of the clearing - this was beyond all expectations.
"Wait a minute," shouted Ford perfect. "What a minute!"
he leaped to his feet and demanded silence. After a while he got it, or at least the best silence he could hope for under the circumstances; the circumstance were that the bagpiper was spontaneously composing a national anthem.
"Do we have to have the piper?" demanded Ford.
"Oh yes," said the Captian, "we've given him a grant."
Ford considered opening this idea up for debate but quickly decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged rock at the piper and turned to face Number Two.
"War?" he said.
"Yes!" Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Perfect.
"On the next continent?"
"Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!"
"But there's no one even living there yet!"
Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.
Number Two's gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect his eyes were like a couple of mosquito that hover puposefully three inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes, fly swats or rolled newspapers.
"I know that," he said, "but there will be one day! So we have left an open-ended ultimatum."
"What?"
"And blown up a few military installations."
The Captain leaned forward out of his bath.
"Military installations, Number Two?" he said.
For a moment the eyes wavered.
"Yes, sir, well potential military installations. All right...trees."
The moment of uncertainty passed - his eyes flickered like whips over his audience.
"And," he roared, "we interrogated a gazelle!'

Predators (2010)

Like many people my age, I loved Predator growing up. Arnold kicking the crap out of a creature more technologically advanced…the movie was just wicked. Of course I watched all the sequels, and none of them where as good as the first.

Walking into see Predators I was rather excited. I hadn’t seen many previews for it, but the theater was as packed as I thought it would be.

The movie starts off with this guy named Royce falling from the sky.

*side note – I spent the whole movie looking at this guy, trying to remember what other movie I had seen him in…I think it was a war movie…but even after looking at IMDB, I still have no idea…maybe he has one of those faces.

Back to the movie….

Royce awakens in mid fall and finds himself in the middle of this strange, humid, jungle. While exploring his surrounding and trying to get his bearings, he meets up with other people who arrived the same way he did. At the end it ends up being

-         A Mexican drug cartel enforcer (Danny Trejo….he is in like everything!)

-         Spetsnaz soldier (the Russian equivalent to the British SAS, or our Delta Force…bad ass MoFos)

-         IDF (Israel Defense Force) sniper – the only chick in the group

-         Revolutionary United Force Officer (RUF) from Sierra Leone (I believe)

-         A death row inmate

-         Yakuza enforcer (to me….about as bad ass as you can get!)

-         And oddly….doctor Edwin

It is a strange mix, and none of them know how they got there…but they all have one thing in common, they are hunters, the best of the best.

So they chose to stick together in this strange jungle and while exploring, they stumble upon empty cages and a dead US Special Forces soldier. Now at a completely lost, they move to higher ground…only to see an alien sky looking down on them and they realize they are not on Earth anymore.  

The group has their first encounter with a ravenous pack of alien beast like dogs. The group fans out and do what they do best…survive. After the attack, Royce, who has somehow become the leader, decided that they are being hunted like a game and the dogs where just sent out to flush them out and show the hunters how the group would react. After a few minutes, they realize that they are one man down and they here the Mexican’s cry’s for help. They find him in a middle of the field. The Israeli wants to go help him, but Royce and the RUF said that it was a trap and they has both used this method to hunt in the past.

Sick of being the hunted, Royce suggest they take the upper hand and follow the “dogs” and they find the hunters encampment and find a captive Predator. While in the encampment, three larger Predators attack and the RUF solider dies (always killing off the minorities first). After, the Israeli confesses of the original Predator attack in 1987 (brining in the original movie…very nice)

While leaving the encampment, they meet a survivor, an air assault soldier (played by Laurence Fishburne) how has survived by scavenging and hiding on the planet for 7-8 years. He has gone completely insane, and although he is pretending to help him….he did not survive this long by helping others and soon the group realizes that he is just trying to kill them so he can use their things.

They escape from the soldier, only to find themselves face to face with the warrior Predators again.

This movie has a very good ending…obvious…but good and sadly I felt like they did more talking and walking then fighting and dying. I would have loved to see more action, but you can’t have everything. But this is not a movie you need to go see in theaters. Take your time…check it out when it comes out on DVD…save the $10 for something else.

Excel Trick - Splitting Data into Multiple Columns

Excel to me can be the greatest program…or the worst, depending. I am always finding new tricks and formulas to get the cells to do what I want.

Recently I had a file of over 3,000 names. I wanted to add them to our system, however, the file had the first and last name in one cell together and I needed them in separate cells.

I have found a formula for this in the past, which works, but I forget it more than I remember it. So many excel formulas running around on bits of post-it around my desk…rather crazy.

So I found this after messing around for a while and getting sick of it.

So the steps are quick and easy:

1) You want to insert a few extra columns (Since I was dealing with names I added 3 or 4 because some people hyphenate their last name or included their middle or just had 2)

2) Hightlight the column you want to separate (for me it was the column with the full name)

3) In the top tool bar select Data

4) Click on Text to Columns option

5) Choose Delimited

6) Select Next

7) Select Space  and Treat consecutive Delimiters as one– no other option needs to be checked

8) Select Next

9) Select General (may already be preselected)

10) Select Finish

Now that was quick and easy and saved me so much time with 3,000 + names.

I emailed my best friend and told her about this, she said…damn I could use that. Don’t forget! It got me to thinking, maybe it isn’t just us who could use this. SO..I tossed it into a blog…so that me and my best friend can reference it in the future and other people can find it and hopefully get some help from it 

Patient Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel

My best friend recently lent me Patient Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel. In my search for good zombie books, I had seen it a few times, but never picked it up for one reason or another, but after it was handed to me, and I was looking for my next zombie book to read, I picked it up. My friend, although he said it was good, warned me that it did take a little getting into and had its slow moments. Of course, I am thinking, this is a zombie book…how many slow moments can it have.

The story takes place in Maryland, and Joe Ledger, our star, hero and savior is on leave “suspension” from the MDPD. He gets kidnapped by these secret government officials and taken to a top über secrete military recruitment facility where after taking on a zombiefied guy of a man he had believed he had shot and killed, he is recruited by a mysterious man and leader of the Department of Military Scientist (DMS) Mr. Church. The zombie virus has actually been developed by a terrorist organization, who want to bring death to America…in a literal way.

Joe cautiously signs on with the DMS and becomes the leader of Team Echo, which consists of guys from all over military and government organizations (it reminded me a little of the “Men in Black, Will Smith would have been Joe, and these guys would have been the rest of the men in the room applying to the MIB).  His team consisted of Top, Skip, Ollie, and Rabbit. Team Echo is not the only team, Grace Courtland, who has been with the DMS for a while, is another of the team leaders, and although she was wary of Joe at first learns to respect him and trust him in no time.   

One thing that I found really funny was the Doctor. Dr Hu. yes that is right. Doctor Who!! He was the only one yelling Zombie from the beginning, there always is one…

Sabastian Gault, a pharmaceutical zillionaire, in order to earn even more money (greedy prat) decides to work with terrorists are die hard Muslims who truly hate America and her corrupt ways. He joins up with El Mujahid and his beautiful and sexually alluring, scientific savant wife Amirah to develop a virus that will spread across the world giving his pharmaceutical companies the chance to make billions. Of course, you can’t trust terrorist and Amirah seduces Gault while her husband plots a way to bring down America. Gault thinks he has Amirah and El Mujahid under control and when he tells them that the Zombie virus only needs to be at a level 3, Amirah continues to work undeterred until she reaches and surpasses  level 10 for her husband to destroy America with. Level 10 being that no longer is the virus just passed through a bit, but can contaminate the air and bring a city to its knees within hours.

And it is the DMS jobs to find out about the plot, and stop it before it is to late, and the 4^th of July is just days away!

As I mentioned originally this book was a little slow to get into and it took me longer to read then a normal zombie book (weeks longer). I actually put this book down a few times and even re-read Broken Angel by Richard K Morgan in-between (that is an awesome book by the way). But once I start a book, I need to finish it; at least it was not as bad as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…that was just horrible. It was not the best zombie book I had ever read, but it did have a lot of twists and turns. Although I would never recommend anyone to go buy it, if you have a few days and you will be down by the pool enjoying the summer sun and a friend has it…pick it up. It is not bad and you may enjoy it.

Although I did not love this book, I will try another Joe Ledger Novel… you never know.