Is it just me?

Or are other people also annoyed by restaurants that try to make it seem like the wait staff is paying rapt attention to you and really, really cares, and they try to make it seem this way by making the waiter/waitress memorize the order rather than write it down?

Today, I took my first vacation from work during my vacation this week (meaning, I only talked to someone at work about work on my cellphone for 15 minutes, and I sent an email), and we went out to lunch, then took The Childrens to see Bolt in Real D 3D. The movie was sort of typical Disney animated movie. Kinda thinly plotted, but with great animation and emotion. But, holy smokes, the 3D was incredible!

Really. I've never seen anything like it. This new generation of all-digital 3D using DLP projectors and circular-polarizing filters is jaw-droppingly realistic. They charge $2 extra for the 3D version at my local cinema vs. the normal version, and it's worth every penny. We went to the weekday first showing matinee, so it came to $7/person, which isn't bad at all.

And these Cinemark guys also have this fancy snackpack thing that I've never seen before. (I've only been to the competing movie theater chain prior to this, so I don't know how long it's been around.) They have a snackpack that comes in a box like a Happy Meal box, only there's a spot for a drink inside, and a place to put the popcorn, and a place to put a candy snack, and then you close the top and it has access portals. There's a tilt-out door on the side that lets you at the popcorn. There's a hole in the top that lines up with the straw hole on the soda lid, and you poke your straw through the top and leave the drink inside, and the candy sticks out the top on the other side.

Cool. Everything is self-contained, yet completely accesible. We experienced no spills.

As for the saga with the compooter, that is now solved. I got everything I needed to know from PC Pitstop's Viruses, Spyware, Adware and Hijack This Logs forums. The really cool thing is that they have people who provide support absolutely free. You run a couple programs, post the logfiles, and someone gets back to you pretty quickly with customized directions. I had some dude named Juliet who walked me through the cleaning procedure. I actually went a whole day before realizing that Juliet wasn't a dude's name. I had read it as some foreign variation of "Julian" on account of it was in a peecee support forum, and who would expect to come across a woman in a place like that?

Anyways, I highly recommend these folks if you find your compooter gets hijacked or your virus checker starts complaining about stuff but doesn't actually seem to be able to fix it.

Tomorrow, I think I'll have the train setup finished. The Mrs. picked up some new track sections I needed to get the layout right, and I screwed down most of the trestle risers and started tacking down the track. I didn't quite get halfway through the tacking process before we had to split for the lunch/moovie thing. The train runs much more reliably already, though, as the track isn't all misalinged everywhere. I got through the part that is facing out towards the room, and not the inner arc or the side against the wall. Meaning, I got all the parts that MaxieC bangs into all the time.

I'll post some pictures when I gets em.