Sunday, September 19, 2004

It’s been a productive weekend - cleaned the apartment, laundry, church, lunch with the ‘rents, the Redskins game (they played like poo-poo this week - what happened?), etc. I spent a couple of hours cleaning up my computer yesterday - purged some stuff, installed and ran SpyBot, installed the upgrades to Firefox and Thunderbird, and managed to catch some interesting stuff on the tube in the process.

First up, on the History Channel yesterday, I caught an episode of Command Decisions and an episode of Decisive Battles. I had seen these shows a few weeks ago - one discussed the legend and battles of Spartacus against the Romans, which I found really fascinating. What was cool is that the show uses video game technology to show what the battle must have looked like. The other from earlier was about the Battle of Waterloo, and what I like is that they lead you step by step through each part of the battle and pause to give the audience a chance to pick from multiple choice questions on which step to take next. Very cool.

Anyway, yesterday the episode of Command Decisions was about the Athenians battle against the Persians. I didn’t realize it until later, but this was the battle from which Philipedes (sp?) ran 26.2 miles to Marathon to report the battle won and then died on the spot. It was interesting to have the battle laid out with the questions periodically about what should be done next.

The episode of Decisive Battles was the Battle of Adrianople - the Romans against the Huns who crossed the Danube River. If they had taught this stuff like this when I was in school, I would have been completely fascinated. At one point, I looked up at the TV to see who the scholar was that was talking to find that it was Victor Davis Hanson. It was kind of cool to see the person whose name I see all over the blogosphere.

OK, so next was mindless fluff TeeVee - a little What Not to Wear in the afternoon. While flipping around the channels, I happened upon a movie with J-Lo and Vincent D’Onofrio that looked really familiar, but I couldn’t think of what it was or what it was called. I just remember that it was pure evil and that while it was visually interesting (and disturbing), I did not like it one bit. Turns out that it was The Cell. Frankly, I’m surprised they were able to clean that one up enough to show on TV at all - it’s quite gruesome.

Later, I watched Panic Room on TNT. For those who may be interested, TNT will be showing From the Earth to the Moon beginning October 1. It’s one of the best miniseries out there - I rank it #2 behind Band of Brothers and just ahead of Lonesome Dove.

I’m debating whether or not to watch the Emmy Awards tonight. I’m only sort of interested to see if The Amazing Race wins again for Best Reality Show. I’m thinking if they won last year, then they have a good shot at winning again this year. Although, American Idol might be in the hunt. Who knows?