Trouble On The Line and at Work

Ok, first of all, while the phone is technically working and I can receive calls, it's very static-y. I can hear the speaker...just not very well. (In fact, for a brief moment when I picked up the phone this morning, I got the buzzing sound despite changing the DSL filter before the regular tone returned.) A man from Verizon apparently came around while I was at work. It would seem that the problem is on an outside box and he didn't have the right tools. According to the note he left, he'll be back tomorrow or Thursday.

(The Internet, on the other hand, is working just fine. Changing the DSL filter does seem to have solved that problem.)

Work was nothing but a pain today. I haven't worked 8 hours in over a month, the weather was lousy again (though I managed to dodge the storms coming and going), and people were cranky. One older man was being a pain, needling me about writing the price on his check because of his eye problem and leaning hard on the receipt/check printer. You really can't lean on that. It jams easily...and did so. I fixed it, but I was so annoyed that I slapped the top down too hard. When I tried to run his check, it jammed. I ended up with a broken receipt/check printer, three annoyed managers, one annoyed old man with no check, and having to move to another register.

I watched the first hour or so of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom this morning and this evening. I loved Temple of Doom as a kid, and as the first Indiana Jones movie we had on video (we taped it off of HBO sometime around 1986-87), it's the one we saw most and that I have the fondest memories of. Even so, watching it now as an adult, I see the problems and the reasons this is the least well-regarded of the original three Indy movies. Indy's lady Willie does nothing but whine and scream, almost all of the non-white or Chinese characters are treated either condescendingly or as villains, and some scenes (such as the sequence in the pit with the guy ripping out the heart) are so gross, I'm surprised this didn't get an R, much less a PG-13.

On the other hand, there's a lot of fun to be had here. There's a lot of great gags and jokes (many at prissy Willie's expense). Some of the action set pieces, from the opening musical number in the Shanghai nightclub to the famous mine train ride to the bridge finale, are still genuinely thrilling. The special effects are still well-done, especially once we get into the "Temple of Doom" itself.

Last Crusade is still my favorite, but Temple of Doom is fun if you can get around Willie and the Asian stereotypes.