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Hanso Foundation Updated

The Hanso Foundation has been updated. "Mental Health Appeal || a drive for a better future"

The Hanso Foundation’s Mental Health Appeal is a world-spanning system of clinics seeking revolutionary new treatments. It is nothing short of a crusade to rid us all of the spectre of debilitating illnesses that truly hold hostage the human race’s drive to a better future.

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Cars worth the watch!

Saw Cars (offical site) over the weekend and was very impressed! The storyline has been done before and some of the actors are comically (at least to me) typecast playing the same characters from their other movies but it is great story, unbelievable animation, and a good time. The brothers from Car Talk make a cameo which I found very entertaining since I periodically catch Car Talk on NPR (my favorite NPR show remains Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me).

I found the opening sequence so unbelieveably realistic, for a moment, I questioned whether or not they filmed a real car to start. This movie used 2300 CPU years which means your home computer would have had to be running since 300 b.c. to make this movie; granted, your home computer would have taken much longwe since it probably doesn’t have enough processing power to begin with. Pixar overstressed NFS and had to replace it with SAN.

…the NFS, Brandeau confirmed that it was woefully inadequate for the demands of the new movie. "A gigabyte of memory on our file server heads was nowhere near good enough," he said, adding that Pixar needed something in the region of 32 Gbytes.

… Brandeau and his team found salvation in a SAN. … Pixar eventually opted to replace the NFS with a SAN based on an EMC CX700 box, linked to Dell Linux servers running parallel file system software from startup Ibrix.
[Source]

For those that haven’t followed, eons ago The Muppet Movie ran jokes during their credits. In X-Men:The Last Stand, the credits started running and the bulk of the theatre left. Those in the know remained seated for a bonus scene after the credits. (I am not issuing spoilers at this time but will advise staying to the very end). Cars (IMBD) did something similar running some footage during credits then it went to just credits and most people left. Cars also has a bonus scene at the very end.

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Bizarre Dream

So apparently I was chosen to be a guest speaker somewhere for some unknown topic. The dream starts in my hotel meeting some strange people that want to shoot (project through the air) to the hotel on the other side of the street which is where my speaking will be. I give them the slip, run across the street and start looking for the Holiday Inn. I bump into this friendly lady and together we start trying to decide where the Holiday Inn is located. She says, "it’s near a parking structure but I always forget if it is up or down the street." Looking down the street I see the UT student center parking structure and through the big round circle I can make out the green of some of the Holiday Inn sign. The lady and I go into the parking structure and after some deliberation end up on the top level where another lady meets us and promptly plops a pointy cloth hat on my head that has a big, round pedaled flower on the front. I notice the new lady is wearing a similar hat. The lady I met on the sidewalk exclaims, "you’re using my hats!" As she pulls down a flap on her hat to reveal a flower, I come to release she was wearing a similar cloth hat but hers had a duck bill on the front. Turns out she is some kind of productivity counsellor that does motivational speaking but I still get the feeling I’m in a coven of witches.

I explain my strange encounter to them and they just look confused and give their opinion about the stupidity of shooting someone from one side of the street to another.

Next I am in our house but it’s not our house. It is much nicer than our house. My brother-in-law and his wife and children are visiting. My bedroom shares an ajoining bathroom with the guest room. Both are situated in the basement. I forget they are here and I am in the bathroom talking to myself trying to work through the strange people that wanted to shoot me to the other building. I disturb our guests and move to another room where I am attacked my a beetle. I stab it it a spike and it wiggles off and attacks me again. I recognize it as The Guyver and catch it in my hand to show to my other brother-in-law who regards it with slight disinterested. I crush it.

Now I’m travelling on an interstate and a car is obviously following me. I try to evade. In my dream we pan to the chasing car weaving between cars to catch up to me. The car is an old convertible and in it are the guys that wanted to shoot me to the other building (one looks distinctly like Cheech Marin). They are made out of lead and so is the car. We pan up for a view of the crowded interstate to see them closing in on me. The next bend in the road goes to the left but a black and red charcoaled flaming road connects to the interstate bending to the right. I understand in an instant that I’m driving to Hell.