Glen a.k.a. Psmith, MrWrite

As is obvious from my posting history here, I don't hang out here as much. Where I do tend to check, if you're looking for me, is:

Facebook (user: engelcox)
- This place has really come on in recent years, especially with my extended family, who all seem to have discovered interactive web through it. Now that I'm living abroad, Fb seems to be the easiest site to update my family with what's going on in my life. At least for now.

My Blog (http://www.engel-cox.org)
- I update it about twice a month, always with the intention of doing more.

Last.fm (user: engelcox)
- Been listening to a lot of music lately, and everything gets noted by last.fm automatically.

RateYourMusic (user: MrWrite)
- Trying to catch up on my ratings there, and meaning to restart my favorite CD reviews

Flickr (user: engelcox)
- Now that I have an iPhone, I keep meaning to do the "Malaysia Picture-a-Day" project. Might start that with the first of the year.

Speaking of iPhone, I'm on various friend list systems there (Feint, etc.) I tend to only play a few games, though, RockBand probably being the most used at the moment.

For the few of you who follow me here and not at my own blog, a bit of a personal update in a series of blog posts:

It Had to Happen
Health Care Update
Scheduling the Follow-Up
You Have to Build Bypasses
Surgery and Recovery

It's a bit gory in the details. Short form: very mild heart attack, return to the U.S., discover 100% blockage in 2 of 3 coronary arteries, undergo bypass surgery, now recovering.

From </a></b></a></div>sturgeonslawyer
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ (if you want) so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.

I count 45 I've read. I only italicized those for which I have fairly short-term plans for reading.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word.

No more.

Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.

How typical.

Easter Island with my spouse Jill, because she's always wanted to go there.  I'd also hope to stop off at the former home of the dodo, Mauritius.

sturgeonslawyer tagged me with the letter "L."

The rules:
- Comment and I'll give you a letter.
- You have to list 10 things you love that begin with that letter.
- Afterwards, post this in your journal.

1. Lyle Lovett's music, because it takes me back to Texas in a good way
2. London, where I would live given even half a chance (hear that, give me HALF a chance)
3. Letters, especially real ones sent with a stamp; I'm gonna have to send some of my own to get any, though
4. Living, and not just because the alternative is so bad
5. Learning, especially learning how to play the piano better, thanks to my enrollment in class here at UMBC
6. Lists!  Like this one, only more of them.  I'm as bad as that character in High Fidelity
7. Lights! Camera! Action!  (Okay, it's a stretch, but I do enjoy an occasional video)
8. Lunch.  Stomach growling because I didn't have it today.
9. Large drinks, preferably with alcoholic content
10. Letting other people tag me with memes

I'm working on upgrading my personal and work sites to the new MovableType 4.0, which has support for captcha and other comment spam fighting mechanisms.  If things go well, I'll reopen comments on items that I shouldn't have had to close.

It's been awhile since I've done one of these (this one via sturgeonslawyer).

"I've seen ____ of these 168 movies" in the subject line and repost. If you've seen over 85 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. The movies:

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
( ) Boondock Saints
( ) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
() Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
( ) Braveheart
(x) The Princess Bride
( ) Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
( ) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
( ) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
( ) American Pie
( ) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
(x) Harry Potter 1
(x) Harry Potter 2
(x) Harry Potter 3
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Resident Evil
( ) Resident Evil 2
( ) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
(x) Finding Nemo
(x) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30 (Suddenly Thirty)
( ) I, Robot
(x) Robots
( ) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
( ) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
( ) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
(x) KING KONG (of course, I've seen the original, not the new Jackson one)
( ) A Cinderella Story
(x) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
( ) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
( ) Flubber
( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
(x) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
( ) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
(x) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean's Eleven
( ) Ocean's Twelve
( ) Identity
(x) Lone Star
(x) Bedazzled (again, the original, although I caught part of the horrid remake on a plane)
( ) Predator
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(x) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Boss's Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
( ) Frailty
( ) War of the Worlds
( ) Rush Hour
( ) Rush Hour 2
( ) My Best Friend's Wedding
( ) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
( ) Calendar Girls
(x) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
( ) The Terminator 2
( ) The Terminator 3
(x) X-Men
(x) X2
(x) X-Men 3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( ) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Others
( ) Freaky Friday
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle
( ) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40-year-old-virgin

Today's tennis match with Jim Turner:

6-3, 6-0, 2-2 (had to stop at noon to get back home in time to clean up for...)

Today's Semiotic (until we find a better band name) session:

4 songs recorded live, with some real improvement on one of them. I'm not sure about taking the lead vocals for "Editors," even if Matt thinks it worked. My voice on a recording is scary.

Yet another Web 2.0 social network that I'm investigating: http://twitter.com/engelcox/

Bah, bah, went the memesheep. Here's this week's virus.

Post a comment and I'll...

1) Tell you why I friended you.
2) Associate you with a song/film.
3) Tell a random fact about you.
4) Tell a first memory about you.
5) Associate you with a character/pairing.
6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7) Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
In return, you could repost this in your LJ if you wanted to.

All my friends are doing this (you know who you are, so here's my entry into quoting 80s pop lyrics):

"Tonight's the night we'll make history
Honey, you and I
And I'll take any risk, to tie back the hands of time
and be with you tonight"

--Styx