CE Wills

    Hey everybody. Looks like we have let another year go by without doing a lot of things we want to do. Bummer.     Has this been a terrible Christmas season for movies? I can't recall when there has been a holiday season with so few good movies. My wife and I went out to eat today and had planned on going to the show. There was, however, no show I wanted to see and she didn't want to see what was available either. It worked out okay, though. When we got home there was a great movie on TV.     The Long Kiss Goodnight is funny, sexy and action packed. It is edgy. In short, the guy who wrote it writes like me. The film  stars Geena Davis as a lady who has amnesia but has built a new life as a school teacher, wife and mother. Samuel L. Jackson stars as a private detective who is trying to help her discover her past. They find out the hard way that she was a spy and an assassin for her government. They also find out, the hard way, that a...

    This game was one which I refused to download for a while, even though it was on sale for 99 cents. I thought that it looked boring and narrow. Boy, was I wrong! This game totally kicks butt. It is one of those rare games that will actually give you an adrenaline rush. It is that intense. The developers, EA Games, have recently updated the app to include two main avenues of play. You can either be the cops or the racers who are trying to evade the cops. As a racer you have to deal with cops trying to hit you and make you crash, cops buzzing you with helicopters, oncoming traffic, tack strips spread across the road and roadblocks. In the cop mode you are a cop and you are trying to stop a reckless racer by any means, fair or foul. As a racer you can use nitrous oxide for increased speed, overdrive capability and oil slicks. You also can jam the cops communication with a jamming unit. Like almost all games these days, it gets harder as you go along. I prefer my games to...

    I just finished reading an article by Ray Aguilera in the January issue of Mac I Life magazine. The writer is talking about a new device which sounds quite interesting, the Applevision. This is an actual television, 65 inches, as opposed to the set-top box that is called Apple TV. The set-top box merely allows you to stream stuff from your I-Pad to your TV. I just ordered one of those for $99 and it should arrive today.     As I said, the Applevision is an actual TV and has many new features. For instance, it has a camera and microphone. An infrared camera continuously sweeps your living room and responds to movements in a fashion similar to the new Kinect system for X-Box 360. The Applevision will recognize people when they enter the room, turning on the default home screen or programming for your kids or wife. Mr. Aguilera calls it a touchscreen in the air because you make gestures to play games etc. Of course you can stream movies, surf the web and ...

    Hey, everyone. What a relief that Christmas is over, huh? I don't think it was meant to be the way it is.     I started thinking about the so-called good 'ole days today. My wife says that at her house, they would take a left-over biscuit and shine their shoes before church. I one-upped her by saying, "Oh, yeah? I ate the biscuit when everyone got finished with it. And I was grateful for it." Truly, though, you can and people did, shine their shoes with a biscuit. Hey, they were greasy little buggers.     Speaking of greasy little buggers, I remember when everyone had wells and were very conservative about water, particularly those of us who had to crank a handle up and down to get a bucket of water. There was no daily bath. (No showers in those days, mate.) About twice a week we took a bath and here's the recipe: The oldest kid took a bath first, then the next oldest etc. You can see why younger siblings hated the older. Bathing in the...

    Hey, everyone. Merry Christmas. This game is the most talked about new game for quite some time. It uses some new technology to give you truly awesome graphics. The graphics are a whole 'nother level. Really impressive. You are battling your way through an old castle against some impressive baddies. You are trying to reach the inner sanctum of a megalomaniac with a god complex. Your desire in this is for revenge because the dude killed your old man.     I don't really go for sword fighting games for the simple reason that they are not my style of games. If you like that genre this is almost a 'must buy'. That's really an overused term in gaming, don't you think? It's not as overused as addictive, though.     I'd rate this game as: five stars for graphics.                               ...

    Hey, everyone. I'm having a nice Christmas today, thus far. I got a cool songbook for Christmas. It's got Neil Diamond's greatest hits in an E-Z Play format. This is a format for the less gifted among us which features the letter for the notes in a circle. This makes it easier to play songs that are new to you, hence the name.     My love for Neil's music goes away back. I had most of these songs on an 8-track tape, back before I got married. These 8-tracks were a means of listening to music just after the invention of the wheel, by the way. Neil Diamond was a terrific songwriter as well as a live performer and occasional actor. If you are not familiar with his work, may I recommend the following songs? 1. Forever In Blue Jeans . My wife's favorite and the one I had to play immediately this morning. It's sort of an anthem for the common man. 2. I Am, I Said . 3. Cracklin' Rosie 4. Sweet Caroline 5. Kentucky Woman 6. Song Sung Blue 7. Girl, You...

    Hey, everyone. I thought I'd update an earlier post about apps you should get for your brand new Christmas device from Apple. You might need a little help spending your Christmas money. The app store is one of the great things about having an I-Pad. A central, convenient and relatively cheap place to buy toys is hard to beat. Just ask all the folks spending $50 for x-box games. I've jotted down a few apps and games you might like. Keep in mind that the I-Phone version of the same game will cost about one third of the price of the I-Pad game and will play just fine. Also, the prices go up and down with sales, so don't get mad at me, okay? 1. Stanza- the best app for books, probably. It has listings of free books, enough to keep you busy for years. There's a version for your PC as well. 2.Plants vs. Zombies-99 cents. The best game on the store, plus no blood and gore. 3.Angry Birds-99 cents. One of the most popular games in the world. The HD version will cost you a...

    It was a couple of months since he had seen them. The little boy that wasn't big enough to walk when he left would surely be toddling now. The young man had been in boot camp for a couple of months and had been sent straight to advanced training from there. He missed the black-haired beauty that was his wife. He missed her so badly that it hurt deep inside him. She wasn't much more than a kid, herself.     When he got to his new post, he got a weekend pass and went home to get his wife and baby. The baby didn't really seem to know him but it was wonderful to hold the two of them in his arms. There were some tears all around.     They drove hundreds of miles, in the dead of winter, in their old rattletrap Chevrolet. He had taken the sides off an old washing machine and placed the metal in the floorboards so less cold air would blow in through the holes. He was late getting back to base and got in some trouble.     When th...

    Recently I was lurking around the app store and caught EA Games putting a lot of their games on sale. I snatched up a racing game for 99 cents. It's called Need For Speed Shift and it's awesome. Call it five stars out of five, four stars out of four; whatever you want. Just don't call it an opportunity missed to get a great game. In a time when the word bargain is overused and almost non-existent in reality, this is a bargain.     Here's the recipe. The graphics are wonderful and the gameplay and controls are awesome. I'm very grateful for the excellent tutorial with this game. I'm a little slow on the uptake these days. This game teaches us how to play their game and how to race!     About six months ago I bought Real Racing for I-Pad. It's a great game but I had a hard time getting started with it. I was inexperienced with modern games and I didn't know about starting a career. As a result, I merely played Quick Race which caused me to mi...

    Do you remember the series of Die Hard movies which starred Bruce Willis? I loved this series. In the latest of these, Bruce sought the help of a guy who lived in his mother's basement and called himself 'The Warlock'. Bruce laughed at him because he called the basement 'The Sanctuary' or something like that. I fear that I am becoming this man.     I may call it the green retreat instead of the sanctuary but I'm certainly becoming a geek. In the last two weeks I have put about a dozen new games on my I-Pad. Last night I caught my reflection in the glass of my I-Pad as I was playing Brothers-In-Arms 2, Global Front. I saw a stranger, an intense looking introvert with a cold stare.     Should one be concerned if he has an app that stars a Talking Tom Cat which mimics every word you say, drinks milk and purrs when you rub his belly?     I hate to run but I think Bruce Willis is landing a helicopter on the front yard! From ...

    Do you remember the song Proud Mary? When Ike and  Tina Turner did it, she said, "We never do anything nice and easy". Well, that's the way games and poker are around my house. There are some pretty competitive people and it can get interesting. This blog post is meant to describe such a night.     Several years ago I sat at a big table playing poker. The game was five-card draw with dueces wild. There was an interesting mix of players. There were older players with the look of the wolf in their eyes, veterans of many games. There were the casual players who played more for fun but could become ruthless if crossed. There were males and females, young and old, and at least one man who had played in some tournaments, including a regional for the World Series of Poker. There was not a single one among them who did not have the burning desire to win the bragging rights for the night.     Then there were two other players who came to ...

    There's a big frost this morning. The sky is blue and the low temperature overnight was in the teens. My wife is baking a ham and a turkey for a get-together and the house smells the better for it. Several deer have wandered by in the woods, trying to find something to nibble on. We haven't been seeing a lot of deer the last few months because the creek had dried up. Now, however, the creek has water and the critters are around once more. The thing is, they're always around, but you don't see them. The creek is full of water from melted snow and the water is certainly cold. I remember as a kid, we would drink water from the creeks and not think about it. Now there seems to be a national paranoia about drinking water purity. True, there are bacteria that one cannot see but I find it to be deplorable that we have become a generation of people dependent on bottled and canned goods. Here in the USA we have largely forgotten skills like canning vegetables, making preserv...

    Hey, everyone. It's a late night thing again. I got out of bed to read a bit. My wife had picked up a copy of Rolling Stone for me because I wanted to read the John Lennon interview. I just finished it as I sat here in the study where the light is better. It's between five and six in the morning.     I enjoyed the article very much and there was an article that Yoko Lennon wrote which described their last days together. I enjoyed both articles very much. It's funny, looking back. I never thought about the two of them facing the racial intolerance thing due to the mixed racial marriage. This is odd because I remember John's song, The Ballad Of John And Yoko which describes the lack of acceptance from people and governments. Especially as a young person, I never really thought about people other than as a person and I never thought of myself as a white guy, just as a guy. Besides, the males of my generation always thought of Japanese and Chinese women ...

    Hey, everyone. I've been relaxing after a tough day. I like to read Google News and I selected sections that I like which do not appear on the standard version. For instance, I like a section called I-Pad and I-Phone Games. Then, when I see an interesting article, I check it out. Today I noticed that EA Sports, a big game developer, was running a sale on the app store. They have marked down all their titles, which are normally quite pricey by app store standards. So I bought 4 new games to amuse myself with. They were all 99 cents.     1. Madden NFL 11     2.Battlefield: Bad Company 2     3. Reckless Racing     4.Need For Speed Shift     It's really too early to give a fair review on them but my first impressions are as follows; Need For Speed Shift is a good deal for the 99 cents. Very cool graphics and game play, plus it's not hard to get started on. I'm not a good player and there are ...

    I don't wax too enthusiastic as a rule for the simple reason that people or things that you get too crazy about invariably let you down in some way.     However, let me recommend you get an I-Pad. Best Buy will let you get one and take a year or 18 months to pay for it. You may say, "I'm older and not a computer person at all". Bingo! You're just the person who will enjoy it the most.     My many blogs on the subject (14) have talked at length about its versatility and features. My point tonight is that it will probably change some of your lifetime habits, especially recreational habits. It will cut your television watching in half. What a blessing it would be for the sick and shut-in; the crippled. How nice for anyone to have a new hobby, something of interest to get excited about. It's nice to be able to find some common ground with the younger folks in your life, who are plugged in and are tech savvy.     I feel that ...

    Hey, everyone. It was 5 degrees this morning and there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground. The wind has died down since yesterday. Our water is still frozen and I've decided to go to Lowe's and buy a heater to put under the house and thaw the pipes. I hope they don't burst. By the way, the pipes burst because the water shrinks as it gets colder, allowing more water in. Then, as it heats up you need to have a couple of faucets open to allow for the expansion. If you don't, the expanding water has no place to go.     We took a bit of time off from the weather related chores to hike through the woods and look at tracks. Snow makes an amateur tracker into a good one, if you catch my drift. It's really fun when you can plainly see what is going on. We found a myriad of rabbit tracks and squirrel tracks. There was an abundance of deer tracks, both male and female. The doe has more of a triangular track while the buck leaves two parallel  marks sid...

    Hey everyone. We've had a bit of a storm here. Over the last two days there has been about six inches of snow, more than that in drifts. Odd to have drifts here, although I'm used to them in Kansas. The wind has been fierce and the low was 12 degrees. Our water froze, which is a drag.     Well, the power is not out, which you probably guessed from the fact that I'm blogging. It's a good day to play games on the I-Pad or read a book. I think I need to move to a milder climate, preferably the beach. At least the Falcons won and they are now 11-2 on the season. For you folks that live overseas, the Falcons are a pro football team.     I have to go as duty calls. I need to get a kerosene heater out, just in case.     From the white place, I'm CE Wills. PS: You may notice that I've went through my posts and placed labels on them. That means that you can look out to the right and find posts about nature(33), or posts about mo...

    Hello. (I thought I'd change the greeting). As threatened, I went to see The Tourist today. It stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Johnny plays a clueless tourist, an American math teacher who meets a mysterious woman on a train. She is using the stranger to fool some law enforcement types. They wind up in a hotel together in Venice, Italy. By the way, I very much enjoyed the shots of this lovely town. It made me want to go there. Jolie's character begins to fall for the math teacher as opposed to her more dangerous consort for whom she has done the machinations which have enveloped the innocent tourist. After almost being killed, being arrested and being entirely out of his depth, the teacher falls for the seductress and she falls for him. There are a few little plot twists late in the show.      Rather than fill the movie with special effects and mindless action scenes and violence, the director chose to be a bit more subtle. The movie had mo...

    Hey, everyone. Its been cold here at the green retreat. Lows have been around 12 degrees and highs around 25. We had another light snow also.     This morning I was playing the keyboard and enjoying my coffee. I played some songs by the Bee-Gees and Neil Diamond. The Bee-Gees have been a terrific group for a lot of years. Did you know that they have had a top ten hit in 5 separate decades? That's pretty amazing in the fickle world of musical tastes. I love their old song called To Love Somebody . I also like Stayin' Alive, I Started A Joke and a bunch of others. Then I started playing some Simon and Garfunkel and talked my wife into a duet. We did Homeward Bound, Still Crazy After All These Years, Sound Of Silence and I Am A Rock. It was fun. Hey, do you ever hear a song and instantly get a picture in your mind? When I played Scarborough Fair I could see Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) driving his red car up to see Elaine Robinson. I"m talking about the...

    It was a magnificent beast. He must have weighed close to 4 tons and was 15 feet in length. The massive head was probably 15 feet above the ground. It could move with the speed of an express train and its ferocity was unmatched by anything I had ever seen.     The creature had a fan shaped ridge on its back, quite pronounced, and it was amphibious. When wounded, like it was now, its first instinct was to flee to the water. It could stay under for a long time, then arise from the depths to wreak havoc again.     At the moment I was following its blood trail through the woods. The trees were not too close together but there were enough of them to block your view and give you that creepy feeling of imminent peril. The splotches of blood wound through the forest along the edge of cliffs. To my right and 50 feet below me was a sandy beach.     To follow the blood trail of a wounded carnivore is one of the most nerve-wracking ...

    For those of us who are a little older, we have lost another familiar friend. Don Meredith, former Dallas Cowboy and Monday Night Football commentator, has died. In a world where people in the public eye go to great lengths to construct a plastic persona, Dandy Don was fun, natural and very cool. He made Howard Cosell more fun and I really believe the two men were like the biblical verse, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens the countenance of his friend. In a word, they were good for each other.     Who else would have had the nerve to sing ' Turn out the lights, the party's over' on national TV when the game was decided every week? Only Don Meredith. Don was one of that rare breed who dared to be different. Even the media atmosphere could not roll him and stamp him and sale him on a plastic tray. I recall how Elvis was ridiculed for his clothes and hair in high school. Yes, he was ridiculed for his music for many years as well. Those who dare to ...

    It started snowing during the night and by this morning it was around freezing with a northwest wind, snow flurries and about a  half-inch of snow on the ground. Gloomy and overcast, it was not an ideal day to mess around outside. However, if you let the weather dictate your activities you are not going to get very far in this life. Come to think of it, I haven't gotten very far anyway.     I went out and checked the air in the tires of both vehicles. When the weather changes the pressure in your tires changes. I added air to the tires and did a few other chores outdoors. Then I ate breakfast, a bacon and egg sandwich and some milk.     My wife and I walked to the creek and looked around for tracks. We saw signs of where a bear had been rooting around and saw some tracks that were so tenuous that we could not determine what might have made them. We returned home with semi-frozen toes and lit a fire in the fireplace. Then we started...

    Hey, everyone. My wife and I ventured out today and made the trek to civilization. We had lunch and a movie. The movie was Faster with Dwayne Johnson( The Rock) in the starring role. Dwayne plays a guy who gets out of prison and is intent on revenge for the killing of his brother. When he starts killing people, one of the culprits hires a hit man to take him out. I don't know his name but the young guy who plays the hit man does an outstanding job.     Billy Bob Thornton also does a good job as a crooked cop on the edge of retirement, and frankly, on the edge in general. The movie is top notch and is well-acted and well-directed. I think that Dwayne Johnson has been the victim of some bad scripts in the past as he honed his acting talents. He does an exceptional job in this movie and I rate it three and a half stars out of four. True, it is more of a guy movie than a lot of the ladies would like but my wife rates it three stars out of four for the lad...

    Hey, everyone. I had a nice day today. I was off and feeling kind of lazy. We ate a big breakfast. My wife fixed bacon, biscuits and gravy, potatoes with peppers, and a fried egg. I drank milk and orange juice. Then we took a nice walk in the woods. I was glad to see there was still water in the creek from the recent rains. My wife found a tiny little deer track in the mud. When we got back to the house I played the keyboard and we sang a bunch of songs. Very relaxing. We took an afternoon nap which refreshed me. Then I went out and split some big chunks of firewood with the ax. The wood was red oak which is very aromatic. My wife refers to it, very charmingly, as 'butt oak' because of its peculiar odor. Don't ask, OK?     Later in the evening we sat around and watched a couple of sorry movies on TV. We're planning on getting out tomorrow and going to see the latest movie starring 'The Rock'. That's Dwayne Johnson, for all of you people who, like me, a...

    Hey, everyone. Last night I was driving on a lonely mountain road. Several deer jumped out in front of me and I really plowed into one. I had no warning, of course. If the deer had called me first I could have taken another road. At any rate, I hit the deer and watched it spinning in the air as it went by the left side of my car. It was really a weird sight and seemed to be in slow motion. The deer was dead. My car is drivable but has damage to the front bumper, grill and hood. I'll never forget the view of that deer as it went twirling past my window.      On my preceding post I did a review of Carnivores, Dinosaur Hunter. A nice lady from Tatem Games left a comment about the post, for which I am very grateful. If you have time, check out her comment. I was especially interested to know that they are coming out with a sequel called Carnivores, Ice Age. I'll be sure to buy that one. By the way, I killed a Velociraptor on the game last night. I d...

    Hey, everyone. I promised I would update you about a game called Brothers In Arms 2, Global Front. I bought it Sunday for 99 cents. It took me a while to figure out how to play it. Sometimes I lack the patience to learn a game, which leads to a harsh review that is unwarranted. This game is awesome and I highly recommend it. The graphics are wonderful and the action is intense enough to make you lay down your I-Pad and say,  "Whew!" It's a World War 2 shooter game that takes you through battles all over the world as you follow Sgt. Neissman through thick and thin, mostly thin.      I thought I'd update you on my new favorite game, Carnivore, Dinosaur Hunter. As I have progressed in this game it just keeps getting better. New hunting areas and weapons are unlocked. The hunts are amazing in detail. If you wound an animal you can follow its blood trail. When you get enough points built up to start hunting dangerous animals like the velociraptor ...

    Hey, everyone. Yet another busy day here in the mountains. We had some heavy rain during the day with creeks overflowing their banks. Then there was a drastic temperature drop around midnight with snow and a low of 26 degrees.     For all the Angry Birds fans out there, I noticed an article that stated that a Christmas version of the game is coming out in early December. The people who bought the Halloween version will get the Christmas version free. Hard to believe that millions of people, who are not farmers, would get excited over pigs wearing Santa hats. But this is a strange land and we are dedicated to fun.     With the Super Bowl only a few months away, I thought I'd tell you about the Super Bowl I never saw. I don't mean that I've went to them all; I just watch them on TV. Back in the 80's my family and I were living in Kansas. It was January. I was on a temporary job and I was concerned that I'd have to return to the eastern U.S. before ...