Blue ValentineStarring: Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling
This is a very difficult to watch movie about a couple falling in and – ultimately – out of love.
Williams is a smart, driven woman who wants to be a doctor. Gosling is just drifting along. They meet, marry and after a six or so years things just fall apart.
Williams’ character (Cindy) is – after marriage and child – still driven; Gosling’s character (Dean) is just happy being a husband and a dad. Ebert has a great line about this dynamic in his review of the movie: “Dean thinks marriage is the station. Cindy thought it was the train.”
Brilliant synopsis.
Told with a series of flashbacks, some of which require one to read between the lines – it’s a tough watch. Well made, well acted – especially by Williams. But you just don’t want to watch what happens. It’s too painful; too real.
The one thing I didn’t get from the film was how Cindy always thought – up to the end – that Dean had such potential, that he could do anything. I didn’t see anything to suggest that.
Well, after about 12 years, my main router sorta died. As in, didn’t work as advertised.
Fortunately, I had a backup router – a wireless G, instead of B – on hand.
Swapped them out tonight.
Painful!!
The main issue was connecting the new router to a switch. Mix of OSs – Mac, Windows (XP & 7), Linux. OK, but the uplink/switch protocol differs from the router I put in 10 or so years ago and today (understandable…).
But the change is not documented! I had to fart around with ethernet cables, host files and so on to get it to work. Frustrating – because I’m not good at same – but fun because I always learn something from this.
I think I currently have both Windows boxes, both Linux boxes and the Mac all connected via ethernet; the wireless (to another Windoze box) was a challenge, but with the new router (supporting 802.11 G, not just B), it’s fricking faster.
Another decade before I do the same again? Doubtful – I’ll have to (gladly) update to faster faster.
Not my idea of a fun evening, but always fun to futz and learn.
Update: I had noticed my connection speeds deteriorating over the last few months, but I blamed Comcast for that. We have had a lot of storms lately, and so nodes were getting overloaded and so on. I expected things to gradually get back to normal. However, at least part of the slowdown now appears to be the router. The new router is – like the old – hardwired to my main computer, so it should pretty much run as fast as the cable modem.
Yet my speeds seem to have jumped since putting in the new router. Coincidence? Doubtful – I guess the old one was circling the drain before it just died. Interesting.