The 60/30 Rule Report 11/4

Whew. This week was a tough week. In the Three Sentence Movie Review world, I’m cleaning up some details while also trying to revise old posts into the new format. The revision is very slow work, made slower by my 17-inch monitor. If my monitor was just a big bigger I could have two windows open, plus my spreadsheet and could speed up the process a lot.

Speaking of the spreadsheet. I have a spreadsheet of all 1000+ movies I’ve watched since 2007! Very exciting. As I tag the reviews I note the genre category/ies, if it’s recommended, if it has a female director or writer, and also the year the movie was released, as well as the decade.

The plan is that once I get everything in the new format, I can use that spreadsheet to help me make recommendations. I already know I’m going to have to go back through again and tag everything with affiliate links. Fun!  But then I can also add in recommendations.

Speaking of affiliate stuff, I read up on how to be an affiliate marketer. I learned that if you click on someone’s affiliate link, Amazon doesn’t care if you buy that exact thing that was linked to. Your cookie is good for a period of time (35 minutes) and anything you buy during that time will give the seller a percentage of the sales. (At no cost to the buyer.) I found that interesting. 

I took Friday off from work and was trying to figure out how I was going to do the shopping, the week’s cooking, the special entertaining cooking AND also spend four hours working on the sites. I needed to do four hours to meet my weekly goal. I knew I was going to spend all day Saturday at WordCamp and then Sunday entertaining, so things had to get done by Friday.

And then I realized that WordCamp is the WordPress conference. So the entire day counted as working on sites. Phew. This was a very good realization because shopping/cooking took up most of the day.

WordCamp was amazing. Three sessions in, I realized that every session I attended had a woman presenter. And that none of the questions asked by the audience were the type of ego-fellating questions I usually hear from computer people (ahem *guys* ahem). People even asked questions that could be considered dumb (“What’s a slider?”) and no one made fun of them for it. I didn’t feel like a tool for taking notes with paper and pen, instead of on my laptop. And the content ranged from very good to fantastic.

The last session I attended, which was about how anyone could give back to the WordPress, shed some light on my observations. Everything I experienced was by design. The WordPress community works very hard to be inclusive, kind, and to avoid ego feeding. Once I better get things up and running, I will look into how I can volunteer.

SKS Postcards: Studio 300 Round II

Here are postcards 1/5 and 5/5 from Sara’s missed-your-birthday multi-postcard missive. In the first postcard we can see in real time her realization that she’s missed my birthday.

In 5/5 I get an update about her week. Sounds like a busy one.

Thanks for the birthday greetings! They are always welcome.

MANY Postcards from Iowa

My mailbox was full today. My friend Heather is a Girl Scout leader and she had many girl scouts (and some parents) make postcards for my birthday. 30 arrived today. Aside from being unique on the front, there’s a nice long letter on the back. Eventually, I will get to read all of it.

And here’s one more!

This was a fun day to go to the mailbox.

3SMR: The Land of Steady Habits

3SMR: The Land of Steady Habits

Nicole Holofcener’s The Land of Steady Habits left me unfulfilled, which is a rare for this director. As usual, the plot told the story of a rich white, person, but this time it was a rich white male person.* The acting was good (especially Ben Mendelsohn and Edie Falco) and I enjoyed the small intersections of people, but ultimately the movie left me cold.

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription ($7.99)
Where watched: at home

*There are a million movies from the rich white man point of view, but this is Holofcener’s first movie featuring a male main character.

3SMR: City of God

3SMR: City of God
http://www.impawards.com/2003/city_of_god.html

I’m not familiar with the slums of Rio de Janeiro,* and the City of God transported me to that location and aptly illustrated Rocket’s (Alexandre Rodrigues) brutal life. The film left me unsatisfied due to unanswered questions** but quite satisfied with interesting camera stuff. I will say that City of God is worth watching for its opening scene.

Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home, in preparation for Filmspotting’s March Madness 2019: Best of the 2000s

*My total experience with Rio is Romeo + Juliet.
**The transition from child to teenager comes with houses increasing from one story to multi-story. Did he move, or did the slums grow up? It was never really clear. Also, once Rocket became a teenager, what happened to his parents?

3SMR: The Good Place Season 2

3SMR: The Good Place Season 2
http://www.impawards.com/tv/good_place_ver2.html

While this is a movie review site, I’m happy to feature good TV, and The Good Place is very good TV. In season two, we get to see all of our characters grow, which isn’t always a thing in American Television. This show is funny,* visually interesting, and has Janet.**

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home with Matt.

*We knew Kristen Bell had good comedic timing from the funny parts of Veronica Mars, and it’s good to see her skills at work in this show.
**Janet is the best!