I saw a couple of good movies this week, and thought I’d pass along my suggestions.

1) Taken with Liam Neeson

This movie didn’t get much buzz when it game out, which is too bad.. Because this movie KICKED ASS! James Bond meets Jason Bourne. Non-stop action, a decent storyline, and it never missed a beat. If you like international thrillers with lots of action, Taken is the movie for you!

2) Fired Up – Yep, that cheerleader movie..

I was expecting some gratuitous T&A, but I was really impressed. This movie is funny as hell! Lots of laughs, a clever storyline, and lots of eye candy.. My wife was willing to give it a chance, and she ended up loving it!

If not, why are you still working there? “Oh, it’s a bad economy, I’m lucky to even have a job..” That’s a load of crap!

I had one of the best jobs in the world, making 6-figures at 24 years old. I bought a home, a couple of cars, and I invested a ton of money in the stock market. Live was good.

Then 9/11 happened, and the world I knew was turned upside down. My employer’s biggest client was directly affected by this, and our business dried up in a matter of months. I was laid off in November, and NO ONE was hiring.

Months later, I took a sucky job (at a fraction of my original pay), because it was the only thing out there. It was mindless work, in a workplace full of office politics, and I hated it.

It was there that I realized that I needed to do something else. So began the ZC empire!

“Necessity is the mother of invention..”

If you don’t like the cards you’ve been dealt, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Last night brought us the season premier of Jon and Kate Plus 8.. I’ve been watching this show with the wife for years now, and it’s been one of my guilty pleasures.. Rumors of a supposed affair have been making the headlines for months now, and this season is supposed to address those allegations!

This was an awkward episode, with tensions so high you could cut it with a knife! I thought this was all some fake drama in order to bring in more viewers, but it seems like it’s the real deal! Kate is a raging bitch, and I almost can’t fault Jon if he did indeed mess around with the 23 year old teacher.. In all honesty, this media whore needs to shut down production and deal with their core issues, or they’re doomed.

As a car guy, I was psyched to see Jon roll into the birthday party in his new Nissan 350Z Nismo. Why he didn’t go for the new 370Z is beyond me, but it’s good to see that he’s got something other than the minivan to drive.

Zander Chance wishes to thank the brave men and women of the Armed Forces! In between the BBQ and beer, take a moment to remember those who have lost their lives defending liberty.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day!!

So it’s been a month since I switched over to Mosso, and I couldn’t be happier! There are benefits to having a dedicated server (unlimited amount of sites you can host, no worries about usage/bandwidth overages, better access control vs. manipulation through .htaccess, etc), but the worry-free nature of Cloud Hosting won me over. Heck, I was able to go away to Alaska for a week without Internet access, and I didn’t have to worry about my sites going down or anything.

The issue I was most concerned about was my Compute Cycle usage, as Mosso only gives you 10,000 cycles per month. I did manage to exceed this, but I’m working with the guys over there to figure out why this is happening (I’ve got two sites that are currently eating up a big chunk of the cycles), and I’m confident that we can get this worked out.

My only other gripe is with their control panel interface. It’s a bit cumbersome to navigate, and a little slow at times. But for most of us, once we setup our sites, we’re rarely going to visit these screens again.. So it’s not a HUGE deal overall.

If you’re interested in making the switch to Mosso, contact me and I’ll send you a referral code good for $25 off your first month’s bill!

I’ll preface this by stating that I’m a frequent cruiser.. We met many people that were cruising for their first time, and they enjoyed their experience with Holland. We typically cruise on Carnival or Royal Carribean. Despite all the crap that people give us about going on Carnival, it remains our favorite cruise line. But Holland America has quite a reputation for their Alaskan Cruises, so the wife decided to give them a shot. We knew going in that it’s a much older crowd, but that wasn’t an issue for us.

How would I describe this cruise? Frustrating. Chaotic. Disorganized. NEVER AGAIN!

I really don’t understand what happened.. Checking in at the cruise terminal took over an hour. I have NEVER waited that long before to check in. My blood was boiling by the time I got on the ship. We arrived in Seattle at 11am, but it was 2:30pm before we stepped foot on the cruise boat.

We went to get some lunch, where we ended up waiting 25 minutes for a HOT DOG! This station is a total mess, and completely mismanaged. This “area” also handles pizza and tacos, and those stations were no better. The cooks were agonizingly slow.. 30+ people in line, and they insist on toasting each hot dog bun on the grill, even though the hot dogs themselves are already cooked! How about you ask the people if they want them toasted or not? Most of us were HUNGRY, and couldn’t care less about it.

Dinner was another nightmare. The concept of open seating seemed great – You can eat dinner whenever you want. But the staff that served us were all over the place, and service was dismal. It was strange that the people with assigned seating raved about how excellent their service was. Could the open seating staff be less qualified than the others? Could they be less motivated because of how open seating affects their tipping situation?

In any event, it was a mess. One night, we were seated, and we never got a waiter! 20+ minutes later, we got a “manager” to take our order himself. Ironically, this happened another morning, where we were seated, our drink order was taken, and then we NEVER saw our waiter again. How does that happen TWICE in one week?!

And then there’s the food.. Eggs Benedict is always my breakfast of choice. Unfortunately, theirs hollandaise sauce was awful! Then there’s the issue with dessert, which consistantly sucked. 7 days of Baked Alaksans (yuck!), along with a bunch of other unimaginative selections. One night, I got the chocolate mouse. I can’t even describe how small it was, barely bigger than a THIMBLE! WTF?!

What really irritated me is that there’s basically no food available after 8pm, except for room service. The pizza / burger / hot dog station closed at 5pm, the ice cream station closed at 8pm, and everything else was already closed. We came back from Victoria at 9:30pm, hungry and cold. I went up to the cafe to get a hot chocolate to warm up, only to find them closed!

Carnival has food available 24 hours a day, and plenty of it.

Getting off the ship in Juneau was another “experience”. Imagine 1400 people standing in the stairwells for 55 MINUTES trying to get off the boat (after we arrived in port over an hour late), while two idiots hold up the line because they want you to use hand sanitizer before you debark. Getting back on the ship wasn’t much better.

One other “quirk” – The boat doesn’t get normal television stations. The only two stations you get are CNN and ESPN. No CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, etc. A real bitch when it’s finale week. The only cruise I went on without network TV was on a Carnival boat back in 1997. Bizarre.

The day we came back to Seattle, there were more issues with debarkation (which was delayed over 90 minutes). We’re fighting to get off the boat so we don’t miss our flight, the front desk OKs us to do so, and these 70 year old women at the baggage area tell us we can’t leave, and that we have “plenty of time”. A manager finally gets our baggage, and we make a mad dash for the airport.

We arrived at our gate 20 minutes before our plane left!

(It may have been sooner if we hadn’t been dropped off on the complete opposite end of the terminal.. Why ask what airline we’re going on if you’re going to ignore that fact anyway?)

What a week..