Swimming in a sea of otherwise pretentious movies trying too hard to fit into a genre, along comes a refreshingly new movie by director Jason Reitman called Juno. Juno MacGuff is a high school student who finds herself pregnant after having sex for the first time with her best friend, Paulie Bleeker. The movie tells the story of the journey she takes, from discovery about the unwanted baby to its birth.

The wonderful thing about this film is it doesn't browbeat the audience with any kind of message about the dangers of teen pregnancy, and it doesn't make quirky, stereotypical attempts to come across as weird and unique for the sake of trying to set itself apart as an independent film. The story just works, the characters just work, the direction just works; everything about this movie just works. If you are looking for a warm, heartfelt, and genuinely entertaining movie, you should give Juno a chance. We guarantee you will walk out of the theater with a smile on your face.

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Fans of the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer were distraught when Sarah Michelle Gellar announced she didn't want to reprise her leading role after season seven, which lead to the cancellation of the series. Though the creative team wrapped up the story quite nicely, Joss Whedon (the series creator) felt as though he had at least one more season's worth of stories to tell. How was he going to do this with the television show no longer in production? Why, comic books, of course. Collecting issues one through five of season eight, The Long Way Home picks up shortly after where the previous season left off. Leaving Sunnydale behind them, the Scooby Gang and the newly formed slayer posse spreads out to take on evil all over the world. Here's a detailed synopsis from the Dark Horse Comics website:

"Since the destruction of the Hellmouth, the Slayers-newly legion-have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt. But not everything's fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. Meanwhile, one of the "Buffy" decoy slayers is going through major pain of her own."

How does the series transfer to the new medium? Quite well, even if the pacing is a tad rushed. Overall, Buffy fans should not miss out on these, even if they would otherwise do without reading comic books.

NOTE: Anyone who is unfamiliar with the first seven seasons will be completely lost trying to read this. Whedon gives no backstory and uses only minor segue elements to transition into season eight. It would be nice if there was some way to bring new fans up to speed, but the history of the characters and their adventures is far too deep and complex to be able to do so.

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We were slow out of the gates getting started with our new years resolutions, but we've finally taken the plunge and started eating healthy. Linda has quit drinking regular soda and is on an Optifast diet. The diet consists of consuming no more than 800 calories per day in the form of health-shakes and protein bars. Joshua has quit drinking caffeine entirely and is on a "homemade" diet of no more than 1500 calories per day of various foods. We've been on the diets for a week now and we're happy to say we're kicking arse and taking names.

There is one caveat, though, in that we have both been sick for a few days now. Joshua has a terrible cold and Linda is in the process of contracting the same thing. In all likelihood we are victims of circumstance and suffering from a nasty virus that's affecting a lot of people in Alaska right now. It still seems like bad timing since we are doing all of this for health reasons, so we're going to pout like children until we feel better.

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Today at MWSF (that's MacWorld San Francisco for all you n00bs), Apple announced the release of the MacBook Air, the newest addition to Apple's family of laptops. The Air is is a subcompact notebook designed for lightweight portability and is less than 1" thick. It has many awesome features you can learn about by watching this video, but our favorite has to be the networked optical drive. The Air does not have a built-in optical drive, but instead can piggy back off a drive installed in any other Mac on a shared local network. If you own any other Macintosh computer running OS X, all you need to do is put an optical media disc in its optical drive and the Air can read the contents of the disc - very, very spiffy.

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In my place of business, we use Microsoft Exchange Server as our preferred e-mail server software. Being a Microsoft product, it doesn't like to play well with non-Microsoft e-mail clients such as Mail.app, Thunderbird, and others. This normally isn't a problem since we use PC's running Windows XP as our primary work computers and Outlook 2007 as our preferred client. For Apple OS X, Microsoft does make an Office suite that includes an Exchange compatible e-mail client called Entourage. I should, therefore, be ready to setup my work e-mail with full Exchange properties at home on our iMac, right? Well, if only I was complacent with being allowed to use Entourage and no other client.

Despite multiple websites and message forums saying it is either impossible or, with some serious tweaking, a major headache to try and use any other client, I still thought I had the chops to make magic happen. I first installed Entourage so I would have a client that would work properly no matter what. I then started installing numerous other clients to see if I could get them to interact with our Exchange server. I was able to use the e-mail portion with no major hiccups, but I couldn't find any software that was able to utilize Exchange calendaring. I did find a workaround, though, or so I thought.

iCal, Apple's free calendar program that comes included with Leopard, has the ability to import calendar settings from an Entourage account that is actively installed on the same computer. Bingo, herein was my solution. Only after importing the Entourage calendar into iCal did I notice that my work PC no longer had any appointments showing up in Outlook. Even my appointments in Entourage were gone. Not a single previous or future appointment existed on any of my computers. WTF? Luckily, my calendar isn't completely borked and I'm able to receive and create new meetings and appointments, but why would Apple set iCal to do something like this? Is it a bug or programming oversight? I guess I've got more research to do, but I am done with attempting to thwart the Microsoft beast... for now.

- Joshua

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Fans of the Sci-Fi Channel original series Battlestar Galactica already know why they watch it: it is nothing short of amazing. Others have tried watching the show and just couldn't get into it. We personally think they're crazy and devoid of decent taste. The people this blog post is addressing, though, are the ones who have never watched a single episode. We feel it is our duty as decent Americans to inform you that you really are missing out on what is quite possibly the greatest television program in history. No, we aren't exaggerating.

Here is a fan-made trailer which showcases some sweet battle sequences.

Awesome? Yeah, we think so as well. The first two seasons of the show are available on DVD and the third is coming out in March. There is also a standalone movie that was recently released on DVD called Razor. So, do yourselves a favor and get on the Cylons' good side - watch the show.

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Spring semester at the University of Alaska, Anchorage begins next week. With the exception of some last minute details, we feel we are prepared. Once classes begin, we're pretty certain we'll be facing the busiest semester of our college student careers. Things will hopefully go very smoothly and we'll make it out alive. For everyone else who is going back, we wish you the best of luck. We'll see you at the finish line with our suntan lotion and folding beach chairs in hand.

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Head First Labs, a subdivision of O'Reilly Media, Inc., publishes a wide variety of how-to technology guides focusing on programming languages. I'm in the process of reading one of their books, Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. What sets it apart from similar books is that its written in a fun and friendly style that is engaging and easy to comprehend, which is very important for people who would rather set fire to their eyebrows than read any kind of tech manual. Though I work in IT and love computers, I am definitely one of those people.

Once I finish their HTML book, I want to move on to a book that teaches Javascript (or perhaps a book that focuses primarily on CSS). When I first realized I wanted to progress in this direction, Head First Labs didn't have a Javascript book available from their library. I was worried I would have to suffer through a terribly dry and boring book by some other publisher, and then the gods smiled upon me - Head First Labs announced the release of a Javascript book. I don't know if it is as reader friendly as the HTML book, but I'm anxious to find out. If anything, at least I can say learning the basics of HTML and CSS wasn't a chore.

- Joshua

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