I’ll admit that this ongoing situation confused me — surely this person, presumably some other 12-to-15-year-old Allen Holt, would A) know his own email address and B) realize that he wasn’t getting any email from any of these accounts he was signing up for? One site, okay, sure — either you put your address in wrong or you that site’s mail setup is busted or something else kept you from getting email. But there were many of these sites this kid had signed up for, so, um, wha?

A couple of times I tried logging into these accounts — after all, I had the login information for them, so maybe I could use that info to find out who this kid who thought he had my email address was and ask him (very nicely, of course) to cut it out. But no luck. There was never any information I could use to identify the kid (which is actually a Very Good Thing, I feel, for sites geared toward younger users).

So the occasional random gaming accounts continue to appear in my inbox.

Then yesterday I received an email — again to that same Gmail account — from a teacher in Utah addressed to the parents of her new class of kids, talking about how happy she was with their progress so far this year. Luckily for me she didn’t BCC the address list: I looked through all of the addresses she sent the email to and found the name, at long last, of the boy who’s been unknowingly tormenting me for the last year (where “tormenting” equals “occasionally spamming my inbox.”)

Now I had my in.

I sent an email to his teacher explaining the situation and requesting that she tell the kid that my email address wasn’t his and asking if he would please kindly stop using it. She wrote back and told me she would, and also told me that he’s a really good kid and surely didn’t mean any harm — which I’d already gathered, of course, given the sites he was registering with, but it was still nice to hear that my email account wasn’t being used by a little douchebag.

This morning, she wrote back and finally answered the question I’d had all along: the kid’s mother has an email address one letter off from mine, and he’d either been mistyping it or just had it wrong all this time. Knowing that it was his mom’s address made the whole thing make much more sense to me. His teacher said she’d talked to both parent and child and everything should be copacetic now.

So thank you, Becky Ivory of Murray, Utah, for gracefully handling what surely must have seemed a bizarre request from a complete stranger on the other side of the country. You easily could have ignored my email or been less than friendly in your reply (assuming I was some kind of stalkery weirdo), but you did neither. I sincerely appreciate your help, and best of luck with your students — especially the clearly ones addicted to online video games.

I think, in fact, that the site’s ugliness was one of the reasons I haven’t updated it much lately. Looking at the site and its ugliness, temporary or not, was a reminder of the work I wasn’t doing, so I tended not to look at it and, therefore, not update it. That problem, then, is now solved, and I hope to get back to a more consistent update schedule. Regardless of the other work I’m doing and the quality of that work, I almost always feel better about myself when I’m writing. I have one of those brains that tends not to be quite sure what it thinks about things if I’m not writing my thoughts down somewhere.

I have been doing some writing, of course: during the last month over at Moviegeekz, I’ve posted reviews of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Ryan Reynolds mindfuck The Nines and the fantastic and underrated Robert Downey Jr./Val Kilmer noir-comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as the old Sandra Bullock romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping, just ’cause I like Sandra Bullock. I’ve got more stuff coming up over there just as soon as I find the chance to finish writing it; soon I’ll cross that magical fifty reviews mark and it’ll start to feel almost like a legitimate movie review site.

That’s it for now — just wanted this site not to feel quite so abandoned. More to come soon!

(Funnily enough, highly competent people tend to undervalue their own competence, assuming better of everyone else than they really should.)

But scanning through the news this morning, I realized there was an absolutely perfect connection, a note-perfect example of exactly the sort of person Justin Kruger and David Dunning were talking about in their study: Sarah Palin.

Watch the video below with Palin in mind, and enjoy. (If it helps entice you to watch the video, I’ll note that the word “sodomites” appears several times.)

Oh, hell, what am I saying…all of you should check the article out. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope y’all enjoy reading it!

And not only does it have those recent reviews, it has a brand-new one you can’t get here!  Click on over to read my review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and feel free to poke around a bit while you’re there.  And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed!

I’m pretty excited about this development — it just feels right, y’know?  And it doesn’t mean I’m abandoning this site, either — I have plenty of non-movie stuff to write about sometimes, and all of that will continue go here.  Stay tuned!

I don’t have a lot of focus on this site, as anyone who’s read it for any length of time has doubtlessly noticed.  I suppose that’s unsurprising:  I tend not to have a lot of focus in my interests in real life, so why should I expect my blog to have much focus?  I wrestled with that fact for awhile, but I’ve pretty much come down on the “So What?” side of the fence — I have lots of things which interest me, and I like knowing that I can write about any of ‘em here if I feel so inclined.

But even though my name’s in the URL, I don’t like to think it’s all about me.  I want people to read what I’m writing, and I want them to feel engaged, y’know?

So my question to you, My Adoring and Adorable Reading Public, is this:  is there anything you’d like me to write about more often?  Anything you’d like to see more of — or less of?  Anything that you to tend to think of as an area of expertise of mine that I could illuminate for you?  More artwork?  Less artwork?  More reviews?  Fewer reviews?  I’m open to all kinds of suggestions here.  There’s no saying I’ll necessarily use your suggestions, of course, but I’m curious to hear what sorts of things you’d like to see more of from me!

I’m going to try to be around for you more.  It’s not fair of me to string you along with a number of incisive, witty posts and then drop you like you’re aflame.  I don’t have time for a full post here right now, sadly, but I hope to be back later this weekend — maybe after I see Star Trek tomorrow.  But in the meantime, just to prove to you I have been doing something, I give you two pictures I drew of my lovely daughters:

More soon!

Why, you ask? Because I’m going to join the web development team at Harmonix Music Systems, the incredi-awesome software company behind super-mega hits Rock Band and Guitar Hero (the first two, anyway). This opportunity was one I hadn’t necessarily been looking for or expecting, but once it presented itself it was one I couldn’t possibly pass up. I’m mean, c’mon… how in the hell could I turn down an offer to work at the place where they make Rock Band?!

A friend of mine asked if this were my dream job. It’s not, in that it’s not Pixar. But past that… honestly, it’s not too far off. It’s working with technologies I enjoy (Hello, open source! Goodbye, Microsoft!) for an amazingly successful entertainment company which makes products I really and truly enjoy. And the corporate culture there will be, I’m pretty sure, damn good for me. I’m so very very excited about this opportunity, even though it means moving again and it means I’m going to be without my family for several weeks — they’re not moving up until we get the house here rented.

So if I’m not too posty over the next few weeks, that’ll be why. Moving. Again. (Though hey, I might not have much else to do while I’m up there before the family gets there… well, except play Guitar Hero with Brian.) Wish me luck, everybody!