Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 41
Sign: Libra
City: SPRING VALLEY
State: CALIFORNIA
Country: US
Signup Date:
09/16/05
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Thursday, September 04, 2008
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Myspace.com Blogs - CNN Hilary Rosen Comments on the Election - Dark Delicacies MySpace Blog
Current mood:  disgusted
Category: News and Politics
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog....
I read this a little earlier on CNN and the commentator is right on the money.
1:58 PM
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Wednesday, July 02, 2008
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Open Auditions for Scratch This Weekend!
Current mood:  happy
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
Swords & Circuitry Studios and Cinema Verde are currently casting for a 5 minute pitch reel for a horror suspense series. At this time we will be auditioning two roles:
Mary Cooper, a 27 year old African American woman. A loving but mentally unstable single mother who lives in fear that her child's father is the devil himself.
Rikki Cooper, a 9 year old African American girl. Beautiful but intensely serious for her age, more terrified of her mother's unpredictable moods than any of the strange things that seem to plague them both.
The audition for both roles will take place at Cinema Verde, 7323 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, CA 92115 on Sunday, July 6th at 2:00 p.m. and will continue until approximately 4:00 p.m.
Filming for the reel will take place July 12-13th in El Cajon, California. Actors selected for filming the reel will be paid a $50 flat fee for their services on the project, and will receive appropriate billing.
If you have any questions about the audition, please contact Neal Hallford at neal@swordsandcircuitry.com.
11:27 PM
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
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Democratic Math: An Open Letter to Hillary
Current mood:  annoyed
Category: News and Politics
Dear Hillary,
I'm writing you today on behalf of a Democratic party that wants to have a future. Once this election is over and we face challenges in the mid-terms, we want to be able to maintain our gains in both houses so that we can protect American families of all races, religions, and creeds. We want to make sure that the millions of new voters that have been inspired to vote in this election STAY with our party and continue to take an active role in the electorate. While you have undoubtedly inspired many brilliant and talented people to work in your campaign, Obama has brought nearly twice as many new voters into the fold. Obama is the future of the Democratic party, and it's time that you stepped aside for the good of all of us.
Please understand that I have tremendous respect for the things that both you and your husband have done for our party and our country. You've been an outstanding Senator with what I believe is still a tremendous future ahead. But all of that said, I have grown increasingly disappointed in your presidential campaign which all too often has played by Karl Rove's textbook of dirty tactics and old-school mudslinging. I wanted a presidential candidate I could look up to and respect, but you've not demonstrated either of those qualities in your campaign. The time has come to call it quits and start helping to unify the Democratic party so we have a chance to fight and win against John McCain in the fall. Anything further will only demonstrate that you aren't in this for the good of America, or the good of your party, but solely for the glorification of your own ego.
Let's look at the remaining primary contests. Assume we award you West Virginia and Kentucky by very respectable margins, 56% to 44% for example, and we assume that conservative Latinos go for you in Puerto Rico by the same huge margins. Let's also be insanely optimistic and give you 70% of the remaining superdelegates. Under those circumstances, Obama STILL clinches the Democratic nomination, but only after both of you damage each other's reputations even further while wasting millions more in Democratic donations that SHOULD be spent fighting against John McCain. It's time to stop doing exactly what Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative right WANT the Democratic party to be doing. For the good of America Hillary, please drop out of this race.
11:36 AM
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Friday, March 28, 2008
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Do Robot Dogs Chase Electric Cats?
Current mood:  impressed
Okay, I’m never gonna give up my real, fuzzy face dogs, but this is the coolest thing in robotics I’ve seen in a LONG time. Screw Aibo, I want one of these for Christmas..
http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=164333&ESRC=army.nl
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Currently
listening
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Electric Dreams - Soundtrack
By
Giorgio Moroder
Release date: 25 February, 1993
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1:23 PM
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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Remembering Joe
Current mood:  peaceful
Category: Life
Last Thursday, we laid my father-in-law to rest, and I was asked if I'd like to say a few words about him during his memorial service. Since I knew that most people would be talking about Joe's numerous accomplishments, I chose to focus on Joe's legacy through his five children. Here's the text version of the tribute I presented... Before I start, I just want to thank the rest of Joe's family for getting up and sharing their stories and their thoughts. I know how hard it can be at a time like this to get up and speak about your deepest innermost thoughts in front of a crowd of people. I lost my own father over eleven years ago, just two months after Jana and I were married. I still find it difficult sometimes to express how much I loved him, or how much I still miss him.
At the time that my own father left me, I was least prepared to be without him. I was in desperate need of his advice. I was newly married, living a long way from where I was born, responsible for fixing and maintaining a house and a yard and two cars. My father was a multi-talented handyman who could have fixed anything with a length of baling wire, a roll of electrical tape, and a well-placed word. I could hardly tell one end of a screwdriver from another.
But what I'd not thought about at the time was that when you marry someone, you get a package. Sometime's it two for one, or three or one, or in my case…a seven for one deal. Along with my beautiful new bride, I'd inherited three new brothers, a new sister, and an amazingly loving and accepting pair of new parents, Joe and Jackie Ondrechen.
Whenever I had a crisis, I soon learned that while I couldn't call on Dad, I could call on Joe. If something around our house broke, I no sooner could lay the phone down before he'd be there with a tool kit to help us out. If our car broke down, he would be right there helping me to get on the road again, regardless of the hour.
After a while, I realized that I had to be careful about sharing with Jana's parents whatever mechanical ills we might be suffering from, or else he'd be over trying to fix every single problem we had. That was an important part of who Joe was. He wanted to help. And he never asked a thing of me in return except that I love his daughter…which I do, with all my heart. But over the years, I've also come to cherish this family, these children, that Joe and Jackie brought so lovingly into this world.
Whenever someone passes on, I think we all want to take stock and ask ourselves about the legacies they will leave behind. For some people, it might be a building. Or a law. Or a book. But what legacy will Joe Ondrechen will leave behind for all of us?
If there's anything you learn about being a part of the Ondrechen family, it's that the important things aren't about things at all. They aren't a material tribe. Jana has often told me that as she and her siblings were growing up, they often didn't have a functioning television set. But what they did have were encyclopedias, and music lessons, and dinner time conversations about politics and world events. To an Ondrechen, what's important are things that you do, the actions you take to improve the world, and the lives of those around you. It's about being a part of the solution.
Joe and Jackie shared a strong belief in volunteerism. Though I'm not sure at what point in his life he started giving up his time to others, I do know that he joined the United States Navy a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He believed strongly in serving his country, and in helping her be strong. Along with millions of other Americans, he was part of what we now call the "greatest generation," the men and women who helped throw back the enemies who not only endangered America, but endangered the fundamental values of all humanity, regardless of race, religion, or creed. He served selflessly without asking anything of his nation, even to the point of not wanting the Navy to have to pay to move his family between his many postings because he didn't want to be greedy. This too was a part of who Joe was.
But while I love and respect my late father-in-law, I cannot give him sole credit for defeating the Axis powers. Unquestionably he played his part in that conflict, but then again we ask ourselves, what is it that Joe will leave behind personally for future generations? Once again, I say that what Ondrechens are about are ideas, and making them come to life. If that is our criteria, then we need look no further than the confines of this chapel and his children assembled here today.
Mary Jo, Joe Jr., Steve, Jana and David. In case you ever nutured even a quantum of doubt about how your father felt about you, take it from this outsider's empirical perspective: he loved and was deeply proud of every last one of you. He gloried in your lives. He was happy at your victories, and sorrowed at your losses. Whenever any of you would call on the phone, he would light up at the sound of your name. It meant the world to him just to share a few moments of your lives, and rightfully so. Though each of you has a very individual personality, and each of you have followed different paths, I see a spark of your father in all of you. Whatever may have happened to Joe, there is no doubt that his spirit lives on in each of you.
To his eldest daughter and son, Joe passed on his love of science and of all things technical. Mary Jo is a highly respected professor at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachussetts, having achieved her doctorate at the highly impressive age of twenty five. Even though she is spending a year on sabbatical here in San Diego, we hardly see much of her as she flies all over the world to speak at conferences and to attend to the business of her university. Joe Jr. has similarly worked for many years as an engineer for some of the largest government contractors, working on projects that ultimately touch millions of American lives.
If things had gone differently, Joe Sr. might have followed career much like one of them. When he retired from the Navy and attended college, he opted ultimately to take a degree in Public Administration rather than the physics or anthropology that he loved. With a wife and five children to support, he had to think of their futures, and the legacy he would leave behind.
Joe Sr. was also a great lover of music, and had one of the best voices in his congregation at St. Philip's Church in Lemon Grove. To varying degrees, all of his children inherited the ability to play musical instruments, or at least to appreciate music for it's own sake. Once when my dear sister-in-law Mary Jo was offered a new baby doll to play with, she rebuffed her parents by saying, "raver have a record player." Similarly, when Joe offered Steve a chord organ to play, Steve informed his dad that he'd rather have a guitar instead. (As you can tell, Ondrechen children develop strong preferences early on.) Since that time, Steve is rarely without a guitar pick somewhere on his person. To this day, he writes and performs music both for love and for profit, helping to spread his father's love to new generations wherever he performs.
To my darling, dear wife Jana, he left so many different wonderful traits that it is hard to pick a chief one from among them. Like her father and many of her Ondrechen aunts and uncles, she knows how to tell a great story, and has a keen eye for observing the interesting characters around her. From her highly organized father, she adapted the traits that make her one of the best trade-show planners in her industry. But what she got in spades not only from Joe but from Jackie as well, is her courageous compassion for others, and her desire to help those less fortunate than herself. In our nearly twelve years together, there's rarely a week that's gone by that she hasn't done something to benefit a charity, to assist with a drive for the homeless or those afflicted with AIDS, to reach out and comfort those most in need of a light in their lives.
A few years back, as we began to contemplate the future, Joe and Jackie asked that Jana become her brother David's legal conservator, a responsibility that Jana gladly accepted. Although the choice was extremely logical because of Jana and I's everyday proximity to David, it was also because her extraordinarily strong compassion, and ability to empathize with others. This was a nearly seventh sense honed by spending years alongside her parents as they worked for the numerous charities with which the Ondrechen family have become so strongly associated.
Last, but certainly not least, David is also an inheritor of his father's legacy. Joe Sr. was a man of very few words, and usually preferred to listen to others. If you knew Joe, he could communicate volumes with only a look, or a touch on the shoulder. David can show or tell you astonishing things with only those same tools, for those who take the time to get to know him. Like his father he is kind and compassionate, and inordinately patient with the rest of us when we don't understand. He has taught us all about listening, and watching, about taking time to unravel the truth behind the mystery and seeing the beauty that can bound in a grain of sand. David teaches us that some of the most important things in life take some learning to understand.
It is hard to think that Joe the man has really left us, but what he left behind is ever so much greater than just the mortal body we commend to rest today. Through these five, miraculous, wonderful children sitting before you, Joe is going to change the world in ways we can't even begin to imagine, but of one thing I am certain. We shall all be better for the marvelous example that Joe was to us all.
7:57 AM
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Friday, February 15, 2008
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Joseph Ondrechen Sr. 1922 - 2008
Current mood:  sad
Category: Life
It's my very sad duty to announce the death of my father-in-law, Joseph Ondrechen Sr. He passed away yesterday at the age of 85 while at home with his wife Jackie.
He grew up during the Great Depression in a small coal mining town in West Virginia, and served as a career military man in the United States Navy, achieving the rank of Chief Warrant Officer. As part of the "greatest generation", he fought in World War II and later bore witness to the historic Bikini Atoll nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s.
Following his career in the Navy, he worked for the state of California for many years, retiring at last to his home in southern California.
Joe had many different interests including a love of the sciences, something which he passed down to all of his children. He was particularly interested in anthropology, which he studied in college following his naval career. He was a loyal fan of both the San Diego Chargers and the San Diego Padres, and could easily have been a sportscaster himself for all of his knowledge of the games. And like myself, he had a particularly soft spot for critters of all kinds.
Joe was in some ways a hard man to get to know. He was very quiet and soft-spoken, preferring most of the time to listen to others. He was enormously generous and caring, and in all the years that Jana and I have been married, he was unfailingly kind and supportive of me. He will be dearly missed by all of us.
Joe leaves behind five children: Mary Jo Ondrechen of Mansfield, Massachusetts; Joseph Ondrechen Jr. of Santa Clarita, California; Steven Ondrechen of Austin, Texas; Jana (Ondrechen) Hallford of Spring Vally, California; and David Ondrechen of National City, California. The details of his funeral are still to be determined.
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Currently
listening
:
Mozart - Requiem / Augér, Bartoli, Cole, Pape, Wiener Phil., Solti
By
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Release date: 10 March, 1992
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10:07 AM
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5 Comments - 4 Kudos
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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What’s My Century Again?
Category: News and Politics
Today I saw a news article that the pope has cancelled a visit to a university over protests of the pope's position on...Galileo? I mean, aren't we all sort of over the whole Earth going around the sun thing by now? I would have expected abortion or contraception. Even the whole Chuck Darwin thing, but I guess some folks just won't let bygones be bygones. Even after a couple of centuries.
Here's the link to the news article on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/15/pope.protest/index.html
2:53 PM
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Friday, January 11, 2008
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My Name In Lights...
Current mood: happy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
Well folks, it's official. My name has finally appeared on the big screen. 
Jana and Justin and I all went to "In the Name of the King" last night, and lo and behold, my name floated up the silver screen. Granted, it showed up somewhere after the janitorial staff were all listed and the entire population of Germany were named, but it was there at the top of the names under special thanks right at the very end of the credits. It should have been listed a little closer to the writing staff (they were using my material afterall), but I'll settle for the nod nonetheless.
For those of you coming to the 2:00 showing at the AMC Citywalk, I'll meet everyone outside the theatre about fifteen minutes before showtime. I'll be running around in a Gas Powered Games T-Shirt (or possibly my Dungeon Siege tee, if I can find it). I may also eat lunch at the Hard Rock cafe about an hour before that, so give me a buzz on my cell if you want to join me.
--- Nealiios
11:46 PM
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San Diego Siege tonight
Current mood:  awake
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
Just a reminder, "In the Name of the King" hits screens tonight. Come join Jana and I for the viewing!
Dinner at 6:00 at Hennessey's Irish Pub in the gaslamp, then the screening at Horton Plaza at 7:35. If you're coming down to join us, give me a buzz on my cell at 619-916-9075.
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Currently
playing
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Dungeon Siege
Release date: 04 April, 2002
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12:06 AM
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
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"In the Name of the King" Premieres - L.A. and San Diego
Current mood: peaceful
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
Hello all,
Just a quick update on the "In the Name of the King" premiere parties we're throwing this weekend. Since I've had friends in both San Diego and L.A. say they'd like to come, we're doing TWO premiere parties! Pick the one that's most convenient for you!
SAN DIEGO PREMIERE - Friday, January 11th
We're aiming for the Friday, 7:35 p.m. showing at the UA Horton Plaza 14, to be proceeded at 6:00 p.m. by a quick dinner at Hennesey's Irish Pub, on the same street as Horton Plaza.
Here are a couple of links to help you find out where we're going:
UA Horton Plaza 14 on Fandango (Buy your tickets online)
http://www.fandango.com/uahortonplaza14_aabfx/theaterpage?date=1/11/2008
Hennessey's Irish Pub
http://www.hennesseysgaslamp.com/home.html
LOS ANGELES PREMIERE - Saturday, January 12
On Saturday, we're going to attempt to make the 2:00 p.m. showing at the AMC CityWalk Stadium 19. Again, here's a link:
AMC CityWalk Stadium 19 with IMAX (Fandango link. Buy your tickets online!)
http://www.fandango.com/inthenameoftheking:adungeonsiegetale_102766/movietimes?location=Los%20Angeles,%20CA&date=1%2f11%2f2008
We may be doing a lunch or dinner thing before or after in L.A., but contact me on the day of for details.
Come and help us cheer in the off chance my name actually shows up on this thing, or at least keep Jana and I company as I grouse about what they've done to my once-beautiful gaming universe. :) Feel free to invite friends, family, and small marsupials as long as they remember that the whole shebang is dutch treat. (Unfortunately they didn't pay me for this, so no free lunches for anyone quite yet!)
If you need to contact me before the dinner or the movie, give me a buzz on my cell phone at 619-916-9075. Hope you can join us!
Neal
3:27 AM
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