When I first saw ThinkGeek advertising the Plush Portal 2 Turret, I thought it sounded extremely cool. I waited patiently for them to come into stock, and promptly ordered one for early December. Upon receiving it, I thought it looked extremely cool, but was a bit disappointed with the performance of the motion sensor. It basically required shining a flashlight into the “eye” (which is actually a small black tube opening below the glowing eye). The motion part worked great, and knocking it over resulted in various sayings from the game.

A quick examination of the “eye” found a stray piece of plastic in the opening, but still lousy performance. A quick email to ThinkGeek resulted in a prompt response of “seems defective”, but alas, they were out of stock. Rather than ship the old one back for a refund, I decided to wait until they had them back in stock, which was about 2 weeks later. At that point, I contacted them again, and they promptly shipped out a replacement, and rather than having me ship the old one back, just asked me to toss it. Cool! The new one arrived a few days later, and low and behold, it worked great. It could “see” me walk by in the hall, and would respond to other motions. Examination of the newer unit did seem to indicate they had made minor adjustments to the “eye”, in that the black “straw” that directs light back to the sensor was shorter, which would no doubt allow more light to get to the sensor.

All and all, the product is great, and ThinkGeek’s service was exemplary.

[xrr rating=4.75/5]

While not a stoner, I do enjoy the Harold and Kumar movies as they are silly, and a nice call back to the days of National Lampoons, and other classic 80’s comedies, not to mention the primary actors in them being highly enjoyable, and talented. As such, my wife and I went and saw Harold and Kumar 3 this last weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The movie starts off well, and we soon determine the “plot” of the movie is replacing a lost Christmas tree. Danny Trejo plays Maria’s (now Harold’s wife) father, and he places a great deal of importance on Christmas. Harold and Kumar haven’t really been friends in a while, and their story lines don’t intersect until maybe 20 minutes into the movie. Once that happens, it becomes a very familiar with the previous movies. Hi-jinx ensue, and they eventually meet up with NPH, who as usual plays a caricature that could only come from a Harold and Kumar movie, and this time maybe even funnier than previous examples. He even explains what happened when he died in the last movie. After all this, and a brush with death, we get the extremely campy scene similar to the cheetah ride in the first movie, and the whole movie ends on a nice happy note. All and all, it’s a pretty good movie. I’m not sure it’s worth the $19 it cost for two of us to see it in 3D, but they do make fun of the 3D aspect a few times (it’s a joke a few times, as are nice topical things refering to Kal Penn’s previous job (for the White House), and John Cho’s previous role in Star Trek). See it. At least in the cheap theater, or on DVD.
[xrr rating=4/5]