The new iMac

The new version of Apple's iMac was unveiled at the Apple Expo on France on Tuesday. Here's the info from Apple's website, and here is a picture of what it looks like "under the hood".

Don't Panic!!!

This is awesome news from the BBC - new version of Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy text adventure game to launch on BBC Radio 4's website. The original version was created by Douglas Adams and Infocom back in the 80's, and I loved that game. The online version of the original game can still be found through this website, but read the description on the page carefully to learn how to play the game online. EDIT - Apparently the website's online java version of the game is not always available, so some times it may not work. You can try again later in the day. Just an FYI.

It's still a really funny (although sometimes exasperating) game, and it really brings back memories of the old days when I played it on my old Atari 800 (64K of RAM, baby!!). The packing for the game was the best - all the neat stuff you got with it. It came with Peril Sensitive Sunglasses (black cardboard wrap around sunglasses), pocket fluff, a miniature space fleet (empty plastic bag), Hitchhiker's Guide brochure, and "Orders For Destruction". They just don't make games like that anymore.

Go see Napoleon Dynamite - it's fricken' AWESOME!

Forgot to mention this a couple days ago, but my wife and I went and saw Napoleon Dynamite last Saturday. It was really funny, and we thought it was pretty good. The website is kinda fun too, has some quizzes based on events from the movie. Anyway, I'd recommend the movie pretty highly - and stay till the end of the credits!

Not sure about this idea...

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, and the brevitiy of the few post I made within the last week or so, I've been kinda out of it. But I think I'm finally over being sick, so that's a good thing! And hopefully I'll be able to post more often now, which would be an even better thing, right?

This is kind of interesting, but I'm not sure it's a good idea - Nintendo's new handheld gaming system, the Nintendo DS, to have free Voice over IP chat feature. The deal with it is you can connect a headset to your DS and use it's built in 802.11b WiFi capability to connect to a wireless hotspot and then chat with other Nintendo DS players. But the maybe not so good part mentioned in the article is that you can also make free phone calls. I'm hoping that isn't actually the case, but I suppose it is theoretically possible. Nothing on the company website specifically confirming or denying this - there is some pre-release DS info on their site here. It does mention voice chat and wireless networking for multi-player, but not VoIP calls. We'll hear more about this in the coming months, I'm sure.

Google Search bar

You'll notice that there is a Google search bar up under the blog title, but there's also a search bar at the very top of the page. Well, the one at the top is a Blogger feature and is there to search this site only. The Google search bar under the title runs a normal Google search - just starts it from my site. You'll probably also notice ads from Google too - hey, like many other people out there blogging and whatnot - I want to get PAID too!! Many other sites use Google's ads, now I do too. So, do click an ad or two if you see something interesting - every little bit helps, right?

And the winner is -

Read this article to find out what the top ten Sci-Fi movies are, according to The Guardian UK's panel of experts. That list works for me, I agree with it for the most part. I probably would have put The Matrix up just a little higher, but not much higher.

Don't forget to watch Dave Chappelle's Showtime special, For What It's Worth. It premieres on September 4th at 9pm.

You heard that from WHERE?

You know what I mean, you read something here on the blog and tried to explain it to someone and they were all, "Huh? Blog?" Well, with the new Email Post feature, now you can just email the link to the post you're talking about to them, and make life easier on yourself. It's a new feature for Blogger, and it's active on my blog right now. Just look for the little envelope with an arrow icon below each post. It's all about serving the (2) people who read the blog, yo.

Recent events

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I was sick this past weekend. Start feeling a little odd on Thursday, and by Friday evening I had a fever just over 101. Not a lot of fun, I assure you. So I was out of commission Saturday, and still a little out of it Sunday morning. Felt a whole lot better Sunday, but still not normal. But it's all OK now, so here's something a little more interesting to read about!

Having a bit of trouble finding the soundtrack to Garden State, it's been out since the 10th of August but it seems that every store I go to doesn't have any in stock. Maybe I'll just download it from the iTunes Music Store - oh wait, they don't have it either!! Well, technically I can download each song individually, but that's really not the same, is it?

My wife and I went to see an advance screening of Suspect Zero last night, it was interesting, but not a great movie. An unconventional thriller, and had some interesting plot twists. Not the best, and the trailer for it gives away too much (like many of them do), but still not a bad movie.

We also went to see Open Water - saw that Sunday evening (after I was mostly recovered from my illness.) It was good, not as scary as I had though it would be though. And the weird thing I noticed - Steve Lemme from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe (they did the movies Super Troopers and Club Dread) was in it briefly! And the girl in the movie (Blanchard Ryan) was in Super Troopers! This all relates because as I was sitting there watching the movie, I was thinking "Hmm, where have I seen that girl before?" and as soon as I saw Steve Lemme, I realized that she was in Super Troopers. See, this is how my mind works sometimes.

GMail Notifier

Google's free email service, GMail, now has a small tool you can download and run on a WIN2K or WIN XP computer. It sits in your system tray, and notifies you when you've received new mail in your GMail account. Download it here.

Interesting news

This article about a major medical study hits close to home for me - since I have Type II diabetes. The study recommends that all Type II disbetics, regardless of their cholesterol levels, should consider taking cholesterol lowering drugs (like Lipitor.) It is interesting that Lipitor's manufacturer, Pfizer, provided some funding to the study, though it is noted that the study was supported primarily by the British government and the British equivalent of the American Diabetes Association and was conducted independently of the companies involvement. It's an interesting idea, but I don't know if just one study is going to convince me that taking MORE drugs is a good idea - I'm already on plenty of medication, thanks.

Garden State

Just saw Garden State last night at The Drexel - it was a sneak preview since the movie hasn't opened here yet. Both my wife and I loved this movie, it was really very funny, well written, and better than I expected. Who knew Zach Braff from the TV show Scrubs could write and direct a pretty darn good movie? It wasn't perfect - but it was witty, and engaging, and filled with great performances from Braff and Natalie Portman, and from Peter Sarsgaard. Go see Garden State - you won't be disappointed!

Star Wars Original Trilogy DVD's

Here's an article about the September 21st release of the 4 DVD Star Wars set. I'm getting it, but I'll admit that the rumor of additional "tinkering" by Lucas worries me. Some of the added elements in the "Special Editons" were alright, but some (Greedo shoots FIRST??? WTF???) were horrible.

In case you hadn't noticed, Windows XP Service Pack 2 is delayed - again. The company statement is that it was delayed "after receiving feedback from IT groups saying they hadn’t had time to implement a tool for temporarily blocking the automatic download of SP2." Since SP2 causes conflcit in several applications, like Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Veritas Backup Exec, and some of Microsoft's management tools, this tool is a necessity for many companies. Also, SP2 is certainly not perfect - there's already one hotfix available for it. The SP2 delay is (so far) just for corporations - home users should be able to get SP2 from Windows Update starting today.

NASA identifies flaw that killed Columbia astronauts

In this ABC News article, NASA reveals that the method used to apply insulating foam to the shuttle's external fuel tank was defective. This caused cracks to develop because of spots where there was no insulation, a failure that resulted in a suitcase-sized piece detaching from the external fuel tank of Columbia and striking it's left wing. This foam strike punched a hole in that wing, which lead to the failure of the heat shield.

Is Microsoft's Windows XP Firewall secure? The old Internet Connection Firewall is changed and updated by Service Pack 2 into the NEW on-by-default Windows Firewall. And according to the article, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Lots of news...

The Google IPO is nigh, beginning at 9:00am Eastern. Bidder registration closed last night.

Governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, shocked everyone when he announced he was gay, and resigning as governor. He made the announcement at a press conference on Thursday. He won't officially resign until November 15th to prevent the need for a special election.

The Supreme Court of California ruled on the case against the gay marriages performed in San Francisco, and said that Mayor Gavin Newsom had exceeded his authority in allowing the marriages. The over 4,000 same-sex weddings performed in San Francisco in February and March were ruled to have no standing under state law and the court declared the marriages "void and of no legal effect from their inception." That really stinks - I still don't get what the big deal is over gay marriage. If they want to get married - let 'em, I say.

First Bonnie (which was downgraded to a tropical storm, and wasn't as bad as it was expected to be) hits, and now Hurricane Charlie prepares to hit the Florida coast. Winds are expected to top 110 mph. Sucks to be in Florida right now - hope it doesn't get too bad for them.

Build a Better Bush

We were having a lot of fun with this link at my office yesterday - Build a Better Bush . Thanks to my wife for emailing it to me (love ya!)

Athens Olympics - most secure Olympic Games ever, or most invasive?

Read this story from CNN about the enormous effort several companies have made to provide the security for the Summer Olympics in Athens (opening ceremonies are this Friday.) It's a huge - and expensive - undertaking, and involves lots of electronic surveillance from over 1,000 high-resolution and infrared cameras, 12 patrol boats, 4,000 vehicles, nine helicopters, a sensor-laden blimp and four mobile command centers. But there are questions of invasion of privacy to consider, since the system can pickup spoken words and analyze e-mail and phone traffic (cell and standard) and has the ability to understand Greek, English, Arabic, Farsi, and several other languages as well. Groups in Greece have protested against the system, and some have even gone as far as going around spray-painting security cameras. It's a tough line to straddle, the line between providing security for an international event and respecting privacy of thousands of individuals both native and visiting the country. Hopefully this huge system will do only it's intended job, and won't be used in a more invasive manner to pry into people's private lives.

RIP - Rick James dead at 56

Rick James was found dead yesterday morning at his home near Universal City, CA. Very sad news indeed. First Ray Charles, and now Rick James. Maybe this will stop all the idiot kids running around going "I'm Rick James, bitch!!" We can only hope.

The new Batmobile - in action!!

Check this amateur video of the Batmobile from Batman Begins - SWEET!!!

Updated versions of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird released

Mozilla.org released updated versions of Firefox (now on version 0.9.3) and Thunderbird (now on version 0.7.3) yesterday. This new release is to correct 4 bugs in the earlier versions. Read the MozillaZine article for more info.

The Village - WARNING!!!!! (Slight) Spoilers!!!!!

I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Village on Monday night. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be. I liked The Sixth Sense alot, and I just love Unbreakable - it's one of my favorite films. But The Village - wasn't what it had been hyped up to be. I don't want to give away the whole film, but this is DEFINITELY not a movie about mysterious monsters in the woods. It's basically a treatise on the evil of modern society, and how a group of people hoped returning to a more innocent time would rid them of those evils. I did like the performances in the movie, Joaquin Phoenix was very good, as was Bryce Dallas Howard and Adrien Brody. William Hurt gave a particularly good performance - very good indeed. Again - I don't want to ruin the entire movie, so I won't get into to many specifics on the performances. There were funny scenes, and scary scenes, and very touching or emotionally moving scenes - but the movie as a whole just seemed weird, kind of insincere. Because all the trailers and commercials make it seem like a "scary monster-in-the-woods what do we do?" action movie - and it isn't. It wasn't horrible or unwatchable - just not what I expected, I guess. Don't think I'll be recommending it to anyone, maybe telling them to wait till it's out on video or something.

HP to ship notebooks with Linux pre-installed

This is a great thing - HP to launch Linux notebook. Since Linux is already installed and configured, you shouldn't have weird problems with drivers and stuff. Plus, you've got support from HP if you do have a problem. Nice!

A bit of fun

Try this game - HomeRun. Yeah, I know it's not written in english, but it's pretty easy actually. Click the sign that says "Start", then keep the drunk guy from falling over by moving the mouse left or right. You won't see a mouse pointer, so it's tough to gage how far left and right you are moving.

For some funny reading, try The White House (it's a parody site - the REAL White House URL is whitehouse.gov). Some pretty funny stuff on there, but may not be appropriate for all - viewer discretion is advised.

Go me!!!

I made my post about the Batman Begins trailer way, way, WAY before it was posted over on Slashdot. I rule.

If you are a Blade fan, you may want to check out the website for Blade Trinity, the final movie in the series. Watch the trailer, check out the downloads (desktops, AIM icons, etc.), and hope (like I am) that Jessica Biel doesn't suck up the place. Hee - the spellchecker wants to replace "Biel" with "bile". That's kinda funny!

Batman Begins trailer!!

Go to http://batmanbegins.warnerbros.com/ - click Trailer - Enjoy!!

Slight change to the site

You'll probably notice that Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added back in, I finally got around to setting it up in the new template I'm using. So - comment away!!

Hope is on the way!

Watched some of the Democratic National Convention last night, and caught all of John Edwards speech accepting the Vice Presidential nomination. He's quite the public speaker, isn't he? Very charismatic, very engaging. I first noticed it during the primary, whenever he spoke in public he was projecting this sort of "down home" vibe - kind of an appeal to the everyday people to connect with him because he has been where they are and stands for what they stand for. Don't personally know if I buy all of what he's selling, since I don't ever really trust malpractice attorneys, but he's damn good at selling it. Cute little kids too. We'll see if his vision of the One America he wants to help us reach holds out once he and John Kerry get elected in November (boy, am I optimistic or what?)

The problem for the Democrats is the divisiveness within the party - a case in point was Al Sharpton's speech at the convention last night. He strayed from his "approved" speech - which I don't have a problem with at all, he made some great points and had some valid observations and calls to African Americans across the country to make their vote count, and to slam the Republicans who seem to thing those same votes are for sale - "Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously, is our right to vote wasn't gained because of our age - Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of (civil rights activists) Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us. This vote can't be bargained away. This vote can't be given away. In all due respect, Mr. President, read my lips: Our vote is not for sale." He received a few standing ovations during his 24 minute speech (he was scheduled for only 6 minutes), and got great responses from the conventioneers for statements like the preceding and this comment, "The issue of government is not to determine who may sleep together in the bedroom, it's to help those that might not be eating in the kitchen." Fiery stuff indeed, but here's the problem. The Democrats can't afford to even have the hint of division - the margin of support between Kerry/Edwards and Bush/Cheney is so close right now, and we can't afford to have another Presidential election like the last. Hopefully the Democrats can pull together the different elements developing within their party, like the delegates who still stuck with Dennis Kucinich during the roll call. A lot is riding on their ability to show the public what Kerry and Edwards are all about - and convince people to get out and vote. Not much time left till November guys - you had better really get on it.

Some people have no sense of humor...

Well, that didn't take long. The Richmond Organization, which owns the copyright on Woody Guthrie's tune "This Land Is Your Land" (on which JibJab's "This Land" is based (See post below)) is suing the creators of the site. Read the article here. No sense of humor, I tell ya...

Hee hee!!

Got the link to this from my sister - This Land starring George Bush and John Kerry. Very funny stuff!!!

Short post today, feeling sort of out of it. If anything else strikes my fancy I may post it up, otherwise I'll update again tomorrow.

Hey, this tastes a little funny...

Ewww. Read this. I'd rather starve, personally.

The CRN Test Center recently evaluated Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate (RC) 2 - and 3 of their 5 test machines no longer worked, blue-screens of death appearing after the install completed. Whoopsie. Sounds like SP2 RC2 is still not ready for prime time, hopefully this gets corrected soon - because that service pack is desperately needed.

Or maybe she WILL come back some day - update on the Linda Ronstadt/Aladdin controversy

The chairman of the prospective new owners of the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, Planet Hollywood Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Earl (a partner in the group that won the right to buy the Aladdin in bankruptcy court) has responded to the controversy - read the article here. He's also offering to take Michael Moore up on his offer to join Ronstadt onstage. It's also noted in the article that the Raelians, "a group whose religion revolves around beliefs about extraterrestrials and cloning, named Ronstadt an honorary priest or guide, a title that previously has been bestowed upon celebrities such as Moore, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor and George Michael." So she's got THAT going for her.

On a more personal note - this is my 100th post! A small milestone to be sure, but worth noting I think. It's quite a bit of fun to write this blog, and I think it won't be long till I've written my 500th post and beyond. That's all for now, more to come later maybe. 

NASA releases pictures from the Apollo 11 mission

A large number of pictures taken from space and from the surface of the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts have been digitized and are available online here. This was just linked on Slashdot, so site response may be lousy right now. You can view the thumbnails, but I haven't been able to pull down a full-size image yet.

New Look

The page IS different - you aren't seeing things. I changed templates, decided I liked this one better than the old one (with some help from my wife - thanks honey.) I've added most of the little extras I had on the page into the new template, but haven't added the Haloscan comment/trackback scripts in. Blogger hosts commenting now - and I may just stay with that instead. The drawback would be that any comments added thru Haloscan under the old page would be gone. Haven't decided for sure yet - and I'm sure I will change other things - so leave comments for me and let me know what you think of the new layout. Your input is appreciated!

Well, I guess she won't be coming back some day...

Singer Linda Ronstadt removed for the Aladdin Hotel & Casino following a concert Saturday night after expressing support for controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Whoa. Sounds like someone touched a nerve, eh? This really shouldn't have surprised them as she's been making the same dedication at EVERY show. Since her recent summer tour began.  And here's a great response from Michael Moore via his website - an Open Letter to Bill Timmins, President Aladdin Casino and Hotel. God, that's a great response.

Fallout of the Download.Ject/Scob worm

The writer of this article raises a valid point. Now that the problem is (hopefully) fixed, why can't we know which sites had a problem? Sure, they are afraid of lawsuits - but isn't hiding the truth from the world just as bad? I guess the watch word for Net users these days is "suspicion" - be very cautious of what websites you visit and what they might be doing "behind the scenes" while you are there. As always, be sure you are updating Windows, running anti-virus scans at LEAST once a month, running a firewall or behind a router, and using spyware/adware/malware detection and removal utilities like Spybot and Ad Aware.

It's a start...

I'm not normally one to cheer for Microsoft, but this is good news - Microsoft awarded $3.95 million in a lawsuit against spammer accused of sending millions of messages trying to lure e-mail users to a Web site that illegally used a Microsoft trademark. Now if they were just as diligent in securing Windows, that would REALLY be something. I do remember this, the spam wanted you to go to windowsupdate.com (Microsoft's ACTUAL Windows Update website is http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) and download a toolbar that they claimed would download Windows updates for you. I never really understood why someone would think that was necessary, since Windows Update isn't that hard to use, and if you have Windows XP it can be setup to download and install updates automatically. But getting rid of the big spammers is a good thing, so I guess it all works out in the end.

Awwww, that's...umm...sweet? I guess?

I guess it's true love - John Edwards and his wife celebrate each wedding anniversary by going out to eat - at Wendy's. Alrighty then. My wife and I celebrate each of our wedding anniversaries in Las Vegas.  Yeah, our choice is better.

A bit of fun

Got this link from my wife - Escape! Very simplistic design and graphics, but it's a lot of fun - and it's addicting. Enjoy!

Another big Vegas merger...

It was just announced today that Harrah's Entertainment Inc. will buy Caesars Entertainment Inc. for $5.2 billion in cash and stock. To quote the Tim and Tom Connection, "That's a lot of cheddar, a lot of salad." Harrah's operates 28 casinos in 13 states under the Harrah’s and Showboat names, and has about 41,000 employees. Caesars owns 28 properties worldwide, including Caesars Palace, Bally’s Las Vegas, and Paris Las Vegas, and employs 54,000. This merger will make the new company the world's biggest gambling company. So, now most of the properties in Las Vegas will be controlled by only two companies. As long as both deals are approved and go through - of course. Fewer comp cards to keep track of is a good thing, I suppose!

Emmy award nominations

The Emmy nominations are out - and Arrested Development got 7 nominations! I love that show! And The Amazing Race (the best show EVER!!) got 4 nominations, including Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, the award it won last year. It'll win again - I did mention it's the BEST SHOW EVER, right? The most nominations overall went to Angels In America, with 21.

Steve Ballmer bets that Xbox can take Sony in the next-gen console war

Well, I certain don't have the same rosy outlook that he does, but - Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, predicts victory in the next-gen console war. Well, we can only hope that he's got his "Developers, developers, developers!!" on board.

Apple has confirmed the next iMac will utilize a G5 processor while speaking to analysts and members of the press during it's 3rd quarter fiscal year '04 conference call Wednesday afternoon. It also states that the reason why the new iMac won't ship till September is because IBM is having manufacturing problems. IBM makes the G5 processor for Apple, and could not supply enough processors to Apple for an earlier launch of the new iMac.

*Yawn!!!!!*

Feeling tired today? Be sure to visit tired.com and tell them about it. The site has received 32,000+ messages so far (read the Slate article here) and they don't show any signs of slowing. But seriously, who ISN'T tired? Heck, I'm tired every day!

Which movie villain are you?

This is a pretty cool quiz - Which Movie Villain Are You?
I, apparently, am Agent Smith -

Books schmooks

This article about a National Endowment for the Arts survey released Thursday states that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; and that the pace of lost readers is quickening, especially among younger readers. So, go read a book already!

A view into the future of computing-on-the-go?

This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette talks about a project in development at Intel Research Pittsburgh called Internet Suspend/Resume. If it actually works the way they say it will, that would be really useful. Perhaps someday we won't need to lug laptops around to do work or stay connected to the internet when away from home!

News of an exploit that affects Mozilla/Firefox - seems they are susceptible to the shell: scheme. The newest version of Firefox (version 0.9.2) includes the patch mentioned in this link. The only thing that changed between the 0.9.1 release and 0.9.2 is the inclusion of the patch. You can check if you are vulnerable by opening Firefox and then - 1) Type about:config in the location bar. 2) In the textbox labeled 'Filter' type shell 3) network.protocol-handler.external.shell should be listed and set to "false" If it's not listed or set to true, you need to apply the patch. The patch will fix older versions of Firefox and of Mozilla and Netscape 6.x or 7.x.

[Singing] But how do you know she is a witch? [/Singing]

In (Awesome!) news from Broadway, Monty Python's Spamalot (The Musical) announces that David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria, and Tim Curry will star as Sir Robin, Lancelot and King Arthur. And there was much rejoicing (Yay!).

Finally!! A new post!!

Greetings. I'm back from my trip, and not really happy to be back at work, but oh well. Had a good time visiting my Dad and stepmom, and my brother and his family. I've got some pictures, and I'll be linking a few of them into the blog - but I haven't had a chance to do it yet. The Amazing Race was on last night. Gotta have your priorities :)

In other news, Microsoft released a "patch" to fix the exploit in Internet Explorer that allowed compromised sites to download the trojan known as either Download.Ject or JS.Scob.Trojan. I say "patch" cause it's really just a workaround right now. A more comprehensive fix is said to be in the works.

Google is cracking down on people making a buck or two off of Gmail accounts. Google has added to it's user agreement, stating that Gmail users may not "sell, trade, resell, or otherwise exploit for any unauthorized commercial purpose or transfer any Gmail account." Darn, there go my dreams of financial independence.

Money money money money...MONEY!!

So the Big Game/Powerball jackpot is up to like $290 million. Now if I could only win...

MGM is now being courted by two suitors - Sony and Time Warner. Sony bid $5 billion for MGM back in April, and Time Warner just entered a bid recently. $5 BILLION. With a "b". Billion, like your own island with giraffes and stuff running around.

Apple is apparently making a new iMac - but it won't be shipping till sometime in September. They aren't taking orders for the current iMac any longer, and the current stock of iMacs won't last till September. Whoops.

Well, another weekend is upon us, and once again the wife and I are going out of town. So I will once again be incommunicado - possibly till Wednesday. We will be in Chicago, visiting my Dad and stepmom, and my brother and his family. My brother and his wife just had another baby last week, so we get to go and visit with my NEW niece, Isabella.

Here's a picture of baby Isabella with her mom, my sister-in-law Errin -



So cute!! Now, my brother has three daughters. In about ten years, he'll never get to use the bathroom or the phone. The poor guy is just hopelessly outnumbered. It'll be nice to visit with all of them, and I'll have some new pictures to post once I return, I'm sure.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man... Part 2

Whoops - teenager trying to bootleg Spider-Man 2 caught by theatre employee with night vision goggles. Hee - bet his parents were PISSED.

In other news, the Las Vegas Monorail will finally open starting July 15th. Since it was supposed to open in March, it's about time. This is really cool news for me and my wife - cause we love The Vegas!

Spider-Man, Spider-Man...

Went to see Spider-Man 2 last night - it was great! The Spider-Man movies have become the best movie adaptations of a comic book series as far as I am concerned. It all starts with the director - and Sam Raimi is a hell of a good director. His Evil Dead movies are brilliant, but since not everyone likes horror movies they didn't have huge mass-market appeal. Raimi was the perfect pick to direct the Spider-Man movies, and he's proven that with this movie. He really understands the subject, and it's so evident in the special touches he put in and in the performances he gets from his cast. And what a great cast - I always thought Tobey Maguire was the perfect choice for Peter/Spider-Man (Here's a link to an interview with Tobey Maguire (also has a interview with Alfred Molina)) and Kirsten Dunst was a great choice to be Mary Jane. I wasn't sure about James Franco as Harry Osborn, but he was good in the first movie and was even better in Spider-Man 2. He won me over with the great job he did in his big scene near the end of the film with (MAJOR HUGE SPOILER WARNING) Willem Dafoe reprising his role as Norman Osborn, encouraging his son to get revenge for him. By far my favorite single performance would have to be J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of The Daily Bugle. He had some great scenes in the original, and practically steals the second movie.
The film was great - I highly recommend it to one and all, and will be seeing it again myself as soon as possible!

Fahrenheit 9/11

If you haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11 yet, go see it. See Spider-Man 2 of course - but don't neglect to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It's a very important movie, and was also very entertaining. Well worth the price of admission, I thought. You can also read some of Michael Moore's interview in the most recent Playboy Magazine here (WARNING : This link will take you to a snippet of the interview in the July Playboy magazine. It's hosted on playboy.com, which is DEFINITELY not a safe-for-work website).

Pavitr Prabhakar, The Amazing Spider Man...wait, WTF???

Yeah, this is kinda weird. Spider-Man India – Spider-Man comic book "re-interpreted" for Indian audience. Man - first our JOBS get outsourced to India, now our superheroes too??

In other news, Jack Ryan is an idiot. If you have a wife as hot as Jeri Ryan is -



you shouldn't be doing stupid stuff like trying to get her to go to sex clubs and boink you while other people watch. Not very smart, huh?

I'll be gone the rest of the weekend, and through Tuesday probably. Not sure if I'll be able to post while away (being as the only access I'd have would be dial-up (bleah!)), so I might not post for a few days. To my reader(s?), I apologize for the downtime. Be back soon!

Gorramn good news

For fans of the FOX show Firefly, the shows early cancellation was hard to take. The release of the episodes made things a little better - we could finally see the episodes never shown on FOX, like the original pilot episode. Then came word of the movie adaptation of Firefly - and the word is good. The title of the movie is Serenity - and there is a newly created official movie website here. Not a lot of stuff on there yet, but does have a little info in the blog. The release date for Serenity is April 22, 2005.

Another upcoming movie, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is running a contest where the winner will appear in the movie. Only one problem - you must be a resident of the UK, no overseas entries will be accepted. Darn.

You've Got Spam!

Hee. Hee hee. Hee hee HA! HA HA HA!!! Software engineer at AOL charged with stealing AOL's subscriber list and selling it to spammer. Oh man - what an idiot!

So - first Google announces Gmail, with 1 gigabyte (1 GB) of free storage. Then recently Yahoo announces it will increase it's free storage to 100 megabytes (100 MB), and if you pay for Yahoo's premium service you get 2 GB. Now Hotmail is offering 250 MB free, and 2 GB for their paid service. Well, if nothing else, Gmail has forced other free mail providers to make their services a little better. Although it is odd that Yahoo and Hotmail have "trouble" with Gmail - blocking invitations or sending them straight to the bulk mail folder. Weird, isn't it?

Prepare to be assimilated...

This is just creepy - Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power and data conduit. Sounds like the Microsoft wants to Borgify us all. The article talks of "virtual keyboards on a patch of skin", and "(It) need not be limited to the skin of a human being". I've got chills over here people!

And in other tech news - Comdex 2004 is cancelled. They say it'll be back, better than before even, in 2005. Well, if they can really revitalize Comdex like they discuss in the article - it would be worth the year off. We shall see in 2005, I suppose.

Lack of update problem? SOLVED!

Been a while since I posted something - but here I am!

Cool news for those of us who use portable devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc.) fuel cell technology. Battery life extended 2.5 times greater than current lithium-ion rechargeables - and this is just the first generation of these Mobion fuel cells. Sounds pretty good so far!

The first privately funded manned space flight happened Monday. The pilot, Mike Melvill, reached a height of 62.21 miles above the surface of the Earth. The craft, called SpaceShipOne, and the exotic booster plane White Knight that carried it into the atmosphere were built by Scaled Composites, the company of aircraft designer Burt Rutan. The project was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen - to the tune of more than $20 million.

I've got some pictures I took last night that I'll be posting up here - once I can get them onto a site I can hot-link them from. Gonna try and do that later tonight, so I will post again if I can get that working.

Blogging ain't easy, yo

Well, today I decided to look on the lighter side and not get all heavy and serious like. So here's a quick movie review-

Went to see The Terminal with the wife last night. We both enjoyed it a lot. I thought Stanley Tucci did a great job as the uptight stickler-for-the-rules bureaucrat, and I liked Tom Hanks performance - I thought he really brought a lot of heart to the character. But the show, she was stolen by one of the supporting characters - by Kumar Pallana, who plays Gupta, a janitor at the airport. He's also been in Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums. Gupta loves to mop an area of the floor, surround it with "Wet Floor" signs, and sit back and watch as harried travelers in a hurry ignore the signs and end up slipping on the wet spot. Like this time, when he got Catherine Zeta Jones -



He also has some great bits during the dinner between Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones (hee - plate-spinning!!). Here's a pic of him juggling rings -



Overall a good movie, I thought. Definitely worth the price of admission.

In other news - check this Slashdot article about Gmail. I might have to try some of those utilities...

9/11 Commission report - communication failures and chaotic decision-making

I don't really have anything witty to say about this, but I'm sure you've all heard the findings released yesterday by the bi-partisan commission investigating 9/11. Here's an article summing it up. It's shocking, it's disturbing, and it's troublesome to hear that so many things went wrong. But - with just a bit of perspective - it's not impossible to understand. I remember hearing of the initial crash into the north tower, and thinking "That's horrible, a plane accidentally crashed into the World Trade Center". Of course, that supposition was very quickly dashed - the terrible images captured of the second plane flying purposely into the south tower made it all too apparent what was really happening. I know I wasn't alone in my initial thought, because when the attack began I was in a doctor's office - everyone around me was talking about the "accident". Yet it's still troubling, understandably so, to hear of the problems our government and others were having during the crisis. Even President Bush had communications difficulties - he had trouble reaching top officials in Washington from the elementary school in Florida he was at - he couldn't get a secure line, and had to use a cell phone! The hijackers (at least once that I've heard of) pressed the wrong button, and instead of addressing the passengers in the plane - they transmitted to air traffic control the message "We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you'll be OK." followed seconds later with "Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane." Some reports are attributing these statements to Mohammed Atta, the hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11, the plane which crashed into the north tower. Once the controller who heard this contacted his supervisor, the Boston air traffic center contacted the Northeast unit of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), with a frantic message: "We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something". The response from NORAD was - "Is this real-world or exercise?". Fighters were scrambled from Otis Air Force base (153 miles from New York City) at 8:53am - 7 minutes after Flight 11 crashed into the north tower. This all happened within 29 minutes - the hijackers transmission was at 8:24am, the call to NORAD at 8:37am, the crash at 8:46am, and finally the F-16's scrambled from Otis AFB at 8:53am. Even if the fighters had scrambled a little earlier, it would not have prevented that crash. But what of United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the south tower, and American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon? Could they have been stopped? Doubtful, at best they would have been shot down over populated areas - not a option I think the military would have taken. Besides - pilots didn't have a clear authority to shoot down civilian aircraft, even though VP Cheney did issue the order with approval of the president. So it's impossible to tell.

Is any one person/agency/administration to blame? No. Too much went wrong, too many people didn't have the right info at the right time. I'm sure we will be debating this for years to come, and we actually don't have the final commission report yet, so there will be much more discussion very shortly. The only hope we have is that all the discussion and investigation leads to lasting changes that, we can only hope, prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

Sorry for such a downer post - I just needed to get that out there, I suppose.

Hmmm...

This just seems like a bad idea to me - Microsoft plans to offer anti-virus software. I guess when your OS is the number one target of every virus writer out there, it seems to make sense. And I suppose as long as it isn't bundled in with the OS it won't be perceived as the de facto standard. I guess the worrisome part for me is that I don't know if people will actually ever properly use anti-virus software - I talk to people all the time who think that they have no virus problem, and yet they are running a 4 year old copy of Norton Anti-Virus that was never updated. Or the swear that they do anti-virus scans "every day" - and when you ask some more questions you find that means that the scanner does a quick boot-sector scan at startup, and they think that is good enough. Well, one can hope that at the very least Micro$oft maybe will train people to use anti-virus software.

WTF??? Panda Porn??

And, in news very close to my heart (because I just LOVE The Vegas...) - the MGM Mirage Group's offer to purchase the Mandalay Resort Group was approved by the Mandalay board. MGM is assuming $2.5 BILLION in debt from Mandalay. Damn, that's a lot of debt!! The deal is expected to close sometime first quarter of 2005.

Random acts of blogitude

So, the new release of Mozilla Firefox (version 0.9) is now the current preview release. You can download it here, but beware - if you use version 0.8 now you will need to uninstall it BEFORE you install 0.9. Your current Firefox profile SHOULD be imported into 0.9 automatically - but any Extensions or Themes you had for version 0.8 will be gone. There are new versions of most of the useful Extensions available, hopefully more will be coming soon.

The first virus that infects cell phones has been discovered - it's called Cabir. It infects phones using the Symbian operating system, and propagates via bluetooth. Fun!

In other news - my wife and I went to the BIA Parade of Homes, which is a yearly event where local home builders all build homes in a new development and totally trick them out - landscaping, decks and patios, decorating - the whole nine yards. I always see at least one home theatre system in these homes that I want to install in my house. It was a lot of fun, the weather wasn't great - but at least it wasn't pouring down rain on us whenever we were outside. We must have walked up and down 9,000 staircases though - quite the workout. There were a few very nice houses though. Here is a picture where you can kinda see the house I liked the best - it's on the left -



I know it's hard to really see anything in the picture - but it's the best I've got since I didn't have my camera with me. I found this pic on the Parade of Homes website. You've got to do the best you can with what you've got, or something. I don't know - I've got nothing.

Sad passings and a new beginning

Hey - did you hear that Ronald Reagan died? No fooling! He's getting some big state funeral today, and people have been going to view him at the Capitol rotunda. Yeah, I was surprised too - it's like no one at all in the media is talking about it.

And now another sad passing (sans the sarcasm) - Ray Charles passed away yesterday. He shall be missed.

In much brighter news - Leo LaPorte has announced that he has accepted a job to host a daily show for G4/TechTV Canada!!! This is good news - Leo's regular presence on our TV screens has been missed. I'm just hoping that this will be carried on G4/TechTV here in the States...

OMG - Is J. Lo PREGNANT??

Yeah right - like I even care ;) What really disturbs me about the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony "marriage" is that he divorced his wife Dayanara Torres ONE WEEK before marrying J. Lo. That's cold man.
He left this -



For this -


I don't know - but I'd have stayed with the woman I have TWO KIDS with. Maybe I'm weird...

Emergency post - The Amazing Race 5

I'm in trouble - I didn't post about The Amazing Race 5, premiering July 6th on CBS. So, here's a post about it.

Starting Tuesday July 6th - 11 teams of two, all with pre-existing relationships, will start off on a race around the world. For the last team standing - 1 million dollars. For everyone else - Philimination!!! (Heh, I just had to throw that in there. The Television Without Pity folks will get that. If you don't read TWoP - click the link and start! What's wrong with you?). Check the CBS website for more info - including the hot off the internet presses list of Racers!

There you go sweetie, I kept my promise to post about TAR. (Love you!)

Ooooh...

It's been a while since I posted, so I figured I'd better fix that ;).

Gaze in wonder and amazement at the new Apple G5 - now all dual 64-bit processor powered. Hence the title of the post - cause I'm sitting here slack jawed and drooling over this. Plus - the top-'o-the-line dual 2.5 GHz G5's are liquid cooled. Pretty slick, eh? Of course, since the dual 2.5 GHz G5 system starts at $2,999 (yipe!) I'm not going to be getting one anytime soon.

Better be sure those hard drives are really 100% cleaned before you sell them - a company bought a hard drive from eBay and found a financial services company's customer database and access codes for the company's secure intranet on it. Oopsie!

It's not much, but it's todays post. Hope this keeps my 3 or 4 readers RIVETED. At least till tomorrow's post - right? ;)

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban

I saw the movie last night (and have tickets to see it again tonight) with my wife - we both enjoyed it a lot. Quite a different feel to this movie - the change in directors is VERY evident - but it's a good thing in my opinion. The pacing was better, and even though the movie is 2 hours 21 minutes it didn't seem really long. I liked the Dementors, and the effects were well done. And once again the film makers have done some very inspired casting. David Thewlis as Remus Lupin and Gary Oldman as Sirius Black were fantastic! Hopefully I'm not too tired tonight that I fall asleep in the middle of watching it for the second time - didn't get to sleep till after midnight, and I had to get up at 4:30am to get to work by 6am. No rest for the wicked, apparently...

Is your PC toxic?

This article is rather disturbing. But it is good to know that these PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl) compounds are being phased out. Of course, all the lead and mercury and other junk in PC's isn't going away soon - and is toxic too. I'm not advocating throwing all your PC's away (especially since these flame retardant compounds are present in TV's and other electronic equipment - so you'd have to toss EVERYTHING out), but this does present a problem similar to the problems discovered with asbestos. I guess it's becoming unsafe to do just about anything these days.

In much happier news - I'm going to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tonight (and tomorrow night as well), so I'll be sure to post up a review tomorrow. I'm hoping it's even better than the first two movies - we shall see...

RUSH!!!!!

Saw the Rush 30th Anniversary tour last night at [Product Placed Car Dealer] Amphitheatre, and it was amazing! They played almost 3 and a half hours, here's the setlist -
R30 Overture - (medley, with retrospective Jerry Stiller dream intro) consisting of : Finding My Way->Anthem->Bastille Day->A Passage To Bangkok->Cygnus X-1 (Prologue)->Hemispheres (Prelude)
The Spirit of Radio
Force Ten
Animate
Subdivisions
Earthshine
Red Barchetta
Roll The Bones
Bravado
YYZ
The Trees (Daytripper ending)
The Seeker
One Little Victory (with dragon intro)
(-Intermission-/'That Darned Dragon' intro)
Tom Sawyer
Dreamline
Secret Touch
Between the Wheels
Mystic Rhythms
Red Sector A
Drum Solo
Resist (acoustic-Geddy and Alex)
Heart Full of Soul (acoustic-Geddy/Alex/Neil)
2112 (Overture/Temples of Syrinx/Grand Finale)
La Villa Strangiato (W/Lerxst rant)
ByTor & the Snow Dog->Xanadu
Working Man (reggae ending)
Encore:
Summertime Blues
Crossroads
Limelight
(Jerry Stiller outro movie)

There was actually one more song in the encore - but I can't remember what it was :(
The Jerry Stiller intro and outro were very funny - although a guy in the row in front of me was all "Look man! It's BEN STILLER" to his buddy. What a moron. The rant Alex (Lerxst) does during La Villa Strangiato was hilarious - and weird. He ended up talking about a goat going into the production office with receipts, and how did a goat get receipts? And were does he keep them? See, weird - I told you! It was a great show, and if anyone wants to buy me a present you can go here and buy me the Golf Shirt or the program. Just in case anyone out there felt like getting me something ;)

Seething with jealousy...

Man, am I ever jealous of the students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. They have fiber optic connectivity across the campus - over 16,000 fiber ports on campus! Plus the campus network supports 802.11G wireless access!! Geez man - these kids are going to get spoiled rotten! Plus, they can download music WAY faster than other college students ;)

In other news, the lovely RIAA is encouraging Macromedia and SunnComm International to develop technology that will limit the number of times you can copy a CD - BMG Music Group is currently testing the SunnComm version of this "secure burning" technology. The technology is - of course - based on Microsoft's DRM (Digital Rights Management) software. yet another way for the man to keep us down. Damn the man!

Daniel Radcliffe's take on the fate of Harry Potter

Here's an interesting article on CNN.com about the possible fate of Harry Potter. Daniel makes a good point. Harry's destiny does seem to be intertwined with Voldemort's - and J.K. Rowling is notoriously cryptic about Harry's fate. I guess we shall have to wait for book 7 to find out. I wonder if the rabid Harry Potter fans around the world could deal with Harry dying?

Legislating against Gmail

California's state senate has approved a bill that limits Google's Gmail, and if passed will prevent Google from permanently saving data collected when they scan user's emails to place content ads in them. Huh. This isn't even a publicly available service yet, and already legislation is being drafted against it. Sure, this wouldn't prevent Google from launching Gmail - but I guess I just don't see what the big deal is. As long as we can trust Google not to utilize this data in ways contrary to the way they state it will be used (to place content-related advertisements in email messages you receive via your Gmail account) then this shouldn't be a problem. Heck, I've got a Gmail account, I've been in the beta test for over a month - and I hardly ever notice the ads. They are really that oblivious to me. It's like doing a Google websearch - you know the links over to the right are paid search results and maybe you pay attention to them, maybe you don't. At least this is how I look at it. Opinions differ, I suppose.
In movie news - a group of climatologists have seen the new film The Day After Tomorrow, and apparently find it rather, well, HILARIOUS. Good to see the stuffy scientists getting out to the movies and having a good laugh (heh).

It's just not a good time for file-sharing...

The RIAA has filed suit against another 493 people it says were illegally sharing music, and has reportedly resolved 486 cases already. These cases all seem to end with settlements and don't go to trial. And to make matters worse, the US government is moving forward with the PIRATE Act, which would let federal prosecutors file civil lawsuits against suspected infringers of copyright law. Wow. See, stuff like that is why I get music from Apple's iTunes Music Store - 99 cents a song and most albums are $9.99. I tell people who might be in a gift giving mood to get me a gift certificate, or go to Target and get me a pre-paid iTunes Music Store card. Easy for them to do, and really easy for me to use.
I already went on a rant once in the blog about the RIAA and it's litigious attitude toward file-sharing, and I don't want to revisit the issue entirely in this post. Read it for yourself HERE. It's just a sad state of affairs when failing businesses like the RIAA and SCO have to resort to suing everyone as a last-ditch attempt to make some cash. Maybe someday the only way to get music will be through some sort of file-sharing - that'd show 'em, right??

Yet more TV show finales

So, Joan of Arcadia had it's first season finale Friday, and 24 had it's season finale last night. The Joan finale was weird. Really weird. She had weird hallucinations, and is having a crisis of faith, and her mother had a dream about God - and God appeared in her dream looking like he did when Joan first saw him. And her father had a conversation with a dead woman. See - WEIRD.
24 - well... It was a pretty action packed episode. And Tony is in BIG trouble for his decision to help Saunders in exchange for saving Michelle's life. And Chase - is an idiot. He's supposed to be this big bad field operative - and he couldn't kick one guy's ass in a fight? And then he attaches this virus dispersal device to his wrist? Moron. I'm sure not ONE of you who saw this episode didn't clue into what was going to happen next as soon as they focused in on that fire axe. That was pretty hardcore though - Jack Bauer is a serious badass. I think the scriptwriters are getting really lazy though - would it have KILLED them to reveal Saunders reason for doing all this instead of just conveniently killing him off? Man, I hated that.
Anyway, it's decision time tonight for American Idol, who will win - Fantasia or Diana? And even more importantly - WHO CARES? Bah, this year's competition has not been good. I thought Jennifer Hudson was voted out way early, and that LaToya should be in the finals. But I guess that's just me. Last nights performances were just lame, and that new song SUCKS. I didn't vote, just don't care. And how the hell are they going to stretch tonight's show out for TWO HOURS? Do they really need to pimp Fords and Cokes that badly? Bah!

Season Finale and a Series Finale

I'm quite the avid TV watcher - Survivor, The Amazing Race (coming back July 6th - WOO!!), The OC, American Idol, The Apprentice, Joan of Arcadia - the list of current shows and old shows I watch could go on forever. The series finale of Angel was on last night, and the season finale of Smallville was on Wednesday. And I stayed up late both nights to watch them - so I'm pretty tired right now :) Anyway, I really liked Smallville - it was a good season-ending cliffhanger. I was very surprised (SPOILER ALERT - DON'T READ FARTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE EPISODE - MAJOR PLOT POINTS REVEALED!!) that Lionel had Chloe killed. Not so surprised that he had Lex poisoned (I presume), but that boy really needs to stop drinking booze around the mansion - this is the second time Lionel has drugged his alcohol!!
So, that was Wednesday night - definitely worth being up late that night, in my opinion. Then last night was the series finale of Angel, a show getting killed before it's time, I think. It was pretty darn good last season, and this (now the final) season had ups and downs, but I enjoyed it. The finale though - I don't know. I'm going to watch it again (because my wife slept though it), and maybe it will improve after a second viewing. I didn't hate it - it just didn't really have a note of finality to it. I know that they really didn't intend to be ending the series, and kinda rushed to tie up most of the loose ends - but I still think it needed just a bit MORE. I don't know how else to put it really. Sad to see the show go, but maybe they will bring it back - maybe a movie-of-the-week kind of thing.

It's a very sad thing - R.I.P. Call For Help

I read The Laporte Report (Leo Laporte of TechTV's blog) frequently - even more often than normal recently because of the TechTV/G4 merger. Sadly, Leo reported today that they have officially filmed the last Call For Help, which will air Friday. I'll admit that I didn't watch Call For Help religiously till Leo was the host - Chris Perillo was cool and all, but not my favorite host. I like Leo, he was the main reason I watched Screen Savers. So I began watching more frequently once he moved to Call For Help, and he put on a good show. I'm sure they helped a lot of newbies - and probably even some experienced users like me. I wish Leo the best in whatever he does, and am somewhat heartened to see that he agreed to keep doing the little 90 second bits he does on Screen Savers. And hey - maybe some other channel WILL pick up CFH - it could happen (keeping my fingers crossed...)!

Truth - or Fiction?

I wonder - is this true? I haven't seen any increase in the size of my Gmail storage. Oh, right - here's why. Best to always wait till you have the facts before putting up articles with unsupported claims, eh?
Hmmm, was that a little to snarky? Oh well ;)

THIS is so cool!!

There used to be a cool app called Playfair that let you listen to tunes from your iPod/iTunes Music Store purchases on more than the DRM (Digital Rights Media) allowed PC's. Apple killed it - so it moved overseas. Apple killed it again. Now it's back, and it's called HYMN (Hear Your Music aNywhere). Very cool stuff - as long as you aren't afraid of the command-line interface.

It's a worm eat worm world...

It's a funny thing, really. Someone has written a worm virus that infects PC's infected with the Sasser worm - because of a vulnerability in the Sasser worm itself. But it's not a NEW thing - DoomJuice and DeadHat infected PC's that had the MyDoom worm, however, they didn't gain entry to PC's because of a vulnerability inside MyDoom. That's the new wrinkle to this game. It's just the way of the virus writing community, I guess. As always, run those anti-virus programs, people!
A update on the (alledged) writer of the Sasser worm. Sven J. is his name, and he has told authorities that (get this) he was trying to create an ANTI-virus. Seriously. He says that he came up with Netsky to get rid of the Bagle worm - which the Netsky-A variant does do. Of course, that's not all it does... Anyway, looks like he'll probably avoid jail time. Good for him, I guess.
I have recently had a bad time with a spyware infection - no less than 8 different lame sidesearch, optimizer, and browser enhancer programs just appeared out of nowhere on my Add/Remove Programs list! No idea how these got there, but with help from Ad-Aware 6 and SpyBot 1.3, I got rid of them (I hope...) - but man, was that a pain in the ass! I've never had a big problem with spyware before, and I really hope to never have one again.

Handheld gaming news from E3

This is pretty cool - I'm a big video game fan, have been since the days of the Atari 2600 (I'm an Old School Gamer). The handheld game market, which has been owned forever by Nintendo, is about to get quite the shakeup. At E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) Sony officially unveiled their new handheld, the PSP. And Nintendo has officially unveiled their replacement for the GameBoy Advance, the Nintendo DS. More info HERE. That Sony PSP sounds awesome - wireless connectivity, and it's a music player and will play movies too? Crazy. I'm quite the collector of game and PC hardware, and I will be getting both of these - maybe not immediately (depending on how expensive they will be), but as soon as I possibly can.

Oh - for a little bit of Flash weirdness, check out Cramato.com. This is really funny if you're familiar with the song that plays during the animation - "Psycho" by System Of A Down. Still pretty darn funny if you don't know the song though.

A new piece of Mindless Fun

Thanks to the Link of The Day on Userfriendly.org I have discovered a new website to spend hours doing absolutely nothing useful at - and having a great time doing it! Go right now to The Encyclopedia of Pointless. May I suggest the Choose Your Own Error Adventure as a fine way to start exploring the site. Enjoy!

On Things Involving Cats & Dogs

Random thoughts for today -
Why do dogs love us so?
Do cats get jealous of the dogs, because the dogs love us so?

Yeah, I know, that's a little weird. Let me provide some explanation. My wife and I have two pets - a cat, George, and our dog, whose name is Lucas (yes, I know - "George Lucas". You probably won't believe me if I say that wasn't planned, so I won't even bother to try). George is my wife's cat, she's had him since before I knew her. We got Lucas after we bought our house - Lucas will be 2 years old soon. Anyway, enough background. George and Lucas have what I like to call a "HATE/Why Won't You Play?" relationship. Lucas wants to play with the cat, have a good time chasing each other around the house - dogs do this, it's natural for Lucas to want to, I suppose. George does not like the dog. AT ALL. It's not just a normal disdain that cats have for dogs in general - it's special. He will hiss and spit at the dog, and if up high enough to do so, will wallop Lucas in the head with a right cross paw or two. Like I said - "special". The other day Lucas was following me around the house (like he does) and we went into the kitchen. George was in repose on the center island in our kitchen (like he does) and decided to up the ante some in his ongoing war against dogs. He bit. But not Lucas - he bit ME. Fairly hard too. Didn't break the skin, but I think he would have if I hadn't whipped my arm out of the way in shock. Needless to say, I was very surprised. This was unprovoked - If I am spinning the cat around on his back on the kitchen floor, and he nips my hand lightly - this is to be expected. I provoked that reaction, and it was just a playful nip. This was an unprovoked action, and I'm surprised by it. I don't anticipate further problems, as George seemed very sorry and contrite when he witnessed my displeasure (via the strong (verbal only) scolding he received). But - is this an example of the envy I mentioned earlier? Was he just jealous, because he thinks the dog is loved more? I don't know...

Well, THAT'S new...

So - I go to www.blogger.com to write a new post for the blog today, and it's different. Blogger, that is. They've changed the site. New graphics, new interface - it's quite a change. Still kinda getting used to it, but so far I like it.

In other news, I've been using Mozilla Firefox for some time now, ever since they updated to version 0.8 and renamed it Firefox. I also started using Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird. And I think they ROCK. A browser that gives you a built in pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, easy to install skins, and the ability to install additional features Mozilla calls extensions. Thunderbird has a decent built-in spam filter, is easy to use and configure, and also has downloadable extensions. Plus, they're free of ads (unlike Opera), and totally free! Try them - you'll like them!

Ah, Sunday...

A day of rest, indeed. With the schedule I have at work now, I'm there from 6am till 5pm Wednesday through Saturday. So when Sunday comes along - I am very very tired, and in dire need of a day off. Nice thing is, I can laze around the house all day Sunday, and I still have Monday and Tuesday off as well. Nice, huh? Yeah - I'm one lucky bastard. On a different note, Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!

A chicken or the egg dilemma...

So, a 18 year old kid is currently in custody in Germany, suspected of creating the Sasser worm. Great, right? He was arrested Friday and according to reports, he told the authorities he created the worm, which caused quite a bit of trouble in Britain, among other places. So they have him, but now what? The damage is done. And we are left with a dilemma on two fronts - first, what do we do with the suspect? What will the charge against him be - and will he be subject to only German law and prosecution, or will other countries get a crack at him? Second, and actually the bigger problem here, who do we REALLY blame? The kid who exploited a vulnerability in Windows - or the makers of the Windows? I'm not talking in a legal sense, it's not reasonable to hold Microsoft responsible for viruses (although, it is tempting). I view this more as a morality problem - this kind of activity is becoming more and more common, and it's really becoming more and more difficult to prevent. No operating system is 100% safe, but it seems that Windows is the worst of the bunch by far. Is this just the price to pay for being the most widely used operating system, or is this all due to bad programming and a corporate mentality that simply pushed products out before they were adequately tested and hardened against tampering and vulnerability? And back to the morality issue - is this simply due to a culture that has too much curiosity and to little supervision? Is any one person REALLY to blame here - or any one corporation - or is this a problem with society as a whole? Too many questions here, and not enough answers. Time, I suppose, will tell what will happen here.

TechTV staff - You're Fired!! (copyright Donald Trump)

Well, this is unfortunate news. Leo Laporte, TechTV personality and host of Call For Help announced on his blog The Laporte Report that TechTV's new owners G4 TV have fired TechTV's staff (Comcast owns G4). I really liked TechTV, and the posted info on G4's website about the TechTV/G4 merger leads us to believe that some of the best TechTV shows will continue - but will the finest part of those shows, the talented hosts and other on-air personalities - be involved? I, for one, don't think I would want to watch Call For Help without Leo, or The Screensavers without Patrick Norton. In fact, there was a short time recently when Leo wasn't on Call For Help (due to a disagreement with the management of TechTV) - and I didn't watch the show because he wasn't on (They reached an agreement April 15th, he was back on the air on Call For Help on April 20th). Well, let the protests begin, I say.

Don't. Just... Don't.

I'm so sick of hearing about Friends. Ooh, it's the last show, what'll I do without my Friends? Bah. It's been like this since last summer - I'm sick of it. All this hype of a show that hasn't been any good in years. What a waste. I mean, there is a good show coming to the end of it's run this year - Angel. Sure, it was never as big a deal as Friends, and it hasn't been on the air as long. But it was a good show, and it deserves some rabid media attention, right? Wait - maybe if had received some media attention, it wouldn't be cancelled. And now it also occurs to me that sarcasm really doesn't come through when I write something. Trust me though, if you heard that sentence the way it sounded in my head - you'd have TOTALLY got it.

Penn & Teller : Bullshit!

I love this show. It's simply one of my favorite things to watch on TV. I watched the first season and thought it was great, but somehow kept missing episodes of the second season. Well, thanks to Showtime On Demand, I am now all caught up. They did some great stuff, talking about recycling, PETA, safety hysteria, the War on Drugs, even the Business of Love. Their next topic is The Bible : Fact or Fiction? - man, that sounds good. I love the way Penn & Teller present facts and prove to the viewer that this stuff is, well, Bullshit! I think one of my favorite things they did was an experiment they conducted the first season. The topic was Environmental Hysteria, and they went to a big environmental rally and circulated a petition to ban a chemical - dihydrogen monoxide. Folks, that's H2O - water! They didn't lie to people, they told them straight up it was a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide, and told them some of the bad things water can do - all true information. The best part was that about 70% of the people they showed signing the petition were holding - bottled WATER!! And they got a LOT of people to sign the petition - it was hilarious!! See - this is a great show! Be sure to watch it, if you don't already - Thursdays at 10pm, or do what I do - wait a couple days and catch it On Demand. Love it!

WTF RIAA??

Has the RIAA (Recording Industry Artists Association) turned into another SCO? A company that just runs around suing everyone? Read this article for more information. I really think that lawsuits are the wrong way to go about this. Yes, it is illegal to download music, movies, books, etc. you didn't pay for. Really no way to argue about that, since that's THE LAW. But instead of complaining that people download and share music over P2P networks without paying for them, wouldn't it be a better idea to concentrate efforts on making purchasing music in the traditional manner (on in a new manner) a better option? If the cost of the CD in the store is roughly the same as buying a blank CD and spending the time (and money - for a broadband connection, electricity, a PC and the necessary hardware/software to burn that CD) to create your own CD - but the purchased CD has higher sound quality, has the cover art and liner notes, etc. - doesn't that make it a better value? For me, that would make it worth going to one of the several stores very close to me where I can purchase it. Maybe it's just me.

Fun with iPod

I have a 15GB iPod - got it February 14th. Which was great timing, cause the Pepsi/iTunes promo started soon after that. I think I ended up with something like 50 free songs, not bad I guess. I have something like 800 songs in total on my iPod, and I spend alot of time listening to it on random shuffle - which makes some very interesting choices. I've had it go from playing Radiohead to Journey to Eminem. It's a lot of fun to just take a long walk and let it shuffle play an ecclectic mix of your music to you. I also have a FM transmitter to use in the car - so I can take along my iPod on car trips. Apple released a new version of iTunes and a new version of the iPod software - and I guess some people are having problems with the new software not recognizing their iPod. Man, that sucks. I don't know what I'd do without mine now.

Random fun and weirdness

So I read User Friendly every day - I think it's probably one of the funniest online comics (and I read a LOT of online comics). They have a feature on the site called the Link Of The Day - users of the site submit webpages and one is chosen to be featured each day. Today's site is Antibubble - it's pretty interesting. Gotta say I've never actually seen that before. Don't know if I'd have the patience to try and make antibubbles myself, but it would be cool to actually watch it happen.

Think locally...

I work for a corporation that has offices around the country - and I'm sure has some offices (for at least a few of the businesses it owns) around the world. That said, it's very important to the company for local offices to become involved in the community. So, we are always being given opportunities to volunteer our time to local causes and such. I generally put little stock in personal voluntarism, my personal time is very valuable to me. So I generally find myself participating in events I don't have to attend, events I can give money to, or donate goods to. Recently I did do a 5 mile walk for WalkAmerica (their main site is HERE, but local events will be on locally sponsored websites). My wife and I did the walk together, and had a good time. Our office is also doing donations for Operation Feed, a food donation program run annually by the United Way here in Central Ohio. Since that event only requires donations of food or money, I donate :) But anyway, I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I think you don't necessarily have to kill yourself donating hours every week to worthy causes to make a difference. If more people donate time to events they believe in, or touch their lives in some way, then the impact is felt strongly. If you combine that with charitable donations to worthy causes, you've really made a difference. And that's one to grow on ;)

Waiting for inspiration

Boredom causes introspection. Well, it does for me at least. I've been thinking a lot about the state of my life, the state of the world, etc. - and I think I need to make a change. I'm really really in need of a new job, I think. Problem is that to get a "good" job, I need more education. I'm toying with the idea of going back to school. It's something I'm going to have to think about a lot, since it would have a definite financial impact on the wife and I if I went back to school - even part-time. So right now I'm just considering my options and we will see what happens I suppose. On a different tack, check out this link to a auction on eBay - Imperial Star Destroyer replica (the auction has ended). Looks like a LOT of work went into that, huh?

Reality TV

OK, I'll admit it - I watch reality shows. Not every one, but a lot of them. I've watched Survivor (but not every season), The Apprentice (which was a whole lot of fun), one season of Celebrity Mole (lame), Mad Mad House on the SciFi Channel, and have watched Newlyweds and The Osbournes on MTV. I'm sure there are others I've watched that I'm forgetting to mention. But I really wanted to point out that for all the mostly useless hours of watching vapid people spout off endlessly about themselves I've sat though during the runs of these shows, there is one reality show that I believe is a cut above the rest. A reality show that is worth watching, is engaging television the viewer can become invested in, and overall is a hell of a lot of fun. That show is The Amazing Race on CBS. It's a race around the world, it's an endurance test, it's a challenge-based strength and planning and intelligence test, it's a test of relationships. The fifth season will be shown this July, and I for one can't wait. I'm not quite as psyched as my wife is (because she is the biggest fan of the show EVER), but it's definitely a show I look forward to watching. And something that makes the show even more fun to watch every week is going to Television Without Pity.com (or TWoP for short) to read the recaps of each show. The brilliant folks at TWoP write recaps for many shows, like Survivor, The Apprentice, Newlyweds, Smallville, Angel, American Idol, etc. The recaps are written in a style that describes what happened on the show and also manages to bring a hilariously "snarky" tone to the shows that are either lacking in intellectual merit (I'm looking at YOU, American Idol) or to characters on the show who deserve to be taken down a peg or two. Well worth stopping by and reading a recap or two from your favorite show.

The Blahs

Ever have a day where you just don't really feel up to doing anything? Like you just want to lie around the house watching crap on TV and not really doing anything? Yeah, that's the kind of day I'm having. Plus being at work today really isn't helping that feeling go away - it's actually exacerbating it. Blah. On the plus side, I get to beta test Google's Gmail thanks to having a Blogger account. Thanks Blogger!!

The Black Mamba can deliver GARGANTUAN amounts of venom with one bite.

Saw Kill Bill Vol. 2 last night - and it was terrific! A very different movie than Vol. 1 though. I was very impressed with the performance that David Carradine gave - he was very, very good! Also I enjoyed Darryl Hannah's performance in both movies, she had some of the greatest scenes in Kill Bill Vol. 2. And Quentin Tarentino learned the lesson of the martial arts movie genre - if you're going to introduce some esoteric move (The 5 Finger Palm Exploding Heart Death Technique), then someone had better use it!

Kill Bill Volume 2!

Go see Kill Bill Volume 2!! Go right now! Do not delay! Skip school/work/familial obligations/medical treatments - just GO!!

Tax day!

So it's April 15th - tax day. Our federal taxes have been done for months (since we knew we would get a HUGE refund), and we just sent in the state taxes yesterday (since we owed money). Taxes suck in general, but not getting a refund sucks hard.
On a seperate note, THIS article is pretty interesting. How far off are implants that actually ARE computers - not just interfaces to one? It boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Oh, that's just great!

So the President ruined my evening last night - how about yours? I'd be lying if I said that American Idol was the greatest show on TV (or my favorite show to watch), but I do enjoy watching it in order to rip on the sucky performances. And this year, there are a LOT of sucky performances to rip on. But the show was postponed tonight due to the President wanting to make a speech. On top of that, 24 was postponed to SUNDAY. At 9PM. That's when The Sopranos is on!! Man - yet ANOTHER reason to vote Kerry for President huh?

You'll have that...

Ah, what a day. Still trying to adjust to the new work schedule, and I'm really dragging right now. Thought I'd write something to help keep me awake. So, what to write about. Hmmm. Maybe this would be easier if I had some caffeine in me....

(10 minutes later)

Alright, that's better. Caffeine - our fine stimulant friend. Alright, and now - we're writing!
But what to write about? I need...inspiration. Alright, a quick walk should get the creative juices flowing...

(20 minutes later)

Well, that walk was great - a little longer than I intended to be gone, but no matter. And now - to write!
Crap.
I got nothing.
Oh well. You should be outside enjoying the beautiful weather anyway - not inside reading this.
But I will leave you with this one little link - The new Spider Man 2 trailer!
Be sure to watch it only in moderation - because you should be outside.
Enjoying the nice weather - remember?
Oh, just do it - it'll make you feel better.

Bleah...

Wow, am I tired today. Just started a new schedule - and now I get to work at 6am. That's really early, man. It's worth the payoff though - since I work 10 hours a day, I get 3 days off. In a row. That may not sound like a big deal to some, but I tell you what - it's amazingly hard to get days off all in a row where I work. However, I'm going to resemble the walking dead for a while till I get used to it. With any luck I'll be able to see the new Elisha Cuthbert movie The Girl Next Door this weekend - as long as I can stay awake...

A sad date in music history

On this day 10 years ago, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana alledgedly committed suicide. His body was found three days later. I remember the day the news broke very well, I had gone into work early and hadn't heard the news until a friend of mine came up to me and said that Kurt had been found dead from a shotgun wound. I remember thinking "What a jerk. How could he joke about something like that?" - and I refused to believe him. Later in the day I caught the news and realized that it really was true. I remember feeling very sad for Kurt, that the demons he fought with had finally got the best of him. I remember feeling sad for his daughter, that she would grow up not knowing her father - but having everyone she meets telling her how much they loved her dad and his music. I remember feeling sorry that such a great talent was taken away from the world much too early. RIP Kurt - you are missed.

HELLBOY!

Sorry, I know it's been a long time since I rapped at you (apologies to Jim Anchower), but it's been nuts at work. I've been training new hires, and haven't had a lot of play time this week. Oh well. Went to see Hellboy last night, and really enjoyed it. Decent story, and lots of action - and I think Ron Perlman did a great job as Hellboy. It was kinda scary how much he looked and sounded like my idea of what Hellboy would look and sound like. Cool movie, I recommend it.