Say Cheese!!

My lovely wife got me a new digital camera for an anniversary present - the Kodak EasyShare DX7590. I got a chance to use it for the first time yesterday at Thanksgiving dinner at my Mom's house, and it was really easy to use. Had to get up early today for work or I would have a few pictures to put in the post - I'll definitely get a chance to post some after the weekend.

Happy day after Thanksgiving!

It's the busiest shopping day of the year, so I'm sure you're out there now fighting traffic and long lines at the register - but if you get a chance, go check out the Virtual Bartender. Ask Tammy to do something, and she'll do it - maybe. Some commands I've had work are "kiss", "flirt", "gymnastics", "jiggle", and "pillow fight". Just an FYI, this is a bit racy (no nudity though), so it might not be safe for work.

Busy, busy, busy

I know, I know - it's been a week since my last post. But in my defense it's been a fairly busy week. Getting back into the swing of things after vacation really took a toll on me, I'm still not 100% back up to speed. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I have it off but have to work Friday - but then I took Saturday off. So I work a day, am off a day, work a day, am off till Wednesday. Could be worse.

Vacation was great - I didn't write a lot about it cause I never seemed to get a chance to. We went to Las Vegas, stayed at my Dad's timeshare at the Hilton Grand Vacations Club. Decent room (and it was free!!) and located right behind the Flamingo - so the location was great, right in the middle of the Strip. And we were really busy - went to the Tournament of Kings at Excalibur the first night we were in Vegas, and since we walk EVERYWHERE we go in Vegas we had to walk there through a rainstorm. A rainstorm that generated a RECORD SETTING AMOUNT OF RAINFALL for Las Vegas. You wanna know how much? 0.25 inches. I know, it seems like not a lot, but in the desert? That's A LOT. Trust me. So we were wet, and cold, and it is really tough to walk around the Strip when the sidewalks are wet (since all the casinos have fancy sidewalks of marble or polished granite or whatnot). Suffice to say, once we got to the show, we were really glad to be inside. They started our "feast" (it's a dinner show) with tomato soup, and it was so good!! A great way to recover from the weather outside. We had fun at the show, but took a taxi back to the room - no WAY were we walking through that rain again!!

Gotta stop here for now - I'll try to post more about the trip soon. I'll also try to get back to posting more regularly - hopefully my cruddy work situation will get better soon.

The Amazing Race 6 premiere

So I think it's no secret I love The Amazing Race, I've posted a few times before about it and how terrific it is. The 2 hour premiere episode for the sixth season was last night, and it was so great! My wife and I already have a team to hate (Jonathan and Victoria, mostly because Jonathan is an ass), but who knows about the other teams ? Some of them seem like they could be OK, and a lot of them need to pay closer attention to their clues and road signs and maps and... well, pretty much EVERYTHING. I can't wait to see what happens!

Vacation never seems to last long enough...

Greetings! I've not posted in a long while because I was on vacation. My wife and I went to Las Vegas (with a short side trip to California) and we just got back on Monday. So, I'm still trying to get back in the swing of things - and just started back to work today. Since I've still got a lot of catching up to do this will be brief, but hopefully I'll have time for a longer post tomorrow or Friday. I am glad to be home, but truth be told I would much rather still be on vacation. I guess that's pretty true for anybody though, isn't it?

OK, now that's just cruel

You've had a rough week. You ended a hard fought campaign hopeful that you and your running mate would win - only to lose to a retarded Texan. Your running mate conceded the election Wednesday, and you figure you'll decide what to do next since you gave up your seat in the Senate to run. But wait - it's not over! Your wife has breast cancer! Seriously, what's next?

Election 2004 (or as I like to call it, Wait - WTF?!?!)

So yeah, John Kerry conceded the election and George W got a second term. He's also declared his win 'historic'. Not the word I would choose, but whatever. But I hate how all the Republicans are now all about bridging the partisan gap, and Bush himself said he wanted to "earn the support" of those who voted for Kerry. They say this after running one of the most devisive campaigns in history, and basically convincing the Republican faithful that 'Moral Values' are more important than any other issue facing this country. What a crock. We'll see just how bad the next four years can get - with the dollar losing value across the globe, huge domestic deficits, and ever eroding lack of respect for the US in the eyes of the world. Oh well - there's always 2008, right?

Kerry Concedes

According to a story on CNN, John Kerry will officially concede the 2004 election to George W. Bush. Not a whole lot else to say about this, it's certainly not the way I wanted the election to go. Guess it's time to move to Canada, eh?

An important message brought to you by... EMINEM?!?!

No really. I case you've forgotten just how important the presidential election is, watch this video for Eminem's song "Mosh" off his new album Encore. Very cool video, and a very cool message. Word to your mother.

In a more humorous election-related vein, check this little Flash animation out -
Political Bohemian Rhapsody. Pretty funny!

New Photo iPod

Sorry about the lack of posts recently - work has been seriously kicking my ass. Once I get home I don't really want to even look at a computer, much less use one. So here's a second post for today - hopefully this helps make up for the recent dearth of new posts :)

OOH - I want the new Photo iPod! Who wants to buy me one of the 60 GB ones? C'mon - it'll make you feel good!

The Amazing Race 6!

The next season of The Amazing Race is set to premiere on CBS November 16th - check out the website for racer profiles!! I love this show so much - it's so awesome to have another season so soon after the last one ended. I just wish they would release the earlier Races on DVD, since I never got to see the first one. It'd be a great thing if CBS ever did release them on DVD - I know it'd sell really well!

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

If you haven't seen Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN's Crossfire yet, go to this link and watch it. And here is a link to Jon's comments made on The Daily Show Monday about what happened. Very funny stuff!

NOW

A great new show on The Discovery Channel - No Opportunity Wasted gives participants $3000 and 72 hours to live a dream they have NOW. It's hosted (and was created) by Phil Keoghan, the host of CBS's The Amazing Race (the best reality show EVER). The show is very inspirational, and Phil came up with the whole philosophy behind it when he was 19 and had a near death experience during a dive into a shipwreck. Read this interview with Phil for more info about TAR and NOW and his philosophy on life and how to life it like each day was your last. A good piece of advice, I think.

George Lucas to receive AFI Life Achievement Award

The American Film Institute has selected George Lucas to receive it's Life Achievement Award. He's the 33rd recipient of the award. You can read the full article here. I agree that he has contributed a lot to filmmaking, and so I believe he deserves the award. The innovations he has pioneered (digital filmmaking, special effects (ILM), sound (Skywalker Sound and THX) alone are worthy of a life achievement award. Now, if it were an award purely for directing... well, not so much.

America - F**k YEAH!!!!

Went to see Team America on Tuesday night (it was an advance screening) and it was really funny. My wife and I are still singing songs from it days afterwards. I really need to get the soundtrack for it when it comes out on November 2nd (ooh - Election Day!)

A very, very sad day

Christopher Reeve died Sunday night, after suffering a heart attack Saturday night and falling into a coma. I'm really sad about this, Christopher Reeve was the perfect choice for the Superman movies - and he became a hero in the eyes of this 10 year old (well, I was at the time). Then he had his riding accident in 1995 and became paralyzed, but became even MORE of a hero and an inspiration to all. We'll all miss you Chris, and those who knew you really DID believe a man could fly. RIP.

SETI - nope, not in Ohio!

Here's the link to the Slashdot post, and here's the actual article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette -

The search for extraterrestrial life has ended at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services in Columbus, Ohio.

The department Thursday fired a computer programmer who admitted to using a state-owned computer server to process data for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, run by the University of California at Berkeley.

Charles E. Smith, 63, told administrators he didn’t think loading the SETI software on the server was much of a problem because he ran the program only when the server wasn’t being used, according to a disciplinary report.

Department head Tom Hayes disagreed.

“I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn’t find it in the mirror in the morning,” Hayes said. “I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building.”

So OK then. If you are a programmer or systems admin or computer professional working for ANYONE - you shouldn't be loading shareware software onto their servers. I'm down with that. He deserved to get fired in my opinion. No need to kick the man when he was down though. You fired him - you don't need to basically call him stupid as well. Just my two cents.

The second Presidential debate

Watched most of the debate last night - Bush didn't really sway my opinion of him. I still think he's a weasel, and his attacks on Kerry didn't really go anywhere new. He just keeps hammering the same couple of points - "liberal", "flip-flopper", "unfit to be Commander In Chief". I thought Kerry handled himself well, and didn't get rattled by Bush's more forceful and confrontational tone - a real departure from Bush's performance in the first debate where he seemed really tentative and had long silences before coming up with something to say. Apparently, Bush's performance (and a odd bulge in his jacket) have launched a theory that he was wearing an earpiece in the first debate. Some say the picture is doctored, some say when he said "Now let me finish" in the middle of an answer that he was actually talking to the person in his earpiece (here's a link to a forum that has a Real Audio clip of this. I don't know if he did or didn't - but he didn't look like he had an earpiece in for last night's debate. One more debate to go - hopefully Kerry will continue to shine!

Good to be in DC!

Go to www.jibjab.com. Watch "Good to be in DC". Repeat as necessary. That is all.

Seriously - go now. It's really funny. You'll like it, I swear. GO!!!

A vision of the future

I read Robert X. Cringely's I, Cringely regularly and his latest article really has some food for thought. Although the ability to act as your own broadband ISP/Cable provider/VoIP provider is outside of the means and technical knowhow of most people, it's still a very cool idea. Wish I could do it!

Cheney : Not up on the whole internet thing

Hee. In Tuesday's Vice Presidential debate, Dick Cheney was trying to direct people to look at factcheck.org, a nonpartisan Web site run by the University of Pennsylvania. But what he SAID was "factcheck.COM" - which is a for-profit advertising site based in the Cayman Islands. They re-directed traffic (since they were getting swamped with hits) to a site run by George Soros, a billionaire who makes no secret of his opposition to the Bush administration. A lawyer for the owner of factcheck.COM said his client "picked the Soros site partly for its political views", but also because Soros can afford the cost of all that Web traffic. And traffic to www.factcheck.com is still being routed there - click the link above if you want to check. They have a disclaimer on their page - "We do not own the FactCheck.com domain name and are not responsible for it redirecting to GeorgeSoros.com. We are as surprised as anyone by this turn of events. We believe that Vice President Cheney intended to direct viewers of the Vice-Presidential Debate to FactCheck.org." Hee. I'll bet Cheney could be heard muttering after he was made aware of the error, "F*** the internet." Hee.

One small step for (a) man...

Congratulations to Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) and their leaders, Burt Rutan and Paul Allen, and also to pilot Brian Binnie - SpaceShipOne completes 2nd Historic trip to space and wins the Ansari X Prize. The second trip needed to clinch the win happened on Monday. I was able to watch the landing, and it was a very cool moment. Check this link out to watch video of the flight.


On a sad note, Rodney Dangerfield died Tuesday afternoon. He was 82 years old. Rodney, we will miss you. And we respect you. RIP.

You've got to have an exit strategy

If Bush wins the election in November, I think I'll move to Belize. Yeah, or Canada. That could work.

The first debate

I watched very little of this, heard a little bit about it on NPR this morning. According to this Boston Herald article, the debate hasn't changed many opinions or helped many undecided voters make up their minds yet. Perhaps the next debate will help them. My mind is already made up (*cough* the banner at the top *cough*), but you should go out and do some research if you're still undecided yourself. Just be sure to cast your vote November 2nd - if you aren't registered, go here - but you need to hurry!!

Ewww, that's just fugly...

My wife loves this site - Go Fug Yourself - some truly poor fashion choices on display here. Go check it out!

Lost

The pilot for Lost finished up last night (and will be shown again this Saturday) - so far I'm really liking this show. I'm just hoping that the weird "monster" on the island with the crash survivors doesn't turn out to be something lame. If you haven't watched the show, definitely take advantage of the Saturday replay and check it out - you won't be disappointed!

Where is her miniskirt, made of snakeskin...

It's possibly getting a little too much airplay, but Bowling For Soup's 1985 is a funny song - funny video too!
If you have iTunes - click the link below to purchase 1985

There's only so much time in the day, you know.

Been awhile since I've had time to post anything - work has really been sucky recently and I've been so busy I had no time to get one written. I'd get into why work sucks so bad, but that would just end up making me mad - so I won't. But on a different subject, a couple of my favorite TV shows had their season premieres recently - Smallville and Joan of Arcadia. Joan just premiered last night - it was great! I'd really missed the show, and it was a good episode. Love that show, and this season looks to be pretty good. Smallville was on Wednesday night here - we don't have a WB affiliate station, so WB shows play on weird days usually at 10pm or later - which sucks sometimes. It was a pretty good episode, but had entirely too much of two things - naked Clark was one, and Lana (just Lana in general, she's bad) was the other. The introduction of Lois Lane was cool, and I'm hoping they really do some good things with the character. I also REALLY thought it was cool having Margot Kidder play Dr. Swann's assistant, Bridgette Crosby. If you don't watch the show, it's REALLY cool because Dr. Swann is played by Christopher Reeve. Of course these shows plus all the other shows I watch - well... It's alot of TV. But you've gotta do something with what little free time you can get these days, right?

It's on like Donkey Kong!! (to quote Chip)

Didn't have enough time to post about this yesterday, but the finale of The Amazing Race was Tuesday. It was a great race, and the best finish in my opinion. Chip and Kim were my favorite team by far, and it was great fun to finally have the team I've been rooting for during the season finally win one!! One of the best parts of watching the finale was my wife's reaction to some interesting hats worn by Chip and Kim, and Brandon. You can see them in this picture -



That's right - red ski caps that say "Canada" on them and look like a maple leaf! Here's a bigger photo -



Neat, huh? So basically, every time my wife saw one she started giggling and going "I want one!" They are proving to be kinda hard to find though. Haven't had any luck except for one we found on eBay, and the bidding for it is over $33 right now. That's a little pricey. Gotta keep looking, I guess. But overall a great show (2 time Emmy award winner!) and a great finale!

A really good reason to not even open spam

Apparently, some spam emails "opt-out" links are actually JavaScript exploits. You click on the link and the malicious script uses an exploit in Internet Explorer to basically turn your PC into a email relay - opening it up to unauthorized access and turning it into a spam source. Nice, huh? No one should click those links anyway, since all it REALLY does is confirm your email address and shows a spam emailer that someone reads mail at that email address. Read the full article on The Register here. So it would be a good idea to not let your mail program run JavaScript, to not open spam mail at all, and to maybe use Mozilla's Thunderbird instead of Outlook/Outlook Express.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Saw Sky Captain Friday night. I really liked it a lot! Very interesting concept and I thought it was well executed and really looked great. The visual effects were terrific, and the whole style - with the animation and the CG backrounds and the colorized look - it was really effective to set the tone and pull you into this world. Go see Sky Captain - you'll enjoy it!!

Hmm, looks like it might be time to stop using that pirated version of Windows...

This article on news.zdnet.com goes over Microsoft's new plan to "provide a better experience for users of licensed software." Right. Sounds more like a way to find out more about who's NOT using licensed software to me. It's optional at this time, but who knows? They could start making it an automatic mandatory check, like whenever you go to Windows Update it would automatically check maybe. We'll see what becomes of this, if anything.

Make your own Flash movie

This site is pretty fun - D.Film Moviemaker. you can choose from pre-rendered backgrounds and characters, add some music and your own words and make a fun little flash movie! Have fun!!

Try it - you might like it

Been listening to some new bands recently on my iPod -

Coheed and Cambria - a quirky little band from upstate New York. You've possibly heard the single A Favor House Atlantic or seen the video for it. If your interested and you have iTunes, you can click this iTunes button to download it for yourself!


My wife heard this song and thought it was Rush - because she thinks the singer sounds like Geddy Lee. And he does - a little bit :)

Lacuna Coil - an Italian band, kinda Goth rock, I like the tune Heaven's a Lie a lot. A guy on a message board I frequent described Lacuna Coil as "Evanescence, but with talent". Hey, that's not nice... or am I dumb for thinking Evanescence has some talent? Again, if you're interested and have iTunes, you can download the song by clicking the iTunes button -




By the way - these aren't free downloads. If you want them, you'll have to pay 99 cents. Not a bad price to hear some cool new music, but I wanted to be sure nobody thought I was giving away free music or something!

Whoops, forgot one!

Forgot one game on the post from yesterday -

SIMS 2 - for PC - This is probably the most anticipated sequel of the year so far, I can't believe I forgot to list it before! It's getting good reviews from the game magazines - looks like it's even more fun than the original, and I'm sure it will sell VERY well.

New and upcoming video game releases

I know I said I'd be posting yesterday, but I had a big problem with my PC and spent a good few hours fixing it, didn't feel much like doing anything else on a computer after that! So, here's a little info about some upcoming video games (a subject near and dear to my heart) that sound like fun -

FABLE - for PC and Xbox - This game came out today, and it sounds really cool. It's a role-playing adventure game with a twist - everything you do from childhood (where the game begins for your character) to death - affects the game and your character, how he looks and acts and interacts with everyone in the game. Neat stuff.

HALO 2 - for PC and Xbox - This one doesn't come out til November 9th, and I can't wait!! It's going to be even better than the original Halo, check out the trailer if you don't believe me.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II : THE SITH LORDS - for Xbox on 12/04 and for PC on 2/05 - I loved the first KOTOR, and this one certainly is shaping up to be as good if not better than it was.

PLAYBOY : THE MANSION - for PC and Xbox and Playstation 2 - This game gives you the chance to BE Hugh Hefner, building the Playboy magazine empire from scratch. And as you become more rich and famous, you get to outfit the Playboy mansion and throw huge star-studded events. Could be a good time! (Definitely ADULTS ONLY, though)

LEISURE SUIT LARRY : MAGNA CUM LAUDE - for PC and Xbox and Playstation 2 - The new installment of the famous Leisure Suit Larry series looks like it will live up to the old games and will also push the boundaries of the Mature rating for video games! This one is out now, check it out - if it's your kind of game :) (Again, ADULTS ONLY).

Short post

Not going to be able to post much of anything, cause I'm sending this one in over dial-up. Yuck. I had forgotten how bad dial-up sucks. Cable modem or DSL - it's the only way to fly, baby. I'll have much more to say tomorrow once I'm back at my own PC and my cable modem and wireless network. That's the good stuff!

Never Forget

Resident Evil:Apocalypse

Went to see an advance screening of Resident Evil:Apocalypse last night with my wife. She's not a big video game fan, so it wasn't her cup of tea, but we had a good time. I thought it was an alright movie, and that it was certainly better than the first one. Milla Jovovich is back - but none of the other actors from the first movie. It also stars Sienna Guillory and Oded Fehr. Here are a couple of pictures -

Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine


Milla Jovovich as Alice


Like the first movie, this one also dosen't hold true to the storyline of any particular Resident Evil game, but uses some pieces of the games and develops a story based on events that happen in them. This one borrows plot elements from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3:Nemesis. It was a pretty decent movie - especially since we got to go to the advance screening for free!

Truly not happy about this...

Alright, I read this story from USA Today. And I got a little mad, because I'd jokingly said awhile back "Gee, wouldn't it suck if Lucas goes back and replaces Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen at the end of Return of the Jedi?" And he DID IT. Man, I'd actually pay a lot of money to get the real, unchanged, un-Special Edition, ORIGINAL Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. But apparently that isn't even close to what we will be getting on September 21st. Damn it, we need to save these movies from their directors!!

Michael Moore wants to show Fahrenheit 9/11 on TV before the election

Here's a link to a message written by Michael Moore and posted on his website in which he explains why he isn't submitting Fahrenheit 9/11 to be nominated for a Best Documentary Academy Award. This is a great idea!!

Whoopsie

Seems like Blogger was having some server trouble yesterday. I wrote two posts for the blog yesterday morning, and tried (several times) to publish them - with no success. Kept getting an odd error message, after it had tried for 5 minutes or longer to publish. So I emailed Blogger support around 10am yesterday, and hadn't heard anything back from them by 3pm. I decided to try one last time to publish the new posts - and that time it worked! I did get a reply from Blogger support later on that said they had been having some problems and that they should be resolved now. So now I'm keeping my fingers crossed every time I try to publish new posts to the blog - hey, you never know what will help, right?

I'd heard a story about this band on NPR a week ago, and just today got around to checking out their website. The Mini Bosses. They play rockin' versions of old NES game music, like from Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. You can download a few songs from the website to see what I mean. Takes me back to the old days when I spent hours sitting by the TV playing those games on my NES - good times...

Atari to re-issue some old games

Interesting news here - Atari announces it will re-issue some of it's old games. Called "Atari Anthology", it will include 85 games that were originally on the Atari 2600. Another collection of re-issues, Atari Flashback, will include 20 games and will actually be a miniature Atari 7800 console complete with old school joysticks. Might be cool, might suck - I'd totally kill at all the 2600 games.

Give 'em the old flim-flam flummox, daze and dazzle 'em...

Greetings all - I had intended to post on Labor Day, but it turned into a really weird day that involved a almost 2 hour stint at the urgent care office (not for me, for my wife), followed by a fruitless search for a open pharmacy on a holiday. Some HAD been open, but since we were looking for one after 5pm, they had closed. Everything is OK, no major trauma and she ended up not needing the prescription anyway. But no post Monday. Ah well, could have been worse.

Yesterday we went to see Chicago - The Musical at the Ohio Theatre. Been a while since I've seen a musical, and I really enjoyed it. We have season tickets, and this was the first show of the series. A really great way to start - hopefully the other shows will be as good or better. Coming up in the series are Oliver!, The Producers, and Moving Out, among other shows. Should be a good series!

America lagging behind in broadband access?

Acoording to this article, the US has dropped from third to tenth in country-wide broadband penetration across the globe. And some articles in the media indicate that America has "missed the high speed revolution" and is a "broadband backwater". Sure, South Koreans and Swedes "enjoy 100Mbps connections" - but they are more compact geographically the the US. No denying though that I personally would LOVE to have a 100 Mbps broadband connection (by comparison, the best available cable modem connection in the area I live in is 6 Mbps download and 512 kbps upload). Heck, who wouldn't want to be able to download a 72 megabyte file in like 6 seconds?

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.