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!