Posts from — May 2002

After an uneventful weekend, I’m back to work today. We didn’t go to the movies but we did rent Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise (don’t bother), had a nice picnic dinner on Monday and did some shopping and yard work. I enjoy staying around the house and not going anywhere. Fighting the crowds at the store on the roads and everywhere isn’t very much fun. Staying home on holidays is like a break from all of that for us.

2 more days and I’m out of here. I’ll be at the Dallas Headquarters of FSB for a long weekend. If you need me, just page. I’m not going to answer you but you can page anyway.

Go to Disinformation and take this quiz. It’s a bit of an eye-opener.

If you are making a boulevard turn and there are two lanes turning, STAY in the corresponding after you have turned. Don’t get in the INSIDE lane and then jump over to the RIGHT lane after you’ve turned. Each day when I leave work, I am plagued by morons who don’t understand this simple driving technique. Click here for diagram

I plan on moving my other pages (Mortism’s, Rants, Quotes and e-Grams) to the Network 23 discussion board. Then they will be a little more interactive and maybe somebody will finally visit. What are you waiting for? Sign up today. Do I have to bribe you people?

I’m going to the First Saturday computer show next week. It’s something that I have wanted to do for years. Now I have my chance.

If you ever wondered why Yoda is called the Jedi Master, you will find out when you see Star Wars II - Attack of the Clones. I was totally immersed in the Star Wars universe from the very beginning of the film.

Some people are saying the dialogue was stale and there wasn’t enough action in the film. Bah! I thought it was the perfect blend of action, mystery, special effects and awesome scenery. Not once did I think the story was slow or boring.

Answers to questions I had from the very first movie were revealed. Now I have new ones I can’t wait to get answered in the next movie. The references to future and past events and the origins of well-known characters like Boba Fett, Obi Wan and Darth Vader is terrific.

Go see it if for no other reason than to see Master Jedi Yoda actually kick some ass.

The Force was with this movie all the way! If you didn’t like this film then you aren’t really a true Star Wars fan.

What do YOU think? Go to Network 23 and let everyone know.

From J: My team is in position and has completed a long-range survey of the area.
Early analysis indicates a heavy concentration of mid- and high-level
corporate personnel, for the most part engaged in communications and
software development/deployment. Local infrastructure appears well-executed,
with a user-friendly arterial surface transport system, and a reasonable
spectrum of replenishment facilities. Note: they are limited to ground
transportation, manual control, in this zone. Fusion-powered air transport
has not yet been implemented, scheduled Q1 04.
Team Zed (Col. Ted Bryce, you may have heard of him), at its discretion,
will conclude their mission with a close-in sweep in stealth mode. This is
the first field trial for our new stealth package, with its major software
upgrade. We’re all feeling real confident that the new system will more than
satisfy the Appropriations people and their abaci.
Final report will be compiled by this time tomorrow. I’ll contact you,
using secure protocol Romeo Niner Lima.

Perhaps the best review of the new Star Wars movie comes from Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool news. During the SXSW computer conference, he was ushered to a secret room where he was shown a beta release of the upcoming film. Many say this was a ploy by Lucasfilm to get some excitement going for the film around the Internet. Their plan worked very well.

Take a minute and read the review. Its an honest and fresh account from someone that genuinely loves Star Wars and wasn’t there to overanalyze the film and pick it apart. He watched it just to have fun. Whenever I see a film, I ask myself if I had fun watching it. If I did, then the movie did its job and I give it a high rating. Perhaps I’m a bit too liberal with my great reviews but it doesn’t take much at all for me to have fun.

Elsewhere, it is exactly one year today that my favorite author Douglas Adams died. I fondly remember the good times I had reading all five books in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy.”

Adams brought us such great memories as Vogon poetry, Babel fish, Joo Janta peril sensitive sunglasses, Improbability physics, paranoid androids, elevators that suffered from the fear of heights and many more fun things. I miss him.

Now let me go find my towel.

We get a fleet of secret vehicles to patrol the roads around town. These vehicles have the “power” to revoke the license of anyone driving badly. The Secret Patrol spots a driver not using his turn signal and bam, they are not allowed to drive anymore. Forever. No discussion.

Not knowing when and where the Secret Patrol will strike, everyone will FINALLY FREAKIN’ DRIVE RIGHT. That means no more speeding, tailgating, not using blinkers, aggressive driving, everything.

My plan will get all the losers that can’t drive off the road and in the end, I will be the only one left. That’s because my driving is perfect.

We finally saw Spiderman this afternoon. I thought it was great. Pam’s reaction was the opposite. She didn’t like the violence and even more, didn’t like Kirsten Dunst. I suppose we’ll have to go see some chick-flick to make up for it.
Tobey Macguire was perfectly cast in the title role. My favorite moments of the film were of him discovering his new found talents. I didn’t care at all for the Green Goblin’s outfit. I thought the mask should have been a little more animated. I supposed it was probably following the comic book but I didn’t care for it.

I will definately see this film again.

Meanwhile at Atom Films, they are showing the Star Wars fan film awards. Check out all the award winners. My favorite is “StarGeeks.” The banter between the Star Wars and the Star Trek fans is hilarious.

The Klez virus is easily the worst email-based virus to date. It does everything the typical Outlook Express-exploiting virus does, it looks like a almost normal email, you run the cloaked attachment then it emails everyone in your address book with more viruses, but it does one extra thing: it randomly changes the From field to anyone in the address book. - from Wired

As Frank-n-Furter said, “It’s getting really hard to have a good time anymore.”

You know that Mitsubshi commercial with the women doing that weird dance in the front seat? I really liked the song playing. With fast Google search, I found the song was called “Can’t Live Without You” by Dirty Vegas. Go to their site to see a unique way of listening to the song yourself.

I started to reconfigure my site with the new links but I got busy. Then there were 2 episodes of Enterprise, and now I’m out of time.

I met Russell Simmons of Def Comedy Jam fame today. Nice guy.

I enjoy watching various Earth cams. Remember the one at the 7-11 store? I still think its the best out there on the net. Here’s one in Las Vegas by the MGM Grand. It rotates so you can see familiar views if you’ve ever been there.

AT&T cable: quit aggravating my brother. He wants to add another converter box to a second TV but they say that’s not allowed. The wall jack is there but they won’t let him get another box so he can get the digital cable TV. Stupid people.

Then his cable modem was fried by a lightning storm but they have to come out to swap it for a new one. He can’t drop it off at the office and get a new one. Comcast prefers you do this so they don’t have to send a tech out to the house. Morons. They had better hope I don’t call them. It will not be a very nice conversation. I need to teach my brother the “fine art of whining to get your way.”

Is anyone else having trouble with the link to Powerloafing? Let me know. I suggest maybe using the latest browser and check your security settings if you are having trouble.

The Gallery @ FSB is now online. After some real configuring, I finally got it working. It was a chore but I’m happy with the outcome. There are a few errors popping up so I’ll have to fix them. I quickly posted some images to test it out. The process is extremely easy. Having albums (and sub-albums) makes it a snap to organize all your photos online. I did notice opening an image seemed to be slow. I’ll check that out too. Later.

After tonight, there are only 2 more “hours” in the show 24. I have to vote this show to be my second favorite show of the season. My first is Farscape. Anywho, 24 promises to be suspense-filled to the very end. The promo’s say “nothing is as it seems.” You can bet that Pam and I will be there watching.

Don’t forget to sign up for the lively discussion at Network 23, my new discussion board.

The redo of my main page is imminent. I’ll be adding and removing some links and creating buttons for the new sections of the site.

My brother Jeffery IM’d me with this site. I thought the images there were awesome, you will too. Find one and make it your wallpaper.

Am I the only one who hasn’t seen Spiderman? We’re going tomorrow night.