8.31.2006
4:09pm

Bill Gates pimps Windows 95 in a DOOM video. No, really. Apparently it was made back in 1995 and he talks about DirectX and the other new features that would make Windows 95 the platform for gaming. Well, for a while anyway.

I'm not even going to bother with Ernesto photos since there was no noticeable change except some big puddles. NASA even decided to stop rolling the space shuttle back to the hanger and sent it back to the launch pad since the winds were low enough. It should launch Wednesday. Lockheed Martin got the contract for the next-generation space shuttle; the old models will be retired in 2010.

8.29.2006
9:06pm

No work tomorrow and no school tomorrow... that means party tonight!

I should have some before / during / after photos of Tropical Storm Ernesto to post in a couple days.

8.28.2006
11:08pm

It's only the 2nd week of classes and there is already a tropical storm on the horizon, Ernesto. Possibly will land as a category 1 hurricane but that looks unlikely. Florida Tech is on the lookout, and we should know whether Wednesday's classes are cancelled by 1pm tomorrow.

My mind is reeling with all of the stuff that I'm trying to keep up with regarding work, school, and other activities. Today my PDA todo list had about 16 items on it and most of them are for this week. Outlook keeps me sane. Pretty soon my favorite TV show seasons are going to start up again (House, LOST, Family Guy, South Park, The Simpsons) so that's going to be another thing to schedule. Now I just need Fox and Comedy Central to jump on the ABC bandwagon and allow Internet streaming of their shows (with ads of course).

We ended up watching Poseidon on Sunday night: not a bad popcorn flick, but the audio is more impressive than the plot. The biggest thing that stood out in my mind was how little cool stuff they got for $140 million. Sure, the first 20 minutes are impressive with the wave crash, but the rest of the movie looks like it could have been done for a very small budget. It would make for a cool video game, having to escape from a huge sinking ocean liner, but as a movie it's not the best story.

8.26.2006
11:12pm

I just saw Inside Man tonight for the first time, courtesy of Chris's girlfriend Melissa who bought it on DVD. It's one of the better heist movies I have seen, right up there with The Italian Job and Die Hard: With a Vengeance. It doesn't have as much intense action as the other two, but the suspense is better. Denzel Washington gets to play the hostage negotiator in Inside Man, the opposite of his role a few years ago in John Q when he was the hostage-taker. Clive Owen is a good archetype "bad guy" actor, and Jodie Foster does a great job with her supporting "devil's accomplice" role. It's worth a watch.

8.25.2006
3:32pm

Laser optics flash puzzle. See if you can get to stage 25 like me.

8.23.2006
8:31pm

Be prepared for a mega-disaster hurricane, says the director of the US National Hurricane Center. I hope it doesn't hit Florida. Or North Carolina. Or Virginia. Or New York. South Carolina, Georgia, or Pennsylvania would be ok. Apologies to anybody that lives on those coastlines.

2:13pm

Three hour breaks in-between classes are good for watching House. That is, if you don't have any homework to do like me. That's only going to last this week so I might as well enjoy it. Also if I have time this weekend I'm going to check out F.E.A.R. before I have to return the game to Nate.

8.22.2006
8:12pm

Today was another busy day, although not as bad as yesterday which was a fortunate thing. The morning sky was very nice on the drive to work, with some clouds blocking off the usually blinding sunrise:

The two classes I had today were Logic and Virtual Instrumentation Lab. The first was short and boring and the latter was long and interesting. Such is life.

8.21.2006
10:52pm

Up at 6:45am, back home at 9:15pm, it must be school time. Today was the first day of classes for the Fall semester, and after working 4 hours at Harris I went over to campus for 4 classes and the first Student Ambassador meeting (I have to run those now as well). The first of many long, busy days. On the plus side, I can understand all of my teachers pretty well so far. Two of them are even regular American guys with no accent.

Tomorrow there's the organizational fair, two more classes, and 3 hours at Harris. Fun!

8.18.2006
8:49pm

Need I say more?

8.12.2006
10:26pm

I've been spending more time at YouTube lately, mostly watching comedy clips (like Who's Line is it Anyway, George Carlin, Robin Williams, Comedy Central Presents, etc). I can't wait until Robin's new movie, Happy Feet, comes out; it's obviously a play off the success of March of the Penguins, and not coincidentally both are from Warner studios. It will probably be very stupid and have no plot, but the jokes should make up for it ;). Here's a funny clip from Frank Caliendo that I found when perusing today. From the news headlines I've seen lately, that site is growing like crazy in terms of viewers and number of videos uploaded and served each day. So far I haven't made any clips of my own, but I might dig up some that I have from years past and post them up there (like the funny jousting videos I made with some other people in high school).

Tomorrow I'm going to campus from 10:30 till 2:30 to tend to the Parent's Lounge for orientation as a Student Ambassador. It's something new that FIT is doing this year, so that the parents have a place to sit down, grab some snacks, and read some local newspapers/magazines while their kids are off at the various "welcome to college" crash course sessions. Then on Monday there's more administrative stuff to take care of, and I need to inform Harris of what my part-time hours will be during the semester.

My friend Dave Kincaid has put up a new website.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: SNAKES ON A PLANE comes out next Friday. I've seen some rather interesting TV spots promoting the movie, and I think there will be enough cult interest at this point to guarantee financial profitability, even if the critics have a field day with it. (Where did that expression come from anyway--have a field day? Doesn't make any sense. Oh wait, just ask wikipedia).

8.10.2006
9:28pm

From last night's Colbert Report on Comedy Central, in reference to President Bush only taking 10 days of vacation this year, the shortest summer vacation he's had yet:

"He [Bush] is like a Black and Decker cordless Dirt Devil vacuum. If you don't recharge his batteries, he can't suck."

Colbert also really stuck it to Joe Lieberman for losing the district primary in Connecticut, supposedly because he refused to appear on the show like his opponent, Ned Lamont. Of course the real reason he likely lost was his unwavering support for the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

8.8.2006
9:22pm

Nate brought his new toy to work today. A Verizon XV6700 speakerphone / Pocket PC / 1.3 megapixel camera / QWERTY thumbpad / bluetooth / WiFi device. It's smaller than the basic HP iPaq PDA I had last year that didn't have any phone feature, keypad, or camera. Miniturization is an awesome thing. Oh, and it can also do wireless Internet from any location with digital cell service. Nate got the unlimited data transfer plan, so if he comes close to running out of voice minutes he can just use Skype over the net instead of the regular phone feature. Fortunately I don't believe it has the click-to-talk feature which is IMO a step backwards for phone communication.

So the question becomes, when will they be good enough that everybody carries one consolidated device instead of the miriad of individual electronics that we now have. No need for a separate phone, PDA, iPod, digital camera, Blackberry, GPS, etc. Flash RAM is reaching capabities now where it may be possible to have such a high capacity device without the need for a bulky hard drive. Hold your combo device up to the credit card scanner and press your thumb on the screen to securely transfer bank data over very short range wireless. Make a shopping list while browsing the web for interesting stuff, transfer it onto the PDA, go to the store, employee PDA syncs with bluetooth to your PDA, and you get a personalized tour of all the stuff you wanted to look at in person. Company gets valuable feedback information from initial shopping lists and what products are actually bought at exit time. Buy movie tickets online, and instead of having to print them out at the theater and immediately hand them back to the attendant, just keep the record on the PDA and then wave it by a scanner by the ticket-checker-person (I think their official title is a little more glamorous).

At some point it would become dangerous to put too much power in one device, especially when it comes to digital unlocking and secure ID abilities. Of course that's what the implanted microchips are supposed to be for.

8.6.2006
10:44pm

It might not be an official part of HL2: Episode One, but this secret weapon is pretty sweet. I'll have to go back and play with it some. Looks like it might appear as an authentic weapon in Episode Two.

12:31am

So many great quotable lines in The Birdcage. I swear that movie doesn't know whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama (it's classified as comedy though). Read 'em at IMDb. My favorite is probably:

"Oh I see, so you're going to a cemetery with your toothbrush. How Egyptian."

I've managed to get 3/4 of the way through Doom 3 in just a few days. I should be able to finish tomorrow and then I can close that chapter.

8.5.2006
4:52pm

Today was a squirt gun fight kind of day. Clear, sunny skies and hot weather. A mid-day rainstorm in the distance that teased us with the promise of precipitation yet did not come close enough to deliver.

Tim did manage to get all of his stuff moved out, although he had to pack the car pretty full (See below). Chris brought over his belongings to move into the room so I have effectively switched roommates in one day.

8.3.2006
11:08pm

Watched a couple good movies this week... the first was Spaceballs, which I had never seen before, and tonight it was V for Vendetta which I had seen in the theater. If you haven’t seen Spaceballs before I would recommend it... nothing like some good Star Wars satire with Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet (Darth Vader) and Bill Pullman as Lone Starr (Han Solo / Luke combined). Throw in some John Candy as a chewbacca-esque dog-man and Mel Brooks himself as Yogurt (Yoda). The very beginning was absolute gold but I particularly liked the way Mel pokes fun at the over-marketing of blockbuster films and also the part where several main characters pop in a video tape of Spaceballs and watch themselves on the screen in the movie (and they even get the tunnel effect right). I have a desire to rewatch History of the World Part 1 now... haven’t seen it since 10th grade.

I also picked up a copy of Half-Life 2 Episode One this week along with Doom 3 (buy one get one free at Circuit City). Valve really did a great job with episode one, and even though it’s a short installment for $10 I was very pleased. I will definitely be getting episode two when they come out with that hopefully by Q3 2007. Doom 3 has been pretty good so far, and the gameplay style is different from HL2 so it’s not repetitive in any way. I was a little underwhelmed with the graphics quality at first, but it is still very demanding on hardware resources. Id software also tried to put in a good amount of story development along the way so that it doesn’t just feel like you’re shooting bad guys the whole time (which you basically are).

School deadlines are sneaking up on me in a very unfair manner. I’m not ready to have to think about all that stuff yet, but it’s coming whether I want it to or not. Work is still going well and I’m going to transition back to part time when classes begin on the 21st. I found out this week that Chris Maher will be moving in with us for August and maybe a little bit beyond that, until he and his girlfriend find a place to rent of their own. Dan is still doing his thing in Illinois but he will probably be back this fall to attend some BCC classes and work at Geek Squad.