6.30.2008
10:06am
Same old Zimbabwe. Maintain power by force and intimidation. When you are the only candidate it's hard to lose.
WALL-E beat Wanted at the box office.
1:53am
This guy Gabriel Iglesias is hilarious. Check out the Comedy Central special part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. It's not quite complete, a few bits are missing like the croc hunter and the GPS bit got cut off early. The whole thing is great. Also the racist gift basket, big friends, and the hotel. All in good fun.
6.29.2008
7:39pm
These cockpit photos are actually pretty spectacular.
JCPenny stirring up a little controversy.
6.28.2008
11:38am
Woke up late this morning to some great news on digg. Diablo 3 from Blizzard Entertainment is getting close to release. It's been 6 years since I played Diablo II so this is pretty high on my anticipation list. I just had to watch through the cinematic trailer and gameplay video. The environment interaction is pretty cool but it looks like the game will have fairly hefty hardware requirements. Specifications haven't been released yet.
Maybe a little copycat action on the latest Coldplay album? I haven't bought it yet but I'll get around to it one of these days.
This is what I thought about WALL-E:
It had a lot of great parts, definitely your typical "Pixar" class movie. Plenty of humor, more than any other Pixar movie yet in my opinion. It needed it though with the limited dialog. They convey so much though with the actions, body language, and what limited vocabulary the robots do have. I'm not going to try to rank this relative to the other Pixar movies, if they avoid one thing it's cookie cutter plots so it's hard to compare merit since each film may appeal to a certain type of person.
The audio and score was great I thought, it really allowed my local cinema to show off what it could do. Peter Gabriel in the closing credits was decent but the lyrics nothing special; thematically matches the film though.
There are a number of sci-fi references, not sure if I caught them all but they are definitely in there. Nothing slapstick but definitely smile-evoking.
I don't like the way they inserted the live action content (video clips only, no interaction of animated characters with live action). In fact thinking back I can't recall a single Pixar movie that did that, maybe I'm just forgetting though. Also for those who hate studios that take a political stance you might be slightly ticked off by a couple things Pixar put in there.
This will be a popular family movie but I agree with some of the reviewers that say it may not hold the attention of young kids. As for me though, it was animated excellence and there were a few times I caught myself mouth agape just lost in it.
If you've seen the movie Idiocracy some parts may seem a little familar :)
Brian has a much longer blog post about the movie (and some of the Apple connections) and also found there is a web site for Buy n Large, the fictional corporation in WALL-E. Tons of tongue-in-cheeck sarcasm and Onion-style articles on there.
6.26.2008
9:11pm
I've got my ticket to see WALL-E at 12:01am. I've been up to about 2am every day this week so it won't be anything unusual to stay up. Unlike Ratatouille I've got a really good feeling about this Pixar flick.
1:44am
The geek in me prevails over the audiophile in me sometimes and so I have to say I'm very impressed with this effort to reproduce a song from Radiohead on computer equipment.
I rented Juno from Amazon Unbox service. Big mistake, it took about 2 hours of caching before it could even start playing. The quality was excellent once it began, but damn that is a long wait for "on demand" digital rentals (or purchases). The movie was pretty good, plenty of quotable parts. Not quite "Knocked Up" funny, but then again it isn't supposed to be the same kind of movie.
6.21.2008
1:46am
My internal clock is all out of whack now. I came home from work Friday, went to sleep, woke up around 10:30pm and so I've been up now for about 3 hours. I probably should have taken another sick day on Friday, but I was feeling ok in the morning so I went in.
Kung Fu Panda is on the agenda this weekend again. Still haven't seen it.
6.19.2008
9:01pm
Youtube, you entertain me. "Just because you're not dutch doesn't mean you can't be awesome!" Half-Life hat gets a thumbs-up too. Anyway, found the video from this article about the shape of that particular fruit snack.
I've been pretty sick the last couple of days. Yesterday I left work early and went to bed around 6pm. I took a sick day today, still had to go to class at FIT at 5pm though.
Keith Olbermann on McCain and the Enron Loophole.
See the first Obama general election video here.
6.17.2008
11:49pm
Tonight was my third trip out on the bike. I rode over to Harris, mainly to see how easy the route was. The streets were pretty dead and the thunderstorm had moved on a couple hours earlier so I didn't get wet. I've been feeling sick this afternoon with a sore throat and sniffles.
I also managed to kill my TV tuner card this evening. I rearranged my computer equipment this past weekend, and I had to switch the coax cable to a longer piece of RG6. WinTV wasn't giving me any signal so I decided to tighten the coax connector where it joins the card. Well I tried doing that and after I twist it a couple times I smell a slight burning odor and see a little smoke blow out of the exhaust fan area. I quickly powered off the PC even though Windows was still responding fine. I removed the tuner card to see what happened and one of the solder points shorted out against one of my motherboard heat sinks. When I installed the card I noticed its extreme proximity to the heat sink, so I put a piece of electrical tape on the PCB to insulate it. My torquing on the connector caused the solder to tear a little hole in the tape though and it grounded itself. I tried fixing the tape and powering up again, but the tuner card was not detected any longer by Windows. I had to go get a replacement one, fortunately Circuit City had it on sale again so I popped the replacement in (with 3 layers of electrical tape this time). I didn't even have to reinstall the software.
Lazula has returned to normal as of this morning. She's eating fine and playing with Saphira like usual. They tore through a piece of whole catfish that I got at Publix, although "whole" is a misnomer because it already had the head, organs, and skin removed. At least they got some bones. She still didn't want to finish the tuna fish that I was using as a teaser, but Saphira ate that up.
Tomorrow I have to finish my first project for operating systems class, and do the chapter homework. There was some interesting chatter on Slickdeals today about a Microsoft Live search promotion in conjunction with eBay. Apparently certain search terms on Live were giving people 35% cash back offers on eBay Buy-It-Now items paid with Paypal. So you could pretty much buy anything on eBay and Microsoft is going to refund 35% of the purchase price, up to $250 refunded per transaction. They limited to 3 sessions per eBay user. I didn't end up buying anything, and the 35% madness is over now but there is still a 10% discount active. I was more than a little suspicious of Microsoft actually honoring this, especially since there is a 60 day waiting period before any cash back is actually to be paid out. If they do follow-through then I can't imagine how many thousands of dollars it will cost.
You have to know a little about World of Warcraft to get this joke. And a little geometry to get this one.
8:24pm
6.16.2008
11:27pm
I had an interesting experience with AVG's new virus scanner, and it appears that it is causing problems for hosts as well. I decided to uninstall it when Firefox was crashing multiple times in one day due to the malware scanner.
Lazula has been sick this weekend. Today she seemed more her normal self but still didn't eat anything except a little bit of egg. If she won't eat tomorrow morning then it's definitely time for a vet visit. I found out at work today that one of the little kittens that Nate and Kayla were fostering died of a respiratory problem. They took it to the vet for treatment but there was little chance for success because it was a viral infection.
6.14.2008
10:42pm
There's overpriced and then there's OVERPRICED! Have you no shame Denon?
I got back home about an hour ago from helping with the move. It took a while longer than I expected, Adam and Tammy have more furniture and "stuff" than to be expected in a 1-bedroom apartment. They did have a garage too so that was part of it. Their rental house is pretty close to where I live, in fact I rode my bike over there this morning.
2:25am
Yeah, I'm up pretty late tonight. Not a great idea either, because I'm helping Adam and Tammy move into their rental house after I get some sleep. I was already over there for a little while today to help with the speakers and a few other large items.
The reason for my late night is because I started assembly of the bicycle I bought at Wal-Mart today around 11:30pm and it took longer than I thought. About 2 hours to get everything adjusted right. Then I had to go try it out, 1:30am be damned. I did stay in the apartment complex though since it is lighted. I bought a disassembled one because I was pretty sure that an assembled bike would not fit into my Yaris. Even if it would, I'm not sure if I'd want an assembled-by-Walmart bike. When I was there I found some shelves that I wanted that were on clearance, so that was another two sizable boxes loaded into the hatchback. Way more useful than the Kia.
6.11.2008
7:34pm
I always thought a unicorn would look a bit more... equine.
Nate and Kayla got 3 "loaner" kittens from the shelter that Kayla is volunteering with. They get to take care of the 6-week-old kittens for a while, then return them for adoption. Yeah right... I bet they become permanent family members ;)
6.10.2008
10:22pm
hulu.com has added full episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Most excellent, I've been needing some comic relief for the election news.
6.08.2008
4:19pm
Today was beautiful and sunny (and kinda hot) so I made a trip up to Brevard Zoo. They've got some new additions since I was there last, most recently a baby Pudu and some Red Wolf pups. I didn't see the Pudu when I was there today, but I did get a good photo of the wolf pups when they were nursing. Also they traded with another zoo for a breeding pair of giant anteaters and their jaguar yearling Nindiri is leaving for San Diego zoo.
I saw one of my coworkers, Mimi from accounting, there at the zoo with her husband. It was somewhat unusual that all of the giraffes were avoiding the viewing platform today, the only people that could get a good view of them were the folks doing the kayak excursion.
6.07.2008
11:22pm
Apparently I need to go see Kung Fu Panda, because it's gotten excellent reviews for story as well as animation quality. Maybe tomorrow, I know Adam and Tammy wanted to see it.
I finished Sweeney Todd about a hour ago, just... wow. I still don't know what to think about that movie/musical, except that it was classic Tim Burton material. It didn't bore me like Corpse Bride did, although the theme of death is common to both. In both movies there is also an undesired marriage, but in Todd it's a minor part of the story. The whole "musical" aspect usually takes me a few scenes to get accustomed to, but after that it's mostly transparent and just natural for the film. As expected, the score and soundtrack were lively and engaging, and unlike most Burton movies this one doesn't feature Danny Elfman's work.
10:39am
Oil prices are predicted to fall from their own bubble, the only question is when exactly it will happen. Hopefully a lot of people will have switched to more fuel-efficient cars by then, and realized that it's nice to only fill up half as often. On the Yaris forums I've already heard people reporting that their dealers are sold out and have 30 to 45 day backorders, I'm sure the same is true for some of the other econobox cars as we sit at $4/gal.
12:09am
Just got finished watching Michael Clayton rented from Blockbuster. Great character lineup, it's not an action movie but a legal drama. Tilda and Clooney did great I thought, and the ending was just perfect--both calming and nerve-wracking at the same time. I earned enough My Coke Rewards points a few weeks ago to get a free movie rental night coupon. Two DVDs, popcorn, and a couple sodas. The other movie I grabbed was Sweeney Todd, seemed to get good ratings and wikipedia calls it a "musical thriller" so I'm interested to see how that works out.
6.03.2008
10:12pm
It hasn't been a good week for Harris stock.
Fox News just had a brief clip of Hillary Clinton saying she "makes no decision tonight." Whatever. Barack is on now.
