Month: February 2007

Holy crap do I have a lot of tabs opens! And for that reason I’ll start by pointing out one of the awesomest Firefox addons – Session Fix. All it does is ask me if I want to save my session when I close down the browser. No more worrying about losing the 30 tabs I’ve had open all week!

• This weekend I was excited to see Eric Meyer address the whole “not enough women speakers” issue at web conferences by pointing out that he felt expertise and content were more important than genitalia. Unfortunately he got toasted for it. I wanted to write more on this subject and link to all of the craziness going on, but screw it. If you read his post and don’t get the idea that picking someone based on actual qualifications over gender, race, creed, etc. than I think there’s a bigger problem…
• As a side note, I went to a technical college. My class had one of the largest female enrollments at 25%. If you looked at the number who were actually in computer fields, it was far below that. Why is it still a surprise that there are fewer females in technical areas?
• The wallpapers installed in Windows Vista are awesome. And now you can get everything Hamad Darwish submitted for free. (thanks to Ed Bott)
• For the politically-minded, check out OpenCongress. Looks like a good way to keep track of what’s going on.
• I may use Wikipedia regularly, but I do not his my disdain for it while doing so. I would love to see the co-founder’s new project, Citizendium take off. It certainly sounds like a better alternative than Conservapedia (which already appears to be offline).
• In case you hadn’t made up your mind about David Caruso, this is all you need to know. (thanks to Jess)
• For those with a shoe fetish (my personal faves are the 4th pair). (thanks to Kottke)
• And, finally, if you’re looking for some new music, why not go through the SXSW line-up day by day and get some free mp3s!

That’s all for now kids…

To quote my blogiversary post from last year:

Crap. I was sure I would get my “blogiversary” right this year. It’s at the end of February – the 26th, to be exact. Not that difficult to remember. Of course, I kept forgetting what date I am currently living in, which is why I just noticed that today is the 27th. Yeehaw.

It’s frightening to think I was going to write almost the exact same thing this year. Good to know that little changes around these parts.

Yes, believe it or not, I’ve been working on this site for 4 years – and I’m beginning to think that it will never be done. Seriously, I wish I had something more profound to say at this point, but I’m just amazed that I still have a drive to keep this place running. This will be my 776th post – even accounting for all of the quick snippets I’ve written, that’s a lot of words. And you would think that after putting that many of them on the screen I would have become a tad more eloquent. Well, you can just keep on thinking that way…

Oh, and in case you actually didn’t watch the Oscars last night, you probably missed out on this gem of a commercial:

I have to give credit to Apple on that one, very clever.

I don’t think I ever actually plan on watching the Oscars, it just sort of happens. I understand the concept of Oscar parties and pools and all kinds of wacky hijinks that surround the event, but I usually forget it’s even on. And then I just turn on the TV and POW! I’m watching it for the next 5 hours.

It’s not like the GRAMMYs, mind you. I actually have respect for the Oscars. The only reason I bothered to watch the GRAMMYs (am I seriously supposed to capitalize the entire word?) was because they managed to get 3 very immature grown-ups to get into the same room as each other for like the third time in 2 decades. And after their five minutes were up, I only checked in every 20 minutes or so to make sure James Blunt didn’t win anything.

No, this is much more my typical laziness kicking in and preventing me from scheduling anything in life more than 2 hours in advance. Honestly, I really enjoy the show (at least now that I’m confident Whoopi Goldberg is no longer a host) because it’s filled with lots of cool montages that remind us of what awesome movies have been made and what people have died this year even though you were sure they bit it back in ’99. And I’ll even admit that I enjoy the new ways they try to get people to appreciate the other aspects of film making (reading excerpts from actual scripts, showing the costumes on stage, and, of course, the sound effects chorus). It’s also a great way to fill up my Netflix queue. Yet somehow this isn’t enough of a motivation.

I think I tend to get jaded by years like 2004 when they just gave every award to that horrid Return of the King movie regardless of whether or not it was deserving (“And the award for Best Documentary, Short Subjects goes to…”). So this year was a real treat as lots of upsets led to truly appreciative recipients as well as a nice diversity of films getting awards. The highlights of the night included Al Gore’s fake announcement (where was this personality 7 years ago?), Alan Arkin getting some much-deserved recognition, and Martin Scorsese finally winning a Best Director award as presented by the triumvirate of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg.

Of course this all would have been even better if Lisa could have stayed up late enough to watch it to the end…

I forgot my cell phone at home today. In order to call Lisa – who has had the same cell phone for longer than I’ve known her, whom I have been with for over 4 years now, whom I call just about everyday – I had to look her number up in my Gmail contact page. I could still tell you the phone numbers for my best friends in elementary school, but I can’t remember a single phone number of someone I’ve learned since getting a cell phone back in 1999.

As far as I am concerned, my wife’s phone number is 1…

Way back in the fall I switched my desktop machine to Windows Vista. Of course that was the first release candidate and, in Microsoft terms, that means beta software. The system is just above bargain basement purchases, so I knew I wasn’t going to get the greatest WOW! experience out there. However, I did like the feel of the new environment, and that was good enough to let me push through the various bugs and glitches.

A few months later I found myself ready to redo the system with an actual, honest-to-goodness legitimate, final release copy of Windows Vista (of the Home Premium persuasion). No, I didn’t pay for it, but I’m an IT guy and I have my ways. Regardless, the system is back up and running with corrected video and sound cards that magically make the system run as it should. Suddenly getting things done at home is no longer a chore (well, at least computer things).

I’m not sold on this being a permanent switch, mind you. There are issues regarding the inherent DRM of this new OS that may lead me toward the inevitable. But at least for now I can enjoy my pretty desktop with the confidence that the screensaver will no longer kill it.

Interestingly, I just re-installed Windows XP on my work laptop. Too many trial software versions and various hacks and left me with enough wonkiness that I was set for a cleansing – as an IT guy a complete re-install of a desktop machine is easy enough that I can do it at a moments notice. Especially at work where everything is backed up to the server anyway. But cleaning off the system and getting it running properly again reminded me that a few good tools (such as Google Desktop) can make the environment friendly enough that there is no need for an upgrade right now.

What am I babbling about all of this for? I don’t know, I’m just a geek and needed to get some of that out – now where’s my sushi…

Has anyone else seen the commercials for Black Snake Moan? It’s the story of an older man who finds a young lady and chains her up in his house. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Seriously, that’s what the movie is about – at least according to the commercials. Checking out the trailer you’ll at least figure out that the girl has been sexually abused and the old blues man has chained her up in order to “git ‘er right wit’ God” or something. Still, when writing the story of a on black man in the South chaining up some half-naked white trash girl he finds on the side of the road, I’m not sure of any angle that actually makes it marketable.

Oh yeah, Samuel L. Jackson stars in it – that would be strike two. So does Justin Timberlake. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?!?! Who green lighted this thing?

For all I know, this is a brilliant dark comedy about racial tension and sexual abuse in the South. But right now there is no indication that anything but sheer insanity sent this film along its way.

P.S. The Black Keys are on the soundtrack and in the trailer – so that’s cool.

Today’s the kind of day that I wake up, look at my clothes, and decide to put on a nice pair of jeans and one of my favorite concert tees. Then I go downstairs and think, “What am I going to do today? That’s right, I’m painting the closet. Well, no reason to change out of my nice clean clothes. I’m certain nothing could go wrong while painting in a closet. After all, I’m a very careful guy…”

Thankfully, I never spend more than $25 on pants. Still, I’m half expecting the day to come when Lisa walks in to find me painting a ceiling in my tux.

• I’m sure Mark can agree with this post on How To Tell If You’re Watching A Bad Nicolas Cage Movie – although I do have to say that I enjoyed Trapped in Paradise. (via Jess)
• In the “falling into an open manhole is funny” category, we have a guy getting shot when mistaken for a river rat. I don’t have an actual link, but it doesn’t matter – you can’t make this stuff up. So just read Scott Adams take on it.
• Thinking of skydiving? Watch this video and think again (note: I couldn’t get the video to work in Firefox for some reason). That thud is one of the most sickening/terrifying sounds I’ve ever heard. (thanks to Kottke)
• Sometimes I wish thousands of adoring Internet users would flock to my site in order to read my witty posts. Then I see the potential fan mail and wonder if I should delete this site so that people like that won’t know I exist.
• Hmm, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger and I agree on something more than just the fact that Commando is the greatest action movie ever made – namely that California doesn’t necessarily need the bloat of the rest of the US. A note for mizerchik: I hate the “extreme liberalism” of California, too, but I loves me some secession discussion!
• And on a final note, I’m not the only person confused by the cute baby proclamations.

There, some more tabs are cleared.

A commercial comes on the TV reminding us that Lost is actually going to be on tonight. It would be pretty easy to forget at this point, normally we get one new episode a month. But that one commercial can provide such emotional drama:

Commercial: Tonight on Lost…
Lisa: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Commercial: …an encore presentation of last week’s episode…
Lisa: What the hell? They said 16 new episodes with no repeats.
Commercial: …followed by an all new episode.
Lisa: Oh.

Things will be okay as long as I keep threatening to stop watching if they screw up. I said I’d stop if someone didn’t get shot back in December – sure enough, Sun finally shot an “Other”. Last week I said I was giving up if the show ended with Ben being saved and Kate, Sawyer, and Jack still locked up – sure enough, that’s not how it went. I sure don’t want the show to end up like Prison Break, which I’m only watching these days out of spite. Trust me, season 3 will not even be worthy of a download.