Lost Series Finale

Posted by Thomas Tue, 25 May 2010 00:43:11 +0000

I take back every bad thing I ever said about Lost. The finale totally met my expectations, and in future viewings, I’m sure it will exceed them. I actually watched the finale twice last night, and then proceeded to watch the first half of the pilot to recall the symmetry. I have high hopes that Lost will remain amongst my favorite tv series. I doubt that it could usurp “The West Wing” at #1, but I imagine in time it will settle in at #2. I’m not sure if it will have the rewatch-ability of West Wing, but I feel compelled to rewatch the entire Lost series. Some back of the envelope numbers: ~115 episodes at 45 minutes each, watching 12 hours a day yields a whole week to get the job done. Given the last couple of series I watched, getting through them can be quite a chore.

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Lost Season 6

Posted by Thomas Sun, 23 May 2010 02:39:36 +0000

I suppose I can eek out an actual post. All of Friday night and Saturday have been a Lost marathon, catching up on season 6. I had enough will power to wait this long, but not quite enough to make it until tomorrow. I wish now that I didn’t have this ~24 hour lull to lose my momentum and linger to ponder the end.

I’ve watched plenty of series finales in my life. Many of whom from tv series I’ve loved. But none I can remember ever meeting my expectations. A cursory inspection of the internet’s best series finales is lacking as well (though it sounds like “Six Feet Under” might be something I should put on my list of things to watch… Lost has the potential to be a good one to wrap things up and bring closure and resolve. Only time will tell.

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Movie Catchup

Posted by Thomas Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:17:35 +0000

I’ve gotten back in the Netflix swing (even though I’ve had Ben Hur for like months now). I even managed to see one in the theater.

Baby Mama – better than expected, esp the second time around
Duplicity – the ending left me wanting
Sunshine Cleaning – an excellent and well made indie film
District 9 – didn’t meet up with the hype (though fundamentally a classic storyline)
I Love You, Man – slow and lackluster, esp for the quality of the cast
X-Men Origins: Wolverine – eh, as expected, I suppose

From a while ago:
Last Holiday (the original) – worth watching
3:10 to Yuma – I saw this with Max at the Lake; not bad, but didn’t love it
The Hangover – didn’t meet up to the hype
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – didn’t meet my high expectations
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – met (average) expectations

I guess I’m only lacking “Terminator Salvation” from my list a while ago.

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Movie Marathon Epilogue

Posted by Thomas Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:38:03 +0000

The weekend was quite nice. Unfortunately Saturday it decided to get hot again, after having several days of 70s and being quite pleasant. I rode Friday evening after some marathon meetings. Getting a work out was good. :)

On Saturday, I multitasked while getting a car wash, scarfing down lunch and hoping my antenna didn’t get torn off or bent. I headed downtown, ignoring the signs that said “avoid 75/85 downtown”. They weren’t lying, and I sat in traffic for a good 30 minutes. I left rather early, so I had time to waste. I did fill this time, though, with some traffic engineering. I made it to this theater (UA Tara), mid-afternoon. It was quite old, only had like 4 screens, and didn’t even have stadium seating, which quite surprised me. It looked like it had a bunch of indie films, and strangely the vast majority of folks watching were older (i.e. retired). Not quite the demographic I’m used to seeing at the theater.

First up was The Hurt Locker. I wasn’t too impressed (aka I didn’t really get it). I’m not really one for this particular genre of war movies.

I had a bit to kill until the next movie, so I ate at The Varsity Jr.. I can now say that I’ve eaten at The Varsity (even if it wasn’t the one on 75/85 :) ). It wasn’t too bad (though I wasn’t terribly hungry to begin with — given me eating only a few hours prior, and I’m not especially one for hot dogs).

Then at the same theater, it was on to Away We Go, with its stellar cast. It’s a Focus film, so you know it’s good. :) It was probably my favorite of the three.

The film let out a little after 9pm, leaving little time to find the next theater to see (500) Days of Summer. It was close by (10 minutes), but I’d never been there before. Along the way I re-found Taco C. I thought I blogged about it being in a shady part of town (but I couldn’t find a post in a cursory search). But, having lived here longer, it still is in a possibly shady part of town, but not in a necessarily unsafe part of town. I’ll probably have to frequent there more often when the urge hits me. I finally found the shopping center containing the theater, but had issues actually finding it. Asking someone for help, I managed to find it, get my tickets, and sit down just as it was starting. The house was packed, but I found a decent seat. Yay for things working out! I will probably leave my full review for another post, but I will say that while I immensely enjoyed the dialog/comedy, thought it was a really good movie, and think people should see it, I really didn’t like it. Like I said, the full review (including spoilers) will have to wait for another rant, er I mean post. :)

After driving back to to the suburbs, I had an Oreo blast from Sonic at midnight, to top off the night. Good times.

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Movie Marathon

Posted by Thomas Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:02:50 +0000

I guess I’m doing some movie binging (not to be confused with bing-ing) to try to keep from falling further behind on my movie watching (while giving money to those institutions still making great movies).

To see today:

The Hurt Locker + Away We Go + (500) Days of Summer

While utterly ignoring my dire need to do laundry, buy plane tickets back to Canyon, get my oil changed, and clean my bathroom.

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hangover

Posted by Thomas Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:56:32 +0000

Forgot how much I hate commercials in things I paid for…

Update: The Hangover was awesome by the way. Worth sitting through the Dove and car commercials.

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Summer Blockbusters

Posted by Thomas Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:02:17 +0000

I’ve got my work cut out for me, and I’m already behind. :(

  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  • Terminator Salvation
  • The Hangover
  • Away We Go
  • Year One
  • Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

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Star Trek

Posted by Thomas Sat, 09 May 2009 11:03:59 +0000

Went to see Star Trek w/ the company yesterday.

It wasn’t as good as I was expecting, but it wasn’t bad either. For what it was (a action movie anyone would enjoy), it hit the mark and was watchable. I expected more depth out of the characters and out of the movie in general. The overall style was nice, but there were way too many lens flares (or whatever that effect was) which I found distracting at times. I didn’t really see any nod to Shatner’s portrayal of Kirk, so I was disappointed that didn’t happen.

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Transporter 3

Posted by Thomas Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:06:39 +0000

I watched the first and second Transporters either last weekend or the weekend before, and tonight I watched the third installment. Skeptical given its current lackluster rating of 5.9 on IMDb, I was expecting to be let down. But either due to or in spite of lowered expectations, Transporter 3 delivers (hmm, no pun intended).

I think what I like so much about the series is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. I might sound like a broken record on this, but I remain resolute that this is one of the significant indicators of a good movie. As a movie maker, you’re asking everyone to suspend their belief for a while, so I think it’s good when they give a cosmic nod to that fact.

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The Man Who Knew Too Much

Posted by Thomas Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:57:52 +0000

Of course luck would have it that when I finally put my Netflix on hold, I would start watching movies again. I swear I’ve had the same three movies since I can’t remember when. But, this weekend, I was super bored, so I watched “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (which was good and cool ’cause it had Doris Day in it), “Psycho” (I don’t recall ever watching it in its entirety before, even though I saw it during my music appreciation course at A&M, and I slept through basically all of it :) ), “Black Snake Moan” (which was way better than expected), “Meet the Spartans” (which wasn’t as humorous as one would have liked), and “The Other Boleyn Girl” (which was pretty good — I watched it primarily because it was Focus Features film, but in the end, you can’t go wrong with both Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson :) ).

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Posted by Thomas Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:44:44 +0000

So, if I was behind before, I’m still behind. Like I said, I’ve seen a good number of movies, but I’m still pretty far behind. When I was home I saw “An American Carol” which was mediocre, as was expected. We also saw “Burn After Reading”. Now this movie’s trailer gave it awesome potential. Stellar actors, great directors, and what looked like a quirky plot. Man was I wrong on that one. It was just too weird for me. It was just not worth seeing. Please don’t go watch it. Don’t even rent it. Don’t even download it for free. :) There was a preview for “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People” which in hindsight we should have seen instead…

I also fell in love with “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. Had I known it had Marshall in it from “How I Met Your Mother” and had I known he wrote it and is an awesome musician, I would like to think I would have seen it sooner. I watched it once, then got it and the bonus dvd from Netflix, watched all of that content, then watched it again. A super classic.

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Behind

Posted by Thomas Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:40:12 +0000

(Oops, this was a draft from June 8 that I never posted… I’ve actually seen a good number of these.)

I am like crazy far behind on movies that have come out recently. Recently meaning in the past six months. :( Here’s a list starting with movies released in Jan 2008:

Meet the Spartans
Definitely, Maybe
Jumper (not thinking this one will be good, but should see anyway)
Be Kind Rewind (can’t pass up Jack Black)
Vantage Point (eh)
The Bank Job (??)
21
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Baby Mama (should have its funny moments, right?)
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
Made of Honor (hard to pass up Michelle Monaghan from Gone Baby Gone)
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

And if you take into account my Netflix queue, it gets even longer:
Lady in the Water
The Illusionist
Saw III
The Prestige
The Queen
Eragon
Shrek the Third
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Vacancy
We are Marshall
Fido
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Semi-Pro
Mama’s Boy
Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show

Man, I’ve got my work cut out for me…

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Flying by

Posted by Thomas Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:44:43 +0000

The past three or so weeks have really flown by. I’m not even really sure why. I guess lots to do at work makes the days go quickly, and long days lead to short evenings.

One week down in Mountain View, and one week to go (unless I extend my stay an extra few days). I didn’t do anything this weekend, just lounged around, keeping tabs on the storms and trying some to catch up on the politics.

I did manage to see several flicks this weekend that I’ve never seen before. I’ve had African Queen on my to-see list for quite some time, and finally saw it on AMC. It was a surprise to me that it was in color, but overall it was good; the quality you’d expect from Bogey and Hepburn. Just before I left I watched Transformers, which was really good. I never was particularly interested in watching it, but I think Drew’s comment on Facebook made me revisit it. My next to last batch of Netflix included 21, which was really good, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, which was also good, and the first disc from Carrier, which is pretty interesting. I currently have out Semi Pro, which wasn’t as funny as I would have liked, but still enjoyable, Fool’s Gold, which was passable, and A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, which was ok, and semi-educational. Tonight I also saw for the first time Dirty Harry, which is a classic I’ll likely have to watch again, and this afternoon I saw License to Wed, which was better than I was expecting. I guess having John Krasinski (and some very large majority of the cast of The Office) really did it for me. Had they all had not been in it, I dunno how I would have felt.

I finally managed to do some laundry tonight, which is good, because I would have been out of clothes after today. :) I also managed to trim my nails, which I tend to put off all too much. Much like the haircut I am really in need of (even though it’s only been like a month and a half since I got one at Sallie’s wedding). I had to spend several days in a hotel before the corp apartment was available, so that was a little different that usual, and as always it’s nice to get into the apartment, where it’s a little more like home (even equipped with an empty refrigerator :) ). It’s been good to see the people here face to face, but I am half already looking forward to getting back to Atlanta and even more ready to take some time off. The time off kind of sucks, though, because it’s hard enough to keep up with work in real time, let alone keeping up with everything that’s going on after being out of the loop for 5 business days (and even more calendar days).

I guess that counts as a real update, but basically things are chugging along and the days are passing at an unbelievable (and I do mean unbelievable) clip.

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Weekend Update

Posted by Thomas Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:12:48 +0000

The last three weeks at work have been extremely stressful. I’m constantly busy, and very rarely recall what I did 5 minutes ago. This non-stop multitasking gets to me after a while. Though it does make the weeks fly by. For example, this past Friday, to me, it really felt like the day before was Monday, not Thursday. So last weekend I decided to escape a little, and got back into a movie swing. I really haven’t watched too many movies over the past several months, so I’m back logged a bit. :) Last weekend I re-watched “Definitely, Maybe”, hoping for some good director commentary (it was lackluster), re-watched “Roman Holiday”, saw “Be Kind Rewind” (which was only ok), and went out to see “Dark Knight” (which was exceptional, despite my original reservations). Looking at my Netflix queue, I also watched some time ago “How to Steal a Million”, which wasn’t too bad. I watched the new Harold and Kumar, which was really decent for a sequel. I am definitely looking forward to watching the alternate ending for “I Am Legend”, even though someone’s already ruined it for me. It’s supposed to be much better than the theatrical release and follow the book (which I didn’t even know there was a book). I also have “Mama’s Boy” at home. We’ll see if I ever get around to watching it.

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Per un pugno di dollari

Posted by Thomas Tue, 20 May 2008 19:32:49 +0000

I finally watched A Fistful of Dollars last night. I wasn’t quite in the mood for a western, even less so one that was originally dubbed (I would have much preferred the sound track have been real and it have been subtitled — even if that was the way they made them back then). Despite all of this it wasn’t too bad. It’s been one of those classics I’ve been meaning to watch for forever, and now I can cross it off the list and move on to the next in the trilogy.

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Movie Catchup

Posted by Thomas Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:18:03 +0000

I’ll catch you up on movies, since it’s been a while. I have gotten back into a movie watching mood as of late, having gone through most of my Netflix movies over the weekend (I think there for a while I had a couple of movies for over a month). I’ve seen Balls of Fury, which was good. Enchanted, which was good. No Reservations which was ok. Good Luck Chuck which was funny and perverse. 27 Dresses which was good. Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, which was lackluster. And Juno which was pretty good. I plan on watching There Will Be Blood tonight. And after that, I’m actually having somewhat of a hard time picking what to get from Netflix next. I have plenty in my queue, but none that really stand out as flicks I want to dive into. I have a lot of stuff in there I need to watch, and not too many things I want to watch. I’m half looking forward to watching Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but IMDb currently has it at a 3.7 and when I looked last it was like a 4.1. I’m guessing that the subject material is really rubbing people the wrong way, but the trailer looked pretty intriguing to me.

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Super Tuesday

Posted by Thomas Sat, 09 Feb 2008 03:39:20 +0000

It was sort of funny flying on Super Tuesday. I woke up at like 6:30a so I could be at the polls by 7a, so I could catch my cab at 8a, so I could catch my plane at 10:30a. I left to vote a little late (at 7:15a) and as luck would have it, there was an uber-long line. I finally reached the head of the line around 8a, and quickly voted. In fact, I voted on a Diebold electronic voting machine. I give it a 50/50 chance that my vote was actually cast for the person I was voting for. I voted for Ron Paul, btw… A little late for the cab, but made it to the airport/California fine. The flight was pretty packed, and I had to sit between two older ladies. Other than the soreness from sleeping sitting up and practically not moving for 5 hours, I made it ok. I did watch CNBC the entire time (well, between napping). I probably learned more about the candidates in those few hours than I knew leading up to then.

I’ve already had In-N-Out a couple of times. :)

I also totally biffed it on one of the bicycles they have for us to ride between buildings. Late last night I was returning a bike to the building next to where I parked. I attempted to pop the bike onto a curb, but failed. :( Between the height of the curb and the fact that these have old school brakes where you pedal backwards to brake, I stopped abruptly and catapulted myself over the handle bars. Good thing nobody was watching (although I bet it would have been humorous to have seen — after I was confirmed ok, of course). I only came away with a few scrapes on my hands and a little soreness from catchin my whole weight + momentum on my hands on some concrete. Oh well, I’ll know to think twice before attempting that curb again. And, luckily today, no further bicycle accidents. :)

I totally forgot my Netflix at home. What a waste. :( But I did watch Seduced and Abandoned, which was ok, but I had a bit of trouble following why certain things were going on. Probably would need to watch it again…

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Billy Barou

Posted by Thomas Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:18:25 +0000

I watched Caddyshack, probably paying the most attention I’ve ever paid to it. I didn’t watch it outright (i.e. with nothing else going on), but mostly paid attention. I can see where it gets its cult following. I also just finished Waitress which was really good and refreshing in its honest take on life and relationships. At then end I noticed its dedication to the memory of writer/director/actress Adrienne Shelly. Further investigation revealed that she was tragically murdered shortly after it was made. An exceptionally sad and somber addition to the meaning associated with the movie. I also just finished Sunshine, which was recommended to me. I guess I didn’t really get it, because I didn’t really like it…

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Cloverfield

Posted by Thomas Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:48:11 +0000

Horrible. If I watched it again, then maybe it might get a little better, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

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No Country for Old Men

Posted by Thomas Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:16:27 +0000

I finally managed to watch To Have and Have Not, a DVD I’ve had from Netflix for I don’t know how long. I thought it was pretty good. It was of course the legendary film where Bogey and Bacall first met and fell in love.

I also finally managed to see No Country for Old Men in the theater. It’s been out a while, and I’ve been wanting to see it for quite some time. It was highly rated on IMDb, so I was glad to catch it still in the theater. As the credits were rolling, I was still trying to formulate an opinion; I still don’t think I have. My initial reaction to the ending wasn’t good, but now I’m sort of confused, and thinking that I should watch it again to try to better understand the nuance…

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Half Watched Movies

Posted by Thomas Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:43:37 +0000

Over the past couple of days off, I’ve been working on the computer as I am wont to do, and have been half watching movies while I work. I thought I’d share: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Wedding Crashers, The Guardian, Something about Mary, The Holiday. Back to back Vince Vaughn and Cameron Diaz. As I was flipping through the movies, I thought to myself that I was passing over a lot of them, wondering if I needed a better selection. I wonder if I could just look at all of the movies I’ve rated on Netflix and use that as a master list… :) Ohh, interesting. Moving on to Spiderman…

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Leaving on a jet plane

Posted by Thomas Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:57:33 +0000

Leaving for Canyon in the morning (bright and early at 7:30 am). Should be there around 11am. I still haven’t packed or know if I still have laundry to do. Could be a short night. I’m going to try to procrastinate doing laundry as much as possible by organizing and posting photos. :)

I was trying to remember all the movies I’ve watching that I haven’t posted about. I thought there were more, but I can’t remember any more. I have a couple of oldies sitting by the tv I really need to watch, but spend most of my free tv time trying to get through JAG.

  • Disturbia. Not like Rear Window (which was good). Decent movie though, good commentary. The chick was uber-hot (and apparently single at the time of the taping of the commentary…).
  • The Best Years of Our Lives. Cool movie that’s still relevant today.
  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This one’s a keeper, pilgrim.
  • The Birds. I thought it not as good as is generally accepted. I “watched” it before in my music in movies appreciation class, but slept through most of it. :)
  • Jaws. I have no recollection of watching this in its entirely before, but just did. A classic.

Man, I have too many movies to watch still…

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I am Legend

Posted by Thomas Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:42:33 +0000

I liked it better when it was called Children of Men/Mummy/Signs. Would not consider it deserving of its current IMDb rating of 7.9…

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Remiss Movies

Posted by Thomas Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:28:16 +0000

Again I’ve been remiss in posting. Lately I’ve caught up a bunch on somewhat of a movie backlog. I’ve watched:

  • Charade, which was very good
  • Maltese Falcon, which I realized half way through I had seen before, but hadn’t remembered. :( I guess that means that I wasn’t to impressed. But it was good. I wonder why I had forgotten I watched it before…
  • Eurotrip, which was good and better than expected
  • This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which, while interesting, wasn’t all that well put together, I thought. Not nearly as compelling as Supersize Me.

The past week I also started listening to the 1920s Radio Network on the world wide web. The music is pretty soothing; mostly standard big band tunes. And when it gets late they do radio theatre. Where I learned that Dragnet first started as a radio show, which I never knew before. I guess that makes the sketch Jack Webb did with Johnny Carson on the Carson Show about clapper make a whole lot more sense. :)

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Cleaned

Posted by Thomas Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:53:44 +0000

I couldn’t stand it anymore last weekend. I took most of the day on Sunday the 7th to clean the apartment. It was time. I managed to clean the floors, the toilet, and the tub, but no counters or sinks. I actually cleaned the Formica in the kitchen and bathroom on my hands and knees since I don’t have a mop, and fastidiously vacuumed the carpet (although I don’t know how much it helped). Towards the end I was wishing that I some of that pre-vacuum powdery stuff to freshen up the place. Maybe I should get some candles to smell up the place, too…

I will be in Canyon over this coming weekend, flying in Saturday and flying out Sunday so I can see the new niece. I’m not staying long this trip, but I’ll be back once a month for three months straight, so I can’t see much complaining.

I’ve spent most of this weekend and last week trying to get a few more systems up and working at home. I got hadoop working on a couple of Xen nodes, so that was cool. I got their demos to work, but then I couldn’t really think of anything to do with the new found programming platform, so it’s gone unused. I’ve also been trying to get SSL working for ldap. I think I’m finally starting to understand the whole certificate authority and SSL at a macro level, but there’s always still more to learn. I was maybe hoping to get ldap over SSL working pretty well and maybe even kerberized nfs working, and I’ve made some progress, but not as much as I’d like.

I also managed to actually watch a movie. I don’t know how long I’ve had the Maltese Falcon from Netflix, but by now it’s probably been months. I saw “CashBack”, which was ok. A decent independent film, which had its moments, but not too much to write home about. I also finally tried to play “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” but it had a deformity in the disc, so it was unplayable. I’ve been slowly going through JAG, and am currently in season 3. I guess on the surface it’s a pretty cheesy show (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but it has some long running allusions and story lines that are slowly unraveling, which is why I’m watching in the first place. I guess that I could read online what happens in the end, but where’s the fun in that? Anyway, it’s nice to have this very episodic show carry on these threads and morsels they pay off every once in a while. What was quite odd, though, was the very last episode of season 1. I watched this episode, not knowing anything about it. It was a cliffhanger at the end of the season. To be expected, correct? Well, I start watching the next season, and it doesn’t pick up where it left off. I check online, and it was never aired and the conclusion never written. I was miffed to say that least. Well, they didn’t totally forget about it and actually reused it, re-wrote the story and made a whole new episode out of. Not too bad if you ask me, as there were definitely some tricky and very fine lines to walk to pull it off, which I think they did.

Anyway, it’s 3am. Why am I still awake?

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Apocalypto and Shooter

Posted by Thomas Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:18:21 +0000

I managed to watched both Apocalypto and Shooter this weekend. It’s seemed like forever since I’ve watched a movie at home or in the theater. They were both good; I’d say Shooter better than Apocalypto, since there was a lot of hype/buzz around Apocalypto, which set my expectations higher than for the relatively unknown Shooter (well unknown to me at least).

I thought that Apocalypto had a whole lot of potential that it didn’t meet up to. The story was timeless and well constructed; at its base a story about a man and his family and the things he had to do to survive and the things he had to do to bring his family back together again. The sort of story that very much transcends the time, cultural, and language differences. The acting was spectacular. I don’t know how much acting experience the majority of the cast had, but I would imagine it was little to none, yet the acting was so believable. I think my major concerns were primarily in how several of the action scenes were shot and in some of how the stunts looked. There were times when both just seemed exceedingly amateurish, even to the point that I felt visually jarred the several times it happened. I could understand how the quality of the stunts could be compromised due to the fact that I think that most of the stunts were done by the principles, but my gripe was that there were only a handful of these stunts that were executed poorly or shot poorly. The vast majority were great, but there were these few that should have been better for a film of this size and scope. The second thing was that I felt that the music could played a much more significant role. There were several times when I expected the score to really build up the suspense or the action, or more strongly emphasize or underline what was going on. The movie, which not quite what I would have considered an epic like Braveheart of Gladiator, the story was fundamentally strong, the dialogue was colloquial and smart for the time in which it was set, and perhaps you couldn’t accompany a not-quite-epic movie with an epic score, but there were times when I really felt like the score let me down. And after I had watched it, I was of course glad to see that there was a director’s commentary, but I couldn’t even make it through all of it, in which Mel Gibson commented as the director, along with co-writer/co-producer Farhad Safinia. In what I was able to get through, Mel didn’t talk about at all (or very little) about his crew or his DP, the set design or production design, costuming or makeup, where the actors came from and their background, where things were shot, what language was being spoken; I could go on. Honestly to me, I really love a director who is grateful to everyone involved in the production all the way at the top from the studio and the producers down to the lowliest of production assistants who make the enormous undertaking it is to shoot a film these days an actually doable project. There are so many things that have to be coordinated and perfectly timed and setup that it takes a village to make a movie on this scale. In the small portion of the film that I watched with the commentary, he just really came off arrogant to me that he wouldn’t mention the army that helped him realize his vision.

Shooter on the other hand I have very little to talk about. I thought that it was a very well done film. It was very real and more or less factual, with a good plot and arch and character development. The cinematography was great as was the production design. And, in the commentary, the director gave me exactly what I like in a commentary, adding depth to the story, explaining those subtleties and nuanced things I missed the first time around, and generally adding depth to the character development while adding technical details, talking about shooting, the actors and the locations. An all around great movie with a feel that definitely hearkens back to a style of film making and story telling that we don’t see very often nowadays.

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Assorted Goods

Posted by Thomas Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:23:00 +0000

I managed to go biking this late afternoon/early evening. I think I got started a little after 7 and rode for the usual 30 minutes. Since I’ve been back, I only recall going riding once, which was the Monday or Tuesday that I returned. I managed a little longer trip that time, but then on Saturday I had the staples pulled out, so I figured it best not to aggravate it with the help. Which means that it’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve ridden, which isn’t the best of things.

I will be heading back to Mountain View for two weeks starting Monday. I picked up a bike shipping box for my bike, so I have the possibility of taking it with me, which could be interesting. I’d love to bike around campus on my own bike or even ride it the couple of miles to work.

I won’t say that I’m second guessing the glasses, but half wondering why I picked form over function. I’m slowly getting used to having the frame within my eyesight, having to refocus outside of the lens if I want to watch my food go all the way from the plate into my mouth, and having the frame smack dab in the middle of the keyboard. It’s very odd, too, that I now have two pairs of perfectly good glasses. I don’t think this has ever happened before, as new glasses were always the result of a significant degradation in vision or due to breakage. Now I have a choice of glasses. I probably should put the old ones away and lock away the key so I’m not tempted to wear them.

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Good Weekend

Posted by Thomas Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:03:02 +0000

Yet another weekend has gone by without me going through my backlog of photos and lining them up for the photoblog. I guess I’m a little overwhelmed by the sheer number.

The rest of my weekend was quite good. Went to a lan party Friday night, riding Saturday afternoon, an early 4th of July party afterwards, and rested today, watching some Studio 60, Sabrina, and The Unforgiven. Sabrina was good, and The Unforgiven was ok, but I think I mean to get Unforgiven, not The Unforgiven. Silly me. I thought that the episode of Studio 60 I watched might have been the last, and looking it up now, it was in fact the series finale. Sad that it didn’t work out for Aaron and Tommy, but I suppose that they’ve had other good runs.

If you ever have the opportunity to lounge around in the pool for half of the day and into the wee hours of the morning, I highly recommend it. I don’t recall ever doing that before, but it really was posh. I suppose it’s like being at the lake, but this was somehow different. I dunno. Anyway, highly recommended; esp with some good and very chill friends.

The regular lake party was also this weekend, and even though I couldn’t be there, I did manage to help Drew and Nancy find their way. I don’t know what the odds are that when you call me I’m not sitting in front of a computer, but Nancy managed to, and caught me driving to this party. I was, though, able to help them get to the party, with my trusty stash of maps to basically everywhere I’ve driven in the past many years. I’m pretty sure I would have no problem finding Max’s lakehouse or even getting to that particular barn for barn dance. At one time, I could have driven out to Max’s blindfolded, but I would imagine now I would have a little trouble remembering the exact roads to take. Although, I bet I could find my way, if only by my gut. So, I was driving up I-75, while looking at hand drawn maps and nice maps of Texas. An odd experience to be driving, giving people directions in another state. Chalk up another good story.

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Favorite Movies

Posted by Thomas Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:20:39 +0000

I don’t know if I’ve ever really compiled a favorite movies of all time list. I searched for 2 seconds on the blog and didn’t find anything. I somehow stumbled upon this question at work some time ago, and didn’t have a readily available answer, so I’ve put some thought into the top few, and I’ll give them here, in no particular order:

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Movies I absolutely must watch

Posted by Thomas Mon, 28 May 2007 18:53:33 +0000

Looks like I’ll be plopping down a good bit of money at the movies here pretty soon. All of these should be worthwhile. :)

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Shrek the Third
Ocean’s Thirteen
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Knocked Up
The Ex

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Cinco de Mayo

Posted by Thomas Sun, 06 May 2007 14:20:12 +0000

I’m probably way overdue for an update. If you couldn’t tell from my last post, I will be staying through June 2. Overall this is a good thing for me. As I was getting to the end of my original 3 weeks, I wasn’t really looking forward to leaving and going back to Atlanta. The opportunity to stay was confirmed and then finalized. At which point I almost had second thoughts — mainly between bills and having to make arrangements (which wound up being a pain in the ass cause I didn’t plan far enough in advance) and the newness of the new job wearing off and the eminent repetition starts to set in. Oh well, them’s the breaks. But now I’m over it and glad I’m still here.

I don’t have any real plans for this weekend. The only things I really had to get done were one to do laundry (man I was scraping the bottom of the barrel) and two, to return/rerent my rental car. Budget has some nonsense about not being able to rent a car for more than a month. So, I had to drive back up to SFO, return the car, then rent another. I suppose all is not lost, though. In the trade, I used my Fastbreak status to quickly get a car without a reservation, so that was cool. And, since I had recently signed up for said Fastbreak-yness, I had a cool double upgrade coupon. So, I’m paying less than I was, and I got upgraded from my stupid PT Cruiser to a new Mustang. How cool is that? Anyway, the Mustang will take some getting used to, but having never driven a sports car (if you can call a new Mustang a sports car), it should be an enlightening several weeks.

In these several new cars, I have already come to some enlightenment regarding car design. One of the first things I noticed different about the PT Cruiser was the automatic locking doors once you got past X mph. That’s cool and all that the manufacturer feels like increasing my safety by locking my doors, but what they should do in addition to this is unlock the damn doors when you the thing in park or whatever. I don’t like having to unlock the doors again when I get out. The other thing is about surfing radio stations. I guess I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to the Yukon. The PT Cruiser didn’t have anything for my hand to rest on while pushing the seek button. My hand rests rather comfortably on my shifter in the Yukon… And then, when I started driving around the Mustang, I realized how it’s a travesty when the designer places the seek button and the volume knob so far apart that you have to move your hand. It should not be this way. In the Yukon, my hand can stay in one place, seek forward and backward, and has easy access to the volume knob for all of those annoyingly loud commercials or stations. Anyway, things to look out for in your next car purchase.

I did watch Hot Fuzz the other weekend and Spiderman 3 on this past Friday. Hot Fuzz was awesome. Highly recommended. Spiderman 3 was decent.

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The Aftermath

Posted by Thomas Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:56:38 +0000

Pwned! Yes, Marc, I came up with the idea quite some time ago that I should pull this April Fool’s joke, and I came very close to just posting an entry saying that I was going to do it, instead of actually doing it (Unfinished Post #355). But, I thought, what the hey, maybe I’ll fish around for some gullible people. Well, looks like it worked! Yay!

So, in other real news besides the haircut and my fake engagement (still single ladies), my parents were here for a week between the 21st and the 28th. About the only thing that we did was go to see the CNN Center and go on the tour. International TV studios are cool. :) We walked around Centennial Park. I’ll probably post the one pic I took eventually.

In the world of movies, I’ve seen 300, Wild Hogs, North By Northwest, 21 Grams, Reign Over Me, and last night, Blades of Glory. 300 was good, but not as good as all the hype said. Wild Hogs was much better than expected. North By Northwest was eh. 21 Grams was exactly like Crash and that other movie that I went to see after Children of Men that I liked so much better but can’t remember the name of right now. I guess since I’ve seen more than two of those type of films, that they aren’t really that enjoyable now. I could see why nobody else like that third movie if they’d already seen the other two. To quote Drewby, “I liked it better the first time when it was called Fight Club”. Reign Over Me was good. And Blades of Glory… um, I think it could have been better. Maybe it was because I watched it in a practically empty theater. Maybe more people laughing would have helped it.

On Wednesday (the 28th), I finally received the final packages for my new file server. I got it put together and up and running that night. I had a total of 5 400 GB drives, but one of them was currently in use and completely full, I needed to make a backup before I pulled it out of its current home and put it into its permanent home. I dusted off the ol’ fibre channel and used it. Now I realize how abysmally slow it is (read/writes in the 5 MB/s range while transferring 400GB takes a while). I managed to get my data off, physically transfer the drive, and get the new array up and running. I started to transfer everything back, which took an equally excrutiatingly long time. We were having a lan party at work, so I wanted it to be ready in time enough to show it off. I didn’t get everything transfered that I would have liked, but enough that I packed it up and took it to the lan. I don’t think anybody got any content off it, so that was pretty disappointing. When a couple of guys tried, it kept crashing explorer. I don’t know if it was just Solaris running Samba, or if it was just my Samba config. As I didn’t really tweak much in the Samba config, I would lean towards a misconfiguration issue and incompatibility playing nicely with XP. If I had a copy of XP, I would test for sure. I might try a VM copy, if I can get it to work… After all that was done, I’ve spent the rest of the weekend playing with it more. I’d make some poor choices of naming things, so there were those mistakes to correct. Then I transfered all of my home directory over to it. I had pretty much run out of space there as well. Once that was done, I transfered argento over to ldap/kerberos/autofs and cut argento over. It’s been pretty smooth sailing so far, I must say, working off of nfs. I’m starting to jones for a gig switch and a telco rack. I setup snapshotting as well on it all, which was one of the primary motivating factors of going with a Solaris/ZFS solution. And, I added some new entries to ldap to get some further automount entries besides home. Automounting stuff from LDAP is awesome. While playing with the array, I had been noticing a slightly ominous, yet faint clicking sound emanating from one of the drives. I installed SMART tools, and finally got the syntax right only to see this on one of the drives: HARDWARE IMPENDING FAILURE GENERAL HARD DRIVE FAILURE [asc=5d, ascq=10]. Doh! Looks like I’ll have to RMA one all too quickly. At least I still have the nice box and packaging Seagate sent the last drive in, so it shouldn’t be hard at all to package it up properly.

And finally, I’ve frozen my a/c again. :( With the fibre channel and all of my machines going over those several days, the apartment got pretty hot (cite my away message “i don’t think my apt can adequately cool the current level of heat i am generating… :(“). So, I figured it was just all of the drives spun up, working hard, and generating too much heat. But, Friday night, it was cool enough that I turned off the a/c and opened some windows for a while. That’s when I heard it, the ominous dripping coming from the HVAC closet. I took off the grate with my trusty cordless drill (thanks Clay and KB), and confirmed what was going on. I called the office Saturday morning and put in a work order. Later when I dropped off rent, the lady at the office said that she would have maintenance call me to confirm that it was a trivial condensation leak. They never called. Chalk up one more for “The Runaround”. Maintenance finally knocked on my door at 8:15 this morning. He confirmed that it was frozen, turned it off, and is letting it thaw right now. Hopefully all it needs is a little freon top-off. But it is worrisome that they topped it off not too long ago. Either I’m doing something that I’m not supposed to do, or there’s a leak…

Anyway, so I was up early and started writing to catch everyone up. I made sure to take a shower before the dude got back and tried to finish this post up before work. And now I’m done, and I still have gobs of time before work… bah!

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Netflix Recommendations

Posted by Thomas Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:36:55 +0000

Netflix is slipping a little. They just recommended two movies to me that were already in my queue! Way to go for the obvious, “let’s recommend something that we already know they want to see” (that’s probably not what happened, but it’s fun to pretend).

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Movies Update

Posted by Thomas Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:01:24 +0000

In addition to all of that (you are reading this in chronological order, aren’t you?) I’ve watched my Netflix movies, too. “The Puffy Chair” sucked. Even with it being an indie film and all, the dialog, plot, and character development just wasn’t there. Next I watched “Clerks 2” which I thought was great and their best film yet. Them being the director/production staff. I didn’t really get the original too much (I don’t get a lot of the really indie genre), but this one was a little more normal of a story (if you can call it “normal”), so for me it was more enjoyable. It just wasn’t out as far as the first, so easier for me to watch and enjoy. Then, I watched “Wordplay”. After having watched “The Puffy Chair” I wasn’t really in the mood for another independent documentary, but it was surprisingly good. I would definitely recommend both “Clerks 2” and “Wordplay” to anybody, but stay away from “The Puffy Chair”.

Both of my sisters have now recommended to me that I become a movie critic. I’m not sure what I think about that.

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Babel

Posted by Thomas Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:09:10 +0000

“Babel” is the best movie I’ve seen since… I can’t remember. I watched both “Children of Men” and “Babel” at the theater tonight. I cut it close with Children, but I slid in right on time. I went to eat at Popeyes beforehand, and simply cut the 7.40 a little close for comfort. I went to see “Children of Men” first because it is currently getting an 8.2 at IMDB, I like Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine, it had the dude from Serenity in it, and I like films with an indie feel. This one let me down a bunch. For an 8.2, I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, just not #159 on the list of IMDB’s Top 250 good. Afterwards, I greatly debated if I should have seen another movie. I felt pretty odd and e-something (from the tip of my brain — affluent and bourgeoisie of me) about going to an expensive movie twice in one night. I guess I paid 2 * $9.25. A little stiff, if you ask me. But seriously, Babel was totally worth it. There was almost no one in the theater. I wasn’t 100% sure that “Babel” was the movie I was thinking of, as I had looked at a bunch before I left home. I was pretty sure, though, so took a chance. IMDB has it right now at a 7.8. It is easily 10 times better than “Children of Men”. Like I said, I can’t think of anything to compare it to. The only things I can think of are “Crash”, “Man on Fire”, and “V for Vendetta” (which apparently I didn’t blog about — I would have sworn I did… the mind is going). I’m not talking about comparing this to the old films, just new ones. I was so emotionally connected to these characters and what happened to them. They had me emotionally suspended and unresolved until the very end. Even then, I still have questions. Awesome, just awesome. I hope this one takes best picture.

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Bringing Up Baby

Posted by Thomas Tue, 16 Jan 2007 01:28:16 +0000

Man, it doesn’t get much more looney or screwball than “Bringing Up Baby”. :) This one definitely gets added to the favorites. It’s even funnier the second time around.

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Non-depressing update

Posted by Thomas Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:39:56 +0000

I awoke this morning to knocking at my door. In my i’m-still-asleep stupor, I was excited, as I thought that it might be my new coffee table (oh yeah, I finally got the coffee table). I put on my robe (j/k I don’t own a robe) and answered the door. It was the police. Luckily I had [insert something here that would have been fortuitous in light of a cop showing up on my doorstep] the night before. He asked if I owned the Yukon (which I do of course). Someone had tried to break into it. They managed to crack the handle, but didn’t get into the car. They might have gotten spooked or something (who knows). Anyway, the car’s ok. I’ll need to get some estimates of getting it fixed, and most likely I won’t claim it on the insurance, so it’ll probably be out of pocket (yay!). I took some pictures of the damage this morning, so I’ll probably eventually post them.

In other news, I caught up on Lost on Friday night. I had finished season two some months ago and hadn’t been keeping up with season three. They were in a lull, so I picked up the first 6 episodes (that’s how many they’ve made thus far), and I’ll poke my head back under the sand for a few more months. I really do like watching them in groups (like I’ve done with West Wing and Scrubs), as it’s just so nice. I think that I’ve made some peace with Lost’s slow timeline. I’ve also decided if I were any of them, I would have snapped, and not trusted anybody, and just started killing anyone who messed with me. I really don’t understand what the others are afraid of from these people who crash landed. If they’re so sure of their purpose and their success, then they shouldn’t care about them. If their purpose is so pure, they should have no problems letting new people in and have those new people help them. It just seems like a cult or something. They have to hide and ethically justify what they’re doing for the greater good. It just doesn’t make much sense. But, if the story is supposed to last for 5 seasons, then it should be getting close to half way, which is somewhat of a comfort… like it’s only downhill from here or something.

I also’ve watched “You, Me, and Dupree” which was better than expected. Also, I finally watched “Funny Face”. I didn’t realize it was so much of a musical. Oh well, it was still decent. Having Fred Astaire in it should have tipped me off.

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Casino Royale

Posted by Thomas Fri, 01 Dec 2006 01:30:04 +0000

I just saw the new Bond flick “Casino Royale” which was pretty good. I dunno if it was 8.0 IMDB good, but it was good. It was also really long, clocking in at 2.5 hours. Most movies nowadays last no longer than 1.5 hours, while most older movies will be 2 hours long. There were a great many things that were different in this one, straying a lot from many of the common devices in most of the preceding Bond films. Things such as Q, lots of gadgets, lots of sex with lots of Bond girls, not the normal martini, not the normal card game, not the normal bond girl, no Money Penny (but an allusion to), new Felix Leiter, et al. They also seemed to try to have a throwback to some nostalgia in the first few minutes. Both of the studio logos were in black and white, yet were the current logos. Then the first sequence of the film was in black and white, with what I considered to be way too much grain. I watched “Roman Holiday” for the first time recently and in one of the dvd features, they explained how they had painstakingly restored the film. This process was excellent whose end result was a film without grain. They also left their trippy psychedelic main titles, with a little less lsd. In addition to the black and white grain, the way in which the opening sequence was shot was very much modern as well, not really lending itself to continue this theme of an old film noir movie. Also, as I was watching this, I really wanted them to do the titles in an old style as well, but it was not to be. So, while I’ve heard a person or two mention that they don’t like the new Bond as a blond, I didn’t really mind it. This guy was so young and buff that it really reminded me of what must have been the films during Connery’s peak physical shape. Having the franchise break out of the mold was a great stroke, I thought. They tried to focus a little more on story (which is why I would guess that the film is so long), which has been quite lacking as of late. Also, it seemed to me that they finished up rather quickly and in not so interesting ways (verbally for a bunch of it). You would have thought that with 2.5 hours they could have done a little better with the pacing. They still had the blockbuster action sequences which I would also guess would be the bulk of its appeal to the general audiences. I just wish that there would have been better writing and better story telling. I would love to see another in this departure from the cookie cutter Bond film, hopefully with a better story with some real twists, and perhaps shot in a style more in sync with this older time period in Bond’s life. I would imagine that those two things would really revive this dormant dynasty. Join us next time when we’ll discuss Alfred Hitchcock’s timeless and flawless “Dial M for Murder”. :)

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Shorter hair

Posted by Thomas Sun, 19 Nov 2006 21:55:52 +0000

It seems that it has been quite some time since my last post, a week to be exact, for which I apologize to my noble and illustrious readers. I must be on quite the Jimmy Stewart kick, as I have watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Rear Window”, and “The Philadelphia Story” (which I am currently in the middle of). Both “Rear Window” and “Accepted” were really good, and “The Philadelphia Story” is looking pretty good at this point, too. You should watch the director’s commentary of “Accepted”, as it has virtually nothing to do with the movie that these guys are watching, and more to do with the making fun of each other and generally goofing off. It was a really good time. I watched some Airwolf, MacGuyver, MXC, Get Smart, and MythBusters this weekend. I’m really digging the variety. I continue on to try and catch up on my old movie backlog, which I’m sure will take me quite some time. This little endeavor has, though, gained me quite a whole new appreciation for actresses before my time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Shirley MacLaine, and Audrey Hepburn.

My apartment complex recently had need to shut off the water to the entire complex several times over several days, during business hours. I’d say that this happened roughly 3 to 4 times over a week or so. It definitely took me at least two tries to get through a shower without them cutting off the water half way through. Once or twice I misjudged the time, and once the notice fell off my door, so I was caught completely unaware.

The new cable has been pretty worthless. I watched it for a day or two, and remembered why I didn’t miss it (especially since I don’t get channels like 3-6 on my tv, as it is somewhat decrepit, and counts me out of some of the probably better broadcast programming). Comcast was quite efficient in their billing, as it has already come, which reminds me that I need to expense it.

I somehow managed to get my external into an odd state, where it now has XFS on it, instead of the normal FAT32. I didn’t have enough to rectify this, so I had to break out the good ol’ fibre channel for a bit to get the external back to a state where just about any o/s can read it. I can fill in the mundane details later, for those of you who care. I’ve played with LVM before, but always more in a playful way than in a production way. And I knew that it wasn’t the most intuitive thing in the world, so I had to mess with it some to get it to bow to my will.

Oh, I got a haircut this weekend, as I was going to a wedding on Saturday. The haircut went ok. The sides are a lot shorter than I prefer, and there is some long hair in the front (like everyone seems to leave long with the part not in the middle), but other than that, I can’t complain. The wedding was small, but good. It was the first that it wasn’t a Wesleyite and hence wasn’t a wedding where I felt like I’d known them forever and knew lots of other Wesleyites in attendance as well.

It’s been pretty cold at night here, so I haven’t been riding at all in the mornings. I caught up on some laundry over the weekend. I had a fun adventure both dropping off and picking up my suit from the cleaners. During the drop-off, the Indian lady was trying to ask me a question, which I couldn’t understand at all, and asked her to repeat mabye half a dozen times. I still didn’t understand and finally another employee (that was on the phone at the time) stepped in and said the word “Thursay”, which is what she had been trying to convey to me, that the suit would be ready to pick up on Thursday. Which was fine, of course, but it was definitely a tough time getting through the thick accent communication barrier. Then, when I went to pick it up Friday after paintball (yes, I know get over it), I had an almost even harder time getting it back, as they apparently couldn’t read my hand writing, tought that the G was an E and finally a C to figure out where they had my suit stashed among the racks and racks of clothes. I finally got it back, but question if I would go back there again. They also left some odd oily (or what seem to be oil) marks on my white shirt. I dunno what to think about that, but I’ll have some time before I need more stuff dry cleaned.

This past week I’ve meant to blog about the stuff like the dry cleaners and the water being cut off, but let it slip and they both might have gone by the wayside, but I happened to remember them tonight while I was writing, so you all can partake in my life a little more. I should try to do a little better about shooting off little bloglets when I think of funny things that happen.

Anyway, I am looking forward to getting out of Dodge. I’m getting pretty stir crazy around here…

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Soapy-box

Posted by Thomas Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:14:27 +0000

Why would you condone text-speak abbreviations in official high school exams? It’s lame. And why don’t they just put an extremely heavy weight on spelling? Wouldn’t that be an semi-unbiased way to make sure that the kids know that they should use the appropriate spelling, while simultaneously not punishing the content for the poor spelling?

I was today forwarded to me an email of some propoganda of the American Family Association, stating that Best Buy has banned the use of Merry Christmas in their advertising. Apparently this is an abomination, although it is beyond me as to why. Can anyone tell me why they have a problem with this? Best Buy is an international corportation (albeit a small one, with only US and Canadian stores). Corporations don’t care about you, they only care about their bottom lines and their stock holders (well, supposedly their stock holders). They only pseudo-care about you if they loose you as a customer, so I would imagine that they thought long and hard and chose the decision that would piss off the fewest of their likely customers. Also, I’m not quite sure what exactly their expectations are from this campaign. They want everyone to email Best Buy, but there is no mention of boycott or anything else. Are they just bitching and whining about this? Seriously, what did you expect from a corporation? It’s the American way, the realization of American dream, and capitalism all at work. It would appear that the major reason why this is even brought up is due to several other corporations changing their stance from previous years. Also, it appears that they have a problem with Borat. Are they aware that it was fictional? That jokes make fun of things? That we don’t have to be offended by every little thing? That the “Running of the Jews” really is a funny premise? That it is really funny in the context of the movie while simultaneously really sad that there really are real people in the world that honestly and completely hate certain people-groups. It is honestly sad. But in a make-pretend movie, it’s ok to laugh, honest. :)

Ok, off my soapbox now.

I watched “Stranger than Fiction”, which was really good. I’ve also watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” today, which I accidentally napped through parts of. I went to see Borat a little while ago, which I loved. And I watched “Roman Holiday”, which I seemed to recall loving as well. My Netflix queue is filled with old movies at the moment, including “Mr. Smith…”. I seem to be on a kick to try to whittle down my list of movies I need to watch from the IMDB Top 250. Well, that and I’m still really low on modern movies that I want to watch.

Does anyone else ever feel like no matter how hard they try, that there are a great many things that they cannot will into happening?

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The Weekend

Posted by Thomas Sun, 05 Nov 2006 14:30:37 +0000

REL was in town. I thought about going, and maybe should have, but didn’t.

I whole-heartedly and completely agree that this is gibberish to me as well.

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘I can’t configure Debian’.

I watched “The Break-Up” (which was still good), “Thank You for Smoking” (which was ok), and I’ll be watching “Roman Holiday” sometime today most likely.

I knew it. I didn’t think that I had much of an accent. Now irrefutable internet proof!

What American accent do you have?

Your Result: The Midland

“You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.

The West

The South

Boston

North Central

The Inland North

Philadelphia

The Northeast


What American accent do you have?


Take More Quizzes

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Movie Catch-Up

Posted by Thomas Mon, 30 Oct 2006 01:48:03 +0000

That researcher guy got questioned and then his house searched and stuff confiscated, which is unfortunate, because he really did break the law. He should have known better, but the problem has existed for quite a while. I despise it when a company or organization or department feigns something like that. You give the illusion of security or fore-thought or whatever, but in reality you can’t or won’t accept the truth.

This should make a bunch of people very happy.

To catch up on movies as of late, I’ve seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, which I thought was pretty much “The Apartment”, “The Lake House” which was better than I was expecting from Keanu and Sandra, “Blade Runner”, which I still don’t really get, “Match Point”, which was excellent, especially from Woody Allen, “Nacho Libre”, which I should have watched in the theater, because it was really good and would have been better with an audience, “Lost in Translation” which was ok, but seemed more or less like “Code 46”, and “Memoirs of a Geisha”, which was wonderful.

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Movies Update

Posted by Thomas Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:14:22 +0000

I’ve been remiss in my keeping you all up to date on the movies that I’ve been watching as of late, so here’s an update.

A couple of weekends ago (the 16th, I think) I went to see “The Last Kiss”. I figured that it would be good because of Zach Braff, and it had a good IMDB rating. Oddly, though, it was only showing in four theaters in the entirety of Atlanta, so I had to traipse across town to find a theater. The one that I picked, though, was really nice, and I am more convinced that the theater where I usually go has poor sound. Overall, I think I liked it, but it’s hard for me to remember now.

I also watched “Some Like It Hot” with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon, some time back. It was supposed to be a really screwball comedy, but I didn’t think it too much of one. It was still pretty good though, and now I understand why everyone loves Marilyn.

I watched “Buffalo Soldiers” and “The Great Raid”, both of which I thought were mediocre.

I watched “12 Angry Men” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and found them lackluster. I don’t really know what either one was about. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood to watch either of them (I slept a bunch through the latter).

I finished the few episodes I lacked in season two of Lost, if you couldn’t tell. I yelled at the TV multiple times, which to me indicates that I was pretty in to it (as much as I hate to admit it).

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments

Two years and screwball comedies

Posted by Thomas Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:55:05 +0000

It’s been two years since my first blog entry. Not nearly as long as many on the web. It seems like a fairly long time, until I think that I’ve been here for 17 months, which only makes about 6 months worth of blogging while in CS, which doesn’t sound like very long at all. Odd how often time seems both short and long simultaneously…

For your enjoyment, a listing of thoroughly enjoyable, truly screwball comedies (feel free to add others in comments). Hollywood needs to make more of these.
Top Secret!
The Naked Gun
Hot Shots!
Airplane!
Animal House
Young Frankenstein
Loaded Weapon
Robin Hood: Men in Tights

And, a random quote, which seems plausible:

Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they’re much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity.

Posted in General, Movies | 5 Comments

Drewby, Movies, and Doodles

Posted by Thomas Mon, 21 Aug 2006 21:47:24 +0000

Everyone must pressure Drew to post! http://drewiscool.com/

This past weekend I got back into the Netflix swing of things, watching “The Apartment” from 1960 with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. I wasn’t expecting it to be black and white, which wasn’t bad, just a little shocking. It was easily worth its 8.3 rating on IMDB. Highly recommended. I also watched the original “Ocean’s Eleven’‘. This one was disappointing. Not too much like the remake, and I personally didn’t like it too much. Slow pace, but supposedly good writing. I also saw “Lord of War” with Nick Cage and Bridget Moynahan. This was basically an indie film and was excellent.

Saw “Snakes on a Plane” today. We had a company outing this afternoon to see the movie. Got to love our perks. To steal from some dude’s comments on IMDB, this movie was “ridiculously enjoyable”. To me it was akin to a modern day “Airplane”. Not nearly as over-the-top, but hillarious and enjoyable all the way through. Be sure to watch it with your friends, preferably with snakes, rubber or otherwise. I might even go see it again. It’s currently getting a 8.2 at IMDB, and they aren’t too often wrong. :P

As I’m sure that you’ve noticed, I just added a “Movies” category. I should have done this a long time ago, and I will have to go back and put all of my movie posts into it…

I was sitting here coding with my music on random and heard “The Purple People Eater”, by Sheb Wooley. This conjured a very strong memory of a restaraunt in Amarillo called Doodles. It was just off Western on Olsen, right near Michaels. They served hamburgers with diy toppings, in a very classic setting, with neon signs, old tin signs, an old style gas pump, booths, the whole nine yards. They also had a juke box, that you could, for free as I recall, play a song or two. Which is why this song reminded me of the restuarant, because I always wanted to play that song on the juke box. Anyway, I went there quite often with my Mother, and it’s just not something that I had thought about in quite some time, so a little trip down memory lane.

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

The Poseidon Adventure

Posted by Thomas Sun, 11 Jun 2006 01:00:13 +0000

Due to popular demand, I put “The Poseidon Adventure” in my Netflix queue. I just got done watching it all the way through, and then again with commentary from Pamela Sue Martin, Stella Stevens, and Carol Lynley. I found it to be a pretty decent movie. For whatever reason it really reminded me of the Indiana Jones movies, although I’m not sure why. And now that I’ve seen this one, I am curious to see what they changed in the new one. I doubt that the new one would ruin the old one for me, so it could be a nice little exercise of my piqued interest to see how the story changed, how they thought that they could make it better, to see if anyone different dies, etc. It was a pretty good movie, but not a great and epic one. Did you notice that the music was done by John Williams? To me it leaves something to be desired. It was just one of those movies that I felt had an enormous amount of potential, but in particular the writing and soundtrack seemed like they could have used a little more polish. Enough of my commentary for now. Like mitcheaven, I would recommend that people see the original.

Also, since I’m sure that everyone is wondering, I did go and see the Shane and Shane concert last night. It was pretty good. I fell into some old habits. I arrived about 15 ’til 8, when the concert was supposed to begin. The doors opened at 7:15, so the best seating was already taken and I was left to fend for myself. Now, this santuary had a balcony and immediately I chastized the folks sitting under it (but with a good view of the front of the band) that they had chosen poorly, as balconies are very badTM for sound. The balcony didn’t wrap all the way around, so I chose my seat in the wings, with no overhead balcony, and where I figured I could still see the main guys pretty well. By the end of the concert, I was happy with my seating choice.

Although I will say this, that power diversity is key. The band who opened for them got a minute or so into their first song and they must have flipped some breakers. Tsk, tsk. Got to watch out for putting stuff all on the same circuits… especially the subs, they draw a lot. And, I was also pretty critical of the sound of the opening act as well, so there inlies the old habit. But, it really did make me wish that I could just drop everything and be a roadie/sound guy and tour all the time with some awesome band…

I am very sleepy, but I do not want to go to bed. Why is that?

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Bow tie

Posted by Thomas Mon, 22 May 2006 01:42:13 +0000

While killing some time before the 5:05 showing of “Scary Movie 4″ (which was the best that I could find to watch, bad I know, right?), I went on a search for a self-tie bow-tie at the mall. I stopped by one rental place first, which didn’t have any of them in stock, but did recommend that I stop by another rental place in the mall. So, somewhat discouraged that this process was going to consist of a little more effort than originally planned, I went in search of the second tux rental place. Upon finding a directory and then realizing that I had already passed the place, I stepped inside with my drink (I was very concious of the fact that they most likely didn’t want me in a store with a cup in my hand, but it didn’t stop me). At first I wasn’t sure who were customers and who were salespeople, but I inquired if they had any “real” bow-ties. The young lady said that they did and managed to find a couple quickly. Anyhoo, long story shorter, I am now the proud owner of a black, silk self-tie bow-tie. I finally figured out how to tie it and managed to tie it twice. Look for it next time I’m in a tux.

My friends’ blogosphere is rather bleak. Anyone else out there posting for the summer, or have the lives of everyone become lackluster and boring with the onset of summer?

Speaking of summer, today I have been craving a couple of things: 1) is beach volleyball with the Trinkas, et. al. several summers ago and late night romps to Sonic for drinks and 2) is a hammock. I keep telling myself that I want one and that I’ll run to Wal-Mart to buy a cheap one. But I am plagued with exactly where I would put it, as I don’t want to drill into my balcony (come to think of it, I don’t even have a drill), nor do I want a free-standing one that could theoretically be stole. Granted I am on the second floor, I wouldn’t put it past people.

I think that I’ve missed my first wedding of this summer, yesterday, with Sommer’s. At least I think that it was yesterday. I know that I missed several last summer, and I’ll miss many this summer, and most likely I’ll devote a post to that end sometime soon.

Now I should go to bed, but I don’t want to and I’m not that tired, so I’ll go toss and turn for a while…

Make me happy and post to your blog about your summer plans. :)

Posted in General, Movies | Comments Off

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Posted by Thomas Sat, 20 May 2006 13:38:29 +0000

Best. Parody in the form of a film trailer. Evar.

Posted in General, Movies | Comments Off

My own oddities

Posted by Thomas Mon, 15 May 2006 02:04:42 +0000

I am pretty sure that I will never be able to watch Poseidon because I’m pretty sure that you can’t have very large [read tsunami, and unlikely to be tidal] breaking waves in the middle of the ocean. I’m sure that Chad would back me up on this one, that this fact would pretty much ruin the entire movie for me.

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

E-mail and Primer

Posted by Thomas Sat, 06 May 2006 18:02:49 +0000

More and more these days I find myself regarding email as a less effective form of communcation. I used to reply to emails religously, but now find it difficult to do, if at all, and I’m not really sure as to the cause. Now, I get a ton of email at work, and so everything gets immediately prioritized and filtered. If it’s something that needs immediate attention or something that can wait a day or two, then it will get its own attention in its own time. But, if it’s extraneous or passing information, it gets immediately archived, with most never being looked at again. Of course there is the occation when I search to find some random email that I briefly perused and now need again, but that probably isn’t too much of the population of my email. Perhaps email for me has become an almost purely informational and one-way form of communication, not unlike blogs. That I post and people read, and comments happen, but it’s all pretty much driven by me, and there aren’t very many expectations to deal with. Perhaps it’s because I’ve come to realize what an absolutely horrible form of communication it really is. I’ve seen email threads go on and on for days, when a simple phone call would have fixed the issue in minutes. This is why I have a pretty well formed disdain for email. So consider this a warning, that unless you are asking me a pretty pointed and important question, you might not get a response. So I guess don’t consider it an extra-ordinary brush off, but more like a common-run-of-the-mill type. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that, well, actually I’m not entirely sure why…

And why is it that when I see a picture of a mother holding her newborn child in the hospital, it always looks like it was taken in the 80s? Perhaps the majority of the pics that I have seen up to this point like that were of my parents, having kids in the late 70s/very early 80s. Do I project that timeframe in my mind to those new pictures?

Anyhoo, I just finished watching Primer. Well, technically, I just got done watching it trice (two commentaries). But, the main reason that I am telling you this is because it was written/directed by Shane Carruth. During his director’s commentary, he mentioned his brother Caleb was a recording artist and had done some music for the film. When I heard this, I knew that the director’s last name was Carruth, and it immendiately clicked that his brother was Caleb Carruth. I don’t know if the name is familiar to you, but it is very familiar to me. Before “Shane and Shane” was “Shane and Shane”, it was “Shane and Caleb”. So, I have randomly stumbled upon a movie (I think that Netflix recommended it to me) that was written/directed by the brother of one of the guys in one of my favorite bands, if you can calle them that. Small world. It’s definitely an indie film, and was shown at Sundance, so you know off the bat that it’s not too bad. This was the first film for almost all of these guys and they did pretty well. The story is pretty original and I would recommend watching it. I won’t say it was stellar (and it’s really too bad that they had pretty much zero budget, which really constrained the explaining and telling of the story), but it was pretty darn good for these guys’ first production. So, I would say that it’s definitely worth a Netflix rental, especially if your queue is as empty as mine is.

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Wednesday

Posted by Thomas Wed, 03 May 2006 23:09:45 +0000

No more dreams as of late, well none that I recall… I’m at somewhat of a loss for what to blog about. I think that there are only a couple of West Wing episodes left. Um, don’t watch “Derailed” as it is uterly predictable. I am currently the highest bidder for these doohickies. I’m not sure if that link is going to work or not… Oh, and I can’t believe that it is already May. I have no idea where this year has gone to. And yes, I just ended my sentence with a preposition. Ok, I’m done, and I bet everybody lost some IQ points for getting this far into my paragraph.

Update: Oohh, ooh, I just remembered. On the way back from picking up my delicious Papa Johns pepporoni pizza and cinamon sweet treat, I MURDERED an orange highway barrel… going like 70 MPH. I mean murdered, like “Thomas, on the highway, with the Yukon”. It shocked me, but I checked my tire when I got to the next red light, and everything seemed a-ok. I guess the Yukon can take a licking and keep on ticking. I had seen the barrel on my way and avoided it at the time, but on the way back, it crossed the very small median, and I nailed it good. Maybe this was a decent post after all.

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Three plus posts in as many days

Posted by Thomas Sun, 30 Apr 2006 00:04:53 +0000

Watched “History of Violence” without commentary, with commentary, and a very long making-of type thing on Saturday. This movie was absolutely beautiful. Music, photography/cinematography, direction, actors, production design, you name it, it was good. The plot was original, and not cookie cutter; the performances were great. While watching the making-of, I noticed Chris Bender, who I recognized from somewhere else. I finally remembered that it was from “Just Friends”, where he was a producer, and was on the commentary for that one, too. Interesting to see these connections and hopefully to find perhaps other good movies from the same people.

In tribute to Chad, words of the day (taken from the director’s commentary of “History of Violence”): suffused and obstreperous.

Why aren’t there comments feeds for Xanga, Blogger, etc? This is a travesty, and I am lazy… Why is there no autosave in WordPress? And there is no spell check either. People are really dropping the ball.

Ohh, and I hope that everyone has noticed that my blogroll is now constantly up-to-date, as it pulls from my Bloglines subscriptions. It should cover everyone, and I would hope that it’s pretty much a complete and authoritative source.

Oh, and I don’t think that I ever gave appropriate <insert word I can’t recall here> “quote/unqoute” “props” to www.fatrobert.com and Robato’s Xanga after he was so gracious in his blog. What is the word? Not circumspect, not retrospect, retribution, retroaction, counteraction, counterproductive, circumvention, revolution, revalation, appropriate response, proportionate response… Is there a single word to describe “to give back equally in accordance to”? Perhaps I’m smoking crack and this will give you all something to ponder for this week. Man, this is going to bother me, now…

Wow, are you still reading this? If so, then you are awesome! (And probably bored/slacking/procrastinating, if you are still in school.)

Posted in General, Movies | Comments Off

Monday

Posted by Thomas Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:24:15 +0000

It seems like it’s been a while since a substantive post, so here’s to this one being one.

I watched “Inside Man” a weekend or two ago. Imdb gave it a 7.4, which is why I paid to see it in the first place; I was quite disappointed. The character development just wasn’t there, and I really didn’t have much sympathy for the good guys and not enough disgust for the bad guys. Maybe I’m over-critical at this point in my film watching, but eh…

I got some new fibre channel stuff from a co-worker. But, like most things that you buy, they require other things that you need to buy. So, I really need to buy some copper gbics, some other fiber fibre cards, sc/sc fiber and a pci-riser card. Even when you get stuff for free, there’s always a catch. :(

I thought that there was more to say, but perhaps not.

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Not much

Posted by Thomas Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:08:25 +0000

Watched “The Constant Gardener”. Good, but sad. Cool pic. And check out worksongs. He’s had some good stuff as of late. Also I bought a receiver on-line tonight. Should get here in 6-10 days.

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Wednesday

Posted by Thomas Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:03:43 +0000

Watched Dukes of Hazzard and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room over the weekend. I thought both of them were excellent. Why didn’t anyone tell me that Jay Chandrasekhar directed it? He had a cameo with Rabbit. Farva was in it, along with Kenny from Garden State, Jessica Simpson, and Willie smoking an apple as a bong. Good times.

Aquarius January 20 – February 18

The stars understand that faith is difficult in the modern world, but trust them when they tell you that the derivative of a constant is always zero.

This Dilbert is hilarious and all too true.
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2006020523365.jpg

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

DVD audio commentaries

Posted by Thomas Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:54:45 +0000

I don’t know about you guys, but I love dvd commentaries. I’m not entirely sure why, but I do. And just about as much as I love audio commentaries, I love linux, transcoding, and my avel linkplayer2. Why you may ask? Because the synergy of those things allows me to be lazy and just watch movies without having to deal with the phyical dvds. BUT, it also means that the movies that I watch don’t have the commentaries on them. So, when I do own a great movie, such as Garden State, I figure, hey, I’m a reasonably bright individual, why don’t you re-encode the movie to include the audio commentaries? Well, that’s just what I did, and I’m going to tell you how I did it.

Rip & transcode w/ dvdrip. This gives you a project directory in ~/.dvdrip, the vob files, and a shiny, newly-ripped avi. For me this took about 2.5 hours and made my system virtually unusable. Load avg was over 10 for the duration. :( Time for new ram. 2GB anyone? :)

Rip the audio from the vobs like so (the vobs are in the directory vob/001/):

tccat -i "vob/001/" -t vob -d 0 -S 0 | tcdemux -a 2 -x ac3 -S 0 -M 2 \\
 -d 0 | tcextract -t vob -a 2 -x ac3 -d 0 > commentary-1.ac3
tccat -i "vob/001/" -t vob -d 0 -S 0 | tcdemux -a 3 -x ac3 -S 0 -M 2 \\
 -d 0 | tcextract -t vob -a 3 -x ac3 -d 0 > commentary-2.ac3

Garden State has 4 ac3 audio tracks: 0 is english, 1 is spanish, 2 is the first commentary, and 3 is the second commentary.

Add the commentaries to the original avi:

avimerge -o tmp.avi -i garden_state_xvid_dvdrip.avi -p commentary-1.ac3
avimerge -o garden_state_xvid_dvdrip_with_commentary.avi -i tmp.avi \\
 -p commentary-2.ac3

Voila! Now you have an even shinier and newer avi with 3 total audio tracks and 2 new audio commentaries. Looks like each new audio track cost us roughly 141MB! in additional storage space, but, hey, it’s worth it.

Tune in next time for another installment of Thomas’s Cool and Overly Complex Technology, we’ll discuss the possible advantages of the new h264 codec to improve quality while decreasing filesize.

References:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_DVD-Ripping
http://dominia.org/djao/dvdsub.html
http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?Command_Examples/Multi-Audio_AVI-Files
http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?Command_Examples/Pass-Through_Modes
http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4linux/single/index.html#tricks_extraaudio

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Movies, Technology | 2 Comments

Third Wheel

Posted by Thomas Sat, 07 Jan 2006 19:39:27 +0000

RUN, do not walk, and find the movie “The Third Wheel”. I have no idea how I’ve missed this awesome movie since it came out in ’02. Go now. Don’t wait. What are you waiting for? Why are you still reading this? Seriously, go rent it. Download it. Do whatever you need to do to watch this movie. Seriously. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Update

Posted by Thomas Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:07:23 +0000

Well, I watched a whole lot this weekend. I must have watched maybe 4 episodes of both Mash & West Wing. Also watched my Netflix, of Stealth, Elecktra, and Daredevil. Somewhere in there I also watched Casablanca.

Casablanca, Elecktra, and even Stealth were all pretty good. I thought that DD was a little weak. Casablanca of course is a classic, and now I finally understand why. I liked the Eastern-ness of Elecktra a bunch. Not so much your regular comic feel, but more like a ninja movie. Ninja movies are cool. When I picked them, I didn’t even realize that DD and E were connected…

I’ve really felt like a slacker lately. Maybe it’s because my apt’s a little messier than it should me. I don’t know why, but I wish the feeling would go away. That, or that I could get some motivation to get my life in order, but that task is never completed. Tasks without end are not fun.

Posted in General, Movies | Comments Off

146

Posted by Thomas Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:33:37 +0000

I guess that you guys are in for a treat! Two posts in one day. Perhaps I’m trying to compensate for how ever many days it has been since I last posted (not counting today). Most of you I would guess are procrastinating from finals, so I’m glad to be of service.

I had Papa Johns for lunch and dinner today. What can I say? A large is two meals. Especially when it costs $13.

The deal with the car: I heard something funny when I locked the doors using the remote. Didn’t think too much about it at the time. But when I came back and the power lock on the driver’s side door wasn’t working, I figured that some rod had popped out. No big deal, right? I figured that when I had some time and some daylight, I’d look into it. Which was the next Saturday. I began to take off the inside part of the door, only to find out that my 7mm socket wasn’t quite going to do it for me. I decided that I would just get what I needed at Wal-Mart and headed out. In the parking lot I ran into two co-workers. These guys happened to be working on one of their cars, and so I asked them if they could help me out in the tool area. Which of course they did. I followed them back and finished taking apart the door. To my dismay, it wasn’t so much that a rod had popped out of a guide, as the power lock actuator had come detached from the door and was just hanging inside it. After some pondering I figured that if I had some sort of hacking device, I could probably take out the rivets and just reattach the actuator using some machine screws and nuts. But, by this time I was cold and wasn’t really in any mood to fiddle with it any more. I had neither a hack saw, nor any machine screws, and I just wasn’t in the mood to track everything down. Since it was precariously perched, I wasn’t about to slam the door shut to break anything further. I just closed it enough so that it would be locked, but not shut all the way. That weekend it rained a bunch. Since my door wasn’t shut all the way, the seal wasn’t tight, letting rain water in. My seat was pretty damp when I got in on Monday, but didn’t really realize what had happened until after my but was wet. I just stuck it out driving to work and had a soggy bottom for a while. Nobody seemed to notice, so asll was good. Anyway, I just left it pretty much as it was for several days. The inside of the door just sort of hanging on by a thread. Late this past week I was finally fed up with my door not quite being whole, so I pulled the actuator out of the inside of the door so that the window would work properly, and put it all back together. Which is where it still is. I am currently thinking that I would love to pay a bunch of money to the dealer to fix it. We’ll see. I did though get an oil change and a car wash yesterday. It needed both. I also got some overpriced wiper blades and an air filter at the quick oil change place. Yes, I know. I let them do it to me so I wouldn’t have to figure anything out. I knowingly paid the premium for my own convienence.

What else, I guess that I haven’t told you guys about the AVEL Linkplayer2 that I got. It was an early Christmas present from the ‘rents. Which pretty much all of my presents have been, well all of the big ones at least. Since I’m more than 500 miles from home, it would be an ordeal to try and get presents back with me on the plane. Not impossible, just a hassle that I’d rather live without. So, they ordered stuff and had everything shipped out to me, which is totally cool with me. But it does make me wonder what this year will be like at home when everyone else will be opening presents. I know that they’ll have some stuff for me too, then, but things just won’t be the same. I guess that’s what I can expect for a while so long as it is cheaper and better for me to fly rather than drive.

Well, what else? I did see Saw II today. It was good, but to me it was exactly like Saw I. Definitely not worth the $6.50. Walked around the mall cruising for chicks. Didn’t find any. :( Bought a broadband router at Circuit City. Note to self: Send in the rebates.

Work is good. Changed gears a bunch. Change is good, until it becomes the norm, then more change is needed. Rinse & repeat. Been taking pictures. I took a few tonight, but I haven’t seen them, yet. I looked at Circuit City for a X-in-1 card reader, but they wanted $40. I’m willing to pay $10 for one, so no dice. I have to import them from the camera, so it’s more steps than I’d like, leading to me putting off downloading them in a timely manner. I would have taken more, but it was cold and I had neither the desire to get shot, nor the desire to get arrested. I might have tresspassed on a high school… At least some old farmer dude didn’t let out the air in my tires.

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Crappy

Posted by Thomas Sun, 11 Dec 2005 14:15:12 +0000

Damn it. Don’t you hate it when you type a whole bunch of crap into your blog, only to have it quickly erased? Yeah, me too.

Well, I had written this whole long story about how much my driver’s side door actuator has the rivets busted on its bracket, how I tried to fix it and failed, and how my butt got wet in the process. But I guess that you’ll never know the story, because of my slip of the key.

Well, I’m sorry that it’s been so long since my last post, and writing all of that only to have it gone has really put me into a not good mood. I watched Saw (once regular and then once with the director’s commentary), the first episode of Firefly (once regular & once with the director’s commentary) and then the second episode of Firefly with director’s commentary. I’ve still got the Alamo to watch, but I sort of want to see Saw II in the theater, so I might go do that today.

My right forearm has been acting up lately. Maybe it’s due to my longer stints of sitting in front of a computer nowadays. It feels like I’ve worked it harder than I should have and like it’s a little weak. A feeling like when you run until your legs feel like jelly. Cole, any adverse effects from coding at work?

I was reading Guy’s blog, and he mentioned Rich Jones. I’m pretty sure that I know this person. Small world.

And I posted a bunch to the photoblog. Check it out.

Posted in General, Movies | Comments Off

Pulp Fiction

Posted by Thomas Sun, 06 Nov 2005 01:04:17 +0000

I watched it again for the first time tonight. I tried to watch it some time ago (during high school, I think), but for whatever reason, I couldn’t watch it all the way through. I guess since then my tastes have changed a lot, and I have a greater appreciation for these kinds of movies and Mr. Tarantino as well. Anyway, I liked it a lot. Good movie.

Posted in General, Movies | Comments Off

Thursday

Posted by Thomas Thu, 22 Sep 2005 23:24:03 +0000

Thanks Ames for checking out the photoblog and commenting. I really appreciate it. :) At least I know that somebody’s listening. Also a new shoutout to my newest commenter, Ethan. What’s up, bro? Thanks for stopping by.

Well, I paid off my washer and dryer a couple of days ago. My how quickly Sears can cash a check. I’m looking to have a bigger buffer in my checking, so I think that I’ll be working as much overtime as I can stand from here on out. It won’t be a whole lot of extra money, but every little bit helps, you know?

Also, I’ll be traveling on business starting next Monday. I’ll still be reachable through every mean that I am currently, save probably AIM. And even that I might be on and off. Email and phone will be your best bets.

Watched Sin City and Bad Boys. Both were ok, I guess. Sin City was good in its own way, but not much to write home about. I’ve probably seen Bad Boys before, but couldn’t really remember, so I got it. It was pretty average, I’d say for a Will Smith action movie.

Traveling might give me some opportunity to take some pics, but we’ll see. If I am going to do that, then really I’ll need a bag, a memory card, and a tripod. Things that I’d rather not spend money on right now.

My sisters both got back from their vacations with their husbands. I am told that they had good times. Laurie and Edward on their honeymoon to Hawaii, and KB and Clay on a cruise. Yay for them.

Enough for now, and I’ll try and post another photo to the blog.

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Super Size Me

Posted by Thomas Sun, 11 Sep 2005 23:16:32 +0000

Why are companies being demonized for giving us ultimately what we want? We love Wal-Mart for their low prices, yet we loathe them for the practices they use to obtain those same low prices. We love McDonald’s for their cheap, crappy food, yet we sue them for making us fat. When are we going to stop blaming other people for our own lack of self control and our desire for instant gratification? We have decided to a cheap price now. A cheap price that overrides the ultimately much higher cost of the long term price. You want cheap goods and you want a fare wage? Well, then those goods aren’t going to come from the work of your hands. Cheap goods don’t grow on trees.

</soapbox>

I hope that everybody saw the comic that Marc sent. Essentially the classic line from “When Harry Met Sally”. It is especially pointant today as I have recently been thinking about how I am sure that it is going to be a while before I wind up with a girlfriend. For you see that I have been convinced that I simply want it too badly. And, as such, “me” doesn’t communicate at all to any girl that I’m interested in. Added to that their ability to smell how I am ultimately not ready…

As I think that I have mentioned here before, this cycle or game of trying to exude the fact that you’re ready because you’re not interested in dating. So, I say that I understand that things aren’t going to work out because I understand that I need to be much more comfortable in certain situations. So I become disinterested in dating because I know that I’m not ready, only to realize that my disinterest leads to dating, which leads me to realize that I’m not ready, which leads me to realize that I am, etc.

If that nonsense made sense to anyone, then you get a cookie. If you are one of these lucky/unlucky people, then please see your nearest fish for your cookie, courtesy of Bernies and their parents.

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

Long time no see

Posted by Thomas Thu, 08 Sep 2005 00:26:12 +0000

Well, I’ve had no internet for something like the past week. Several people noticed that I wasn’t online, and a couple of them called. I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, just off of the internet. The dullards that host our internet here finally fixed it today, after much gnashing of teeth. I considered posting stuff separately, but I think that I’ll just make one post that spans the entire time.

I dunno about you guys in Texas and what help you have seen going towards LA. I thought that seeing convoys of cherry pickers going towards the aftermath of a hurricane or two that we or surrouding states has had so far was surreal, but seeing a convoy of moving equipment that I can only guess was going towards LA sort of blew my mind. Then later I saw the remnants of a military convoy as well. It was definitely a surreal thing in my mind. I don’t have cable I’ve been a little out of the loop in all of this, so I don’t see it on the news 24/7. Probably good and bad.

Gas prices aren’t too bad. I’ve paid like 2.89 or 2.84. Governor axed taxes on gas for the month, so it should be ~15 cents cheaper.

Unfortunately, that may be it. Since I didn’t have internet I was a little more bored than usual, but not too bad. I did a little reading, but mostly watched what I’ve got downloaded. Chad had me get a TV show called Arrested Development. Watched about 6 episodes of the first season and think that it’s pretty good. Definitely watch some more. Also watched Full Metal Jacket, which is why I answered the phone the way that I did when you called me, Ben. And btw, Mindy this is Ben, Ben this is Mindy. I don’t know if you guys have met or not, but he’s an 06er.

Anyhoo, enough for now.

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Cookie’s Fortune

Posted by Thomas Sun, 07 Aug 2005 14:43:56 +0000

A financial investment will yield returns beyond your hopes.

Hmmm… does that say what I think that it says?

‘Bout to go to work. Since I’m flying out on Friday, I figure that I don’t particularly want to loose those three or so hours of pay, so I’ll pick it up today all at once instead of sometime spread out this week. Watched “The Ladykillers” last night. I saw the original in my music in film class, so I knew pretty much what was going to happen. Odd that Tom Hanks was in it… Disappointed that there wasn’t a director’s commentary. Watched “Blazing Saddles” as well yesterday. Good flick. Thanks for the thought, Ben. I’ve also got “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” as well as “The Life of Brian”. We’ll see about watching one of them tonight. Well that actually depends if one of my network cards hasn’t bittent the dust… Also got through some of my book yesterday. It seems pretty good, but is really too early to tell. Picked up some Chinese for lunch today at a little place near by, hence the cookie’s fortune. I seemed to have bought too much food (my traditional meal of sweet and sour chicken). We’ll see how well the chicken and rice keep. Maybe I can stretch a couple of meals out of my $7.75.

laters

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Fried

Posted by Thomas Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:40:06 +0000

So apparently a while back I came a little closer to being fired than I would like to have been. Unbeknownst to me, I had a review at the end of my 3 month contract. Emails went around to the appropriate people, seeking reviews. Between what essentially boils down to clerical errors and some miscommunication, I was almost let go. But it was pretty quickly found out, and settled, all without my knowning. Good to know that they do in fact like me and want to keep me around a little while longer. :)

Watched “Cast Away” last night and the commentary tonight. I really liked it, but I bet there will be an ensuing flame war about how people didn’t like it.

Essentially impulse bought a book this morning from Amazon, Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations. It would be nice if I could plow through it this weekend. We’ll see.

Posted in General, Movies | 5 Comments

2 Things

Posted by Thomas Sun, 31 Jul 2005 01:30:44 +0000

In the vein of me only doing like 2 things, work and movies, I just saw “The Island” and work will come soon enough, but let’s not talk about that. Since I depleted my reserve of Netflix, I checked movies online and thought that I was going to have to watch “Fantastic Four” which I’m sure is ok, but wasn’t too looking forward to watching. So, I happened upon “The Island”. I picked up the trailer online, and with that and an IMDB rating of 6.9 I figured that it couldn’t be too bad. And it wasn’t. I’d say that it was excellent, excellent. I highly recommend it. Double-plus-good. It must have reminded me in different ways of over half a dozen movies. Music or people or themes or production design or plot.

Just before I saw the movie, I needed to grab some grub, as it was almost 10pm and I hadn’t eaten in quite a while. I happened upon a Moe’s grill-thingy. It’s like a southwest place. Semi-Mexican food. Got a burrito. But why I’m telling you this is because I noticed this girl, who seemed a little young to be working fast food. Now, this place just opened and was like still in grand opening phase. The lady who was running the register was probably early-mid forties. There were two other ladies, on very grandmotherly and the other about the same age as the lady running the register. So, I came pretty quickly to the conclusion that these were two daughters and a mother who were running this place. And I also decided that this young girl who was working was the register lady’s daughter. Not 5 seconds after I decided this, it was confirmed, as the daughter walked by, hitting the mother in a loving way. This prompted the lady, as I was signing my receipt, to explain that this was in fact her daughter.

The reason I tell you this is because it was just plain weird. I assumed this fact of relation, and then almost instantly it was confirmed. Weird.

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Insert creative, descriptive title here

Posted by Thomas Sat, 30 Jul 2005 13:14:32 +0000

Appreciation goes out to Ben for making me feel good making my blogs one of the first ones that he catches up on after a dry spell. Also to Miss Collins. I didn’t know that you read this, so that’s super cool. It took me a bit to realize who Amy was with the email that you gave. But after a quick search of my employer came up with one result and your last name. Which was good, because I would have not posted the comment had I not realized who you were… This also made me think that you’re a google whack, but I just looked up the rules and tamutrixie03 wouldn’t count. Anyway, Amy, in my book, you’ll always be a Google Whack. :)

So, last night I watched the “Punisher”. I thought about posting here how if it wasn’t a good movie that I was going to have to… um… something… I dunno. I guess I was just going to be disappointed and angry that I had wasted a perfectly good Netflix spot in my weekend for a crappy movie. But this was not the case. It totally wasn’t really what I was expecting (which is usually a good thing when it comes to stuff like this), so I enjoyed it. I watched “The Whole Ten Yards” the night before. It was ok, but not as good as “The Whole Nine Yards”. Very scatterbrained, I thought. Not a complete waste of time. I will watch “Analyze This” sometime today. Again, I hope that it’s a good movie. It would seem of late that I am having some difficulty finding movies that I really want to watch. There is a mountain of movies that I feel obligated to watch, like “Platoon” or “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”. Stuff that I should watch, but really just have no desire to sit through. Sounds like a personal problem, doesn’t it? :)

I thought about just leaving the comments about “The Prince and Me” just go, but as I type apparently I’m not going to let it go. So, as far as the comments go, you can either make fun of me for it, or I will just censor more of what I write and you can just never hear about stuff like that again. Which would you rather have?

Time for lunch and a movie.

Song in my head when I woke up this morning: Dave Matthews – When the World Ends

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

Sunday

Posted by Thomas Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:13:11 +0000

I don’t know how many times that I’ve titled a post “Sunday”, but I bet that it’s a bunch. Well, I didn’t really do anything this weekend. I had my Netflix in, so I watched “The Transporter”, which was awful, “The Prince and Me”, which was better than your average chick flick, and “The Whole Nine Yards”, which somehow I managed to watch 3 times in one day. I watched once regular, once with commentary, and then once again regular. Well, that last one I was doing other stuff, but I’ll count it anyway. Watched a bunch of “The West Wing” today.

My major accomplishment was my new toy, a fibre channel array. I’ll not bore the majority of you with the nitty-gritty details, but let’s just say that I now have a 606GB RAID 50 1Gbps fibre channel array, spread over 7*3 disks, with 3 hot swap spares. Since I was about to pull my hair our for most of the week, I am glad that I seemed to have figured out what was causing me so many problems. I might have to kill someone, but that’ll be a later post. :)

Oh, and BTW, I went to Subway for dinner tonight just before 10pm. I had decided whilest I was driving what I was going to get: a wheat footlong meatball, with American cheese and Parmesan, and 3 chocolate chip cookies. The young woman asked me what I wanted, and I told her. She didn’t have wheat bread. Nor did she have any meatballs. Nor did she have any chocolate chip cookies. Damn Subway. Anyhoo, I had a footlong, turkey, white sub, with no cookies. It was tasty, but not what I was looking for… I did notice while I was there that there is a little wing shop and a little Chinese place right next door to the Subway. I thought about dropping in with my Subway in hand to get a take-out menu, but decided against it. Maybe next weekend I’ll try one of them…

fin

Posted in General, Movies | 6 Comments

Sunday

Posted by Thomas Sun, 17 Jul 2005 21:50:04 +0000

Saw both “Willy Wonka” and “Wedding Crashers” in packed houses down the road. Both were good. I think that I liked “Wedding Crashers” better than “Willy Wonka”; more along my humor, I think. I probably liked “Willy Wonka” about as much as I expected to, which wasn’t that much. A little weird for my tastes, but I figured that I would regret it if I didn’t see it in the theater, so I went.

Bought some Switchfoot albums at Circuit City, too. Got The Early Years: 1997-2000: The Legend Of Chin/New Way To Be Human/Learning To Breathe [Box] and The Beautiful Letdown [DUALDISC].

Also just got done watching “Last of the Mohicans”. And I watched “Mr. Deeds”, because I don’t think that I ever really watched it in its entirety.

Oh, and never live on a street called “Columns”. People never hear me say it correctly.

Robert Mitchell notified me of where I could procure some more of my hats, which arrived late last week. They make me happy. Although the $50 the hat that I lost cost me does not.

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

Sunday

Posted by Thomas Sun, 03 Jul 2005 16:18:24 +0000

I watched “Bad Company” the other night from Netflix. Like halfway through I realized that I probably had seen the dern thing before. Which is pretty bad that I thought that I hadn’t seen it, nor that I had any recollection of what it was beforehand. I guess that I really didn’t think that it was that good the first time around. Watched some Chris Rock standup, too, from the Apollo. So, a night with Chris Rock. Also got the 4th disc of Band of Brothers. It’s a pretty good series.

I’ve been trying to code some in Python as of late. I forgot how hard it can be to learn a new programming language.

I’ve also been trying to combine clustermatic and knoppix. I’ve made some pretty decent progress (I think), but I’m running into some issues that I’m not sure exactly how to resolve… :(

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Saturday

Posted by Thomas Sun, 03 Jul 2005 01:28:10 +0000

I’m sorry guys that I haven’t posted too much as of late. I guess that it just seems like life’s slowing down and I’m getting settled in and used to things. Just saw War of the Worlds. It was pretty good. Even if the story was a little weak (it doesn’t help that it’s a remake of a movie that most of us have already seen), the story-telling was excellent, as was the CGI, cinematography, and the production design. Just top notch. And the music was awesome. John Williams of course does it again.

Lately I’ve really been missing being involved with Breakaway. And that’s sort of weird because of the odd relationship that I offically had with them, or really that lack of official relationship… Anyway, I really miss doing sound with really great equipment with professionals. I dunno if it’s just my ego or what, but I just loved doing sound and having an influence in all of these people’s worship experience. Plus, you can make it exactly sound how you want it to. Want less cymbal? more electric? more toms? All at your fingertips. I remember them fondly, but as I sit here and type I recall the mixed feelings that were actually there… If anybody sees Marcus Toussaint, smack him up side the head for me and ask him if he can find out if there is a Breakway-ish thing here. I know that they have similar things around Texas, but for the life of me I could not find any info on any of them on the web. So, maybe the Breakaway office knows.

Don’t have any plans for the Fourth. Well, if I want to get paid, then I have to work… so I will be doing that.

Peace.

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Weekend wrapup

Posted by Thomas Sun, 08 May 2005 13:18:40 +0000

Well, yesterday I went to the DMV to get my license changed. Hiisss! I had thought about getting there really early to camp out for a while so that I’d be at the front of the line. Well, that didn’t happen. So, I finally got there around 8:55 (they opened at 9:00). I was at the end of a line of people that was approximately 150 people long. After almost three hours and $9 I had my new Georgia liscense.

On the way I saw a bunch of guys playing cricket at like 8:30 in the morning! And I saw a family of geese. Man I have got to get myself an awesome digital camera.

Yesterday I watched Meet the Fockers, which was good. And a little bit of Short Circuit last night. My parents sent me a care packages of some linux magazines, hot pads, some dish towels, and of course some cookies. Yay!

Well, I’ve got a bunch of errands to run, so I’ll git… ttyl…

Oh, and I’m going to be in Texas for Greg and Stephanie’s wedding Memorial Day weekend. If you’re within a couple hundred miles of me, you should knock me up… that’s British for giving me a call… pervs… I’m flying into IAH Saturday morning, then wedding all day, then party Saturday night, then hanging out somewhere Sunday and Monday morning, then flying out Monday afternoon. Be there or be square.

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Monday

Posted by Thomas Mon, 02 May 2005 21:35:59 +0000

I watched the director’s commentary of “Garden State” yesterday afternoon, and then watched “Shaun of the Dead” last night. I recommend them both. “Shaun of the Dead” is a real horror movie, while at the same time is a comedy. Plus it’s Bri’ish, so that makes it worth it, all by itself. I forgot to put them in the mail this morning, though, so it’ll be another day before I get some more flix. I got my tix for the Hibbs wedding at the end of May. Apparently it’s going to cost me an extra $70 to turn the car in at 1pm instead of 9am. I suppose that I should have planned that better before I picked up the plane tickets… oh well, better luck next time. I guess I’ll put that off, too, as I doubt that their prices are as linked to time out at the time of reservation as plane tickets are.

I got my stereo setup to my computer, so now I’ve been listening to mp3s on the stereo instead of on headphones.

A little clarification on the subject of having to not tell some people that you love them. As most of you know, I don’t have any actual gf experience. I wasn’t speaking exactly to the spousal types of relationships, but perhaps more generally. Maybe everybody got caught up in my use of the word relationship, when perhaps the word friendship might have conveyed a little better exactly what I was trying to convey. I stand by my assertions. And I don’t deny that it’s probably a good thing to tell your significant other that you love them… I guess… But if you are doing it just to hear them say it, even when they don’t really want to, is that really what you want? For them to tell you exactly what you want to hear? Or should it be heart-felt? I’d prefer the latter. Somehow I doubt that I’m going to win this discussion…

Enough for now. On to some West Wing.

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

Saturday post-mortem

Posted by Thomas Sun, 01 May 2005 00:26:50 +0000

  1. Shower, check.
  2. Lunch, in progress.
  3. Kroger/bank/gas
  4. Do the dishes
  5. Take out the trash
  6. Tidy up
  7. Wal-Mart
  8. Pay bills
  9. Plane tickets
  10. Car rental
  11. Movies
  12. Oil change
  13. See about RMA’ing dead drives
  14. Make media pc
  15. Laundry
  16. DMV

I totally got most of the stuff done. I blame the dish washer on the dishes, as I don’t think that maintenance ever came to fix it. I should call them about that… The trash compactor is really far away. I’ll take it out when I go out tomorrow. It’s ready to go, sitting by the door, I swear. I give up on the media pc. As much as I’d like to be able to watch West Wing on TV, I just think that the computer that I was going to use is going to be too loud. I’ll just have to buy this instead. Watched “Garden State”. Better than I thought that it would be. I’ll probably watch it again tomorrow.

It’s not looking very good as far as car rentals go. The major companies’ policy is only 25ers can rent. I’ll have to see about that…

Man, I really, really, really don’t want to get a stupid Georgia license and tags… I want to keep my Texas ones. :(

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Friday Night

Posted by Thomas Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:52:59 +0000

Well, I finally got my Netflix in yesterday and today. I semi-watched “Ocean’s Twelve” last night. I had seen it numerous times before, so I wasn’t paying too much attention to it. I had hoped that there would be an awesome director’s commentary to explain a bunch of stuff, but alas, there was none. I can only hope that they will produce one in the future. I’ve also got “Shaun of the Dead”, and “Garden State”. I watched an episode of West Wing or two, and had Arbys for supper. Exciting, I know. I did, though use a coupon to buy 8 sandwiches. We’ll see how far my $10 gets me.

Hmm, what else… I did get direct deposit setup in time, so I got paid! Yay! But, unfortunately I paid ~25% in taxes, et. al. DOH! Not as much mula as I thought…

And, I’m a little nervous now, since many more people read my blog that I previously thought… There are the obvious peeps, but if there are any other stealth readers out there, then I’d appreciate a shout out…

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Yay! Two posts in two days…

Posted by Thomas Sun, 10 Apr 2005 16:41:11 +0000

I’m going to try and keep more up to date with stuff, even though the next couple of days are going to be extremely hectic. I do have a place to live, or at least I am in the process of signing the lease. Hopefully I’ll have both a place to live and utilities setup by the time that I move in. I will be taking a trailer and a bunch of furniture most likely. And maybe even a washer and dryer. So, I’ll be recruiting people to help me load the big stuff on Wednesday.

Got to watch “Clash of the Titans” yesterday afternoon. Well, I say got to. I had the remote, and I decided to watch it. I’m not sure who I made mad, but I don’t really care. Let’s just say that it was so bad that it was good. I’m pretty sure that the last time I watched it, it was during junior high. Like 7th or 8th grade English. We’ve been watching a lot of MoviePlex as well. It has both good and bad movies, but no commercials. Oh, and Bond movies, too, as of late. It’s fun to watch a movie where you have no idea of really what’s going on, but you’re enjoying it anyway.

Ok, enough for now. If a blog entry is too long, then I don’t read it. I’ll take any comments on the length of this one…

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Saturday

Posted by Thomas Sun, 21 Nov 2004 01:11:49 +0000

Went to the store today. First time in months, it seems. Forgot to get new razor blades, tho. Got up late. Didn’t wind up going to C-time leaders retreat. Ate some grub from the store. Watched “Lock, Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels”. Yes, Ben, I know that you have it, but as we found out earlier, I apparently can’t watch your movies… But I can watch Netflix… Don’t ask me why. Started watching “Varsity Blues”, but haven’t gotten to finish it, yet. I’ll probably finish it tomorrow afternoon, and then watch “Just Married” then, too. Then went over to T.J.’s apt for dinner. Turkey and the works. It was good. Watched “Monsters, Inc.”. It was good as well, but I’ve seen it a bunch, so no show stopper there. Now, I should go to bed, because there supposedly is Sunday School in the morning, and every week I get up later and later.

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The Incredibles

Posted by Thomas Mon, 08 Nov 2004 00:11:08 +0000

I saw “The Incredibles” tonight with Cole, Rachel, and Chad Hopson. It was better than I was expecting. I thought that it was pretty funny, even if Rachel didn’t think quite as much so. Definitely some good one-liners, and, as usual, lots of adult humor that I’m sure went over the kids’ heads. Overall a good movie, though. I highly recommend seeing it.

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Friday/Saturday/Sunday

Posted by Thomas Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:11:54 +0000

Since I didn’t have much to say on Friday, I just skipped blogging about nothing.

Saturday was better, though. Unfortunately, though, I still got up at noon, but was pleased to find out that they didn’t really notice that I wasn’t around to help with the work project on Saturday. I just didn’t feel like getting up early. I figure that they need more indians than chiefs on stuff like that, and I am definitely a chief. I think that it worked out well that I didn’t get up and go. I was at Wesley for a while, and then around 6pm we headed over to Susan and Jaimie’s for a Halloween/Game Listening party. They fed us some cool ghoustly food and we watched “Saved!”, which turned out to be a better movie than I had first anticipated. Then we watched “Dawn of the Dead” which was also a quality movie, except that I didn’t quite like then ending. I’m not usually one for horror movies, but this one was good. I won’t ruin anything for you guys, but if you want to watch a scary movie, then you might check it out.

The best part of the night was probably the ride home. Ben Mason had a couple of masks that he brought, because it was actually a mask/costume party… So I put on this ugly, red devil mask, complete with horns and everything. I was wearing this, at like 3:30/2:30am, depending on how you counted the time, sticking my head out of the window. For several blocks we weren’t next to anybody, but finally I got to scare the crap out of this girl in the next lane. IT WAS AWESOME! Then there were a couple of guys, but they weren’t scared, and mostly they just played along.

Today did the Sunday School thing, setting up the laptop/projector and running sound for the little band that plays for Sunday School. Went to A&M UMC for church, then went to Fuddruckers for lunch, which was good as always. I just went home after that, taking care of some laundry and bills. Got to talk to Chad Suhr for a bit, since he needed some info for an application that he’s filling out for a pregnancy center or something. He misses Wesley alot and is super busy grading papers and stuff. He hasn’t been able to really find a church, nor a good small group to plug into. He’s involved with Intervarsity, but it’s not quite the same as Wesley was. Different types of people and a different type of organization. I guess that he’s considering Catholocism, but the priest that he talked to he really didn’t like and wasn’t too helpful. Anyway, paid some bills, made a deposit, then went to Wesley. Ate dinner there, and setup stuff for worship. Then pretty much since after worship, I’ve been working on writing new code for the scheduler.

Blah blah blah. Somehow I doubt that the details of my life would seem that interesting…

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