I've been working like a dog lately. At least the end is a mere 3 weeks away. Ugh. I'm on multiple projects at the moment, but of course, the scheduling assumes that I'm 100% for each one of those... so at the moment, I'm hopelessly behind and really have no chance of catching up without pulling in a few more people. Hence, why I'm working on a Sunday. This sucks.
In better news, I ran across a coupon where I was able to get a free 2GB Flash Drive. The coupon / promo ended today. I'd been eyeballing a new flash drive es since the free on Todd gave me was only a 64 MB one. Honestly, I've never needed much more than that, but there were a few times where I was needing to tote some ISO images and couldn't, so... now I can... as long as they are CD ISOs.
Since I wasn't sure of the validity of the coupon in hand, I wandered around the store looking for something cheep so I wouldn't end up at the counter with just the flash drive and nothing else. I'm weird like that. Anyhoo... I wandered over to the DVD section which always has some interesting DVDs on sale. I almost picked up Kill Bill Vol 2, new, for $6.50. But I put that back. And scanned the DVDs some more. One thing I have a weakness for is the 50 Movie Packs that are usually around $20.00 and contain 50 movies on 12 DVDs. They are usually horrible movies that either can be bought uber cheep or are 'public domain'. Anyhoo... I picked up a couple of them, but they were all full price. One that I had been eyeing for a while was '50 Musical Classics'. I had done a little bit of research on it and decided that I wasn't going to pay anywhere near the $20 retail for it since it wasn't really the kind of musicals I was thinking about (Easter Parade, Meet Me In St. Louis, etc). It's more like Rock, Rock, Rock will Bill Haley, old soundies with Duke Ellington, and the like.
Anyhoo. As I was just about the leave the section, I noticed another set of 'sale' items... in front of the 50 Musicals Movie Pack. No way was it on sale. They never are. Until today. Yay! It was $8.18. That's what I'm talking about yo! So now I have a 2GB flash drive (free) and the 50 Musical DVD set for less than what I have in my toy budget. Gotta love that.
I've also been reading David Carradine's book "The Kill Bill Diary"... which he wrote while making the movie. It was pretty cool. Much better than "Endless Highway" which I didn't give much of a chance since it didn't go into much detail about any of the Corman movies he was in, which is all I really cared about. I finished it up last night and, like I said, I liked it pretty much. Now I want to see the movie so I can put into visuals some of the things that David described.
Well, gotta cut this one short... the process I was waiting for finished. Later!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Movies... n other stuff
I'm sitting here eating Michellina's Lean Gourmet Mac n Cheese doused with some El Yucateco XXXHot Habeñero Hot Sauce and figured I'd give an update.
=-=-=-=-=-=
Last night the wife and I watched the movie Junebug. It was definitely an indie film, not in that the acting sucked (it was good) or that the cinematography sucked (there were quite a few very nice shots and interesting camera angles which I enjoyed), but more in that at least on a first watching, the theme or story or whatever isn't exactly concrete in the way that watching, say, Men In Black would be.
So, I enjoyed and didn't enjoy the movie. I admit, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm not a moron either. I understood in most cases where the movie was going.. but when it was done I was left wondering 'Why did I just watch an hour-40 of this?' Yes, I got the whole big-city vs. small-town thing. I came from a small town, I get that some of the things we do there can seem a bit backwards and all that crap. Have you every witnessed 'hog trough dancing' at a wedding? I rest my case. So I understood that aspect of it. But I felt like there should have been something more there. I dunno what that should have been, but there should have been something more. Or maybe, my feeling of uncomfortable emptiness at the end of the movie was the intended reaction. That happens sometimes I guess.
It got quite a bit of good press and most reviews are 'glowing' and the like. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. Maybe it was because it was a 'talkie' movies and we had to mostly watch it with the sound turned off (because for whatever reason, the geniuses to pressed the DVD thought that only French subtitles were needed). Maybe it's 'cause some of the material hit close to home for me and I was busy thinking about things in my brain when I should have continued to pay attention to the movie. Again, I didn't hate the movie, but on the other hand, I likely wouldn't want to see it twice.
=-=-=-=-=-=-
We watched another movie the other day called The Namesake. This indie film is one I enjoyed. It's the story of a boy/man who was born in America to Indian parents and given an 'interesting' name by his parents when he is born. At first he likes the name, then rejects it later in life and tries to distance himself from his parents and his parent's heritage. The lead character in The Namesake is none other than Kal Penn, Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.
Interestingly enough, Kal Penn's character is, at first, a doped out high school student, which pretty much mirrors his performance in H&KGTWC. But after those first few scenes and he moves into a period later in his life, Kal really put in a good performance, in my opinion. Hopefully he will continue to take challenging roles but still continue to do goofy movies like Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar.
=-=-=-=--=-=-
I messed up at work today. I'll make this the short version. We were waiting on a group in UK to finish their stuff. My boss was supposed to have a meeting with some peeps in the UK to determine if we could start. Got an email from one of the lead testers in the UK saying that their testing had PASSED. I assumed this meant we could move on. Half hour later, boss shows up and says 'they are doing another build'. I say 'uh, oh'. He says 'You haven't told the group to start have you?'. I say 'Yes'. He says, 'Tell them to stop. You were supposed to wait for me'. I say, 'Ooops. I figured someone saying that the testing had PASSED meant that we were all clear. Obv not'. So run around and tell everyone to stop. We'll likely get the new build tomorrow. Sigh. This puts my schedule 'techincally' behind. However, since we can't move the dates, I have to somehow absorb a two day loss. Shouldn't be a big deal really. Just had to comment about it since it was on my mind.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Found out in my testing group of about 15 people that there are like four drummers. What are the odds. Drummers are scarce... or usually don't come out of the woodwork unless provoked. Wow! That's like a quarter of our group. Weird. I mentioned to one of the other peeps that we should start our own taiko group. That would be bad-ass.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The 'super machine' downstairs is acting a little weird. I switched out a power supply and that seemed to make it less weird, but it has rebooted on my a few times already, so it seems that maybe it wasn't just the power supply. Maybe the mobo is a bit goofy. Noticed it was running a little warmer than my machines upstairs. Generally runs around 120F which shouldn't be a problem, but the odd thing is that it is like 60 in the basement, so you think it would run COOLER than the ones upstairs where the room temp can usually get up to 80-85F when the halogen and the two computers are running. I dunno. Maybe I will have to switch out the mobos.
Or, since I am considering going wireless and buying a laptop (a cheepo, but a laptop nonetheless) for the main computer for both me and the wife, maybe I'll just not bother and use my old computer (which is nice and solid) as the new 'toy' machine.
=-=-=-=-=-=
Last night the wife and I watched the movie Junebug. It was definitely an indie film, not in that the acting sucked (it was good) or that the cinematography sucked (there were quite a few very nice shots and interesting camera angles which I enjoyed), but more in that at least on a first watching, the theme or story or whatever isn't exactly concrete in the way that watching, say, Men In Black would be.
So, I enjoyed and didn't enjoy the movie. I admit, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm not a moron either. I understood in most cases where the movie was going.. but when it was done I was left wondering 'Why did I just watch an hour-40 of this?' Yes, I got the whole big-city vs. small-town thing. I came from a small town, I get that some of the things we do there can seem a bit backwards and all that crap. Have you every witnessed 'hog trough dancing' at a wedding? I rest my case. So I understood that aspect of it. But I felt like there should have been something more there. I dunno what that should have been, but there should have been something more. Or maybe, my feeling of uncomfortable emptiness at the end of the movie was the intended reaction. That happens sometimes I guess.
It got quite a bit of good press and most reviews are 'glowing' and the like. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. Maybe it was because it was a 'talkie' movies and we had to mostly watch it with the sound turned off (because for whatever reason, the geniuses to pressed the DVD thought that only French subtitles were needed). Maybe it's 'cause some of the material hit close to home for me and I was busy thinking about things in my brain when I should have continued to pay attention to the movie. Again, I didn't hate the movie, but on the other hand, I likely wouldn't want to see it twice.
=-=-=-=-=-=-
We watched another movie the other day called The Namesake. This indie film is one I enjoyed. It's the story of a boy/man who was born in America to Indian parents and given an 'interesting' name by his parents when he is born. At first he likes the name, then rejects it later in life and tries to distance himself from his parents and his parent's heritage. The lead character in The Namesake is none other than Kal Penn, Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.
Interestingly enough, Kal Penn's character is, at first, a doped out high school student, which pretty much mirrors his performance in H&KGTWC. But after those first few scenes and he moves into a period later in his life, Kal really put in a good performance, in my opinion. Hopefully he will continue to take challenging roles but still continue to do goofy movies like Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar.
=-=-=-=--=-=-
I messed up at work today. I'll make this the short version. We were waiting on a group in UK to finish their stuff. My boss was supposed to have a meeting with some peeps in the UK to determine if we could start. Got an email from one of the lead testers in the UK saying that their testing had PASSED. I assumed this meant we could move on. Half hour later, boss shows up and says 'they are doing another build'. I say 'uh, oh'. He says 'You haven't told the group to start have you?'. I say 'Yes'. He says, 'Tell them to stop. You were supposed to wait for me'. I say, 'Ooops. I figured someone saying that the testing had PASSED meant that we were all clear. Obv not'. So run around and tell everyone to stop. We'll likely get the new build tomorrow. Sigh. This puts my schedule 'techincally' behind. However, since we can't move the dates, I have to somehow absorb a two day loss. Shouldn't be a big deal really. Just had to comment about it since it was on my mind.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Found out in my testing group of about 15 people that there are like four drummers. What are the odds. Drummers are scarce... or usually don't come out of the woodwork unless provoked. Wow! That's like a quarter of our group. Weird. I mentioned to one of the other peeps that we should start our own taiko group. That would be bad-ass.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The 'super machine' downstairs is acting a little weird. I switched out a power supply and that seemed to make it less weird, but it has rebooted on my a few times already, so it seems that maybe it wasn't just the power supply. Maybe the mobo is a bit goofy. Noticed it was running a little warmer than my machines upstairs. Generally runs around 120F which shouldn't be a problem, but the odd thing is that it is like 60 in the basement, so you think it would run COOLER than the ones upstairs where the room temp can usually get up to 80-85F when the halogen and the two computers are running. I dunno. Maybe I will have to switch out the mobos.
Or, since I am considering going wireless and buying a laptop (a cheepo, but a laptop nonetheless) for the main computer for both me and the wife, maybe I'll just not bother and use my old computer (which is nice and solid) as the new 'toy' machine.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Good Weekend
On Saturday, I got to hang out with my bro Todd. We went to Cici's Pizza and buffet-ed our selves silly. Then we went back to his place and played a few hours worth of Rock Band. That was fun. I first tried being the 'drummer' and let me tell you when you're a drummer, you don't want some screen telling you where to hit. Plus, it probably did not help that my first song was The Who 'Won't Get Fooled Again' which is typical Keith Moon - i.e. pretty much it's one big drum fill with nothing every really repeating. I found I did much better in Singing Mode, though by the end of the evening my throat was getting sore.
On Sunday, my wife's sister came up for her birthday and we went to the Money exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art. That was pretty cool. After that we went to The Cheesecake factory and rang up a sizable bill. But at least I have left overs for the next two days. Man, those portions are out of control.
On Sunday, my wife's sister came up for her birthday and we went to the Money exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art. That was pretty cool. After that we went to The Cheesecake factory and rang up a sizable bill. But at least I have left overs for the next two days. Man, those portions are out of control.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)