Missed the update yesterday cause I went to have drinks with co-workers… again, I had something to rant about, but it’s gone again… this forgetting is becoming annoying.
I will say one thing, I’m annoyed at computer makers and Microsoft. I tried to play Might & Magic I yesterday, and my computer is too fast to run it. I can’t see the damage, or the attacks, or anything. And as far as I can see there is no way to force my Pentium 200 to run slower for just that game. It’s just agrivating that I can’t play a good game because my computer is to advanced for it, and then I go to buy a new game and it isn’t advanced enough to play it. I just can’t win.
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Today’s Song: How Soon is Now, the version done by Love Spit Love. I love this song, and it’s been my song of the day before (back when I gathered up about 10 different versions of the song) but this version was originally on the soundtrack for “The Craft” and now it’s the opening song for “Charmed”, that new show on the WB with Alyssa Milano and Shannen Doherty (although my favorite is Holly Marie Combs). Anyway, the song rocks, check it out.
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TV Highlight: Speaking of Charmed… I’m digging this show. It’s only had one episode, but it’s got possibility as long as they don’t wuss out and keep up the occult content to a good level like they do on Buffy. Plus the three stars are quite attractive, not a bad one in the bunch. If you like Buffy, check out Charmed and give it a chance.
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Trivia Answer: Meg Ryan and hubby, Dennis Quaid starred together in Innerspace, D.O.A., and Flesh and Bone. The bonus 3-D movies: Meg was in Amityville 3-D, and Dennis was in Jaws 3-D.
Trivia Question: Keeping the chain alive – Dennis Quaid shared a role with Val Kilmer, who did they both play?
Category: Random Thoughts
The general category for posts on this blog.
7 October 1998
I finished the first in the Myth Series of books by Robert Asprin. Great book. I am looking forward to the rest of the series… I think I have about 10 books to go or so.
I’ve been thinking I should do more reading… but then they put on all these good TV shows… I may have to give up working just to get all my leisure activities in. hehehe
At one point I was considering putting up a picture of myself on my web page… but thanks to sCary’s Shugashack and the “wack links” section pointing me to www.fugly.net, I have reconsidered. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life. :-p
There was something that I was going to say today… a rant about something cool… but I forgot… maybe tomorrow I’ll rant about forgetting cool stuff… or maybe I’ll forget.
Time to get back to work…
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Today’s Song: The title song for the TV show “Buffy: the Vampire Slayer” performed by Nerf Herder. Probably the coolest TV theme to come down the pike in years.
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TV Highlight: One word… Buffy. ’nuff said.
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Trivia Answer: The Top Gun costar of Tim Robbins who would later team up with him again for a love story that involved Albert Einstein is Meg Ryan in the movie I.Q.
Trivia Question: Keeping with the trivia train I’ve got going, Meg Ryan has been in 3 movies with husband Dennis Quaid, what are they? And as a bonus, they didn’t star in these together but both of them have done a movie filmed in 3-D, what are they?
6 October 1998
I’ve been messing with my bot lately… and no, that’s not some sexual mastabitory thing. It’s an Eggdrop IRC bot, a Win95/NT port of a Unix bot. In any event, it normally runs in a DOS window. I got tired of seeing that stupid window on my taskbar, so I got one of those TrayIt programs that will allow you to minimize any program to the System Tray… but it sucked, it was eating up all the memory. So I whipped out VB5 and wrote a small program that called the bot to a hidden DOS window, then unloaded itself. This makes the bot run like normal, with no extra overhead, but there is the drawback that I can only see it running in my Task List or on the IRC server. No icon, no nothing. The only way to kill it is to either access it from IRC (either DCC chat or Telnet login) and give it the .die command, or end the task from the Task Manager. So for the last 2 weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how to embed a DOS window into a VB form. That way I could make a one form program that can minimize to the system tray that runs the DOS window on it, with a few buttons for starting and stopping the bot (perhaps even a small telnet embedded window for doing all the commands).
After reading a bunch of those “Hardcore” VB books I have come to the conclusion that they are a bunch of morons. Not stupid, mind you, they do know their stuff. They write great programs and bits of code, but when I buy an “Advanced VB Programming Techniques” book I expect to find a book that shows me the advanced features of the environment and language, and new tricks of the code. Instead, I get a book full of code that totally ignores the current environment and functions, where the author totally starts from scratch and essentially makes his code non-Object Oriented because I have to use 20-30 of his small functions to use one of his advanced ones, most of which are simply replacements for existing functions included with VB. It’s a crock of shit.
Now I’m considering just starting from basics myself and learning what is needed to write my own bot for the Windows environment. I think it would be easier.
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Today’s Movie: Anything by Andy Sidaris. Starting way back with “Malibu Express” in 1985 up to the recent “Return to Savage Beach” in 1998, Andy has had a way with film that few other directors have. Sure, they are straight-to-video schlock, but it’s the way he does it. In any other movie, the guns would look real and do real things. In any other movie, the fight scenes wouldn’t look staged. In any other movie, when the large breasted Playboy Playmate heroine says, “Wait here and I’ll change into something more appropriate.” it means the camera will either stay here or do a time-lapse and she’ll return in an actual fight-appropriate outfit instead of having the camera follow her into the bedroom, watch her change (maybe have sex with someone) and put on a thong or something leather to take down the bad guys. These are truly bad movies, but you gotta admit, beautiful often naked women, guns and explosives, ninjas, bad acting, and laughable story lines make for great popcorn munching fodder.
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TV Highlight: I thought I was going to hate Hyperion Bay (WB, Mondays, 9pm) when I read about it. I mean, come on, I didn’t like Mark-Paul Gosselaar in Saved By The Bell (the original or the college years) or any of his movies (although I haven’t seen Dead Man on Campus yet), so I didn’t think I’d like him here. But I watched the first episode because I always give any show one chance, and then I watched the second, and now the third. I’m hooked.
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Trivia Answer: Tim Robbins. The movie in question was “Fraternity Vacation”. And if you didn’t catch the other hint in there, I put the “Top Notch” in CAPS on pupose because Tim Robbins was also Merlin in Top Gun. More trivia than you cared to know.
Trivia Question: Speaking of Top Gun and Tim Robbins, what Top Gun costar would later appear with Tim in a movie about love and… Albert Einstein??
5 October 1998
Things are a brewing around here… A friend and I started up a new Clan for online gaming (and for social gatherings for the local people) called “Nobody’s Heroes”… the name is cool, Pete gets kudos for that. Things are going well with it, gathering up some of our old friends, some from our old clan, some from other clans… it’s nice.
I’ve been toying with the idea of sponsoring a “National Standing” for TF2… I worked out a bunch of details and I think it could work.
Pete and I have also come up with some cool map ideas for TF2 that we are going to start working on… they should rock if we can do them right.
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Today’s Song: “Operator That’s Not the Way it Feels” by Jim Croce. I work in tech support. I sit on the phone all day. And this song just gets stuck in my head sometimes. It’s a great classic tune, and if you’ve never heard it, you need to. Most of Jim’s work is really good. It’s folky, but sometimes it’s just what you need to lift you up on a lousy day. And not the way heavy metal or punk lifts you up. Not pumped. Just a smile.
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TV Highlight: If you have the Sci-Fi channel check out “Space: Above and Beyond” on Sunday nights at 7pm. The show was created by a couple of guys who left the X-Files, but never got seen much. It originally aired on Fox, and only ran a season, maybe a little more. It’s about the 58th Squadron during a war with aliens in the near future. It’s not so far fetched, and it’s not just about killing aliens. This week was an episode where after setting down on a planet in enemy control to med-evac the 61st, they discovered that the Chigs (aliens) were using their radio signals to triangulate rescue ship landings and attack the group waiting for rescue. But the episode is done from the point of view of Nathan West, the appearant sole survivor of the 58th, who is having trouble remembering what happened. It turns out the 58th aren’t dead and that Nathan only played dead to get pulled out so that he could communicate the new landing zone directly to his commanding officer, to eliminate the use of the radio. It was definately a cool episode, and the show it good all the way through. Too bad real sci-fi never lasts on regular TV (see this show, Sliders, and I’m sure a few more. Any show that uses real plots instead of a “Monster of the Week” format gets cancelled. And face it, X-Files is still an MotW format show.)
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Trivia Question: What current Top Notch actor once played a character nicknamed “Mother” in one of those Spring-Break-Fraternity-Romp movies?
Answer next update.
2 October 1998
Some baseball games are just better than others. Game 2 of the Braves/Cubs playoff was phenominal. It was slow to start, but then any good game should be. I’ve never liked games that ended in the first inning where some guy hits a 3 run homer and the rest of the game is just great pitching. Being in the crowd at a game like that is just awesome… I need to get season tickets.
Is $60 too much to pay for tickets to a baseball game? The seat are regular season $15… hmm… maybe.
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Theater Review: None.
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Today’s Song: Centerfield by John Fogerty. Great song… good baseball music… but I hate when they tease you with the few opening claps of this song at ball parks but won’t play any more of the song.
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Today’s Movie: None.
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TV Highlight: None.
1 October 1998
I’m going to see the Atlanta Braves play the Chicago Cubs in the second game of the five game series tonight. And today my loyalty was called into question. A few days back when the Cubs beat the Giant for the Wild Card position and the right to be in the playoff I proudly announced, “Cubs all the way, baby!” Mainly because I like the Cubs, I’m from Chicago originally, and.. well.. because it felt like the right thing to say.
I’m also a Braves fan… I have been for a while, even back when they were in last place (yeah, I know, EVERYBODY says that, but I always admire a last place team that refuses to give up). So I’m going to this game tonight, and personally, I don’t care who wins, because I like both teams. I’d be happy to see either one of them move on to the next level, so basically, I’m in a win-win situation because regardless of how the game turns out, I’m a fan of the winner. Is there a law that says I can’t be a fan of more than one team?
Anyhow, my loyalty got called into question when after I made the “Cubs all the way” comment and then today said I was going to the game to see the Braves beat up the Cubs. As if I had just switched sides in a war, I was being called a traitor, and that I was recanting my earlier words. Why?
Then I got raked over the coals again when I said that I was pulling more for the Cubs because the Braves get this far alot and I’m a fan of the underdog. I mean, it’s why I became a Braves fan in the first place, they were in last and I rooted for them. They’ve been on top a while. Sure they haven’t won every World Series in that time, but they have won their division for 7 straight years.
I’m flawed, and I know I’ll never be perfect… and I just get tired of seeing someone win all the time because I know that I don’t. Do I want them to lose… no. Do I want the other guys to win… yes. But then you see the problem with life in general, for people to win, someone has to lose. I don’t want the Braves to lose, but I want the Cubs to win more than I do the Braves. C’est la vie. That’s life. Deal with it.
Of course, I say all this knowing that the Braves are going to win. The Cubs are good. Just not that good. =)
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Theater Review: None.
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Today’s Song: Got You (Where I Want You) by Flys. I just dig the whole idea of this song… a guy… hitting on a girl… who really isn’t even aware that he is alive much less hitting on her… and thinking to himself, “I got her right where I want her… she’s mine.” Just cracks me up and makes me feel good.
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Today’s Movie: Escape From New York. If you have to ask why I would chose this as a movie of the day, then you need to go rent it.
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TV Highlight: I watched the original Khan episode of Star Trek last night on the Sci-Fi channel. I have always loved the movie Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan but I had never seen this episode… truly a treat to see where it all began. Basically the whole Star Trek thing on Sci-Fi is cool, worth making time for now and again.
29 September 1998
Wow… only 6 days this time, instead of 2 months between updates. The sad thing is that not much has happened.
“I went to a party last Saturday night, didn’t get laid, got in a fight, uh-huh, it ain’t no big thing…”
Well, enough Lita Ford lyrics… I did go to a party, I didn’t get laid, but I also didn’t get in a fight… not on Saturday anyway.
In recent months (within the last year) I have lost a few of my best friends… no, they didn’t die… things just changed.
With one it was that I was tired of seeing him complain about his life going nowhere and yet always passing up opportunities when they presented themselves. He wasn’t sure what he wanted and was making no effort to find out. And as I said, I just got tired of being around it, and as his roommate, I was always around it. We parted ways when our third roommate decided to marry some guy she had met on spring break and move to Maryland and we terminated the lease early. I’ve seen him a few times since then, but only in passing really, not as friends.
With the other, it was odd. He blew up at me one day, said some things he probably shouldn’t have, and that was that. I realized in that instance something I had wanted to ignore, we weren’t friends anymore. This started about the same time I got fed up with the other guy mentioned above, and I decided that I wasn’t using my life to its fullest because I let other people have their way too often, I rarely stood up for what I wanted and went with the crowd, or in most cases, this guy. And when I took more control of my life, there started to be a friction between us, because I wasn’t just simply letting him have his way as I had done in the past. Then, for some reason he started doing something (or maybe I just noticed it then), in our IRC chat room he would act totally differently than he did face-to-face. Sitting across a table, we would discuss things, agree, disagree, in a civil manner, but in the chat room, he would always take a side opposite me, whether he believed in it or not, and argue to the death, even when I was right. Then the rug got pulled out from under him in his life, and somehow all that ended up on me, wrong time, wrong place situation I guess. He blew up. Called me a Nazi among other things, and that was that.
Losing friends is something I have never enjoyed. Whenever I moved when my father got transferred I always lost friends, and it always hurt. Somehow though, this is different. It’s not that I want to see them go, they were friends, good friends, close friends, best friends, but somehow my life seems brighter that we have parted ways.
Life is full of doors, in doors and out doors, and people coming and going, and sometimes we invite a friend to stay a while longer when they start to go, and sometimes it’s for the best, and sometimes it’s a better choice to let them go, for them, and for yourself. I’ve let them go, I wish them the best, and I hope they do me the same. Perhaps, somewhere down the road, our paths will cross again… perhaps.
Anyway… I think the time has come… the time has finally arrived… to jump and dance and feel alive!
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Theater Review: Saw nothing this weekend. It happens. Get over it.
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Today’s Song: Shimmer by Fuel. The song just rocks. (period)
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Today’s Movie: I watched Falling Down last night and I remembered back when that movie came out. Everyone I knew saw the commercials where is made Michael Douglas look like the everyman, the hero, raging against the wrongs of the world in his little walk through downtown. And I warned them, I garanteed them that the movie wasn’t going to be that simple. When we left the theater, most of the crowd was a little down. They didn’t like the way it ended, with Mike becoming the bad guy, an man pushed over the edge by life. I loved it. But then… I’m like that sometimes.
23 September 1998
Well, it’s been a while since I updated this… more than 2 months. In that time, I’ve been working my new job as Seagull Software (basically learning that every horror story you ever heard about people who call tech support about “broken cupholders” and “foot pedals” are all true), and I’ve been hanging out with friends alot.
I promised a rant a while back about something that… frankly, something I can’t remember. Must not have been that important. In any event, my world has changed and my outlook on a few things are moving from their once anchored points.
For now, I’m just happy to work, get paid (once a month, now THERE is something to rant about), and hang out on Friday nights at Barnacle’s (a good local restaurant/bar where they have trivia for house cash).
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Theater Review: I’ve seen alot of movies since my last update, but I’m just gonna talk about one (partly in comparison to another) that I saw recently, Baseketball. I have to say that this was much better than I thought (and maybe low expectations helped make it better). It was rude, disgusting, offensive, and down right roll-on-the-floor funny (although not in the theater I saw it in). Everyone I know (save a few) were raving about how funny Something About Mary was, but really, I didn’t like that one very much. Sure, it was funny, but not really as funny as all the hype. Whereas Baseketball started with alot of hype, but that died out when the movie wasn’t raking in the money. I just really liked this movie. And as a bonus, I only paid a dollar to see it. That’s right, I frequent the dollar theater, you want to make something of it!! =)
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Today’s Song: Dammit by Blink 182. I got this CD when I took advantage of one of Columbia House Music Club’s Buy One Get Three Free deals, and it was worth every penny, and this song.. well, it’s just a poppin’ tune. Makes me want to get up and slam.
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Today’s Movie: Like the theater reviews, I’ve seen a bunch of other movies in the time off, but I’ll pick on one that I saw recently. Mimic. It was a cheesy monster movie. But it knew what it was and did it pretty well. Plus, any monster movie where they pull no punches and let the big bad bug kill the annoying kids is a good movie in my book.
9 July 1998
Some time just shortly before noon, Clan DoS died.
DoS, the Disciples of Syrinx (not satanic, its from a Rush song), was the gaming clan that I was in for the last… jeez… almost 2 years. Over the past 6-8 months however, we fell on some hardships as RealLife(tm) set upon many of us.. myself included at times. I like to think I did a nice write up on the closing of our doors, check it out, http://www.clandos.com . Now, so very unlike me, I’m going to quote myself:
“Well… even though I’m one of the guys who helped make the decision to disband the clan, it’s kind of like when they have to shoot Old Yeller… he’s your best friend, he’d give his life for you and you’d do the same, but it just needs doing… Ending the clan hurts… but so does anything worth having… memories more valuable than gold, my friends, that’s what life is all about…”
I actually said that. I look back on that and think, where the hell was I when this got said. It’s like it’s not even me. Same with the write up on the clan page. But then something happened about 30 minutes after I said that and signed off IRC and was working on my webpage.
I still love computer games and comic books… I like cartoons… but somehow… in the last couple of weeks… really the last couple of days… I’ve grown up. Not so much that I forget what it’s like to be a child… but somehow, I saw all this coming… my new job, the clan disbanding, and other things… and I’ve come to understand the world a little bit in places I didn’t before. Things I did yesterday that seemed so cool and fun, today seem irresponsible, like a waste of a few of the precious moments we are given here on this Earth, like time I could have better spent somewhere else, on something else.
I’ve always held that I never regret anything that I have done in my life. And I still don’t. Because I cannot regret the things that made me who I am today because I like who I am, and I would not be the same if I had not made those mistakes that I made. But for the first time I see that maybe, just maybe, I can keep myself from wasting time… from wasting life… on things that in the end give me nothing in return, no sadness, no joy, no “memories more valuable that gold”…
Today is just a sad, sad day all around…
…Tomorrow will be better, if not by nature then I will make it so.
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Theater Review: [none]
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Today’s Song: Oven by Seven Mary Three. Just kind of fits my mood today.
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Today’s Movie: Crossing The Bridge. This is one of those films you’ll never see if you aren’t the kind of person who takes chances on videos you have never heard of. It’s written and directed by Mike Binder, who also did Indian Summer (another good one). It’s just a good movie about three close friends. Makes me feel good when I watch it.
4 July 1998
We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
Sorry, had to do it. Today is the 4th of July. Meant to watch “Born on the 4th of July” the other night, but I missed it. Now I think I’ll have to rent it.
Lots of little things going on ’round here… nothing to fantastic though. I start work on Monday. I got tired of sitting on my ass at home while unemployed, but now that I have a job… I don’t wanna go, I wanna stay at home and sit on my ass.
Ever get one of those weeks where you sleep alot, but you don’t seem to be getting any rest? I’m having one.
I’m thinking of redesigning my whole page here… the front anyway… making it a gate to all my other stuff… and linking the pages together better… now that I’m at Xoom, I can make subdirectories, and if you have ever made a webpage before you know how much subdirs help organize the mess.
Well, I still have that rant in the wings… but I’m gonna hold off until I get a chance to properly write it up, when I come home angry from work one day next week… :p
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Theater Review: Black Dog. This is a gem. Patrick Swayze, Meat Loaf, Randy Travis, and a mythical truck driver road legend of the, you guessed it, “Black Dog”. This is not a movie to see alone. Take friends who know how to throw a good one-liner MST3K style and you will have a blast. My personal best was finding ways to work in every one of Meat Loaf’s songs into his scenes, and I almost didn’t work in one of his most famous, Bat Out Of Hell, but he returned in the end (since he is one of the bad guys) and presented the opportunity as one of the actors says “What was that?” after getting rammed by Meat with a truck, “That’s a BAT OUT OF HELL, baby!!” This was a sad, sad movie… we were able to work in all of Patrick’s movies too. Not to mention all the Smokey and the Bandit jokes flying. I’m glad I only payed a dollar to see it, because in the sarcastic words of Kelly, “This is the best movie ever!”
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Today’s Song: First Cool Hive by Moby. It’s on the Scream soundtrack and they used it in some of the early previews for the 5th Element. It’s just a groovin’ tune.
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Today’s Movie: A Clockwork Orange. This is a sick, disguesting, demented film. But I love it anyway. And with Warner Bros. re-releasing new digitally mastered versions of movies for their 75th, I’ll be able to get a new copy of this (mine being worn out of course, I bought it previously viewed).