This morning I woke up a little late. Our Monday morning meeting (which is always held on Wednesdays) was due to start and I wasn’t going to have enough time to do my normal morning ritual AND make the meeting. So I took a 3 minute shower instead of 10. I’ve got a ghost of a goatee one cause shaving just the sides took less time that the full shave. And I skip out the door, breakfast in hand.
And then I stop.
I live in Atlanta, and we don’t get snow that often. So when I got outside and saw that everything was dusted in a powdery white, I had to pause and take it in. The whole drive to work was slow and I made my way in awe of the beauty that fresh snow can bestow upon an otherwise dingey looking world. Before I even got out on my neighborhood I almost turned around to get my camera so I could take some pictures of this wonderland around me.
Slowly, slowly, I made my way to work. And I wasn’t alone. Other people were driving slow too. Not because the roads were slick. We had no ice, no snow on the streets, they were clear. People were driving slow, just like me, to take it all in. It wasn’t a blizzard, or even just a handful of flakes here and there. This was the perfect amount of snow for a place that doesn’t get it that often. A thin layer of white over everything but the roads. The rooftops, the yards, the branches of trees. And that which had fallen on the street had melted in place, so that it drifted away as water and didn’t leave those ugly clumps of brown and black dirty snow.
It was pure.
And it brought to me something I had been missing for a while… with my job, my home, my everything, I was getting a little tired, defeated, and depressed. But now I realize, for what is not the first nor the last time I’ll have it pointed out to me, that sometimes all you need is to look at things with new eyes.
Have a wonderful day.
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Theater Review:
none.
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Today’s Song:
The entire New Miserable Experience album by the Gin Blossoms. It’s all good. Not a bad song in the bunch. Even the country song is cool (“You can’t call it cheatin’ ’cause she reminds me of you”). I listen to this and to their other stuff and it makes me a little sad to know that the group broke up, but at least they put out music this good before they did.
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Today’s Movie:
Cloak & Dagger. I had forgotten about this movie until last night when it was on the Disney Channel. It’s not a great movie, it’s not even a good movie. But I remember when I saw this and I was big into the role playing game Top Secret, and at that time, this was the coolest movie. It’s about a kid who has this imaginary role playing character that he actually wills to life. Now, compared to other super spy guys, Dabney Coleman as Jack Flack seems kind of silly, but to a kid of 9 or 10 years old, he made a great secret agent.
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TV Highlight:
Well, another week, another Buffy. Last night saw the return of Vampire Willow. Alyson Hannigan is cute, but when she gets all dressed up in those evil leather outfits, its just that little something extra that pushes her into the sexy category. Still, Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of the best shows on television.
Category: Random Thoughts
The general category for posts on this blog.
23 February 1999
So I have this dream last night… it was an odd mix of The Postman (more the book than the movie) and The Stand. It started as a worst case scenario of the Y2K bug (which will never happen, it’s not like the world is just going to shut down over night), a little anarchy, a little war. People banded together here around Atlanta and we started rebuilding society. It was just an odd dream all around. I don’t remember my dreams all that often, so why do I remember this one?
Dreams can tell you alot about a person, I think. What they are thinking, what they really feel, what they strive for, what they hide. I used to keep a dream journal, and I should probably start that again. I just wish I could find that old journal, because maybe now, looking back, I might get a little insight to myself, applying what I know now to what I felt back then. But sometimes, I think that maybe it’s good that I can’t find it. Overanalysing yourself can lead to a mental lockdown. I don’t know.
Occationally, I get this de ja vu feeling, that feeling that you’ve done or seen or heard something before. And later, after I go through the situation, I’ll remember, “I dreamt that! Months ago! Exactly as it happened!” But for some reason, and maybe it’s good and maybe it’s bad, I can’t remember that I’ve dreamt these things before they happen, always after. What good are precognitive dreams if you can’t remember them on time?
By far though, I would say the coolest thing I have ever had happen in dreams is a shared dream. Where I had a dream and someone I knew was in it, and when I talk to them, I find out that they had the exact same dream, only, from their point of view. And it’s like we were in the same dream space or dream scape or whatever, because everything is the same, and in my dream I had full control, and in their dream, so did they, and it’s just so cool and weird and exciting and frightening. And to me, I guess, it lends credibility to things like mental powers, astral worlds, and magic (or magik or majik or however they are spelling it this week to denote real power not illusions of power). Do you believe in magic?
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Theater Review: She’s All That. When I first heard the title of this movie and saw the preview I though to myself, “This is going to be another one of those throwaway John Hughes wannabe movies of the ’90s trying to recapture the ’80s teen angst genre.” But I did go see it, and I was surprised. It was actually entertaining, funny, warming, and good. It made me laugh and smile, and at moments, had me remembering times in my life that were (while not that fantastic) similar. While I don’t think any movie will ever quite get was Sixteen Candles, Pretty In Pink, and all those other ’80s classics had, this one comes pretty damn close.
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Today’s Song: No More Love by God Lives Underwater. If Alice In Chains did techno music, this is what it would sound like. And I gotta admit, I love this song. The music is pumping and the lyrics are just cool. I picked up Empty, GLU’s first full album and the second that I have bought, specifically for this song, much like I picked up Life In The So-Called Spaceage for From Your Mouth, and found that once again, while looking for one song, I found a good album.
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Today’s Movie: Book of Love. It’s an odd little throwaway movie that most people will never see, but I have, and it was a good way to spend a couple hours. A light comedy about a kid trying to land the girl of his dreams in the ’50s.
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TV Highlight: I watched the first part of Stephen King’s Storm Of The Century. This was good story telling so far. I’ve heard from some people that it drops off at the end, but so far I’m glued to the screen. I can’t wait to watch parts 2 and 3.
20 February 1999
Nothing worthwhile was ever easy.
That’s a great quote. I’ve always liked it, and I see its truth. But does it mean that if something is hard, it must be worthwhile? I met this girl, you see. I met her on New Year’s Day, but then she had to go back to school. I liked her alot, but the distance between us and a few other things were killing me. I’ve always believed that a relationship, while it may actually be work should never FEEL like work. The work you do for a relationship should feel good, you should never mind what you have to do. So when things started feeling like work, and I start censoring what I said, I ended things.
Then I meet this other girl. I already knew her, but it was like turning around. Bang. There she was. I like hanging out with her, everything seems so cool. I’d love to hang out with her more, but I get this feeling, and she has told me, that she isn’t totally over the last guy she dated. I want so much to help her, but here is another quote I heard once that I also see the truth of: “You can’t hire contractors for a broken heart, it’s a Do-It-Yourself job.” You can talk and listen, advise and sympathize, but in the end, only the person with the broken heart can know when to move on. When they have healed enough to dare again. And therein lies my problem… I like this girl, and while I’m not looking to get married, I’ve never been one to just “date”. But I’m afraid to get too close for fear she isn’t ready and I know she doesn’t want to get too close for the same reason, but I can’t help but want to get closer.
“Nothing worthwhile was ever easy.”
—–
Theater Review:
Varsity Blues. It’s a high school football movie. That just about covers it. But I have to say, it’s done really well. At the end of the movie, during the final game, I was on the edge of my seat. I really got caught up in the emotions of the situation. I have to give this movie a thumbs up.
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Today’s Song:
“If I Can’t Change Your Mind” by Sugar. In a bizarre sort of way, this has to do with everything I said above. The song rocks, but it’s the lyrics that bring me back to it again and again.
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Today’s Movie:
Total Recall. I got this on DVD. It’s just a good movie because sometimes, don’t you just wish you were someone else only pretending to be in your current life and that actually you were part of something bigger, something better, something.. important. I know I do sometimes… not all the time, but just sometimes.
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TV Highlight:
It’s been here before and it’ll probably be here again, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This show is still one of the better things on television. If you don’t watch it already, you should.
16 October 1998
Well, this is the end of my plan. I may start it up somewhere else someday, but for now, this is the end.
…all good things.
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Trivia Answer: Before Val Kilmer was in Top Gun he was in Top Secret!
15 October 1998
Argh… missed a few days… and I still don’t remember what I was going to rant about…
Pete and I have finally gotten some things rolling with our new gaming clan / social club… you’ll find us on Gamesnet irc servers in channel #nobody.
Other than that… I watched the Braves make a stab at a comeback that ended as I expected… they brought it to 6 games, but lost. From a 3-0 deficit they did a damn good job in any event.
Well… I’m off to do some junk (work mostly)… until next time… all good things.
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TV Highlight: Buffy… Charmed… and now I’m digging the commercials for Brimstone. This show should last about 6 episodes because most people won’t like it, but I think it looks like it’s going to kick some serious ass. I don’t like Peter Horton, but a show about a demon trying to do good to get into heaven just is a cool idea. I will be glued to the TV.
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Trivia Answer: Dennis Quaid and Val Kilmer both played Doc Holliday in movies about Wyatt Earp. Dennis did it with Kevin Costner in “Wyatt Earp” and Val did it with Kurt Russell in “Tombstone”.
Trivia Question: What was Val Kilmer’s big screen debut? (if you have been keeping track, we have circled back around to a member of the Top Gun cast.)
9 October 1998
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?
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.)
—–
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.
—–
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.