Tag: today

Mystery Men

Reviews

I know its an old movie, but I picked it up on DVD at Best Buy for five bucks today. I love this movie. Its a perfect example of what I think this world would be like if there were superheroes. There would be people with real super powers, but most of them would just be regular guys with kitchen utensils and garden implements throwing down a little justice on the wicked. Its also kinda what I was hoping for when I heard about City of Heroes so long ago… sadly, while their costume creator is fantastic, the uniqueness of the character under the suit is very limited. If you want to be a scrapper, you have a sword, a katana, some claws, a dark aura, spines, or you are a martial artist. And every archtype has the same limitations… you can put twenty blasters next to each other, and they may “look” vastly different… until they all pull out their assault rifle and fight exactly the same way. Where is my shovel? Where are my forks? Where is my bowling ball? Where is my furious rage?

Anyway, the movie itself is great. I highly recommend it.

World’s Worst Fortune

Random Thoughts

So last night we ordered chinese, General Tso’s Chicken as usual from the place across the street. It was good, as usual. And after the meal, I opened my fortune cookie.

Promote literacy. Buy a box of fortune cookies today.

Wow… Not a fortune, but an advertizement. I fear for what this might be an omen of…

Links

Site News

Not much going on today… but I did manage to move my links from the old site to this one, and they have a page all their own.

The Line Forms to the Left

Random Thoughts

I started laughing uncontrollably today. But it was one of those things that shouldn’t really be funny. As I’m sure you know, the Pope died. Its a sad but expected loss. His health had been dwindling, and the whole world knew he was not long for this place. Over on CNN’s website, they’ve been running constant play-by-play coverage, as they do with just about every story. And this article appeared this morning, mile-long line for glimpse of pope.

And I started laughing.

When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Disney World, and my experience waiting in lines has never ever been the same. While we stood in line for tickets, and me being a huge fan of School House Rock, I started singing “Elbow Room” and jabbed some poor guy in the kidney while I was claiming my space in the name of Manifest Destiny. But that’s not really why I was laughing… It was all the signs they used to have at the various rides.

So I’m reading about the pope, and the mile-long line, and the first thing I imagine is the Louvre museum scene from the movie ‘Eurotrip’. I picture people standing in line, and a mime-robot is there trying to entertain the masses and earn money to feed his robot family. Then I see the first sign, “The wait from this point is [240] minutes.” And the numbers are those stick-on numbers so they can change the sign as needed. At the front of the line was a standee, which looked like an archbishop with his hand put out to his side about waist level, and a word bubble hung over his head, “You must be this tall to view the Pope.” From there the scene went crazy… women holding screaming kids, people placing their belongings into cubbies before going to view the Pope, people coming out the other door some saying it was the best viewing ever while others were trying to play off that they slept through the whole thing. Finally, I turn to my friends and say, “Screw this guys, he’ll still be dead later, this line blows, lets head over to Lenin’s tomb and come back here when the line dies down.”

Hours later, I’m still chuckling. Yes, I’m weird.

And sometimes they do it wrong.

Random Thoughts

After such a glowing view of the new GM events in EverQuest, Verant goes and has a 7 hour patch. No wait, a 9 hour.. make that a 12 and a half hour patch.

But I supposed they were due. The last half dozen patches have actually finished BEFORE the deadline. I guess something broke today.

13 March 2001

Random Thoughts

The First Step
I did something good today. Something hard.
One of the toughest things I have found in life to do is to take the first step toward anything. The first step is the most painful, and the reason people generally avoid taking them. It is change. Leaving the comfort of what is and stepping toward unfamiliar ground.
I cleaned my bathroom.
Yeah, laugh. Go on.
Now let me explain.
I used to live in a damn near immaculate apartment. I have for quite a while. My mother was always shocked considering the number of years I refused to clean my room. But the first time I moved out on my own, it was a, pun intended, clean slate. I started off putting things away, vacuuming regularly, and so on. And I had a roommate that was also fairly clean. My roommate’s cleanliness, however, turned out to be tied directly to his mood. When we moved to the next apartment, he changed jobs and stopped seeing the girl that he was, and he stopped cleaning. Happy.. clean. Unhappy.. not clean. But it was okay as there was me and our third who kept this tidy. Then I moved back home. My parents had a new house that I had never lived in. I had one room, and I felt like a guest. So I moved out again with a friend who bought a house. It was clean, but he preferred to have a “cleaning day” once a month instead of cleaning along the way. It was his house, so I went along with it. Then decided to get my own place. Ahhh… Freedom. 🙂 This place I cleaned, kept my own schedule, and it was good. Of course, time came that I decided I needed more money, so I moved and took on two roommates. We are slobs now. Well, not totally. We clean enough so that its not filth, but there are stack of books, boxed sitting around, and more.
But today I took the first step, and cleaned the bathroom.
See, the trick I have found is that often it looks more daunting than it is because you look at “cleaning the apartment”, when its actually more managable if you look at “cleaing the bathroom”, “cleaning the living room”, “cleaning the bedroom”, and so on. Making the large task smaller, and less painful steps to take.
Baby steps.

14 February 2001

Random Thoughts

Love
Does she think of me,
when I think of her
all the time
Does she dream of me,
when I dream of her
every night
And does she smile
And does she laugh
She does
I do
 
You’ll pardon the poetic, but today’s that day. You know the one. The roses, the candies, the cards, the hearts. Valentine’s Day.
While this day is often thought of as the romantic’s domain, I think its also important to remember family and friends. There is all kinds of love in the world, and none of it is any more important than any other. Today should be a celebration of all love, not just romantic love.
That said…
You know who you are.
I love you.

2 October 1999

Random Thoughts

Well, I finally got just about everything done on this page. At least enough that I feel comfortable killing the old page dead and putting up my first .plan file in the new format.
Not much to say today, but I should have something to say tomorrow. For now, I need to finish up, sign off, and head out. I’m going to meet someone I haven’t met before for a friendly movie and maybe some dinner. Or perhaps this person will turn out to be some sort of Internet stalker and I’m just heading out to my own demise.
I’ll report in tomorrow… or maybe I won’t.

25 February 1999

Random Thoughts

WARNING: Job rant to follow.
I work for a software company. I work in tech support. (No. I have never had someone ask me about their coffee cup holder. It’s not that kind of support.) I deal with a GUI Development Software package, and I support the programmers who use it.
So all today I have sat in a training class on the newest features of our latest release of one of our products (all of which will be integrated into all of our products). And I’m in awe. With all these new tools and functions, knowledgeable developers will be able to do some really cool stuff. And not only that, they will be able to do large amounts of work in a short period of time. If someone takes a good month or two and develops a nice set of templates for our product that use all the little features we have made available, the programmer will be able to do a one time pass through of the automatic GUI building procedure and be left with only minimal changes, those minor things we have yet to incorporate, to make before they have a final product. They just need to sit down, read all the instructions and then they’ll be set.
So why am I really not looking forward to all this?
It’s that last line. It turns out that 98.5% of all programmers don’t feel they need to read instructions. They know they basics, and they should be able to “feel out” the rest of it. Boy, is that a complete load of bullshit.
When our new product comes out, I will spend the next 3 to 4 months “recovering” people from their “feeling out” the new features. People will manages to irrevocably delete entire projects without making backups and blame me. People will accidentally invalidate data and even the Windows registry playing with things that they have no idea what they are doing, and in the end they will blame me. Every step, every tool, every piece of information they will ever need is within their reach. And each one of them will throw it in the trash because they are “programmers” and they don’t need “handholding”, they aren’t “children”. But they will cry. Each and every one of them will cry when I explain, “Well, you shouldn’t have done that. It says so in the manual.”
So if you ever learn anything from me and my postings here it is this… RTFM. Read The Fucking Manual. Every page. Every word. Every step of every tutorial and example. And don’t blame the support guy for your mistakes. He’s just doing his job.
—–
Theater Review:
none.
—–
Today’s Song:
Overkill by Lazlo Bane. This is originally a Men At Work song, but I picked up this CD from Lazlo Bane based on someone telling me that if I liked the original I would love the remake. Well, I loved the original, so I snagged 11 Transistor by Lazlo Bane and popped it in the CD player. Man, I was totally blown away by this version of the song. Where the original was kind of bubble gum poppy like most of Men At Work’s stuff, this version is smoldering fire. It builds up, starting with one man and a guitar, and ends with Collin Hay himself guesting in the final verse. Truly worth my money, ’cause the rest of the CD isn’t too bad either.
—–
Today’s Movie:
For some odd reason, I’ve had quotes from Real Genius floating through my head all day, so I’m making it my movie of the day. If you have never seen this Val Kilmer classic, you must. Go to the video store now and rent it. Some of you might have to wait because someone else might get to it first, but that’s okay. Go tomorrow. And the next day. And everyday until you get it. And Kent, stop playing with yourself.
—–
TV Highlight:
(sarcasm)
RERUNS!! I love it when I get to see shows that I’ve already seen, especially if I have seen them 2 or 3 times before. But one step even better is when they preempt reruns so they can air some movie (edited for television) that made hundreds of millions in the theater guaranteeing that 99% of their audience has already seen it, and probably rented it too. Titanic will probably be a good one to run on TV (over 2 nights even!!) because NO ONE has seen that one. And NO ONE has rented or bought it yet. I mean, can you imagine all of the people (all 6 or 7 of them) who will finally be able to see Titanic!!!
(/sarcasm)