Matador – seemed like a good idea, but just couldn’t hold my attention. Brosnan and Kinnear had good chemistry, and I thought it was a good role for Brosnan but the plot just flopped on me. 3/10

Benchwarmers – meh… how many times can we do the same movie? 2/10

V for Vendetta – The Wachowski brothers redeem themselves. Never read the book, so can’t say how well it does there. The action was great, story was solid, and can you really go wrong with Natalie Portman? 8/10

Yes Men www.theyesmen.org – Got a kick out of it. Can’t believe the stuff these guys got away with. 6/10

Watched Winter Soldier just because I had heard a decent amount about it. Disturbing really. My father was in the VietNam war, and I know the trouble he had readjusting to life back here. He never really talked much about it either. A frightening look at war and what it does to people. Also makes you think twice about backing the US whenever we accuse people of war crimes – if we can’t confess to our own, we have no right to accuse others.

October Sky – Somehow I missed this one years ago. Great, feel-good, based-on-a-true-story about The Rocket Boys getting out of a small mining town by using their brains. 7/10

… man I’ve watched a lot of movies lately….

Cellular – Lame. I’m not sure who told me to watch this, but I want to punch them in the face. 2/10

Inside Man – How did anyone give this a good review?! Great cast directed by Spike Lee, it just tried to do too much. It was a great bank heist movie – I may have even put it up close to Heat – but it tried to throw some political thriller BS in there and lost me. I still give it a 5/10 for the good parts though.

Scary Movie 4 – Not my idea. Pretty much what you should expect from this franchise by now – good for a few laughs, but if you haven’t seen what it’s spoofing you’ll stare blankly at the screen. I’ll give it a 4/10 just for the digs at Cruise.

Brick – Really enjoyed this. I actually had to turn the subtitles on a few times – the fast dialogue, made up lingo, and bad sound made it tough to watch at parts. Watching some of the deleted scenes, you see what the poor sound engineers had to work with though. A noir-murder mystery that’s light on the mystery. Fairly original I thought – they set it in a high-school. The high-school aspect isn’t really meant to be high-school. Don’t think of this as a Dead Teenager Movie. I think the director even said something about “… this is to high-school as Gotham City is to New York City” Good story and solid acting by a bunch of unknowns. 8/10

Just felt like typing something this morning I guess.

If you’ve been stopping by my little corner here for awhile, you’ll notice I’ve got some links up to the ‘old’ stuff. Some of it I’ve made look pretty, other things I just haven’t. I’ve always used this site for my own personal amusement, and I thought it’d be nice to get some of the old stuff back. Not everything works, and I know the ‘fish cam’ is down more than it’s up and I broke the comments again… but like I said, it’s for my amusement and the 3 of you that read this don’t click on the google ads enough for me to quit my job and work on it full time. 🙂

So, anyway, a lot of crap has happened lately. One of which was a friend of mine had an accident skydiving and died from his injuries. It’s weird how the human brain works sometimes. Even though when you start in this sport, the ‘old timers’ will tell you “Skydive long enough, and you will lose friends to the sport” – it still seems like it’s something that happens to ‘someone else’. He just screwed up – which is one of the things that makes me mad. Maybe mad isn’t the right word… let me see if I can explain: Ted was a very logical person – he thought through everything he did or was about to do. Even then, a momentary lapse in judgment cost him his life. I don’t think things through that much, and I do a lot of shit on a whim. It just seems like analytical people should miss the “Shit Happens Bus” more often.
Ted and I had had our issues, and we were probably a bad influence on each other on occasion… but I always had a good time with him, he could always make me laugh even if I was having a crappy day/week, and the skydives were always fun… or at least entertaining. The last few times I’ve been out to the DZ, it’s just been ‘different’ and I’m not sure why. Because he’s not going to be there again to jump, drink, talk, laugh with or if just because the whole ‘losing a friend to the sport’ has taken some of the joy out of this hobby of mine.

Beware, dear son of my heart, lest in thy new-found power thou seekest even the gates of Olympus . . . . These wings may bring thy freedom but may also come thy death.

-— Daedalus

I think I had more to write, but I think that’ll do it for today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write my “Ode to the Lady in the POS Gold Buick”

This is just a test. I’m switching hosting providers.

Why is it everytime you call to cancel, they want to see what they can do to keep you? Any other time you can’t get them to do anything for you.

I think everything that I care about is working again. I put some links up there to some old parts of the site – some of it’s really ugly, and some of it isn’t working yet. You’ll have to get over that.

Oregon Trail – 6306 is my best score so far.
Yes, between the PCs, Xbox, and PS2 at my house… I still end up playing really old games.

Just want to see if this works:

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Cisco Exam Number: 640-801
Passing score: 849
Your Score: 912

I rule.

Anyone looking for a network engineer?

Total Credits: Required – 100.00 Earned – 101.00 Remaining – 0.00
Total GPA: 3.517

10 Years after I started, I finally have a degree! If anyone has been paying attention, a year ago I decided to finish my degree. No pressing reason to I guess, it was just something I regretted never actually finishing. Unfortunately, because so much time had passed many of my credits from long ago didn’t count anymore. So I basically still had a year left. I set myself a goal of being done in a year, and I actually hit it. So for the past year I’ve been working 40-50 hours a week and taking 14-17 credit hours. To say I didn’t have much of a life is probably an understatement. I’m not really sure I’ll know what to do with all my free time this summer. Thursday I take a Cisco certification exam, then I’m done with studying. Eventually I may go on to get a 4 year degree… maybe in another 10 years though.

So, next chapter? I have no idea. Assuming I pass this exam Thursday (and I should) I’ll have:

• 10 years experience as network administrator
• AAS Computer Information Systems/Network Engineer
• Cisco Certified Network Associate
• Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

Actually, I’m not sure if my MCSE is still valid – I’ll have to look into that. Too many of my exams might have been retired by now. That’s actually a pretty decent looking resume I think. I think I’ll relax for a couple weeks… maybe take a nice vacation this summer. Then I’ll tighten up the resume and see where it leads me. Know anyone hiring?

Why can’t gum companies just say what flavor you’re buying? Had I known “Midnight Cool” actually meant “black licorice” I wouldn’t have bought the crap! Damn you Wrigley!!! Stop trying to be cute and just name the stupid thing what it is.

Sigh… more stupidity requires my attention. Guess I’ll have to write the rest later.

I’m building an ark – anyone have some animals that need saving?

Adding to the List of Thing I Don’t Understandâ„¢
– If a print job fails, why do you try it 6 more times? Did you forget you already hit ‘print’?
– How did Terry not win Survivor?

Not much going on since my last post, so here are some random thoughts:

My bike is running beautifully now – I went wandering around last weekend for a little over 100 miles.

Have you seen Napster Links? (free registration req’) — pretty cool stuff.

I’m done with one class, and almost finished with the other two. One is actually going to take until the end of the quarter, the others I worked ahead in. Not sure what I’m going to do with myself after this quarter… vacation maybe.

Speaking of being done with this crap, I’ve been offered a job. On the upside, it’s big money, something new, in a new place, would look great on a resume, and could lead to a really good full-time gig. The bad: It’s a 3 month stint in Iraq. Sigh… yeah, I’ll probably pass on that one. The money isn’t good enough to dodge IEDs while working 7×12.

Who broke the weather? This constant cloudiness is making me grumpier than normal.

I can’t get motivated to study this cisco crap.

I’m thinking of buying one of these to play Gran Turismo 4 with. Does that make me just a little too much of a geek? I’m going to buy a controller that costs 8x what the game did, and almost as much as the system I’m playing it on. If you want, you can buy it for me. Hey, at least I’m not asking for this to go with it!

I’ll put this here for anyone that happens to hit Google looking for why their car won’t start (hopefully it’ll save you some time – the answers are out there, it just takes awhile to find) This specifically applies to Pontiac Grand Am (at least year 2000 through 02) but presumably could hold true for most GM vehicles. If you go to start your car and it does nothing – lights come on but starter doesn’t turn (some report that the starter turns, but the fuel pump isn’t on so it’ll never actually start) it may be because of the stupid passlock system. It’s a security “feature” that keeps people from stealing your car. The computer needs to ‘see’ the key turn. Of course, this only applies if your battery isn’t dead – watching your dome/dash lights for dimming when you try to start it will tell you if the battery is dead or not. With the key in the “on” position, the “Security” light will be flashing. Leave the key on for 11 minutes – the security light should stop flashing. Turn the key back to off, then try to start it. This is how the computer relearns the key. At this point I’m not sure how to keep it from happening again (assuming it does) but it’s probably either something as simple as needing a new key (if there’s a lot of bronze showing on your key, try this first) or something a little worse like the ignition cylinder needing replaced. I guess I’ll find out. I don’t think my next car will be a Grand Am – between this and the 3 replaced wheel hub assemblies, it’s driving me nuts already.

I should probably get some work done…

Happy tax day!

Well this weekend was pretty nice – I got a lot accomplished, had some fun, got ahead in my school work, made the World’s Greatest Ribs &trade and even had a few minutes to setup a Fish Cam 🙂 My bike is even (almost) ready to go for the season – just waiting on the battery that should be on my porch today. Just a note – if you decide to change the plugs yourself on a R6, it’ll take much longer than you think it will.

In case anyone is accessing my home Cisco lab – it might be a little goofy for the next few weeks. I do have a Cat 5000 that I’m dropping in, as well as a new 2600 to do trunking. It’ll be on the diagram eventually.

So the “Tax Professionals” are going out after work to celebrate the end of their busy season. I wish I could cram 80% of my job into 3 months, then have a party thrown for it. “Yeah for you! You did your job! We’re all so proud!” Gag. Why don’t they throw me a party for driving 40 miles to click a button for some moron? (No, seriously, I did that last week) Ingrates.

I guess that’s about it… everything is boring here at the moment. But it’s summer, and that always gets a little exciting.

Yesterday was a spectacular Monday. Ok, so work was bad for a Monday, but after…. after was good. I got home in record time (I was tired, I skipped class) and decided to run some errands. Didn’t have to wait at all to get my haircut, and the guy did it in less than 10 minutes. Went to the grocery, had a ton of stuff, went right to an open cashier who had to be the quickest cashier I have seen in my life. If I decide to open a grocery store, he’s my lead cashier. Seriously, I was the bottleneck – I couldn’t throw stuff on the belt fast enough for him.

My night was even educational – at the gas station I learned that “… you don’t need a million dollars if you’re dating someone with a million dollars!” When I start my own country, talking loud on a cell phone in public will be a serious offense. I may even allow law enforcement to just shoot you if you’re doing that. At least those of us standing in line got a good laugh out of it. Oh, and ordering $20 worth of food at a fast food drive thru will also get you shot. Yes, some lady did that Sunday – and of course had no idea what the entire family wanted when she pulled up to the speaker. But I’m not here to complain about Sunday, Sunday was still decent too – my mother was in town, she came out to the DZ to watch and had a good time.

Maybe sometime this week I’ll get the ‘old’ stuff back up on here. When I rebuilt the whole thing, I never put the links back in to the old stuff… probably time to do that. And I may put up a ‘fish cam’ – I have a small saltwater tank now and a webcam that’s doing nothing. I don’t get searches for ‘balki’ anymore, but now there’s a dozen or so a month looking for casts, broken bones, legs in casts, etc. That just seems odd. And a link to something on here was posted on a car forum, but I have no idea what. And I got hit with guestbook spam… seriously people, what’s the point? You suck.

Ok, back to playing with VMWare and planning a vacation for the summer….