Kevin's musings

Not much exciting to report on monday. I did stay up until the wee
hours finishing a book. It’s been a while since I did
that. Staying up till 3am is not as fun the next day as it used
to be. It was a fun book tho: The 4th Dresden book:
Summer
Knight. Not some kind of great literary work, but a fun
read. Lots of nice twists and turns, good fights and dialog.

I need to go out later today and get food for Xmas eve/day
dinners. Since I am staying home this year I get to make my own
dinner. Will probably look for one of those turkey breast
thingies, and look at doing some cookies or other desert.

Well, the party went quite well. Had a not gigantic, but reasonable
crowd. Had some good discussions on various topics. The carmel
apple martini’s were a big hit. Many of them were
consumed. Party finally broke up around 2am or so.

Today I think I will play with computers and watch netflix that have
piled up. Don’t have to do anything in particular, so I don’t
think I will.

Need to get my butt in gear and start cleaning up the house in prep
for the party tonight. Also need to make some cookies and take
stock and see if I have enough finger foody things. Also need to
check on booze. I think I have all the martini fixings I need,
but not sure about other things. Also need to go and drop off my
old microwave and toaster over at colorado homeless
families. Busy Busy.

Just your typical friday. Working along trying to get some things
installed and some other things upgraded. Should probibly go to
the store later and see about picking up stuff to make yummy
finger foods for the party tomorrow. As usual, I have no idea
how many people will show up. Only a few people managed to reply
they will be there, so we will see. I should invite more folks,
if I knew any more to invite.

Hurray. Cobalt machines are finally end of lifed. I fucking hate the
cobalt raq’s. Some clients of ours have them and they are
worthless and anoying. They don’t ever have security updates,
which is a gigantic “kickme” sign on the internet these
days. They don’t have featurefull software, since they are 10
million versions behind. They have crappy hardware. You can’t
get their binaries easily. They just suck. Hurray for them
getting the axe!

Had a nice time at boulder hacking society tonight. Went and had
dinner at the southern sun, then over to caffe sole for wireless
and geeking. The wireless there still hates my usb wireless
card. Noticed that my laptop has a mini-pci modem in it, and the
thought was to try a mini-pci wireless in it and see if it could
find it. Convinced john to take the mini-pci out of his thinkpad
and let me try it. Turns out tho to do that he needed a “secure
torx”, so that failed. Oh well, it was a nice try anyhow. Will
see about finding another mini-pci to try.

Just got back from The
Return of the King. It was quite excellent. I happen to
think the third book is the worst of the lot. The Sam and Frodo
stuff in there is endless and not very exciting. The battles in
the book are good tho. The movie made the Sam and Frodo parts
interesting and the battles were cool. Very nice movie. Its a
toss up between this and the first one wich was better. Will
likely have to see it again, and of course get the deluxe dvd
version when it comes out.

Didn’t update yesterday because I was messing with my laptop. Got a
new 80GB 5400 rpm drive for it. Pulled the old drive out and
put the new one in and did a fresh install. I tried to get my
old drive working on another machine so I could copy my data off
it to the new drive but ran into all kinds of hell. It wouldn’t
see it at all, or would address it in the wrong way so it
couldn’t see the partitions. Finally ended up putting it in a
machine and booting a rescue cd and bringing it up on the net
that way. Managed to pull off my data and get everything
configured back the way I like it again. Nice having lots of
space.

Tonight is the Return of the King showing. Should be nice. I am
looking forward to it.

Just suffered thru The
Hulk. Oh my ghod was it bad. Here’s some general rants
about this fetid pile of parrot droppings. (My apologies to
parrot droppings).

Why is it that most recent movies insist on making dialog so soft it’s
hard to hear it, but making the explosions and other stupidity
so loud it breaks your speakers? I guess it gives more dramatic
impact to the move, but I find it so annoying that it’s hard to
describe. When watching the DVD at home I tend to keep a window
(yes, I watch moves on a computer) open on my laptop logged into
the move machine with the mixer up and ready. I have to turn it
up for dialog and down for big boom shit. Fucking Hollywood.

This movie had about 1 dimension. Ok, so you show a cute collage of
Bruce growing up in the credits, but that doesn’t really make us
care about him. There wasn’t really any character there. How
about some footage of him before he hulked? Why should we
fucking care what happens to him? Why?

Granted that the military isn’t the smartest thing in the world, but
they should be able to learn from their mistakes. Why on fucking
earth would they keep trying to kill the hulk when they know
that it’s just making him madder and madder?

Special effects are fun, but hours and hours of them in a row is
boring and useless. Without any kind of a story or anyone we
care about at all, special effects just make your move cost more
and us madder that we wasted time watching it.

Jennifer Connelly
is cute and all, but thats not enough to make a movie. Well, a
non porno at least. Of course on one of the irc channels I
frequent, the discussion was: What happened with her breasts?
She was flat (and very cute) in labyrinth. Then she was gigantic
in the rocketeer. Goggle seems to say that she did have
reduction surgery, and also lost weight and had a
kid. Personally I liked her best when she isn’t as endowed.

Why do they always have to make a ending so they can have the opening
for the sequel? Christ. I sure hope there isn’t a sequel to this
craptacular POS.

I had a bottle of wine with dinner and the movie tonight. I should
have opened the vodka. Or perhaps the bottle of ever-clear.

Bummer. No snow. Just a bunch of annoying wind. Whats up with that?
Many of the last few winters have just been exceptionally
mild. Global warming? Bad luck? I don’t know, but I wish it
would snow more.

I’m gonna try and do a cocktail party next Saturday night. Hopefully
some people will still be around town and interested. Should
have martini’s and finger food. Looking forward to it. Anyone
reading this that didn’t get an invite, drop me a mail and I can
give you directions. kevin at scrye.com

Well, back from investico field. It was pretty grueling, but not
particularly difficult work. Some observations (in not
particular order):

The volunteers/employees at investico park at the Denver
Colosseum. Since the check in is done at the stadium, you could
in theory take advantage of free parking and shuttle bus by just
using it.

There were lots of security drones around, but they were quite low
key. I was kind surprised that there was no search or walking
through metal detectors. I could have walked in with whatever I
could wear no problem. Not sure what checks fans have to go
through.

I found it kinda funny that they were talking about being very strict
on some things (beer rules mostly), but yet had a list of names
of people who were mucky mucks and should be given whatever
they want.

So you spent a ton of money for a ticket to a game and what do you do?
Stand around and look out the view and wander around. I many
times heard my co-workers (who cared more than I about such
things) ask someone what the score was and they had no idea.

When I explain to you I can only sell you two beers, don’t keep trying
to let me sell you a third one. There was this otherwise nice
seeming lady that kept trying to get me to sell her another
beer. Sheesh.

Our booth ran out of pretty much everything by the end of the 3rd
quarter. Some things we started out not having. 6 bottles of
water sold out in about 15min before the game. The coke was gone
in one of the dispensers from the start, and the other died
before halftime. We were thinking it was because it was the last
game of the season and they wanted to get rid of as much as
possible so they didn’t have to deal with it off season.

Broncos games have big spenders. I can’t recall the number of 100′s I
got. Lots of 50′s. Carding everyone was I thought a good way to
do it. Some of the older folks were very happy to be carded
again.