We borrowed the movie “Taken” from JonesBuster. I must say that JonesBuster has a wonderful selection of movies, I highly recommend them. We watched in Monday Evening after our daughter went to bed. The tension built immediately. They did a wonderful job keeping you on the edge of the seat. Overall the movie was great, I loved it. There were a couple of disturbing scenes, mostly when “Peter” gets hit by a truck. I have also heard comments about the main character being too brutal to the bad guys, though I must say, that if I were in his position, I don’t know if I would be very kind and loving to them either. Suffice to say, I recommend the film, but top those who are a little older, definitly not for your 12 year old.
Movie Review: Taken
May 21st, 2009Movie Review: Star Trek
May 11th, 2009I just got a new job, in order to get that new job I had to interview all over the place. One of the places I interviewed at was called Digicert. They still haven’t filled the position that I applied for, but apparently the owner likes to keep “good relations” with everyone. So they rented a movie theater and sent out invitations to see the new Star Trek movie. How can any one refuse a free movie. Besides, a free Star Trek movie, even better!
Overall the movie was fun. It was quite action packed and did a pretty good job building the story and developing characters. The special effects are really good as well. I know a few people that have issues with time travel, so they probably won’t like the film, but for those that can look past the time paradoxs, I think you will enjoy the movie.
The only complaint that I have with the story, is that I don’t feel like Nero had much of a position to hate Spok as much as he did. I don’t want to say much more than that, otherwise I’ll give to much away. Let me know what you think of the film.
Fun with telemarketers
May 8th, 2009I have always been annoyed when telemarketers call and try to sell me something that I don’t want now, and never will want. As I have grown older my opinion of telemarketers has not really changed much. That said, my outlook on how to deal with them has changed. What in the world does that mean? Well, as I have grown older I have discovered that most people don’t like telemarketers either, so the nicest thing for me to do is to tie up these telemarketers for as long as I can.
At first I started asking them to hold, and then I would walk away. That was an alright way of dealing with the menace, but I figured there was more that could be done. As a result, I started letting the telemarketers give me their sales pitch, and then tell them to hold. Although this worked sufficiently well, I did not really get to have much fun with them.
I then found some very interesting videos on YouTube that show an very efficient way to deal with them. A way that allows me to have fun yet time the sales person up for a long time. How about you watch them for yourself, they are fairly self explanatory.
This one shows the power of a little social engineering and also shows that you need to be careful about what you say.
And here is a fun on that shows how easy it is to annoy a telemarketer. I must warn you it is a little long, but it is funny!
I think that it’s just some good quality fun! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I couldn’t stop laughing while I watched the first one.
Game Review: Super Mario Brothers 3
May 8th, 2009I hear a lot of people complain about the Nintendo Wii because “it doesn’t have the fancy x that the y has.” This complaint drives me nuts. Even though the new gaming consoles have fancy graphics, the games aren’t nearly as fun. One of the best features of the Nintendo Wii is that through the Wii Shopping Channel, a player can get old retro games. One of these games I got this last week was Super Mario Brothers 3.
My wife and I have spent quite a bit of time playing this game. It’s great because it doesn’t make her dizzy from all of the movement, and it has absolutely no violence in it. Unless you count jumping on turtles and then hurtling them at walking mushrooms.
The game is simple and easy to plan but can offer hours of enjoyment. It also appears to have added the ability to save, though I have yet to figure out how to save the game. Maybe one of these days I will read the manual. Once again, if you want to play come on over, or check it out on the Shopping Channel.
Bloggin’ Upgrade
May 7th, 2009For all of you who have tried to make comments, but have been unable to for a variety of reasons, the most common being that my posts have vanished, or you have been unable to login, I have some very good news. I have updated the blog software to the most current version. Hopefully that means that there won’t be any more missing/phantom posts. I have also changed the way that comments work. Now you just need to fill in the form, my server checks it for spam and blocks it if it thinks it is spam. Hopefully we won’t lose any one comments. It has to be filled with quite a bit of spam to be blocked, so we shouldn’t have any issues. Good luck and thanks to every one who is leaving comments.
Game Review: World of Goo
May 7th, 2009For graduation my grandparents gave me a nice crisp twenty dollar bill (among other things). I was explicitly told that I was to use the money on something that I wanted, not what my wife wanted, not what we wanted, and not something my daughter wanted. I was told to spend the money on myself. Since purchased a Nintendo Wii last year, I decided to get a game for that. The game I got was called World of Goo.
World of Goo is available for download in the Wii Shop channel, it is also available for every other OS out there (Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX). This game, which I heard about a few months ago from some co-workers, quickly jumped to the top of my favorites list. If you enjoyed the old classic games that allowed the player to solve puzzles and think about how to accomplish a specific task, then you will love this game. I feels a lot like a modern version of the Incredible machine crossed with Lemmings.
It has a nice slick UI, has a stellar sound track (that you can download for free), and has some pretty good graphics. The thing that I find most interesting is that this game was created by two guys that doesn’t spend any money and who’s office is which ever random wifi coffee shop they wander into on a given day. This game truly shows you what can happen with a little work and no money. They are truly a success. Check out the game play trailer that I have included below. Come on over to my house and play the game if you desire. This is definitely a game to purchase so that these guys continue to make good quality stuff!
Movie Review: Lady in the Water
April 29th, 2009This film was quite interesting to me. I had to wait a while before seeing it. My wife has a hard time watching potentially scary movies, and this one looked to scary for her. So while she was at a bridal shower, I jumped on the opportunity to watch the movie.
Overall the story was cool and the director did a good job exposing portions of it at a time. The director also did a pretty good job of leading me in one direction, and then all of a sudden I had come to the wrong conclusion. I felt part of the movie, because the characters in the film experienced the same thing.
Some of the special effects seemed weak at times, but the story of the movie made up for those portions of the film. Overall I would give it three stars. Hope you enjoy it as well. Let me know what you thought of the film.
The trouble with other peoples hardware
April 26th, 2009Last night while I was sleeping (or rather, trying to sleep, my allergies have been getting to me the last few days) I received a phone call. It was one of my clients. He said that he had been unable to access his computer for the last 40 minutes and wanted me to check it out. It never seems to fail, I leave for the weekend, and that is when the disasters happen. Fortunately, last week I replaced my border switch with a Cisco 2924, this made it possible to troubleshoot a lot more without actually being on site in the data center. I found that all my hosting equipment was working right and that my clients computer had a link. So I called the on call technician and had him restart the computer. That still didn’t fix the problem, so I had the technician log in. We found that the default network route was configured wrong (don’t ask me how that happens in the middle of the night) so I fixed the default route (which meant sending the information to the default router rather than the network address.) which fixed the problem and everyone is happy now.
Webhosting Upgrade
April 24th, 2009I have added a new service that I am offering with my webhosting company. I have started offering colocation. This new service has started to tax some of the companies resources, so as a result modifications had to be made. The goal of the modification was to start measuring the bandwidth that each server/colocation client that is used.
In order to facilitate this change, a new border switch had to be installed. I purchased a Cisco 2924 on Ebay. The great thing about this switch is that it is a fully managed, the previous switch is classified as a web-smart switch, which simply means that it has a web interface. The new switch allows my monitoring server to poll the switch and store usage information about each port.
A long time coming
April 24th, 2009I have finally gotten back to writing entries on my blog. I haven’t had much time, but now that I have finished my degree in Computer Science Networking so I will have some more time to write. So come back often.
