Archive for December, 2004

30
Dec

Sin City

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Cool and Movies

A while back Frank Miller (”The Dark Knight Returns”, “Ronin”) was disgusted with Hollywood and refused to sell the movie rights to any of his creations, especially Sin City. Robert Rodriguez (”Desperado”, “From Dusk Til Dawn”) was a huge fan and secretly put together a short film of one of the Sin City stories.

He presented the finished footage to Miller with the proclamation: “If you like this, this will be the opening to the movie. If not, you’ll have your own short film to show your friends.” Miller approved and here is the trailer for the upcoming movie.

It seems to be a nearly shot-for-shot copy of the (amazing) comic and I get chills watching that trailer. Pick up the Sin City comics if you even halfway like hard-boiled film noir, and definitely check this movie out when it debuts.

*Chills* I tells ya.

28
Dec

It Means “Hunt Master”

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Cool

I know several people who should have got one of these for Xmas and I’m one of them.

24
Dec

I’m An Addict

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Personal

I admit it. I’m addicted to Diet Vanilla Coke. Anyone who’s been to my house has seen the empty cans everywhere, the closet-full of boxes of empties, and the minifridge in my office full of nearly forty perfectly cold Diet Vanilla Coke cans.

Seems I’m not alone.

I started drinking Diet Coke back when I first started Body For Life, mostly when going out for dinner. Before that, I was a massive Coca-Cola drinker and looking back I’ll bet that most of the carbs-turned-to-fat on my body is from the godawful amount of sugar my Coca-Cola habit put into my body. Now if only I could get rid of it as easily…

I like Diet Coke, but I *love* Diet Vanilla Coke. When my stores get low I start planning a trip to Superstore to get more (they sell 12-packs of the cans for a measly $3, compared to Save-On Foods’ “sale price” of $4.29). The only drawback of Superstore is that they’re often out of DVC. It turns out it’s incredibly popular and the distribution deal forces them to take equal amounts of everything so they can’t overorder from Coke to make up for that. Bah.

Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. I’m not going to stop though. I don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, and don’t drink alcohol all that often, so I’ve gotta do *something*, right?

20
Dec

Which Firefly Character Are You?

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Survey

Haven’t done one of these in a long time, but hey, it’s Firefly even if it is blatantly obvious which selection applies to which character…

Mal
You are Captain Malcolm Reynolds, aka. Mal or
Captain Tightpants. You saw most of your men
die in a war you lost and now you seek solitude
with a small crew that you are fiercely devoted
to. You have no problems being naked.


Which Firefly character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

20
Dec

Corporate Non-Denominational Winter Celebration Gathering

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: General

Saturday night Mel & I went to the Stream Christmas party. Well, they couldn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. Stream is one of those companies that’s big enough that it has to do everything in its power to not offend people that work there because they might sue. So if you’re Wiccan or Athiest or whatever and they start talking about Christmas in any kind of official manner you’ll be a dick and claim that it is creating an uncomfortable working environment.

Look, I’m an athiest, but it’s a damned word, ok? It’s like a shortcut everyone uses for “winter-time reason for partying”. Whether it’s Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, Decemberween, or just excuse-to-get-drunk-with-coworkers it really doesn’t matter. Nobody’s trying to bring up Jesus, so we could all just settle down.

Anyway, the party was about what you’d expect from a staff function. The people were varied from the professional (in suit and ties) to the radical (a full-on glued up mowhawk) to the slovenly (multiple bad mullet wearers in illl-fitting out-of-fashion clothing). Entertainment was Trevor McDonald, an old friend of mine. He used to run the club “Earthquake Annies” and I was the guy he came to for computer help all the time. He performs mostly classic rock playing his guitar with drums and other backing-tracks running off a computer and Katrien DeGroot singing backup vocals. For what it is, it’s quite good and fit well with the evening.

Dinner was so in-keeping with a staff party that I probably could’ve loaded my plate blindfolded. Buns, butter pats in individual containers, salads (dressing in nearby containers and Caesar), broccoli/cauliflower/carrots mix, mashed potatoes, pasta, salmon and of course, roast beef. Nothing surprising and certainly nothing with any spice to it. Some day I’d like to go to one of these and see some curry or thai food with a “Spicy!” warning in front of it as well as the usual.

We ate, we talked with a few people (Tony was there of course) and left around midnight. It’s hard to say I enjoyed myself. It certainly wasn’t a bad night, but there weren’t really any high points either.

In other words, a standard staff Xmas party.

15
Dec

Creationists Are Just Asking For Fair Play?

By Puck 0 Comments
Categories: Rant

A question for the Creationists out there who are arguing for “Intelligent Design” (or any other version of “God Made Everything With Magic”) being taught in school Science classes:

Are you also arguing for the teaching of Evolution in Religious Studies classes?

Addendum:
Ok, one person already didn’t get the irony there. What I’m saying is that Creationism has no place in a Science class in the same way that Evolution has no place in a Religious Studies class. Everyone get it? Ok, good. Carry on.

08
Dec

If you don’t run anti-virus, you’re the problem.

By Puck 1 Comment
Categories: Rant and Software

First off, go to Trendmicro’s Housecall, a free virus scan and let it install the ActiveX controls needed for you to scan your computer, then start the scan. I’ll wait here until you get back.

Go. I’m not continuing until you start that scan.

Oh, you want to know why? Because when you get infected with a virus these days you’re not hurting yourself, you’re hurting thousands and thousands of other people. Today’s viruses can be installed via unpatched Internet Explore Security Holes (and you do go to Windowsupdate.com and patch them, right?), opening email attachments (that you thought were from friends, or of Anna Kournakova being naked) or from the old-fashioned “running an infected file”. There are even some viruses that can just get onto your computer if it’s on the Internet, not behind a firewall, and not updated with the latest security patches.

And what most viruses these days do after they’ve been infected is spam themselves out to EVERYONE ELSE YOU KNOW. That includes me. I checked my email today and Symantec Antivirus deleted TWENTY virus attachments. Someone who knows me, or at least has my email in their temporary internet files folder somewhere, is infected and their computer is non-stop sending itself out through its own email program, over and over again.

And all it’d take is an antivirus program. Me, I like Symantec (aka “Norton”) Antivirus. It’s powerful, a fair price (I suppose) and constantly updated.

My guess is that the majority of you out there don’t have an antivirus program installed, or haven’t updated the one you have and haven’t done a scan in a long time. Oh sure, maybe *you* aren’t opening email attachments, but is everyone who uses your computer so smart?

A friend (coughJoeKeysercough) asked me today why he couldn’t send email. He gave me the error and it was because his outgoing mail port was blocked. After going through every possible cause I figured it had to be his ISP blocking it, and the main reason for that: They detected he was sending out TONS of email and was either a spammer or infected. So they blocked it. Good for them, I say. If not for that action he would have continue to send out that virus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to everyone in his address book and anyone whose email showed up on a web page he visited. Nobody would know it was him because viruses are smart and fake their “from” addresses.

So look, just go get scanned. If you come up clean, that’s great. You should still get an antivirus program installed, and should definitely make sure you get the latest Windows security patches.

And while you’re at it, stop installing spyware just to get at porn. Yeah, you know who you are.