We found a new kitten at the Marin SPCA on Saturday. Originally named Cady, we are currently finalizing on Gris or Amber. She is adorable and has settled in very quickly. Other names are still being entertained, so have your say in the comments.
Update 8.4.2003 – We have decided on the name Madeleine, Maddy for the nickname. Have I mentioned that she is adorable?
While I don’t approve of the resentful French-bashing streaming from the American right-wing, as a person of English-decent any humor at the expense of the French tickles the funny bone. That said, head back over to Google and type in ‘French Military Victories’ and click ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’.
This post contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen Terminator 3 and don’t want to know what happens then don’t read this.
I left the movie feeling disappointed. As I reflected on the movie’s plot, thin—like butterfly wings, I was more dejected. What were they thinking? 175 million dollars for what? Some non-original chase scenes (the crane was somewhat original), most of which were recreations of chase scenes from Terminator 2, a new Terminator TX (not much different from the T-2000), and with the exception of Arnold, all new actors. We’ll leave aside his decision to do this movie in the first place, but with judgement skills like this, do we really want to consider him as Governor of California?
What really bugged me about the film was the new take on the frachise philosophy. The war is now inevitable. It is fate. So Sarah Connor’s epitaph, and best line from T2, ‘No fate but the fate we make.’ is gone, out the window, buh-bye. Instead we have an inevitable war with the machines (which is not stoppable at all in the movie); SkyNet will take over the world’s computers by viral infiltration or human invocation. The first movie started out this way, Sarah Connor running for her life, just trying to survive, yet in the end she defeats the Terminator and grimly realizes that the machines are not invincible. In Terminator 2, the humans go on the offensive and destroy the remaining parts from Terminator 1 that are leading to SkyNet’s creation. We even have a soliloquy at the end that tells the audience that the road is not set, that Sarah Connor’s rallying cry ‘No fate but the fate we make’ is the rule now, not fate.
Then Terminator 3 … war is inevitable … we end the movie with John Connor and new chickie (future wife and mother of his children) hiding in a bunker riding out judgement day.
So what is so terrible about that? You pays your $8.50 and you sees some shit blow up. Entertainment? No. No, it isn’t and it’s also lousy storytelling. Because now in the Terminator trilogy we are left with nothing more than three movies chronicling the beginning of what is arguably a much better story. Fictional heroes are not made in the early battles. John Connor’s heroic moments come in the future, so how about some of that story? How about the story of the war between man and machines? Since this war is no longer an option in the minds of the writers and producers, then why the hell do we care about the story of Terminator 3. Skip it. Let’s get on with the story of the war. Tell us how John finally grows up, stops whining and takes charge — PLEASE! Tell us how we turn the tide in the battle against the machines. Tell us the story of the Luddite nightmare that this franchise has become. Tell us about human spirit overcoming problems and defeating the machines. Don’t show us a movie that just rehashes a prior movie. Unfortunately, after blowing 175 million dollars on this waste of celluloid, I don’t think that story will ever be green-lighted, and the potential of this franchise, like this last movie, is wasted.
If you haven’t seen this yet, go to Google and type ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and click the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button, which will take you automagically to the first result.
Read the page, don’t just glance at it as I did the first time. If you just want to see the page, here it is.
Apple’s new 64-bit G5 system specs have been posted here (1.8MB PDF). All indications show that the G5 should rock the computer world and boost Apple’s lagging hardware sales.
Most significantly, the combination of the new dual-processor G5’s, Quark 6 and Acrobat 6, should be enough to finally move the publishing industry up to OS X. All the software above is finally OS X native, and the G5 will make those applications scream. Now I just need to get to Vegas and see whether Lady Luck will agree to fund the purchase …
My cat was killed last night by a hit-and-run driver right in front of the house. She hadn’t been outside too long but I guess the allure of checking out neighbor kitty’s domain was too much to resist.
She was a fine cat. A talico-tabby that I adopted from the pound in ’89, she was head-strong and demanding, as all cats tend to be. When she wanted to be petted she had a way of burrowing her head under an available hand as if to say, “There, I’ve done the hard part of lifting your hand into place, now please just move those fingers of yours and scratch me a bit.” Recently she also started to play peek-a-boo with my wife when we would lie in bed. If Pauline would pull the sheet over her head, Tasha would extend a paw and pull the sheet down and then keep her paw on Pauline’s chin while proceeding to doze off.
Tasha in the catnip
Yet, she was sick. Diagnosed with eosiniphilic granuloma almost two years ago now, she was getting monthly depomedrol shots to control the inflammation in her mouth. And maybe as a result of that she starting pulling her hair out along her flanks a few months ago. She was looking mangy, and would sometimes drool, but we still loved her. I would let her out of her carrier on the way back from the monthly vet visit and she would ride in the car’s passenger seat with her front paws perched on the dashboard, watching the world go by at what must have seemed like an astonishing pace. She was very cute when she did that.
So long Tasha. We’ll miss you.
Wu-hoo! Verizon, who has been a major opponent of forthcoming cell-phone number portability, has announced it will no longer be opposing the November implementation.
This New York Times article (free reg required), gives the details. My guess is Verizon was getting alot of bad press due to their opposition and by supporting it hopes to get some customers to switch to them come November. A paragraph from the article supports this supposition; “But the move may not be at all bad for Verizon, according to industry analysts. While the company has spent $50 million to prepare its system for portability, it may wind up gaining more customers than it loses, said Blake Bath, a wireless industry analyst with Lehman Brothers. Mr. Bath said Verizon had high customer satisfaction rates and was in “a great position” to capitalize on the dissatisfaction of customers who are signed up with its competitors and could be enticed to switch.”
I think Verizon will get alot of new customers, especially away from Sprint and AT&T where anecdotal evidence indicates customer dissatisfaction is rampant. AT&T and Cingular still oppose number portability.
Naturally I found this bit of news distressing. Basically, some computer manufacturers/retailers were finding it difficult to sell off their remaining USB 1.1 hardware. So last december the USB Forum announced “that henceforth USB 1.1 would be called USB 2 and USB 2 would continue to be called USB 2.”
Yes, you read that right. To further confuse things, the slower speed would be dubbed USB 2.0 “Full-Speed,” while the real USB 2.0 specification would be called USB 2.0 “Hi-Speed.” Un-frigging-believable. Really. Some would call this misleading, others, including myself, call it downright wrong. Some areas in life are a little grey, but this is just plain wrong. And furthermore, we are just now hearing about it, and not even from the American press. Un-frigging-believable.
Sony and Toshiba have both sold USB 1.1 laptops under the new USB 2.0 moniker. So if you bought a USB 2.0 machine lately and your speed doesn’t seem any faster than your old machine, thats why.
Wrong. Just wrong.
My loathing of Netscape 4.x increases daily. It is the only browser that requires extensive backward-compatible HTML code changes in order to render pages correctly. Microsoft has pretty successfully upgraded most users away from the IE 4.x branch, yet there are a couple percentage points of any site that still hang on to Netscape 4.x. C’mon people, you are holding up the works. Yahoo! and their <spacer> tags, table tags using HTML 3.2 coding, using tables for layout, all these things could be greatly mitigated if we could have a decent campaign to rid the world of Netscape 4.x. Maybe little ‘Netscape 4.x not welcome’ buttons? I am not advocating everyone use IE. Far from it. Upgrade to Netscape 7, or use the browser Netscape is derived from, Mozilla – both have built-in pop-up suppression, reason enough IMHO to upgrade. Or use Opera or if you are on OS X and haven’t installed Safari you better get on it because Microsoft ain’t makin’ IE for the Mac no more. If you like your browsers lean and mean, try Firebird (Win,Mac,Linux) or Camino (OS X), both offshoots of the same Mozilla code that make up Netscape 7. Netscape 4.x is five years old now folks. There are alot of nifty things that can be done with HTML that will enhance your Internet experience. So please, on behalf of web developers everywhere, UPGRADE!
Consumers scored a rare victory last Friday (6 June 2003) as the “US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the legality of a pending regulation from the Federal Communications Commission, known in the cell phone industry as ‘local number portability.'” Local number portability, to be implemented 24 November 2003, will allow you to switch your cell phone company while retaining your phone number. You won’t need to get new letterhead, business cards or go through the hassle of trying to contact the myriad of people who have your cell phone number.
As I mentioned earlier in my tirade about Sprint PCS, number portability was the main thing refraining me from switching to another carrier. The cell phone companies are against it, because they know that their years of customer disservice is going to now bite them in the ass. While all carriers have their downsides, and alot of switching may just be ‘grass is always greener’ syndrome, giving the consumer the ability to retain their number in a switch may actually improve carrier’s customer service. Perhaps they will now actually be empowered to actively retain existing customers and not just gear any new promotion to new customers.
Verizon is dead-set against number portability. Citing ‘huge costs’ and resource drains away from implementing enhanced 911 tracking (911 operators will be able to use GPS to determine a callers location), the carriers want yet another delay, and now that they have lost in the court they are lobbying Congress. In an amazing testament to campaign contributions, many lawmakers are actually falling for it. Nevermind that this rule was enacted in 1996 and that the carriers have had three delays since the original 1999 deadline; the carriers want to charge you for an implementation and then not implement it. If you look at your cell phone bill you will see a line-item charge for ‘Federal Telephone Number Pooling’ or something similar. Sprint has been charging customers since November 2002. All carriers have the charge and some may have been charging customers longer. Likewise for the enhanced 911 implementation. On my Sprint PCS bill, that line-item charge is ‘E911.’ So the carriers claims of high costs are nonsense, they are just passing the charges onto consumers, and if I’m paying for it, then I damn well want it!