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Domains Forklifted |
11-Jul-2007 |
The relocation of domains has begun. loseke.net
and bugzilla.com have both been moved to
the new provider as I'm losing the free ride where I've had them tucked away for years
now. swo.com will follow shortly once I'm up to speed
on all the nitty gritty, and one cool new feature will be the forums for all the SWO folks.
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Worlds of Warcraft Stress Test |
13-Sep-2004 |
This past weekend, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate
in the stress test portion of a beta test in Blizzard's new MMORPG called Worlds of Warcraft. As
you can imagine, not much sleep ensued. Read on for some screenshots and comments on the
experience.
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Cabin Fever: A Review |
15-Sep-2003 |
Lions Gate Films has a fun one for the end of summer horror movie
crowd which does a good job of delivering a quality product.
Cabin
Fever, written, produced and directed by
Eli Roth, is
something of a departure from the his previous works. Five young
college students head for the hills for a week after finals to
blow off some steam partying and shooting squirrels. Instead, they
encounter a flesh eating virus and quickly descend into all manner
of documented psychologically paranoid behavior.
Now, I likes me a good horror movie, I've even been known to
like a few bad ones. It's my opinion that this one falls into the
"good" arena. It's a perfectly acceptable one-off story with
absolutely no need for a sequel or cable spin-off. The things this
movie does well it does pretty darn well. You get to know the
characters quickly, and the ugly personality traits usually kept
hidden surface for all to see as the story moves along. Once we are
introduced to the vector (infected hermit) for the bad guy (flesh
eating virus causing extreme paranoia) it's all downhill. And it's a
fun ride too.
Don't get me wrong, there's no oscar material here, it's just a fun
gory shock movie. I had fun watching it as did the other people in
the theater, and it held my attention the whole way through. We all
jumped when we were supposed to and the "Ewww"'s were coming from all
directions. Sure parts had holes, some of the editing I questioned
(lack of continuity in setting up the area at the beginning), but it
was fun. Definitely not for everyone though. More reviews and
general bashing can be found at the movie sites message
board where even the director responds to folks.
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It's a Comic Book World |
21-Aug-2003 |
So there I was, firing up the old synapses for another exciting day at
work and checking my email at the same time. Definitely not something
the unintiated should try, you could ground one out and wind up
staring blankly at the screen for hours. But enough about my brain, that's
really not the point of this.
I'm checking my email and have a little surprise from my good friend
Dan, who is a comic book reader much like myself. Dan, however, is
able to remember such details as artist names and portfolios whereas I'm
lucky if I can remember which titles I'm reading at any given time.
Dan asked if I wanted some of the comics he was getting ready to toss
out, namely some gems of our friend Lobo.
Now, I don't know if you're a Lobo fan or not, but he's
exactly the sort of character that people enjoy reading, whether they'll
admit it or not. He's a fun character to follow, most of the time as
a guilty pleasure. Who amongst hasn't thought about how nice it would
be to smash someone else to smithereens, if only for a second before
modesty and sanity throw us a harumph.
So I tell Dan, sure hook me up, and he includes in the deal four
small boxes of the rest of the titles that didn't make the cut. Alot
of old Dark Horse titles that petered out fast, as well as some Image
and DC runs are included. Well you can imagine the fun had to be
rooting through all these old titles, after reading through all of
the Lobo titles first of course, most of which I had read, and some
that were new to me.
The rest of the titles may or may not get read at all, they'll most likely
get picked through by friends. What's the point of all this? I got some
Lobo comics that were ten or more years old that were like new to me
and I enjoyed them just as much as if they were brand new. You can't say
that for most titles, or even books. So go out and buy Lobo, if you can
any. You'll thank me later.
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Review of Metallica's "St. Anger" |
12-June-2003 |
The new Metallica album, "St. Anger" is out. I picked it up last
night and am currently trying to give it a good listening to. I've not
heard any of it played on the radio as I haven't been listening to any
clearchannel lately (*cough*fvckers*). I've been pretty unhappy with
Metallica offerings over the past several years, even totally ignoring
the past couple to include the one with an orchestra... whatever. But,
I caught a sideways comment in some article somewhere about them going
old school on this one and that it was supposed to be pretty good, so,
thinks me, I'll be the judge of that.
First off, let me just say that Metallica has been trying for a long
time to make anything anywhere near as good as "Ride the Lightning",
their second album. Since that album, their best stuff has been covers.
There were a couple good tunes on "Master of Puppets" (Battery, Damage
Inc) but past that point it's all been, frankly, disappointing.
For this lineup, we have the original Lars and James along with
almost-as-original Kirk Hammett (he replaced Megadeth's Dave Mustaine
dont'cha know). The new bassist, Robert Trujillo, comes over from those
nice East L.A. boys we all know and love as Suicidal Tendencies to
replace Jason Newstead (who came over from Flotsam and Jetsam). Of course,
Robert didn't play the bass as recorded on the CD, that's Rob Rock the
producer.
On a side note, Jason's new band, the venerable Voivod, encourages
downloads of their new tunes, unlike some other bands of whom we may
have heard.
Anywho, here I sit at work with this new collection of tracks rolling
through my ears - ears which have been finely honed in the listening of
Metal, both good and bad, at volumes both loud and louder. So, here we go.
The first thing that I immediately notice, because it's such a stark
difference, is that it sounds like Lars is beating on kettle drums. It's
so stark it's distracting. Yay to Lars for his artistic creativity - boo
to the band and producer for not beating any sense into him. If there was
any original drumming to be heard on this album I probably wouldn't be as
harsh, but that stupid "TANG!" that hangs in the air after every kettle
drum hit is not only distracting but it sounds entirely out of place.
James does a bunch of singing on this album.
Kirk Hammett, I think, has the queen of all hippies for a wife. I'm
pretty sure I heard that watching one of those VH-1 "Beind the Music"
shows. He's been off on some creative artistic bent for the past several
years and some of that seems to be less present here. Things may not be
going well at home. Unfortunately, that's about the most positive thing
I can say about any of the guitar work. He's playing the top of the neck
and not getting very technical or exciting. I think that the guitar solo
in Metal is dead - or at the most getting occasional checkups while on
life support.
I think the producer, Bob Rock, is getting ready to retire soon as well.
Every song sounds pretty much the same - same pace, same sound, etc. Very
good if you like the sound as a sleep inducer. Muddy, flat and monotone
for the vast majority of the 11 tracks. I was wondering to myself if we
were going to hear about a recall due to faulty mixing by the start of
the second track. However, be careful - some tracks use more than two
or three chords. It might catch you off guard and make you jerk awake
in the middle of traffic.
I'll bet you can pretty much guess how I'm going to summarize this one
so I'll spare the pathos and just say: "Hopefully they'll do some
more covers soon."
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Still Standing |
07-January-2003 |
I just realized that this page was horribly out of date, so I stopped
in this morning to give it a once over. There's actually snow on
the ground and it's been there for much longer than usual. Not that
it's much help to the whole drought situation here in Colorado but
it doesn't hurt.
Bugzilla is back at home,
in the garage, and patiently awaiting a new wiring harness and
suspension. The paint is on and it looks great.
We kicked the year off right in the paintball area. Matt,
Phil, Brett, Adam and myself spent the afternoon at Z Warzone in
Denver. Great fun, nice place and a fun game there. This year is going
to be alot of fun up in the woods I believe. We might even be able
to pull off the camping/paintball trip we have been talking about.
Oh, and I found this today, thought it was kinda cool. The Plan 9
Bunny for the Plan
9 operating system at Bell
Labs. From the same guys that brought us Unix. Nice logo.
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