Theres so many random things

by | Nov 5, 2001 | Imported Entry

Theres so many random things to mention, I don’t know where to start. Wait. Yes I do. The Diamondback won the World Series! Yippee! I’m not a DB fan really, I’m merely a Red Sox fan who just enjoys seeing the Yankees lose. I will give both teams credit though, it was an awesome game. A classic “one run down, bottom of the 9th” scenerio. Awesome, truely awesome. I think it’s perhaps the best baseball game I’ve watched in a long long time. Huzah! Check out ESPN.com for all your news and info.

Elsewhere, my girlfriend rules! She comes over and makes cookies for me and then watches the rest of the game. How cool is that? I love my girlfriend. To quote one of my favorite movies: “Theres a million fine looking women in the world dude, but not all of them bring you lasanga at work” (or bake cookies for you either). Have I mentioned that I love my girlfriend. And no, it’s not just for the cookies, it’s everything else to. Love ya cutie!

Lastly. WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER SUCKS! …*pause* … A LOT!!! Lemme explain. Since I installed 2K over the summer, I’ve never upgraded to the recent version of WMP. Why? Well, because I hate it. It’s bulkey, it’s a resource hog, it’s horribly designed, it doesn’t play anything right and it’s proprietary file type (the shitty WMA’s) is purhaps the most half assed, poor qualitied excuse for a media file since VOX. Damn it’s bad. But, today, stupidly, I ran windows update, and without thinking, allowed it to upgrade Media Player. Big mistake. Not only can I NOT reassociate my Axis CD Player with CD audio but it grabbed control of any file that possibly contained sound or motion and won’t let go. I was watching a 40 minute PVD video yesterday in fullscreen with no problems. Today, I can’t fast forward without having WMP lock up. I hate this stupid piece of shit. Anyone know any alternative players that don’t completely suck?

Randomness: Today I spent a

by | Nov 3, 2001 | Imported Entry

Randomness:

Today I spent a good portion of the afternoon waiting for Jason to get off the phone. He had asked me to go with him to Best Buy to buy a new stereo for his car. (it was stolen when his car was stolen) Anyway, Melissa called him sometime around 2:00 and they talked until well after 5:00. How cute. Atleast I had time to shoot part of my photo project, watch “PCU” and play some Red Faction. Then, after getting off the phone, and deciding he still wanted to go, we headed out to Jason’s car and found that it wouldn’t start. The ignition will turn over if you give it a lot of gas but you couldn’t let up on it. Once it settled back down to an iddle, it choked and turned off. We did eventually go to Worst Buy so he could look at radios, but feeling down because the Jeep wouldn’t start, he didn’t get anything.

After that we headed back here and I settled down to play a game of Red Faction when I realized that game 6 of the World Series was on. Silly me. Good thing I turned on the TV too, or else I wouldn’t have seen Arizona kick the Yankee’s ass 15 – 2! Yah! While all that was going on, Jason and Pete were installing RF so we could play a little LAN game. Well, Jasons worked fine, mine obviously works fine, but Pete’s was having some trouble. There’s a random error when you’re playing with mixed OS’ (Win 98 & 2K and XP against each other) that mentions something about incompatable game data when you try to connect to a server. That was Pete’s error when he tried to connect to me and Jason’s game. How unfortunate. There is a patch out and it reportedly fixes it, but it didn’t seem to work in our case. Bummer.

I will however, say that Pete’s machine has been having some problems and has had random network issues in the past and that this isn’t really a big surprise. I don’t think his machine likes new things. It took him two installs and two reformats to get 2K to be somewhat stable (it’s a very stable OS) and in the past he was never able to connect to UT games with me and Jason. Even at this moment, he can’t see us on the LAN. How odd. I dunno. I’ve tried to figure it out over the past two years with no luck. Hopefully, we’ll all get those much needed upgrades over the coming months and everything straitens itself out.

As for myself, I’m just sitting here typing, feeling very pleased about the baseball game and even more happy about the 40 minute Paul Van Dyk video I found. Yah! The internet will never cease to amaze me. Anyway. I was faily productive today, so I don’t feel all bad. I did get a roll and a half shot. As for tomorrow, I dunno. I was hoping to see Lauren a little but I know she’s working hard on her paper. I think I’ll just get some random stuff done. I’ve got bills to pay, my room to clean, stuff like that. We’ll see. Later.

Current Music: Paul Van Dyk – We Are Alive (A1 Breathless mix)
Current Mood: Very Good

Wow, I’ve been bad about

by | Nov 3, 2001 | Imported Entry

Wow, I’ve been bad about updating. But that’s ok, this one will be hooj! Lots of reviews coming your way. First of all, lets starts off with Friday.

Friday was pretty good, I got up late, did a little cleaning around the house and met up with Lauren later in the evening for dinner and a movie. We decided to go to Jalapenos, this swank little Mexican place a little further south side. It was delicious and really hit the spot. After that we headed over to the video store to see if there was anything we wanted to get. Reluctantly we rented “Unbreakable”. Now, for me, there was some conflicting interests over this one. Nick loves it and really recommended it and Nagle really hates it and told me to stay away from it. So, I decided that I needed to form my own damn opinion and renting it anyway. Well, if those two are the far ends of the spectrum, I’m somewhere in the middle. Lets begin. First of all, I liked the “idea”, it’s new and it’s interesting. The acting was also pretty good. Personally, I’m in the camp that thinks Bruce Willis rules, he just does. On the opposite side of the coin, there were a few things that bothered me. The soundtrack, or complete lack there of, really aggravated me. Secondly, the damn “M.Night Shyamalan twist” at the end. It was the same damn ending as “The Sixth Sense” pacing and all. Even down to Bruce Willis’ expression, they simply changed the purpose and the dialog. Lastly, the cinematography sucked. A lot. I have no idea what they were thinking, but I could only liken it to “Three Kings”, a movie which also had a decent story but horrible cinematography. I have a big problem with shitty camera work, in case you couldn’t tell. So, while it was entertaining and effectively killed 2 hours, I won’t be buying the DVD. Sorry Nick.

Second, last night “Monsters Inc.” opened. Huzah! Now, I’ll say this first, because I can hear it coming, but I didn’t think that Toy Store (1 or 2) were “laugh out loud” funny. They had their moments and were “cute and funny” but not comedic if you know what I’m getting at. “Monsters Inc” however, was very funny. I laughed out loud through out the entire piece. It was that slightly elevated humor that parents will get when they take their kids to see it. I don’t think I even need to mention the caliber of the animation. It was Pixar, it was great. They do good work. Period. The characters were believable and funny, well animated and well voiced by the likes of Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and many others. I really don’t have anything bad to say about this one. It was a kids movie though, so, if you’re not into letting go of your grown-up stereotypes for two hours you may not appreciate it for what it is. If you’re still a kid at heart or just have nothing better for two hours, go see it. You’ll like it.

So, lets see, what else is going on. Oh ya, Jason got his Jeep back. Yah! It doesn’t have any license plates, so he’ll probably get pulled over a lot, but it’ll be ok. I also got around to doing some well needed hard drive cleaning. Somehow I filled but both a 10G and a 30G. I don’t know how but I did. So, off to Best Buy I went to buy some more blank cds so I could do a little house cleaning. I think my computer is feeling better now. Now that a good 10G has been lifted off it’s back.

Lets see, what else. Oh, as for today, I’ve got some photo stuff to do. I’m setting up and shooting a still-life so I can have something easy to do an emulsion lift with on Monday. Lauren is working on researching her paper today and is going to baby-sit tonight, which leaves me here with nothing to do. I’ll find something to keep myself occupied. Maybe I can convince the roommates that they’d like to play Red Faction multiplayer, probably not though. Oh well. We’ll see. Later.

Ok, another random question: Does

by | Nov 1, 2001 | Imported Entry

Ok, another random question: Does anyone know where the fucking plug-in menu for 3DS Max is??? I know this sounds like a stupid question, but I’ve always done everything by hand and never bothered to use any plugins. I found a copy of “Creature Creator” and wanted to play with it but it says to simply select it from the plugin menu. Well, umm, I don’t have a plug-in menu. I’ve got the usually stuff: File, Edit, Tools, Group, Views, etc. But not “Plug-ins”. I see that it’s loaded from the “Plugin Manager” but you can run anything from there. I know how to use render plug-ins, like “Film Grain” and stuff like that, but I’ve never tinkered with creation plugins. I should really sit down and get to know this program inside and out cause stuff like this makes me feel like a dumb ass. Dave, any help here???