by Matt | Apr 19, 2004 | Imported Entry
We had a bit of a movie weekend over here at the Perry ranch. We ended up seeing both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Hell Boy. A little artsy and a little campy to balance each other out. Both were quite good. Sunshine was fucking brilliant and Hell Boy was entertaining in that “scifi popcorn flick” sort of way. But, Sunshine was brilliant. That’s how to make a movie folks. Hollywood take take that and run with it and save a whole lot of people from ever seeing another Jerry movie again. For the record: I hate that fool. The only thing he’s ever done right was putting up some bank for a little show called CSI. And even then, thankfully he doesn’t have any creative control. But I’ve spun off onto a tangent. Back to my story.
Saturday, post work, the girls met me over at my office and we headed into town to this upscale “art house” theater. Mostly because it was the last place in town still showing Eternal Sunshine. Downtown Houston doesn’t really compare to most other cities you’d think of. Mostly because it’s “downtown” is about 10 square blocks. The “city” proper however, goes on and on for miles. Basically, it would be like if Boston was stretched out all the way to the NH boarder. Or maybe it NYC engulfed all of New Jersey. Something like that. So, it becomes a case of “where do we go now?” instead of “now what do we do?”. There’s not an “area” to hangout in like Harvard Square or Newbury Street or the Theatre District. Oh well. Enough about the berg.
The movie was great. Fantastic. Best movie I’ve seen this year so far.
I really don’t know how else to put it. I really enjoyed it.
Sunday I skipped church in favor of some much needed sleep and some house hold chores. I had no clean sox left at all. None. Sad and pathetic isn’t it. Anyway, mid-afternoon we decided to check out HellBoy just for kicks. We went to the local cinema 6. It’s a tiny little theater that still has those wonderful things called matinees. Those are hard to come by. Especially when we got in for $3.25 each. Beat that.
Most of the movie was good. Mostly entertaining with a few slow spots. There’s a few “logic” bombs I could drop into the story but nothing as horrible as the last Harry Potter movie. And we all know how I felt about that one. Hell Boy was about average for a scifi/action/adventure/shoot’em movie. And paying on $3 for it made it all the more enjoyable.
After that it was back to our place to put together a shopping list. I was sent off into the wilds of Pearland to do some shopping. Target seems to be the place were yuppie white folks shop I’m afraid. I felt almost out of place. Like I wasn’t white or yuppie enough to be there. Young couples with their 2.5 children, shopping for high priced groceries with sweaters tied around their necks in case there should be a sudden ice storm in TEXAS. And me in my “lounge clothes” that consist of a pair of ripped jeans, and old Boston Red Sox t-shirt and my sandals. Hopefully I offended someone’s fashion sense enough to be the topic on conversation at Olive Garden that night over crappy martinis and painfully uninspired pasta.
Damn, I love being a sarcastic opinionated SOB. It gives me the most wonderful sense of accomplishment and joy down deep in the tacos of my heart.
Yeah.
Today there was a quick stop at the nearest Jiffy Lube for some new oil for the Mazda. Most of the day was actually spent thinking about web-ish things. I’ve now been commissioned by Dena Brody Interiors to redo their website. I also have to redo Ladd Photography’s website AND I’m still working on my design for this page. There was actually a break through in that and I’m happy to say that I’m getting nearer to finishing my own site. I spent a good long while today pouring over CSS help sites and tutorials. I now have all my DIVs in a row, so to speak. I actually also thought about a variation I could do on my theme with (and don’t gasp) Flash. I know, I know, I’m supposed to hate Flash. I do hate it. But my idea is cool enough to give it a try. I’ll have to think about it.
This evening I think we’re watching Mister Smith Goes to Washington, because Jimmy Stewart is fantastic, followed by some image retouching on my part and eventually some CSI:Miami. The single TV I watch.
Lastly, I’ve gone a little “Pinstripe” crazy. Originally designed as themes for Mac only versions of FireFox and Thunderbird, crazy windows theme enthusiasts were quick to port them. Now my collection is complete and it looks damn nice. Which is why you should click here to see them. Sorry I can’t share any of the details about the themes. I had to beg people for them and I promised I wouldn’t share until they’re released.
And that’s all for tonight. Later.
by Matt | Apr 15, 2004 | Imported Entry
Apparently everything is bigger in Texas. That includes food. Some of you already knew this. You lucky bastards that got to visit Casa Ole’ or Whataburger can certainly agree that Texans know food. Italian is no longer an exception. I had thought I’d be stuck with the crap-shoot that is Olive Garden forever, but no! Tonight we stopped at a little place called simply “The Italian Kitchen”. There was also a subtitle along the lines of “Mama Mia’s” so I’m not really sure what it goes by. In my book it shall simply be know as the single Italian place that doesn’t suck. I got, and I’m not exaggerating, three huge (full steak size) pieces of veal parmigiana. I ate one and the rest will be lunch and dinner for days to come. Best part is that it’s cheaper than the OG.
As for that dribble about audio things…
I’ve given up with Creative and Sound Blaster products all together. Period. The next card that goes in the next machine to come will probably be a Turtle Beach. And that’s only if I don’t get a mobo with some nice 5.1 Dolby built in. You might remember me mentioning having this rig hang or restart from time to time, usually when playing games. A few of you might even have witnessed the “clicking” issue where games will produce a horrible high pitched clicking until it eventually crashes. For years I couldn’t trace the problem to anything in particular. Now, out of a last desperate attempt to play more than 20 minutes at a stretch, I’ve finally yanked the Audigy card out of the computer and set up the nforce’s onboard audio. That was a few days ago. I haven’t crashed yet. Things are looking promising.
It took a little bit of work to get the onboard up and running though. A few driver packs and some hardware IRQ moving (to basically get rid of the prior existence of the Audigy) later, it’s all good. I’m not sure why windows won’t understand the name of the product, but if that’s it’s only hang up we’re probably doing good.
Lastly, before I go relax with Lauren and our latest Netflix delivery, have you guys seen the new Nvidia card. Holy cow. The GeForce 6800, according to both Tom’s and HardOCP which I trust explicitly, is going to absolutely smoke anything out there right now. Plain and simple. I don’t know what to think at this point. I’m pretty happy NVidia got their act together after the NV30 and NV35 crap. Apparently they’ve done good this time around. The $500 street price is kind of unpleasant but who knows. Maybe in a year or two when I’m ready to get one it’ll be cheaper.
g’night kids.
by Matt | Apr 15, 2004 | Imported Entry
A big, big, big Uber thanks goes out to Jason for figuring out what was up with the website.
“I fixed it. Finally found out what was causing this.. some munga had configured the address I use for www.docholoday.com for a filtered dialup customer. So each time this customer dialed in, it would snatch your IP address away. I’ve moved him up and out of the hindenburg range so it should never happen again.”
YAY! Like I said, a big thanks. This pretty much made my day.
Alrighty. Back to printing pictures and whatnot.
by Matt | Apr 13, 2004 | Imported Entry
I’m getting a little weirded out only being able to update this page between the hours of midnight and 6am. Every time I try to access this page, whether it be from work, home, Lauren’s computer, mine, my bosses, whatever, I get the fantastic “connection refused” error. That or more recently I’ve been getting “connection to host failed” or “connection failed: server unreachable”. Take your pick. I don’t really know whats the problem, it’s not my expertise nor department. I just find it odd.
And, since it is nearly midnight and I’ve got a long day of photos tomorrow, I’m afraid you miss out on the long and completely enthralling post about how the police came by our studio today. I’ll try and pass that one along to you if I’m ever able to reach the site again.
Matt out
Now Playing : – Stevie Ray Vaughn – Texas Flood
by Matt | Apr 12, 2004 | Imported Entry
Subtitle this: Vegans need not apply
I’ll explain the meat in a minute, first let me catch everybody up with the mundane things. This week has been fairly eventful as a whole and thankfully not all of it involves work. I did however have to be in attendance of this years official Miss Houston USA pageant. That was Friday and Saturday. Friday was the longer of the days, starting around 8am and going until nearly 11 at night. There was the usually picture taking of brainless teenage girls that I won’t bore you with details about. That evening around 6pm the preliminary show started. The purpose of which is to narrow the field of 120 contestants to 24 (12 in each category: Miss and Teen). See, they do both the Miss Houston and the Miss Houston Teen pageants at once. Fun abounds, let me tell you. Saturday was slightly more interesting because it was the finals and winners were chosen. Good for them, or something.
Immediately follow the pageant on Saturday I went out to dinner with Lauren and her family to celebrate her Dad’s 50th birthday. He chose a restaurant that is self-described as “Brazilian Rotisserie”. I called it 45 Minutes of Meat. Now, when I say that it might not sound like a lot, probably about the length of an average dinner out. That my friends, those glorious 45 minutes, were a constant and unstoppable flow of meat. The concept is simple. You pay for “dinner” and you get a plate and a peg of wood. The wood is colored green on one side and red on the other. You put it beside your plate. When you have it green side up, every time a waiter comes by they give you a new kind of meat. I ate, in one sitting: prime rib, fillet minion, top round, eye of round, pork loin, BBQ ribs, rotisserie chicken, grilled shrimp, peppered beef and about a half dozen other things my memory is too fuzzy to remember. It was fantastic.
Oh wait, I forgot to mention, they bring the meat to you on swords. Yeah. Wow. My brain shut down after a while in order to concentrate on digestion.
When I awoke from meat filled fantasies it was Sunday and time to go to church for Easter. After which it was time for more meat. Just your traditional Easter ham mind you, but tasty anyway. There were of course the typical side dishes to accompany the ham and so an afternoon was devoted to spending time with family-in-law and eating. We also watched Cheaper by the Dozen at some point too.
Not being satisfied with a mediocre movie, after the family left we put in both Drop Dead Gorgeous and Best In Show. Somehow three mediocre movies, melted together, seem to offer some sort of entertainment value.
Today, being Monday, is my typical day off. My usual Monday is filled with video games and slacking, aka: relaxing. Since my hard drive reformat last week however, none of my games have registry values and/or work correctly. They all need to be reinstalled. I of course either left the disk at work for the games I typically play, or don’t feel like taking the time to uninstall, reinstall and re-patch games that I’ve abandoned in favor of newer. I know, what a tough problem to have.
I can assure you it’s not my only problem. Money is stretched so thin it’s getting emotional for me. I’m considering delivering pizzas at night to get us through. It’s not really good. I don’t really want to get into it though, I’ve been upset about it all day and I really don’t want to dwell on it any more.
Other than that it’s pretty much the same old thing around here. Work, more work, sleep. You get the picture. At some point last week there was supposed to be a review for me at work which should have yielded a raise, it’s been moved to this week. I plan to push the issue a little and get that as soon as possible. Any little bit would help.
Ok, I’m going to try and find a game that both works AND I don’t have to reinstall.
Matt out.
Currently Spinning : Chicane – Live at the Palladium (22.01.2000)
by Matt | Apr 7, 2004 | Imported Entry
I can’t seem to see this very site. I can’t ping it either. But a trace-route completes successfully and I can physically “see” the domain and I can FTP in. So, there’s nothing wrong with Hindenburg (maybe) and there’s nothing wrong with me and there’s also nothing wrong along the route. Weird. I also can’t see Liquidillusions.net. But I can get to Chocobo and Ckelly and JTN just fine. Tell me that isn’t weird? Any guesses?
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