March | 2006 | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for March, 2006

Domo Arigato

Posted in Bing Crosby, movies, reviews with tags movie reviews, movies, personal on March 12, 2006 by Paxton

Good night tonight. The wife and I went to eat sushi. Had the Dragon Roll, spicy scallop and Rock & Roll Tempura. Very good. Ate WAY too much. Afterwards, we saw 16 Blocks with Bruce Willis and Mos Def. Great acting, much better than I expected. We only saw this because there’s not much out we want to see but it was very good.

After getting home from the movie we watched Bing Crosby in Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Very silly musical. Very light, but enjoyable. Do NOT take it seriously if you see it. Bing Crosby, like Elvis Presley, has to sing about the most mundane events of his day in his movies.

Movie Reviews: Cool Heist Movies!!

Posted in heists, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags movie reviews, movies on March 11, 2006 by Paxton

I just watched The Thomas Crown Affair this morning (Saturday) for the second time. I hadn’t seen it since it was in theaters. I forgot how awesome that movie is. Got me thinking about heists, dude. How freakin’ cool would it be to be a part of a heist? What part would you play? Would you be the guy who obtains all the gear? No matter how sophisiticated or experimental the equipment needs to be, that guy has not only heard of it, he can get it ASAP. Would you be the brains? No matter how complicated or completely insane a security set up is, this guy has seen it, and will know a way around it. I usually dream about being the tech guy. No matter what computer system or software setup is in play, this guy can hack it and make it do whatever he wants. Awesome. In honor of this, I want to talk about a few of my favorite heist movies.

I’ll start with the one I just watched, The Thomas Crown Affair. Brosnan plays cool as a cucumber Thomas Crown and Rene Russo plays sultry Catherine Banning. Sexy and cool movie with a couple very smart art heists. Brosnan was in a movie recently called After the Sunset that could have been a sequel to Thomas Crown Affair. Replace Salma Hayek with Rene Russo and you’re rollin’. Check them both out.

My next heist movie is the one I’d have to say is at the top of the list for me. It’s the remake to Ocean’s 11 with Clooney, Pitt and Damon. Very suave, action packed and it takes place in Vegas. Gotta love it. The sequel was just as good.

Another great heist flick is, suprisingly, The Heist with Gene Hackman and Danny Devito. It’s got a lot of twists, but is pretty dark. Sam Rockwell also puts in a great performance in a very clever script.

Another one I like is called Foolproof. This movie stars Ryan Reynolds and is about a group of young kids that plan perfect robberies, but never perform them, that is, until a gangster forces them to do it. Ryan Reynolds is the man and this movie is very entertaining.

There are many others I enjoy also. Heat with Bobby DeNiro, The Saint with Val Kilmer and Mission: Impossible (the first one and not technically a heist movie but they pull one off). This is a sub-category of movie that I thoroughly enjoy and I hope you do to.

Technorati Tags – Movies Entertainment Movie Reviews

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Ecto Cooler Redux

Posted in humor, personal, pop culture, random with tags Ecto Cooler, Ghostbusters, Hi-C, pop culture on March 10, 2006 by Paxton

This will be a pop culture entry, not really having anything to do with Technology or Movies.

I was visiting one of my favorite websites, X-Entertainment. On this site, Matt, will review pop culture anomalies and fads from years past. He has some fascinating articles about Kool-Aid, old videos, discontinued snack foods, etc. One day I ran across a great article about a Hi-C flavor called Ecto Cooler (shown left). It was written in 2003. I remember this flavor very fondly. I never had it myself, but I remember kids at school having it. The article contends that Ecto Cooler, after the Ghostbusters fame died, was reborn as a flavor called Shoutin’ Orange Tangergreen (shown right). I searched for months but as far as I could tell the flavor had been discontinued or it may be hard to find in this part of the country but can be seen everywhere else. I just didn’t know.

I didn’t know, that is, until I went to Enterprise, AL on the weekend of Mar 3, 2006 for a good friend’s wedding. In a small grocery called Southern, I found 12 packs of the Shoutin’ Orange Tangergreen juice boxes on the shelves. YAHTZEE!!!!! I bought two and commenced to drinking the liquidy goodness all weekend. Let me just say, that if this is what Ecto Cooler tasted like, I see why it was so popular. So fruity and tasty I’m ready to sacrifice small animals to the juice box Gods in my quest for more. Oh juice box Gods, bless me with more juice boxy love soon.

Technorati Tags – Pop Culture Humor Nostalgia

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Mozilla Firefox Review

Posted in Firefox, internet, reviews, technology with tags internet, Mozilla Firefox, technology on March 10, 2006 by Paxton

Being a fan of technology, I am also a fan of cool little pc desktop apps. Every once in a while I’ll highlight a particular favorite of mine. Today I’ll be discussing the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
Some of you may have heard of this, some of you not. It is an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Microsoft, until recently, had stopped development on IE. It just sits there, stagnating on your desktop like a boil. Bugs that have been around forever are still there, not to mention that fact that spyware, malware and viruses are written mostly against IE because the most people use it. Back in 2001, I got sick of using IE and switched to a browser called Opera. This browser had a much faster rendering engine and incorporated tabbed browsing, the first I’d ever seen this feature. I never used IE again. Opera has since been replaced by Firefox.

Firefox is a nice alternative because it is highly customizable for every user. If you don’t want certain features, you don’t have to have them. When you download Firefox, the browser is a bare bones application that does the basic browser features. One of the basic features of Firefox that IE doesn’t do, just yet, is tabbed browsing. If you have multiple websites open, they are all kept within one browser window and tabs at the top let you quickly switch between your open pages. It’s a very nice feature that you immediately wonder how you lived without. If you want more advanced features you download what are called “extensions”. I’ll delve into extensions more deeply another time, but they include things like email checkers, weather forcasts, ad blocking, search bars, etc. You name it, someone has made an extension for it. You can also download themes which change the “look and feel” of Firefox to something more appealing to you. I currently use the Metal Lion theme which addes a brushed metal look to the entire browser. I love it.

If you would like to tryout Firefox, go to the Mozilla web site here. They just released Firefox 1.5.0.1 and should be releasing version 2 at the end of spring. Hope some of you discover the joys of alternate browsers with me.

Update 1/31/2007 – Version 2 has been released. Click on the Take Back the Web – Firefox button in the bottom right Links section of my sidebar to get the newest version.

If you want to check it out, Opera still has a browser, which is now free. Check it out here. They are up to version 8.5.

Technorati Tags – Technology Review Mozilla Firefox Internet Browsers

Man Sued for Deleting Files Off Company Laptop

Posted in computers, technology with tags technology on March 10, 2006 by Paxton

This article concerns me greatly.

Apparently a man decides to leave his company. He deletes personal files off his company laptop. He knows, like everyone should (right?), that deleting files in most operating systems does not actually delete the file. It only removes the pointer to that file. So he uses a professional file scrubber to permanently delete the files making them impossible to recover.

I guess he must have left the company on bad terms (the company alleges he went into business for himself in the same industry which is a violation of employment contracts) because the company searches his laptop for incriminating files proving he was violating his employment agreement. When they discover that he used a file scrubber, they sue him for damaging a company owned laptop. What concerns me is several courts upheld the fact that deleting data off a hard drive constitutes “damaging” a computer. The company also said that the moment he decided to leave the company he no longer had implicit authority to delete data off the laptop. While I might agree with the latter, I have a serious problem with the former.

I worked as an IS consultant for over 8 years. I had a company laptop the entire time. I was careful not to put anything on it that would get me in trouble later, but I do not agree with the fact that deleting data on the hard drive constitutes damage to that computer. He turned the laptop into the company in the same condition that he received it, there should be no case against him. That is ridiculous. Hell hath no fury like a company scorned, I guess……………….

Technorati Tags – Technology Lawsuit