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Copyright |
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©2005 Jason Cross
All Rights Reserved
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 Wednesday, August 28, 2002 |
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What *is* the plural of Praying Mantis? Mantises? Manti? Hmm.
Before yesterday I had never seen a live praying mantis in my life, despite their being one of my favorite insects (shows what kind of kid I was that I had a favorite insect!). Now I've seen three in two days, all downtown near our building, one outside our break room window on the 19th floor. Odd.
Maybe it's a sign. God has sent his most devout creature, the insect that can't help but pray. Probably not though. |
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Sunday, August 25, 2002 |
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This weekend was Gnomedex - the Lockergnome convention held annually. I have the pleasure of calling many of the Lockergnome staff my friends, so that, combined with the fact that we're doing a CrossPaths-Lockergnome partnership assured my being there.
Gnomedex is great.
I've been to a number of "computer conventions" and none of them compare. There were about 400 attendees, which makes it relatively small, but that's part of the charm because you actually meet people, recognize and get to know them. Chris Pirillo, the Lockergnome himself (and host of TechTV's Call for Help) brought in a great group of speakers. What's really cool about Gnomedex is that these speakers don't just talk and leave; instead they mingle in the crowd, attend the other talks, and chat with the people at the show. It's pretty amazing.
Highlights from the show for me were:
* Seeing Chris and Gretchen again for the first time since last year.
* Seeing Phil and Kacie again for the first time since last spring.
* Meeting Jennifer Goodenow from Spindustry finally!
* Getting a great positive response for the new CrossPaths Pay-As-You-Go plan and the Gnomies.com ISP.
* Getting up on stage with Chris and Lori to talk about the new Gnome ISP with CrossPaths, my cell phone ringing (in silent mode) and cutting out my microphone, and Lori attempting to answer my cell as I talked with it still attached to my belt clip.
* Meeting the sales people for MediaFour, the Des Moines-based company who creates MacDrive. Particularly the cute saleswoman.
* Being confused for someone else twice (two different people confusing me for two different people), one of who thought I went to Iowa State, another thought I was their friend's old roommate.
* Walking back into the Marriott lobby after booth teardown and finding Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, and Mark Thompson just sitting together on some couches in a corner of the lobby just talking.
* Helping Jennifer sneak Chris' digital camcorder behind his back and recording people congratulating him about Gnomedex, including recording Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, and the outstanding Megan Morrone, the latter two of who are actual TechTV celebs. It's just pretty cool thinking that I have actually filmed two TV personalities. It was really funny when I was prepping Megan with the "Ok, counting down from 3, 2, 1..." and she was like "Yeah, I get it, though they don't usually say '1'".
* Talking about blogs with Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger.
* Learning that there was a point in 2001 when Evan was the only Blogger employee, yet they came back from it and are arguably the most successful blogging company out there.
* Learning how Phil "Pud" Kaplan of FuckedCompany got his start and basically makes all this money from completely automated page systems he's created.
* Seeing Leo Laporte and David Lawrence sing "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" to each other during the karaoke session.
* Ms Gnomedex 2002 - Gnome-Girl's winning performance.
* Hearing Doc Searls talking about the fact that open-source and commercial software both have their place and that much innovation is due to commercial software - which is absolutely what I believe but was not expecting to hear.
* Standing right there next to Steve Gibson listening to Doc speak.
* Lori and her usual party antics!
* Finding out how much of a Gnome-geek Steve Mays from Learfield / RadioIowa is.
Oh, and there was so much more. Like I said, it was a great great time. Heck, meeting Evan Williams and Megan Morrone was worth it!
Pictures to come... |
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Saturday, August 17, 2002 |
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Last night I had the, well, I won't say pleasure so let's just say occurrence, of watching "The New Guy" on DVD.
Yeesh.
As most people who know me, or at least read what I write about movies on occasion, know that I'm pretty forgiving about movies. I don't expect Shakespeare when it's not meant to be Shakespeare. It's a good way to be, as there are lots of movies out there that aren't great by any means but have their charm.
The New Guy ain't one of them.
It's about this kid who enters his senior year hoping to be more than just a loser, gets horribly embarassed, goes to prison for a day or so for no real reason, gets the idea from an inmate he befriends that if he gets expelled and sent to a new school, he can start acting all tough and crazy and be popular, does so, and becomes so before the inevitable unveiling of who he used to be by the bullies at the old school. And of course all is forgiven because even though he supposedly has a reputation as a crazy killer of a guy at the new school, he still has a heart of gold.
Throughout the movie we also see him in and out of prison, just visiting it appears, but still allowed in among all the kind-hearted inmates. And we see Jerry O'Connell and his brother who are way too old to still play high school guys. And we see football games that play out in mere minutes. And we see Eliza Dushku trying out bathing suits. That was the good part. The only good part in the whole movie.
No wait, there was a second, Zooey Deschenal was in the movie.
Do yourself a favor - don't see this movie. Don't be stupid like me. If given the choice between this movie and unnecessary dental work, choose the movie, but at least think hard about it before doing so. |
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Saturday, August 10, 2002 |
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I can't believe people are still confused by the Widescreen vs Fullscreen (aka pan-and-scan) formats. Bigger ain't necessarily better when it means having the sides cut off people!
Fortunately, some people still keep an open mind and are willing to change their view... ;) |
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Today I caught a matinee of xXx, aka XXX, aka Triple-X, aka that new Vin Diesel movie. The movie was developed to be sort of the Bond of the younger generation - a younger secret agent who is flawed and into extreme sports-type things like dirt biking and cliff-jumping.
It was pretty good, a fun ride, with lots of action pieces. I liked the Xander Cage character, as he had a sort of sense of humor through the whole thing, and am interested to see how the franchise evolves (XXX2 is already a sure thing). I also liked the way that X didn't kill people unless necessary, instead using knock-out darts part of the time. Bond is so blase about killing.
There was a preview for The Transporter in front of XXX, which is the new Luc Besson movie. It has the guy who played Turkish in Snatch in it (that reminds me - Phil, don't forget to bring back my Snatch DVD when you come back next week) and looks pretty cool. I loved Besson's work in Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element, so this should be interesting. |
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Last night I went to see the movie Signs. Was it good, you ask? Eh, I'm not sure.
Don't read this entry if you don't want to see some details having to do with the ending of the movie.
You see, I really like parts of the movie. REALLY like parts of it. But at the same time I REALLY dislike parts of the movie as well.
M. Night Shyamalan can sure make a creepy as hell movie, this proves. And I like thew concept of a movie centered around people on the periphery of an alien phenomena and not right in the center of it like in most movies (*cough* ID4 *cough*), but at the same time its handling of the plot, heavy-handedness of the theme and ending, and its real lack of reasoning behind the aliens motives, make it leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I mean, come on, aliens travel all this way "just to start a ruckus?" to steal from what Will Smith's character said in ID4. And not only that, but WATER hurts them, and they seemed to have missed that fact until too late, despite, oh, the commonness of water on Earth.
I wish Night would make a sequal to Unbreakable. I would love to see that. |
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Thursday, August 8, 2002 |
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From the "Ask Jeeves" Day Calendar:
How did Nostradamus predict all those future events?
It has been convincingly suggested that, as a politically active Protestant living during the Inquisition, Nostradamus often talked in code about contemporary occurrences rather than trying to predict the future. Regardless, his maddening obscurity has been interpreted long after his death in dozens of different ways, showing that if you're obscure enough, put no time limit on your "predictions," and have thousands of people reinterpreting and retranslating your words for centuries afterward, you can be an amazing psychic too. |
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Monday, August 5, 2002 |
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Ah yes, time for the National Balloon Classic, that time of year when balloonists from around the city, the state and the country descend upon (or rather ascend from and then descend upon) Indianola for our 9-day balloon festival.
Growing up in Indianola, it's easy to forget that there are quite a few people who have either never or else very rarely have seen a hot air balloon in person. When you live here, you kind of take them for granted, as during the summer, it's a rare calm day NOT to see at least one in the sky.
I've crewed for a few balloons - Midnight at the Oasis (Christine's balloon!), Pup's Delight and O'Henry. For the uninitiated, crewing means that we help set up and take down the balloon, as well as chase after it while it's in flight.
Conditions only allowed for two flights this weekend, so hopefully things will clear up for the rest of the week. It's an awful lot of fun, and it strikes me that they still seem quite beautiful even after all these years of having seen them.
Sadly, Christine was injured :( in a post-landing mishap through no fault of her own. Breaking your wrist in three places is an ordeal, as is missing the classic because of it, but it sure beats an in-flight problem! It's sad though, 'cause she loves ballooning so much, and being an Indianolian with her wings clipped during *our* event is a magnitude harder than missing some other balloon event.
Oh yeah, and Keith and I still hope to get a balloon of our own one of these years. So watch out you other balloonists - 'cause we'll come to play! ;) |
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Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |
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Had lunch at Spaghetti Works with Brandon today. That's right, THE Brandon from the band Elixyr.
If any of the 5 readers are music company moguls, check 'em out! Heck, the rest of you can, too. |
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