I finally got around to seeing the Matrix Reloaded today. Not too bad. Had heard a couple of "it was a bit disappointing" reviews, so didn't expect too much from it. Had to see it alone, as I had a single Greater Union voucher which needed to be used before 5pm today, and I didn't have any other movies left that I wanted to see. Another day, another stoopid shopping centre parking setup.
Spent most of the day at my nana's house. She's moved into a hostel and the contents of her house are up for grabs to all the kids and grandkids. Got a bunch of tupperware and some food. Among the goodies are some icing sugar (unopened) with a use by date of November 97, and some golden syrup (also unopened) with a use by date of April 94. :)
It's pretty scary just how much stuff is there (and how much history). I have to remind myself to not get old, or at least clear out clutter every so often so whoever has to clean out my house when I die doesn't end up just throwing everything out.
I've always rather liked Kevin Spacey, so tonight I did a repeat performance of last night and trundled off to the movies. Tonight I saw "The Life of David Gale". It's a little cliched (sp?) but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Tonight I was alone though. Going to the movies by yourself totally sux in my opinion. Yes I know, when you're actually watching a movie it doesn't matter if you're with anyone or not, cause it's not like you actually get to talk to them. But just being there and sitting by yourself is just depressing. For me anyway. And then afterwards the shopping centre was all shut down, so mild panic set in because I don't know my way around this shopping centre at all and I had to go outside and down a level and hope I could find my way back to where the car was parked. Stoopid shopping centres. Not as bad as your average hospital though - those things are like rabbit warrens, unless you've been given very specific instructions about where to go, it's rather easy to get lost in them. But I digress :) Bed time!
Up and down kind of a day today. Sucky people at work and frustrating .wk4 file formats. Long and lively staff meeting at cia (and I'd just like to say for the record right here that I think nothing will change - it's one of those laws of entropy isn't it?). Longgg catchup with Luke after which was great, haven't talked to him much recently. We chatted in the middle of the road for two hours about work, hobbies, fish, collectables, dvds, etc, was excellent. Ploughed through the support mail getting it from 25 to 4 in under 2 hours.
Just enough time for a this-or-that:
1. TV or radio?
CD jukebox! Radio in the car, tv I try to watch only when there's something specific on, otherwise I don't get anything done
2. On the radio: talk or music station?
Music. Actually on the way home tonight was listening to the Phil O'neal show on triple m, and someone had written in saying how much they like the format of the show (which is partly talkback). I actually have to agree. I dislike talkback as a rule, but there's something about this particular show that's considerably more interesting to me than any others around.
3. Actual books or books-on-tape (or e-books)?
I don't do much reading.. if I had books available on tape I'd probably listen to them in the car, but otherwise real books
4. Actual newspaper, or web version?
Web version .. when I read anything, which is rare
5. Wall Street Journal or National Enquirer?
Sydney Morning Herald or Daily Telegraph? Stoopid american questions again.
6. TV news...news channel such as CNN, or your local broadcast news?
I only get local (sydney) news.
7. A movie you've been looking forward to seeing gets bad reviews all around. See it anyway, or pass?
I'd most likely see it anyway, unless I couldn't find anyone to go with (which happens more often that not anyway)
8. See movies when they first come out, or wait a few weeks for the lines at the theater to get shorter?
I like seeing them fairly early - you get the better cinemas that way
9. TV: cable, satellite dish, or just plain old antenna?
I still have the old-fashioned antenna
10. Thought-provoking question of the week: If you had to choose only one form of media to come into your home, which would you choose...print (newspapers, magazines) or electronic (TV, internet)? Why?
Electronic. Everything you need is on the internet, why would you need paper? :)
This or That:
1. Yummier: Chocolate ice cream or strawberry cheesecake?
Strawberry cheesecake
2. Better to watch on TV: Movies or sports?
Movies for sure! Sports? yuk! ;)
3. A better web browser: MSIE or Netscape (or tell us your own favorite!)
Well I'm against IE on principle, but I use it cause it's quicker to load. I used to use Netscape 3 until only very recently, as Netscape 4+ were just bloatware. And I also designed web pages for Netscape 3, cause I figured if they worked there they'd work anywhere
4. A better way to travel: Automobile or bus/train?
Depends where you're going. I'll drive just about anywhere unless it's difficult to get parking (eg the city)
5. Your preferred camera: Digital or film?
Digital
6. A Cooler Vehicle: Motorcycle or sports car?
Sports car (WRX specifically)
7. More fun: Video games or board games?
Probably board games
8. Sexier: A perfect body or an intelligent mind?
Intelligent mind
9. A stinkier smell: Skunk or gasoline (petrol)?
Never smelt a skunk
10. Thought-provoking question of the week: What is more important to you: making a ton of money and being at the top of your field, or finding your soulmate and living a comfortable but not wealthy life?
Finding a soulmate
Lacking inspiration, I delved into JC's archives and found this:
~When was the last time you~
Smiled? Probably within the hour
Laughed? Earlier at Bible study
Cried? A couple of weeks ago
Danced? The other month at a club that Striker dragged Jess and I along to, although we didn't dance much, and only up in a back room in the dark :)
Were Sarcastic? Dunno, I'm not very good at it
Watched your favorite movie? Which favourite movie? hrmm..
Had a nightmare? Last year I think, but it wasn't really a nightmare as such, well I suppose it was, a friend of mine had let me down in it
Last book you read: I'm reading "All Good Things" at the moment
Last movie you saw: On TV, The Green Mile. At the movies.. urp, can't remember
Last song you heard: That I could name, Lose Yourself by Eminem, on the bus
Last thing you had to drink: Apple and Blackcurrent juice
Last time you showered: This morning
Last thing you ate: A piece of chocolate cake
Watching my first ever Director's Commentary - of "The Sound of Music". It's quite interesting; a very cool movie too - one of those classics you just watch every time it's on TV - or I do anyway ;) I've actually been surprised how many details and little things and stuff happening in the background that you don't notice with all the sound/speech going. You can look at the other cast members that aren't normally in the spotlight or doing the talking and see what they're doing when the camera isn't directly on them. I should watch more movies without the sound more often!
Today was significantly better than yesterday. Helped along by finally getting a working DLT drive. Looks like it really was a terminator problem with the replacement drive *sigh* Plus it was Friday, which is always nice :)
Going to the exchange tonight to replace the faulty disk in gamera. It should either all go quite quickly and the array should rebuild itself, or the whole raid setup will crash and burn and I'll be reinstalling windows and recovering from backups late into the night. Next post you'll know one way or the other :)
1. What was the last song you heard?
"Forever May Not be Long Enough" by Live (in the credits of "The Mummy Returns")
2. What were the last two movies you saw?
"The Mummy Returns" and "Dragonheart"
3. What were the last three things you purchased?
Petrol, McDonalds for dinner last night (bleah), Subway for lunch yesterday
4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?
Reinstall my operating system, buy a small tank for my betta (and think of a name for him), look for property, support mail (and think about documentation)
5. Who are the last five people you talked to?
The dude at the petrol station, Jim, Luc, Houssein, Ross
I went and saw Star Trek Nemesis tonight. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although it wouldn't be classified as one of the better Star Trek movies. It had the feeling of just a big episode, with not a whole lot of plot or character development. Again it's a Picard/Data story with the rest of the cast thrown in for good measure. The wedding at the beginning was pretty cool though :)
Mirina Sirtis had a stack more lines that Gates McFadden yet somehow managed to be below her in the credit list .. wonder how she felt about that! The bad dude reminded me of the bad dude in Dragonheart, not really sure why.
Luke said he fell asleep a few times, although I don't know how, I was on the edge of my seat most of the movie.. or maybe that was because I needed to go to the toilet. No, really, I quite enjoyed the movie, except for the sad ending.. I don't want to spoil it for anyone (not that anyone's likely to read this before seeing it anyway) but someone dies. They may as well have destroyed the Enterprise E as well to end the series so finally.
Striker and Rainbow had seen it before downloaded off the internet and said not to expect much, and their expectations were lived up to. Campbell also enjoyed it, but again said it wasn't a good movie.
But after all that.. I reckon you should go see it anyway ;)
6th July 2004:
Way back in February last year, when this blog was still a baby, I made a comment about the search terms that people had put into search engines to come to my blog. One of them was "ar-620t". A couple of people made comments and this entry is now number one in Google for ar-620t. Since people seem to be posting to it more and more often, I thought I'd better put up this little header paragraph to welcome you all. Apologies for the long page, you may have to search a bit for anything useful.
Here's the original entry from last February, scroll down for the forum:
Below are the keywords that people typed into search engines to bring them to my blog in January 2003:
27 17.76% kazza
21 13.82% sentinal csiro
8 5.26% kazza movies
7 4.61% sentinal hotspots
5 3.29% csiro sentinal
4 2.63% csiro fire sat* image sentinal
3 1.97% ar-620t
3 1.97% fish tank lights
3 1.97% strictly aquariums
2 1.32% fish tank stuff
2 1.32% growing plants movies
2 1.32% kazza little
2 1.32% kazza news 2003
2 1.32% rockdale plaza
2 1.32% sentinal
The first column is the number of times the keyword/phrase was used - I only showed ones with two or more repeats. The second column is the percentage and the third column is the keyword/phrase.
"kazza" was the biggest drawcard to my site, thanks in no small part to the fact that people are *stupid* and can't spell to save themselves. It's KAZAA people *NOT* KAZZA!! Sheesh! Get it right! www.kazza.com actually used to have someone's personal page, but now it's run by the producers of kazaa for all the stupid people out there in the world.
"sentinal" also brought in a lot of visits because I actually mistyped it when I wrote it - it's meant to be "sentinel" referring to the CSIRO Sentinel page which shows bushfire hotspots in Australia.
There were also a bunch of referrals from my fish tank references. My blog is the only page indexed by Google to contain "ar-620t". This is the name of an aquarium tank made by Aqua One. Aqua One is a company that does not have a website, and obviously relies on resellers and retailers to promote its products. In this day and age if a company doesn't have a website they are seriously behind the times. At least that's my opinion anyway.
So I've not been able to find out a single thing about this fish tank that I now own, because there is not one single webpage out there dedicated to AR-620T fish tanks that can give me the specifications of my tank. The leaflet that came with it was just as useless, so if anyone out there has one of these tanks and their specs, maybe they could pass them along!
I was fiddling around with the config of my blog today and noticed you can get an activity log of entries added and search terms used. The following are some of the keywords entered into the search thingie in my blog:
'arvrillavinge-i'm with you'
'sex'
'porno'
<lots of other sex-related entries from the one ip address snipped>
'movies'
'kazza'
'vodafone credit codes'
'free top up codes '
the last two and avril lavinge make me wonder the most. Like, isn't it *obvious* that my page is a blog?? And I don't even have any entries even *remotely* related to those search terms.
People are weird!