Tuesday, June 21 2005, 1:39 PM

I had another eye exam this morning with Dr. Saxe, and he says he sees good improvement, although I don't really see much difference. My eyesight is up to 20/25 in the right eye, but I think that's kind of misleading. With my left eye I'm able to pick off the 20/20 line at a glance, but I have to strain for seconds at a time to see the lines with my right eye. The leakage has slowed, and he says most of the swelling inside my eye has gone. I guess that's good news, even though I don't really see it with my own eye.

I had a good time this weekend down with Jon and Michelle in Cincy. We caught a Reds game saturday night and watched the new Batman movie on sunday. Batman gets two thumbs up from all three of us. The plot and action were all great, and it was kinda neat because you didn't have a clear idea of who the bad guy really was until the very end. There were a few 'bad' guys throughout the movie, but arch-enemy super villan type wasn't revealed until the end. I plan on seeing it again soon. Very few movies get that from me.

I've got a few pictures from the trip up in the gallery, along with some others that I hadn't posted yet. It seems that I took more pictures of their cats than anything else. What can I say, they were cute!

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Saturday, May 22 2004, 1:23 AM

Yah, someone accused one of my last few posts of not being in english, and in a way they really aren't. I've been working on some technical projects over the past couple weeks, so my brain has been in the computer dork mindset, which leads to all sorts of technobabble. I'll try to translate some of it here... My wireless LAN project was basically a way to encrypt all of the traffic going between computers on the wireless network (my laptop, Joe's laptop, and the communal Windows machine in the living room) and the gateway machine, which is the computer that connects to the internet. The reason that I'm doing that is because the encryption protocol used on my wireless accees point is inherently flawed, leaving it wide open for breakin by a patient person. IPsec (IP security) is a much better alternative, offering a very secure encryption that's not easily broken. The concept of a honeypot is basically something that is left wide open that people will get into and meddle with, for the purpose of learning different methods of attack from the not-so honest people out there. The honeypot is meant to be infiltrated, so anything bad to it isn't really damaging.

The laptop stuff was Matt and I being total dorks, although in this case, Matt was definitely leading the way. Basically his PHP-code based retort translates to the following: open your laptop, and while the laptop is unloved, pour love into it. The humor is really lost in translation though... I seriously laughed out loud when he typed that.

Hmmm... now to current events... I haven't been up to all that much. I'm fairly confident that the pre-mentioned IPsec stuff will be stable and do what I want, which is good. That means it's not just a learning experience... :) I've been spending a lot of time at both work and home working on the latest revision of the server monitoring program that I wrote to keep tabs on things at work. It will probably keep me busy for quite a while, but I've got the data collection framework in place, and it's collecting and storing the data as it should, albeit from one server, and only when I'm testing things. I'd like to get it on other servers soon to make sure it behaves as it should, but I -really- want to get some form of an automatic update system set up first, so that when I do make updates, I won't have to log into a bunch of servers to update things manually. There's also a lot of work to be done... Apart from the data collection I still have to create the alert system that will notify us when things are 'out of whack', the log averaging and trimming system that will give us a cool historical record of server performance, tendencies and general changes, and the whole display and admin interface that you need to use it all... It's quite the undertaking, but I look forward to the challenge. Once Josh gets done with his current projects he may lend some of his rather extensive talents to the project, and Joe Doss really wants to dominate my interface/display pages with his CSS kung-fu. Greg also said he would help, so we'll see where we can fit him in... ;) Ok, enough geek talk.

I went out with JDoss, his girlfriend Abby, and her friend Allison to see Shrek 2 this evening, and it was hilarious. Most of the humor was totally directed at adults, which was cool. The computer animation was really good, although there seemed to be quite a few parts where the spoken words were noticably out of sync with the animation on the screen. I know that it's exceedingly difficult to replicate human expressions, but it did seem like the first Shrek movie, and other CG movies, have been more successful in their timing. Oh well, it was still friggin hilarious. I enjoyed the company too! :) Thanks for the invite Joe!

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Monday, October 06 2003, 2:29 PM

Last night I checked out "The Rundown" with Amanda (yes ladies, I suppose it could be called a date). It was pretty sweet. Lots of action, kinda Jackie Chan style. The Rock's character has a thing against guns, so for 99% of the movie he just whoops ass on people without using them. He uses some guns later, but it's only as a last resort. Lots of cool stunts. Stiffler (I don't know his real name) plays another Stiffler-like character, but he's pretty funny too. And Christopher Walken plays another goofy-weird-evil guy. He always gets the weirdest parts. If you see it, keep an ear out for his tooth-fairy line.. it's hilarious. Grade: B+

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Friday, July 25 2003, 12:14 AM

Today was pretty slow... there were a couple mind benders at work involving email, and I knocked out this weeks compliment of chargebacks. The datacenter is coming together - the first couple of rows of racks are in place, just awaiting the power whips and ethernet. The OC3 is due to be lit up sometime this weekend, so hopefully we'll be in business in the next few days.

Didn't do much today at home... I got ready for the canoe trip this weekend, and watched Star Trek Nemesis. Good flick, but they didn't need to kill off Data. Assholes. Oh well. Won't be back until sunday... will post then. As if anybody will be waiting on the edge of their seats.... heh

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Friday, July 04 2003, 1:27 AM

Just got back from checking out T3, and I must say that I enjoyed it. Tons of action. It could pretty much be called a two hour chase scene, but there were a few breaks that calmed things down. The demolition budget for this film had to be just huge.... they blow up, run over, and just plain destroy so much stuff in the movie that its just plain crazy. The plot could be called a bit thin, but it works. Anybody that saw the previous two Terminator films already knows what's going on, so background is just unnecessary. The film definitely takes a few interesting twists that one wouldn't expect, but they're definitely cool. The end is kinda anti-climatic, definitely leaving room for Terminator 4, or as we were mentioning in the parking lot afterwards, John Connor 3, since Arnold isn't exactly young these days. (Anybody that can pinpoint the [MainCharacter] - [MovieNumber] reference gets bonus points. Hint: it's not Rocky or Rambo... it's from a bad movie with a great soundtrack.)

And, yah, I have to comment, the actress that played the TX is waaay hot. Kristanna Loken, you can call me any time - which would be a neat trick, since you don't have my phone number, but I figured I'd throw it out there. (Yah, that was lame, oh well... I'm single and lame, I accept it.)

movies reviews

Saturday, May 17 2003, 8:39 PM

I saw the Matrix Reloaded last night, and again today, and I must say I thought it was pretty sweet. Steve thought otherwise, but oh well, I thought it rocked. The action sequences were friggin sweet (the freeway scene being my favorite), and the plot had a lot of twists and made you think. They introduced some cool new characters, like the oracle's guardian guy, and the ghostly twin badasses. Did anybody else see how much they looked like the librarian ghost from the beginning of Ghostbusters? Heh. The only knocks I had on the movie were the corny romance dialogue and the way the plot flowed. The action sequences (while being completely sweet) were all long and seemed to stall the plot out some. Other than that, it was solid. Can't wait until the next one!

movies reviews

Sunday, December 22 2002, 5:56 PM

The last couple days have been a tad busy. Yesterday I helped a friend move into her new house, which was an adventure. Lots of stuff to move. Saw the Two Towers (again) with my family later on, and it ruled just as much as when I saw it the first time. I was a bit disappointed with the liberties they took with the script/storyline, but overall it was sweet. They really did a great job portraying Gollum/Smeagol and the turmoil that character went through. I was kinda mad that they made Faromir seem kinda evil for a while, since he was a stand up guy in the book. Oh well.

I got the rest of my christmas shopping done today, which is a relief. I always hate going out into the fray at this time of year. Now I just have to wrap everything up.

movies ramblings

Wednesday, December 11 2002, 10:51 PM

Wow. Busy at the new job. I leave for work at around 9 every day, get there at 10, and I'm normally not getting home until 7:30 or so. Makes for a long day, and not a lot of free time. Past couple days have been pretty hectic... Some of the other techs haven't been around because they're taking finals, leaving the load for the remaining few of us. And I'm still learning the ropes, so it makes it pretty strenuous. Hopefully it'll get better with time.

Not much else going on... By the time I'm done sweating it out at work, I'm all burnt out and just want to vegitate. I am pumped about seeing the new Star Trek movie [yes, insert nerd jokes here, I'm used to it]. It looks like it's got a lot of action and a cool plot. And it sounds like it'll be the last Trek movie with The Next Generation cast, so it'll probably end with a bang. If I feel inclined I might post a review of it or something after I see it.

Anyways, I'm outta here. Time to crash and burn.

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