I left the theater about seven hours ago, and although I'm not sure how things went while I was sleeping, I can assure you that my waking hours have been marked by a seemingly permanent grin.

The third movie takes liberties with the source like nobody's business, but it makes for what is, in my opinion, a superb movie. If you saw X-Men2, you may remember the scene at the beginning where Nightcrawler goes shooting through the White House. Bang! he's there. Bang! now he's over there. Bang! he just kicked my face in. To me, this movie felt like it was set at that pace the whole way through. It moved from one scene to another so fast that I just kind of sat in my seat catching my breath when it ended. So, I would say that overall, I was very, very pleased.

One disclaimer, I did walk out of the theater just seven hours ago (I'm headed back in about 10 minutes), so if you've been reading my journal for a while, you may be aware that I tend to give fairly glowing reviews for Fantasy/Comic book movies. Even more so directly after seeing them.

They are, according to Penny Arcade, the apex of feline sleepwear. Unfortunately, my unnamed new friend has yet to acquire this artifact. I brought her home from the animal shelter last night, and I've already decided that parenting would be bad for my health. When I went to bed (long before my roommates), she was curled up on A.'s lap while he played Counter-Strike. When I woke up this morning, I couldn't find her anywhere. Due to my usual mental state at that early hour, I went to work assuming that I was just too tired to see.

Several hours later, my roommate rolled out of bed and up to his desk. Then the dragoncortez style panic kicked in. "We can hear her, but we can't find her." So, to make the panic subside, I convinced myself that they were looking and that she would turn up sooner rather than later. An hour later I ask if they have found her. "No, and I'm starting to get worried." Ok, so when they actually got up to look, she was just behind the entertainment center. Panic unnecessary, stress unwarranted.

In other news, I haven't posted anything here for a while. I finally asked that girl from Toronto out. The first date went okay. Asking for a second date resulted in the type of confusion only dating can produce. First, the response was "Sure, Saturday should be fine." Then, it changed to, "I was really surprised you called; I didn't think we had hit it off." Finally, "You know, I don't think this is such a good idea. We just don't have that much in common." Alrighty then, I'll just have to find someone who will require less for a second date.

I had this great plan where I was going to post an entire entry in Spanish to show off my mad fluency. When that happens, you the loyal readers will be the first to know. :)

Is it just me or did a bunch of FortKnox's journal entries disappear? In particular there was one about a solution to the moderation problem that was most definitely wiped off the map...

I do have one theory: with LG posting again, FK went into a fit of rage and started deleting all his JEs. Let me know what you think.

Update (2 minutes later): I take it back, I can only see the one missing now...

That's an interesting Doors song, but the Doors are a topic for one of my classic rock lectures (yet to be written). Actually, that was the best title I could come up with for talking about Hellboy (notice the downgrade from "review", they take too much work).

I liked Hellboy a lot. I should probably see it again before trying to give any objective analysis, but I'll treat you to some of my biases instead. The whole idea of some demon-spawn being raised by a religious good guy to fight evil is very appealing to me, so if that type of thing isn't for you, you probably won't enjoy this movie all that much. My other bias: I really like Selma Blair, so I tend to view movies with her in a more favorable light. It's just one of those things. Plus, bonus! she's a firestarter. I mean, how cool is that? (I know, I know, there seems to be at least one in every comic book universe, I mean I grew up on Spiderman and his amazing friends Iceman and Firestar. Oh, and sorry, Mr. Morrison, that's the reason behind the title.)

So with further ado sure to come, let me say that this film is very well executed. It doesn't pretend to be high drama or a startling revelation on the state of mankind; it does deliver lots of stuff blowing up/being smashed. The dialogue for the most part is quite humorous, e.g. Hellboy discussing relationships with a 9 year old kid was great. "She took his picture!" By the way, Ron Perlman is just awesome as Hellboy.

Things that may limit your ability to enjoy this movie include: a secret government agency dealing with the paranormal; yet another comic book movie; a few little things seemingly lifted directly from Muppets in Space of all things; Nazis doin' their supernatural thang. Aside from that, I can't think of much to dislike about this movie.

Sorry, no discussion of Pretty in Pink (you've all probably already seen it anyway). I ended up spending the evening in Sigil. Maybe this time I'll make some progress worth talking about.

Well, well, well, well, okay, that's enough of that.

I guess it's been a while since I last wrote in my /. journal. I suppose the shock of seeing LadyGuardian post something was too much. At this point, I feel my need to recap everyone else's journal, but I will resist the urge.

And...I'm back. I had to take a look at my last journal entry to see what I should be including in the long awaited recap of the last couple months. I seem to be using the word recap too much, so let's start by saying that I am a big Sluggy Freelance fan and benefitted greatly from the scratch and dent sale at Plan9. I picked up some of the earlier books to really jump start my evil plan: convert all co-workers to Sluggydom. So far it's going really well. At least five people have read book 1, one guy started going through the archives online and is up to book 6. In a note unrelated to the scratch and dent sale, I have to say that I love my signed and numbered Fire and Rain hardcover. If you are a Sluggy fan, you already know that Pete likes to recap, and apparently, so do I.

Going back to the "really cool girl" previously mentioned in this space, things did not work out so well. I found out that she was pretty fresh out of high school (at least she acted like it when I got to know her better). So don't worry, that's not the reason I haven't posted for a while. In fact, I don't know what the reason is. I did meet a cool girl from Toronto, but we haven't been out on a date yet. Maybe it's the website I created for my apartment that's been sucking all my time. Perhaps putting up pictures from the parties (sorry, Mormon parties are very tame, generally speaking) has put a drain on my creativity. Mmm, probably not.

With regard to my l33t Linux gaming skills, I'm not proud to say that I took home the Linux box I'd been using and wiped it. Now it's being used to play Planescape: Torment (I must get out of Sigil this time!!), and fills the role of extra computer for the occasional LAN party.

Since the subject of gaming once again has reared its ugly head, let me publicly acknowledge that I was silly to put off trying out Counter-Strike for so long. Seriously addictive gameplay. Unreal Tournament 2004 is giving it a run for its money but probably not for too long. Also, for the Game Boy Advance, I highly recommend Fire Emblem. Cheesy characters, sweet tactical strategy.

Lest I forget, I got Prince of Persia from Gamefly a while back (and since returned it), and it totally rocked. Very forgiving game mechanics (love the dagger of time rewind feature) and a cool story to "bookend" the action. The final scene with the Prince and Farrah is great. I hear that they're trying to make it (the entire game, not just the last scene) into a movie, and I can't say that I see much sense in that. The game just doesn't take that long to beat.

A co-worker just reminded me that I'm going to see Hellboy today. If I remember, I'll post a spoiler-free review in the next couple days. There's also a midnight showing of Pretty in Pink at a local indie theater. My roommate and I talked about getting dates to go see it, but I have yet to reach deep down inside to find the courage to ask anyone. Story of my life right there.

All right, I feel like I have written enough...for now! Mwhahaha, oh, um, heh, moving right along.

Ok, so if I want to be honest, and today that is the case, my time spent gaming has actually gone down since I joined Gamefly. I also moved to a much better place this month, but that's an entirely different topic that I might cover at some indeterminate time in the future. Mostly I am just really excited, because today I got Neverwinter Nights installed on my Linux box (and I even did most of the work!), while tomorrow I fully expect to resolve all the conflicts preventing a certified Neat-O installation of Unreal Tournament 2003 on Linux.

So, I guess this means that my geek level is rising. I got a Game Boy Advance SP for Christmas to balance out the XBox (Nintendo is far more geeky than Microsoft...duh). So far, I only have Super Mario Advance 4. I never beat Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, so I'm pretty happy with it so far. I am looking forward to trying out Fire Emblem, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, and Warioware$.

Of course, all of this coincided with meeting this really cool girl right after New Year's. So far, she hasn't fully committed herself either way as far as video games, fortunately for someone - probably me. So, sad to say, the gaming time has been sacrificed (but not very much) for the greater good. Bravely, I admit that more sleep than gaming time has been lost because of this strangely-timed occurence.

I'm so glad the Cheat is not dead.

P.S. Rather than create a new entry, I'll just admit my sheep-like nature in this postscript. I'm now playing nationstates like the rest of the kids; my nation is Lagartija in SolemnDragon's backyard.

Watching the extended versions of the The Fellowhsip of the Ring and The Two Towers, then watching The Return of the King is an experience I highly recommend.

I can see that everyone is either busier than I seem to be today (which is an unusual thing for me lately), or no one found that gem of a post very insightful. Either way, I don't really care; sometimes, I get caught up in the moment, and that was one of those times.

Christmas is the only good thing about winter. There I said it. Having grown up in a climate similar to that of Phoenix, snow is not something I really appreciate. Temperatures below freezing tend to have very detrimental effects on my happy demeanor. On the bright side, Santa Claus is one of my favorite people.

My struggles in learning to use Linux continue.
At one point in time, I was using gnome for my window manager, had my geforce2 card working correctly, and had even managed to install and play unreal tournament. Unfortunately, the version of mplayer I had installed was wrong, and when I did some upgrades to fix that (I can't remember what else I was fixing), it broke my video card driver somehow. After that, I switched to KDE (I liked the themes manager better, heh), but today I managed to break it by trying to install a PHP IDE (I believe it was quanta). So right now, I'm working out of gnome, hoping that my friend who has been providing free technical support, linux advice, etc. will show up to the office soon. Let me just say that overall I really do like Linux.

For any Strong Bad/Homestar Runner fans out there, I highly recommend the Strong Bad Sings... cd. It's thoroughly enjoyable. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you should check it out. It's a really funny online cartoon.

Well, if bethanie can get all political, I can go all social commentary on everyone. Actually, what I really wanted to do is point to this awesome post on segregation and political correctness.
For context, the discussion was based on an article detailing the censorship of Grand Theft Auto Vice City (censorship being a hot topic for another day.) My favorite line from this person's post: We don't have separate drinking fountains anymore, and only the handicapped and the elderly have seats reserved at the front of the bus. But we have separate television shows, separate music styles, separate styles of clothing, separate vocabularies, and now separate mission objectives in Grand Theft Auto.
I tend to take a middle of the road approach to politics in general, but I find "political correctness" to be more than a little disgusting most of the time.

In unrelated news, The Return of the King hits theaters in a week. Call us maladjusted if you will, but my company (there're only 6 or 7 of us) is having a work party next Tuesday. It starts at 1 p.m. and ends about 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. I'll give you one guess what we're doing.

Wow, imagine my surprise this morning when I opened up /my/amigos/ and found a bunch of JEs talking about LadyGuardian's less than graceful exit from the /. social scene. I'm very much a lurker these days and can't recall ever having a conversation with LG, but I did read her JEs along with everyone else's in my friends list. I guess if I thought about it, I could go to her site and read her amusing ramblings there, but realistically speaking, I'm going to miss her -- just not enough to go visit her non-slashdot site. I barely have time to read through /my/amigos/ page.

A big congratulations needs to go out to Bethanie for getting under her skin. I had no idea. Honestly, the double entendre and innuendos in general get overused on occasion, but you still have insightful things to say. If I flamed everyone who ever said something I didn't care for, I'd be a pretty lonely guy. And after seeing LG and FortKnox's JE comments, I think enough has been said about that. :)

Well, I really need to get back to work; it's taken me far too long to write this today (I keep minimizing my browser so that I can work on something else for a while,) but I had to get my thoughts down.

P.S. LG, you probably won't ever see this, but I always meant to ask what Counterstrike servers you played on, you know, just to see if you're as good a CT as you claim. ;)

So much going on these days. My company moved to a new (temporary) office space about three weeks ago, so we've been trying to get stuff going from here until we move to our new, new spot. I hate moving...

I did finally get my processor back only to learn that the IDE controller was the problem. It seems that no one has been able to write a Linux driver for it yet. I switched back to my old tower (and daily crashes!) and decided to install LInux on it. It works great, except for the crashes still happen (I long ago determined that there is some kind of hardware issue with this tower, so I know it's not the OS' fault.) I'm using Gnome for my window manager. I have it set to use the Apple style theme, which is really cool. I grew up using Macs and see no reason to emulate the evil empire. :p Now, if I can just get Unreal Tournament running on it, that would be killer.

I think the rest of this JE is going to fall under the title: A Little Too Excited About the Small Things.
I'm just way too excited about this ergonomic keyboard.
I'm also way, way too excited about my basketball team (aka The Utah Jazz.) Maybe I should cut back on the sugar, but their two wins so far (out of a predicted 8!) were very encouraging. I have tickets to tomorrow's game against the Phoenix Suns; the Jazz aren't expected to win, but they also weren't expected to win against Portland or Minnesota. It should be a fun game regardless.
I'm less excited, but still a bit too much, about ze Matrix coming out tomorrow. I really enjoyed the second movie. Sure it wasn't as mystical, mysterious, or mind-bending (heh, alliteration) as the first, but it was a fun action flick. I expect something very similar from the final installment.
I'm very possibly a little too excited about The Return of the King. I'm not expecting the Scouring of the Shire or Aragorn's Mighty Trot through the Lands of Death, so I figure I'll really enjoy it. I will keep my fingers crossed that Liv Tyler doesn't have too many speaking lines. She really looks the part, but Eowyn was far more interesting to watch onscreen in The Two Towers.
I'm definitely too excited for this Zelda bundle that they've been arguing about on games.slashdot for the past couple of months. I've never spent a lot of time playing any of the Zelda games, but somehow I've convinced myself that buying a Gamecube and this bundle will solve that. Only time will tell.

I think I've reached the end of the Over-Excited section for this JE. I'm sorry for not commenting in anybody's journal; I have been reading though. Bethanie, as always, has had some real humdingers that I thought I'd write in, but never found the time. Mao Che Minh had a short lapse of madness that was very troll-like of him. And of course, the FortKnox photo contest of infamy. See, I've been keeping up in my spare time. :)

Oh, by the way, the subject for this JE: it's been snowing for 4 or 5 days straight, and I keep telling msyelf that the sun will come out tomorrow. Shortly afterwards, I feel sick to my stomach, but there you go, you can't have it all.

Interpol.

Interpol rocks.

Interpol rocks [insert superlative here].

Yes. I saw Interpol last night. Yes, I'm still suffering from the morning-after-glow. Yes, this glow is brighter than it normally would be due to the presence of a girl that accompanied us to the concert last night. If I say anything more, I may betray my allegiance to U2 and Coldplay. Besides, said girl might (the odds are miniscule) find this entry and uncover the truth: I am a freak.

Back to regular old /. topics: No word yet on my processor. I hope Intel doesn't take too long. Switching to the new computer is high on my list of wants.

Also: Mozilla Firebird still rocks (not as much as Interpol, though.) I even converted a good friend (who considers himself a strong proponent of Windows) to this miracle of a browser (ok, maybe not a miracle.) So the love affair mentioned in the past still burns brightly. :)

One more thing. I ran across this yesterday, thought about submitting it to the editors, but figured it was too inflammatory. Then I thought I'd write a Journal Entry (JE) about it, then it occurred to me that I've been ripping off journal entry themes from others a little too much (apologies to bethanie. :p) Besides, there really isn't that much to say about an article talking about Billy Gates and prostitutes in the same breath.

I haven't written in my journal for what seems like ages. Part of this is due to a change in my work schedule that leaves less time to kill on /., and part is due to trying to install Linux on my brand new computer. It seems that I am under a double curse (too bad it's not a pirate curse seeing as how it's Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

The first curse I suffer is that trying to install Linux on any kind of system owned by me will result in lots of Mormon curses and general ill-will towards the open source community. There is this cycle that I seem to follow (much like Gabe's famous RPG cycle from Penny-Arcade) wherein I start thinking a lot about Linux, I find the latest 'cool' distro and install it on a computer of the x86 persuasion. I immediately begin having problems with this new OS and shortly thereafter, wipe the partition and switch back to Windows. Then follows a period of time during which I talk about how great Linux would be in a world where someone would install and configure it all for me, but since such a place doesn't exist, I'm a Microsoft flunky. The cycle then starts over.

The second curse is related to my work computers. You see, they don't work. This new one will be my third (but the first I tried to put Linux on.) They have a tendency to freeze up at very inconvenient times, regardless of which version of Windows I'm using (and I have to say here that I've had almost no problems at all using XP at home.)

As you may have guessed, the two curses coincided a little over two weeks ago to produce a rather unpleasant experience culminating in sending my processor back to Intel for a replacement. That's probably far too much said about that.

In brighter news, the little company some friends and I started has developed a very potentially big solution to the email spam predicament. More about that in 3-4 months when we're ready to launch our sell-out campaign. :)

This thought brought to you courtesy of my cousin's wedding.

Let's see, I've wanted to be in a band since my obsession with U2 really started to take hold sometime around eight or nine years ago. The closest I've come to this was around the time my brother got married (got a marriage theme going on for this JE -- details at 11.) The full story behind that is very short: a couple friends played guitar while I sang a song or two.
This time however, things seem to be falling into place for really forming a band. Over the last three or four summers, I've been getting occasional guitar lessons from the previously mentioned friends. These were aided somewhat by the torturous piano lessons I endured as a minor in my parents' home. So my performance skills are almost to a point where I won't get booed off the stage.
11: This weekend I went home (I don't know if you can call a place where you haven't lived for seven years home) for my cousin's wedding. At the reception, she had a mariachi band playing. The thought flashed in my mind: wow! what a great way to make some money on the weekend. There was already a plot to form a band for some weekend gigs, why not throw in some mariachi numbers. I could be Adam Sandler! So anyway, that's the why and wherefore of my subject.
I feel obligated to say here that the mariachi band was very good. They played the classics (my family has Mexican roots on my mother's side) and some Elvis in Spanish. I think that were I to add some numbers to our our brit-pop set, they'd have to be from the classics line-up (e.g. Cielito Lindo, Guadalajara.)

Now tell me, is this not a better JE than ranting about how bethanie totally beat me to writing about Dowd's article on the politician's blogs. Then she goes and writes a beautiful JE about the power outage at her place. Talk about salt in the wound... :p

Never make the mistake of saying something you'll regret. Ha ha. Well, since that rule is nearly impossible to keep, let me expound. I only vaguely recall why I started my journal here on Slashdot. I seem to remember having a desire for some form of /. domination. This reminds me, I need to post an update to that plan at the bottom of this JE, however, I first wish to blather on about something I sometimes regret saying.

Nic-o-demus (who will be referenced further below) is the mastermind responsible for my entrance to the /. world. It was he who introduced me to the wonders of karma and fueled my desire to become a more involved member of the community. It's becoming very apparent that the real reason for this post was to talk about karma...anyway, shortly after I began posting journal entries, I stated that I had begun doing so in part to exercise my dormant writing skills. You see, in school (both high school and college) my English professors were fond of lauding my papers, generally - to my dismay - in front of the rest of the class. Being a shy person, this praise was somewhat discomfiting. At the same time, I was a very focused student of the science commonly referred to as Mathematics. This love of Math (that most beloved subject of teenagers everywhere - but that's a different post entirely) led to my entrance in the College of Engineering at the University of Utah. See now I'm totally going off-topic and should be modded down. Let me summarize (no! that would take too long,) I am writing now because of guilt. I feel that all these entries discussing my hated vice (gaming) have taken something from the literary side of my writing. Not that there was much to start with. In reality, Nic-o-demus made fun of my blog.

Yes, that's the crux of it. Somebody made fun of me, so now they must pay. Actually, anyone reading this horrendous entry must pay. To recap:

• I have a bloated opinion of my writing skills.
• I use my /. blog in part to keep said skills from atrophying
• I haven't been writing about anything but games lately.
• My entries have also been over-laden with asides and general stream-of-consciousness ravings.
• My good friend Nic-o-demus pointed this out to me in a joking tone.
• I feel the need to write something - anything! - that is not about games, but can't think of anything to write.
• This is the result.

To totally defeat the purpose of this post, I'm still enjoying KotOR very, very much. I've gone back to try and finally finish FF8 (yes, I do have a crush on Rinoa, sadly enough.) And, there is still a stack of games in my To-Do pile. Blech.

****The long awaited aside, err, footnote, err, something like that.*****

Nic-o-demus recently achieved excellent karma. The guy doesn't log in for two years, then he shows up last month with good karma (same as me.) I figured, I post more than he does, I read more than he does, I mod (both M1 and M2) more than he does, I'm sure to beat him to excellent karma. BUT NOOOO.