Watched this last night.

Interesting.

It wasn't what I expected going in.

I guess the idea was to root for Stall, even though he's a stone cold killer.

Hmmm.

I'd be one of these guys:

Tonight at Greenfield's Bar: Sphincter Sledge with special guest Em Emalb

Then I'd be featured on some rap songs:

Wait up by Timbaland and Magoo (featuring Em Emalb)

Then, I'd do a CD, but I wouldn't actually record any songs. I'd have (and this is the genius part) a bunch of "special guests" come on to record their hit songs with me and we re-release them as a compilation.

That'd be fucking sweet.

If I were a musician.

Samtehbutcher:

God damnit Sam. Don't do this shit to yourself. You're experiencing a minor setback and it is frustrating. I understand that. I also understand the need to get that shit out of your system and carry on. I also understand the need to get it out there so people will give you a kick in the ass to keep you going.

Maybe I'm not cut out for this after all.

BOO. You got this bro. I have faith. Don't give up at the first real bit of resistance. Rome wasn't built in a day, and people don't figure everything out all at once. Do your thing.

GMHowell:

Get the fuck out of Maryland. Seriously. Do it now. There ain't shit for you there, and life is kicking your ass. Expand your job search to the entire country and go where you fit in.

Also, with your experience, I find it really hard to believe there is nothing in the medical IT field for you. Keep looking, don't give up.

Everyone else:

Sup?

quick review:

Good movie. Good characters, not quite enough development on Jim Braddock's character, but shit, the movie was 2hrs and 35 minutes long.

A pretty incredible story, to be honest. I enjoyed Renee Zellweger for a change, she actually showed some chops in this one. Russell Crowe made me forget I was watching him in a role, he did a great job of being Jim Braddock.

Paul Giamatti might make his way onto the underrated actors list. He's pretty damned good.

I had zero expectation going into this movie (I knew Braddock's history before viewing) and yet I was pleasantly surprised. Good stuff, all around.

4/5

Which would be harder to do?

A) rush for 8 yards in an NFL game

B) make it through 40 seconds of being in the ring with Mike Tyson (circa 1986)

C) hit a major league pitcher's fastball

Which of the 3 is the easiest?

So Saturday, a friend of mine turned 40.

We celebrated by going out to a supposedly nice restaurant here in Atlanta called "One".

The name alone should tell you how I felt about it, but hey whatever, you know, it's his choice, so fine, we'll go.

We get there and it's all style and pretty much no substance.

The perfect description of the evening:

I order a cheese plate appetizer. It's $16. They present a huge plate with three types of cheese. Awesome, right? Nope. Each cheese piece was the size of a quarter, and only about an inch tall.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Great. So we order a couple more apps, and I'm scarfing down the hummus/bread/cracker thing they refill for free. Time for dinner. I order steak frites, which is skirt steak marinated in some new age shit, cut on the bias, and served over a plate of parmesan fries. The steak was good, the fries were good, but there wasn't enough. I'd say roughly 4oz of steak, and to compare it to McDonalds, a small order of fries. WTF?

I am not a goddamned supermodel. I like food. I especially like well prepared/served food, and I like to eat til I'm sated.

Everyone in our party left still hungry. About 3 hours later we all ended up eating at a fucking waffle house. The funniest thing was people watching. I am not a fan of "scene" places, and this was definitely one of them. A cross-section of mouthbreathers, people trying too hard, and young kids trying to get their bones, or something. Whatever. Homey don't play that.

Fuck you, pretentious restaurants! Feed your fucking guests.

The bill, for 6 people: $290.

Yeah, ripoff. Next time, I'll pass.

Got a question for you Server geeks....what type of KVM would you recommend?

I'm going to have 2 pcs and a laptop hooked into it, and don't have a lot of desk space. (Hence the need for a KVM)

I'm not paying for it, so money really isn't too much of an issue. Any thoughts? Anecdotes? Antidotes?

How ya'll been? The last two days when I've had a free minute, I've taken a walk down journal entry lane. I've read a lot of the journals I wrote back in the day and it's pretty cool to see the journey. Looking back at stuff like the engagement thread, the house buying thread, the wedding thread, heh, it's cool, you know?

I was digging for the link where I wrote about "the girl".

I found it: http://slashdot.org/~Em+Emalb/journal/48362/

Wow. I've written a shitload of journals over the years. Who knew?

Anyway, happy friday kids. What's the happs? Let's have fun this evening, k?

Yesterday I took the CCIE Voice written exam. For those that don't know, that's pretty much the hardest networking test you can take.

I passed with an 87%, needing a 70% to pass.

Now I get to try and pass the lab portion. (I have 3 years* to pass it) I am gonna do my best. Assuming I can pass it, I'll join a pretty elite group, considering there are only 301 worldwide with this cert.

Anyway, fuckin' go me. Rock.

*used to be 18 months.

Apparently, slashdot is having some issues.

I say issues and I mean "blowing as normal".

I tried about 4 different times to respond to various comments yesterday, and couldn't.

Typical. Anyway, they're there now.

Post in this entry and I'll tell you what bugs me about you.

(of course, go ahead and tell me what I do that annoys you too)

Fire away...

And this seems like the perfect place to say it.

Nothing.

Where the fuck is everyone?

Ok, yesterday Jen and I watched Jarhead. I have to admit, I was a little cautious in guarding how I felt going into the movie. It isn't everyday that a movie tries to capture what it's like to be in the Marine Corps, especially this day and age.

First, the scenes with during bootcamp were pretty accurate. Obviously, the most shining example of what bootcamp is like is Full Metal Jacket, but even then, they don't quite get it. There isn't one guy that is responsible for you all the time, could you imagine that? 3 months, day in and day out of having full control of 90 idiots? Can you say burn out?

Normally, teams of 3 drill instructors handle a platoon.

The scenes when he gets dropped to his unit was just about spot on, except for the beating the shit out of him and tying him to the bed. Not so much, anymore. I will state that I did not serve directly with a grunt unit, so maybe they do things a little differently there.

The field scenes were spot on. 90% of what we did consisted of sitting around trying to find stuff to do. We even pitted two scorpions against each other, just like those knuckleheads did. One part of the movie that I thought was abysmal was the homo-erotic overtones that seemed to insinuate that these are just over-sexed, macho boys trying to be tough. Didn't like that shit at all. I never once in my 5 years in saw anything even remotely close to that. "Field fuck"? What the fuck?

Anyway, the movie did a good job of capturing the boredom, self-introspection, and the waiting you seem to always be doing. Also, the one idiot character who always had something smart-assed to say to women? Every platoon has one or two of those guys. They usually end up getting the crap beat out of them.

All in all, I give it a 2.5/5. I would not watch this movie again.

Ok, how is the weather this summer where you live? I think I can count on one hand the number of 90+ degree temperature days we've had here in Atlanta. Right now it's a 82 degrees...at 10:30am in the middle of July. Insane.

We've also gotten a good amount of rain this summer. That's a wee bit unusual as well. How's the weather there?

A) normal

B) irregular (discuss if this option)

C) outside? huh?

Saturday, we went and watched POTC, Dead Man's Chest.

If I had to use a single word to describe this movie, it would be long.

Holy crap, I thought my ass was going to start a revolt. After the previews, disclaimers and the actual movie, I figure I'd sat there for a little over 3 hours. Ugh.

The movie had some fantastic special effects, but the plot was all over the place, parts of the movie seemed weirdly out of place, (the whole King of the Island scene) and they spent too much time building the loosely put together plot and not enough time on what was actually important, having a good plot and moving the movie along.

Friday night I got tore up. A rough estimate shows me consuming about 20 shots and a couple drinks. This was over the course of a long evening though, so I also consumed about 8 glasses of water during the evening as well, so I woke up feeling not great, but not as bad as I could of. Sometimes you just gotta get drunk, you know?

Anyway, that little tid-bit is important, because it had been about 7 weeks since I'd last cut the grass. Too busy, too wet, out of town, etc, and that's how you get to 7 weeks. So, armed with my trusty lawnmower and some trash bags, I set out on the unenviable task of taming the wilderness that is my backyard. (the front yard was ok, I managed to get that cut 3 weeks ago, it started raining right as I finished, so I didn't get to work on the backyard)

8 very large trashbags full of grass clippings later, it looks pretty good. I had to raise the blade on the mower to it's highest setting, cut it, lower to "normal" setting and cut it again. Of course, it was like 92 degrees outside and humid as shit. So I sweated. A lot. And my sweat smelled like Patron. Awesome.

So, it'll probably be a while before I drink like that again, but it was certainly fun. I'm not an obnoxious drunk, just a little bit louder, and life is more amusing to me. If I were a retard drunk with no self-control, I wouldn't get drunk. Get it?

How was your weekend?

FortKnox was right (I didn't read your entry til after I went and saw it), this does remind me of "XGY GPKKTEPPF".

I thought it was a cute movie, with various "life lessons" to be learned for the little ones, and enough "adult" humor to keep the old folks interested.

We went to a 7:30 showing, and there were 5 people in the theater. I love that.

Tomorrow I am going to the opening of Pirates. Yeah boy.

What's for lunch kids? I'm hungry already.

Anything on tap for the weekend?

So, last saturday, I watched Superman.

2.5/5 stars.

Superman is just a shitty superhero. He's lame. His "alter ego" is lame. His love interest is a nagging bitch. His nemesis is the only worthwhile human in the entire picture.

The movie was full of decent effects and stuff, but as far as the plot goes, weak sauce.

Spoiler below:

When Lex shoves the kryptonite "knife" into his side/back, I knew then and there it wasn't over. What Lex should have done was this: chip down the kyrptonite into small chuncks and coat a chainsaw with them. Use the kryptonite-coated chainsaw blade to cut Superman into many many chunks. Feed them to sharks. Kill the sharks. Feed the sharks to people. Kill the people.

Ya get it?

Lex was a brilliant psychopath. And yet, at his moment of zen, what does he do? Kicks Superman a couple times, and shoves a rinkydink shard of kryptonite into his side. WEAK WEAK WEAK.

For shame, Bryan Singer. For shame.