I thought we were in the month of November, but something just doesn't feel right. First off here in the Mid-Atlantic we had highs in the eighties earlier this week. Seasonal temperatures are more like highs in the 50s! And now it seems everyone's minds are turning to matters of love. First we have Technolust waxing poetic for his captve audience. And now even the bastard is thinking about love, or well lust. This is supposed to happen in the springtime, not in the fall!

I just got back from seeing 28 days later, and I have to say that if you are a fan of horror this was a great movie! I thought The Ring was pretty twisted, but I have to say that I think this one will stick with me more. I can normally write off most horror stuff, just because I don't believe in it. In this case though I could see science actually doing something like this. Also, for those of you on the other side of the pond, I've heard that your DVD has an alternate ending that isn't available in the states until next week, when they are going to put it on after the credits, so warn us if you decide to talk about it.

In other movie news, I also caught Pirates of the Carribeen today and found it to be a throughly enjoyable movie. Its not particuarly thought provoking or anything, but it was fun to watch, and the effects were pretty darn sharp in my opinion.

In totally unrelated news, I helped (well actually, I did and he pretty much just watched) a friend change his car battery and managed to completely round off the bolt that goes into the positive terminal. I'd say that this is a lot worse then just chewing up the heads on some screws. Gave me an excuse to add a set of "locking pliers" (craftsman's name for Vise-Grips") to my tool collection though. Only problem is that my tool collection is getting too big for my tool box, and I don't think there are very many that are a whole lot bigger than the one I have, unless I get one of those rolling cabinets, or the top component to them. They won't fit in my car so well though, so I'm kinda stuck.

The recent conversation about reading over in LadyGuardian's journal made me wonder, what people are reading right now. Not what are you waiting to start reading, but what books are you currently working on reading. I'll get the ball started.

For "entertainment" purposes I reading Pelandra by C.S. Lewis. I read it about a year ago, but I never finished its sequal Out of the Silent Planet.

For "professional enrichment" I'm reading Learning Java from O'Reilly. I know several other programing languages but I've never picked up Java. It doesn't really apply to my current job, but as much as it is used I think it would be helpful to have a rudimentary understanding of it.

Lastly, I'm trying to get myself back into the habit of reading the Bible on a daily basis. I know I need to do it, but I do a poor job of actually following through with it.

Anyone else care to contribute their two cents?

This article makes me even more concerned about the current state of the U.S. Presedential Administration. This is just one more indication of just how hawkish our current administration is. Why would you want to do anything to make nuculear weapons more usable.

Afganistan I could agree with. Iraq I could understand. But this goes too far.

If we didn't have a congress composed of Republican "yes men" I wouldn't be so concerned. What good is a seperation of powers when congress simply provides a rubber stamp for whatever the president wants to do. When the Dems try to exercise some caution they get accused of using delaying tactics and circumventing the intentions of the constitutional framers.

I got to see Matrix Reloaded at 10:00 tonight, and it is well worth the lack of sleep I will get tonight.

Posible spoilers follow, I don't think they are, but if you want to go in with a 100% blank slate then you might now want to read this.

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Some of the reviews I had been reading said that it went pure action, and droped a lot of the philosophical stuff. I'm happy to say that there was a respectable dose of it still in there, maybe not as much as the first one, but enough to make you go hmmm...
It was definetly good enough that I'll go see it again. I think I'm going to have to listen to the Architechts speach a few more times before it makes sense to me...

This was a link on the front page, but since it was with a bunch of other microsoft stuff a lot of you may have skimmed right past it. The next time I have a user ask me why the desktops are locked down so tight I think I am going to hand them a copy of this article.

Whats worse is the stuff that won't run without 3 times the testing because it wants to put a file or registry key where it isn't allowed to. Or what happens more often is you unlock the desktop so that application can run...

After looking through Com2Kid's journal I was struck by just how much many of us in the journal subculture seem to have in common. Or maybe its just that I only notice the commonality and miss all the things that we are all worlds apart on. But anyway, I thought I'd throw a little "survey" out and see what kind of responses I get.

If any of you more connected people want to take this and put it up in your journal feel free. I just want to see what the results look like. Feel free to add your own entries to your replies.

Gender: M
Age: 22
Religion: Christian
Political Affiliation: Democrat
Occupation: IT
Marital Status: Single

Update

Looking through the responses a lot of people seem to be political "basket cases" to steal a phrase from Kieth Russell. So lets break this down a little more. Some of these skirt the political/religious line, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of our politics are strongly influenced by our religions. So...

Abortion: Opposed to it on a personal level, but don't feel it is my right to decide for someone.
Gun Control: Strongly in favor of background checks. Don't see a need for private ownership of assult weapons.
Enviornment: Good stewardship of the earth is a must, but moderation should be practiced in all things.
Social Programs: Strongly in favor of, belive that those who can work should work.

Once again, feel free to add to this list, these are just here to get the discussion started.

Acording to a story on ZDnet News Wal-Mart has begun offering computers without an OS loaded on them. I wonder what the Microsoft has to say about that, after all, selling computers without an operating system encourages piracy ;-).

Peter Jackson has relesed some details on the video and DVD release of The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring. According to this article it looks like he is going to follow the George Lucas method of maximizing profits. What it boils down to is that he is going to release the cinimatic version in August of this year, and then a special edition with about 30 minutes of additional "special edition" footage in November. So far he has hit the first two points from this comment that I made almost a month before this article was published.

Saw The Lord of the Rings last night and have only one word, WOW. The visuals, costumes, sound, etc were all fantastic. They did a great job making a movie that will satisfy the fans, without being over the heads of people who have never read the books.

The time constraints of the movie meant that some stuff had to be cut. The flight from The Shire to Rivendell was very abreivated, as was the time they spent in the Lothlorien. Glorfindel is left completely out in large part to push the Aragorn/Arwen love story line. The only major plot inacuracy that I saw was that Gandalf had already escaped from Sauraman by the time Aragorn and the hobbits reached Weathertop. I also think they put a little "easter egg" in the movie for the biggest fans, I'm seeing it again tonight with a different group of friends and I am going to check for it more closely.

All in all it was a throughly enjoyable movie, and I think a lot of people are going to watch the movie and go out and read the books. If you haven't read the books, watch the movie first, and then read the book, it will be a much more enjoyable experience for you. But in any case go watch it, I am probably going to see it three times in the first week it is out, and it will be worth every penny.

You know, it would be really nice if there were more details given about why a story was rejected. Was it just not interesting enough, is it off topic for slashdot, is there already too much on the front page?