Infinite Improbability Driver

So, our building was doing fire alarm testing today.. I hope it’s done because it already woke me 6 or 7 times.. I like how it was conveniently scheduled for “between 9am and 5pm” .. because I’m sure there’s no one else on night shift in our building, and if there was, we never liked sleep that much anyways.
Shaw was hear yesterday, and as we expected, found nothing wrong.. He made all of our cables 2 inches shorter, (as have the last few shaw techs visiting here) tested it and said everything should be good, and that he’s had a few similar complaints downtown in the past few days.. and will have “maintenance” look into it. Oh well.. not like we expected them to fix anything anyways.

Several times today our upload on the shaw connection has been flaking out.. just called them and first after deciding the computer attached to the cable modem was the problem admitted that the upstream rates for the modem were “downright nasty” and we will get yet another visit from a Shaw tech.

I’m pretty sure he’ll show up, find nothing, tighten some connectors and leave saying “good luck”.. as has happened several times before.. but we’ll see.

Burn was saying their cable has been messed as well, and even though they called shaw before we did.. they got a Tuesday appointment..

So, I just realized AlexisOnFire is playing at Red’s here in Edmonton tonight.. and it’s all sold out.. has been for weeks.. I really enjoy their music and would love to see them live. Here’s a Poster for the concert.

Oh Well.. Maybe Next Time.

So, the blog is coming along nicely.. getting everything settled and learning the new bells and whistles of RT 3.1… I am playing with a new skin engine, so that might appear here shortly. There will be some more updates when I’m done working, the queue is keeping me at bay at the moment.

The Butterfly Effect

Some people want to forget the past. Others want to change it. Ashton Kutcher (Just Married) stars as Evan Treborn, who ties his emotional scars in adulthood to the frequent blackouts he had as a child. As he begins to unravel intensely personal truths about his childhood circle of friends, Evan decides to risk everything in a bold attempt to change the past, hoping to save the people he loves even if it means destroying everything he knows.

All I can really say is “WOW.” I truly have not seen a movie I enjoyed as much as this in a long time. When we came out of the movie, we had a real charge about us, and it felt very strange, almost surreal, as we were waiting for something life-altering to affect us. It is one of those movies that sparks conversation - along the same lines as Identity, Memento, Sixth Sense and Signs - and that you will think about for days after seeing it. This really shows the paradoxical negative side to the quantum-leap idea. All I can say, is GO SEE IT if you haven’t, Aston Kutcher does a remarkable performance that really demonstrates his acting talent.

- This essay is written for guys. If you’re not one, you might want to stop now, lest you be offended. For those of you still with me, I’m about to answer a question that has baffled men for generations: why can’t guys understand women? A lot of people say that the reason men and women don’t understand each other is because they aren’t speaking the same language, but that doesn’t explain it. How can a woman say something in perfectly clear English and actually mean something entirely different? No, she’s not being deliberately deceptive, and she’s not trying to trick you. After years of intense study and careful research, I’ve finally found the answer: there’s a mental block in her brain that prevents one half - the subconscious half that determines her wants, needs, desires and feelings - from communicating directly with the conscious half - the part that communicates and interacts with the rest of the world, including you.
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Go Read this at GROKLAW: SCO’s Motion to Compel Discovery, it’s a comical piece.. especially when you think about the fact SCO is demanding IBM give them evidence on what IBM ’stole’.. I especially admired the comment reflecting this as the famous Monty Python Cheese Shop skit.

–shamelessly quoted from here. –
SCO’s Verbal Argument

(a judge takes his seat)

Judge: Good Morning.

SCO Lawyer: Good Morning, your honor!

Judge: Ah, thank you.

SCO Lawyer: What can I do for you, sir?

Judge: Well, I called this hearing to hear your reasons why you are suing IBM.
More specifically, to hear what kind of evidence you have against IBM.

SCO Lawyer: Ah, evidence!

Judge: In a nutshell, yes. So I thought to myself “a bit of verbal
argument from SCO might do this case good and shed some light on what this is
all about.”

SCO Lawyer: Come again?

Judge: I want to know about the code.

SCO Lawyer: Oh, I thought you were complaining about Mr. McBride’s open
letters!

Judge: Oh, heaven forbid - I find those laced with humorous snippets of verbose
prose!

SCO Lawyer: Sorry?

Judge: The letters are funny.

SCO Lawyer: So he can go on typing then, can he?

Judge: Most certainly! Now then, some evidence please, my good man.

SCO Lawyer: Certainly, sir. What would you like?

Judge: Well, eh, how about some SMP code violations?

SCO Lawyer: I’m afraid we couldn’t actually find any, sir.

Judge: Oh, never mind, how about JFS?

SCO Lawyer: I’m afraid we won’t have that till after discovery from IBM.

Judge: Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout lawyer, let’s see what you have
about NUMA.

SCO Lawyer: Ah! It’s still waiting on someone to put it on a cd, we were
expecting it this morning.

Judge: It’s not my lucky day, is it? Aah, RCU then?

SCO Lawyer: Sorry, sir.

Judge: Memory Allocation?

SCO Lawyer: Normally, sir, yes. Today the courier’s van broke down.

Judge: Ah. USB?

SCO Lawyer: Sorry.

Judge: LPT ports drivers? Serial ports?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Any evidence about IDE drivers?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: SCSI?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: SATA?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Floating point emulation?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Video drivers?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Keyboard drivers? Vi, emacs, sendmail, x-windows, man pages, bash
shell?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: “Tux Racer”, perhaps?

SCO Lawyer: Ah! We have evidence for that, yessir.

Judge: (suprised) You do! Excellent.

SCO Lawyer: Yes sir. The media it’s on tho, it’s …ah…it’s a bit smudged
up…

Judge: Oh, I don’t mind a bit of a reading challenge.

SCO Lawyer: Well…It’s very smudged, actually, sir.

Judge: No matter. Fetch hither the evidence of IBM’s wrong doing!

SCO Lawyer: I … think it’s a bit more smudged than you’d like, sir.

Judge: I don’t care how ****ing smudged it is. Hand it over will all speed.

SCO Lawyer: Ooooooooooohhhh…!

Judge: What now?

SCO Lawyer: The paralegal’s eaten it.

Judge: Has he.

SCO Lawyer: She, sir.

(Pause)

Judge: Grep?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Gzip?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: You… do have some evidence, don’t you?

SCO Lawyer: (brightly) Of course, sir. It’s a lawsuit, sir. We’ve got…

Judge: No no… don’t tell me. I’m keen to guess.

SCO Lawyer: Fair enough.

Judge: Uuuuuh, Gimp?

SCO Lawyer: Yes?

Judge: Ah, well, let’s see the evidence on Gimp!

SCO Lawyer: Oh! I thought you were talking to me, sir. Mr. Gimp, that’s my
name.

(Pause)

Judge: KDE?

SCO Lawyer: Uh, not as such.

Judge: Uuh, GNOME?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Ximian?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: OpenOffice?

SCO Lawyer: Not today, sir, no.

(Pause)

Judge: Aah, how about how you found your evidence then?

SCO Lawyer: Well, we weren’t expecting to have to answer that.

Judge: Weren’t expecting?… It’s one of the single most important pieces of
discovery!

SCO Lawyer: Not according to SCO, sir.

Judge: And just what is the most important piece, “according to
SCO”?

SCO Lawyer: Our MIT analysts.

Judge: Is it?

SCO Lawyer: It’s our number one piece of evidence, sir!

Judge: All right. Okay. ‘Are they here today?’ he asked, expecting the answer
“no”.

SCO Lawyer: I’ll have a look, sir … nnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.

Judge: It’s not much of a lawsuit, is it?

SCO Lawyer: Finest money can buy!

Judge: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

SCO Lawyer: Well, it’s so full of legal jardon, sir!

Judge: It’s certainly uncontaminated by the burden of evidence…

SCO Lawyer: (brightly) You haven’t asked me about Pine, sir.

Judge: Would it be worth it?

SCO Lawyer: Could be….

Judge: Have you - (to McBride)SHUT THAT DAMN WORD PROCESSOR OFF!

SCO Lawyer: Told you sir….

Judge: (slowly) Have you any evidence that IBM misappropriated SCO UNIX code
into the PINE e-mail program?

SCO Lawyer: No.

Judge: Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism
to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me:

SCO Lawyer: Yes sir?

Judge: (Deliberately) Have you in fact got any evidence against IBM at all?

SCO Lawyer: Yes, sir.

Judge: Really?

(Pause)

SCO Lawyer: No. Not really, sir.

Judge: You haven’t.

SCO Lawyer: No sir. Not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.

Judge: Well I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to sentence you to death.

SCO Lawyer: Right-Oh, sir.

(The Baliff takes the SCO Lawyer out of the courtroom . A few minutes later, a
distant scream can be heard while the lights in the courtroom dim momentarily)

Judge: What a senseless waste of human life.

I went and saw Bad Santa last night, I wouldn’t call it a disappointment, but it wasn’t an overly deep movie either. The characters were intentionally flat, with strongly typed flaws. The swearing, especially in front of young children, begins to wear on the viewer, almost to the point of, “was it really necessary?”

I’m not a prude, by any sense of the imagination, but this movie lacked tact, felt forced through many scenes, had about 5mins worth of plot, and some primary characters still are unnamed at the end of the film. This movie has the last silver-screen appearance of John Ritter, (playing a sheltered shopping-mall manager.)

My recommendation is to wait until it hits video (won’t be long) if you really must watch this immature act-of-rebellion of Miramax against Disney. (First Kill-Bill, now this?)

A new film by Miramax, a subsidiary of Disney Inc., portrays Santa Claus as a depraved glutton, drinking and robbing his way through the holidays. “Bad Santa,” scheduled to be released Nov. 26, is a post-modern revision of the family classic “Miracle on 34th Street.”

In “Bad Santa,” actor Billy Bob Thornton’s Santa gets drunk and has sex in his Santa suit. Mr. Thornton’s character dresses up as Santa by day only as a ruse so he can rob the department store he works for at night. Besides getting drunk and having sex, Mr. Thornton’s Santa also uses vulgar language in front of children.

Disney executives have expressed their displeasure with the movie and Miramax’s repudiation of Disney’s wholesome family image. Michael Eisner, Disney’s chief executive, was shocked after viewing some scenes. “Nothing appears sacred anymore; this is just not in the spirit of Walt Disney,” he said.

Read the rest of the story at: The Washington Times.

      It was 39 years ago today
      Roddenberry taught the band to play
      They’ve been going in and out of style
      But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile…

It was 39 years ago today that cameras began to roll for the first time on Star Trek. It was the first pilot, on December 12, 1964, that began at the Desilu Studios. The pilot, “The Cage” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike was seen 2 years later inside a later, 2-part episode called “Menagerie”. The pilot also featured a female “Number One” and an excitable pointed-ear “Martian” named Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.

The NBC executives asked for some changes and called for a second pilot. This second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The network said, “Get rid of the woman and the guy with the pointed ears”. So he married the woman, Majel Barret, and kept the guy with the pointed ears. Leonard Nimoy would not have had it the other way around. The woman dyed her hair blond and waited in her husband’s reception office so that when he walked in even he didn’t recognize her. She became Nurse Chappel. The guy with the pointed ears, this “Martian”, became less emotional, more logical, and Vulcan green rather than Martian red (which wouldn’t photograph correctly).

The series lasted for 3 of the “5 year mission” of the Starship Enterprise, a victim of poor ratings. Ironically, the following year, demographics were used and it was discovered that Star Trek was appealing to exactly the kind of audience that advertisers wanted!

The show remained incredibly popular in syndication, spawning 19 years later another TV series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and again in “ST: Deep Space Nine”, “ST: Voyager”, and now “Enterprise” (which is in it’s 3rd season.)
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Movable Type Ownz j00.

and popdog sux.