Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hollywood, lists, Uncategorized

A Post-Script of General Notes

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Realized that I had a variety of “briefs” after making my initial post…

1. This Anna Nicole Smith thing is going to be an interesting movie on HBO or something in a few years. Who do you think they’ll cast for the title role?

2. I didn’t even think about how I didn’t think about missing ’24’ this week until I scanned through the titles of my last few posts. Yeah, not gonna miss that show at all.

3. I got an LCD monitor for my desktop that might just make the desktop PC my favorite computer again…

4. Four Best Picture nominees down, 1 to go. I still think The Departed is your front-runner.

5. Shoveling blows.

6. Pitchers and catchers report to camp in 3 days.

7. Still haven’t started that “get up early more often” thing yet.

General, Uncategorized

Ad-Focker

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I was driving down to Milwaukee last night, listening to the Bucks game on the way.

I realized during the first commercial break that I have come to abhor advertising interruptions in all their forms.

I barely watch TV; most of it I catch via the interwebs or DVD. I have junk email accounts to keep any and all wasteful messages out of my inbox. I use extensions for Firefox to block ads of all sorts on webpages. I’ve put a garbage bag just inside the front door of my apartment so that I don’t even have to bring ads and flyers into the house.

Having to deal with commercials on the radio is annoying as hell. But how can you listen to live sports without them? I guess the lack of ads in all the other usual places has really made the ones I hear on the radio more acute.

This post in the “gosh-it-sucks-to-be-me” category… 😛

OK, well– off to a movie. Later, I’m meeting Michelle for some Valentiney good times. Enjoy yours (or don’t, if that’s what you’re in to).

Hollywood, Uncategorized

Ticked Its Last

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I watched this week’s 24 a day late. Hard to say whether or not my opinion was swayed by a coversation with Kevin earlier in the evening, but here’s my current assessment of the season, after 7 MIND-BLOWING-NUMBING HOURS!!!

– Jack Bauer is immortal
– In the fictional world of 24, presidential terms only last a year or two; whatever’s convenient…
– intensely dramatic events ALWAYS occur at 60-minute intervals
– CTU headquarters is actually a mobile facility that follows no further than 10 minutes behind Jack
– If they dropped a nuke on CTU headquarters, there would not be one dead character I give a crap about

With these things in mind, I feel it prudent to retire from viewing this show. On top of everything else, I’ve noticed that this year’s script clumsily whacks the viewer on the melon over and over with a “this-is-the-worst-case-scenario-of-an-evolving-War-On-Terror-with-a-hawktastic-administration-in-power” stick.

It’s been fun, Jack, but it’s time to move on.

Seems like even good TV can last about 4 (*maybe* 5) years tops before they run out of ideas.

General, lists, Sports, Uncategorized

Early to Bed, and All That Sorta Crap

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I was reading a post from Lifehacker this morning, and while some of the linked tips therein have a greater application to people who are a lot busier during their days than I generally am, the idea of getting up early and having a productive morning made me think back to living in Bozeman.

Particularly in the spring of that year, even though I had no job and no place to be other than class twice a week in the evening, I tried very hard to get myself to bed at 10 every night, and I got up around 5 every morning. I remember feeling really good about waking up, and there’s no doubt that I felt more creative and productive when I got a jump on things.

I’m thinking that I might have time for more interesting blogging first thing in the AM (shrugs). It’s worth a shot anyway, so I’ll try to keep you up to date and let you know how it goes…

Couple Misc. Notes:
– Super Bowl was pretty lame. It was interesting through the first half, but the Bears D really wore down as the game went on (prolly had something to do with the fact the offense couldn’t stay on the field– I’m looking at you, Rex). Joe and April came over, though, and we had Randy Balls, pizza, and grilled cheese sam’iches.
– I helped Michelle file her taxes, but I screwed something up and she’s actually due another 160 bucks or so. We’ll have to put through an amendment.
– Michelle really likes the idea of being able to easily share you camera-phone pics on the web, so she set herself up a Flickr acct yesterday, too. Only a couple pics so far, but watch for more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuck2thefloor

lists, Uncategorized

F Some of YI's

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This has been a relatively silent week, so this terse entry may not be very satisfying, but it is what it is.

1) The first week of the semester has been blissfully steady, not overwhelming. We’re going to start processing next year soon, so things will change.

2) I cleaned up my apartment. It’s awesomely good. This is officially the first time the whole place (from the garage to the first floor to the bedroom) is tidy and “put away.” I feel as though I can do other stuff.

3) Filed my taxes, and I’m getting a smaller percentage of my withholdings back than ever!! But it’ll still be nice to use the refund to pay some stuff back…

Perhaps more to come; I’ve also got a week and half of news to catch up on. How’ve you been?

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

Vista, Word, and the Internet

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I had wanted to post something geeky that I was thinking about earlier in the week, and a post at Lifehacker gave me a good reason to jot those ideas down a little more cohesively.

Here’s basically a copy of my comment to the above-linked post:
I don’t really give a crap if Microsoft is evil or not, but by making almost nothing work well with old hardware, Vista seems like little more than a way for MS to cater to hardware vendors…

I’ve been running XP (and/or occasionally some Linux distro) on my desktop machine (a 1.3 Ghz athlon) since I upgraded it from Win 98 over 5 years ago. It still runs everything I need like a top.

It seems to me that new-software development curve has really dropped behind the new-hardware curve since XP has been on the market. Outside of cutting-edge gaming, what is everybody out there doing that you need to replace a computer every 2 years? Surfing the web? Listening to music? Burning a DVD? Writing a paper? Even on my 5-yr-old desktop: Done, done, done, and done.

So, I imagine there are other people in the same sort of boat, and I look around at PC sales plateauing, the only really good reason I can come up with for MS to show us this “new OS” (whose key features it seems could have just been in an XP SP3): force everyone who wants it to upgrade, whether they really need to or not.

?

After all, all the PC makers (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc., etc.) scratch MS’s back by packaging Windows with every unit they move. Eventually, it just makes sense for the software folk to reciprocate. It’s all about the benjamins, one way or another, and that’s true for every party involved.

Personally, this sort of crap makes me a lot more excited about the next version of Ubuntu, tentatively due in April. If the hardware support for my laptop (which is already pretty damn good) gets even better, it’ll be ‘bye-bye XP’ for the Bocko.

lists, Uncategorized

PM Notes

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1. For a “back to work” sort of day, I sure posted enough in the blog.

2. Just realized that there is a whole segment of my every-Tuesday-work tasks that I completely flaked on today. Oops.

3. I wonder if I apply for a new job, will they google me and find this page? Doubtful– there is another Jason Bock that is far more Googlful that I am…

4. I probably shouldn’t just drink this bottle of wine…

5. On with my list, this is it…

Hollywood, lists, Uncategorized

AM Notes

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1. Got busted at work this morning for running BitTorrent. This woman from Networking who was no younger than 55 went into a detailed explanation of how much bandwidth I was using and what the repercussions are for the network at-large. All she really needed to say was, “Hey– stop using BitTorrent. Now.” In any case, my thought was, “if they don’t want us using this, why don’t they just block the ports..?”

2. Oscar Noms are out. I’ve made it a ritual in recent years to at least see all the candidates for Best Pic, so when I bitch about who won, I feel like I have a good reason. I’ve also expanded that to trying to see as many of the director and screenplay nominees as I can, too. Here, in no particular order, are a list of flicks I’ll have to catch in the next few weeks with that in mind:
– Babel
– Blood Diamond
– The Pursuit of Happyness
– The Last King of Scotland
– Half Nelson
– Dreamgirls
– Letters from Iwo Jima
– The Prestige
– The Illusionist
– The Queen
– Pan’s Labyrinth
– Little Children

That is all…