why clooney is cool/why I love flickr

Barbara Walters asked George Clooney if he’d ever do a movie like Brokeback Mountain where he played a gay character. He replied “I already did.” That’s one of the many reasons I like Clooney – here’s another. I wish all “stars” could learn a little from him, it’d make the world that much better, and we wouldn’t have so many pompous assholes as idols.

This post is alternatively titled “why I love flickr” because it’s little stories like these that define what flickr, and the people who share their pics and stories, is all about.

are you familiar with the prophecies of the witches?

If not, you should be. The Dark Materials trilogy is one of my favourite reads, with a little magic, a little steampunk, and a great ride all mixed together. Recommended.

If you are, check out the new trailer for The Golden Compass, the first of what I hope will be an awesome trilogy. I saw the trailer on Thursday night when we saw the new “Pirates” movie, and I’m chuffed for the release in December. After watching the trailer, I can’t help but think half the cast walked over from Casino Royale and started filming.

be red

So last night’s game was pretty sweet. I’ve seen a couple Ottawa – New Jersey games before, and they’ve always been 1-0 snore-fests. This one was great, starting with everyone being surprised by Alfredsson popping one top-shelf less than five minutes into the first. There was a half-second of silence while everyone realized what happened, and then the place erupted. It pretty much stayed that way for the rest of the night.

Super entertaining back and forth, and Chris Neil played the best game I have ever seen him put in. He skated, he hit, he cycled, and he had a great rush that he couldn’t quite finish (I think he was surprised he made it to the net). The rest of the team was solid in the first and third, with a bit of a let up for the first 12 minutes or so of the second. Remarkable to see how much poise they have now.

I’m amazed at how effective the Senator’s positional play and set defensive formations are. Couple it with the confidence the team is showing, and I can’t help but think this may be their year. As a Leafs fan, this pains me. But they are my hometown team, and if the Leafs aren’t in it, I’ll happily cheer for them on. (especially if it means the cup finally returning to Canada)

Funniest part of the night was when we were chatting with the folks behind us. I was with Coop and Rob, and Coop was wearing a New Jersey Devils tee. I was wearing the Alfredsson jersey pictured here, and was cheering the boys in red on. The women behind us were making faces and booing sounds at Coop until I admitted that the Leafs were my team, and then I got all the grief and more. I guess Ottawa fans really don’t like us. *sniff*

Irritating part of the night was the Team 1200 post game show constantly opining that Brodeur had a terrible game. I’d like to see them stand in front of a snap shot from Alfredsson or Fisher from the top of the slot and see how fast they react to a shot that has the corner pegged. Fucktards; I guess that’s why they’re on AM radio.

Entertaining across the board, and it was even worth the $200 price of admission. That said, that’s probably it for me this playoff run; I was just happy to see them win a playoff game (this was my seventh, and the first one where I’ve seen them win).

effects of the second death star’s destruction on endor

I was going through some old e-mail and came across a discussion between me and my old boss at Globix. My boss was our CTO, and we had many, many crucial discussions. They usually started out with a question I asked, such as:

Was the Death Star II close enough to Endor – and was it’s gravity well significant enough – to alter Endor’s orbit enough to kill all the little furry fuckers when it was destroyed?

For important questions like these, his response was always blisteringly fast. In this case, here’s what came back:

Well, I have considered the effects of the destruction of the second death star on Endor many times. These are some of the conclusions I have come up with;

While the death star had considerable mass, I have to believe the empire would have chosen a very dense planet to put it into orbit around. As one could note both rebel and imperial forces appear to be under 1G of force. Since the death star would have an opposition force, the moon of Endor must have had higher then 1G of pull into it’s gravity well. Therefore one must conclude that the destruction of the death star would have had little effect on the native life forms of Endor other then returning them to a normal greater than 1G gravity sans some tidal gravitational force disturbances.

On a more positive note, Since the death star was capable of destroying entire planets it’s power supply must have been pretty powerful. It is my belief that when the death star exploded, from having it’s power source go critical, it would have unleashed huge amounts of lethal high intensity radiation. I foresee the little fury fuckers on the side exposed to the death star being cooked by a giant microwave blast. The ones on the opposite side of Endor eventually being mutated into cannibalistic little fury fuckers and eating themselves into extinction.

Better yet the radiation would have sterilized all those fucking rebel scum who just killed thousands of union workers..

This is the same guy I had a three hour discussion with, including filling two 4×8 white boards, on which spacecraft would win in a winner take all situation (The Doomsday Machine from Star Trek got my vote, because really, there’s no way Kirk should have been able to stop that thing).

I miss those convos.

why i hearts me some intarweeb

2 kids dressed in all black standing next to a $40k car covered in tape on the side of the Ohio turnpike at 3am. One kid projectile vomiting while the other one tries to take pictures.

I give you Reason 4,624 on why the internet is idiotic and fantastic all at once.

Besides looking like it was an entertaining trip (except for the whole “sleeping in the car when it was below freezing” part), some of the pics are pretty damn funny. Why? Why not.

norton ghost 2002: where’s my license key? (xp edition)

I needed to do a partition-to-partition copy between two disks. I had an older copy of Norton Ghost that I knew would be perfect. It came with Norton SystemWorks Professional (for XP! it said so!), and I had used it before with Windows 98 boxes. Perfect, off I go.

I installed the software on my XP box, and created a bootdisk. I took the bootdisk and used it in the machine I wanted to perform the disk copy on. The PC-DOS environment loaded nicely, and then Norton Ghost started to load. It asked me for a serial number. Wait, what? When you create a boot floppy for Ghost 2002, you must enter your license number every time, and it’s keyed to the install on your PC. Hooray!

I looked on the install CD and the manual – no number. I normally don’t throw that stuff away, so was confused. I read through the manual and was told that the license number would appear in the splash screen every time I started GhostPE.exe on the machine I installed the software on. Simple enough, so I opened a command window and tried to run the program.

I was greeted with “you can’t run this under windows NT, boot to DOS”. Tried running it in Win98 compatibility mode; same nonsense. I didn’t really want to create another boot disk and boot my PC into DOS, mainly because I had already endured the reboot process on my XP box twice from installing the floppy (who uses floppies anymore), creating the norton bootdisk, removing the floppy, and re-installing it in the machine I was ghosting the partitions in. I wondered if the serial number might be accessible elsewhere…

Sure enough, it is.

If you run into this problem, change into the directory Norton Ghost 2002 was installed into. In it you’ll find a file called “ghost.env”. Look at the line labeled “Keycode”. The 12-digit alpha-numeric value is what you need.

Apparently this was only done with Norton Ghost 2002. Hopefully it’s because the users tracked down the product manager or business wonk who thought it was a great idea to put that little hook in to prevent piracy, and disemboweled them with a rusty spoon.

too damn tired

I was supposed to post an update today of how work was going after three weeks. I am sad to report that I am writing a paragraph or two to say that I’m a slacker, and won’t be providing an update until tomorrow or sunday or never. Never is a very long time though, so there’s decent odds I’ll update tomorrow or Sunday.

Today I did something I haven’t been able to do in a very long time – I went for lunch with co-workers who live in the same city as I do. We hit Feleena’s, but couldn’t get a spot on the patio because it was so unbelievably gorgeous outside. The gorgeousness called out after lunch, so coop, robcee, and I went over to Jacques Cartier to play a little disc golf. I had some great drives (including a couple that actually went where I wanted them to), a couple birdies, and maybe a single digit above par score (maybe). ’twas glorious.

Of course, when I came back, all the things I had wanted to do this morning but were bumped by a mini crisis were still there. So, I got caught up, and am just finishing now. That’s why no there will be no update. What’s important to note is that I didn’t resent spending any time getting caught up – the job is that good, and the trade-off of an evening catching up against a nice lunch and a round of disc golf in near-perfect conditions was well worth it.

Life is good. The only other thing I have to say is I hit 10k views on Flickr today, and that’s without being much of a group whore. I will be getting out with the camera this weekend because I have been craptastic in getting out of late. Ok, it’s time for bed.

today’s burning question

as you can see, I’ve been dedicating the last couple posts to really important topics. in the interests in maintaining the level of intelligence around here, I need your help in answering a question that’s been bugging me since Jen brought it up:

{democracy:3}

Thanks for your input.

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