Hockey Fans (Knoxville IceBears)

I took my kids to "family night" last week so they could get enjoy an evening out and see a medium-sized sporting event. I was a little worried since I have always thought hockey fans are pretty rude and really only go to see the fights. I was completely wrong about the fighting, in fact, the family in front of me was so engrossed with the game they completely ignored their two 6 year old girls. The girls tapped me on the knees and legs all night asking questions about this and that, and when they tried to ask their parents to go to the bathroom they had to wait for an intermission. I was right about the rudeness, even on family night when an opposing player was introduced everyone would yell "SUCKS!" after his name was announced; classy. After every goal a rousing rendition of Gary Glitter's rock n' roll part II would kick up only to have a chant kick up at the end that went " We're gonna beat the hell outta you...." That's stuff I guess I just need to expect around something like that but the worst thing was the complete lack of fair play and respect for an opponent. At one point the opposing team clearly scored a goal that was not awarded to them. When the officials reviewed the play and gave them the point the place erupted in profanity and shrieking. That's the worst display of sportsmanship I have ever seen. Yes, you should want to win and compete very hard. No, you should not want to win at the expense of fair play.

Mac OSX (got jacked!)

Hmmm, looks like some hackers are starting to take advantage of the, sometimes, overconfident Mac users out there. I had been wondering how long it would take for people with ill-intent to start going after Apple. FYI every operating system is exactly as secure as the person poking the keys.

Word of the century (so far)

I heard this from a young person the other day and almost died laughing. See also "Foop".
Shart.

Winter Olympics Coverage (sucks)

NBC is really trying hard to cover the Olympics, but can't seem to understand why their ratings are poor. Let me sum up television viewing for all of the networks, as if they give a crap about what I think. When the time difference for the host country is six hours ahead, you face significant challenges because of the Internet. The best way to cmbat this is to have a more flexible schedule. Do not try to save the "high-profile" events too long. For example they are trying to broadcast in our area from 8-12 at night, I can assurethem that only about three people in this country have any desire to watch Ice Dancing during prime time. The events that interest me are sanwiched between the most boring events in the world. I would rather just read the results than try to suffer through curling or some gay ice skater. If they want people to watch they need to get the American athletes to win, and if not win then at least stop acting like some sort of primadonna. They should also show the "more exciting" events as soon as possible to prevent people from dying of boredom during "the crucial third rock" on sheet b of whatever the crap that means.
The other thing to understand is that you can hype an unpopular sport or program all you want, you can show it in everyone's favorite tv watching time, you cannot make it not boring or stupid though. If you show a crappy show/sport thurday at 8 p.m. on thursday, it won't make people watch it. I can't figure out why this is so difficult to understand, T.V. executives are firmly convinced that showing crapola in a hot time slot will boost the ratings. It will, but only because they are hunting for their favorite show which you just stuck at 10 pm on Sunday.
Moving a good show to a crappy time slot can significantly reduce its lifespan. This is because no matter how much you like a sport/show it isn't worth dragging yourself into work late or dead tired just to catch some show. Of course none of this will work if we keep trying to push unpopular ideas, Commander-in-Chief or The Book of Daniel, on people who don't want to watch it. Sure there is a small minority that want to see this stuff, but T.V. just can't be in the business of pleasing the smaller crowd or they will lose all their money.
I will now wait by the phone for the job offers from all the T.V. networks.

Movie Review (Sahara)

This movie also had enormous potential that seemed to be unrealized. The premise was great, and I never really wanted to turn the thing off, but I was also never really engaged in the story. In their defense, moviemakers in the Indiana Jones-style really have a lot to live up to and probably won't ever be able to reach that level. The sidekick charachter in this movie is hilarious, and everyone does a credible job, the story just isn't great.

Movie review (40 yr old Virgin)

Done in the National Lampoon style this movie had enormous potential. This potential was unrealized as the writers seemed to rely on excessive foul language for laughs when it just wasn't needed. Several very funny scenes are interrupted by the F word when it just doesn't work with the situation. There are several hilarious moments, but unfortunately they don't overcome the ridiculous abuse of cuss words. In the end, the guy actually waits until he is married to have sex.

Bryant Gumbel

So I heard a rumor that Bryant Gumbel said he isn't interested in the Winter Olympics because there aren't enough black athletes competing. Interesting that Mr. Gumbel can say that and not be called a racist. Let's try that same statement a different way. "I don't really watch the NBA because there aren't enough white athletes playing." I think my statement would be received differently for some reason. I am pretty sure that Bryant Gumbel rarely says things of this nature, and this type of statement seems out of charachter for him. By the way that's a picture of him with his wife Hilary.

Movie Review (Firewall)

I read somewhere that this movie was boring, Harrison Ford's performance was weak, and it was technically inaccurate. This movie was very entertaining, and the directors and writers did a good job of allowing their main charachter, Ford, to make significant mental leaps that a security analyst would be capable of. Harrison Ford was vintage Jack Ryan which is what some people are knocking, they must have forgotten how well he played that part. This charachter is similiar and Ford did a great job with it.
Now for the nerds thatread this, there are several things that were a little off. In the beginning of the movie as Harrison Ford and one of his employees decide to activeky block a hacker attempting to breach the bank's security. They choose to insert a router ACL instead of using a security device. While this method is effective, no security analyst would place the load on their infrastructure routing mechanism when other means were available. Additionally he uses a ridiculously simple password for home security, and his personal identity was very easily compromised. All screenshots I can recall showed accurate Cisoc IOS and Unix commands, nothing looked fake or Hollywood like Swordfish and other "hacking" movies. Overall I would say this movie is a lot better than most other things that have come out recently.

Al Gore and Hollywood

Al Gore has once again proven he will say whatever seems to make the people in the room happy regardless of the truth. This past Sunday he was addressing a room of people in Saudi Arabia and apologized for all the terrible abuses arabs have suffered since 9/11/01. He stated that arab men were "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgiveable conditions". This is just not true, and if he had come out from under whatever rock he was hiding under at the time he would have known that. In his defense this may have still benn during his sulking bearded stage after losing the 2000 Presidential election. While I believe people are entitled to their opinion, this anti-american crap is stupid.
Speaking of anti-american, have you seen Billy Zane and Gary Busey's new project Valley of the Wolves Iraq? This movie portrays U.S. Marines actively shooting civilians intentionally, and Gary Busey's Rabbi charachter harvests organs from dead arab children and sells them on the black market. So not only is this anti-american like Munich, Syriana, and most of the asshats in Hollywood, it's anti-semitic. Since it was made in Turkey it isn't getting a lot of press. Yes Turkey, our NATO "ally". This is not the way I like our country portrayed, especially by people who have never served our country and certainly never served during a war.

Mrs. King's Funeral or (The Democratic National Convention?)

I watched the eulogies delivered yesterday for Mrs. King and was shocked at the remarks made by President Carter and Reverand Lowery. What a terrible forum to present your politics and slander a man who was actually in the room. This type of grandstanding is shameless.
President Carter made reference to the Kings being wiretapped many years ago, which was something that should not have happened. Comparing that to what the NSA is currently doing however is ludicrous. Did you know that for the NSA to monitor you under the current conditions that one end of the monitored call must be destined to or originate from a known terrorist country? That's right, calls within the borders of the United States are not monitored. As for Rev. Lowery's ridiculous speech about WMD and the "fact" that they don't exist I guess he hasn't read this. Might make some people question who they call a liar.
I don't agree with everything the President does or says, and sometimes I wonder if it would be possible for him to further alienate some people from his cause. Yesterday's remarks from the left certainly demonstrated that you can further alienate people from your politics with just a few poorly chosen words at exactly the wrong time. The funniest part was President Clinton acting like his wife will be the next President, that just won't happen I've been over that before. It is always best to wait for the correct forum to wage your political wars, yesterday was not it.

Muslim Cartoon

The violence over the "anti-muslim" cartoons is ridiculous. Muslims all over the world continually slander Jews and Christians in their media even portraying them as Nazis. The difference is Jews and Christians don't start rioting and killing people over it. The hypocrisy of these acts is astounding, the majority of these rioters apparently think it's ok to portray jews as child killers as evidenced in the top cartoon, but you can't poke a little fun at Mohammed. I think Mohammed can take it just a bit if his people are willing to dish it out. Here is a pretty decent article. He has several nice Muslim cartoons in there, anyone want to start a riot?

Gangsta Rap (doesn't suck, no)

So the whole persona of rap seems semi-ridiculous, but apparently it has a niche with the ridiculous misspelling of words and mostly terrible lyrics. Recently a co-worker of mine rented a car with a gangsta rap cd stuck in the CD player. We decided to try and identify the artist by the lyrics, they went something like this:

" MotherF***in' n**ga too f***in' hype." " bust a f***in' cap in yo' n**ga a**." " Oh hell yeah, you like it like that."

This was every song on the disc. I stuck the lyrics in Google and apparently these lyrics are actually in several different songs by different artists, it really didn't narrow anything down for me. We did get a good laugh out of the whole experience though.

Movie Review (Crocodile Hunter)

I saw this about three weeks ago on Fox, I believe, during a slow rainy weekend. The movie was pretty funny and as entertaining as the regular show is. I am giving it a negative review because it has been on every weekend for the past three weeks, and it has been on multiple times duruing those weekends. This crappy lazy programming is awful, I mean really they have to have enough movies in the vault to show something different.

Truckers

Let me start by saying I know how much truckers contribute to our infrastructure by performing their jobs. America cannot survive without these men and women.

That said I also think only about 1/3 of them are actually decent drivers. If you ever listen to channel 19 on a CB they are constantly whining about "4 wheelers". That means you and me in our family vehicles. They constantly complain about us being in their way, which is probably valid since most people around me seem to think they are on a Nascar track. The problem I see is when these giant vehicles are flying down the road at around 80 mph on average. This is compounded by the fact that on hilly terrain they can only go 50 uphill and 90-100 downhill. The drivers are also paid by the mile, so the farther they can go and the faster they can get there, the more they get paid. All of this is a recipe for disaster, if you don't believe me just take a trip on an interstate anywhere, if you survive these giant drowsy speed demons you will probably agree. I think they should start paying these guys a regular salary or just by the trip. They currently are required to keep some sort of log, but apparently it's pretty easy to fake it.

Movie review( Underworld Evolution)

I saw Underworld Evolution with some co-workers this past week. If you liked the first one, you should definitely go see it. Like the first movie, the plot is not what's important. The cinematography was not quite as good in this one and the fight scenes were all kind of anticlimatic. Making up for all of that however was Kate Beckinsale looking uber smoking hot in, and sometimes out of, her tight leather outfit. I give it a 2.5 out of five stars.