Ugh, I was somewhat interested in seeing this movie, if only to finish off the story line from the first two films. But now that it's over, I wish I hadn't bothered watching it at all. Plot resolution? Yes. Could they have cut the running time by an hour or so, and still resolved the plot? Yes. Could somebody have summarized the plot resolution sufficiently well in a few minutes time, saving me from watching the movie? You bet. Was the story unnecessarily complicated? Yes. As good as the first Matrix? No way. Worth seeing? Barely.

Pretty good footage of big wave surfing all around the world. Even though I've seen big wave surfing before (the IMAX footage is a great piece), I never tire of watching surfers fly down the face of a 5-story wave. This film includes footage of guys eating it, bad, while surfing a monster wave. Fortunately, everyone turns out fine, but the crashes look bad. The waves are so enormous that it's nearly impossible to believe that anyone could survive a mishap, yet somehow they usually do.

Click to enlarge

One of my friends came over tonight, and we got to talking about old video games. I've been into Gauntlet, Joust and Dig Dug lately, and we talked about other cool games, like Tempest. I remember being a kid, playing Tempest, and wondering why there was a big monster on the cabinet graphics when the game itself contained no monsters whatsoever. So I just did a search and hunted down this graphic, showing the cool monster that never appears in the game.

I was in the men's restroom this afternoon just as a co-worker was on his way out. It didn't take much to notice that he didn't wash his hands before leaving, which is an instant gross-out in my book. I know there are plenty of people out in the world who don't believe in washing their hands after going to the bathroom, but that doesn't make it any less gross. One of my favorite arguments is, "who cares? I've been doing this my whole life and I ain't dead yet." Well, to that point, I could shoot you in the arm and cut off your leg, and pretty much guarantee proper medical attention would keep you alive, but that doesn't mean it's frickin' good for you. I guess some people have really, really low standards if their worldview says the only negative consequence to consider is death.

Anyway, I'm generally pretty accepting of others' decisions and way of life, but only to a point. For instance, I'm not too happy about accepting the following:

• observe co-worker not washing hands after bathroom visit
  
• on separate occasions, observe co-worker in the break room reaching into communal snack bins with hands
  
• realize that you yourself have consumed snacks from the same snack bin
  
• yucko

So what can I do? Tell the guy he should wash his hands? Or maybe I could tell everyone else to steer clear of the communal food, because Mr. Nasty Hands has rummaged through the contents? Or just keep it to myself, making a point to never eat any snacks again?

Perhaps I wouldn't care if I weren't so observant and aware. That way I wouldn't have noticed who did or didn't wash his hands, nor would I have remembered seeing those same shitty hands dig around through communal food. Indeed, ignorance must be blissful.

Taken from the article, "Tourists flock to the dead zone of Chernobyl":

"Nearly 20 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Chernobyl power plant and the poisonous wasteland that surrounds it has become an unlikely tourist destination.

Day-trippers armed with Geiger counters take guided tours from Kiev through military checkpoints to the doorstep of the reactor. Increasing numbers of adventurers are finding their way into the irradiated zone, seeking the eerie thrill of entering family homes unchanged since they were evacuated at a few minutes' notice, two decades ago."

The Happiness of the Katakuris is categorized as "Musical, Comedy, Horror". The comments posted at ILuvVideo (where we rented it) said things like totally crazy and fun, and you should definitely watch this movie. So we did, and it was just as expected, crazy and fun.

Postal, cycling parting ways at season's end

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. One of the biggest and most widely recognized sponsors in the sport of cycling will be no more after the 2004 year.

There have been a number of snippets in the press from critics of the sponsorship program, saying it's a waste of money to sponsor a cycling team. They've asked for proof that the sponsorship had a positive impact, but like all marketing tactics, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to quantify the effect of an ad campaign or sponsorship move. Who can truthfully describe the exact effect of money spent on marketing? Sadly, because there was no easy way to describe the positive effects of sponsoring one of the biggest cycling teams in the world, the decision-makers at US Postal succumbed to pressure and decided to pull the plug at the end of the year.

Curious to find out more, I did some digging and discovered interesting results.

For an organization like the United States Postal Service that has annual operating expenses in the billions of dollars (look at the numbers yourself), it seems a bit unreasonable to cry over sponsorship money. We're talking a few million dollars (maybe 10?) a year on a high-profile, globally recognizable cycling team, which is literally only a fraction of a percent of what is spent by the US Postal organization.

From the 2003 Annual Report, the operating revenue for the year was $68,529,000,000 (yes, that's 68.5 billion dollars), operating expenses came to $63,902,000,000, income was $4,627,000,000, and the number of career employees was 729,035.

So we've got 3/4 of a million people working for a company with $68 billion dollars in revenue, $63.9 billion in expenses, $4.6 billion income (which I assume represents profit), and yet people blame a cycling sponsorship for the financial strains on the USPS organization. I don't get it. If you're gonna question anything about an organization's spending, why go after the something that represents 0.015% of total expenses?

For sake of argument, consider the following. If you paid your average employee $30,000 annually, cutting headcount by just 500 people would reduce the outright operational costs by $15,000,000. That would still leave you with another 728,535 employees. Want to really make a difference? Reduce employee headcount by 28,535 (to bring the total to an even 700,000 people) - presto! You've just saved the US Postal Service $856,050,000 per year!

This is a kind of biography/documentary of one of the most famous skateboards of all time, Mark "Gator" Rogowski. The film was well done, and interesting to watch. Being an ex-skater myself, it was ultra-cool to see all the old footage and advertisements, and a bunch of the old skaters. Bonus: the dvd has extra footage and clips, including a long, unedited pool session with Gator and Jason Jessee.

Here's a good review from the Austin Chronicle (it got 3.5 out of 5 stars).

Well, we finally watched this movie, what with all the hype and hoopla surrounding the release of Volume 2. What can I say? Not my thing. Parts of it were funny, parts of it were entertaining, but it came off like a martial arts version of Pulp Fiction. For all its supposed originality, it's just another edition of canned, formulaic Tarantino.

Spyware is absolutely everywhere

"an Average of 28 spyware programs run on each computer and more than 30 per cent of PC's have a Trojan Horse to call their own.

A report from EarthLink and Webroot Software bases its findings on scans of more than a million internet connected computers.

Most of the 29 million spyware programs that were found were harmless "adware" programs but there were more than 300,000 instances of programs capable of stealing personal information or providing unauthorized access to computers.

Of course the information would be even more credible if EarthLink didn't sell a program called Spyware Blocker as part of its TotalAccess package of software programs and tools."

Amazon.com just announced a9 ("a9.com"), a new search engine. The idea is that they took the best aspects of Google, and added more stuff. They got a really cool one right off the bat - say you want to searh for:

"prince lyrics let's go crazy"

just open a web browser and point to:

"http://a9.com/prince lyrics let's go crazy"

and the first thing you'll see is the search results page. In general, just stick your search string after the a9.com. Pretty clever. If you need more coaxing, they've got a list of reasons explaining why a9 should be your search engine of choice.

I'm on the market for my next mountain bike. spending the time to research my options. I'm currently focused on the Specialized Epic, which stands out thanks to the Brain shock. In addition to a mountain of positive reviews floating around the net, I looked up the patent application with the US Patent Office ("United States Patent #6,267,400"). There's some interesting information in the patent app, including schematic drawings and stuff.

Here's the abstract from the patent application:

"A bicycle shock absorber for differentiating between rider-induced forces and terrain-induced forces comprising: a first fluid chamber having fluid contained therein; a piston for compressing the fluid within the fluid chamber; a second fluid chamber coupled to the first fluid chamber by a fluid communication hose; and an inertial valve disposed within the second fluid chamber, the inertial valve opening in response to terrain-induced forces and providing communication of fluid compressed by the piston from the first fluid chamber to the second fluid chamber; and the inertial valve not opening in response to rider-induced forces and preventing communication of the fluid compressed by the piston from the first fluid chamber to the second fluid chamber."

Just gave a quick read through RFC 1725, then telnet'ed to my mail server and manually read my email through a command terminal. In the words of Triumph, I am a huge nerd. :P

John Phillips wrote Across New Zealand in a Can Opener in September 2000. A damn funny piece of work.

Here's an interview with Filip Meirhaeghe, he talks about the 2004 season and how he's preparing for the Olympics in Athens.

A nerd at Carnegie Mellon University devised a way to build a $14 Steadycam rig. With it, you can use your handheld video camera to shoot video of moving targets without all of the jittery behavior you'd see when using a camera by itself. He's got some sample videos posted, and they look pretty darn good, especially considering that he's an amateur and his equipment cost nearly nothing.

Actors Whip Easter Bunny at Church Show

"A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.

People who attended Saturday's performance at Glassport's memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, "There is no Easter bunny," and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.

Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said."

Today's News of the Weird brought to you by Katsuya Matsumura. This person has created one of the strangest computer cases ever.

I found a site (www.regionfreedvd.net) that provides instructions for unlocking the region encoding on various home DVD players. No guarantees that your specific player is supported, but it's worth looking. Once unlocked, your player will be able to play DVDs from anywhere in world (something that's currently not possible, thanks to region encoding).

I looked up our home DVD player (CyberHome CH-DVD 300) and followed their instructions. As far as I can tell, it seems to have to worked - I was able to set the encoding to 0, which denotes "all regions" - but I won't be 100% convinced until I can watch an out-of-region DVD.

Excerpt taken from an article at New Scientist ("Investigation: Forensic evidence in the dock"):

"Contrary to what is generally thought, there is little scientific basis for assuming that any two supposedly identical fingerprints unequivocally come from the same person. Indeed, according to a report published in December, the only major research explicitly commissioned to validate the technique is based on flawed assumptions and an incorrect use of statistics. The research has never been openly peer reviewed."

There's an article at The Register as well ("Are fingerprints really infallible, unique ID?").

According to this grammar quiz, I am a Grammar God. When I saw the results page with this picture, my mind immediately began replaying quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ("Good idea, O Lord!"... God: "Of course it's a good idea!").

On April 3, 2004 University of San Francisco will host the first Flash Mob Computing computer, FlashMob I, with the purpose of creating one of the Top 500 Supercomputers on the planet.

FlashMobComputing has an interesting idea: gather random people together (as many as possible), all with computers, and temporarily connect them together to make a supercomputer. They had their first gathering a few days ago, and produced some decent performance results. The organizers say they'll submit their benchmark data for inclusion in the Top 500 supercomputer list.

I put a cap on this morning (raining outside... must keep bald head dry...), and took it off once I got to the truck. No sooner had I taken my cap off than a wolf spider hopped out. I'm not panicky about spiders, but I would have rather not had one sitting on my head.

I was immediately reminded of my inability to recognize a brown recluse, so I did a little research just now to confirm that what was on my head this morning was not dangerous (it wasn't). Here's a good info page on wolf spiders.

This page shows two good pictures of a brown recluse, with some tips on how to identify one.

This Wired article ("Find the Download in a Haystack") was fun to read. It's basically a big gripe against RealPlayer and how shitty it is to find/download/install/use the RealPlayer application. Perhaps the tides are turning, and RealPlayer will someday cease trying to shove things down peoples' throats?

After posting a calorie chart from Chipotle, I tallied up my lunch from today and I'm a bit shocked at the sodium content. My burrito had a 13" tortilla, rice, black beans, fajita vegetables, red tomatillo salsa, and cheese. Here's the breakdown:

Click for calorie info

If you've ever looked for calorie information from Chipotle, you've probably run into the same thing I did - nothing is available, not even on their company website.

So I sent email to Chipotle, and they sent me calorie info for all Chipotle ingredients. You have to add the totals up yourself (each ingredient is listed separately), but you can use it to build a calorie total for anything they make.

I was pretty shocked to discover that the veggie burrito I normally order totaled out at 1150 calories (that's just the burrito - no chips or drink). I have since dropped sour cream and switched salsas (saving 200 calories), bringing my burrito down to 950 calories.

This article at The Register ("Sony talks up PS3") offers a peek at the upcoming PlayStation 3 console, as well as some other Sony gaming products in the works.

Inventor Guy Négre has developed a car capable of a top speed of 110 km/h, 300 kilometres on one tank of fuel and at a cost of just a penny per kilometre. All of this at "zero pollution". In fact the car cleans the air it uses!

More info on the MDI Air Car, the world's cleanest car.

The release of the IMAX film Brain Power is currently scheduled for Fall 2004 (according to the IMAX website). I did some digging and found an article at the New York Times ("From a Speeding Bicycle, a Look at the Brain") that sheds a little light on the making of the movie. Specifically, everything I've heard until now has said that Tyler Hamilton's brain was scanned during the race, but the article says the brain info we'll see in the film was not captured during the race, and might not be from Tyler's brain at all (several people's brains were used throughout the movie, including Tyler's). I wonder which will be released first: this movie, or Gran Turismo 4.

Introducing... Maximum Grothe 2000

Use Maximum Grothe 2000 at your own risk, without doctor's supervision.

Google Copernicus Center is hiring!

Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007. This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen.

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Photo by Graham Watson

This is great news for Hincapie. He's an excellent rider, and definitely deserves recognition.

George Hincapie wins overall at De Panne

"After finishing third in the fourth and final stage, U.S Postal's George Hincapie has won the overall title at the Three Days of De Panne, the final warm-up before this weekend's World Cup Tour of Flanders.

Hincapie's third place finish was enough to vault him past earlier race leaders Baden Cooke and Danilo Hondo. Check back soon for full results and a complete report."

Nice write-up at IMBA ("Natural Resource Impacts of Mountain Biking") about trail damage caused by mountain biking. Various studies are gathered and summarized, and the article concludes by saying "A body of empirical, scientific studies now indicates that mountain biking is no more damaging than other forms of recreation, including hiking." Having personally been yelled at by hikers while riding local trails, I'm glad to see solid evidence that shows mountain bikes aren't so evil.