:: theMediaman journal ::

:: Sunday, May 30, 2004 ::

Sometimes it's fun to watch what other people are buying at the supermarket.

While Simone and I were picking up a few things at the violently overpriced Sobey's, the woman behind us started unloading items from her shopping cart.

In the collection was six boxes of enriched soy milk, a box of nutri-grain bars, and a box of Special K bars... followed by a jar of Duncan Hines icing (no cake mix) and a box of Reese Peanut Butter and Chocolate breakfast cereal.

There wasn't anything in-between... just these items of ultra-health and raw, cane sugar.

Humans are weird.

:: Stephen 11:43 AM [+] ::

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Yet another long gap between postings. This time largely due to an extended May 2-4 weekend.

I took Friday off in addition to the already long weekend. The day was used to get my car to Kitchener to have the stereo replaced. While the car is no longer under warrantee, the CD player is.

The better part of the day was spent walking around the East end, enjoying the last day of sunshine before a Kansas-like storm would dump half of Lake Huron on Central Ontario. The entertainment was provided by my newest, $15 toy from Tiger Direct... an MP3 player that plays 3" discs. And for the first time in weeks, my headaches disappeared. It may not be the only reason but the unhealthy, Toronto air must be part of the problem.

When I got the car back it had a far superior radio in it. I was told over the phone that they no longer had the same model of radio in stock. Oh darn. It was a piece of crap anyway. I figured they couldn't much find one that's worse, and if they did, then I could tell them they have to give me the same model or better. Looks like it didn't matter, because I what I found was not only a nice, new stereo that better fit the look of the car, but also had far more watts-per-channel (45W vs. 15W) and sleeker interface including a volume knob.

Afterwards, I drove to Mississauga to pick up Simone and went out to dinner with Syl & Carmina. We went to a Korean/Japanese restaurant, and by the end of the night I confirmed that I am probably alergic to shrimp. Whenever I have them in a stir-fry, then I'm fine. When I eat shrimp sushi, then I usually get a scratchy feeling in the back of my throat and tongue.

We watched Van Helsing (could be a good monster-flick, but the dialogue was really cheesy at times) and drove up late to the cottage.

...and then it rained. A lot. The roads washed out and the trenches behind the cottage were overflowing. I took a bunch of photos with Simone's camera of the flooding.

Not much more to say about the weekend... beyond rough-housing with Dean and Robert a lot, and the odd political discussion usually spurred by Irshad Manji's book, The Trouble With Islam (Can someone explain why she looks almost White in the American bookcover?).

Monday was clear enough that we spent a few hours at Harrison Park in Owen Sound. Our feet were soaked from walking in the still-wet grass. Even the dirt pathways were saturated to the point that they could absorb no more water.

So, in all, not the kind of weekend where you get that great tan to start off the Summer. But I have a new radio, and that's all that matters.

....oh! and I have Bass response now! I like my new stereo.

:: Stephen 12:25 PM [+] ::

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...and not a moment too soon!

:: Stephen 5:01 PM [+] ::

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Simone and I saw the movie, Troy, this weekend.

*WARNING* Mild spoilers ahead. Don't read today's entry if you haven't seen the movie. Well, there's nothing new in here if you already know Homer's "The Iliad"

Pretty decent film until you realize what it's trying to accomplish. It had a lot of the feeling of an Epic Film. This included the set design, hordes of extras (many of whom were CG... I'll come back to that), and even Peter O'Toole.

Unfortunately there were some key failures that were impossible to ignore. The first part of the film is about the romance between Paris and Helen... two characters you really don't get a chance to give two hoots about. After that, it's about Achilles and whazzername, and finally Hector and the other wazzername. Very little time is spent on true character development except where Brad Pitt's Achilles is concerned... but we flip-flop between liking and disliking him so much that his character becomes uninteresting too.

There was also a LOT of take-the-easy-way-out filming, using technology developed for Lord of the Rings to make the hordes of 50,000 soldiers. It would have been far more impressive if we hadn't all seen it a dozen times before over the last three years. Computer generated soldiers is no longer 'cool' now that they've got them in everything from The Alamo to Cold Mountain.

Finally, after all the uninteresting romances going on through the story, it just became a war movie a la Braveheart. Wolfgang Peterson wanted to leave the Gods out of the film because "they were silly". While it probably would have made an otherwise standard war movie more interesting, I don't think I could have handled more people in this story. Peter O'Toole's Priam, King of Troy was the only character I actually cared about consistantly throughout the film. Most of the other characters I gave two licks about were out of pity.

I loved it as an action movie, but there was simply not enough character development to make this a lasting film. The acting was quite good, and the scripting was better than I might have expected. The special effects were superb, but if they were clearly going for an "Epic Film" feel, then they missed the mark by substituting CG warriors for extras.

For a film that pushes three hours, it simply wasn't long enough for the subject matter. Something that was no fault of the filmmakers was that the theatre seemed to have the A/C on full blast. It's really difficult to feel the burning heat of Troy's beaches when you're shivering.

:: Stephen 12:41 PM [+] ::

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On my way to work today, I got in a serious traffic jam. Turns out there was an accident on Bayview, taking up the whole right lane. The backed up traffic went from the bridge just North of John St. all the way to the 407.

Usually, I don't let myself get that worked up when I'm in a situation like that. I remember once when I heard someone talking about being late for a meeting because an accident stopped all traffic. What really stuck with me was when she said, "just my luck!" as though she got the worst part of the ordeal!

I wanted to critisize her, but I knew that would be hypocritical. I've done the same thing countless times. However, from then on I decided I wouldn't get worked up in a traffic jam. That's not to say I don't feel like I deserve the opportunity to 'rubber-neck' and catch a glimpse of the car-nage!

What really made this traffic jam special was the opportunity to snub a Hummer H2 (which, as I've found out recently, has WORSE milage than the H1 due to the use of a standard gasoline engine instead of the more fuel-efficient Turbo-Diesel). I was in the left (and clear) lane. Normally, what you're supposed to do is let one person in from the blocked lane, then one car goes, then one car from the blocked lane, then one car goes, etc., etc., etc.

Well, the H2 took advantage of the fact that many cars had slipped into the clear lane early, and blasted up the shorter right lane. When it came time for me to let one car in, I blessed my luck that it was the H2.

I didn't let him in.

He was forced to go behind me, but not for lack of trying. The moron kept moving over more and more even though the nose of my car was in front of his. The first car in the blocked lane's lineup was a cop car, so you know he didn't want to hit THAT. As for my car, the one safe bet is that if the driver is vain enough to buy a Hummer, then they're too vain to risk scratching their car. By the time he was scant millimeters off my left side, I leaned on the horn. That finally stopped him in his tracks.

Then the fun began.

I flipped him off while he was behind me. More than that, my middle finger did a little dance for him as I chanted "SOFA YOU!"*

*Note: I've changed The 'F' Word to "Sofa", because it gets used a lot in the rest of the story.

Now remember that there was a cop car right behind us... the moron dropped the hammer once we passed the disturbence and swung out around me. I moved my left hand to the passenger side and continued my dance and chant of "SOFA YOU! SOFA YOU! SOFA YOU!"

The next tactic for the moron was to put on the brakes in front of my car... sort of like the way that guy does at the beginning of Christmas Vacation, except much slower. Owning the H2 proves he has a small dick, and thinking twice about letting my car crash into his beast proved he has no balls.

So I gave him the double-deuce. Well, we pulled up to the next stoplight and he decided he wanted to let me have it. He pulled back into the right lane and let me pull up beside him. My dancing middle finger returned to the passenger seat and I continued my shouting of "SOFA YOU" out my open window. He started going with some complex insults including a thumb-across-the-neck, gonna kill you type of threat, but I kept inturrupting him with "SOFA YOU! SOFA YOU! SofaaAAA YOU!".

Sure, I know I'm clever enough to come up with something better, but the frustration on his face at getting "SOFA YOU" over and over again as he was trying to come up with proper insults was too beautiful to stop. He pulled off just as I expanded my vocabulary to include "Get your sofa'ing hunk of tomato* off my roads!" ('tomato' substitued for The 'S' Word).

So, if you see a brown Hummer H2 (same brown as tomato*) with the licence plate ASMD-459 then feel free to spit on it, run your keys on it, or pee on it... all with my blessing. Just don't tomato* on it, because you wouldn't be able to tell.

:: Stephen 12:42 PM [+] ::

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Okay. Bunch of new changes with the Blogger software. Dunno if this will make things better or worse, so we'll have to wait and see. *Addendum - While trying to publish this entry, the FTP publish feature failed and returned a 404 error. Not off to a good start. I hate it when they change free software... you can't complain!

Continuing with the bad news, I've been having trouble replacing the "invisible antenna" on my car. I bought a universal antenna that's supposed to go on all Fords, but it won't go on mine. I posted a pic of my Ford Escort ZX2's antenna mount to a ZX2 owners forum for help.

I've since learned that it's called a 'retainer ring', not a 'metal do-hickey'.

I was told that I had to remove the retainer ring in order to get the new antenna on. After working on it for some time with a Robo Wrench all I managed to do was rip off the plastic ring and embed teethmarks from the wrench on the retainer ring.

The work I've done has yet to attain the all-too-common status of 'Spectacular Failure', but it's getting there fast.

The whole prospect of fixing/modding something on my own car is losing steam. I've been trying to think of something easy to do as a First Project. When some fuck-nut ran off with my antenna, then I figured that this was as easy as anything else I could plan to do...

...maybe I should have stuck with the idea for Rear Bumper Detailing

:: Stephen 1:18 PM [+] ::

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Odd trend with re-releasing classic films... giving them different Rating Classifications:

Alien release in 1979, Rated R
Alien re-release, with extra footage, advertised with the tagline, "The scariest movie ever made... just got scarier" when it was re-released in 2004, Rated PG

However, if you think that overall standards get softer with the de-sensitization of society, you'd be wrong.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail release in 1975, Rated PG
Monty Python and the Holy Grail re-release in 2001, Rated AA.

The Holy Grail re-release also carried the disclaimer 'Violence'. Is the Killer Rabbit more terrifying to children under 14 than H. R. Giger and Ridley Scott's Alien?

:: Stephen 11:19 AM [+] ::

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I've gotten into a nice pattern of late-night television, including the Season 5 Simpsons episodes, South Park, Futurama and Daily Show with John Stewart. Additionally, Simone's working full time now, and gets all evenings during the week off - luckily, she doesn't get sick of me easily, and by spending quality time at my house, she doesn't have to spend quality time with the parents.

All in all, it's a wonderful time to be alive.

Now on to my geek stuff...

My Murdoch project is having some difficulty with the next step. I'm trying to install the Operating System on a 256 MB CompactFlash card. Unfortunately, after installing all the drivers and necessary software for the HTPC the installation is still in excess of 300 MB... and that's with no virtual memory.

By the way... when a computer has 128 MB of RAM, why the fuck doesn't WinZip have enough memory to run without Virtual Memory??

So there's still some bugs to work out. The final step is to finish making it look cosmetically pleasing, but I have the feeling that's some ways off.

The project to follow Murdoch is an as-yet unnamed CarPC project. I've been doing a lot of reading up on motherboards that will fit into the small space allowed by the ZX2's console. In other words, when the time comes and if I have the money, I'll be ready!

Final note... I just got my hands on Ford Racing 2. Has just about every Ford car and truck in there, including some classics and some concept vehicles... but it doesn't have a single Escort in the bunch! This would be a great arena for the ZX2... if only I can figure out how to modify one of the cars in order to MAKE it a ZX2 ,^_^

:: Stephen 1:46 PM [+] ::

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