3 out of 4 stars
I hadn’t really planned on going to see this flick, even though I am a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, as it didn’t seem to be my kind of movie. The trailer looked slow, deliberate, with little if any action. I occasionally like character driven films, but it is kind o hit or miss. This film really surprised me. The acting was absolutely top notch and the murder/mystery kept me guessing through most of the plot. The two biggest stand outs were Laurence Fishburne and Sean Penn. I had real doubts about Fishburne’s ability to convincingly take on the role of a Boston cop just because the accent seemed so foreign in the commercials, but he pulled it off in great style. And as far as Sean Penn is concerned, I think Roger Ebert said it best when he explained, who would have thought Jeff Spicoli would turn out to be such an amazing actor 
If you like character-driven dramas, then you can’t go wrong with this one.
Published on
February 29, 2004 in
Personal.
If you haven’t noticed…I’m making some changes to the site’s layout. I am moving to entirely CSS driven design with what will hopefully be full XHTML. I’m not sure if this layout will stick, but I am currently thinking so. If you have Internet Explorer, please let me know how things look to you (especially if you can compare to well designed browsers like Mozilla, Firefox, or Safari). I am trying to work around Microsoft’s browser issues and make everyone’s experience good.
Also, if anyone is knowledgeable about CSS, please take a gander at the source and stylesheet for the front page and tell me why the left and right borders do not show up on the container holding the main entries, but it does for the header. I am still fighting with this and haven’t come up with an answer yet 
Published on
February 23, 2004 in
Software.
In coordination with the replacing of my firewall with an Siemens SpeedStream appliance, I decided to reinstall my SuperMicro 1U box with Fedore Core 2. Well, that didn’t work. Seems the install would freeze up during the boot sequence in the agpgart code. Unfortunate, as this does not happen in RH9, but not totally unexpected since it is a ‘test’ release.
At this point, I went back to my old standby, Debian. Installed 3.0r1 and then upgraded to Sarge (Testing). Things are working well and I have XDMCP configured so that I can Xnest the desktop on my iMac (if you wonder why, then you have never heard one of these monster that make your office sound like a windtunnel. Mine is located in the garage). I installed snort, mysql, apache, and acid. Things are going well, but oddly enough, the portscans are only being logged to snort’s text logs and not into the database. According to the FAQ, the output needs to be changed from log to alert as the preprocessor for the portscan rule works at an alert level. So, I am sitting here waiting for some script kiddie to attack me
[UPDATE]
Well, someone had attacked me, but it now only logs to the database. I was tailing the alert file in /var/log/snort like an idiot… Oh well, now it is working, but I see a small issue. The portscan detection seems to occasionally thing I am portscanning someone else. This occurs under normal traffic, so I have come to the conclusion that I need to add my Earthlink IP to the home net and enable the portscan2-ignorehosts using the home net. Unfortunately, this system is not the gateway, so I believe I have to come up with some script to check the IP on the SpeedStream, update the home net and the restart snort. Maybe I can come up with something simpler 
Published on
February 21, 2004 in
Software.
Trying something different at home. I decided to swap out my OpenBSD firewall with a cheap little Siemens SpeedStream 2624 wireless router now that I don’t do anything with my home connection except your typical internet browsing and the occasional ssh in from work. So far things seem to be working.
This came about for a couple of reasons. First off, I am trying to simplify my electronics at home and basically have very few online systems. This is a trend within my entire life as I seem to value simplicity above almost all else. Secondly, I want to have a very low power requirement on my gateway/firewall as I want to have it easily powered by a UPS that I plan on buying as well as our new home generator in the event of a power failure. Finally, this frees up a machine to play around with Fedore Core 2 – Test 1.
More updates if anything funky happens…
Published on
February 9, 2004 in
Music.
I am glad to see that Evanescence won ‘Best New Artist’ and ‘Best Hard Rock Performance’ at this year’s Grammy Awards. I know their music/lyrics can become repetitive, but I do believe their music shows a lot of raw talent and with direction and some additional touring under their belts I think the second album could be even better.
Unfortunately, without co-founder Ben Moody playing guitar, they may be a different band. I think I like Amy Lee’s vocals and lyrics best so as long as the lead guitarist replacement is talented and can work with her then it should be all good. It looks like tour stand-in, Terry Balsamo, may become a full member of the band, but it doesn’t seem certain yet…
Review: Bubba Ho-tep
3 out of 4 stars
A few of us headed over to see Bubba Ho-tep after work on Friday night. I would probably rate this film with 3.5 stars if for no other reason than it’s originality, but I only have whole stars. It is a lot of fun, but as a friend had told me, it’s not constantly laugh out loud funny. There is a lot of introspective dialog, some horror (very, very mild), and finally some very funny scenes. Bruce Campbell is great in this film, but even better the pairing with Ossie Davis just really works well.
I like Bruce Campbell, but I am not a huge fan, but that may simply be that I am probably the only person I know that has only seen bits and pieces of the Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness movies. I know that these are gaping holes in my movie experience and I hope to remedy it soon.
If you’re around the Raleigh, NC area, I definitely recommend you head on over to the Madstone and see this film…
Published on
February 5, 2004 in
Personal.
Well, things have just been crazy lately between going down to South Carolina to help out Heather’s family, a leak in our roof, Heather getting a flat tire, and just general craziness at work, but for some reason I am just in this blah kind of funk. I have no idea why, but it seems to be there none the less. I am still having fun with the iPod and I am starting to play with Applescript more again, but still everything is kinda blah…
Oh well, guess I just have to be patient and the excitement will return
Published on
February 1, 2004 in
TV.
So, the Superbowl is over and as far as football goes I probably could have seen as much of the game on local news highlights as I watched. Thanks to the glory of TiVO, I simply fast forwarded through all the boring parts and got straight to the good stuff…
And by good stuff, I mean Superbowl Commercials
The Pepsi/iTunes ad was cute, but seemed a little lacking. I think they got the point across, but it wasn’t as eye-catching as I would have liked (not that I know how it could be made better). I personally really liked the H&R Block, “Willie Nelson Advice Doll”. For the most part, many of the commercials were somewhat bland and it wasn’t a great year for them, but it was fun…
