Topic by topic, you never know what will wake the Badger…
Slashdot referenced this great story on CNN.com and I can’t stop laughing at the following comments by Mark Hamill
“I remember the memos from 20th Century Fox,” Hamill said. ” ‘Can you put a pair of lederhosen on the Wookie?’ All they could think of was, ‘This character has no pants on!’ This went back and forth. They did sketches of him in culottes and baggy shorts.”
It has been a very long week or so it seems. I am sitting in my office setting up a couple of CentOS systems and watching ‘Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back’ on DVD. I am simply grateful that the week has ended. I have felt like I was on the edge of sickness multiple times this week and I just feel weak.
Our home phone was finally shut off today. Wireless just makes more sense now. We call locally so little, but I really need a new phone to replace my dog-gnarled Sanyo 8100. The Treo 650 is supposed to be hitting Sprint PCS this November. There are a few other Bluetooth phones are supposed to be coming as well. Whatever my next phone is, it must be Bluetooth-capable. I very much want to be able to sync it with Address Book under OS X.
Anyway, time to sleep. Catch you all on the flip side…
I have finally gotten on board with a great TV show, that has long since been cancelled, ‘Firefly‘. I believe I missed the first few episodes of this show before I had a TiVo and as that was a dark time, I probably never tried to pick up in the middle. I just got the first disk from NetFlix and I can’t believe how much I missed. The show is very intelligent and I have always been a sucker for the ideas of space travel and taming the ‘Wild West’. Probably why Han Solo was always my favorite character in Star Wars (which I pre-ordered earlier this week). I have to say, the more of Joss Whedon’s work I see, the more I find him to be a truly talented individual. Eventually, I will check out ‘Angel’ as well (I am already getting back into Buffy).
Anyway, just wanted to mention that as it seems topical with the Firefly movie coming out next year, titled ‘Serenity‘. BTW, I love the opening song for this show. It is country, but the style is just fun to listen to. Check it out if you get the chance, both for the show and the title song 
I saw ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow‘, but at this point, I really don’t feel like writing a review. Maybe tomorrow. The movie was fun and entertaining, but not overly so. You simply start watching and then an hour and 45 mins have passed and it feels somewhat empty like you simply lost track of time and floated through the story. I know I am rambling, but the movie is just hard to pin down. As Andy Richter describes on the show ‘Quintuplets’…’like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall’
And I leave you with that
I am sitting at my desk debating what to do. I want to go home, but I really don’t want to get wet in the torrential storm going on outside. I don’t really have any plans, but this week has just drug on for way too long.
My actual plan is to have a nice steak and baked potato for dinner, then flop down on the couch to watch some of the goodies I got from NetFlix. Hmmm…maybe I should just brave the weather and go
By the way, I am testing out some new firewalling software, m0n0wall. The software has a very respectable feature-set handling NAT, DHCP, IPSec, VLANs, traffic graphing, etc. The really cool part is this is FreeBSD running a web server and utilizing PHP in ~6MB of space. Wow! I have this running on an old 8MB Compact Flash card at home and it really is amazing that all of this fits so neatly in such a small space…Check it out if you are in market for a new firewall. BTW, it also runs off of CD-ROM, so no need to wipe anything else till you’re sure it works for you…
Checked out Resident Evil: Apocalypse today with a group of ex-Oculaners and a friend from IBM. There didn’t seem to be a concensus. I thought it was a great fun ride. Any movie that makes me jump, makes me laugh (even if it was likely unintentional), and has Milla Jovovich in it works for me. Yeah, there are some women that could probably make a crap film and I would still buy in Oh well, the ride was fun.
I enjoyed the work of Oded Fehr as an ex-Umbrella Corporation employee. The Nemesis was even fun, but the character of Jill Valentine, played by Sienna Guillory, is who made me laugh. I enjoyed the idea of a Racoon City Police Officer wearing a miniskirt, thigh-high boots, and a corset
All in all a fun movie. I also got introduced to a new restaurant afterwards, Sushi-Thai. Really good steak and I think I could definitely find myself back there again…
Heather, Vegas, and I got home from the beach this afternoon. We have been relaxing on Carolina Beach out on the North Carolina coast for the past couple of days. It as a nice trip. I had been worried that we were going to get non-stop rain based on the weather forecast, but luckily this was not to be the situation. We had absolutely beautiful weather until we were finishing packing the car today, and then the bottom fell out 
Large amounts of blowing rain sent us on our way back to Holly Springs.
This trip was good for two reasons. First and foremost, we got to relax and kick back. Second, we were able to take our dog, Vegas, on a trip. The little place on the beach we found allowed pets and she had a great time. No seagulls met an untimely demise, but she did rip down the beach dragging me in tow. While Vegas hates the water, she definitely loves the sand.
We got to have a nice dinner with our friends Mike & Laura and watch a few DVDs that I had missed. I rented:
1. The Girl Next Door
I don’t know what to think about this movie. Elisha Cuthbert was sexy as always, but I really think Timothy Olyphant stole the best parts of this movie. He played a role very similar to the drug dealer in “Go” from a few years ago, but he is just so entertaining as a bottom feeder. Not sure I would recommend this movie, but I did enjoy it. I still haven’t gotten my head fully around this one…
2. Kill Bill Volume 1
Very cool. I enjoyed this film and really got into the storyline. Typical Tarantino. Cool dialog, somewhat violent, utterly fun to watch. I loved how he pulled in so much from old martial arts films. Now I really want to see Volume 2.
3. Ron White – They Call Me Tater Salad
At Heather’s suggestion, we grabbed this comedy DVD and I must say, it was very funny. He is a bit more edgy than Jeff Foxworthy, but he does remind me of Blake Clark. I would definitely recommend checking this one out if you like any of the associated comedians.