media, movies comments edit

Went with Stu and Tif to see Aeon Flux this weekend.

Now, I’m a fan of the cartoon. I admit I came in thinking (hoping) that they’d stay faithful to it and reproduce the coolness (and oddness) that the cartoon renders.

I was disappointed.

It’s not that Charlize Theron did a bad job - she didn’t. She was pretty good as Aeon. It wasn’t that the premise was bad - it wasn’t. They came up with a reasonable plot with respect to the cartoon. It wasn’t even bad effects - they worked in the cool gadgets and some of the more odd things the cartoon had to offer tech-wise.

It’s just that… well, it’s like they said when they were making the thing, “Hey, we can be 100% faithful to the cartoon with this movie, except where we can’t be totally faithful. Then… aw, fuck it. Half-ass the thing and call it a day.”

The cartoon felt rich and intriguing. The movie felt sort of hollow. I didn’t feel for any of the characters. I didn’t get to like them. I didn’t care why they were doing what they were doing. It very much felt like it was just going through the motions.

If you see it, do it on a rental. I might even wait until it’s off the new release wall at the video store and pay your buck. You’d do better, though, to pick up the cartoon and watch Aeon in her full glory and pretend the live action version just never happened.

downloads, vs, coderush comments edit

The new version is out and is primarily a bug fix release - hopefully some alleviation of problems for the VS 2005 users.

Fixed bug that would cause VS 2005 to throw an exception on shutdown if the CR_Documentor window had been displayed during the session.

Fixed bug that would display a security warning in the CR_Documentor window for VS 2005 users. CR_Documentor now executes the preview in the “Local Intranet” security zone.

Go get it!

Big thanks to Max and the rest of the DevExpress support team for being so responsive and pointing me in the direction for the exception-on-shutdown bug as well as for testing it out for me to make sure it was fixed. Also thanks to Scott Grosch and Chuck McGavern for reporting the bugs and helping test - if folks don’t tell me something’s wrong, I can’t fix it!

General Ramblings comments edit

There are lots of things getting done lately, and I’m enjoying the closure I’m getting on them so much that I think my creative juices are flowing again - enough that working on new little side projects may be an option.

Friday night I got the last of my Odyssey CD storage cases from Sleeve City and finished the consolidation of CDs from the several racks and bookshelves they previously took up into three of these metal beauties. You wouldn’t imagine how much space I’m saving just on CDs.

Saturday Stu moved to the west side (not far from my house, actually) I spent the day helping him load and unload the U-Haul. Aside from being pretty exhausting (and causing me to be sore and achey even today), it was good to get all that done and I think it will be conducive to much gaming in the coming times. I’m itchin’ to get my Soul Calibur on.

Saturday night after moving, we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which I anticipated being the lamest thing ever but was actually quite entertaining. Good humor and good action, just generally lots of fun. Deep and meaningful? No, but that’s not what we were looking for, either. Just a lot of fun.

Sunday was going to be a sort of “take it easy” day and was looking like it would stay that way despite some minor chores in the morning, but Jenn wanted to get the Christmas tree out of the attic, so that created… a little tension. But I got it put up and, a reasonable amount of grumbling and profanity aside, it all came together okay.

Woke up this morning at 4:30a and couldn’t go back to sleep, so at 5:00a I got up to read. Reading this book Sisters of the Raven by Barbara Hambly. It’s pretty decent, though it’s not one of those “can’t put it down” reads. I’m liking it, though, so I got up and spent an hour reading with the cat before the alarm went off.

Anyway, like I said - the juices are starting to flow again, which hasn’t happened for quite some time (the project we were on about this time last year and into the beginning of this year was, shall we say, trying) and I’m thinking about little projects and stuff to work on. I’m working on a minor bug in CR_Documentor, and I think maybe there’s some stuff I’d like to add to Junction Shell Extensions. I also want to get Solvent working in VS 2005. Oh, and I want better blog software (that’s been in the works for a while now) so it might be time to buckle down and get going on that. Plus the game bug has bitten me and I’d like to get back into the gaming thing. So much to do, so little time.

General Ramblings comments edit

There have been a lot of overly excited people in the Portland, Oregon area because it’s getting cold enough to get some snow.

I hate snow.

“Why,” you might ask, “would you hate such a wonderful cold-weather miracle as the beautiful new-fallen snow?”

First, I’m not an outdoor person. I don’t like being cold. I don’t like being wet. Snow is both. No fun.

Second, I’m not in grade school anymore. Snow does not somehow mean I get the day off. Even if it’s so snowy and icy that my garage door is frozen shut and I can’t possibly make it in to the office, I get to work at home (or I can take unpaid leave - thank you, no - or call in sick and waste a PTO day - again, no thanks). So snow doesn’t mean “get out of work free.”

Beyond that, though, the problem I have with snow is the driving. I, personally, have no issue driving in snow. I haven’t had to do it much, admittedly, but when there’s snow to drive in, I haven’t had much problem. My car doesn’t swerve out of control or slide across three lanes of traffic. The problem with the driving is the other drivers. This is Oregon, right? Rainy country? People in Oregon, surprisingly, have no idea how to drive in the rain. “Holy crap, it’s raining, slam on the brakes!” If they can’t drive in the rain, what do you think snow does?

Common sense goes out the window. The idea that you can’t stop while going uphill because you’ll never get started again doesn’t occur to half the people. The other half drive as though it’s perfectly dry conditions, going 70mph in the 55mph zone, and then wonder why they don’t come out of the turn in the same lane they started the turn in. There’s no concept of moderation while driving - there are only two speeds: fast and stop. No “taking it easy” because “taking it easy” ends up equating with “stop.”

Oh, and don’t get me started on the people with studded tires. Unless you live in a waaaay rural area, you don’t need studs, folks. Seriously. I’ve never owned a pair of studded tires in Oregon and have never needed to. Driving around with studs on when it’s a perfectly dry day or only rain (and that’s all that’s in the forecast)? Well, thanks to those folks for chewing up the road and unnecessarily wasting my tax dollars on road repair. Oh, and special thanks to the ones who drop studs from the tires because of the dry road conditions and later have those studs thrown up to ding my car or crack my windshield. I totally appreciate it.

Anyway, point being, snow = bad. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.