I think that I could take more than this

30

I found this on my co-worker's blog. If you want to see how many children you could take in a fight, click the link to take the test.

Madonna ruins another art, too bad it wasn't her own.

I contacted the Center for Movies and Other Stuff for some reference materials regarding Guy Ritchie last night after watching Revolver. As you can see, the graph starts strong with Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and peaks with Snatch. After this, you can see the sharp decline in creativity due to Madonna crushing Guy Ritchie's soul. I can't feel sorry for Guy Ritchie because he chose to be with her but his movies are really lackluster lately. After the Madonna entrance, the Swept Away premiere was met with "Gigli" type reviews. And then, Revolver. Geez, I really had high hopes for this movie. The beginning started strong and the setup was great but as the story went on, both my girlfriend and I started to look at each other in confusion. The action was there, the stars were present, the story had potential and then it took a sharp right turn and somehow it ended up in Ishtar. The last movie on the graph is Rock n Rolla. This movie hasn't been released yet but if the prior two movies are any indicator of how this movie will be, it will be a stinker. I don't usually write about movies on my blog but I couldn't let this one pass. Madonna, release your clutches on this poor soul who is now dead behind the eyes.

Apple pushes Safari on unsuspecting users

I don't trust Apple even more after this last stunt that they have pulled with Safari. As many network administrators have discovered this week, Safari is now standard with ITunes! I was actually surprised that Apple would pull this with their "loyal" followers. Maybe the other way to look at this is that they are pushing this junk onto users that don't necessarily know about or like Apple software. I do know that network admins now have a problem on their hands in getting rid of this garbage from their systems. It actually looks like Apple took a page out of the Microsoft or Adobe play book for this one. It seems like an "opt in" would be necessary to install this software but they have it set up for the opposite. Let's be honest, who actually reads the legal mumbo jumbo that pops up when installing or updating software? It's hard to read and even harder to understand unless you are the one that wrote it. Last week after the Pwn to Own contest, Safari came in last. Using the Safari browser, the hacker was able to get into the Mac and shut it completely down within 2 minutes. Do you really want this on your system? Hey, Safari actually makes Internet Exploder look like a better option! I will stick with FireFox, good luck everyone else.

Happy April fools day Google!

When I checked my email this morning, I saw that Google has a new mail option. Gmail custom time! This allow you to send emails to the past, supposedly. The idea would be nice if it were possible to send emails to people in the past.



I took a screen shot of this April fools day prank. Hats off to you Google, thanks for the laugh.

Home media electronics not working properly? Check the firmware.

Having a lot of electronics around can be bliss until they stop working the way that they are supposed to. I have noticed that the media equipment that own and have at the house sometimes like to misbehave. I have a 37" Philips plasma television at the house and it started to do some strange things like just turn itself off in the middle of watching a program. This started to happen more frequently as the days went by. I went to the manufacturers website and did some research into the problems that these devices encounter. It turns out that there was a firmware fix for this issue. It was as easy as taking a thumb drive and putting the firmware on it. I followed the instructions given with the program and it was fixed before I knew that it was over.

This made me think that maybe I should check the firmware for all of the other devices that I have in the media center. It turns out that the DVD player, MP3 players as well as the cable box all had software updates that were available. Updating the firmware can be risky sometimes because if it fails you might have an expensive paper weight afterwards. Check the manufacturer's website for the updates and read what it was released to fix. If the fix doesn't pertain to you then skip it. Software updates for DVD players are more common lately because of the advanced types of players being in the market. When I say advanced, I mean up converting DVD players as well as Blu-Ray players. There are already DVD and Blu-Ray players that have RJ45 ports to have a dedicated network connection and receive updates as well as additional content for the media that is inserted. Pretty soon your DVD player will be part of Skynet and the terminators will make you watch "The sound of music" in 1080P. Until then, just check your firmware.

It's official, I'm an adult.

I have been slowly and quietly, kicking and screaming against the fact that I am an adult. I think that I realized this fact today when I checked my Myspace account and saw that I had a dozen or so unread messages from people that I went to high school and college with. Granted, I have a very cool job and career, a great dog and an awesome girlfriend. I did not realize how long it has been since I have seen some of these people that I sat in class with. Some are married, some are divorced. Some have kids, some are still doing the same stupid things that they were doing ten years ago. I think that if you want put some perspective on your situation, you should take a look at your peers that have the same background as you. I have found that if I try and gauge the success of myself compared to the people that I have chosen to surround myself with, I always feel like there is something that is missing. I read the emails from the people in my past and didn't feel too bad after that. Perspective can make or break you it seems like when you are having a some self reflection time. So this is the guy behind the guy to quote a movie line.

Expand your 360 storage on the cheap

I was looking at my Xbox 360 the other day realized that the HD that came with the unit is just too small. I have the newer version of the system with the HDMI port but they skimped on the HD, 10 gigs. I have found that I can plug a thumb drive into the system and the 360 reads the content without a problem. I tried to plug my external SATA drive into the 360 but it did not see the content at all. I went online and priced an external HD that Microsoft sells, 129 gig for $179. What? Just like the wireless connector for the 360, that is too much. I was able to get around the wireless signal issue with a network bridge but now this. After doing some research, I found that thumb drives are FAT32 but my external HD that I tried to plug in is using NTFS.

I took an old 2.5" laptop HD and converted it to the FAT32 format. I found an enclosure an plugged the HD into the 360 without an issue. The Xbox now sees the HD content and I am now able to use the sneaker net method to take content to my Xbox. With the latest 360 OS updates, I can now play .avi, xvid and also HD H264 content. It is nice to be able to take HD movies and play them on the Xbox. So for $79 I found a 120 gig HD and for $12 I found an enclosure that looks great on top of my 360. The FAT32 system is limited to 127.5 gigs unfortunately but that is better than 10 gigs. I don't use the network sharing feature of the 360 because of my network setup but this works nicely. Don't ask, it's a long story.