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Today we went to see Dark Water because Nicole likes ghost movies and I like movies in general. If you’re looking for a scary movie, this is not it. It’s not even really suspenseful or creepy. The acting is fine in it, there’s just no zing. Of course it’ll probably only be around another week so you probably don’t have to worry about seeing it unless you forget and get it on video.

Nicole and I saw this yesterday afternoon. And it was pretty good! (Spoilers here) I like that the look of the invaders is pretty close to what’s in the original novel (at least as far as I can remember). I like that Tom Cruise isn’t very heroic. I like the scale of the things and the destruction. I like the loud noises they make. I like the mechanical sounds they make. I like that they had invaders spreading down alien vegetation for their terraforming and using humans as fertillizer.

Now the sequel, 200 years in the future, we’re taken apart and studied their machines, we’ve learned about their biology. We learn about their homeworld from their machines. It’s time for revenge and we build a battle fleet to go kick their ass. If you want the series to go on, we get there and find they’ve already been wiped out by another species, or after we defeat them another species shows up to wipe them out only to find us there.

This morning at around 2AM our housemate got home triggering the motion sensor light outside which then shone into our room on the wall. Nicole woke me up asking “Is that a UFO?” Well I thought it was funny, but maybe you had to be there.

The Double Shot is a new ride at the boardwalk that yanks you up a tower, then yanks you back down, then yanks you back up, then bounces you around for a few seconds and then you’re done. The whole thing takes maybe 20-30 seconds and it’s a lot of fun! Surprisingly I didn’t get the dropping in the stomach feeling from falling and the view over the water was fantastic!

You can read more about it here. Go on a Monday or Tuesday evening (after 5) and all rides are 1 ticket until Labor Day.

Yesterday morning as I was preparing to go to work, I had my computer delete the file I had just downloaded.

This morning in trying out the voice recorder function on the mp3 player I just got I deleted the files since I couldn’t hear them. Then I saw that my headphones weren’t plugged in.

I need my brain back in shape and I probably shouldn’t be so easy with the delete functions. (Will not delete this post, will not delete this post.)

I decided I needed a new GameBoy Advance game and having liked the original WarioWare I decided this was going to be it. It uses a gyroscope in it so most of the game action is performed through turning the GameBoy Advance and occasional use of the A button. For those of you who never played the original WarioWare, it was a collection of micro-games. You could go through a succession of about 15 microgames at a time, each one lasting 3-5 seconds during which you have to figure out what to do and perform that action. That is no different here, but I think this might even be better than the original. It’s more intuitive to play though not always as easy to get up to speed since you addition to figuring out the objective you have to see what moves when you turn the game and how fast it moves.

If you have a GameBoy Advance you should definitely get this game.

I just saw this at Julie & Fish’s house and I have to say that it was pretty good. Did you like Bull Durham and/or Tin Cup? Then you should like this movie since it’s like those except made by the English and …I won’t say. It was advertised as romance and drama, but they left out the comedy which is very unfortunate because there is a lot of comedy in this movie. The charaters are all fun and make the movie a more than just fluff.

I say check it out.

A few weeks ago I remembered that I wanted to try to see a live drum corp show this summer. I decided to look up the Santa Clara Vanguards to see when they were next playing or maybe to see a rehearsal. I totally lucked out in finding that there was a competition happening on July 2nd. I sent th elink to Nicole and to mo and both wanted to go. So I got tickets for me and Nicole and Mo and Patrick.

When I ordered tickets I chose the premium section but was told that they didn’t have 4 seats together so I chose the section behind that (also a good bit cheaper). When we got the tickets from will call and walked to our seats it turned out that we were in the good section after all and our seats were right in front! Aside from being front and center the good seats are good because they have a back and aren’t just benches. Anyway, we had prime seats for listening, a little higher up woul dhave been nicer for formation watching but I’m very happy with the seats.

It all started with the national anthem played by a hot-shot trumpet player who has played with a lot of people and is getting his master’s in trumpet at USC.

First up was the senior corps. I read that the San Francisco Renegades were going to be there, they are a senior corp (senior meaning anyone too old for regular drum corp (21?), and I wanted to see what they were about in case I ever get motivated enough to start practicing trumpet again and want to join. The first one was a medium sized corp but I don’t remember where from. They were ok and kind of what I expected from senoir corps in general. Next up was the Renegades. They marched well, they played phenomenally (they have at least 6 trumpet players capable of playing great solos) as a band, and they ended up being the loudest of all the corps there that night. Nicole actually had to plug her ears at one point. If I want to join them I have a *LOT* of work to do.

After that it switched gears to the juniors. First was the Blue Devils C-corp. Age range is 6-14 and seeing 6-year olds with horns and marching is really cute. Then came several B-corps that I don’t remember too well, Santa Clara Vanguards, Blue Devils, and I think some others. They were all pretty good as a band but lacked in the solo department.

Intermission came and then the A-corps.

It started with a show from Seattle which did a show about the history of flight, complete with bad voice-over. Boeing needs to not dictate the content here.

Next was Esparanza but I don’t rememebr where they are from. They were the tightest of the bands musically I thought. They could start and stop on a dime and made good use of silence. They also made good use of minimal color guard costumes with a long sash.

Then came the Pacific Crest from Diamond Bar. They had flashy uniforms and by far the best color guard show so far but that’s about all I remember. Oh yeah. I thought everyone was better than Seattle. Unfortunately Seattle beat out Esparanza.

The Mandarins, from Sacramento were really good and I especially liked their uniforms. Unfortunately I don’t think their hats go will with their uniforms. They ended up taking third which I think is about right.

Second to last, but placing first was the Phantom Regiment. I knew they would be a good show because they’re always one of the famous ones in the finals, and this show was no exception. They had an amazingly balanced sound and sounded great overall. Good solos, good playing, good marching, really nothing wrong except for a few mistakes which is no big deal this early in the season.

Finally was the home team, the Santa Clara Vanguards. The Vanguards took second place and put on a great show and there were fireworks going off during it from the neighboring stadium which I think added to it.

I need to try to go to these things more often!

So I bought a PCMCIA cardbus firewire card for the 7thsign laptop with the hope of some time using it to hook up external drives for all the user stuff. Basically never worry about space again. I chose firewire because I’m running FreeBSD 4.X and it isn’t so hot with the USB2.0 but it is supposedly good at firewire.

I put in the card and it tells me right away that this computer won’t support 32-bit cardbus. That’s kind of a bummer. I guess if I want to go the external route I’m going to need a newer machine. Right now I’m leaning towards the MacMini (FreeBSD based) and the MiniMate. I figure I’m not in a huge hurry so I can wait for the perpendicular storage for some really big size. And I don’t have a lot in the way of computational needs so it should last a good long time.

I just finished this book that mo game me for my birthday. I haven’t been reading it all that time, just for the last week. It;s a very fast read about Dean Karnazes and what led him to running ultr-long distances (more than 100 miles at a go).

This is such an enterrtaining book! His story is funny and entertaining and sometimes painful, as you would expect when running long distances. You get to read about the highs and the lows and you get a tiny feel for what your body will be doing under that much stress.