Adam's Blog

This weekend, Jenn indulged me by seeing The Bourne Ultimatum despite the fact that she really wants to see Hairspray. I was very excited, and after a summer of crappy three-quels (Spider-Man, Shrek, and I'd include Pirates even though I kinda liked it), this one was poised to rock. I loved the first two and I really dig this new "real spy" genre. And rock it did. Bourne is the baddest hero in the last two decades, ahead of Thomas Crown, Daniel Craig's James Bond, and even Christian Bale's Batman. There were scenes in this movie where my heart felt like it was going to explode. It was totally action-packed and relentless. I am really tired of script writers, directors, and producers glossing over aspects of their script. For $100 million dollars, you should be able to get 1 IT guy to read your script and tell you if something is implausible. My complaint with Die Hard 4 was that the "virus" that blew up computers had no basis in reality. At least in the Matrix Trinity used a real hack so that nit-picky geeks were appeased when they screen-captured their DVDs. There are very few things in the Bourne...

Scary Movie 3 From (at least part of the) team that brought you Airplane comes a new stinker that still riffs off other movies but instead draws on recycled crap like poking fun of Michael Jackson. This movie couldn't have been dumber if they tried. There is nothing witty, nothing funny, and nothing original about Scary Movie 3, in which they parody - if it can be called that - Signs, The Ring, 8 Mile, to name a few. Skip this one - see parts 1, 2, and 4. Talladega Nights "#1 NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby stays atop the heap thanks to a pact with his best friend and teammate, Cal Naughton, Jr. But when a French Formula One driver, makes his way up the ladder, Ricky Bobby's talent and devotion are put to the test." That's about as much of my brain as I care to devote to Talladega Nights, which is about as dumb as a movie can get. Despite hoardes of devout twenty-somethings spouting off the lines to this film like a classic Family Guy episode, there is no actual comedy here, just ridiculousness trying to pass as comedy. The whole "Dear sweet baby Jesus" thing was...

Scary Movie 3 From (at least part of the) team that brought you Airplane comes a new stinker that still riffs off other movies but instead draws on recycled crap like poking fun of Michael Jackson. This movie couldn't have been dumber if they tried. There is nothing witty, nothing funny, and nothing original about Scary Movie 3, in which they parody - if it can be called that - Signs, The Ring, 8 Mile, to name a few. Skip this one - see parts 1, 2, and 4. Talladega Nights "#1 NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby stays atop the heap thanks to a pact with his best friend and teammate, Cal Naughton, Jr. But when a French Formula One driver, makes his way up the ladder, Ricky Bobby's talent and devotion are put to the test." That's about as much of my brain as I care to devote to Talladega Nights, which is about as dumb as a movie can get. Despite hoardes of devout twenty-somethings spouting off the lines to this film like a classic Family Guy episode, there is no actual comedy here, just ridiculousness trying to pass as comedy. The whole "Dear sweet baby Jesus" thing was...

This weekend, a family friend for well over 20 years, Dr. Richard Weltman, died. Shortly after our wedding last July, Rick was diagnosed with a paricularly aggressive kidney cancer and it eventually weakened him too much. He passed away on Friday, 7/27/07 from problems associated with high dose chemotherapy. Although I was distanced from the Weltmans for several years due mainly to geography, I never really lost the special connection I always had with them from my childhood. I was reunited with them when my father had a medical episode last year, and we immediately caught up. Rick, a gifted hobbiest photographer, took fantastic pictures at our wedding - pictures of people - that served as the perfect complement to our photographers' photos. Our wedding memories are only complete with the photos from both of them. Rick was also a talented doctor, and he lovingly and gently treated my grandather up to the weeks before he died. If only for this, I would be forever grateful. His knowledgeable but honest approach led me to have complete confidence in him. The fact is, Rick was not a part of my everyday life and I knew he was sick, and that is...

So, I found a pair of shoes sandals I really liked. They are made by a company called Sanuk, and they are not very common, so they can be hard to find. The ones I wanted were not at my local store, I looked online. I found many companies who sold the shoes, almost all for $55, and clicked through a few before I found Zappos.com. Zappos.com offered the shoes for $58, but it included free overnight shipping. That seemed reasonable, so I placed my order on Wednesday night. I received the confirmation email within seconds at 9:48 PM Jul 25, 2007. The order was placed at almost 10 PM on Tuesday. I got another email from Zappos.com at 11:45 PM: We wanted to let you know that we've been working around the clock and that we've just finished picking and packing your order: Order #XXXXXXXX Sanuk Vagabond - Chocolate - 11/D - Medium Since we are shipping your order with Free Overnight Shipping, your expected delivery date for this order is: thursday, July 26th 2007. "That can't be right," I thought, I just placed the order two hours ago." I got my tracking number Wednesday morning and the sandals...

There's an interesting article over at The Trukstop about Metallica and their forthcoming "ninth album." There's a lot of speculation, based on comments from the band members, that this release will be like "old Metallica" and deliver what fans are craving. But the question is: does it really matter? I, for one, say no. Metallica is over. They are what they are and will never be more, and that's okay. They've already changed the landscape. Many fans, the snobbiest ones, if you ask me, believe that Master of Puppets was the last great Metallica album. Frankly, I think they are full of crap. Puppets was the last album before Metallica caught on, and that makes it a "got there first" kind of thing. The next group of fans will tell you that ...And Justice For All was the last great Metallica album, and they may be right. Justice featured the same heavy, fast, double-bass-y angst that people connected with on Ride the Lightning and Kill 'Em All, only with better, more developed, more mature songs. Then came the album that changed it all, Metallica, aka The Black Album. A lot of fans will tell you that The Black Album sucked,...

As a follow-up to my previous entry, An Ubuntu Experiment, I wanted to keep you updated on how my neighbors are doing with their new Ubuntu workstation. I caught up with them yesterday to discuss how things are running. The first report was that things are going great. They've got everything figured out and running, they even saw that it had a firewall, but, they asked, it has no antivirus! Do they need antivirus, they wanted to know. I explained to them that there was antivirus protection programs available, but that right now, due to the nature of Linux, it really wasn't necessary. I explained that they should be careful of running things with which they are unfamiliar, but that viruses were unlikely to be a problem. It took some convincing. The mother was hooked on games. They were psyched to have new games besides Freecell and Solitaire, and she enjoyed the abundance of games on the default install. They were unable to get their video camera to work. They told me the disk that came with it didn't work. I explained that the driver and software was for Windows, and that the camera probably worked fine. "But," I asked,...

So apparently, the open letter from Billy Corgan featured on The Stranger was a hoax. I spouted off quite a bit about Billy Corgan as a reaction to the letter, which I bought hook, line, and sinker. So the question is: since I so readily believed that Billy Corgan would say those things, should I cut my losses and count myself amongst those who used to be a Smashing Pumpkins fan, or do I say "I was wrong," eat crow, and resume my love for the band? It's hard to say. I think this little incident has revealed that I have been growing sick of Billy's pretentious "I'm an artist" side. You play guitar, dude. Not quite rocket science or curing cancer. Shame on The Stranger for publishing this schlock. It's irresponsible to publish something like this, even as satire, without any indication that it's fake. Some might argue that the best satire is that which we mistake for reality, and in that respect, this is brilliance. But I say no; this was poor taste, plain and simple. Back on track here, there's no questioning Billy Corgan and TSP's contributions to rock. But there is plenty of question as to...

"Robert Scoble is media. I am media as well." Robert Scoble, you may know, is a very prominent blogger with a whole hell of a lot of readers. Scoble is someone who I've kept up with over the last few years. He worked for Microsoft doing blogging and videos for Channel 9 then recently moved to Podtech to do video blogging. Scoble is a nice guy, he writes fairly well, and has a lot to say. But lately, reading his stuff has been putting me to sleep. Scoble has zeroed in on a few keys things and has not been able to stop talking about them. So, while his blog has always been a reflection of his life, it was much more interesting when he did Channel 9 and visited the Live Mail team or the Windows Mail team and we learned about new things. Lately, Scoble's passions have centered around just a few things. First, and most notably (or most annoyingly), Facebook. Having friended Scoble on Facebook early on, it was interesting to be connected to so many people. Now it's lame: Scoble's headlines fill my "mini feed" page, even after I set it to specifically limit Scoble news....

There's something claiming to be "An Open Letter from Billy Corgan" posted on The Stranger. Can it possibly be real? I think it is, based on the fact that I cannot imagine them posting this otherwise. I was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan. I got Gish the month it was released. I looked forward to Siamese Dream before "Today" took the charts by storm. I was a fan before they got artsy and become The Smashing Pumpkins. I remember Billy when he and D'arcy were suicidal and he had hair. I was there when it all began to work. And I stuck with the band through Adore and Machina, when everyone else thought it was over. I stayed there for a very long time, waiting patiently for for this moment in time, when Zwan and TheFutureEmbrace were just a memory and a new Smashing Pumpkins was upon us. But then Billy releases this "open letter," this ridiculous, ego-inflated collection of delusions. Billy's been a bit of a weirdo for some time now: he had this weird thing with Courtney Love, and he went through an "I'm an important poet, nay, the voice of a generation!" phase. Billy really thinks he's...