Project: Rich

:ʞuıl sıɥʇ ɥʇıʍ unɟ ǝʌɐɥ 'uǝɥʇ lıʇun ʇnq 'ɥƃnouǝ uoos ʇı oʇ ʇǝƃ ll,ı ˙ʎllɐǝɹ sƃuıɥʇ ƃıq ʎʇʇǝɹd ˙ʇı ʇnoqɐ ʞlɐʇ oʇ ǝɯıʇ ǝlʇʇıl os ɥʇıʍ ǝɟıl ʎɯ uı uo ƃuıoƃ ooʇ ɹɐɟ ǝʌɐɥ ı ˙uoos ǝɯıʇʎuɐ dn ƃuıɥɔʇɐɔ ɟlǝsʎɯ ǝǝs ʇ,uop ı puɐ ǝlıɥʍ ɐ ɹoɟ ǝɹǝɥ ɐıɯ uǝǝq ǝʌ,ı ʍouʞ ı ˙suoıʇɐlnʇɐɹƃuoɔ 'sıɥʇ pɐǝɹ uɐɔ noʎ ɟı

http://revfad.com/flip.html

The site has been getting pretty slow (both performance and post wise), so I decided to upgrade to Drupal 6.2. To say the least, I fucked up the upgrade pretty good and decided to do a completely clean install. Just finished migrating all of the content into it with some minor work. I'll play with the layout later, but it's nice to know it was back up and running pretty quickly. Not that anyone noticed since I think I'm the only one who reads what I write here.

I can't help but watch the Oscars right now and think to myself what should really be winning these awards. This being the case, here's my picks for best of 2007. I have multiples in there where I think there are notable others.

• Best Picture:
  Into The Wild
  Michael Clayton
  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
  Gone Baby Gone
• Best Director:
  Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)
  Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
• Best Actor:
  Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
  George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
  Hal Holbrook (Into The Wild)
• Best Actress:
  Ellen Page (Juno)
  Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
• Best Original Screenplay:
  Michael Clayton
  Ratatouille
• Best Adapted Screenplay:
  Into The Wild
  No Country For Old Men
• Best Animated Feature:
  Ratatouille
• Best Cinematography:
  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• Best Visual Effects:
  Transformers
  Sunshine
• Best Sound:
  Sunshine
  Transformers

At the end of 2006, I chose my side in the HD video format war. Knowing there was no clear winner, I commited to Blu-ray as my next-gen HD video format of choice. I don't think that was early enough to consider me an "early adopter." I just didn't expect the PS3 I bought in November 2006 to be such a completely waste as a gaming machine. As much of the gaming nut that I am, I've seriously purchased a single game for that hunk of crap that was quickly beaten and re-sold. This being the case, I gave my $699 "investment" some worth and started buying Blu-ray titles. Since then, I racked up a cautious Blu-ray library having purchased my 50th title (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) a little more than a week ago. I nearly shit a brick when Paramount and Dreamworks announced they would be supporting HD DVD exclusively back in August 2007 and almost brought balance back to the format war. At this point, it was said Warner Bros., having not chose an alliance yet, would be the defining production company to call a winner. They did so a month ago when they chose Blu-ray and then started the death watch for HD DVD. Numerous major retailers and rental companies soon dropped HD DVD support in the last couple of week. Smaller production companies followed. This morning, about an hour ago, Toshiba released a press release throwing in the towel and officially ending the format war. The end of this format war today is a good day for all consumers, including HD DVD supporters. Now all there is to do is pick up my copy of Michael Clayton later today and wait for Universal, Paramount, and Dreamwork to announce their pledge to Blu-ray as well.

11:10pm - I know it's been a while since I've posted anything here lately, but I mean what else am I gonna do at 11pm on a cold Monday night, standing in a line with hundreds of (other?) dorks, anxiously waiting for Halo 3 to be released at midnight. I'm freezing and completely at the mercy of minimum wage Game Stop clerks. As much as life seems to sucks right this second, I'll be playing Halo 3 within the next couple of hours, bring life back to level "all good" in no time. So I ask you this: Who's the sucka now? Damn skippy!

12:04am - The natives are getting restless and Dan is looking at me like I'm a giant Snikers bar. Help!

12:11am - People are yelling and I'm getting scared, yet excited. I need to get out of the line of dorks before I'm unwillingly adopted as one of their own and raped mercilessly. I'm not one of them. Really. Really!

12:19am - I'm starting to come to the sad realization that I may just be one of these people.

12:25am - Maybe being eaten by my friend isn't the worst idea in the world right now. It'd be cooler if I could shrink like Innerspace and navigate his great body.

It'll be a crime if the visual effects don't bring this movie an Oscar nod. Yes, it looks that good and ILM deserve to be recognized for the achievement. This is one of those flicks where when the "it" is happening, all of the bad (and there is a lot) is forgiven and forgotten. Transformers was an absolute blast!

I can tell this is going to be a shitty week already. I'll be relying on groovy girl to cheer me up a lot. This things absolutely cracks me up for some reason.

I like how everyone and their mom (my mom included) have been asking if I got my iPhone yet. Yes, I am a huge consumer whore. Yes, I'm a huge Apple supporter. Even so, no, I have no gotten my iPhone yet. No, I don't plan to get it anytime soon. No, I don't plan to get it at all. I'm sure it's going to be a huge consumer hit, but for me, it's simply not very appealing in its current form. For every one thing that gets me excited, there are five things that detract me from it. I'm sure I'll buy a future version of the device. One that has removable or a poop load of storage to truly replace an iPod, shell access, real SDKs for developers, 3G support, and realistic price. Until then, I can't see this current iPhone swaying any Windows Mobile or Blackberry users.

Now what I am excited about is a future version of my Blackberry 8800 with 3G support. I'm far too happy with that phone to trade it up for anything right now.

After having some strange integration problems with Drupal, I finally got the gallery up and running again. First photo album to go up is Grant's B-day back on June 20th. You can check it out in the gallery. I'll throw up all of the albums I had up previously on my older site, but that's going to probably take a little time. Also need to figure out why this whole site is running so damn slow. That's also going to take some time. Until then, enjoy the holiday coming up!

Due to some policy changes at work, we're no longer able to bring in any device with a camera on it. Included on this list is pretty much every cell phone I own. Not being able to carry my phone feels like... well, like a little part of me has died. Started my search for my next phone a couple of weeks ago and I finally decided to pick up a BlackBerry 8800. I'm actually writing this post with it. I never liked these things and was always quick to bad mouth them, but I couldn't be happier these last couple of days with it.

I got an automated e=mail today from Userland reminding me that it's time for my annual Radio renewal. That wont be the case this year or any foreseeable year following, but it did remind me of something else. 5 years ago on this day would be the first time I submitted a post here. I guess that means today is a sort of birthday. Keep on rockin' in the virtually free net.

5 years and 740 posts later, I've finally retired the ever-friendly, but extremely dated Radio Userland software. As much as I loved it, Radio has pretty much been abandonware for the last 2 years. The final nail in the coffin came more than a year ago when Steve Kirks stepped down as Radio's product manager. Thus began the search for a replacement.

With all of the options out there for web content management systems, it was easy for me to get overwhelmed, but they basically all work the same and with the help of OpenSourceCMS, I was able to narrow my selections down to two of the most popular portal CMSs out there; Joomla and Drupal. Joomla began to win me over because it was fast and the admin tools were easy to navigate. Drupal's admin tools are a little less intuitive in my option. Ultimately, I picked Drupal because the database structure was a little easier for me to understand and, in turn, will be a major benefit when I need to tweak here and there. Whichever way I would have gone these portal-type systems are simply far more common, infinitely more flexible, and 100% free when compared to Radio.

So after a number of hours massaging older data to fit into Drupal (a lot of which I still need to clean), this can be considered a new beginning and, with that, consider this my official re-hello.

It's been a busy couple of months and, once again, I've been neglecting writing here. There's lots to talk about and far to little to cram it all in right now, so I'm not even going to try. Hopefully, throughout the day, I'll throw a couple of updates out there. One for sure being on a particular team playing in a certain bowl game this weekend that is would be most super. More to come.

I am still alive...

I wonder how many posts I'd made with those words in them.

Apparently, it's Ride To Work Day. This is pretty much every day for me. 60 miles total a day and gas being $3.60? Yeah, definitely ride to work day everyday.

My 10-year high school reunion is tonight. I was looking forward to it when I first heard about it, but now I'm expecting it to be real lame. At least I'll be going with friends so we can all be lame together.

I hate how television and movies is such a big interest to me when there are so many more productive things I could do with my time, but oh well. The Emmy nominations were released today and I figure I'd share some thoughts on it.

• It's great to see Denis Leary for Rescue Me and Kiefer Sutherland for 24 in the "Lead Actor in a Drama Series" category. Both of those shows were vast improvements from the previous season, most notably Rescue Me, and Denis Leary is my pick here.
• Where the hell is Michael Chiklis from The Shield? It's only one of the best shows on TV and the biggest reason for this is because of that guys portrayal of Vic Mackey.
• Ben Kingsley and Annette Bening were so damn enjoyable to watch in Ms. Harris. I'm glad they were nominated because these is my votes for "Lead Actor In A Miniseries Or A Movie" and "Lead Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie".
• I'm not big into comedies, but I do watch Entourage and it's completely because of Jeremy Piven.
• Just recently started watching The Sopranos this year starting on season one and the Christopher Moltisanti character is my favorite. Michael Imperioli deserves this nomination based on what I've seen so far.
• Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart on 24 didn't stand out enough to get a nomination in my opinion, but it's nice to see the show get recognized more.
• Arrested Development is the only comedy I watch that was nominated for "Outstanding Comedy Series" and I still enjoy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia a lot more. Where the hell is that one in the nominations?
• I like 24, The Sopranos, and House in "Outstanding Drama Series", but where is The Shield, Lost, Rescue Me, and Nip/Tuck? I mean The Shield is the best show on current TV. Lame!
• This one is really pissing me off. Where is Forest Whitaker for The Shield? He was so good and I hated his character so much that I just loved him in the series. This is a major oversight because he deserves more than anyone else on that list to be a nominee.

Happy Independence Day to all. Well, all except for me that is. While all of you are having fun drinking your alcohol and playing with your fireworks, I've been at work everyday during my 4-day weekend with today being no exception. Hopefully I'll get out of here soon because the 9 hours of time I put in today is enough in my book. Man, this has been a great weekend. Get to work all damn day and, on top of that, I get my first speeding ticket in a long damn time and the first ever on a bike. Highway patrol said they got me doing at least 90mph on the freeway (although it was probably closer to 100mph) and they put on the ticket 85mph. Well that was nice of him giving me that big break like that. Anyways, yeah, great holiday weekend.

Just have to say happy b-day to my favorite redhead. You keep your damn meat hooks off because that's my future wife.