i have not read the book that the movie is based on, but when i first popped the disc into the player i saw that i had two versions that i could choose from. i decided to watch the theatrical release and at the end, i was confused as to why the movie had ended the way it did. it just didn’t make sense.

i read online that the movie was actually rewritten and changed from the book to end this way so that it would be more commercially palatable. so i watched the alternate ending that was on the disc and it COMPLETELY changes the entire relationship between the zombies and dr. neville. though i liked the theatrical release, the ending did feel a little forced and i felt like there were some loose ends. the alternate version really changes the tone of the entire movie and wraps up some references made in the movie earlier much better.

definitely check out the alternate ending, it is fantastic.

i’ve added gravat support into the comment section of the blog and lo and behold, no one uses gravatars. big surprise there as i’ve never even heard of a gravatar until a few weeks ago. oh well, maybe it’ll catch on. otherwise, i guess i’ll be the only one with a picture next to my comments. =P

the office got a new order of instant swiss miss milk chocolate with marshmallow packets and on the packaging prominently displayed is:

“As Much Calcium as a Glass of Milk”

wow. really? you’re going to try to market this stuff as being healthy for you? i mean, that’s great for me, but not so great for people who believe that drinking this will be as good for you as drinking milk. i guess you gotta get your calcium somewhere, though.

sometimes a movie will suck you in and completely take you by surprise. the movie that did that to me in the first few minutes was dan in real life. i love characters who show some insight and dan’s youngest daughter tells him early in the movie when asked why his other daughters are upset at him, “you’re a good father, but sometimes a bad dad.” it’s one of those moments in a movie where i did a double take. there are few times when watching a movie that you are struck by something that someone said that leaves a lasting impression.

it’s true that this movie is completely formulaic and predictable. why then is it that i like the movie so much? i think part of it is that there were some better than expected performances by steve carell and dane cook. part of it is that there was some great writing and dialogue between characters. i love the interactions between steve carell and his youngest daughter.

the basic story, though, is one that you would think i wouldn’t like. it’s about a guy who falls for a girl who turns out to be his brother’s girlfriend. there is a moral struggle between the guy and this girl who actually falls for the guy more than her current beau. whatever are they to do?

i think the movie ends rather abruptly and ties itself up neatly and too quickly, but for some reason i forgive the movie for bailing out so quickly on me and giving it a quick ending. still, i think it’s well worth the watch and i give it a strong recommendation.

should i be concerned that the local l&l hawaiian bbq cooks don’t wear hairnets, hats, or some other device to prevent hair from slipping into my food?

i never really noticed before but i signed up to volunteer at this year’s nikkei matsuri festival and one of the requirements for a volunteer who handles food is to wear a hat. i don’t know why that reminded me that i’ve never seen any l&l employee wear a hat before, but it did. and now i’m starting to wonder if i should be concerned…

is that even the correct term for it these days? sure, you could spin records. i can even sort of understand spinning CDs. but in this age of flash memory-based mp3 players, there are no moving parts. nothing is spinning anymore, so really, i guess it would be more accurate to say what’s accessing in the ipod?

anyhow, i was in a nostalgic mood this morning, so before i left for work i put some new songs on the ipod to fit my mood. what found its way on my ipod was a mix of pet shop boys, erasure, depeche mode, rem, phil collins, chicago, the bangles, and other one hit wonders from the 80s. it was the music that i grew up on.

and as i listened to these songs, i was brought back to the memories of the day. it seems that many of these songs are actually rather depressing in tone. but some of these songs have such specific memories, some that i had completely forgotten about until just now.
Continue reading what’s spinning in the ipod →

i was hopeful that the 2.20 firmware update would fix all of my divx/xvid streaming woes with the addition of more codecs and better support for playing video files in general. and after the firmware update, it’s true, the ps3 does play more files than it used to. but, i am still getting the dreaded streaming error. part of the movie will play and then it’ll crash at the same place over and over. the xbox can play the movies fine, so i’m hoping that eventually when ps3 streaming support is more mature, it’ll work itself out.

in the meantime, this means that the ps3 has been demoted as my media center (which really was the dream) and is now just a blu-ray and rock band player. i hope that sony resolves these issues soon because it’s a shame not being able to use the ps3 as a media center.

i’m currently using mediatomb as my DLNA server on a D-Link DNS-323 NAS.

i have been using this little thing for the last 6 years. it is basically this device that will clean your contact lenses with ultrasonic vibrations. think of it as a touchless sonicare toothbrush, but for contacts. there are no bristles involved, just the ultrasonic waves rippling in the chamber.

it’s been pretty good to me, but the other day i put my contacts into the LenSoClean chamber and in the morning i found that my contacts were crispy. it turns out that the device broke and the auto-shutoff never shut off. the result? the solution in the chamber evaporated and my contacts got dry.

i had to throw out the pair of contacts and device, but i have been happy with it so i ordered a unit from amazon. it should be coming in a few days and then i’ll be back to my normal clean contact routine.

over the weekend, i decided to install a new torrent client on the NAS. apparently there’s a port of transmission for the nas. coupled with clutch, a webUI for the command line client, it looks and feels like the mac os x transmission client. the memory footprint on this client is significantly smaller than that of mlnet, even if you have php+lighttpd running in the background. CPU usage seems considerably higher though with transmission. i’m not sure if the memory/cpu trade-off is going to be worth it, i’ll have to play with it and see.

a bunch of the guys got together on friday night and we tried out the latest command and conquer expansion pack. that’s right…a LAN party. there i’ve said it. it’s true. our first LAN party was probably over 15 years ago and it seems that things haven’t changed much. actually, that isn’t true, we probably only played for a few hours and then gave it up. there were some rock band breaks and also some dessert breaks. we just aren’t the hard core gamers that we once were. all of us were also playing on laptops. i guess technology has progressed enough where we can do that now.

aside from that, i also replaced the air filter for our central air. it turns out that filters are really only good for about 3 months. i don’t know how long this filter has been there, but from the looks of it, i would say that it’s been many years.

on saturday we met with up steve and alisa. alisa has been traveling a lot for work, so when she’s back in town, we’ll try to meet up. it was another meal at sushi maru which i don’t think that i can tire of anytime soon.

mimi and alice also came by on saturday when they were on a break from some kind of pan pacific gymnastics competition held at san jose state. there was some rock band going on.

sunday was spent resting and relaxing for the most part. i did a second load of dishes in our new dishwasher. that was exciting. is it sad that i think that doing a load of dishes exciting? perhaps so. but the dishwasher is NEW. it took me a lot longer than i expected to install it. and it’s BEAUTIFUL.

ok, anyway, the weekend came and went and it’s back to grind for me.