This Woman, right. You don’t have to tell me.
Rocket launched at an age of 13, blessed with a powerful subtlely swerving voice, she’s already released some tens of albums. The latest one is just like we’d expect, a nice marriage between country rock and pop. Most songs swing quite a bit, some are sweet as honey, and some are too standard to bear listening any more. All in all, a bit on the middle of the road.7+.
An hourlong of hard thinking, puzzling, scratching on the head and squinting my eyes. But it’s done. The engine (WordPress) running this weblog has been updated a few notches. Nuff work done, so you’ll have to live with the default lay-out that came with it, for a while.
Will Smith is hitching a ride on the upcoming Valentine Day, as his romantic comedy Hitch was loved all the way to number one this week. Opening bigger than any other romantic comedy (previously 50 First Dates), with $45.3 million.
Second place is for Boogeyman, scary enough for $10.8 million. Third place goes to Are We There Yet? with $8.5 million.
As the Oscars near, Million Dollar Baby keeps rising in the charts, now at number four with $7.6 million. Kids round off the top five, helping Pooh’s Heffalump Movie premiere with $6 million.
Rate 1 (FR#^&% MESS !) to 5 (how very tidy !). Only rate the latest picture, otherwise I can’t keep track of the average.
Total: 1239 out of 397 votes > Average is: 3.121
You keep learning new things every day. Today, I learned about the Whizzinator. A fake penis, which you can fill up with the liquid of your choice (usually clean urine), which is kept warm by a heat pack. It’s sold over all over the internet for the sole purpose of beating drug tests (and hence, I never heard of it before).
Anyways, you know Tom Sizemore, the bad guy from Striking Distance (starring with Bruce Willis) ? Or the bad guy from Heat ? Or the soldier from Black Hawk Down ? Or the soldier from Saving Private Ryan ? Well, that guy has both a drug problem and a beating girlfriend problem (particularly Heidi Fleiss), was caught with a Whizzinator during his probation, and has since failed more drug tests than there are M&M’s in a yellow bag.
I wonder if it’s good (since everybody now knows about this device) or bad (since a celebrity has been caught) publicity for the company in question ?
Some four years ago we already met one half of the family, so now it’s time for the other half. While the new addition to the movie (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) are another few wacky characters, it somehow doesn’t lift this movie above the original Meet the Parents. The fun is still there, and so are the simple storylines. Still, it doesn’t feel as outrageous as I remember the original. It’s not really a must-see, but if you’re in for a quick laugh, this is definitely it.7½.
Every year, you’ve gotta try every category once. So too a music derived film has to be seen. Ray Charles is this year’s entry, is a drama, without any of the documentary feel to it. With full cooperation before the late music legend passed, the dramatisation feels real including all the more nasty stuff. Insight in his psyche is there, though not too deep. It’s directed with a nice balance between drama, story and musical entertainment.
Highlight is, of course, Jamie Foxx’s performance, capturing all the mannerisms while delivering the heart and soul like he’s Ray himself. Clocking in at 2 and a half hours, it seems a little bit too long, but in the end, it feels just right (especially if the extra half an hour of extra footage suggests a three hour cut would have been possible). 7½.
After four years, Jack knows better than to tease us with “…and this… is the longest day of my life”, because every now and then, it WILL get worse. And so another long day has begun. While some time goes by inbetween seasons, the gripping storywriting doesn’t skip a beat. Quality of every aspect remains high. Writing, acting, and overall production value, with the occasional well-designed twist. It’s almost sad they action packed 4 episodes as the season opener, and hence, we’re already down a third of the day.
New software is also fun, by the way. Mostly viruses. Nifty little piece of highly efficient software code. We’ve seen them with advanced anti-virus detection (and disable mechanism). Same for firewalls. Then we have those with a built-in SMTP engine. Those with advance email scanning. Those with advance (in- and outbound) replication mechanism. And the list goes on and on.
Now two of the new ones are just as innovative. One turns the volume down for you (so you can’t hear the warnings bells going off. Interesting addition to the domestic toilet seat arguments), and one clearly states “You’re stupid” on-screen, and through the speakers (hopefully this feature is not copyrighted, because it’s very useful to say the least). But what if both are on your PC, who would win ?
Maybe it should be called “pulling a Sam Raimi”, because he kinda does it again. While his biggest accomplishment involves a certain spider, his roots lie with the horror genre. Through his Ghost House Pictures production company he makes small budget horror flicks, all of which have earned their money back in the first week of release. Following The Grudge’s success is Boogeyman. Enough to scare the competition away from the top spot, with some $19.5 million.
Second place is for romantic comedy The Wedding Date, featuring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney. Are We There Yet? lands on number 3 with $10.4 million and number 4 is for Hide and Seek, with $8.9 million. Close behind is Million Dollar Baby with $8.7 million.
Sometimes tinkering with old stuff is fun. Mixing it with new stuff could be funnier. Hardware wise, but also software wise.
Now, it’s a Windows 2000 Server with Exchange 2000. SMTP part works good, with normal e-mail clients. Outlook 2003 though will send mail through Exchange, and drop it in the sent items (as it should), then the Exchange picks it up, sends the mail. But on the outbound connection, it only sends EHLO and then QUIT (maybe a few RESET’s inbetween), with no real data exchanged (the pun !). This will leave the user to think everything is okay, and even a system administrator would think it’s okay, as no real error occurs. Don’t you just love illogical unpredictable stuff ? Well, off to patch the whole thing up, even though I know I’m not even going to use it.
Just as the poster suggest, it revolves just around 4 person. Or 2 pairs. Or not. Heavily dialogue-driven, it surely is cleverly written, but it’s definitely weird. Smart parts mix with funny parts, and those mix with dramatic parts. Just like life, not all is explained in the various relationships, and so, you’ll have to think “What the hell is going on ?” and “Why ?” a few times. So even when there are a lot of things too coincidental, it still feels very much like real life, and maybe that’s why it’s so enjoyable.7½.
They win. I give up.
Geachte heer Ung,
Het is niet geheel duidelijk of u al antwoord heeft gekregen op u vraag. Mocht dit niet zo zijn dan horen wij dit graag. Mocht u nog
vragen hebben, dan kunt u voor meer informatie terecht op http://www.upc.nl.
Wij vertrouwen erop u hiermee voldoende te hebben ge
nformeerd.
Met vriendelijke groet,
UPC Nederland
They’re stupid. And they have their feet in their ears. On top of that, their heads are up their asses. And here’s the proof:
Geachte heer Ung,
Wij danken u voor uw schrijven.
Mocht u nog vragen hebben, dan kunt u voor meer informatie terecht op http://www.upc.nl.
Wij vertrouwen erop u hiermee voldoende te hebben ge
nformeerd.
Met vriendelijke groet,
UPC Nederland
Het is niet mogelijk te mailen naar service@upc.nl. Indien u nog een vraag of opmerking heeft dan kunt u reageren via het
contactformulier op de website van UPC. U vindt het contactformulier op http://www.upc.nl
Did I ever asked for your thanks ??? And, this is not the standard automated reply, as I already have that. From the email header, it’s clearly another stupid “service” employee on a laptop writing this ingenious reply, hoping the case will go away. One more UPC envelope in my mailbox, and I’m writing again.
Yeah, I gotta get something off my chest. And since I don’t have chest hair, yup, it’s THAT time again. Gotta bother UPC a bit again. (History links one two three). Off to http://qmail.upc.nl/ to complain about this:
Geachte UPC,
mijn ervaring (aanvaringen meer) met uw bedrijf zijn altijd slecht geweest. Door uw technische en administratieve onkunde zijn zaken geheel uit de hand gelopen, maar gelukkig ben ik er met lichte kleerscheuren afgekomen. Of toch niet. Mijn leraar Nederlands heeft me meerdere malen onvoldoendes gegeven voor het onterecht, te veel en overdrijvend gebruik van eufemisme. Dus laat ik het maar herformuleren: Ik heb na menig jaren vechten, half ontbloot het strijdtoneel verlaten.
Ik lijdt tevens nog steeds aan een lichte vorm van het UPC complex, zegt mijn psychiater. Dus hier ligt ook het grote probleem. Ik krijg met regelmaat nog steeds geadresseerde reclame van u. In de laatste stonden maar liefst drie aanbiedingen. Dat alleen is al erg, maar bij het legen van de postbus en het zien van een UPC envelop, gecombineerd met het UPC complex slaat mijn hart zeker 8 slagen over, waarna het ook nog eens in 3x turbo mode gaat voor tenminste 3 minuten.
Laatst was ik voor een routine controle bij de huisarts en was voor deze keer ook helemaal aangesloten op diverse meetapparatuur. Geheel onverwachts schotelde mijn (nu dus voormalig) huisarts mij een UPC envelop voor, en weldra ging al het meetapparatuur piepen. Mijn psychiater heeft achter mijn rug om contact gehad met mijn huisarts. Conclusie: abnormal myocardial contractility. Een lichte vorm van een hartinfarct dus.
Graag wilde ik dus niet alleen schriftelijk bevestiging dat ik van de lijst die jullie overijverige Director Marketing gebruikt voor de advertenties wordt geschrapt, maar ook wilde ik graag weten op welk slinkse manier jullie Eneco mijn persoonsgegevens afhandig heeft gemaakt. Jullie hebben weliswaar het tv en internet via de kabel van Eneco overgenomen, maar een spelfout in mijn naam (die jullie dus gebruiken) is pas bij Eneco in 2002 opgetreden, lang na de overname dus.
Hopend nog maar EEN (lees: 1, interpreteer: aller aller laatste) brief te ontvangen, verblijf ik,
KaNam Ung