Here it comes….
Posted on November 14, 2003
I was just looking at weather.com and saw that a huge storm is heading this way. By huge, I mean that on radar, it is covering half of the state of Indiana, not mention large parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, etc. I’m guessing that this is the one the hit California a few days ago. The thunder is going fairly often in the distance…either that, or someone is lighting off a ton of fireworks (Keep in mind, this is November and it is a windy 40° F outside).
Anyway, I’m prepared if the power goes out. I have a flashlight and candles at ready, and since my UPS is only rated for about 6 minutes of power, I can read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by candlelight if I have to shut the computer down. The only thing is, if the power goes out, so does the heat. I’m prepared for that too, but I will be miserable if it gets too cold.
The Matrix: Revolutions
Posted on November 5, 2003
Once again, I plunked down my money to see the latest Matrix movie sequel. One thing I can safely say is it will make a TON of money because it opened simultaneously in 10,000 theaters worldwide…all at the same hour, which the distributors/producers called “zero hour”. It started showing at 9:00 am here in Indy, although I didn’t go to see it until after work.
Before going to see it, I read a review of it at CNN before going to see it. The review in general didn’t look favorably upon the movie, but bowed to the inevitablity of a huge blockbuster weekend. The review also compared it to a video game, which after seeing the movie, I can understand. There are many scenes which seem to have a “video game” feel. And speaking of video games, I’m guessing that the Enter the Matrix video game probably filled in some plot points, but didn’t contribute too much overall to the trilogy.
SPOILERS AHEAD
A majority of the movie doesn’t even take place inside the Matrix, but in Zion, on the ships (Hammer and Logos), in the tunnels, and in the machine city. While it wouldn’t be a Matrix movie without some action, it certainly didn’t have as much action as …Reloaded. In fact, most of the action seemed a bit…gratuitous. The only really compelling action is when the machines finally invade Zion. The APU’s (didn’t catch what that stood for) seem like the Caterpillar loader from the movie Aliens, but on steroids and with Big Ass Guns[TM]. The scene at the Hel-Club was rather lame overall. It just seemed like some scenes from the original Matrix movie.
As far as the characters go, many of them are back. The “Kid” is back, and has a larger role, though we still don’t find out his name. Agent (or Agents) Smith is back, and in fact he is the only agent there is, although there a lot of him. BTW, I have to add that Hugo Weaving has a great evil laugh. Commander Lock doesn’t seem like as much of an asshole in this movie, though now we can more or less understand what he has to deal with. Bane is back, and the actor Ian Bliss does a good job with the speaking style of Agent Smith. The Oracle is back, played by actress Mary Alice this time, and the Wachowski’s do an okay job explaining the switch. The Architect is back, but only with a small scene at the end with the Oracle. Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo are all back, of course.
In general, I don’t want to get too much into the movie, other than to say that the scene at the end with the Oracle and the Architect mostly sums it up. It didn’t dawn on me until a few hours afterward. In a way, the movie (or at least the Matrix mythology) has a lot of duality. The Oracle is a black female, while the Architect is a white male. The Oracle is good, the Archtect is bad (depending on your point of view for both of them). In explaining the Architect to Neo, the Oracle says that he exists to balance the equation, while she exists to unbalance it. I think another way to put that would be to say that the Architect is quantitative reasoning, while the Oracle is qualitative reasoning. Both the Architect and the Oracle both want the same thing – they want the war to end (of course, so does everyone else). They just have different ideas about the best way to do it.
END SPOILERS
When I was leaving the theater, I heard someone saying to a friend, “The Matrix – a love story.” I thought that was pretty funny, especially because it seemed to fit…to a point. Not that you should get the idea that it was real love story. I wouldn’t call it a much of a love story. I wouldn’t even call it much of an action movie. It actually just seemed like the only point of the movie was to make money rather than entertain. It was an okay movie, but I didn’t feel it was as entertaining as The Matrix: Reloaded or even the original Matrix which at least had the good fortune of being original and novel. As a sequel, of course, …Revolutions isn’t going to be that novel or original, but even …Reloaded had some new and interesting stuff in it.
In Kevin Smith’s movie, Clerks when Dante and Randall are comparing The Empire Strikes Back to Return of the Jedi, Dante says he thought Empire… was a better movie. He goes on and explains the cool things that happened in Empire…, while summarizing his feelings by saying, “All …Jedi had was a bunch of muppets.” I can sympathize with that statement, and borrow it to say that all …Revolutions has going for it is some sentinels and APU’s. Will I see it again? Probably, but maybe I’ll wait until it hits the second run theaters or comes out on video.
Cleaning
Posted on November 2, 2003
This weekend has more or less been dedicated to cleaning my apartment. First of all, I’m fairly lazy, so I had things strewn about the floor, and one of my tables/desks had quite a bit of junk mail on it. Plus, I finally decided that I really wasn’t going to do anything with some of those old computer parts, so I ended up pitching a 7 year old 14″ monitor, a 5 year old 15″ monitor, an old AT form factor mid-tower computer case, 3 years worth of phone books (at least it seemed like 3 years worth), and 4 bags of garbage. I still have to get rid of 2 old printers (one of them is a dot-matrix), and some more trash, but Since it was a weekend and the beginning of the month, there were a few people moving in and out, so the dumpster got full fairly quickly…plus the dumpster serves 2 apartment buildings. At least it gets emptied twice a week.
In addition to general cleaning, I also decided to rearrange my apartment. I moved my computer desk and when I was getting the computer set back up, I had poblems getting it to run. The computer would start beeping on starting. I have had this happen before, and I thought it was related to the heat. Usually, I would turn on the air conditioner and once the apartment got cooler (about 72 degrees or less), the computer would start beck up. Not so this time. Figuring it was a problem with the BIOS, I changed out the motherboard. Luckily, I had a new unopened motherboard ready to go from a couple of years ago. This motherboard also has a set of diagnostic LED’s with it, so if there is a problem, a person will be able to isolate it. This one would go to all red and stay there almost right off the bat. According to the manual, this means that the processor is bad, or at least installed incorrectly. As it happens, I saved the old AMD Duron processor I had before I upgraded to an AMD Athlon. I swapped out the processor and now I’m not having those problems. The Athlon I had was a mobile Athlon. I had ordered a regular Athlon and got a mobile one, so I don’t know how big of a difference there is between them, or if that was the reason for the processor going bad. During the motherboard exchange, I did take the time to clean out the case and I even took apart the processor heatsink and fan assembly to really clean it up. It’s amazing how much shit accumulates in the vanes of the heatsink and onthe blades of the miniature fan.
Anyway, the computer is now working again, and my apartment looks partly spiffy (like partly sunny). There is still a bit to do with the cleaning, but I’ll work on that later during the week or next weekend, after the dumpster has been emptied again. I still have to tackle the kitchen (a big job), the bathroom (a little job), and I also plan on getting rid of some old clothes that are taking up valuable closet space. The old clothes are like the old computer parts. I’m not going to do anything with them, but I kept them around because “you never know when you’re going to need them.” Basically, I don’t need them, will never need them, and even if I do need them, I can always buy some more. Mostly they are old work clothes I had from when i was a printer, so the shirts and pants have stains, holes, and glue all over them. Better to get rid of them.
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