Aftermathmatics

First off, I apologize for that excuse of a bracket I put up last weekend. Up through the sweet 16 it was decent, but after BC and Duke made early exits it was wrecked. That's what I get for having an ACC bias.

I bought a new computer, an Averatec 3715-EH1 laptop. Some quick pros and cons:

Pro: light, fast, good price, 80gb HDD, DVD burner
Cons: keyboard placement was designed by morons, terribly placed touch pad is "the devil"

After blasting terrible XP Home off and putting XP Pro the machine's been treating me better. I tried my hardest to get OSX on here, but it's been an uphill battle. I'll stick to Windows for now. This thing looks like an iBook (which honestly, I would rather have - but I'll wait till the 2nd generation Intel ones) and weighs 3.8 pounds, a good 5 pounds less than my old Dell Inspiron 1100.

In order to finance this operation, I turned to eBay. To raise the 850 so far I've sold an old cable box, a GPS device, an old pocket pc, a bluetooth presenter, and (good riddance) my PSP - I'm strictly a DS man now. The old Dell laptop will follow once I've got all my crap unloaded off it, shred the HD, reload windows and office - THEN I'll list it. I'm $300 short of the goal so far, but I should be able to get that much for the laptop.

Speaking of DS, I picked up Metroid Prime Hunters and Tetris DS today. I'll let you know how they are once I play 'em more.

I'm pretty sure I've got an unhealthy addiction to watching that Shakira/Wyclef "My Hips Don't Lie" music video. I've seen it WAY too many times. Can't help it though - Shakira is ridiculously hot and the song is a good one too. Yes, I like her music. Bite me.

Hotter beat conundrum: Dr. Dre's "Still D.R.E." (with the pianos) or Ciara's "1,2-Step" (with the synth). Tough call, but when I hear "D.R.E." start it just does something to me. I guess it's just still Dre Day.

Movies I have watched since the last time I posted:

Domino (2005): This movie wasn't the complete and total garbage that it was made out to be. It wasn't a great movie, but was mildly decent. One of those "comes on USA or TBS late night and I guess I'll watch it because there isn't shit on and I'm bored and too lazy to get off my ass and do something better" type movies. Come on, you know you've sat through some bad movies on late-night TV too. We're all guilty.

Bloodrayne (2005): DING DING DING! We have a winner! This trash has proudly bumped "House of 1000 Corpses" from my All-Time Bottom 5 Movies list. I can't even describe how much I hated this terrible movie. Sure, there was one fairly hot (but honestly it was really weird/funny) sex scene, but that doesn't make up for the rest of the movie being complete garbage. Oh, and it had Meat Loaf and Michelle Rodriguez (whom I can't stand) - now what kind of an on-screen dynamic can you expect with a cast that has those two? Exactly. Garbage.

The Island (2005): Not as bad as the reviews said. A good watch, a fairly mindless but good action flick.

Walk The Line (2005): Now I like Johnny Cash, so I really liked this movie. Reminded me a lot of "Ray" (both are music-based bio-pics) but I liked "Ray" too. This movie comes highly recommended.

Munich (2005): Another good movie, tells the story of 5 Israelis charged with assassinating the masterminds of the 1972 Munich Olympics tragedy. A good, compelling story with a decent ending - something I honestly didn't know that Spielberg knew how to do. (Yes, I'm still mad that he brutally butchered A.I.)

Just Friends (2005): a decent comedy. Rentable or tv-able for a few good laughs. No need to buy the DVD for this one though, it wasn't that good.


The MCAT is April 22nd, a month from today, and I'm feeling pretty ready for it. Still a bit lacking in physiology and I need to review some biology, but I'm ready to go in physics and general and organic chemistry. Verbal reasoning section shouldn't be too bad either.

{This computer's retarded placement of the Control and Shift keys is killing me, but I guess that all laptops have a learning curve when it comes to the keyboards as none are the same. Dammit. I made like 5 corrections in that last sentence.}

Anybody been watching Sopranos? Great show. I missed it.

5 Songs that I haven't been able to stop listening to lately:
1. Dead Prez - Turn off the Radio
2. Shakira - My Hips Don't Lie (featuring Wyclef Jean)
3. Ciara - 1,2-Step (featuring Missy Elliott)
4. Nine Inch Nails - March of the Pigs [possibly my favorite song of all time]
5. Metallica - Die, Die My Darling

[Quick shout out to Kelli, Sugar Britches, and the rest of my old ER peeps]

Oh, and anybody seen "V for Vendetta" yet? I need to get off my ass and go see it. Maybe I'll do that later tonight.

[LSU over Villanova for the national title. That's what I'm picking right now, before Nova/UF and UConn/GMU have played]

Bracketville Returns

First off, a link to my old brackets [2000-2005].

So I filled out this year's NCAA and NIT brackets. Admittedly it was a little tougher this year, as I didn't follow college basketball as intently as I have the past few years. Why? Because my interest in college basketball is directly proportional with how well GT is doing. If GT is doing well, I'll watch other (non-ACC) games to see how the future competition in the tourney is doing. This year - well I just watched football.


My 2006 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Bracket [click to enlarge]

Picking upsets was hard this year, and I struggled on whether to buy the hype and pick either Oral Robers or Winthrop, but I just couldn't. That, and I had to prevent myself from picking 3 ACC teams in the Final Four. Oh and somehow, I know I'm gonna regret not picking UConn to win it all.

While I was at it, I participated in the annual crapshoot that is filling out the NIT bracket. You never know if teams are gonna show up or not. I never seem to pick the NIT even remotely right.


My 2006 Postseason NIT Bracket [click to enlarge]

We'll check back in a week to see how my Sweet Sixteen shapes out. No, I don't need for you to point out my OBVIOUS huge ACC bias. Check my old brackets.

Sucker MCs Should Call Me Sire

Georgia Tech's basketball season mercifully came to an end tonight. I could only stand to watch the first 10 minutes or so - and I'm as die-hard as they come. Tech was just throwing airballs left and right, not even TRYING to get the ball inside, and started the game 0-9 from the 3pt line and not surprisingly GT found itself down 16-32 before they knew what hit them. I know it's a young team, but they just need to pick up on the fundamentals. You've got a few months, Coach Hewitt. Get them boys in shape.

While we're on the ACC Tournament, I've got to blast FSU's 2nd half performance against Wake Forest. Wake played like they wanted to win, I'll give them that. FSU on the other hand played like they had a 35 point lead, when they were really only up a handful. The last 10 minutes of the game the Noles showed NO signs of life. If they're left out on Selection Sunday, losing by 12 to the doorstop of the league should be the sole reason why.

I just read this article over at SomethingAwful and nearly died laughing. It's a great mockery of all the Japo-philes out there - if you hang out with nerds you know AT LEAST one of these people. Hilarious stuff.

Now that I've got a pair of iPods and a Mac, I figured it was time to try out some of the features that Apple's been promoting for a while. First off was Front Row. I used Front Row Enabler [google for it] to allow my old G3 to run the free application. Great app. While it won't be taking the place of my XBMC any time soon, I do see the appeal. A killer setup: the new Mac Mini, Front Row, DTV (the Mac version of the killer Democracy Player), a torrent app - that would be slick.

I'd been wanting to get into podcasting for a while, but it was a pain in the ass before iTunes made it all easy to sync with my iPod. I love the hell out of podcasting. Listening to the ESPN Radio podcast in the morning (along with the New York Times front page and possibly the BEST podcast, The Onion Radio News) has made my commute excellent [I would just listen to ESPN Radio live, but my damned AM radio doesn't work in my car.] A short list of the podcasts I'm currently subscribed to:
The Onion Radio News, ESPN Radio, New York Times Daily, Diggnation (video), This Week in Tech (TWiT), hak.5 (video), Infected with Martin Sargent, Ask a Ninja, Strongbad Emails, Systm, and a couple others. Great stuff. I've got my networking set to where I can watch the shows on my Xbox if I feel so inclined.

If you haven't seen Ask a Ninja, go there now.

I can't believe that I'd never visited LifeHacker before, but it is a GREAT site. For sure a daily read from now on, along with Digg, Slashdot, Engadget, Fark, hackaday, and Make.

Oh, and I finally got off my ass and started using del.icio.us. Feel free to follow my feed if you feel so inclined. Speaking of feeds, the RSS link for this site is up on the right. Subscribe!

My PCMCIA cage crapped out, so I've moved onto a USB based WiFi solution, but while I was at it I picked up a USB bluetooth adapter. After some forum scrounging, a download of Motorola Mobile Phone Tools 4.0, and getting Alltel to add a non-advertised feature code [code "FST1" for any interested] I am now proud to say that I can use my Motorola v710 as a wireless modem via bluetooth, and I connect at around 120 kbps. Not stellar, but when I'm away from a wifi signal I can now access the net from wherever and all it uses is minutes. Swank.

They've Shown This on Both Screens

So as Spring Break began today, I felt a need to do something fun - so I decided to go and see a movie. I couldn't decide which, so I headed over to Rotten Tomatoes and looked at the ratings. Dave Chappelle's movie had a stellar 98%, but I really wanted to see Ultraviolet. I hate making choices like this, so I checked the times. Lucky for me, both were short (1:42 for Dave and 1:25 for Ultraviolet) so I looked into the feasability of the ellusive double feature:




and boom:



So we were a go. Now I know that theater hopping is usually left to the younger crowd, but who doesn't like to do it every once in a while? Unfortunately, karma got the best of me. No, I didn't get caught. I just got screwed. Let me elaborate about the double feature.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party: This movie was GREAT. If you like Chappelle's comedy and great hip-hop, you're in for a treat. Now don't go into this thinking it's a comedy, it's not. It's a documentary by Michel Gondry, one of the best directors out there. It's a documentary about an incredible hip-hop concert in Brooklyn starring The Roots, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Kanye West, Common, Big Daddy Kane, and the killer moment - the return of The Fugees. The music was incredible. Stir in great camera work with bits and pieces of Dave's comedy and you've got a great 2 hours of fun.

Ultraviolet: Holy crap. This movie...I don't know how to describe this steaming pile of shit. I can't accurately portray just how TERRIBLE this atrocity was. No story at all (so wait, they're vampires? Huh?), terrible CG (think pre-Harry Potter 1 CG - about as good as what you'd see in Half-Life back in 1999), and crappy "action" scenes. It's not a "fight" scene if all we see is everybody rush Milla, then we hear a sword being unsheathed and witness a pause, and the next thing you see is all the bad guys falling over dead. [And guys, to answer your question: no. There is no nudity.] This was a movie trying to be artsy and actiony and epic, and it successfully manages to brutally fail in each of these regards. This has got to be in my worst 5 movies of all time. I checked my watch at LEAST 8 times during this movie, and it's only 85 or so minutes long. Speaking of terrible though, here are the worst 5 movies that I can remember seeing at the theater:

1. Thirteen Ghosts
2. Ultraviolet
3. Rollerball
4. Street Fighter: The Movie
5. House of 1000 Corpses

Now a note about #5 there. I just saw the sequel, The Devil's Rejects, and I really enjoyed it. It'll take a hell of a flop to knock #1 from it's perch. I mean, what a terrible movie. How could you slum so much Shannon Elizabeth?!

Computer malfunction of the week: My damned PCMCIA port stopped working on my laptop, so I had to order a USB bluetooth and wifi adapter. Hella weak.

By the way, it's March 3rd. Look at this bullshit:

80 degrees at 7PM! How is that fair?!

Oh, I got my MCAT admission ticket today. It's getting ever closer to April 22nd. Took a practice today and got a 37. Missed 9 questions (out of 216) and somehow that translates to -8 overall. Scaled scores are the devil when you're dealing with the top-end. You can miss 5 or 6 in scores less than 10, but when you get to the teens, miss one and you drop a point. I'm targeting a 41, but I'll be happy with anything over 36.

CMT has shown Smokey and the Bandit a few times this weekend, so I tuned in once cause, hell - it's a great movie. "What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law" - classic. I didn't remember Jackie Gleason was Buford T. Justice, but he was great. It was interesting to see what south Atlanta looked like in the early 1970s, and how much it's changed between then and when I lived there a few years back. Oh, and I now own 1 piece of NASCAR clothing. Let me know when I've crossed the threshold to "redneck", okay? [Go #20!]