October 31, 2003

Its Winter

Well, we got a dusting of snow last night and today, so I guess that means its Winter now here in Denver. :) On this glorious halloween I believe I will huddle indoors with my hot chocolate and watch some movies.

My work had a lot of costumes and themed areas and such as usual for halloween, I meant to take a camera down there and snap some photos but forgot. If the office shutterbug managed to get any good pictures, I'll be sure to post them here. ;)

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24 Season 3 started off with a bang. I really can't wait for the story to unwind. Thats the downside of watching them when they come out, instead of just buying the dvd set down the road. Now I have to actually wait 24 odd weeks for the whole story instead of devouring it in 1-2 days.

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Had lunch with Linda a bit ago, she's heading out of town for the next couple of weeks so I'll be watching her place again. Yay for TV. -- Although, Tommy has convinced me to go ahead and buy a cheapy TV now and use it for a bedroom TV once I get my house and buy a bigscreen plasma. Soooo, I think I'll have a TV soon regardless. Yay me!

Posted by Malek at 04:40 PM | Comments (3)

October 28, 2003

Rachel Weisz is hot!

This weekend I went down and visited a bit with Melissa. She is 36 weeks pregnant now, so full term. Its looking like Jason won't be back for the baby's birth as he'll probably be stuck in Iraq until January at this point. I'm not much for baby stuff, but the way she has decorated the nursery is pretty spiffy. She showed me an ultrasound pic of the baby, I of course said it was cool, but also in the back of my mind was the thought that ultrasound baby pictures look like aliens. hehe. Sorry Melissa. ;)

Melissa and I saw Runaway Jury. This was a really good movie. The performances were outstanding, and in particular, watching Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman interact was definitely worth the price of admission. But as an added bonus, you also get John Cusack and Rachel Weisz! 4 stars.

We discussed Rachel Weisz a bit. Melissa thinks she has a sort of "girl next door" kind of beauty. I however, disagree, and think she has more of an exotic librarian beauty. I think its the eyes. :)

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My review at work will be next Monday. I got a bit of a preview earlier tonight though, and apparently I still rock. ;) It looks like I may even get a raise this year, which, the way the tech industry has been, and my company in particular, is pretty nice. We'll see. :)

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I don't know how to explain this really. You can thank Tommy for that one. ;)

MP3s Are Not The Devil - This is an interesting essay by Orson Scott Card(sci fi and fantasy author) about file sharing.

Posted by Malek at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

October 25, 2003

Kids playing oldschool games

I had to share this because its so funny.

The link takes you to a story about todays kids playing games like Pong. :)

Posted by Malek at 12:51 AM | Comments (2)

October 23, 2003

Internet is <3

Our internet at work was out for multiple hours today. Its amazing how boring it is to sit around with nothing to do(no internet pretty much means no work OR play, hehe).

Finished watching Farscape season 3 and 24 season 2 yesterday. Both of course end in horrible cliffhangers. Bastards. Really good stuff though.

Anyway, now that I have internet again, I must wrap up a bunch of work stuff that I couldn't do.

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Jesus Actor struck by lightning bolt!

Oh, and I think you'll appreciate this Joe: Oh Yeah!

Posted by Malek at 11:00 PM | Comments (3)

October 20, 2003

One of those days

Yesterday was a pretty wacky day. I managed to get just about everything wrong. As an example, one of the many things I do at my job, is test our electronic trading systems. This involves placing a live trade WAY outside of the market and then cancelling it. Well, my client was behind on data or something, so when I went to place a trade WAY outside of the market, as usual, it turned out it was actually trading at the price I put it in at. Which means, I actually bought something with my companies money. Oops! :) On the upside, I sold it at a profit. Go me! Today has gone much better and things went really well over all.

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Linda is out of town this week, so I have access to her flat to use make use of her TV. Hurrah! I'll be going over there tomorrow to watch a few dvds and probably play some gamecube! :) (And water the plants, and try to hook up her VCR, and check her mail, hehe)

I also really need to get down and see Melissa sometime soon. I'm running out of time to hang out with her while she is still babyless. :)

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Bend it like Beckham is a really fabulous movie and I highly recommend it if you have been a slacker like me and haven't seen it yet. 4 stars.

Posted by Malek at 11:51 PM | Comments (1)

October 14, 2003

100th Post! ;)

Should I award myself some sort of prize for this anniversary? :)

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Damn I've been slammed at work a lot lately. I have projects continuing to pile up because of all the new stuff coming in. I'm really going to have to dig in and try and pull a Super Malek(TM) and wipe this stuff off my plate this week. I hate having this much hanging over my head, even if its not due any time soon.

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I mailed British Airways regarding reimbursement for my hotel stay in London due to their "unofficial industrial action" way back in early August. Over the last few weeks I've been incessently emailing them to try and find out what is happening, but repeatedly my emails would bounce or I would never hear a response. This is of course, Par for the course in my dealings with British Airways thus far, I highly recommend another carrier if you happen to be flying anywhere they go.

Anyway, they FINALLY responded to one of my emails. In response to an email I sent them on Sept 17th(bearing in mind now that it has taken them a MONTH to respond to my email), they told me they are sorry that they suck, and to please allow them 6-8 weeks to handle my request from the date THEY received it, which is entered into their computer as September 30th. So apparently it takes them two months to open their mail too.

*boggle*

I can only imagine that it may take them a month to lick the stamp and two months to mail a reply, so I'm not holding my breath at hearing anything back from them now until after the new year.

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This is a site that talks about the "Ladder Theory." Fun stuff having to do with the differences in the way men and women approach each other. Take it as seriously, or not, as you like, but its funny nonetheless. :) Thanks Adam!

Stealth Disco! Haha, this is also pretty amusing.

Posted by Malek at 11:35 PM | Comments (4)

October 12, 2003

Progress

I managed to make it to the DMV on Friday. My new drivers license should be winging its way to me via the USPS within a few days. It was relatively painless. I always feel like my eyesight is getting worse, so my one worry when I go to the DMV is that when they do the eye check I will be unable to read any of the letters off... hehe. But I could see them nice and clear and that proved no obstacle. Another irrational fear conqured. One odd thing, however, was that they had me take off my glasses for my photo. Somehow it strikes me odd that my license requires me to wear my glasses to drive, but my photo is taken sans glasses.

I found out that Chris was apparently deathly ill most of the week, but he is apparently on the upswing now, and in theory has mailed his half of the rent. Yay!

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I watched the movie Down With Love on dvd this weekend. I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it was and was caught off guard for a moment by the way things played out. Really fun movie. 3.5 stars.

This morning before work I vanquished my need to see movies with other people and saw Kill Bill. Really Really well done. If you like Tarantino movies at all, I highly suggest you go see this. The dialogue wasn't quite as snappy as I would have expected from Tarantino, but everything else was spot on and really, who cares about dialogue in a movie which focuses so much on action? :) 4 stars.

One comment here, for some reason there was a parent with what seemed to be a 5ish year old boy and a 9ish year old girl at my screening. Now, I know that kids can handle this stuff, but c'mon. With all the limbs flying, blood spurting, parent slaying, etc going on in this movie, I think even *I* would think twice about bringing a child that young along. =)

Posted by Malek at 11:27 PM | Comments (2)

October 09, 2003

Half done

I managed to get my haircut today. Yay. Tomorrow I'll try and get my Drivers license taken care of before lunch with Linda.

Its my Friday, yay, the weekend is here. Got a bunch of work to wrap up though before I leave today.

In other news, the rent is still not payed. *sigh*

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For the gamers out there, Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe is now available for free. This is apparently some kind of promotion to get people interested in their upcoming Hidden & Dangerous 2. Anyway, you can get it here.

And some interesting movie news. Jeff Vintar the scriptwriter for the upcoming I, Robot has been tapped to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation. But before he can do that, he has to finish the other script he's contracted to do... Y: The Last Man for New Line Cinema. (If you know what that is, you'll think its pretty cool) --Credit for that stuff goes to Cinescape.

Posted by Malek at 08:07 PM | Comments (2)

October 08, 2003

Stress!!

My rent is 9 days late as of today. As expected, the situation of Chris moving out is causing mass amounts of logistical nightmares. *stress* On the upside, the chances that my landlord will even notice are low, as he normally doesn't cash the rent checks until the 25th of the month or so.

In other news, things like the above and my impending move in March are making me rethink other potential stress factors and I'm considering withdrawing from my classes this semester before the deadline. I have about two weeks to decide.

Worrying about a bunch of stuff is sending me back into major procrastination mode. I've desperately needed a haircut for about two weeks now(I've seriously got an afro starting, damn curly hair) and my drivers license, which expired on my birthday over a month ago, is still not renewed. I'm hoping to manage the enthusiasm to knock both of those things out tomorrow morning before work, we shall see.

Workwise I have a ton of projects to finish in the very near future, that along with the other things has been keeping my updates a bit more sparse. Oops. Will remedy that.

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This page has been around for awhile, but I don't remember listening to these before, so I'm sharing them here. It is 4 prank calls that a radio station made on some guy in Mississipi that gets VERY angry. ;)

Also, I finished watching those episodes of the Tick live action series and thoroughly enjoyed them. The dialogue is just fantastic. :)

Posted by Malek at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2003

Batman Dead End

This is really old, but posting this for my brother so he can have a copy:

Batman Dead End - Quicktime (Right click and Save as)

If, for some reason you haven't already seen the best Batman fan film ever, then please grab it and take a look see. I'll probably only have this up on my server for a few days, so appologies if you try and grab it and its gone.

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The weekend is almost here! Just a few more hours of work to finish and then it begins! :) I think I'm finally going to try and get out and see Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and hopefully I can find someone that wants to see Lost in Translation with me.

Posted by Malek at 10:02 PM | Comments (2)

October 01, 2003

Narnia

I just recently finished watching some movies on DVD based on Narnia, made about 14 years ago. I remember liking the books quite a bit when I was young. However, I don't remember the characters being horribly annoying. Nor do I remember the christian slant being so heavy handed. Overall, the stories were still interesting to me, but I had to restrain myself from trying to slap the characters from time to time. I had thought about going back and rereading these books, but they would be tainted now by some of the things I watched. Oh well. I'd say 1.5 stars or so.

Last night I watched "The Quiet American," with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. Its a psuedo-murder mystery set in 1952 Vietnam. I didn't read the original novel by Graham Greene, so I can't make any comparisons there. It is however an excellent film, with outstanding performances by Caine and Fraser. 4 stars.

I'm pretty sure The Tick live action series dvd's and Dreamcatcher will be in my mailbox from Netflix tonight when I get home and I'm looking forward to consuming those next! ;)

Posted by Malek at 09:53 PM | Comments (3)