Well, one more horrible movie down. I just watched Skydivers, perhaps one of the poorest movies every put to film. There was no acting to speak of, the plot was barely discernible, and it was boring to boot. The movie was about, well, skydiving. But only a little bit. It was torture to watch, even with Mike and the 'bots helping make it more bearable.
I give this movie two empty seats, one for each of the guys that hit the ground without a working parachute. Kind of like this movie did.
Last night before I went to bed I finished Code Name: Diamond Head, an old failed TV pilot by Quinn Martin about a spy in Hawaii. Complete with cheesy screen wipes and only a little action, there's no question why this never got off the ground.
The bad guy, a master of disguise, codenamed "Tree" (I know, boring) is trying to hijack some new nerve toxin. Helping Diamond Head is the Dragon Lady, a hideously thin Vietnamese lady, and Zulu, who later appeared in Hawaii Five-O. I give this movie forty empty seats, one for every pound that Vietnamese lady needed on her body to look better.
By the way, why do they always cast non-Chinese people as Chinese people? It bugs me to see someone that is obviously Vietnamese or Korean, or even Japanese, playing a character with a Chinese name. That whole "they all look alike" thing? It's utter crap.
I just finished watching Bloodlust, another season 6 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This movie had a lot less science fiction and a lot more crazy than normal. There was a great short film at the beginning about Uncle Jim's Dairy Farm though, which nearly redeemed the movie!
The movie is about two young couples on a boat that get off on an island that turns out to be a crazy hunter's personal playground. He captures them, and they find out he hunts people for trophies.
That was basically all there was to it, and I can only give it four empty seats, one for each of the young "stars" of this film.
Next on the list: The Creeping Terror. I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie before, but I didn't review it, so I had to subject myself to it a second time.
This movie starts with a newlywed couple returning home to California when a rocket lands nearby. The sheriff and his deputies check it out, and the government is called in quickly. They find a monster on board that is imprisoned, and later learn there is another one on the loose. The other monster rampages across the countryside, albeit somewhat slowly, and eats people whole. For some reason, they're never able to run from it.
As entertaining as that may sound, it really wasn't. This movie was somewhat slow, and every once in a while a narrator would come along and narrate a conversation that is going on on-screen. I give this movie one hundred empty seats, which is at least how many people were eaten by this stupid monster.
After a long hiatus, I've gone back to watching more MST3K (I'm on season 6). This time it's Colossus and the Headhunters, a terrible Italian movie about a guy named Maciste (we can only assume he's Colossus, but they never really tell us). Since they pronounce it like "my cheese steak" there are quite a few jokes about that throughout the show. Maciste is on an island as a volcano is erupting and people are running for their lives. Although he's a stranger, they follow him to a boat (his boat?) where they leave just as the island sinks into the sea. They sail to another island where a war is raging between two tribes, one of them headhunters. The headhunters are ruled by a guy that left the other tribe, and he captured the old king so he could force the king's daughter to marry him so he could be king.
Full of lots of Italians in short shorts, this movie wasn't really my thing. But because of all the near cheek-shots, I rate this movie two empty seats one for each of the eyes that was put out of the old king. If only I had been so lucky, I wouldn't have seen this horrible movie…
- Found out last night while "showing off" my MUD that I have a login issue I didn't know about. Now I'm motivated to work on it some more.. #
- Said goodbye to brother-in-law, he was visiting from Texas and had to leave today. Sister-in-law and her 2 kids are still here. #
- Lunch at Schlotsky's. Evening plans made. Wife will actually come home. Farscape will be watched. #
- Right now (eg. before I send this tweet), my tweets and blog posts are at the same count: 3,134. #
- For the second time in my life, I've seen names of people I know in the Records section of the newspaper. #
- For my friends outside the US, re: (American) Pi Day: You can celebrate Approximate Pi Day on 22/7! #
- Owowow! Diet Pepsi up my nose! #
- It's always nice when you think payday is a week away but it's actually today! #
- ROFL @JhonenV "Leave no life untouched, even if you have to touch them in a way that makes them cry." #
- Had my first experience using Parted Magic (drive partitioning bootable CD), worked great! http://partedmagic.com #
- Apparently dinner is Skippers tonight. A place frequented by old people and....well....old people. #
- Had a great time playing games with the inlaws and that smelly homeless guy that just showed up. We were too embarassed to make him leave. #
- Just bought FIVE new #RiffTrax files, including the brand new "Twilight: New Moon." I refuse to watch it sans-RiffTrax! #
- My online banking wasn't working because I didn't allow 3rd party cookies in Firefox. Why my bank USES 3rd party cookies is unknown to me... #
- Making ready with the cilantro and lime chicken fajita marinade for tomorrow's dinner. It's a favorite now! #
People and pictures of poor grammar and/or misuse of apostrophes really amuse me. For example:
The part I enjoy most is both the appropriate and inappropriate use of the apostrophe. I see this truck around town from time to time. I finally had a camera handy and snapped a picture of it. I also submitted it to GrammarBlog.
It only comes around once per year (unless you count Two-Pi Day), so enjoy!
- My sourdough rolls are rising quite well. This always surprises me considering there is no commercial yeast in them at all... #
- The rolls were FANTASTIC! Best I've ever made, hands down! #
- I'm getting early automated birthday emails as the more eastern parts of the US are turning midnight.. #
- Remember, my birthday isn't official until the dancing midget jester from The Safety Dance video shows up.. #
- My office is too warm again today. #
- Had a great dinner with dad and stepmom at Tomato Street! #
- I don't know about you, but I could use a little Less'Nique.. #
- So tired. Slept very poorly last night. Have to drive wife to airport in an hour though. #
- Lunch with Peppin today. Haven't seen him in a while. Going to talk cryptography. Should be like old times! #
- Off to lunch at Moon's Mongolian BBQ in Post Falls with an ex-coworker. Good times. #
- Lunch was nice. Had good times chatting about old times, cryptography, and MUDs. #
- Debating: Office net connection can be doubled (up to 20Mbit) for same price. Should I try to stay at 10Mb and get a cheaper bundle? #
- Woohoo! More @woot deals! #woot happy hour = more crap to buy for me! #
- Had cake just a few minutes ago. It's just coincidence that it happened at the same time as #woot happy hour. Really. #
- Watched the #rifftrax of Star Trek last night with the Blu-Ray version (synced perfectly!) There were several amazing riffs in that episode! #
- #rifftrax Star Trek: I loved "that was her favorite cereal." It goes by so fast you almost don't get how funny it is! #
- Nearly wet myself with the #rifftrax Star Trek line "stop trying to shoplift me" #
- 3 more hours of work? Really? #
Since Lorien's been out of town this week, I've been watching Buck Rogers on Hulu. I finished it last night, but couldn't get over the hilarity of the penultimate episode, Testimony of a Traitor.
I won't go in to details, but a ship is chasing Buck and Wilma, and his weapons interface looks like this:
Futuristic or not, that's a pretty cavalier attitude toward combat!
I just finished setting up a new instance of MediaWiki for an internal department. Everything went fine, the setup was straight forward. Except nobody could edit any pages. Even the front page.
Turns out the default values you get are garbage. Specifically, the memory usage. After enabling error logging (also off by default), I found that if you tried to edit a page, the wiki used up the default of 20Mb and halted, resulting in a blank screen any time you click an edit link on the wiki.
Once I figured this out and cranked up the memory limit, things started working fine. I'm just left wondering why the default settings cause the system to fail "out of the box."
Today is my stepmother Charlyn's birthday. Just a couple days after mine, so it's not hard to remember. Happy birthday, I'm coming over for cake later! For some reason, I've been thinking this was on Friday, but when I looked at my calendar it said today.
In my head, it was like this, but in reality, I was just working like normal.
Altered thrift-store art is too awesome to not post about! It makes me wish I had artistic talent!
Once again my Twitter feed failed to migrate over here. I have a suspicion it's Twitter, though, and not the WordPress Twitter plugin. Things are always getting borked up over there.
If Captain Ahab had been hunting the fail whale instead, that book would have been 15 pages long!
At least I got it to work manually…