Analog-Theater 2.0

So, how is everyone doing?  It has been awhile since I put anything up here, so, I figured I had better do so, or I might as well give my little brother the keys and sign over the domain.

But, like wow, hasn’t a lot happened since my last post…I mean, where do I start?

Well, we can start with what I know.  I am now King of the Lab at my day job, as opposed to the former incumbent who called himself the “Queen of the Lab” and who wanted to be the Queen of Summertime as well.  Currently we all hope he is now getting to know Bubba really well.  On a side note, it would appear that being King of the Lab means a lot more work, a lot of the same work, and only $0.10 an hour more then your underlings who have a lot less to worry over.  But hey, I now have Awesome powers according to boss.

On the technology front, we have Intel releasing the Core I7 architecture this week, and they will finally have all the same features as AMD.  Of course they where already faster, so this is more of a nail in the coffin release.  Speaking of AMD, we should see the release of Bobcat this week or next.  Bobcat is an 8 watt processor designed to take on the Intel Atom.  Atom for those of you who don’t know is the 4 watt processor which is used in most of the new Netbooks you are going to be seeing pop up everywhere.  I am currently typing this on my Aspire One, and believe me it isn’t easy.    It would probably help is I wasn’t on an excersize bike at the same time.

Now, you are all thinking 4watts is clearly better then 8, and you are wrong.  What?  I know, I know, math right.  Well the thing is that the Bobcat will be a classic AMD processor and have a lot of toys on the chip that Intel puts on the motherboard, and that means those toys (onboard memory controler, etc…) have to counted as part of the processor when reporting power consumption.

What I really want to see them drop though is Deneb, the new quadcore processor due out this quarter.  Currently I have an Athlon X2 6000+, which is only a dual core, but is still a lot faster then most quad for what I do.

In operating system news, we can be happy that Microsoft is trying to fix the mistake they made when they released Vista at us, and will be dropping Windows 7 in the next year or so.  It will be based on Vista, but should tighten up a lot of the problems.  OpenSuSE 11.1 will be upon us shortly, and I look forward to that, I’ve been using 11 for awhile now and have been very happy.  Ubuntu has gone 8.10 and as I am using that right now, I can’t say much bad about it.  I tried it on my play machine in the office and couldn’t figure out how to fix the screen resolution as even the fancy .conf file I wanted to edit, no longer managed the settings.  I am using KDE 4.1.2for those who are even remotly interested.   I will post a fancy screen shot later.

Apple has also released a bunch of fancy new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops which look interesting, but all have nasty reflective glossy screens that ruin them for much real use.  But for the bargain hunters out there, last generation MacBooks can now be had for around $850 + tax.  Also, for those of you with Netflix, the online movie viewer, now functions in both Firefox and Safari.

Now, we have gotten all that out of the way, how about that economy!  600 point drop in three days, who is in charge of this mess and why are all these idiots selling their stock?  Prices in the toilet means you don’t sell because you will take a bath in excriment.  AIG wants $150 Billion of your dollarsto fund further vactions for their executive staff, who are only footing $20 to $30,000 of the $500,000 retreats.  They need these trips to inform their sales folk of what to sell. If they are $150 Billion in the whole, sales folk don’t need executive retreats, they need to be fired or worse.

Ford, GM, and the other one all want money too, largely because they thought that selling SUV’s while gas continued to get more expensive was a good idea.  I say bail them out, but ensure all the upper management are barred from ever running a company again.  But then I think that about all the companies the goverment bails out.  Charge them criminal neglegance and then if they have a felony, which they should, they are no longer allowed to run a public company.  Problem solved.

Politics I will save so I have something real to talk with everyone about later.

Before I start my scathing review, you might have noticed that I added another story on the fiction page, a cross over with Guild Wars (a mmo that I play alot).  It came out as a whim on my guild’s message board.  I’m not working very hard on it.  I might put up a second chapter some time (since I’m actually half way through the second chapter).

I watched 100 Million BC recently and instantly decided to include it as a lame movie.  100 Million BC stars Michael Gross as Frank Reno, a scientist working for the US Navy on project Rainbow, a time travel device.  Sixty years before the movie, they tested the device by sending twenty-one people back eighty million years, because by sending the people that far back into the past, they can’t change history and cause a paradox.  The only problem with that, is that the further back you go, the more you can change history.  By going that far back, first you could kill a random rodent and prevent the evolution of the human race (if you believe in evolution).  Second, the viruses and bacteria that any of them are carrying will have eighty million years to evolve into something that could destroy all life on the planet.  If they decide to procreate, they could cause the human race to appear eons earlier and completely change the history of the planet.  If you want to avoid a paradox, then they really need to go back to a more recent time (like a week or two).

Well, the team they sent into the past never comes back.  But, some people rock climbing find a cave with some cave paintings.  The navy becomes interested because among the paints there is some writing.  One of the messages says “Frank, it was not your fault”.  They carbon date the writing to the time period they sent the team to.  The Navy decides to send a team of Navy SEALs through the time machine to rescue the first team.  Frank Reno goes back with them.

One by one, the SEALs get killed off by the dinosaurs, including a hungry T. Rex named Big Red that is bullet proof (they shoot him with an M-60, but it doesn’t hurt him) before they finally find the survivors of the first team.  Out of the twenty-one, only four remain.  The four survivors, two remaining SEALs, and Frank make their way back to the time travel device to go back to the present.   However, Frank reveals that someone has to stay behind to shut off the device after the others go through (because there was apperently no way to install a remote or an automatic shut off).  Frank decides to stay so that the others can go through.  Before Frank can shut off the device, Big Red attacks him and goes through the time machine. 

The T. Rex appears in the Navy facility in Los Angeles and immediately eats a scientist and then one of the SEALs.  Then Big Red gets loose and starts terrorizing downtown LA where it eats several people to satisfy his unsatiable appetite.  The Navy officer, the last SEAL, and the four members of the first team all pile into a Seahawk and follow the dinosaur.  For some reason, they decide not to buckle in nor close either of the back doors.  A police helicopter joins the search.  During the search, they mention that the dino is cold blooded even though the current theory is that they were warm blooded (and the movie came out last year).  Big Red catches the police helocopter in its mouth and the helocopter explodes.  Even though the Seahawk is next to the explosion, no one falls out.  And even though the helocopter explodes in Big Red’s mouth, he’s unharmed.  The Seahawk then does a straffing run at Big Red that only succeeds in making him mad.

After a long drawn out chase in LA, a young Frank Reno appears (having just time traveled to the present from sixty years ago, where the old Frank appeared after being attacked by Big Red) with a World War 2 tank.  The tank goes off in chase down the dino and gets destroyed.  Frank throws a portable time travel device into Big Red’s mouth and send him back to his proper time.  Then he uses a second device to take him and the survivors of the first team to their time (because that won’t cause a paradox, either, apparently).  However, someone still needs to stay behind to shut off the machine, because they still rely on a manual shut off.  Instead of asking anyone from the present to do it, two of the survivors stay behind.

Okay, aside from bad science and plot holes big enough for the 60 foot, bullet proof, red dinosaur to walk through, the special effects were bad.  The T. Rex was CGI, but it didn’t look much better then Sid Meyer’s claymation dinosaurs in the original Land of the Lost.  And when Big Red opened its mouth to eat someone, it looked like a funnel, a round textureless opening. 

I’m giving this movie -1 bananas because it had nothing going for it.  Bad plot, bad special effects, bad science, and mediocre acting.