by Matt | Jan 20, 2005 | Movies
Yeah, like you didn’t see this coming.
At any rate, this is my list. Other people have other lists, and that’s fine for them. I’m sure, in some weird backwards world, Spider-Man 2 might have made it onto someone else’s list. Not here brother. I’m tough on movies. People who see movies with me are lucky to survive if I start ranting as soon as I walk out of the theater. The good movie are the ones I wait until I get home to make fun of.
Anyway, without further ado… Matt’s Top Ten Movies of 2004 – now with explanations!
10. Dawn of the Dead – Ok, I know it’s campy. It’s cheesy. But what other opportunity did I have to laugh at zombies……
9. Shaun of the Dead – Good, funny zombie flick. But then, I think all zombie flicks are funny. I’m weird like that. It had its moment, but not enough to move it higher in the count.
8. Saved – Macaulay Culkin in a wheel chair, who couldn’t laugh? Actually, it was a light-hearted poke at people who take religion just a little to far. Jena Malone does a great job for her first film. The van scene still has me laughing. “I’m FILLED with Christ’s love”… *whack*. Classic.
7. Shrek 2 – The cat made it funnier than the first. That and the little inside jokes here and there. I bought the box set. Good stuff.
6. Miracle – It’s a movie about the single greatest hockey moment in history… as if it wasn’t going to make the list. It’s also really good. I went to see it with Lauren and a non-hockey person and even they liked it. Go figure.
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – One of Jim Carrie’s best. Artsy and stylish and just sappy enough. Well written and directed, unique and funny. Bravo.
4. Lost in Translation – I loved it, others hated it. I dunno, I genuinely felt sorry for the characters at the end. That says something right there. That and for once, Hollywood didn’t need a sex scene to “wrap up” loose ends. Genuine movie. Murry deserves some sort of award. But wait, isn’t this movie from 2003? Yeah, but I didn’t see it until 2004. MY list. Get it?
3. Napoleon Dynamite – Funny shit. Period. It had its dull moments, but everytime that kid talked I was rolling in the isle.
2. Garden State – Almost made it to #1. For his first try Zach Braff did a great job. Witty and entertaining, beautifully directed. A real indie-film treat.
1. The Incredibles – Yes, the Incredibles. Not only was it good, it was a cartoon! Seriously though, it was perfect from start to finish. An instant DVD special edition purchase. I found it hard to nit-pick and what I could was easily negated by the fact that it was CG. The voices were perfectly cast, the animation was great and hey, it had Jason Lee in it, what more do you people want!?!
I’m done.
Out.
by Matt | Jan 19, 2005 | Imported Entry
Anyone else keeping up with the “rel=nofollow” tag news? Seems like an interesting idea. I kinda wonder when/if it’s going to get implemented.
For those of you outside the loop, Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Manilla, Six Apart, WordPress, Flickr, Blogger, Livejournal, Buzznet, Blojsom, Blosxom announced their support for a new html tag. By adding the tag to link tags, search engines would ignore it when they index a page.
The idea behind comment spam is that the links spammers post are indexed and count towards their page rank. This would negate that effect.
In my opinion it would help with fighting the page rank but do absolutely nothing for the amount of comment spam. The spam would be pointless, but that’s not going to stop anyone from posting it. Why change the way they post spam when they can just post more and hope it works. Fuckers.
If anything, this will increase the amount of spam that doesn’t work. That, and break html standards… unless it gets adopted there too.
The Story
by Matt | Jan 18, 2005 | Imported Entry
Ok, so its been a little while since I last wrote. Well, actually, it’s been more than a little. But that’s ok. Better to be too busy to write than not I suppose. Actually, there’s been quite a lot going on. I’ve shot 2 weddings, gone to a hockey game, ordered new computer parts and been involved with my team taking the number one and number two ranks on SquadGames and TeamWarefare respectively.
The weddings were fine for the most part. One was with a really good group of people who just didn’t have anything go their way that night (cake was wrong, band sucked, etc) but it was good for us since we did a little problem solving here and there, they really appreciated our extra effort and they had a positive outlook about the whole thing. The other wedding was pretty run of the mill. Nothing to complicated or involved. I’ve also got another wedding coming up in mid-February that’ll be pretty cool. It’ll be at the Houston Museum of Science in the “Gem” wing. I’ve got to remember to go over and take a look at the location so I can get an idea about how to shoot it. I’ve been told it’s a bit of a “cave” in terms of light and that photos won’t be easy. You know me, nothing comes easy.
The hockey game was fun. The tickets were a belated birthday present from Laurens mom. She let me pick out the game and she bought the tickets and I wanted to wait one of the New England teams to be in town. We caught the Houston Aeros vs. the Worcester IceCats last weekend. Good game. Worcester spanked the crap out of them, not like that’s a huge surprise or anything.
In gaming news, after a long screaming battle over some cheating allegations and false positives from PunkBuster, we were dropped to 15 on the TWL ladder. We had a clan member (newly admitted the week prior) get kicked from a warm-up round before a match. He didn’t even play in the match in question. After we won the other team accused us all of cheating and brought up the matter to the game ladder admins. They responded without even talking to us by banning our new player and dropping our rank. We got the following a few days later directly from Even Balance (makers of PunkBuster):
“We have confirmed that several gamehack violations (#81001-81014) triggered since the prior PB Server update on 12.11.2004 in BF1942 could have been caused by files or memory that were corrupted by non-cheat programs such as virii, adware, no-cd programs, etc. We encourage PB Admins to give players the benefit of the doubt for these violations.”
We of course, did NOT get the “benefit of the doubt” and we’re actually quite mad about it. The TWL admins have their heads quite far up places dark and moist. Regardless, and with huge amount of anger, we marched on. We fought back from #15 all the way to #2 after a victory last night over the team that raised the stink in the first place. Man, that felt good. I’ll say this once and only once. The Texas Combat Crew does not, has never and will never cheat. We do not need to. We’re nationally ranked #1 and #2 and there’s a reason for that. We’re fucking good. If you can’t deal with that and get beat down by us, don’t accuse us of cheating, it’s un-sportsman like.
We defend our number two position this week and challenge up for number one next week. Should be good matches.
Lastly, the new computer is on it’s way! That’s right, Matt finally got enough cash to upgrade the old rig. I waited until HL2 came out to see if it was playable and it was, though only barely. I’ve been told that Battlefield 2, being released late Feb/early March, will be quite the system hog. I just had to up the power. Come the end of this week (because New-Egg ships faster then imaginable), we’ll be rocking with a new Athlon 64 3400+. I paired that with a Ultra XConnect 500W PSU, a MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R mobo, 1G of Cosair, a shiny new Zalman cooler and topped it all off with a MSI Geforce 6600GT. I chose the 6600GT mainly because I didn’t have the extra $300 and because its the highest rated 6600 AGP card and it’s from the same manufacturer as my motherboard, making for maximum compatibility. That and they were one of 2 companies to go above and beyond with the 6600 line and put a non-stock fan/heatsink on it. The other was Gainward and they’re having supply problems and the cards have been sold out for months. I’ll plan on upgrading the card to a 6800GT or Ultra after this summer. I figure I’ll have some serious overtime hours after pageant season.
I’ll be using the rest of my old parts for now but a DVD burner and a 250G hard drive are defiantly on my sale watch list. Oh, and speaking of, Chris, that camera you wanted, it’s on a one-day sale at New-Egg today. Just a heads up.
Lastly, and I know I’ve said this before, I do have a new page design almost ready. I’ve scrapped the one I didn’t put up from last year FYI. If anyone wants it, it’s theirs. I just haven’t had the time lately and things like that get pushed to my already crowded back burner.
Anyway, hope everyone if doing great in the new year. I’m looking forward to turning comments back on. I think Jason set up mysql for me and I’m just waiting on a user name/pswd from him. After that I’ll give wordpress a shot. Chris seems to like it and that’s good enough for me. That’ll be when the new design will go up. Should make life a little easier for everyone and it won’t be…. well… brown.
Matt out.
by Matt | Dec 25, 2004 | Personal
It’s Christmas day and what does Houston wake up to? SNOW! Gobs and gobs of fluffy white stuff. The weathermen can’t really explain it and everyone I talk to says it hasn’t snowed in 20 years. It’s actually a bunch of snow (for TX). Probably about an inch or two. Enough to cover the ground and to warrent 3 snowmen (and a few snow balls). Everyone is freaking out. The entire neighborhood forgot about their presents and are out in their front yards playing with this mystery white stuff.
And on a personal note. Merry Christmas everybody. I hope everyone is enjoying themselves. We’re getting ready to have some breakfast and open some present.
Take care everybody.
Matt out.
by Matt | Dec 21, 2004 | Personal
Yep, it’s that time of year again. Another year come and gone and I’ve lived almost a quarter-century. You guys know that my birthday has never been a big deal to me. For years I typically stayed in and had pizza and watched Kevin Smith movies. As I get older I realize that birthdays, especially mine, as just another day on the calendar. Only on this particular Monday I get to choose where we go out to eat. Other than that, life pretty much continues uninterrupted.
Actually, I’m having a rather nice birthday. Lauren surprised the hell out of me and got me an authentic Red Sox jersey and a framed Ted Williams photo. My parents also sent me a “Red Sox – World Series Champions” hoodie and a copy of the NESN DVD “Faith Rewarded: 86 years in the making”. It was a very themed Birthday 🙂
Plans for this week are still rather unknown. I have no idea what days I’m working, which ones I get off, and what I’m doing on any of those afore-mentioned days. I think Christmas eve and Christmas day will be spent at Lauren’s Parents house. Apparently there are two rounds of presents. One the night before from the family and one the next day from the extended family who are coming over for lunch.
Other than that, not a lot is going on. I’m getting some money together for a new system. NewEgg finally credited my account for the refund from the graphics card fiasco. I should have about $750 when it’s all said and done. That should be enough for the bare essentials: mobo, CPU, graphics and PS. The rest can wait. I might try and squeak out a DVD burner too if there’s anything left over.
I’ve also got a few weddings coming up. Two in January and one in February.
I’ll be posting again before Christmas, but just in case…
I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and a great New Year. Drink some nog, watch some DVDs, play some video games. Kick back and relax and enjoy the time with your families. May none of you get the gift of sox (unless they’re Red) and may all your presents be geeky. Take care. I miss everybody. Cheers.
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