Computers Really Do Suck

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Back in my fourth year of college, I use to work two jobs and go to school full time. On the weekends I worked at Best Buy in the audio department and during the week I had a computer lab job. At the lab, I mostly browsed the Internet and helped nursing students with their word processing or internet searches. I hardly ever went to my morning class cause I was so tired all the time, and so the only classes I was really awake for were my afternoon classes. Luckily I had read a lot of novels the year before and done all the work for my afternoon classes, that I was able to pass my finals for that 7:30 am class! This final year of school I had absolutely no social life and spent what little time at home on the Internet too. My girlfriend refers to this semester as the computer geek time. But I hardly even noticed it until I quit all my jobs and graduated, I literally had missed out on everything my last year at school and what did I have to show for it? My best grades since my freshman semester, that’s what!

Back in college computers were still interesting and new. The internet was cool and it was changing every day. It’s now ten years later almost to the day Netscape became a public-traded company and it almost feels like the Internet has now finally started to change again after a long period of stagnation. You have new technologies like AJAX, and open-source projects like PHP and Apache that are keeping things exciting and affordable for everyone.

Now that I’m an old guy to this Internet stuff though, I’m starting to see a lot of younger kids look at computers and they are not excited about it as much as I was. They see computers as tools. They have used them all their life and they are use to them. It’s hard to appreciate a car if you’ve always had one. The technology has also changed, Microsoft finally made a version of Windows that kinda works, Apple moved pass the old MacOS System to the shiny iPod, suddenly computers are not that new.

The other thing that I do get is that working with computers really does suck. You often end up spending hours on little problems, because something is not set up right or worse there is a glitch somewhere. After so many frustrations you realize you are babysitting a freaking widget! And who wants to do that for a living?

Well it turns out that the digital divide has a couple of generations. The older generation wish things were simple like MSDOS and old P90’s. While the newer generation has no appreciation for the design or the history of technology. So if you find yourself collecting old MacSE computers in your garage, guess which generation you are from? Most likely you will have more than one old Mac and PC lying around, and so you’ll think yeah computers do suck, but not mine, mine’s a classic.

Ladies Man?

EditorialsLeave a comment

Last week I managed to find time to watch the movie Hitch, which is arguably what I like to call a post-metrosexual men’s movie. In case you did not know it guys, the whole metrosexual thing is a bit played out and we can all go back to being unshaven, unclean, and definitely macho bastards we truly are…. or can we?

The metrosexual fad showed men, that they are as vulnerable to advertising as women are. Magazines like Cosmo who promote women’s good looks do have male counterparts, namely Playboy, but also what I call the trash metrosexual mags like Stuff and Maxim who promote hot women on their covers while making men think about themselves as consumers of fashion inside. Guys, those mags are bad news, you may think Jennifer Love Hewitt is hot, but that’s just a trick to get you thinking about buying more Ax deodorant instead of regular Old Spice or Right Guard.

It’s sad but there is not one store that I can walk into today and buy a man’s safety razor. All there is are disposable twin, triple, quadruple blade disposables that yes, look like something my girlfriend would use on her legs! So even if I did want to consume stuff, all the stores and magazines are not selling men, manly cool stuff, they are selling junk!

Anyway this brings me back to the film Hitch, in which Will Smith shows pathetic men how to be more confident and communicate with women. The film is interesting, not because it is a romantic comedy, but because it actually tries to aim at a male audience. Let’s face it, even with Will Smith in the lead part, the movie does not exactly fit the woman’s romantic comedy playbook. It does not have some stiff looking rich guy as the lead, there’s no big star like Julia Roberts in it, and instead we have Eva Mendez, which is so damm hot, that I’ll even watch a Will Smith movie after I, Robot!

Although Hitch is not a great movie, it is enjoyable and you do get the right advice about getting a woman, and by getting I mean, getting into a meaningful relationship kind of thing, not the other thing.

The secrets to being sucessful with a woman, like The Woman! U Want, like the one you know, not Pamela Anderson are pretty obvious:

One, you listen, and then you listen, and then you listen. That’s it. You don’t interupt, you don’t ask stupid questions, or make stupid comments. When you meet a woman you genuinely are interested in, you really have to make an effort to get to know her. If she truly is interested in you, she will let you know, and if you are too busy talking you might not get the hint.

Be yourself. No not the totally I got wasted last night guy, but the best yourself you can be. Be charming, be interesting, be creative, be great to be around with.

Last but not least have fun, dating is meant to be entertaining, especially for your date! Don’t forget this, even if you find you absolutely are not right for each other or totally disagree on politics, that’s no reason to ruin a good night out. Usually on the first dates, it’s all about her having fun, but if you don’t enjoy yourself at all, than that is not only bad manners, but sometimes women find that personally insulting.

The Fantastic Four

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Comic books movies are pretty common ever since 911 happened. Although Spider-man was essentially already filmed, it too fits in with the trend Hollywood started, and so we got DareDevil, Spider-man 2, X-Men, Elecktra, The Hulk, etc. In all, except for The Punisher, comic book movies are a very good distraction from real world problems, like terrorism and politics; it is easier to make a movie that requires suspension of disbelief, because even if a theme is controversial, it is not analyzed as much since it is coming from a super hero that isn’t real. Most comic films though tend to be feel-good movies anyway, so there is not much serious thought to begin with. This leads us to Fox’s rendition of The Fantastic Four. A film that disappoints on the most important level of all, the action movie category!

The plot is pretty simple, good boy scientist and his best friend tough guy want to further their research but they are broke. The solicit the help of an old school friend who allows them to take a trip to his personal space station where they have to work together with his chief scientist and her brother. Everyone knows eachother and of course the space cloud they are suppose to study arrives early and the situation leads to a freak accident that gives them superpowers.

The rest of the movie is made up of the four main characters ironing out their personal conflicts, and of course the birth of Dr. Doom, which is a tad underwhelming.

For the most part the acting is not terrible in Fantastic Four, the special effects are neither disappointing, and even the dialogue does not suck. So what’s wrong with this movie? Why did the critics hate this movie? The answer is that the film is too nice! Unlike X-Men where the bad guys are really bad (even cool), and the main character Wolverine is not nice all the time, Fantastic Four has no dark side. The characters are mostly nice to each other and have good manners, with the occasional clumsiness of The Thing, nothing really happens in this film. Dr. Doom turns evil, but even his transformation could be explained as not being rooted in evil.

This all leads to a final battle, which is really the only battle! and then you realize you have watched an entire movie just to get one real good versus evil fight! Even Spider-man fought the Goblin a few times before he really kicked his ass.

Kids may enjoy this movie, I know my kids did, but older kids and adults may find the Fantastic Four lacking in the action department, and for a comic movie to lack action, is simply unforgivable.