I bought a used XV6700 cell phone a couple months back. I have been mostly happy with the switch from phone to phone/pda combo. The slide-out keyboard is sized well, even for my meaty thumbs. Windows Mobile works surprisingly well, especially with my various email accounts. But I hate the touchscreen. The phone seems to be great at everything — except making phone calls.

I’ve been leaning towards giving up on it. But before I could resell the thing on ebay, I went and shattered its LCD screen. Last night while I was out with some friends, I slipped my keys into the same pants pocket as the phone. This morning I pulled it out and found a spider web of cracks covering the entire screen, and the touchscreen no longer works.

Poop.

The other night I walked by a bank, and noticed a computer terminal facing the walkway proudly displaying a Windows 98 splash screen.

Could a bank really be running an operating system that was put to pasture at the end of 2003?

I guess it’s better than Windows 95, or 3.11. But seeing that definitely wouldn’t inspire much confidence in the safety of my identity or banking information if I were a customer.

All church should end in broken bones.

It would be a lot funnier if the entire video was synced to the song.

I got tagged by Terry with this meme, who got it from Scott, who also gave it to Joe, and then Joe went and gave it to my wife. Dirty, dirty little meme.

1. I was a bad kid In kindergarten, I told nuns that my parents beat me to avoid getting demerits. I spent most of third through seventh grade in detention. I disrupted an afterschool program to the point of making a teacher cry. As an altar boy, I helped instigate a brawl by whacking some classmates with the blessed palms from Palm Sunday. Here’s to hoping the whole heaven & hell thing isn’t a reality.
2. I like Jesus Christ Superstar I like the movie, I’ve seen it live, and I enjoy the movie soundtrack. Perhaps this is some reaction to the evils of my childhood?
3. I majored in journalism Working as a web developer, for a few years it felt like a dirty secret that I wasn’t a comp-sci major in college. I started out studying print journalism and finished in graphic design. I enjoyed doing both, but not as much as working with the internets.
4. I stalked a member of the Dead Milkmen When I was in high school, I was really into the Dead Milkmen. Sophomore year, I hunted down their guitarist and interviewed him for a local newspaper article. Then a year or two ago I saw him in the crowd at a show at the NorthStar. For some reason, I thought that made us friends and I tried to make conversation with him. He seemed very creeped out, and I felt like a stalker.
5. I have quit a job without having another one Before my stint doing freelance work I was full time at an unnamed corporation. After a few rounds of drastic layoffs, and a manager who kept me at work on Christmas Eve so he could go to the OTB I got tired of feeling like every day was the worst day of my life. So I finally quit. But it was all for the best. I was working again, and much happier, in no time. Best decision of my life.

Warning, the song is *not* work-safe.

One of my big complaints about OS X is the difficulty I’ve had working with network file shares. Windows XP does it well. Pick a network file path, give it a drive letter, and then it’s available everywhere just like it was an internal hard drive.

Apparently, things have changed in Vista. Whenever I try to access my mapped drives after a boot-up in applications like Eclipse or Fireworks, they’re not available.

The drives show up in explorer. They even open when I click on them. But stored links in applications break. Eclipse projects on the network won’t open. Fireworks’ recently accessed files won’t open.

Things start to work normally if I do a File -> Open and explore through the given app to the networked drive. That seems to bring the drive back to life until the next time I boot.

I’m sure this has something to do with Vista’s new security model. But it’s hella annoying none-the-less. Yet another reason I’d be hesitant to switch at home to Microsoft’s latest OS.

I only heard a few days ago that there was going to be a live-action Transformers movie. The idea sounded like a steaming pile of turds.

But the trailer I saw last night makes it look bad-ass.

Rocky movies are 80% pretext, and 20% fight.

The pretext usually involves Rocky making idiotic jokes and squabbling with Paulie. There are the emotional retrospectives cobbled together from snippets of Micky screaming, Mr. T scowling, and Adrian crying. And there is always a training montage where Rocky lifts something extremely heavy over and over again with increasing ease.

The pretext in Rocky Balboa isn’t terrible. Paulie is grouchy. Rocky spews plenty of dimwitted banter. South Philly still looks a lot like Kensington.

Sure, maybe there is one too many visits to Adrian’s grave. And the slowed Gonna Fly Now theme music building to a movie-ending crescendo is more than a little saccharine. But all told it is a much better cap to the series than the Tommy Gun drivel in Rocky V.

And then there is the fight. I’m normally an advocate of sixty-year-olds keeping their shirts on. And after seeing this fight, I would still kindly request that all sixty-year-olds please retain their respective outerwear.

Sagging skin aside, Stallone holds his own and keeps it believable. The fight, like the entire movie, seems just plausible enough to be exciting.

Note to self: when recipes call for a stick of butter, apparently they are referring to half of what I consider a stick of butter.

Last night in a fit of festivity I attempted to make cookies. But the batch of doughy little balls that went into the oven came out a solitary mass of congealed yellowish goo. It took a few minutes to realize I’d loaded them up with FOUR sticks of butter instead of two.

I should stick to less mentally demanding holiday activities. Feats of Strength anyone?

According to early reviews, Rocky Bolboa might just be watchable, perhaps even enjoyable.

Only a few more days to wait and see.