Last night, I brought my total to 21 theatrical releases seen in 2003. Not bad for the 3d day of March.

Of course, the movie was bad. Not that I’m surprised; I didn’t go to see it because I expected it to be good, I went because Debbie has a thing for Owen Wilson and I’d been neglecting her for too long.

And it wasn’t awful, it was just… uninteresting. I found myself disconnecting from what I was watching, my mind wandering around. Sometimes it was a tangent, like when I tried to remember what Aidan Gillen (who played the villian) sounded like in the original Queer as Folk, and if he was altering his accent at all for an American audience.

Other times it was random, but in all cases, I would always come back to one thought: isn’t this done yet?

Back from B-don‘s (by way of my house) and I find a fat little envelope outside my apt. door. It’s instructions to switch my TCP/IP settings for the Internet provided by my landlord. (In short: switch to DHCP and then enter provided u/p.)

I make the changes and am online at 4:20:51. By 5:09, it goes out for the first time. For a half hour.

Oh, how I loathe this quasi-ISP.

Update [19:37]: Just finished downloading a file from a well-equipped, mirrored server. Average rate of transfer: 6,134 bytes/second.

By chance, I saw the first 90 seconds of a Bill O’Reilly broadcast on 26 Feb. At the start of that show, he said this:

Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can’t do that, just shut up.

Americans, and indeed our foreign allies who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me.

Just fair warning to you, Barbra Streisand and others who see the world as you do: I don’t want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well, let’s just say you will be spotlighted.

“Talking Points” invites all points of view and believes vigorous debate strengthens the country, but once decisions have been made and lives are on the line, patriotism must be factored in.

This does not give the government carte blanche to do anything, but it does give the government the benefit of the doubt at least until that benefit is proven wrong as it was in Vietnam.

It’s exactly because of this say-nothing-and-fall-in-line attitude put forth by fascists like O’Reilly that the Vietnam war went on for as long as it did. Every use and every deployment of a civilian-led military should always, always be questioned by the people.

Of course, O’Reilly has no monopoly on stupidity. At least the press corps knows how to handle it: watch this RealVideo clip and advance to 30:00.

This is JSP coming to you live from Rochester, wishing Brandon Allan a happy 23d. Giving that their birthdays are consecutive, it would be appropriate to also send a shout-out to his brother. But judging by the hour (and his continued absence), it seems he’s too busy living it up on his 21st.

Now for some birthday brownies.

[ Saw it Thursday; this review is late. ]

A quietly good film set in Vietnam during the conflict, just as France is nearing the end of its part in the war. Based upon Graham Greene’s novel, the central character is played by Michael Caine.

As usual, Caine is the consummate pro. It’s the title character, played by Brendan Fraser, who is more troubling. I can’t think of a Fraser character that I’ve ever liked without reservations, and sadly this is no exception.

That’s certainly not to say he drags down the picture. The rest of the film is too strong to be fatally wounded. Even with Mr. Fraser, The Quiet American is something worth watching, especially in times like these.

An energetic, gritty film suffused with heat — and violence. This Brazilian film (English title: City of God) is based upon a true story about the occupants of Rio’s most notorious slum.

It’s a film that the New York Times playfully called “Gangs of Rio” in a nod to Scorsese’s movie. There are certainly similarities, but this picture is much more daring in terms of structure, and it feels more raw due to the youth of its protagonists — a factor that makes it sometimes difficult to watch. More than once a woman in the row behind me gasped sharply at the brutality that unfolded on the screen.

Such is the irony of the slum’s name: in that wretched place, a god is nowhere to be found.

What a day.

It all began when the boss brought an old touch-screen monitor (an IBM G70t) and asked me to hook it up and make it work. By some miracle, he even had the installation disks.

The only free machine was an older Dell PowerEdge which, as luck would have it, contained substantially all of the boss’s files, correspondence, worksheets, and opther artifacts from his previous companies. (“John,” he once told me, “that old beast is worth more to me than all of the other computers in here put together.”)

Great.

So I installed the drivers and got no love — missing TOUCH.DLL. Luckily, I was able to find a much newer version of the drivers. I checked the README, and found they were even compatible with NT4.

Except they weren’t. After I installed the new drivers I got the wicked Blue Screen of Death. No amount of cajoling (VGA mode? Last Known Good?) seemed to wake the stubborn server. The Small Business Server discs that contained NT4 Server were, of course, not bootable. And as luck would have it, the system was formatted with NTFS so there was no way I was going to get to anything without some NT loving.

Miraculously, I found a floppy labeled “Emergency Repair Disk.” Tried to start from that: no dice. Except… wait! what was this? Three original setup disks! Put those in and waited for the chance to press “R” for repair. It never came.

Then I discovered the Microsoft deliberately disables that feature. Apparently unattended installation is more important than repair.

I modified Microsoft’s setup disk and finally, after hours of pain and suffering, I was able to get everything back. Afterward, all I could think was: if I’d stayed in bed this morning, this never would have happened.

Certainly not art, but also not the worst way to while away two hours (but maybe not eight bucks!) The “band Bring It On” is actually much better than the cheerleading flick that is its closest relative. Ebert has it right when he writes the movie “is entertaining for what it does, and admirable for what it doesn’t do.”

And if you think I’ve gone all “pop” in my movie choices, have no fear: the next two will be back up to snuff.

Stay out of Missouri!

That’s one of the valuable lessons from the folks at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who offer the state as an example of how to respond to a biological threat. The steps are only slightly less stupid than those given for a nuclear blast. (In which a man who looks suspiciously like those in the airplane safety flyers learns he should: 1. Take cover. 2. Escape. 3. Take cover.)

Truly, if we’re at the point where we need to make flyers to tell people this, we’re fucked. (And as for why they picked Missouri, I have no idea. Maybe it’s because at least a few of them are showing some sense.)

Update: ahh, at least someone has good nuclear blast tips.

…was even worse than the widely-overrated Spider-Man and is best promptly forgotten.

Hmm.

What was I talking about?

I haven’t been giving the site my usual level of care and feeding lately because my days have been occupied with an extensive consulting job (extensive = 9 to 5 daily plus two weekends so far.)

The experience has provided me with more than cash. There’s also an insight into what I guess is… my own naïveté.

Example: broadband was installed at the site last week by a Jamaican-born part-time D.J. He took a bit of a fancy to one of the workers there and asked me to pass on his number. I did so (with reservations; matchmaker is not my forté) and her only comment was “what is it with black guys and fat chicks?”

While a definitely stereotypical comment, that’s relatively harmless. But then her sister (who also works there) got wind of it. She hadn’t really seen the installer, so as she tried to recall him, she said: “Wasn’t he a nigger?”

For once, I was speechless. I honestly didn’t think anyone actually used that word anymore — I know it’s been years since it was spoken (maliciously) in my presence. So I expressed my disapproval to the woman.

Later, her sister backed up her usage, offering some sort of explanation that included an observation that “there’s black people, like the black business people, and then there’s niggers.” She went on to equate the phrase with “white trash” and then said “Yeah, I’m prejudiced” in a manner that can only be described as nonchalant .

All I could think was: what the fuck parallel universe am I on?

A problem is preventing windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error code: 0x80004005

That little message is giving me fits. What seemed conceptually to be an incredibly simple task (upgrading XP Home to Pro) has turned into an incredible time suck, with a STOP (aka BSOD) message during installation, a suspicious-looking installation CD, and a welcome screen that plays the start-up sound, throws that error, and then plays the shutdown sound.

Fortunately, have FDISK. Take that, error message.

A powerhouse performance by Daniel-Day Lewis anchors this overlong period piece. Leonardo DiCaprio also does well as the vengeful Amsterdam Vallon, though some of my companions (understandably) had difficulty seeing past his previous life as scrawny teenage heartthrob.

Yet the most salient characteristic of Gangs is its violence. I thought of Scorsese’s beginnings as I watched all the blades and the blood and death they wrought.

If this film is to be believed, New York’s streets are actually safer today. How amusing is that?

I just learned that Ad-Aware 6 is out, with a brand-new site to go with the launch. I’d been using a different spyware scanner after it seemed that Ad-Aware stagnated with 5.83 and the September reference file.

I’m pleased to report that the new version is much more visually pleasing and appears to be just as thorough. The site is loads better as well.

Paying federal taxes online seems like a good idea, but why must everything that’s associated with the process be so stupid? The name — Electronic Federal Tax Payment System — is descriptive, but way too long. The (trademarked!) acronym is dumb and it makes an even dumber website: eftps.gov. What, taxes.gov was taken? (At least somebody at the Treasury has a clue.)

Then there’s the site itself. The front is ugly and dumb: doesn’t the “E” mean electronic? Do we really need to call it EFTPS-Online? Would anyone want to bookmark that page? Why does the “Enter” button have what appears to be a down arrow? And why is the next page (that I see) on a .com address? Instead of eftpsnorth.com, shouldn’t I see north.eftps.gov, in order to ensure I am still in the relatively secure .gov domain?

And don’t even get me started on the rest of the site.