A Little off the Top, Please

So tonight I watched Sweeney Todd, the dark slasher musical that seems just right for Halloween...sort of. I was a little disappointed overall with it. The story really didn't get interesting until the end and entire story lines were left dangling and felt pointless and added on. What's worse with this being a musical, is that I feel that the actors were auditioned based on acting rather than singing. Most of the singing wasn't bad, but I just felt it could have been better, especially Johnny Depp. The last major gripe I had with the movie was with the mixing. I'm assuming the DVD was similar to the blu-ray. The vocals were mixed at such a horrible volume level. I could barely hear any of the people speaking, and any time there was music, it completely overshadowed the vocals. If I tried to turn it up, the rest of the movie became in general too loud, especially the music. Fairly mediocre, but I was expecting a little more.

Also today, I had the pleasure of telling off a political caller. After being called repeatedly all day at work (and me not picking up or them leaving a message), I finally was able to pick up and see what the heck they wanted. Calling from a Boston area code (why?), was someone doing some sort of "political study". (I was excited because I thought I might get my opinion in an actual poll) (Also, how do they get my number? It's a cell number which is illegal to do automated calls to...) They asked if I knew who I was going to vote for in the New York State Assembly race. I told them I was leaning on voting for Johnathan Smith. They then proceeded to tell me that he has been involved with many negative and questionable activities and make other false or unbased claims about him. I promptly told the person that I do not appreciate the negative campaigning that I was being subjected to and that I not be called again. She then replied with more negative "facts" about Mr. Smith. First off, pestering my phone all day is not a positive way to get my vote. Second, being independent, I don't like the negative ads and attacking of candidates, especially after telling someone who I plan on voting for. And lastly, this drastically differs from Johnathan Smith's call I got which was from a supporter, in a NY area code, who kindly offered his stance on issues in a positive way and in general was a very pleasant phone call. Let me say, if I was on the fence or had a sliver of doubt about not voting for Johnathan Smith, that is now gone. Being negative to me or through me loses my vote. It does not make me more likely to vote for you! It does quite the opposite! You just lost my vote or any chance I would vote for you, Joel Miller. Hope you waste more money (in Boston!! How can your campaign even say try and "create more jobs in the Hudson Valley" when you outsource to Boston!).

Sometimes you feel like a nut

What a nice weekend. Saturday had Penn State winning over Ohio State. It was an extremely exciting and nerve racking game. The defense was on center stage as we were able to escape with a narrow win. Now we just have to win out and hope for some losses. One thing I didn't like about the telecast was the eulogy they kept showing all day on ABC for JoePa. I mean I know he's old and his future is uncertain, but it just seemed ominous. It's fine to show him respect, but it just came across wrong to me.


Today I was finally able to finish Disgaea 2 for the PS2. I started playing it over a year ago, but moved on without beating it. I restarted it again recently so that I had it done before I started Disgaea 3. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it pales in comparison to the first one.

One last thing is that my praise goes out to Gamestop for once. Rewarding their loyal pre-order customers, they gave us LittleBigPlanet this weekend even though it's not supposed to be out before Tuesday. So far, I am enjoying it beyond belief. It is crazy cool and just an all round great game. The levels are so fascinating seeing how things work and how they are able to do some things. It is such a joy finding all of the hidden items of levels. The single player is enjoyable even though they don't have the servers up and running yet for multiplayer. I love the simplicity of a good platformer, and it is so much fun even just playing with the sackpeople. I thought I wouldn't care about outfits and such, but it is actually quite fun. Currently, my sackboy is somewhere between a pirate with a lion tale and a renassaince bunny.

Brown, Black, Red, Gold

Happy 1K day (with some tolerance)! Hope everyone is celebrating 1K day to it's fullest potential. I know I didn't do much. Maybe next year. At work, for the celebration today was Hack Day. It is where everyone is supposed to come up with unusual projects centered around the tools we use everyday at IBM. A fellow team member was showing me his hacks and projects he came up with in previous years. Stuff like a comment visualizer and editor for our code or a blog aggregator. We were going to check out the other hacks people made this year, but before we knew it, both of us got tied up in our work and he went home early. I know there's a blog site that has the info on, so I'll have to check it out. Maybe next year I can come up with something small. From what I saw, most of the hacks seem to be software related, so I'm curious if any hardware hacks were present. Although my software skills are rather limited when it comes to application hacks, I'm sure I would like to try.

I've been invited to a Halloween party. Yay! But with such short notice, I need a pretty quick, easy costume. I wonder what I can whip up in about week. Using what I have since I practically am one, it would be easy to be a very stereotypical nerd (even more so than normal for me). I'm just worried that it may just bring out how nerdy and uncool I really am since, let's face it, I wouldn't have to change much... Also, being that most of the people are engineers, maybe it wouldn't go over quite as well, or it may go over even better, depending on how I accessorize.

One last quick note on political candidates. I remember at the beginning of the election process people were saying how young Obama was. Well, I wonder what they would say about Roger Calero of the Socialist party. He's only 38! Over 10 years younger. And I was also surprised to find that Ralph Nader is 74. He's older than McCain. I wonder who will be the defacto independent nominee after he doesn't do it anymore, for age or otherwise. Oh well, I guess no one ever questions their age since they have little to no chance as it is. Just weird to find out.

Gangstas

So tonight I saw the movie American Gangster. I know it's been out a while, but it took awhile to cycle to the front of my Netflix Queue. I thought the movie was really well made and a lot of fun. It's a shame it was as long as it was. It clocked in at about 3 hours on the Blu-ray release. The ending was a satisfying ending, even with the long set-up. The characters felt real (maybe since they were). I remember seeing trailers and thinking that Denzel Washington couldn't play a badass drug dealer and russel crow's part seemed off. Not so after seeing it. I thought they both did wonderfully. I don't remember if they won anything last year or not at the Oscars. With all of the good TV on nowadays and the incosistant postal service of Poughkeepsie and White Plains, it is taking me forever to get through my queue. I hope I can continue moving through it pretty rapidly since it has soo many movies on it.

A Series of Unfortunate Rants

So I've got a few rants I want to get off my chest this evening, pretty unrelated too. The first is my usual Heroes thoughts. The show seems to travel like a roller coaster. It has it's ups and downs. I thought this week was rather good. Characters remembered most of their powers for once and used them (Hiro time traveling more, Peter going invisible, etc.), the story was relatively suspenseful and even had a glimpse at a cool fight scene with Syler and Peter fighting a little bit (having the two characters with tons of abilities would make an awesome fight if the writers can keep track of everything), and I wasn't yelling any obscenities at my TV for a change. Unfortunately, I'm totally expecting to be disappointed next week, since that seems to be how this show works.

Next, I want to say what a brilliant thing the most recent firmware update to the PS3 was. The update added Flash 9 support to Sony's shitty web browser. This means that services like Hulu can actually work through the PS3. I find this extremely awesome. I can watch TV shows that I miss through Hulu, and instead of watching them on my laptop screen or going through the trouble of hooking up my laptop to my tv, I can simply turn on my PS3 and watch them on a very nice looking screen. The feature is buggy as hell though it seems. Full screen mode doesn't seem to work so I just do a manual zoom, which isn't a perfect resolution for my tv, but still decent. The video can sometime be jittery even though I have a 15Mbps download speed, which I feel is more the crappy browser and flash support than my connection since it works fine on my laptop. Lastly, the higher quality videos don't seem to work so I have to watch everything at like 360p or whatever it is. This is a small price to pay I say. I get the added benefit of a huge screen, plus I can use my laptop while watching stuff on the tv, so I get added productivity. Overall, I feel this will be my new way of watching my missed TV content. I just wished a few more networks supported it like ABC.

Lastly, I want to address an issue that I saw today, although it wasn't the first by any means. My dad sent me an email today that was sent to him claiming that Obama doesn't say the pledge of allegiance and also had a 'shopped picture of him in a turban. To his credit, instead of instantly believing what was sent to him (like oh so many people do nowadays), he was asking me for clarification and if it was even true. I was able to promptly respond with the proper factual information telling him it was false. I am sick and tired of all of these sick, twisted and just plain false and baseless character attacks. Why in every election or in every political situation do people resort to attacking someone's character instead of actually talking about what matters in how to lead and correct this country? In the 50's it was Senator McCarthy attacking people for being communists, even if they weren't. Nixon's entire election was based on character attacks. Al Gore was character attacked for being boring, uptight, and elitist, and so was John Kerry. This is nothing more than the senseless "witch" hunts that occurred in the 15th and 16th century, which we all look back on and see how stupid they were. Why can't we stop with all of the character attacks? It does nothing to help us and only hurts us. Can't people understand that it's the issues that really matter in your everyday life? I don't care if you don't agree with Obama or McCain's issues, but to have baseless character attacks is just plain wrong and disgusting.

Maybe what sickens me the most is that the amount of racism that is starting to show in this election cycle. (I hope that people can overcome and that nothing horrible happens....vote for the right candidate and the one you believe in, not the one whose skin matches yours) Maybe the racists don't know but Obama is actually half white. That's right, just like me. Maybe they will realize that even though his skin may be dark and his name may sound funny, that he's a decent American. In case they haven't noticed, Obama, isn't even like the type of African American they dislike...He's well educated, speaks proper, and isn't a "gangsta". He cares for his family and isn't a criminal. He's practically "white"! (if rednecks don't count) If these racists hate African Americans so much, why don't they stop and think about what Obama might do to help that culture group. It is my belief that if Obama would become president, it would actually help the African American community, in such a way that it would help lessen many of the stereotypes. You don't think that having a highly educated black man as the President of the United States wouldn't have ripples in the black communities? Young people could look up to him as a role model since currently the only black role models kids have are sports stars and rappers. This might encourage kids to be well educated, go get an education, treat your family with respect, and most importantly, that even if you come from a broken home or a run down neighborhood (like Obama) you can believe in your dreams and you can do anything. I mean it's practically a Hallmark movie. I just want to see all of the racist smears stop. I imagine that's just too much to ask for.

In the mean time, after Palin's success on SNL, the McCain campaign realizes thay have to go after the youth vote. So they are going to star in a movie: McFast & McFurious

Ann Arbor is Still a Whore

Finally, the wolverines have been beaten and we had some redemption. The game was disheartening for the first half and although I wasn't worried, I was angry at Michigan for even getting on the scoreboard, let alone leading into halftime. The final two quarters were quite different and the way it should have been from the start with us whipping their butt. For making me worry, Ann Arbor is most definitely still a whore. Until we can march into their stadium and hand them an embarrassing loss, Ann will be slutty. Although some redemption was served in our 46-17 win, it will only feel better when they are actually having a half decent year.

Now the Big Ten conference looks like it will come down to our showdown with Ohio State next week. I hope we can keep our momentum up. This looks like it will be a very tough game. Considering we have never won in Columbus, I don't like the ominous signs. Oh well. This year is a year of firsts starting with our win over UM. Next week will show our dominance in the Big 10 with a huge road win over OSU. Let's go State!

In other news, I'm dissapointed at Sony, but I do understand why. LittleBigPlanet had been delayed by one week. Apparently a background music track had some questionable phrases in it from the Qur'an. Instead of issuing a mandatory patch, they are delaying the game in case someone is offended that doesn't have internet or just the fact that it might not look good to the Muslim world. I understand your reasons for being so conservative Sony, but I would like my Sackboy! Please?

Dreaming in Sepia

Well, that was probably the most interesting debate of the three. We actually got opinions and specifics about these candidates. It was also the most debate like with them going back and forth with real criticisms. McCain came out strong, punching. He was aggressive on many of the topics and seemed to really be winning the debate. But around half way through, I feel he lost his momentum. After wards, he seemed to be less focused and more of the same from what we've seen. This was supposed to be some of his weaker material, so it's good to see he rose to the occasion for once. He missed a few more question to the end. Obama came out very similar to how he came out for the previous debates. Very cool and collected and calmly answering the questions. At first this seemed to not be enough for the aggressive McCain in the beginning, but by the end, I feel he was dominating in the same way he was in the previous debates. Overall, I kinda think it was a tie. Each had their strong portions of the debate and parts they did better at. I suppose if I had to choose, it would be Obama, since he had a greater lasting impression about the issues that affect me. I think McCain did a good job for once, but I think it's too little, too late for his campaign. He's behind by large margins in both popular vote (10%) and in electoral votes (~200EV). This will not be a game changer and looks like Obama will continue to carry his healthy lead. We'll see if anything drastic happens over the next ~19 days.

Whatever you say about the candidates, one thing isn't up for debate... McCain BE OLD



Oh Jelly Donut, how you capture the truth and put it into a really good rap.

Linger with an Octopus

I decided to buy the new demoscene project that appeared up on PSN this week, Linger in Shadows. I figured for $3, why not? Because it's a demoscene, or interactive art as they like to describe it, it is very short, but I have to say it was kinda fun. The whole thing was like going to a modern art exhibit and looking around. The graphics have this feel that make them look like an oil painting. The story, or what's left of one, makes absolutely no sense with floating monsters, a cat, and some sort of flying dog among a city with numbers of boxes. The ending left me more confused than the beginning, which I suppose art will do. I enjoyed manipulating the objects in the "game" and looking for the hidden items. Overall, weird, but fun while it lasted. I'm glad it didn't cost any more though...

On a totally different note, my friend Matt showed me this hilarious video about Tarvuism. It's so easy to join! I just wonder who would win in a fight between Tarvu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.


Say Hebbo! from Torvakian on Vimeo.

Tarvu tarvooti,
Oboonoo cTooti,
Mimmin O'tibbi noonah,
Mdfitty fitty noonah,
Arvu immentiBarvu,
Tarvu.

We don't need any more story lines!

Jeez Heroes, I think we need some MORE characters to remember. You've already got a cast of like 30 people which everyone has a fricking super power, why not just add some more. It's not bad enough that you are reusing powers and bringing back people that you killed off two times already (!!), you have to go and add even more people. And on top of it all, you take away everybody's common sense so that they do the stupidest things leaving me just awestruck at how inept your writers must be. Ugh, yet week after week, I come back for more of this BS.

Great Weekend

It was a great weekend. Parnets came up and drove around to see the foliage. It's getting quite pretty out. Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves so I'm glad they all liked it and my new home. Wrapped up Saturday by watching Penn State absolutely smother Wisconsin. They didn't even have a chance. Several times we recovered from what seemed like disastrous plays. I remember at least twice on one drive where we had third and super long (20+ or so) and we were able to convert even with clark rolling out of the pocket and passing on the run. This team could be realy special. It really made me happy and less worried about our game at Columbus. If we can pass the next two weeks, and not overlook the last half of our schedule, we'll be golden and should be playing in Miami.

I wrapped up today by watching The Forbidden Kingdom. This is the recent kung-fu/wire-fu movie that was released that had both Jackie Chan and Jet Li in it. I'm not a huge kung-fu guy, but wanted to check it out. I really liked this movie. The story and action were really well done. It kept my attention and was kind of exciting at parts. The movie looked amazing on Blu-ray. It was an excellent transfer and having the beautiful Chinese scenery as a backdrop made it better.

Post Turtle

So it seems like it's going to be a busy weekend this weekend, in a good way. My family is coming up tomorrow and would like to see more of the area. So I'll be busy showing them around. Hopefully I'll be free enough to watch the Penn State game vs Wisconsin. Should be a good game with a struggling Badger team and us who normally don't travel too well. Let's go State!

So at work today, a little story was shared with me that I got a kick out of. Felt like sharing although I know it also applies to Obama, just as it did about Bush in 2000.

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President. The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle .You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."

Little Big Planet

So I've decided to preorder Little Big Planet. This is a rare occurrence for me and I believe only the second time I've preordered a game. The first was just a few months ago with Disgaea 3 so that I could ensure that I get a copy (silly) and to make sure I got the limited soundtrack CD's. I've yet to play it though. How sad...

But Little Big Planet has continued to catch my eye ever since Spring or so. It looks like such an enjoyable little platformer with endless possibilities. Every time I see gameplay footage or see stuff related to it or the crazy levels people are building, I just get this stupid smile spread right across my face. (I feel much like sackboy's). I'm looking forward to playing it later this month and hoping it does well for the PS3. It sounds like it will. Everyone who has or wants a PS3 seems to be talking about this game. I hope it moves consoles too as a larger install base around the world will only strengthen the legitamacy of the PS3 and more developers will have to cater to it instead of horrible ports.

So the reasons I preordered don't seem like much, but it was a tipping point. First being that Gamestop has expanded their bonuses. Now I get not only a Kratos skin from God of War, but a Medusa and a Minitaur as well. Plus I get a special level pack with a few extra levels. Even though I wasn't a huge GoW fan, this was enticing for the sheer amount of extra goodies I get. And I believe I can mix and match parts of the costume so I can just make my regular sackboy have a red goatee all the time. So extra parts are most awesome. Then there is the launch event downloads. For buying LBP in the first week, I get a special T-Shirt skin, and also a "launch" suit for my sackboy. For a game that I was more than likely going to purchase anyway, I decided why not preorder? And then earlier today, I heard of two anouncements from TGS. Apparently, Sephiroth and Old Snake will also be accessable characters for sackboy! That is so totally awesome.
http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/10/09/you-got-metal-gear-and-final-fantasy-in-my-littlebigplanet/
http://kotaku.com/5060913/old-snake-sephiroth-get-sackboyed-for-littlebigplanet
I cannot wait for the possibilities of this game. Oh and yes, Kotaku. I think I did pee a little.

Snow Angels

Tonight I watched my Netflix movie of the week. This week it was the movie Snow Angels. I don't exactly know how this movie made it to my queue or who told me about it, but somehow I discovered this indie film. The story is a complex one with a few parallel story lines which involve a young kid in high school, a cheating couple, and a crazy ex-husband. It takes place in some wintry location (the plates indicate PA). I thought the movie was pretty good. It definitely started out way too slow for my taste as they introduce the characters and we get to know them. After about halfway though, the movie seems to pick up some traction as small twists in the story lead to bigger twists. By the end, I was felt pretty involved in the story and could feel the tension building. The ending left me wanting a little more though. For some reason, I thought the storylines would have converged even more, ala Crash maybe, but for what they did do, it was rewarding. The acting I thought was pretty good, as some of the emotions felt by the characters seem to really come across well. Overall, a fairly good indie film. Just a tad too slow.

Debate 2

Well that debate was pretty uneventful. Each candidate gave very few specifics, avoids the question, has time management issues, can't follow rules, loves to stick to stump speeches (even by repeating them), and are afraid to take risks. Obama showed me that he can stay cool, collected, reserved, and presidential, even when being directly dissed. McCain showed me that he clearly has no knees what so ever, is made of wood, and will just aimlessly pace around like a lost old man. His humor does not work if he is not surrounded by people who (crazily?) support him. It comes across as awkward, sporadic, sophomoric, and just plain weird. I give the whole debate for Obama, especially considering that this was supposed to be McCain's strong point. If so, he should have wiped the floor with Obama, but failed (or Obama rose and met the challenge more than adaquetly). This is bad news for McCain considering is he severly behind in almost every poll and needed to knock this debate out of the park. He will slowly dwindle even more now that we have another traditional debate on social issues, which McCain is supposed to truly suck at. Also, I like how McCain ran away at the end and would not shake hands, clearly knowing he lost. Obama stuck around and shook hands for what seemed like almost 20 minutes.

One last part that seemed to stick with me for some strange odd reason was in the beginning. When they were asked to name a treasury secretary I believe. I feel Obama didn't really answer this question well or much at all. McCain on the other hand was able to answer, but I did not like his answer. He named the Ex-CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman. This to me is an absolutley horrible decision. The website has a horrible business model that seems to be more and more buy it now and Amazon like, makes useless aquisitions which have no relation to the business and then don't bother to market very well (Skype among others), is failing as the internet matures and is destined for failure, and makes horrible customer/business relation decisions (Paypal and security policies?). Maybe this woud fool someone who knows nothing about the tech industry (like McCain himself!) but for me I see it as horrendous. I suppose this could be my hatred for eBay shining through, but you never know. I hope McCain doesn't get too chummy with Meg Whitman, I don't want to purchase my health care or social security on eBay in the future. It might be the only way for the company to stay afloat!

What's in a name?

So I leaped out on a limb and purchased my name as a domain name: www.bryancover.com. Thanks to the Revision3 coupons, I was able to get 2 years for $13. I always wanted to purchase it, but never had the nerve/money. I couldn't beat that deal. Currently it just points to this free blog, but I figure someday I may do something else with it. I picture at the very least it can be a professional site that could host my resume, similar to the way my CSE site did. Or I may host some other fun stuff or just dump files there. This would of course require a hosting plan, which for the time being, I'll do without. And if there are any other Bryan Cover's out there (doubtful), I beat them to the punch. Now I just need to start my business and non-profit organization, and I'll buy up the .biz, .net, and .org.

Heroes is setting me up for disappointment

Why do I keep watching Heroes? They had one good season, and the rest have been mediocre at best. They had a winning formula, but seemed to have lost it. So after the mess that was last season, they got my hopes up for this season saying they knew where they went wrong and would fix it. My hopes were pretty much squashed. Last week's episode was pure craziness. Tonight's episode was mediocre at best. They were at least working with their mess ups from last week and correcting some of them, such as reusing powers, making people good or evil. I don't like this future crazy stuff. Now all of a sudden Syler has a kid, Parkman married the speedster, Claire is some sort of evil person. I would like some answers, which I'm sure will come. But I still feel that the show is still doomed. They lost so many people. I have hope that they can turn it around, but I probably shouldn't. I'll just be left disappointed.

Typewriter Tip Tip Tip

After eating at the Indian Buffet on Friday, Joe at work shared with us this lovely song from The Darjeeling Limited. I had it stuck in my head on Friday and also woke up today with it in my head. Quite catchy... :-)



There is also a clip from the original Indian movie it was in:



Hopefully tomorrow it will get out of my head.

First Test Post

Trying out a first post. I figured I'd like to have someplace to have an internet presence and also a place to write down my thoughts and random internet findings.