our hero in flip flops

Last night, we bundled up and drove into the city to the only theatre in Boston showing Children of Men. We had a celebrity sighting, John Savage. He was sitting at the table next to us and even leaned over and told mom that her coat was nearly on the floor. And as with most actors, he's short. His imdb height lies. I'm 5'10" and he probably came up to my chin.

Anyway, behind the extended entry are a few thoughts about the movie. Summary: It's good and recommended. It's directed by the guy who directed HP: The Prisoner of Azkaban and Y tu mamá también (great movie).

There was a moment at the beginning where I was worried it was going to be all preachy about the environment, but it doesn't do that. It takes unexpected turns and has charming characters all willing to die for a cause (and boy do they): Protecting the first woman pregnant in 18 years after all women became infertile because of the environment polluting our bodies or something like that (never really clear to me why women became infertile). The world is a crappy place when there are no babies. At least that's how this world is portrayed. Dark. Depressing. Dangerous. Very tense film throughout. You don't really get a chance to relax and you don't want to miss anything, which is why you should make sure you pee before the movie starts. Jeff apparently was holding it in cause he didn't want to miss anything....hehe. Good stuff. If you like dark, depressing movies about a dystopian future.

Posted by jennj at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

line rider for the Wii

Back in early October, I posted about an internet game called Line Rider.

They're making a version for the Wii. Due in Spring 2007. Oh man.

Posted by jennj at 11:31 AM | Comments (1)

i'm a stinker

Trivial pursuit conversation this evening:

Me to Jeff: “What is the equivalent of The Davis Cup for women?”
Jeff: “Um…..I give up”
Me: “C Cup”
Jeff: *blink* “What?!”
Me; “Just kidding. Federation Cup.”

Posted by jennj at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

green apples are good

"We love Apple. Apple knows more about "clean" design than anybody, right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have agreed to abandon? A cutting edge company shouldn't be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. That's why we Apple fans need to demand a new, cool product: a greener Apple."

Posted by jennj at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

hate

Well, after 45 minutes of clicking this and clicking that (many of which I'd already done), the IT tech guy decided to reinstall the NIC driver and wireless software. I'm blogging from my laptop and it hasn't hung up on me.

At one point, tho, I almost ripped his head off. At the 45 minute marker he says, "Well, it could be the new version of our firewall client."

*blink* *blood pressure rising*

Me: "When did they push that through SMS? Around the time I started having this problem?"
Him: "Yeah, about that."
Me: "So.....when I asked you and the other tech earlier if it could be any sort of firewall or spyware application recently installed on my machine that could be it?"
Him: "Yeah, maybe. I'm going to reinstall the NIC and wireless software now."

It's a good thing the reinstall worked. I may have gone postal if it was the firewall software.

Posted by jennj at 05:42 PM | Comments (4)

help desks suck part ii

My ability to connect to a network other than work using my work laptop at home is still not fixed. I had a brief moment where it did after I called the help desk, but it's back to being broken. *sigh* Which means if I work from home I can only do webmail on my Mac. Which is teh suck.

I hate that I have to explain to the help desk that NO IT IS NOT MY HOME NETWORK AND I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO GO TO PANERA BREAD OR STARBUCKS TO PROVE TO YOU THERE IS SOMETHING WONKY ON MY LAPTOP AND NOT MY HOME NETWORK.

The guy is coming up this afternoon to look at my machine. I hope that it gets fixed. *crossing fingers*

Posted by jennj at 10:06 AM | Comments (3)

you get what you pay for

Dude, you're upset because the Bratz doll you bought your little girl swears?!? That seems to be the least offensive thing about these dolls.

Posted by jennj at 05:07 PM | Comments (7)

tired

It is a universal truth that when playing Trivial Pursuit you have the answer to everyone else's questions but not your own. *sigh* I can't believe how poorly I did at 90's Trivial Pursuit last night. Oof.

I think I used nine sticks of butter yesterday. That would mean one stick per person, including the two year old.

Anyway, we did not get to the lefse making what with all the other food. As such, we're going to head over to the K's tonight and make it. I must have my lefse!!

I had a Wii scare at Kris and Mike's Sunday night. The remote slipped completely out of my hand. Thank god for the wrist strap. I believe the remote would have hit Mike, not their plasma tv, but it totally freaked me out. We played tennis and that's freakin' awesome. I'm amused that I like a tennis video game but when I've tried it in real life I've only felt frustration. We went to a vegan Chinese restaurant that night and it rocked. Best hot and sour soup I've had in a looong time. We'll definitely go back.

I love the Wii. You know that I like a video game system when I go to play it on my own without nbh asking me if I want to play. Yeah, I can't wait to get more games. As Christmas's go, I would still like to be with my family at this time, but it's been great hanging out with friends here.

Posted by jennj at 09:24 AM | Comments (2)

old habits die hard

Merry Christmas, folks. No white christmas for those of us in the Boston area. It's cold out and sunny.
We're having some friends over for dinner and lefse making. Mmmm. lefse. Off to start cooking....

Posted by jennj at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

co-workers and gifts

I don't send out christmas cards to friends or family. Which means that I don't distribute any at work either. Invariably every year I get cards from various co-workers. I've even gotten tiny gifts (e.g box of chocolates) from co-workers. This is such a nice gesture.

It's when I don't know the co-worker all that well who gives me a gift that makes me feel momentary pangs of guilt. "I didn't get them anything". "I didn't know we were that close". But I quickly mellow and realize it doesn't matter, this is who they are and they aren't expecting anything in return. Take it at face value and enjoy the care that has been shown to you, Jenn.

But then I think, gosh, should I make more effort to be closer to them? Is this an outreach to me? And then I have to mellow out again. This goes on in my brain for probably at least fifteen minutes after I get these gifts. But in the end, time heals everything and I stop obsessing about it and feel happy that even though I don't know this person all that well, I'm glad to be surrounded by kind people.

As a boyfriend from long ago said to me once, "Jenn, you think too much."

Does anybody else have this problem?

Posted by jennj at 12:48 PM | Comments (4)

a study in contrast

Last night was vegan "meat"loaf and tonight was a new york strip steak at the Palm restaurant in downtown Boston. Life is good.

The vegan meal last night was very good and with a few tweaks it would be excellent. The meatloaf wasn't dry at all, I would just add more onions next time. I like lots of onions in meatloaf. The peach cobbler needs a little tweaking too. I'm probably going to make it this weekend. I would not include lemon zest at all. Mistake. It overwhelmed the peaches. And the dough needed something extra and Kristin pointed out that a little more soy milk would probably solve the problem. I was thinking of adding more applesauce but in the end, I agreed that a smidge more soy milk would be what it needed. And I'll be trying it with vanilla soy milk, not plain.

And then we played the Nintendo Wii. I love the Wii. You must go and buy Rayman Ravin Rabbids if you have a Wii. Best. Game. Ever.

Posted by jennj at 09:41 PM | Comments (3)

foraying into the unknown...on purpose

While I know that I've cooked vegan not on purpose (pasta - definitely egg free - w/ olive oil, garlic, veggies and red pepper flakes is a quick meal in our house...yum...), I am actually going to cook vegan on purpose tomorrow night for our good friends Kris & Mike (hahah...I just typed it as Mii cause I was thinking about Nintendo..hahaha...if you don't know, your avatar on the Wii is a Mii). Meatless meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans and a peach cobbler for dessert. It's cold out and I want comfort food! The only thing I'm worried about is the meatless meatloaf and dryness. I've had fake meat before and it's pretty good so I'm not worried about taste. This should be interesting. If it's not good then we can go to Dah Mee.

And then we will play Nintendo Wii games.

Posted by jennj at 09:29 PM | Comments (4)

come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs

I loved Die Hard when it came out. And then when it was released on VHS (then DVD), it was a good standby. When all else fails, watch Die Hard (this was the philosophy many years ago, there are a lot more standby's in the movie collection now). I've even seen the other two even though they aren't up to the "standards" of the first one. So, I saw that there's a trailer for Live Free or Die Hard. I'm going. Bonus: Justin Long (you know, the cute guy from the Mac commercials and Galaxy Quest - "I KNEW it was real!").

Posted by jennj at 02:58 PM | Comments (2)

prison break - no, not the show

I've finished my coursework for this semester except for a two page paper that's due Friday. Since I can pull that stuff out of my ass and get an A, I've decided to just go ahead and announce this semester is done. I had a hard time this semester for some reason. Unfocused. When I was focused all personal time was sucked up in school. The past few months I've been antisocial. Also, with travel, family in town, long commute that's annoying me at the moment, medical problems, etc. didn't contribute to trying to get out and see friends or spend time on hobbies or anything else besides work, school, house, hubby and cats.

As such, I'm taking the winter semester off. I've got some medical issues I want to devote some time to, one of which is exploring surgery for the hypopnea. So, yeah, relieved that I can relax for awhile.

Posted by jennj at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

you can help

My good friend Iwan is raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society by training and participating in their Gulf Coast Half Ironman (He did it three years ago). When he participated then, he ran for loved ones of donators who were afflicted with this disease. This time he's running for four of his good friends with the disease.

If you would like to donate and find out more about his reasons for doing this, please go to his Team in Training page here (warning: music on the page).

I'm donating, will you?

Posted by jennj at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)

cute *and* geeky

No, I'm not talking about myself right now.

Boo Boo Walker t-shirt. Awwww!! I've copied the picture here:

Posted by jennj at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

if you needed more information...

I had already decided awhile ago that John McCain is a d*ck. He's a party man no matter how much anyone wants to think he's in the "middle". And now, even more reason to dislike him:

"Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain...."

I'm not a f*ing ISP.

Posted by jennj at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

help desks suck

In another (edit: I mean previous) life I used to manage help desks. And they were good. They were _helpful_. But I've switched careers into more project management and I decided that I didn't need to fix help desks. Or carry a beeper and be on call, so I stopped.

But today almost brought up feelings of trying to fix these helpless desks. Besides the computer, what's the most important thing a telecommuter needs? Network connection. After determining it's not our network at all, nor even the VPN, but something local to my machine I called our help desk.

Oh.my.god.

I made it clear I was working from home and then decided to let the help desk do it's appropriate thing, which I thought would mean they'd call me back within say, 30 minutes. Two hours later I called back. The ticket hadn't even been "picked up by a tech". So, I politely pointed out that not having this working is detrimental to my productivity today and I can only do so much with webmail, could they please find someone to help me? They did. But.

This person asked me just a few "Did you?" questions. It was like, "Did you reboot?" "Are you sure you can get to the VPN?" "Are you sure your home network is up?" "Did you trye wireless versus using a cable?" Yes, yes, yes, yes. So, she then says, "Well, I'm going to have to forward this to desktop and you'll have to talk to them tomorrow when you're back in the office."

*blink* I'm thinking, "This doesn't help me."

So I said, "You mean you're not even going to look at my DHCP or DNS settings or other network properties? Have me do an Ipconfig? Or any other remote things besides reboot?"

Her: "Well, has anything changed on your desktop?"

Me: "No, but I'm constantly receiving SMS packages and how do I know if that hasn't changed settings? Recently my home page settings got wiped out of IE, so how can we be sure?"

Her: "Fine. Bring up your network settings....etc."

There were some odd things in the network card settings. We changed some of them. And it worked.

Jeebus.

Posted by jennj at 05:20 PM | Comments (3)

Bond, the other white meat

What good is it to have technology that allows me to put a picture of daniel craig as james bond in a tight swimsuit as my desktop background when I have all these application windows covering it?

Posted by jennj at 07:09 AM | Comments (13)

mmmmm......

I've said it before, everything tastes good when wrapped in bacon. Even bacon wrapped bacon.

There's a book for the bacon lover in your life that came out over a month ago that you may want to get them for xmas: Seduced by Bacon: Recipes & Lore about America's Favorite Indulgence

HAHAHA

Posted by jennj at 07:03 PM | Comments (5)

user tip

Dude. If you're going to pick your wedgie, do not do it when you are going UP on the escalator and there's someone behind you. Even if that person has a step between you and them. Ugh.

Posted by jennj at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

"i'm perky"

Probably not work safe. Using the concept of the apple ads for one between the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. Hehe.

Posted by jennj at 08:57 PM | Comments (1)

demolition man

"In the future, all restaurants will be Taco Bell."

Posted by jennj at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

birds of a feather?

While discussing the need for me to replace my powerbook and Jen's need to replace her old Mac AND that Iwan just bought a Mac, we realized that out of 9 of us, 6 were Mac users. I remarked that that is more than Apple's market share. Hehehe.

Posted by jennj at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

"i've got laundry to fold and firefly"

D, B, B and I (nbh was sick) headed down to NYC early yesterday morning to go see Evil Dead: The Musical. We convinced nbh's brother, J, who lives in Brooklyn to meet us for dinner and use nbh's ticket.

I'm a little too tired right now to do this post or the weekend justice. We got into the city around 1ish and met up with E who took the train in from NJ. Since we were going to have an early dinner (4p.m.!) before the show, we stopped at the Soup Man for something to hold us over until dinner. Turns out this is the guy who is the soup nazi from Seinfeld. To be honest, the soup was only OK.

We met up with I, J and D for dinner before the show. We ate at Angus McIndoe. It was really, really good. I want to go back. Drank and ate a lot.

Met up with D and B at the theatre with about 10 minutes to spare. Evil Dead: The Musical is really good. I was expecting pure cheese (who wouldn't?), but these folks are very talented and it's got good production value. I am soooo glad we opted out of the splatter zone. Oof (Jeff overheard a guy say, "Oh man, I wanted to wear these pants tomorrow!"). They definitely found someone who was able to pull off Bruce Campbell as Ash, our hero. I recommend it.

We then met up with I for drinks at a bar. The first bar we went to, well, we quickly walked out due to the unusual stench (Bleach and whiskey, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). So the second place we found was nice and we drank until about midnight. Got to E's around 1:15ish and promptly crashed.

Walked through my door around 4p.m. today. So tired.

Posted by jennj at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)