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The Matrix Revolutions is perfect! Put your hands down, get out of your seat and walk out the door. There is no discussion and there is no debate, period. Don't say it's the third movie and the first was better. Any attempt at comparison is futile and you're wasting everyone's time even thinking about it! So just stop it.

The Matrix is one story and though it might have been separated into 2 time lines that are broken into 3 parts to be told it is still one single entity. It's a beautiful and perfect entity. This story has done more to spark intense philosophical thinking and debate than perhaps any other story in history.

So many questions have been answered. I've read and heard everyone talking about the movie for a week. It seems people are ending up more confused at the end. I just feel sorry for all of you. For me everything is very lucid right now. I won't waste anyone's time explaining things other than to say this. If you find yourself confused after the film you need to rewatch the entire series. Watch the first and second part then go see the film again. However this time don't pay attention to the action, don't get caught up in the kung-fu, and above all look and listen to story. When you block out the interference and focus on the story you'll see things start to make more sense. It's rather logical actually.

I'm just floored right now so excuse my strangeness! I'd just like to say I'm such a fool. Going solo to movies is amazing. In fact, I think I might never be able to truly enjoy any movie in a group from now on. If you've never gone alone for reasons I've discussed a few days back [Monday afternoon thoughts] let me be the first to tell you don't let them stop you. You'll experience movies in a new way. No more friends noisily munching popcorn or slurping soda next to you. Nobody commenting on the action, the sadness, the jokes, or story line. You are free to become fully enveloped into the movie's world.

Watching the Matrix solo was refreshing and an experience unto itself. Maybe it's just the mixture of thrills from the movie and the box of Milk Duds, however I think it's something more. Much more in fact. Since leaving the movie my mind is functioning on a different plane. I don't feel stressed like I did going to the theater and worries that have been bothering me weeks and months are a distant memory. It is as if my mind, body and spirit have been washed clean.

I know it sounds like I must be on some chemical induced dementia but it's not. I've just had an intense and influential experience like no other. Heh. Life is rather strange and beautiful.

It's been another bum weekend for me. Spend most of the time playing Diablo 2: LOD. Got my character up to level 41. Starting to be a rather butt kicking necromancer.

I'm playing in the new ladder where everyone has to start a new character too. So that means no low level characters can put on the godly equipment and be powerhouses. Even the top character right now have junk for items. So with the level playing field even little old me can outplay people.

Anyhow, I haven't yet seen Matrix: Revolutions. Planned to go with my brother this weekend but turned out he had Friday off. So he went and saw it with his friends. So since I'm a big looser and have no friends I haven't seen it. I guess if I can't find anyone to go with me I'll just suck it up and go by myself.

Seriously, who decided it's "bad" to go see a movie by yourself? Actually, maybe the question is, is it just me that thinks going to movies solo is bad?

Hmm. There are some deep philosophical issues that need to be worked out.

Maybe it's the type of movie. Are there certain movies that you can go see by yourself? I'd assume you shouldn't even think about seeing any romantic film alone. That'd pretty much be an unspoken admission of being a dateless looser. But what's wrong with seeing a sci-fi type movie. I'd think it would be perfectly acceptable to go solo. It's pretty much understood that the socially challenged watch these types. So an understanding about the person would exist.

Probably day is part of the issue. Catching the weekday shows might be more acceptable than the weekends. A weekday might imply that your friends were just busy and you were so excited you couldn't wait till the weekend. Could also imply that you've already seen it with your friends last weekend and it was so good you just had to see it again. Going on the weekend by yourself hints to not having friends.

Similarly, the time would come into play. I'd think going by yourself at 1pm or 4pm would be more acceptable than 10pm. Being by yourself in the afternoon just says guy with some free time. Buying a single ticket for a 10pm showing sort of screams "look at me! I can't find a single person to go to a movie with me!"

Ok so maybe it's not too deep. I think I'll just go see the earliest show this Friday. It'll be a weekday and afternoon. Shouldn't cause too many suspicions of what type of person I am.

Have there been times you wished you could do a one click lockdown in XP? A single button you could click and the system would go back to the login screen but keep all your programs running? Want to keep your roommate or little sister/brother off your system while you go out but can't shut down because you're downloading?

Well there's a very easy way to do it. I'll show you how to make an icon that you can click on and locks your system.

You can put this icon anywhere you want. However, I find it most useful on the quick launch bar since with a single, fast click you can lock your system. Much faster than using the log off button in the start menu.

Step one:
Create a shortcut on your desktop. Just right click anywhere and select "new" then "shortcut"

step two:
Enter the following text for the location, minus the quotes:
"%windir%System32rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation"
then name the shortcut "LockDown"

step three:
Right click on the new shortcut and chose "properties". Click on the "Change Icon..." button. Change the Look for icons in this file to "%windir%System32shell32.dll". Select the Padlock icon (bottom row, 12 from the left).

Step four: drag and drop the new icon onto your quick launch bar.

Finally, click it and give it a try. It should cause the system to go to your login screen. However all your programs will still be running when you log back in.

How cool is that!

It's been a good and bad year for Republicans in the election.

We managed to get two more governors, well 3 if you count Arnold out in California. Ernie Fletcher(rep) beat out Ben Chandler(dem) for the Kentucky governorship. The first time a Republican has been elected since 1967 by the way. In Mississippi Haley Barbour(rep) managed to oust the current governor Ronnie Musgrove(dem).

On the local front, thanks to the help from several college republican clubs in Ohio, Janet Weir Creighton (rep) won the mayoral race for the city of Canton. This was actually a White House targeted race. Why you ask, because Canton is the largest city in Ohio the democrats don't have a stronghold on the mayoral race. Our local club was actually called by the White House to personally request our help on the race. We had originally planned on helping in the Kentucky race. However, that changed when the White House called. So we all spent a Saturday afternoon roaming around Canton handing out literature.

Lit drops as their called are really boring. Basically you get handed a bunch of little bags full of post cards, flyers, etc and a long list of addresses to hit. It depends on what they want but you do one of two things. You either just do a hang and run or you actually try to talk to the people. The hang and runs are used more for mass canvassing where you hit most houses on a street. You usually only get asked to talk to people when it's very targeted. In that case it's not rare to only hit 2-3 houses on a street. The individuals are usually registered Republicans that have not voted in the last election or newly registered. The idea being to make sure to get those you know for sure will vote for the candidate to actually go out and vote.

Personally I prefer the hang and runs. There's just something oddly satisfying about looking back down a street and seeing every house with a little white bag handing on the door. Maybe it's because I know it's going to piss off a bunch of Liberals.

Anyways that's the good. The bad is that It appears that democrats did a major sweep of local governments all over the place. While we won the Mayor seat in Canton, 8 of the 10 city council spots went to democrats. Similar in my hometown where the Republican mayor won re-election, the democrats took 4 out of the 5 council spots. And looking at statewide numbers it appears the same all over.

So it's been good and bad in 2003. However the real fun will be next year.

Gamespot is reporting that Sony released some concept art of what their PSP handless game device might look like.

They've been pretty quite about the device but with the specs they've released it should be interesting to see how they work it all out. I've said it before and I'll say it again. With the specs it's easy to admit it could be a very powerful contender in the portable game arena. However, at the same time with those specs you wonder how they'll pull it off. Huge screen, spinning media disc, 2 333MHz cpus (one cpu core and one media engine), 166MHz graphics chip, 166MHz sound chip, MPEG4 decoder, 802.11 Wi-Fi lan, IrDA port, USB 2.0, Memory Stick, and some sort of Expansion port all to be run off a single Lithium Ion Battery!

After you see those specs you have 3 things going through your mind.
1) That's a lot of hardware to be powering off a single Lithium Ion Battery!
2) How are you going to fit all that stuff into a handheld device that will be light and comfortable to hold?
3) Handheld systems have to be cheap. I'd say you have to stay around $200.00(USD) at release to be viable, with the ultimate goal to drop to the $99.00(USD) range to compete head to head with Nintendo's Gameboy. How can they afford all that stuff and stay in that budget range?

I noticed in the logs that several people were doing searches for FreeBSD QuickSheets. Since I have never posted about it before I can only assume you found someone talking about it on a forum someplace. So here is a post for you to find doing a search. Right now I only have the 1 sheet. Hopefully I'll get around to writing another one during the winter break. Feel free to make suggestions for new sheets below in the comments.

I've created an official page that you can see on the local pages links on the left side back on the front page. However here is the current list below as well.

- - FreeBSD QuickSheets - -
Sheet #1:
Installing and Configuring CVSUP and PORTUPGRADE to update the Ports Tree and FreeBSD source code.