so i went do the dentist yesterday. i’ve recently been going to this upscale dentist in the financial district. while i like the hygenist, i’ve got mixed feelings about the dentist. it probably stems from the fact that the very first time he ever saw me he was already proposing all sorts of expensive cosmetic dentistry. i guess it serves me right, as that’s the leading title on their office door. and then he told me i had the teeth of a 70 year old, so i don’t know what to make of that. apparently he wants me to take a bite test to figure out how to fix that, but i’m dubious that any sort of orthodontia could fix what he characterizes as forty years of excessive enamel wear.
perhaps i should go back to my old dentist, who i got along with fine, and was able to smalltalk about college sports, especially cal vs. michigan. however, when linda, who used to run his office, left a few years ago, everything went to hell: billing was a mess, insurance claims were unfiled, and it just became a hassle to deal with. and then some other dentist told hmc that the work done by him wasn’t that good, so maybe it was time to leave.
but this one doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies either. and it’s hard to get an appointment, as if you have to cancel, you can’t get another one for like three months. are they really supposed to make it this hard to take care of your teeth? in any case, despite the (already present) extensive wear, my teeth are fine and have no decay. however, when they were taking x-rays, all i could think of was how it doesn’t matter if you keep your lips open or closed, as the jaw just looks the same regardless, like in those x-rated x-rays.
went to the sf hip hop dance fest as well as the opera to see shostakovich’s lady macbeth of mtsensk. both were a lot of fun.
i just bought the animatrix off of ebay, so i watched it again yesterday. it was interesting to see, now that the whole trilogy has been released, how they really had some clever and thought-provoking ideas around the matrix and the implications of living in a matrix and what that would do to your concepts of reality, and the different possible takes on that. it’s also unfortunate, as these end up being interesting spins which were much more substantive than the last two movies, which, as many reviews have complained about, somehow ended up being about zion, instead of the matrix itself. i guess there are some little morsels here and there, for example where they hint about machines having the ability to make a choice as well as inhabit human mind-space, a sort of agent smith precursor, so that’s interesting. but it also sort of makes you say, “hey, these movies were going over there, and so how did we end up over here?”
i also watched x2: x-men united today. surprisingly entertaining, if a little too long. looked like they spent a lot of time setting up for the dark phoenix saga for x3, perhaps? still, fun, and relatively unpretentious.
given that arnold’s now officially our gov, i thought i should look into his projected policies for the state. of course, there’s his inaugural address, but i figured i should instead analyze his latest body of work, terminator 3.
man, all that crap about being smarter from all that studying, just forget it: i just lost 20 iq points from watching this sucker. it’s just dumb. not that exciting, not that impressive to watch, and not that captivating, despite an obvious amount of money spent on special effects and action sequences. but they all look done (or overdone), and there’s nothing new.
really, the big flaw in this film is the incredibly weak script. could it be a bad sign that it took 12 years to come up with a script for the sequel? nothing really makes sense, the premise is sort of weak, and then they try to get vaguely philosophical and existential around the whole thing, but it’s really half-assed and just irritating. and even if their premise did hold up, why do the machines keep sending terminators back in time later and later during john connor’s life? why didn’t they just send the t-1000 and then the t-x again right after the original terminator failed? whatever. and of course, according to current scientific theory, it’s impossible to send people back in time before the instant the first time machine is invented…
i really enjoyed t2, but t3 is a waste of time. even the t-x isn’t that interesting or even scary, compared to the t-1000 of t2. it even manages to make a hot naked chick dull. it’s just a big set up to try and make t4.
to be honest, i’m not really sure what this bodes for our state. i think i’ll watch that victoria’s secret fashion show next and see if there are any answers in that.
whew. i passed. somehow, i went crazy with the cramming. after having roger teach us for eight hours yesterday, i came back to the hotel room after dinner and just studied like a madman. it brought back memories of college, where the last few years i crammed all night before every exam, and either learned it the night before, or for most open book tests (thank you school of engineering), found it in the book and learned it during the test. yikes. and of course, there were the endless mornings waking up with textbook marks on my face. i also remember that one time i fell asleep studying sitting crosslegged, and when i woke up my legs were so asleep i couldn’t move them at all and had to drag myself across the room with my arms.
i’m not sure why, but i was freakishly determined to learn and pass this test. i don’t know if it’s just because i’m more mature now, or because it’s for work, or if it’s because i didn’t want to do poorly around everyone else taking the test, but i went crazy and was up studying until 3:30 last night, and didn’t get to bed until 4am. and somehow i was all tense and anxious about it, and i was restless and even work up an hour early momentarily (and ended up walking into a doorframe while i was up), despite usually sleeping like a log anytime anywhere. i was afraid i was going to be brain dead today, despite only getting 7 1/2 hours of sleep over the last two days, but somehow i maintained coherence (and on only one cup of coffee), and finished my final two chapters during the day, and then skipped the second lab section to finish studying. when i went to take the test at six, i was past ready, and just wanted to get it over. it wasn’t too bad, actually, as roger had done an excellent job of preparing us. i was actually done pretty quickly, but then i had 33 minutes left, and i thought, “well i might as well look over all the answers again, because well, why not? i have the time.” well, i didn’t actually change anything, but i feel like it’s a good practice, right? anyway, the cool thing is that immediately after you’re done, you find out exactly how you did. and then they also send you this email:
Thank you for using Prometric Prime Testing Systems. Below are the results of your recently attempted test: ============================================= Name: Ed Name of candidates company (if provided): xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx Test Title: IBM DB2 UDB V8.1 Family Fundamentals Start time: 11/18/2003 2:12:22 PM (GMT-12:00) (cst) End time: 11/18/2003 3:10:29 PM (GMT-12:00) (cst) Passing Score: 61% Your Score: Pass - 88.89% (48 earned out of 54 possible) You passed the test. A minimum of 61% is required.
so now i’m db2 certified. i’ll be sure to mention that a lot the next time i’m out at oracle.
ugh. soooo tired. flew back home from lost angels last night, but the 9:30 flight was delayed until 10, so i didn’t get back into oakland until 11, and then didn’t get back home via bart until 12:30 in the morning. half an hour to veg out and play with mika after leaving her alone all weekend, half an hour to throw some clothes together, and then drove down to the hotel in sunnyvale and didn’t get to sleep until 2:30am. and then up at 7 to be in class at 8am.
when i made plans for all this madness, i don’t think i really thought this out.
i’m down here for se database specialist training all week, which means that we’re here to get updated on all the products, do labs to get hands on experience on various databases, and just get the latest info to help sell into the database space. also, i opted to take the db2 certification cram session, where basically we get a crash course in what you need to know to pass the db2 certification test. we can do this because roger sanders, who wrote the actual study guide for the test, works for us and offered to run the course. and better yet, he got ibm to come in and administer the test to us on tuesday for free, and if we fail, we can even retake it on wednesday for free. what a deal! of course, it means that i’m already exhausted and trying to cram all this database stuff in my head. which is fine, but when am i going to sleep?
went down to see the lakers-pistons game. this was actually a hard game for me to watch, as it makes me watch my favorite two teams play each other, which is great because it’s all my favorite players, but it also means that someone has to lose. of course, although i was rooting for the pistons, i wasn’t foolish enough to scream out loud about it, seeing as the game was at the staples center. there was some guy in the next section over who was, and everyone was heckling him and giving him hell. i saw some other guy in a pistons shirt in my section, and we wisely kept quiet.
1. best dunk: ben wallace with a monster slam that knocked me out of my seat!
2. best block: devean george with a nasty slap of the ball all the way to anaheim.
3. most embarrassing block: lindsey hunter on derek fisher. are you kidding? getting blocked my lindsey? he’s like 52 years old and it’s a miracle he’s even standing!
4. where’s darko? yeah, i know he’s only 18 years old, doesn’t even have his driver’s license, and larry brown’s bringing him along slow because he’s got the luxury of a stacked team. but he’s a #2 pick! let’s see some game already! bring out darko!
afterwards (lakers won, but it was a good close game the whole way) i bought some lakers baby booties for outback luna victoria.
so i finally caught up on watching alias, and i have to say that it’s just incredibly dumb now. i don’t know if it’s even worth watching anymore. not that it was some brilliant show before, but it was at least exciting and had clever plot twists, despite the fact that no one ever died. but on last year’s season finale, they finally killed off someone and had a really interesting cliffhanger.
but now it’s just dumb. i don’t know if they had to fire all their writers, but it’s just so stupid.
1. ok, sydney is m.i.a. for two years, wakes up and doesn’t know where she’s been. so they immediately put her back on active duty and she gets to go on secret missions? and then they have vaughn finally rejoin the cia after he quit because sydney was dead, and he’s immediately back on missions with her? and his wife is assigned as the liason from the dept. of homeland security? are you kidding? there are like, what, ten people total in the cia? i guess someone needs a better recruiting program.
2. this is a spoiler, but you know, who cares. it’s so dumb it’s insulting. they kill off will (good riddance) but then he’s not really dead. but he’s in the witness protection program so he’s good as dead so that’s fine (although i read he’s going to guest in a couple of eps later in the season). but then the one person they really kill off is francie, or rather allison who had undergone gene therapy to take her identity. but now she’s actually not dead, but alive? and then they kill her again, but maybe she’s not dead again because the gene therapy gives her wolverine-style regenerative powers so maybe she can never die? how ridiculously perfect for this show.
3. the more and more i think about this, everything is just so unbelievable on this show this year. i’m better off watching fooly cooly over and over again.
(i don’t think there are any spoilers in here, but if you’re worried…)
ok, so i just got back from watching the final matrix installment, and i have to say that it’s not as bad as i expected. which is to say, my expectations were so incredibly low, given the general brief review snippets i allowed myself as well as passing comments from people who had seen it already, that it didn’t out and out and out suck. ok, granted, the plot didn’t necessarily make much sense. and the dialogue was clunky and even embarrassing at times. and nothing was exactly surprising (although that was party because i had a major plot point spoiled for me by dumb people at work who went to our preview screening for customers and then talked about it at the dinner later, dumbasses).
but, you know, the effects were good, the ending was at least not totally bogus, and to be honest, i’m ok with it. at least there wasn’t some dancing ewok party at the end. or some part where later neo becomes governor of california.
other thoughts:
1. monica bellucci has an incredible rack.
2. ok, it’s one thing to watch a nipple pinching scene in a major motion picture, but it’s another to watch it on an IMAX screen, where the nipple is as large as your whole body. yowza.
3. speaking of which, i like that the new yorker review has the sentence:
American men enjoy violent entertainments, and an aureole of religious or speculative mystification surrounding the violence doesn’t take a dime away from the box-office.
4. did anyone else get a tron MCP flashback?
5. <geek>speaking of which, all i could think about when they went to the machine city, was, “but if linux takes over the world, then wouldn’t it be all distributed, and not in a big city? or is big computing iron really the answer?”</geek> apparently i’ve been drinking too much linux kool-aid from hanging out at oracle all the time.
6. anthony noted the similarity between neo’s vision of the real world and what it looks like when frodo wears the ring in lord of the rings. perhaps there should be a crossover, neo: the one…ring?
7. was that actually chairman mao laying in the puddle at the end?
8. finally, was that pentultimate ultimate battle really worthy of a pentultimate ultimate battle? a final fight to end all fights? how does it compare to some other final fights:
-jackie chan vs lau kar-leung in drunken master 2
-jet li in the legend of fong sai yuk
-donnie yen & yu rong guang vs. yee kwan yan in iron monkey
-chow yun fat in that hospital shootout in hard boiled
-superman vs. general zod in superman 2
-hell, the chateau scene from matrix reloaded or even neo vs. agent smith in the original matrix
the quibble is that after all the kung fu buildup, all the action scenes are really shootouts, and very little kung fu in the finale. which is a little disappointing.
i guess the telltale sign was that, even on opening weekend, in a sold out house in the IMAX theatre, full of matrix fans all dressed up and decked in their finest latex, the crowd was entirely quiet during the whole movie, and there was barely a smattering of applause afterwards. not unlike watching the premiere of spawn: the movie in l.a. those years back, where all the fans were in shock at how bad it actually was and didn’t know what to do, despite the fact that todd macfarland was in the theatre. oh well.
so i was watching some of the first games of the year, and there was this one point where i saw a defender half on his man and half off, and i started to yell, “illegal defense!” and then i caught myself since the zone defense had been made legal last year. i remember that i thought it was going to ruin the game, and make it into what i hated most about college basketball: four white guys throw the ball around the perimiter for 48 seconds and then hoist an awkward shot at the end. but now i think, “what was the big deal?” there’s less stoppage of play, the offenses do seem smoother with a lot less isolation plays and ones where they dump it down to one man in the post who slowly backs it in while everyone else clears out. so all good and done, right?
it turns out that tracy mcgrady doesn’t like the zone defense:
to wit, hearing this, the bulls and wolves threw heavy zones at him, both causing huge losses for the magic, including a pathetic four point outing where he didn’t score in the first half for the first time in his career. are you kidding? fucking suck it up and score. you’re supposed to be a superstar and you’re complaining how you can’t beat the zone and the league doesn’t make it easy for you? shit. do you see kobe or a.i. or paul pierce complaining about the zone? punk.
so now with basketball season underway, i find that i have less time. for everything. with two games on tv three or four days a week, who has time to watch movies, update blogs, or even eat? apologies for this, but you have to have your priorities, right?
i do have to say it’s poor taste at best how the sheriff department in eagle county, co, tried to order t-shirts mocking kobe bryant:
we snuck out to see the marc chagall exhibit at the sfmoma on the last day it was showing. it also happened to be free tuesday, so the lines were pretty long despite being a weekday (it still cost an extra $5 to get into the chagall exhibit). it wasn’t too bad, though, as it only took a little over an hour to get into the exhibit, which is much better than the five hours hmc’s mom waited on saturday. the exhibit was really cool, and i’m glad we saw it, as it’s the only place they’re showing it outside of paris. we particularly liked the little picture of charlie chaplin from a private collection, where his feet looked like hands. also, we took in a couple of great photography exhibitions, including the diane arbus exhibition, and this really interesting one by reagan louie on sex workers in asia.
later that night, we took in dirty pretty things at the red vic, which is the latest stephen frears movie, co-starring audrey tatou. pretty great. highly recommended. hmc liked it much more than almodovar’s talk to her, which also had just watched, only she decided that it was a little too silly and the main character really didn’t develop at all but instead just seemed to go from place to place while these things happened around him. i didn’t seem to have the same problems with this; perhaps this is just a matter of different outlooks on life?
hmc flew up here for a couple of halloween weekend parties, but it turns out she spent friday violently vomiting all day long, so she really wasn’t up to going out. saturday she was a little better, and we went out with her family who were up here for caitlin’s birthday. this included some philosophy paper on the ‘ostensible construction’ of mathematical concepts at a kant conference in berkeley, which i skillfully avoided by hiding out at amoeba. afterwards, we missed the space cowboys party as well, as hmc was too tired and started being sick again.