Author: BillSaysThis

The FDA plans to put its two cents in on what low and reduced carb actually mean. Hopefully this will be a good thing but…

Some movies, especially indie movies where the protagonist is a young man, are clearly the wet dream version of a writer’s own idealization of his coming of age. So no surprise that Elijah Wood’s character in All I Want claims to be a writer even at age 17, even still a virgin, even though he does nothing all day but write letters to a father he’s never met that tossed into a footlocker rather than mailed.

Wood’s Jones Dylan shows up in some anonymous small town (which is not in Texas and is somewhere 2000 miles from either Chicago or New York), drops out of college and takes an apartment off campus. He clearly has issues, having shown up with nothing but the aforementioned footlocker and an old red portable typewriter on which he composes the missives. A quick learner, he buys things as soon as their absence is mentioned by one of his housemates. Who are a gay painter cowboy (Aaron Pearl), an aspiring slut actress (Mandy Moore looking luscious as a blonde) and a confused photographer (Franke Potente from Run Lola Run and Bourne Identity), and of course the two women despise each other so having to do with one puts the other off the range.

Wood’s character frequently hallucinates and in some scenes I feel we are supposed to be uncertain whether he is dreaming or not. The belly dancer is obviously in his head, for example, but the scene where he is making out with Moore, well, not sure. Presumably the car crash is real. In a craftier director’s hands, this trickery might be more successful but Jeffrey Porter is too much of a novice to properly handle the surreality. Overall not bad, definitely has some good performances, but not something I’d go out of my way to see even on TV.

okay

Back when I was in high school, I don’t know if there was a funnier movie or one I wanted to live in real life than Animal House. John Belushi, with his awesome body language, eyebrows that had a life of their own, and nasty, witty dialog, set a standard with Bluto Blutarsky that as yet no college comedy has come close to matching. John Landis, Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller created amazing farces, characters and situations that just blew our minds.

That’s the standard that Old School is competing against and by that standard, fails. But if you want 90 minutes of laughs and aren’t in the mood to watch Belushi and crew again, you might watch this anyway. Todd Phillips, who co-wrote and directed here, is developing a touch that continues to grow in the current Starsky and Hutch and, one can hope, do even more in the upcoming Jim Carry version of The Six Million Dollar Man. Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn team up here with a display of behavior that tittilates and amuses. A boatload of hijinks and eye candy.

recommended

In which we see that politicians are the same in Europe as they are here, no matter how loudly they protest otherwise.

eBay can be great if you?re an honest person, I know a few people who are making a living from selling on it, but that takes a lot of work an insight into what people will buy. But as the system gets bigger, more people will at least try to take advantage of innocent/naive/unsuspecting buyers, as happened the other week with someone trying to sell my guitar. That episode seems to have turned out alright and in fact I have sold the guitar for a decent price without paying eBay any fees. The Times weighs in today with an article on some people who’ve decided this burgeoning Wild West needs a few independent law folk, even if the company doesn’t care for them or to acknowledge the volume of criminal activity. Personally, I have my doubts about buying anything costing more than a few dollars without serious fact checking.

Gee Grum, you left a few key items off your list: EPL and Champions League, plus UEFA CUP, are coming down to it and the MLS season kicks off!

The first two days, my shortened first week, at Intransa are over. Scoble, from the best I can tell, I’m the only blogger working there though I hope to spread the gospel in the future. How did it go? Pretty good, I’d have to say, and fortunately my boss seems to feel the same way. Making connections is easier here than at Sun, not too surprising, and similarly I’m seeing more flexibility and freedom in the coming workload. For instance I suggested something a little outside my scope to the Bossman and he said go for it. Nice. Being in an office after all this time is different but I suppose more of the old skillz will come back as the days go by.

Cringely on NMCI: How to hugely screw your company and your customer with the standard in IT fixed price contracts. And isn’t nice that the US taxpayers (hey, that’s us!) will surely be the ones screwed the worst in this huge screwup?

Coder To Developer: Resource List, very, very extensive.

I’m just a bit nervous this morning, normal pre-first day jitters nothing more, but the clock seems to be ticking very slowly just the same. I (want to?) blame Evan for not being willing to get up early enough to have a Morning Coffee Walk. I blame all the people in my RSS list for not writing enough last night to take my mind off things. Uggh, another half an hour until I have to leave to go one last time to a ProMatch general meeting and do the perp walkSuccess Story thing, then head over to the new office.

Speaking of ProMatch, I recommend that any of you unemployed folks in the South Bay join. Although this job did not come directly out of the group, I think that the improvements in my resume and interviewing skills surely helped. Also, less tangible benefits such as getting myself out more, meeting people, being more open to what might come along resulted from participating. One of my goals in the near future is to keep my eyes open and see if I can help any of my new friends in their job hunt.

25 minutes…

I know Jeremy says PageRank is Dead and all, but since Anil pointed out this amusing script to get down to the numbers, how do my two main sites compare:

• http://www.billsaysthis.com: 6/10
  

• http://www.billlazar.com: 4/10
  

• http://www.philringnalda.com/: 6/10
  

• http://www.crabapples.net/: 4/10
  

• http://www.dangerousmeta.com/: 6/10
  

• http://q.queso.com/: 6/10
  

• http://www.scripting.com/: 8/10

Not bad for old Bill.

As you may have surmised from the subject, my long and tiresome hunt was not endless, even though I probably complained, cajoled and kvetched enough to make it seem that way.

I have been accepted a contract position as product manager at a company here in the Valley called Intransa. They make a very serious enterprise class storage system (for the non-techies among you, that means a really big hard disk system) and are a spin out from the big networking company 3Com. If all goes well–if I perform, that is–I should become a regular employee in the not too distant future.

Seriously, I want to thank all of you out there in the webworld for the help, advice and encouragement you’ve given over a very difficult two and a half years. This has meant a lot to me! How did I get this job, you ask? Networking! Seems that what everybody’s saying is true, when you want/need a new job get out there and talk to everyone you know and everyone they know.

Somehow I will adjust to the hardships of workday life. Ouch! Good thing I got caught up on all those old TV series while I had the chance. LOL

Where is Tim Minnear’s weblog? Wonderfalls Producer Seeks Viewers

Bert Kassies writes about UEFA European Cup Football, which I want read later. Do you?

I’ve gone for effect in my writings occasionally as well but in today’s Remote Patrol Tom Heald went way O’verb’Oard!

You’d think, those of you who’ve read this site with any frequency, there’s nothing I won’t write about. Mostly, you’d be correct but there are a couple of very different things going on right now that I’m just holding off mentioning but are taking a lot of my time and mental energy so not much posting. Both of these things are very exciting and interesting and I look forward to writing about them. One will be sooner (tomorrow?) than the other though. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s and come back again.

Calacanis says “The Paris Hilton Rule: If someone tapes you having sex assume everyone in the world will see it. End of discussion.“

Scott Atran: A Leaner, Meaner Jihad

No one I know is more surprised than me that today is the third blogday for BillSaysThis. Sadly, the rumored Sopranos cameos by Mick and Keith never did materialize.

Geffen Records won in court today, or rather they defeated a motion by Axl Rose for a temporary restraining order that would have prevented the label from releasing a Guns N’Roses greatest hits package as scheduled next week. But what really caught my eye was this bit on the long-awaited new GNR release: A “source familiar with the situation said the label has been waiting seven years for Rose to deliver Chinese Democracy and has poured $13 million into production of that album after repeated promises that he was about to finish the project.” I know studio time and studio musicians are not cheap but day-um, I’ve never heard of any album costing more than $10M to record!