Archives

Enemy At The Gates
[ 4-1-01 ][ 4:48 a.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

"Snipers... they're the trend now. Cool, calm, and completely cold blooded, they patiently await their prey and *BOOM!* in one swift shot they execute their victim without blinking an eye."

First movie review in nearly two months. Probably cuz it's the first movie I saw in nearly two months. Yes, that could be it. =P

Was going to write one for The Mexican, but I saw a telesync of that on the computer. For those that don't know, a telesync is only an itty bitty step above a plain ol' camcorder recording. The visual's still via a tripod, but it's hooked up to a separate sound source. Whatever that means. In a nutshell, it's a cam with better sound. I'll just say The Mexican was OK, but rather forgettable. Brad Pitt was fabulous, as usual. And yes, I'm fairly certain I'm straight. ;)

Waaay past bedtime. Gonna have infomercials lull me to sleep now. Juiceman and Tarot card fortune tellers, here I come.

Triple Bootin' Love
[ 3-29-01 ][ 10:14 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Yay! I finally put my gig of unpartitioned space to good use, installing Red Hat Linux 7. Never mind that more than half of my hardware isn't detected, nor do I know a lick about navigating around, I'm just happy that I finally got over the hump of getting it up and running.

Now, my operating system is a triumverate consisting of (in the order installed) Windows ME for games ONLY, Windows 2000 Pro for everything else, and Red Hat 7 for experimentation and bragging rights.

Yeah, baby. =)

Around The Rice
[ 3-28-01 ][ 4:38 a.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Hey guys. Just dropping in at this insane hour to give y'all the heads up on what's gonna happen with this site:

I have a gamers article in the works that rounds up a few recent PC games I've been playing. It's been slow in the scene, but big releases are on the horizon, such as the two most hyped games of the millenium: Peter Molyneux's Black & White and Tribes 2. The former's a God-game where you control your peons to conquer other peons. Think of it as The Sims meets Civilization. Tribes 2 is a team oriented multiplayer title. The original Tribes was a cult-classic.

B&W: The Leopard deity overlooks his peasants.

I also have a few movie reviews in the back burner. Yeah, it's been several ice ages since I've done one, but they're still part of the site.

And to wrap up this rather short and boring update, Gerry's Weird Shit has officially hit beta stages. God preserve us all (kidding!). I'm working with Gerry to get it up and running as the first independent affiliate of Rice World. It should bring some much-missed spice into the Kansur.com domain. =)

Time to crawl into bed. I leave you with a little teaser:

Ye Olde Academy Awards
[ 3-26-01 ][ 6:15 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Ah... so it's my spring break now, and I'm luxuriating (is that even a word?) in the amount of free time I have. That's one of my favorite perks of a college on the quarter system; during breaks, I don't have to worry about anything academic related because next quarter it's all new classes for me.

Anyone see the Oscars last night? Because I didn't. Award shows are so boring. Watching the highlights on Entertainment Tonight is enough for me. They filter out the stagnant material, which is about 80% of the show anyway.

I know Gladiator won the most awards. It only makes me hate the movie even more. Not because it sucked, but because of all the undeserved attention and laud it got. It was an entertaining Roman epic, but that's it. Best picture? Not by a long shot. Russell Crowe best actor? The man barely acted in the movie! He sat around looking glum and occasionally donned a mask to wave a sword. Please. Ah well. I suppose this year's been a pretty mediocre one when it came to movies. Can't wait for Star Wars: Episode II!

Gerry and I had planned to do another one of those Oscar-prediction things like last year, but somehow things didn't gel together in time. He's been pretty busy with his life, graduating and all from UCLA this quarter (congrats!) and preparing for (*gasp*) adult life.

Speaking of adult life, Rice World's slowly twirling down the drain of death. Readership and message board participation hasn't been this low since version one. Obviously disappointing, but I understand the older we become, the less time we have to just casually surf the web. A lot of people and acquaintences I used to talk with on ICQ has dropped out of my radar. As Blink 182 puts it, "I guess this is growing up."

I'll probably be back later tonight for another update, so check back then. If there's anybody reading this latest entry right now........

Two More Crashes
[ 3-22-01 ][ 10:38 a.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Can you believe it? Within a span of 5 minutes, I effectively doubled the amount of times I crashed in Windows 2000 (check the ticker to your left). Both were due to the same reason, too. I was trying to run an MPEG-4 video when all of a sudden Media Player closed inexplicably, followed by a complete system halt. After a hard reboot, I tried running the same video again with the same damn result.

In case you were wondering, yes, I did try running the same video again after that, but instead of crashing, I got an error message. Oh well. Such are the oddities of a Microsoft product. Still, the crash rate in W2K is astronomically better than what I experienced in the W98/ME days. Back then, it's normal to have multiple lockups and BSOD's every day!

As a side note, today I'll be done with my one and only final exam this quarter. Two of my classes don't have finals, and the other one is a take home term paper. I've made a lot of enemies because of that. Heh heh. ;)

Off to liberate myself! Later.

Link Of The Day
[ 3-14-01 ][ 12:48 a.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

You guys studying hard for finals and term papers? Here's a good laugh for you to unwind to. =)

Click! Thanks, Simon.

Tales From Sproul 4S
[ 3-11-01 ][ 1:33 a.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Hey, wanna hear something funny? Someone took a dump in one of our men's restroom shower stalls. Ewww!!

Thank goodness I wasn't present during its occurance, but it's verified by many people, including my roommate, who was a live witness.   According to him, he was in the middle of showering when all of a sudden he smelled something funny. Looking down, he saw small, brown chunks of feces dribble across the shower gutter towards the drain. On the verge of retching, John dried up, took his clothes, and ran out of the restroom with a look of horror ablazed in his eyes.

EWWW!!!

The joys of living in a residential hall with a communal restroom. Gross. But when I thought a little more about it, I could only come up with two reasons why whoever did it... erm... did it. It was either a prank, or he all of a sudden really really really had to go. Think diarrhea scene from Dumb and Dumber. In the case of the latter, I kind of feel sorry for the poor guy. Here you are, showering and feeling pretty good when suddenly your bowels start to make like a roller coaster. What do you do?? You can wrap a towel around yourself and streak towards the toilets, or......

..... aw shit! Guess what, in the middle of your decision making process, it already came out.......

EWWW!!!

Well, that's about enough of that. As a side note, Gerry's Weird Shit is currently under pretty heavy construction and slated to premiere any day now. Keep your eyeballs peeled, folks. Until next time, cheers.

GeForce 3 Screen Shots
[ 3-2-01 ][ 5:22 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Whatever site I visit these days, none of them can stop raving about the nVIDIA GeForce 3. It is simply the most freaking awesome graphics card ever designed, PERIOD. It's breaking into the $10,000 video card/workstation combo realm. Think of it as Industrial Light and Magic on a chip... the GeForce 3 chip.

Don't believe me? I put together a page full of screenshots. The pictures were actually capped when the demo programs were rendering in REAL TIME. No pre-rendering and Photoshop tricks going on here. This is the stuff you'll be seeing in 3D games in about 2 to 3 years, once developers grasp the learning curve of the GeForce 3, but is actually possible to do TODAY. Click!

Rice's W2K Crash Ticker
[ 3-1-01 ][ 5:22 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Ever since I formatted and started dual booting into Windows 2000 Professional, I've experienced a lot less crashing, which pleases me much, to say the least. However, a lot less crashing still means crashing exists, and just a few minutes ago, I crashed for only the second time since W2K's inception into my box.

On a side note, a lot of people are starting to call their PC's "boxes", so that's what I mean by box above. I guess it's the hip, geek way to call a computer you built yourself. Sort of like how ballers call the ball the "rock". Heh.

Anyways, just for the sake of being pathetic, or perhaps I'm just going out of my mind here from school work, I'm introducing Rice's W2K Crash Ticker, which will actively monitor how often I crash. Crash is defined as a complete system lockup that requires no less than a hard reboot (i.e. reset button). No CTRL-ALT-DEL going on here.

So As I mentioned earlier, I've only crashed twice. My first time was actually the first day after I installed the OS, and it was trying to play a game of Counter-Strike. It was loading the map for the server I joined, and all of a sudden, all HD activity died and I couldn't move my mouse, swap out, or bring up the task manager. My second time was booting up my Studio PCTV Vision TV card to watch some NBA on TNT when my system just completely stopped responding. Weird.

An interesting fact to note is that I haven't yet seen the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). Just those two complete out of the blue lockups. Okay. So without further ado, I (proudly?) introduce the crash ticker. It'll be updated on the left.

UCSB Freshman in Vehicular Homicide
[ 2-28-01 ][ 8:06 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

I think I jinxed myself when I boldly stated that the "coast was clear". This is my worst week of the quarter yet, and it's to be capped off with a midterm on Friday afternoon. I'll be making this update short, because I need to get back to work.

Some of you may have heard the news already regarding this. A couple days ago, a UC Santa Barbara freshman ran down 5 people with his car on a party night where the streets were littered with humans. According to eye witnesses on the scene, and there were many of them, he tried to tear off his shirt while screaming "I AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH!!" Good, albeit angry, samaritans restrained the kid until 911 arrived on the scene.

Gosh, with all the deaths surrounding us lately (Oklahoma men's b-ball team, NASCAR racing legend Dale Earnhardt, and a Florida State student athlete) this one hits home the hardest. I've tried not to comment too much on these depressing news but I really can't keep silent for this one.

This year, I'm living in a regular dormitory hall rather than the secluded suite I resided in last year. All around me are people... freshmen and sophomores a like. Usually, people who do psychotic murdering sprees are in their midlife crisis or something. It freaks me out to think the people I live with can just flip out and run people over in cars.

What motivates them do commit such atrocious acts? What compells them to go out and actively take away another person's life? Is it just because they're miserable? How does killing solve that? It's nothing short of disgusting. Humans are so volitile. That's why I'm hesitant to have children in the future. What if I do something wrong in raising them, and they turn out to be the next college freshman to squish people with a car?

And what if they turn out OK, but end up dead the next day suddenly because one of his mentally unstable classmates go on a murdering rampage? How devastating would that be?

There's so much sadness in this world. Here's a moment of silence for the innocent victims.