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At the New York Times there’s an article on interns and blogging, two topics somewhat close to my own heart. Basically, everybody wants to be famous, even if it’s Internet famous, and dishing the dirt they get upon entering the world of industry seems to be the fast track to gaining notoriety. Some people have the typical “whaaaaaaa? you mean I can get fired for badmouthing co-workers, insulting my boss, and spreading all the juicy insider info?” Others don’t really give a damn and want to get fired since they know of the fame and fortune that await:

“Everybody I’ve read about that got fired for having a blog is on to such great things,” said Kelly Kreth, 36, who was fired from her job as the marketing and public relations director at a real estate firm in Manhattan last fall for blogging about her co-workers.

“I’ve had my online diary for six years, and it is very important to me,” Ms. Kreth said, calling the firing the best thing that happened to her. “It led to me opening my own business and making triple what I was making before.”

:scream:

Of course, you don’t hear as much about the people that screw up and quietly get fired, since they don’t tend to be the ones that get book deals. And still, as a wise man once said, no one’s ever been fired for blogging. They’ve been fired for being morons, or for their supervisors being morons, or for a shared level of moronity.

I just saw “Thank You For Smoking” at the local megaplex, the last place I thought I’d see it. I’d gladly have seen it from the local independent cinema but they haven’t had it yet. They are currently locked in a battle for the souls of Corvallis’ independent-movie-loving population with the midsized-crappy-sound-used-to-be-the-big-dog theater. Winner yet to be determined.

Anyway, the movie! It was good. It’s all about the people who are the public face of the slimiest corporations in America today, starring the representative (played by Aaron Eckhart) of the biggest evil of them all, Big Tobacco. He flashes his grin, he stresses that “all findings are inconclusive”, and he doesn’t worry about his side winning as much as the question of “are cigarettes harmful?” remaining up the air. This could be a tense drama but instead it’s really funny, especially the bald guy from Anchorman as the face of the firearm industry.

Whenever I saw Nick’s ex-wife I kept wondering where I’d seen her. She’s played by Kim Dickens, also in the HBO Western “Deadwood”, one of my favorite shows, and it was a bit of a shock seeing her in something other than the elaborate dress get-ups she wears on that. Still lookin’ hot. Also, Katie Holmes, half of TomKat Industries Inc., who I wouldn’t have expected to see in a movie about throwing back the curtain on the lies and machinations of a large organization, what with her newest religious affiliation, but whatever.

I’d recommend “Thank You For Smoking” to just about anyone with a sense of humor, especially those that have consumed enough media to be aware of the constant stream of bullshit getting spewed from every direction.

Plus Sam Elliott is the Marlboro Man, and you can’t beat that.

(Trailer, website)

Farewell, Trojan. You only wanted to be friends. Give us a little power now and then, create some cool three-eyed fish, but no, it was not meant to be. You had issues, serious issues that required a lot of work. So we blew you up.

My buddy Doug was there and captured the whole thing in glorious video. Watch and let it become a family classic.

Trojan Nuclear Plant tower imploded:

Trojan Nuclear Plant’s 499-foot cooling tower crumbled to a pile of rubble early today, as the explosion of 2,800 pounds of dynamite gave the landmark structure on the banks of the Columbia River no option but surrender.

The 30-year-old tower twinkled in a series of fiery charges at 7 a.m., then bowed forward slightly and collapsed. In less than 10 seconds, the tower collapsed into rubble, with only a small amount of wall remaining.

A cloud of concrete dust rose into the morning skies and moved south as the massive structure shattered, then settled, exposing a mound of debris and the jagged remains of the tower’s foundation.

Some people may claim that the protests help bring about this day, but hopefully a larger nuclear power plant will be created in its place, in the shape of a large skull with glowing green eyes. That would be pretty neat!

Read more info about Trojan at Wikipedia and shed a silent tear for a departed comrade.

My right eyeball no longer feels as if it will divest itself of my eyesocket and become a separate entity, so things are good. Of note:

• Valleyschwag - I love free stuff so much I paid money for it. No marijuana, just shirts and stickers and crap. The next shipment is supposed to be going out next week so I’ll report on my gettings when I have gotten them.
• Providence Bridge Pedal - I have a bike and I’ll be near Portland at the time so why not? I haven’t ever done real biking so I will be doing some of that beforehand. I have joined the super secret nerd squad so watch for that.
• Radio show: still going!
• Classes: Pretty good, all told. I have one class that wasn’t going so great. It’s concerned with making video games, more’s the pity, but the schedule has now been altered so I think it will end up all right. I also heard that the NMC program will be shifting more towards video games which is interesting. I’m guessing that around half of the students will be happier and the other half will roll their eyes vehemently upon receiving that news. Me, I’m tending towards staying in the “playing” role vis-a-vis “electronic entertainment”.
• zefrank’s song in this episode is awesome.

Until next time.

The Maxx was a cartoon that aired on MTV in 1995. It was based on a comic book series of the same name by Sam Keith. I just finished watching the complete series, only lasting 13 approximately-15-minute episodes, on Youtube. I’m surprised that they haven’t been taken down, what with Youtube’s stricter stance on material that violates copyright. I’m glad, though, since I never saw the show when it was first on TV. The plot goes something like this, taken from Wikipedia:

The series follows the story of The Maxx, a homeless man who believes he is a superhero. The Maxx shifts between the real world and a dream world, which he refers to as The Outback, which is just as real to him as the real world. Julie Winters is a “freelance social worker”, who befriends The Maxx. Little does she know that she and The Maxx have a deeper connection, and it involves the dream world that The Maxx is constantly drawn into.

The hand-drawn animation is awesome, humor and drama are balanced extremely well, and the voice work is over-the-top in a good way. Evidently Blizzard thought so too, since they hired Glynnis Talken Campbell, the voice of Julie, to be Kerrigan in the Starcraft games and other voices and Michael Haley, the voice of The Maxx, for Diablo. The distinctive voice of Mr. Gone, Barry Stigler, went on to do voicework for many anime productions.

Cartoons no longer are seen in America as solely the realm of children, with television programming like Adult Swim, but I don’t know if most people would be accepting of mature topics like rape being handled seriously in animation. Probably not since the MTV Oddities block, which The Maxx, didn’t take off. I hope it comes to DVD one day with a copious amount of extras, especially commentaries, but it isn’t too likely. Enjoy while you can:

• Episodes 1 & 2
• Episodes 3 & 4
• Episodes 5 & 6
• Episodes 7 & 8
• Episodes 9 & 10
• Episode 11
• Episodes 12 & 13

The Oregonian interviewed Steve Ballmer yesterday when he was in town for the dedication of a new engineering building at PSU. Steve was asked point blank about Microsoft getting on in years and if he hoped to capture some of the growing energy emanating from the open source movement here in Oregon (as seen at the OSDL in Beaverton and the Open Source Lab here at Oregon State, among other things):

“There’s been no technology innovation to speak of out of Linux!” he exclaimed. Ballmer pointed to the company’s announcement last week that it is upping R&D spending. “We’re not middle-aged! We’ve got a big, exciting future!”

In a conversation I had last summer with OSDL’s Stuart Cohen, Stuart told me that he’s convinced Microsoft will ultimately make a version of Office for Linux –and said he suspects Microsoft already has a Linux version of Office running in a lab somewhere in Redmond.

“Stuart’s wrong” on the latter, Ballmer told me today, but might someday be right on the former: “If there was demand and we thought we could get paid for it, we’d consider it,” he said.

“No technology innovation” is a pretty dumb statement but not surprising given Microsoft’s drive to show everybody that they still have the big brains churning out million dollar ideas. Regarding Office on Linux, it would be a very hard sell, both for the price reason Ballmer mentions and the fact that it’s Microsoft. Open Office still isn’t quite as polished as the genuine article but it’s getting there and even has benefits in some areas.

A later post on the Oregonian’s Silicon Forest weblog shares Ballmer’s insights on Vista and development for multi-core chips.

You can keep your so-called professional journalists. For all of my gaming news I’ll be turning to Game Life. If you haven’t seen the show, you’re missing out on an exclusive look into the gamer’s lounge. Come for Andrew’s insights into bongos, stay for Melissa’s talk of skewering pork.

DS Lite: Pre-ordered.

June 11th: Eagerly awaited.

New Super Mario Bros.: It will be mine.

I put a little banner on each single post page with a link to get Firefox with the Google toolbar. I did this not out of altriusm but because they’ll pay me $1 for each new user that installs it. You may be thinking that this marks the point in time that I “sold out”, when in fact I sold out long ago, albeit in a manner most would consider unsuccessful and altogether not worth it.

Anyway. Keep in mind that I was using Firefox long before there was a commission program so I’m not just using it in the hopes that their commissions will buy me a gazebo. I wouldn’t even have anywhere to put it. I figure most people either are already running Firefox or will discover it through other means, but for the paltry few that come across this site and wonder what’s in it for them, I offer the extensions that I use to make looking at webpages a little more pleasant. Hopefully they may do the same for you.

Adblock Plus

As someone who occasionally attempts to juxtapose free content with advertising, I should be against this sort of thing, but flashing, noise-emitting ads really suck. Unobstrusive ads I have no problem with.

BugMeNot

I get really tired of logging into newspaper websites.

Download Statusbar

Ads a bar to the bottom of browser windows instead of a new one. Much more convenient.

ListZilla

To make generating this list easier.

RefControl

Gives me a feeling of smug satisfaction, though you’ll quickly discover which websites won’t work without a valid refer(r)er.

SessionSaver

Firefox will crash, you will be pissed, and you can do something about it (partially).

Keep in mind that more extensions does not necessarily equal better, with memory leaks and such that can make Firefox run like crap. Periodically deleting your profile, perhaps when a new version comes out, can do wonders. This also doesn’t include some of the web development extensions that I use but this is intended as more general purpose.

Addendum: I’ve had ClamWin on my computer for awhile but for some reason never had it set to scan my downloads. I’ve rectified that situation with the ClamWin Antivirus Glue extension. This is all Windows-specific, though I’m sure ye of alternate OSes can figure something out. Windows may be the promiscuous tramp attracting all manner of attention from all the wrong places, but be warned that those with ill intentions may soon be noticing that demure Mac girl and pay more visits to that Linux chick with the thick glasses.

It was time for an external hard drive. Hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper rapidly, and I had need of one for two reasons:

1. Doing video editing on files stored on a network drive for my post production class is seriously painful. Playback halts periodically and just editing files becomes excrutiating when everybody else in the class is trying to work on their stuff too. With file sizes around 5GB, storing in my regular student space isn’t an option.
2. I’m planning on getting a laptop in a few months so not having to be moving stuff around would be very nice.

With those things in mind I ordered an enclosure and hard drive from New Egg, which arrived in the mail today. With tool-less installation it took about 10 minutes to put together, and most of that was figuring out where to plug in the internal cables since I’ve never used a SATA drive before.

Far more time was spent in formatting the drive. In the Windows drive management control panel I only had the option of NTFS, but then I figured that wouldn’t work if I got a MacBook and planned on writing to the drive (apparently because the file system is a trade secret of Microsoft). Okay, FAT32 it is, so I open up my favorite command window and start formatting before I leave for class. I come back to find a helpful error message informing me that FAT32 is limited to 32GB. Thanks for letting me know ahead of time, format command! According to Wikipedia:

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the format program on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32GB. Thompson and Thompson (2003) write that “Bizarrely, Microsoft states that this behavior is by design.” Microsoft’s knowledge base article 184006 indeed confirms the limitation and the by design statement, but gives no rationale or explanation. Peter Norton’s opinion is that “Microsoft has intentionally crippled the FAT32 file system.”

I love you too, Microsoft.

Following this revelation I tried out many different formatting programs but they either observed Microsoft’s stupid 32GB limit or wouldn’t let me format without forking over some money. After much despair I found the FAT 32 Formatter which worked in a few seconds (no problems so far, anyway). Hopefully anyone who stumbles upon this page with the same issues I encountered will find that program to their liking.
It seems that the file size limit for FAT32 is 4GB so I’m really hoping I won’t bump up against that while video editing or I may have to take drastic measures.

You’d think this stuff would be easier by now, even excusing my own ineptitude with hardware. I suppose it is for most everyone but Windows users.