Friday night was one of the longest nights of my life. And it was definitely the worst network upgrade I've ever had the misfortune to be involved with.

We spent 18 hours, from 10 PM Friday until 5 PM Saturday afternoon, trying to upgrade two NetWare 5.1 servers to NetWare 6 and preserve our server cluster setup. Things went well until 3 AM. We had both servers up and running with the new OS and we were re-enabling services that had been shut down. At that point we reconnected the servers to the network storage device (over 3 TB of disk space), and everything went to hell. We spent the next six hours trying to get the servers to "see" the SAN. When they would finally get connected, we'd reboot them and they'd break again. Finally, around 9 AM, we got a solid connection. Then we broke it again and again, trying to tweak things. Around noon, over 24 hours in, we worked on resurrecting the NetWare volumes. By 5 PM, we were goofy from the intense work and the lack of sleep, but the system was working again. Tomorrow I go back to see what bugs we didn't catch the first time through.

Liz and I saw "The Matrix Reloaded" this afternoon. She liked it, but thought it was too wordy. While I enjoyed it again, I felt like I needed a degree in philosophy to be able to understand all the "causality" and "ergos" in the script. And the scene with the Architect isn't any easier to follow on the second viewing. My favorite fight scene is still the one in the Merovingian's lobby, with the swords and acrobatics. That one kicks serious ass.

I saw X2 this evening, at the Loews 34th Street. Tuesday night is a great time to go to the movies. You miss the weekend crowd, nothing ever opens or premieres on a Tuesday, so you get the theater to yourself. The movie was immensely entertaining, and I'm a little bothered by the fact that I liked it more than The Matrix Reloaded. It had a good story, some interesting character development, and the death of a major character by the Spock treatment (sacrifice to save others, possible hints at resurrection in future sequels). The effects were superb, but not as gratuitous as Reloaded. The action in X2 exists because of the story, as opposed to Reloaded, where sometimes the action is the only point. They're both good movies, but I have to give the edge to X2.

In my continuing quest to try every Linux distribution ever, yesterday I installed Slackware 9.0 on my test PC at work. Slackware has been around for a long time; my brother ran it for a few years in the mid-1990s when he was in college. It doesn't have a pretty GUI-based, auto-detecting installer, so I had to know my PC's hardware and settings to make everything run. It doesn't partition your disks for you, either, so it took me five tries before I figured out just how I had to set up the disks to get the system to boot. Once I had the system booting into X/KDE, I configured X for the proper monitor and resolution on the first try (and a good thing, too, since I could have fried my expensive LCD panel if I made the wrong choices). The end result of six hours of work was a system that is about as plain vanilla Linux as you can get. Red Hat and Mandrake, both excellent distros, come with all sorts of custom utilities to make things easier for the user. That's great, but sometimes you want to see how things were before developers tried to make Linux more user-friendly. I wouldn't recommend Slackware to anyone who wanted to try Linux for kicks, or as a substitute for Windows, or on a server (not much in the way of professional support for Slackware). But it's a great desktop OS for the experienced Linux user who wants something other than the Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE designer interface. (I had planned to try SuSE, but since it's a FTP download install only [no CDs unless you pay for it], I gave up and went with Slackware and its one-CD install. Also, I had trouble getting my PC to boot from the SuSE floppies, and who wants to muck around with floppies when you can just use a CD instead?)

The Matrix has me.

I love my job. Last December, I attended a free preview screening of Star Trek: Nemesis, courtesy of Network Associates. This morning, courtesy of the good people of EMC, I got to see The Matrix Reloaded before anyone else. Once again, the screening was at the Loews 34th Street, apparently the place to be for events of this nature. There was a continental breakfast at 7:30 AM, and the program started at 8. An EMC rep introduced an eight-minute promotional video for EMC products. It started out with a few seconds of Powerpoint slides with quotes from happy customers. Then the video itself started, with a woman sitting at a computer terminal, receiving messages like "The Matrix has you." Then she's wearing a tight black halter top, leather pants and boots, and she's executing kung fu moves while the narrator talks about EMC products and other video clips play picture-in-picture style. To me, it said "EMC is sexy!" but it didn't make me want to buy a new SAN. It was as if the video were produced by four or five people who worked independently, assembled their work in a few hours, and an executive said "I guess that will work." After the video came the trivia portion of the event. I correctly answered the question "when Tank asks Neo what he needs to rescue Morpheus, what is Neo's response?" ("Guns. Lots of guns." I watched the Matrix again last night.) I won a doll of Neo in his martial arts outfit, with the helpful comment on the box "recommended for adult collectors". At least the toy companies have realized who's buying their products. After the trivia, it was time for the movie.

I don't want to give too much away before anyone who actually reads this blog has seen it. So I'll try to keep this review spoiler-free. Reloaded reminded me of The Empire Strikes Back. The Matrix was a seminal movie, like Star Wars before it, so seeing a sequel to it was like seeing TESB for the first time: more of the same characters, new stories, better action sequences, and a cliffhanger ending (OK, that's a spoiler, but we all know there's one more sequel in November). The action sequences and special effects are no less mindblowing than the effects in the first one, and won't be duplicated for a long time. The story is excellent, but there are a few scenes that are just talking, explaining things to the characters, and by extension, the audience. It reminded me of my friend James' comment about Commander Riker's purpose in Star Trek: TNG: to explain everything to the audience. It's a long movie (2 hours 15 minutes), so when they get to talking, and no action, it feels like it's dragging. I almost took a bathroom break, but I couldn't be sure when they'd start the kung fu or blowing things up again, so I stayed put. After the first viewing, I'd say it's at least as good as the original. I'll tell you what it's not: it's not The Phantom Menace, or even Attack of the Clones. I don't think Reloaded will disappoint anyone, even casual fans of the original Matrix. I can't wait to see it again, and I'm really curious how the story will wrap up in Matrix Revolutions this fall.

This entry should have been posted a week ago, but I had trouble with the browser and then I just forgot about it.

I've had a busy week at work, as usual. Yesterday, I installed the first NetWare 6 server in our production network. All the prep work we've been doing for the past few months paid off with an error-free installation. After that, I represented Georgetown University at my firm's college fair for Washington Irving High School. The university sent two prospectuses (prospecti?), two pamphlets on financial aid, a stack of about 100 blue response cards for the kids to send back, and a blue and gray GEORGETOWN banner for the table. I wish they'd sent more copies of the prospectus; it was the most popular item on the table, but I couldn't give both of them away. The banner didn't come with anything to stick it to the edge of the table (unlike the other schools, most of which came with silken tablecloths that easily hung off the table), so I fought with a makeshift scotch tape mounting system for the better part of two hours. I spoke to about fifteen students, some of whom were seriously interested in Georgetown, and others who had never heard of the school before. No one wanted to know about the English program, but several asked me about pre-med, business, and pre-law programs. One father wanted to know if his son could major in music and track. I kept asking him what he meant by track until I realized he meant the athletic program. I mentioned the Penn Relays and he seemed to understand that track was a sport, not a major. I think I disappointed them a second time when I explained that the school doesn't offer a music major yet, and probably wouldn't for five to ten more years. I enjoyed the experience, though. I don't do enough alumni work, aside from giving money to the school a few times a year, so this fair was a chance for me to do something to help out the school. And I got a free banner out of it, which means I finally have something to hang on the wall behind my cubicle. I couldn't hang my diploma there, and I don't have any artwork or pictures to put there, so the banner will do.

My wife's parents sent us a care package of goodies from Mississippi, and they tossed in a special toy just for me. I guess they remembered how excited I was at Christmas when their niece's son received a mini-RC car as a gift. He was happy to let me set it up for him and run it around the floor for a while, chasing the dog and cats. Now I have my own mini RC car with which I can torment my cats. I don't really have enough room at home to run the car, but it's fun to startle the cats with it. Vladi is the only one who chases it. Starlite runs away from it, and Magenta just sits there, oblivious as always. Liz is going to be out of the house on Saturday afternoon. It might be my chance to set up an obstacle course with jumps for the car. Where were these cars when I was 10?

Spiderman II was filming in my neighborhood this evening. On my way home from work, laden with groceries and cat litter, I stopped to watch a bit of the production at the corner of Bleecker and Carmine Sts. It didn't look that exciting, and the litter was getting heavy, so I took my purchases home and planned to stay in. But my curiosity got the better of me. On Saturday morning, on my way to work, I had passed signs indicating that they'd be filming in Lower Manhattan on Sunday, and yesterday I forgot to ride past there on my bike. I decided not to pass up another chance to see a movie production up close. There was a small crowd watching from the little park opposite Joe's Pizza, the location of the production. Several people were taking pictures, and the staff kept asking them not to use flashes. Unfortunately, these pleas kept coming AFTER they took the pictures. I saw director's chairs for the cast and crew, including Tobey Maguire, but there was no sign of him on the set. There was a guy in a red helmet who looked suspiciously like him. Finally, after I had been watching for about twenty minutes, Maguire himself came out of the pizza place. He stood on the opposite corner from me, surrounded by production staffers, keeping his head down as people tried to take pictures of him. Since he was wearing the same costume as the guy in the red helmet, apparently helmet-head was his stunt double. After a minute or two Maguire and two staffers walked down the block to his trailer, followed by several of the young women who had been watching this entire scene from my side of the street. He's not as tall as I thought he'd be, and like most celebrities I've seen in Manhattan, I doubt I'd recognize him if I saw him on the street away from the movie set. He came back about fifteen minutes later, and not long after that, I lost interest in the whole thing. It was too cold to stand around much longer, and I still had to eat dinner, fold laundry, wash clothes, and take care of the cats. Back to reality.

While watching The Ten Commandments last night on ABC, I figured out that the debauchery scene near the end, where the Israelites rebel against Moses, was the first spring break. There are lascivious women and horny guys recently released from servitude, abundant alcohol, gold and jewels for everyone, and a complete lack of authority. It looked like every MTV Spring Break special I've ever seen. You see, I never went to the beach for spring break, so I have to rely on what I've seen on TV and heard from friends. Apparently Cecil B. DeMille had been to Daytona, though.

I love my new laptop. I'm using the wireless network right now, at Starbucks on Grove St. near my apartment. Yes, the weather outside is beautiful, and it's stupid to sit inside and surf when I could be outside reading, but hey: it's my life, my wife is out of town this weekend, so I can surf here without feeling guilty for ignoring her, and I will go outside in a few minutes and read more of Doctor Faustus. Only 200 pages to go!

Last night, I finally saw The Devil's Advocate from beginning to end. I'd seen the middle section of the movie several times on HBO and cable, but never the entire thing. It's a damn good movie, no great work of cinema, but it was an entertaining way to spend two-plus hours. Al Pacino is in full-on shouting rant mode, but it's never as unnecessarily excessive as it has been in some of his more recent films. Keanu Reeves is not and will never be considered one of the great actors of his generation, but he does a good job here as the young attorney from the sticks suddenly out of his element and forced to deal with circumstances he never could have contemplated. I couldn't help make comparisons between the law firm in the movie and my own firm, something that I'm sure happened often at my office in 1997 when the movie first came out. Both firms represent multinational corporations and foreign governments, both have breathtaking views of the city from offices in lower Manhattan, and both have the power to entertain the elite of New York. However, I'm fairly certain that Satan isn't one of my firm's senior partners.

We had a Passover seder on Wednesday night, at a friend's apartment in Brooklyn. The arrival of my friend's parents disrupted our plans, in that he wasn't available to do any of the cooking that day, leaving me to roast the chicken myself, according to his recipe. If I'd known it was that easy to brine and roast a bird, I'd have done it years ago. So much for buying the rotisserie chicken at the supermarket. Still, even with the craziness, the seder went well. For most of the evening, Jews were the majority of the participants, something that's never happened as long as my friends and I have hosted a seder. We took turns reading the haggadah, though we skipped the songs and the games at the end. The hiding and subsequent search for the afikoman wasn't so much a puzzle as just storing it for later. As usual, the festivities ran long, so we were left to fly through thirty pages of prayers in about five minutes. That's OK; I don't think my mother ever made us sit around the table and read everything that's in the haggadah after the meal and dessert. I think the Gentiles in attendance (most of whom had not been to one of our seders before) left with a little more knowledge of the history and rituals than they had before, and they weren't even subjected to the delicacy known as gefilte fish.

Liz and I spent last weekend in Chicago, at my friend Carol's wedding. Chicago was a fun place to visit, but it was too damn cold all weekend. It shouldn't be freezing anywhere in April, and with the cold wind off the lake, Chicago is ridiculously cold. On top of the nearly unbearable temperatures, on Friday we had icy cold thunderstorms to deal with. By Sunday afternoon the sun was out, but we'd had enough; we were happy to be on our way home. We did have a great time at the wedding and associated festivities (me: bar hopping on Friday night with the groom and his friends, Liz: drag show on Friday night with the bride and her friends). We also went to a few museums, the Art Institute and the Field Museum. At the former, we saw Seurat's Sunday on Le Grand Jatte, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, a few Pollocks and Warhols, and the armaments hall with jeweled swords and suits of armor. The Field Museum has a few dinosaur skeletons and a temporary exhibit on baseball featuring items from the Baseball Hall of Fame. The guy taking tickets for the baseball exhibit asked us if Liz was a fan, or just along for the ride. She answered "along for the ride" but ended up enjoying the exhibit anyway. In the culinary department, we went to Lincoln Park for Bacino's deep-dish pizza which was amazing. We stayed in Evanston, across the street from Nevin's Pub, where we had a delicious Irish pub-style lunch with Carol's extended family on Friday afternoon. And to close the wedding festivities, there was a brunch at a kosher restaurant in Skokie where we had blintzes for the first time in years. So it was a great trip overall, even if the weather sucked.

I got a new laptop at work today. I traded in my faithful IBM T22 ThinkPad for a T30, which gives me a faster processor, bigger hard drive, and built-in wireless networking. The tradeoff is that the screen resolution only goes up to 1024x768, whereas the T22 ran at 1400x1050. While my eyes will eventually appreciate the difference, I had gotten used to the extra screen real estate even at the expense of font size. I get a touchpad instead of the dreaded pointing stick, so that's an improvement. Why am I complaining? It's a laptop given to me by my office. Free hardware is always appreciated.

First, a story I've been meaning to relate for a few days.

On Saturday, Liz and I attended a fund-raiser for the Washington Square Park Dog Run at a Greenwich Village bar. There were several bands playing, hoops on TV, and drinks aplenty. So we settled in for a few hours of drinking and more drinking. The first band was a quasi-Irish group, appropriate for the bar's Irish theme. The next band took some time to set up, and their stage setup included a piece of cloth across the front of the stage, extending from waist height to the ground. The band came out and started with a blues tune, and I noticed that the guitarist sounded quite good. I still hadn't really looked at the band. After the first song, they announced that there was a special guest appearing for one night only, from the Catskills and the "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" show, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Yes, the four-legged comedian was indeed performing for us live. At this point, as Triumph started his act, I noticed that the guitarist was Jimmy Vivino from the Max Weinberg 7, and the drummer was Jimmy Wormworth, the substitute drummer when Max Weinberg is off with the E Street Band. The other members of the band were probably also from the MW 7, but I didn't recognize them. Anyway, Triumph told some extremely raunchy jokes, made fun of dogs, the dog run, news figures, and sang several ribald songs from "Late Night," including "Underage Bichon." At one point, he sodomized Ernie from "Sesame Street." All this to the delight of the audience, including two young children in the front row, who were apparently the drummer's kids. At the end of the show, the band thanked Triumph, and then Robert Smigel, the puppeteer behind Triumph and the genius behind the "Clutch Cargo" segments on "Late Night" and the cartoons on "Saturday Night Live." It was one heck of a show, and absolutely worth the price of a donation and a few drinks.

In other news, Magenta, one of our cats, has been at the vet's for a few days suffering from what has turned out to be a bout of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). He had a senior cat checkup on Saturday morning, when the vet took some blood for tests. After that, he was OK until we gave him some new wet food. From then on, he was vomiting and listless. We took him back to the vet on Tuesday after they said they wanted to monitor his blood glucose for diabetes. At first, we and the vet suspected he was diabetic, since he's ten years old and overweight, but luckily for all he's just fat. He's feeling better now, and the vet says we can pick him up tomorrow night. Just in time for us to leave town for the weekend. Liz and I were really worried for a few days, but now we're feeling better that he won't need insulin shots. He's an extremely friendly cat at home, but at the vet he becomes nasty and growls and bites. I'm sure he's giving them a hard time. I can't imagine having to inject him every day; I'd end up with more insulin than him.

This site is one of the funniest things I've seen lately. If you like the Department of Homeland Security, and being scared out of your mind, you'll get a kick out of this.

I've had far too much caffeine and sugar to be able to sleep anytime soon, so I might as well post my Oscar commentary now instead of tomorrow.

I watched the show with a large group of friends, something I haven't done in years. It was definitely the wildest Oscar ceremony I've ever seen, with the war dominating the thoughts, if not the words and actions, of most of the nominees.

Chris Cooper, winning Best Supporting Actor, got the first Iraq comment in at 8:58 (for those who had that time in the pool). I'm glad he won, though I thought the award would go to Christopher Walken instead.

I was surprised by Catherine Zeta-Jones winning for Chicago; I thought Meryl Streep had that award locked up.

I haven't seen Bowling for Columbine, but I'm glad Michael Moore won for it. However, the Academy had to know that by giving him the Oscar, they'd be opening up the podium for just the sort of acceptance speech/diatribe that he gave tonight. I heard more cheers than boos, but either way, it was too much. But it was quite the "Wow!" moment at our party. I'm sure that Gil Cates (the Oscar show producer) will make sure Moore's never invited back.

I cheered for Adrien Brody's winning Best Actor for The Pianist; it was an exceptional performance that completely deserved the Oscar. Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson were amazing as well, but Brody went beyond either of them, adopting an accent, learning the piano, and starving himself for months. His speech was by far the best of the night. Aside from the sentiments he expressed extemporaneously, I'm always impressed when a winner can get Bill "Stick Man" Conti to stop the orchestra. And when else would he ever get the chance to make out with Halle Berry?

Nicole Kidman winning Best Actress wasn't much of a surprise. Despite what the press may have said, I think this was her year, much like 2001 was Julia Roberts' year, when she won for Erin Brockovich. I enjoyed her speech as well. Does anyone else think that her divorce from Tom Cruise was the best thing that could have happened to her career?

When the time came for the Oscar for Best Song, we all had the same question: what happened to the fifth song? Eminem had already said that he wouldn't show up at the awards to perform his song, but I assumed that someone else would step up, or that at least they'd show some form of a video of it. So it was unexpected when his song won. And who was the guy who accepted the Oscar? Apparently someone who knows Eminem well enough to call him "Marshall." Someone at our party pointed out that it will be hard for Eminem to say that the establishment doesn't like him. He's won Grammys and now an Oscar. They like you, Marshall, they really, really like you.

Roman Polanski winning Best Director had to be the shocker of the evening. I thought that the award would go to Martin Scorsese if it didn't go to Rob Marshall. Shows what I know. Again, The Pianist was a fantastic movie, and I certainly think Polanski deserved it, but it was a surprise to hear his name. Too bad that he couldn't be there to accept in person.

Finally, Chicago won Best Picture, so despite the twists and turns of the evening, all is right with the entertainment world tonight. The best picture of 2002 won the award it completely deserved. On a personal note, while I doubt I will win my Oscar pool at work, I did pick Adrien Brody to win, and I correctly guessed that the Best Picture winner would win six Oscars total.

I'd get into a fashion review, but there were no standout bad choices that I can remember right now, so the heck with that. I'll leave that for tomorrow's morning shows.

Liz is out of town again this weekend, visiting a friend in Atlanta, so once again I'm on my own for entertainment. I had to be up at 5 AM this morning for a test of my office's disaster recovery plan, so after that was all over I slept until 1 PM. After I got up, I sat around the apartment for a while, watching the NCAAs, then decided I had to ge out for a while. I had hoped to avoid all the war protests in my neighborhood, but I had no such luck. There were hundreds of protesters literally right outside my doorstep. I saw a large group of police in riot gear hustling two protesters down Macdougal Street; the crowd rumor was that they were burning the American flag. After that, I headed uptown and spent some time browsing in Best Buy and Barnes and Noble. On the way home two hours later, I saw more riot squad police jogging down 8th Street, as the helicopters continued to hover overhead. Checking NY1 News' web site, I read that the police are still encountering trouble dispersing the crowd. It's a beautiful day but I'm glad I decided to come home when I did. I'd hate to get arrested just for trying to get into my apartment.

Witnessing all of this makes me think about my opinion on the war. I'm still opposed to it, but not enough to take to the streets and shout about it. I support the protesters' right to assemble and demonstrate against the war; it's the right to this sort of protest that we're supposedly fighting to provide to the Iraqi people. As an American, I also support our troops and the job they're doing over there. I don't think we should have started this war, or even provoked it by our military buildup and strong-arming in the UN, but now that we've started shooting, we need to finish it as quickly as possible. I'm scared of the threat of terrorist reprisals, but I'm reminding myself that the September 11 attacks were not in response to any direct actions by the US, but in response to our way of life. Another attack could come because of the war, or could come even if we hadn't invaded Iraq. I don't think that there will necessarily be a connection between the two (though if there is another attack, the press and the government may try to influence popular opinion one way or the other).

My Final Four picks are Pitt, Maryland, Wake Forest, and Arizona, with Wake losing to the Wildcats in the final. I'm not sure how I came to these conclusions, but they made sense at the time. I've lost several Sweet 16 teams from my bracket already, including the Mississippi State Bulldogs in a piss-poor effort against Butler last night. I enjoyed watching the game with other State fans at a bar uptown, but the game just sucked. There's always next year, of course. And my team, Georgetown, is still in the NIT, so I've got that going for me. How long is it until football season?

So we're going to war in a few days. I'm tired of all the media discussion and the arguments of the various governments. I just hope it's over quickly with as little loss of life as possible. The nation is back on orange alert, so I made sure we had plenty of food and water. That's all I'm prepared to do in case of terrorist attack. Sealing our apartment with duct tape and plastic is virtually impossible, so I'm rolling the dice that any mischief that happens is conventional (and that it happens far away from me.)

I've watched some great movies lately. Last week we rented The Count of Monte Cristo which was one hell of a fun time. This movie has everything: a great story, good performances, swordplay, political intrigue, and lots of cleavage. It's the ultimate revenge fantasy played out in fantastic fashion. Liz didn't think much of the movie, but I liked it enough that I'm tempted to buy it. It's that good.

I just finished watching Children of Dune on the Sci-Fi Network. I enjoyed the network's production of Dune from 2000, but thought that the sets looked a little too fake and not up to the epic standards of the novel, or even the David Lynch version of the story. This new film, of the second and third books in Frank Herbert's saga, outdoes the original movie in production values, acting, and story. I didn't mind the changes to the story (the children are 17 instead of 10 years old, Wensicia is older than her sister Irulan, who was the first born in the novels, no metallic eyes for Duncan Idaho) and I thought that the screenwriter stayed close to the spirit of the novels, similar to the way Peter Jackson has stayed true to the spirit of the Lord of the Rings. Speaking of which, the director even cribbed some details from the end of Fellowship of the Ring at the end of Children, with slo-mo camera work for a main character's death, with dramatic music playing as another character brutally stabs an assassin. And Susan Sarandon tries hard, but her Wensicia comes across as more evil than I remember from the book. And my final complaint is that I only had a clue what was going on because I've read the books several times. Without that, I'd have been completely lost. Even so, I'm still not clear as to why Leto thinks the "Golden Path" is the only way out of the imperial crisis of the story, and the movie didn't help explain it at all. I hope they make a movie of God Emperor of Dune, but I'm not sure the world is ready for a fifteen-foot worm with a human face. And the last two novels are extremely sexual, so those might be even harder to adapt. Still, they've done excellent work so far, and I'm sure future endeavors will be well done and well received.

I really enjoyed the three-day Novell class. Starting class at 8 AM wasn't much fun, but it also wasn't as bad as I thought it was. The course material was interesting enough that I didn't even notice the time. I took my laptop with me, and Novell was kind enough to provide a wireless network with Internet access for those who were inclined to use it, so I was able to keep up with work e-mail while following the class. Instead of the usual desktop PCs and monitors for class work, Novell provided four laptops per two-student group instead (and mine made five on my table). I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to not have to share my work area with another student so I didn't get bogged down on the lab work in conversation with a partner. I offered to talk to myself instead, but no one thought it was a good idea. Anyway, I'd definitely recommend the advanced, intensive Novell classes to someone else who was a real Novell geek like myself. I don't think someone who works with Novell products only part of the time would enjoy this type of class as much.

So it's back to the regular grind tomorrow. Ehh, I had a good run.

I've got three days of intensive Novell NetWare 6 training starting tomorrow, so I might not be able to post much until Friday. (Not that it would be something new....) I hear bad things about these classes: they're extremely long (8 AM to 5 PM), breaks are infrequent, and during such breaks you are strongly urged to do lab work, and there's no Internet access. However, no one who's gone to these classes from my office has been a Novell guru, so I'm hoping to get the definitive experience here. If I don't get anything out of this class, I'm not about to recommend it or any like it to my co-workers. For the same price, I could be taking a five-day class counting toward my certification, and I'm sure that will factor into my impressions of this class.

On Saturday night, I accompanied Liz to a Tori Amos concert at Radio City Music Hall. I say "accompanied" because the music of Tori Amos is not something I would normally choose to listen to of my own accord. I'm familiar with some of her songs, but I'm definitely not a fan. My wife is, though, so I went with her to the concert. I was not alone: the audience consisted of groups of women and couples of women and their sensitive male significant others. I thought I saw a sympathetic look on the faces of some of the guys, as we recognized our collective predicament. Most of us would have preferred to be at any other event, but we were doing our coupled duty by being there. As far as I can tell, it was a good concert. The audience was most appreciative of Ms. Amos' performance, and she responded with two encores. Unfortunately, since it's not my kind of music, and the hall was warm, and I was digesting a large meal, I found myself dozing off during the show. That's quite a thing to consider, falling asleep at a rock concert. Now I need to find a concert or sporting event to which I can drag Liz, so she can return the favor.

It was Phil's Big Weekend At The Movies.

Since Liz was out of town, my entertainment options were limited. I won't go to restaurants or bars by myself, and I don't relish the idea of spending all my evenings at home with the cats, so that left me with the movies as a relatively cheap way to pass the time. Unintentionally, I went to the same multiplex three days in a row, and while it wasn't all bad, I don't want to be a regular at the AMC Empire in Times Square. So I won't be going back there for a few weeks. Anyway, here are my reviews of the two new movies I saw, and a few comments on the movie that I saw for the third time.

Friday night: Frida, starring Oscar nominee Salma Hayek --

Frida was better than I expected from the reviews. Hayek and Alfred Molina are excellent as the leads, and the director does a great job integrating Kahlo's artwork into the movie. I don't feel like I have the complete picture of Kahlo's life after seeing this movie, but I've got a decent idea. Hayek's Oscar nod for this role is well deserved, but even though the Academy tends to like roles where the actor has an affliction or handicap, she's not going to beat Nicole Kidman.

Saturday night: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers --

I'm a geek, so I had to see this film one more time in the theater. The orcs still lose the battle of Helm's Deep if you see it more than once, and I didn't see anything new this time around. But I did notice more of the film's emotion than on the previous two viewings. The theater got a little dusty when Theoden visited his son's grave. I think that Arwen's departure from Rivendell can be seen ambiguously; we're led to believe that she's leaving Middle-earth, but I think we'll find out in Return of the King that she's defied her father and gone to Gondor instead. Since that book ends with their marriage, unless there's a radical departure from Tolkien's story, she's got to end up there anyway. Besides, she has to bring Aragorn his sword (I'm still upset that they didn't give him a re-forged Narsil before the Fellowship left Rivendell). Also, at one point in TTT, Aragorn embraces Arwen and caresses her ears with his fingers. I mentioned this to Jess, and she suggested that he has a fetish. Finally, at one point in TTT when Gollum is screaming and howling, I wanted to turn to someone else and say, in my best Graham Chapman voice, "What an eccentric performance!" But no one I knew was there to hear my witty remarks.

Sunday afternoon: The Pianist, starring Oscar nominee Adrien Brody --

I've seen several movies about the Holocaust, and I knew I wasn't ever going to be in the mood to see another one. And for the first half of this movie, I questioned my need to see any of the events depicted. We know that the Germans are going to humiliate the Jews in the streets. Then they're going to start shooting them randomly. And now they're loading them onto trains for Treblinka. Having seen all of these things in Schindler's List and other movies I saw back in Sunday school (yes, Jews have Sunday school, at least in my community growing up), I knew exactly what was going to happen before it showed up on the screen. But then the movie takes a different turn, as the lead character avoids Treblinka and ends up hiding out in a series of apartments in Warsaw, watching through window cracks events like the ghetto uprising and the eventual defeat of the Germans. Adrien Brody is fantastic as the pianist who goes from playing on the radio to combing through bombed-out buildings for scraps of food. His performance is every bit as good as Daniel Day-Lewis' in Gangs of New York or Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. But I think an Oscar for him would be an upset; Day-Lewis is the clear favorite here.

I'll write an Oscar picks entry in a few weeks. Clearly that's something much on my mind at this time of the year, and unusually enough I've had the chance to see most of the nominated films and roles of 2002. Liz and I aren't doing our usual Oscar picks bet this year, so I need some way to express my views on the nominees. Damn, I'm excited about writing that one.

The passing of Mr. Rogers is a sad occasion in my household. Like millions of people, I grew up watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I hadn't thought about the show for many years, in the same way that I'd forgotten about Sesame Street or The Electric Company. But last night we watched a 1990 documentary on the show and it brought back all sorts of good memories. Characters like King Friday, Daniel, and Mr. McFeely who came into my house every afternoon and made my day a little better. Even as a child, I thought the shoes-and-cardigan routine was goofy, since I didn't have to change shoes when I came home, but it was just part of the show's charm. I always wanted to know how that trolley got from the house to the Neighborhood of Make Believe, and I wanted one in my house (the trolley, not the Neighborhood). I clearly remember watching the episode with Yo Yo Ma, though I think it aired when I was past the age of watching the show regularly. And I'll have to check with my mother, but I think I met Mr. McFeely when I was a child, but I don't remember that as well. Finally, I hated the ending of the show, because that meant that I had to wait until the next day for another visit from Mr. Rogers and his friends. I love reading all the tributes to Fred Rogers in newspapers and on websites. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has some especially moving coverage. I can't write anything more eloquent about the man, so I will just say that Fred Rogers will certainly be missed.

I've uploaded a few pictures from the blizzard to my photos page. Check them out here.

Slashdot posted this article yesterday, titled "Why Nerds are Unpopular." As a one-time nerd and full-time geek, stories like this strike close to home. The author makes a number of valid points about the plight of the smart kid in today's American school system. He says that the years between 11 and 17 are the worst for the smart students, with 11-14 being the worst of the worst. I can relate to that: Seventh grade was the worst year for me in school. Other kids picked on me for years, starting well before 11, but in seventh grade, the torment reached its peak. I was chubby, unathletic, played a weird musical instrument (the viola), had geeky glasses with large plastic frames, my clothes were out of fashion, and I was among the smartest kids in the school. So I was teased mercilessly all year. I don't have any fond memories of that year, except maybe for my bar mitzvah. He argues that smart kids, given the option of being popular but losing intellect in the bargain, would choose to remain smart but unpopular. That's true too. I realized early on in school that I was smarter than most of those around me, and I wouldn't have dumbed myself down for any reason, not even to alleviate the teasing. He argues for a long stretch that American schools are micro-societies along the lines of Lord of the Flies or adult prisons, where the teachers are wardens and the students are inmates. Many schools are suburban and sterile, so the students have to create their own society and order so that they can have a frame of reference. When you get out of high school and into the real world, you have a society to belong to, and you finally recognize that the social order of your school years was an illusion, an artificial construct created for the survival of the group. That sounds about right to me: how else can anyone explain the cliques of students that cannot be transcended under any circumstances?

But I disagree with some of the details. The author argues that the nerds want to be popular, but instead of devoting time to figuring out how to be popular (as if it's a game or a school assignment), they're too busy doing their schoolwork or working on hobbies to try to be popular. I don't think that's true. First of all, I don't think I ever wanted to be popular. I would have settled for any outcome of events whereby I wasn't tormented as badly as I was at the time. For me, it wasn't about working too hard on other things to worry about becoming more popular. No matter what I would have done at that age, I would have been teased and ostracized. The other students had prejudged me a nerd, and there was nothing I could do about it. Eventually, I outgrew my awkwardness, as did many of the students around me. By the time I was a junior in high school, I had learned how to deal with the teasing (don't take it personally, something my parents had told me for years, but I hadn't believed until then) and I found some activities that broadened my circle of friends. The point is that it was a stage in my life that I don't think could have been avoided by my working harder at being popular.

He also brings up suicide, and suggests that it's the result of keeping students in prison-like schools and treating teenagers as if they don't belong in the adult world any more than they belong in a child's world. I think he's got this one wrong too. I considered suicide a few times growing up, at my most depressed moments. But I knew that it wasn't the solution to any of my problems. It would have been a cry for attention, but it wasn't attention I was lacking. It just wasn't the way out of the hole I was in, and somehow I knew that I just had to give things time and they would eventually improve. And they did, since I'm still here. The sad thing is that in my high school, we had a few suicides and several more failed attempts. But the kids who were trying to kill themselves were the popular ones! How much sense did that make to anyone? How could an attractive cheerleader with lots of friends decide to hang herself in her closet? What drove other students to overdose on pills? Even the popular kids had problems, just like the nerds. There wasn't any real difference among any of us; we were all tormented in one way or another. Some people chose the wrong solution to their problems.

The more I read the article, the more garbage I find. I think the author is trying to make a good point, and for the most part he succeeds, but he rambles too much and brings up too many points that aren't further developed. And he doesn't have any solutions to offer. Kind of like me sometimes. It's an interesting read, but I think that there are child psychologists out there who would be able to offer much better insight into the issues of today's teens.

Yesterday was quite a holiday in New York. Liz and I both had the day off, so we spent it relaxing at home and playing in the snow a bit. Around 3:30 PM we went out to see what stores were open in our neighborhood. Starbucks was closed, but Xando was open, so we enjoyed mint mochas and watched what little traffic there was go by. Liz pointed out that trudging through the snow was a good aerobic workout on a day when the most work we had to do was get out of bed. Even though I'm no stranger to large snowfalls, as you probably read below, I hadn't previously been in New York for a blizzard. So I took some pictures of buried cars and kids romping through Washington Square Park. I'll post a link to those later tonight, when I have a chance to upload them.

We watched with great interest as Evan chose Zora on Joe Millionaire. As Lisa De Moraes pointed out in her Washington Post TV column today, it was almost like FOX wanted us to root for her from the beginning. Gee, FOX wouldn't do that. I'm glad the show didn't end with a wedding, or the revelation that Evan was really a millionaire after all, or that Zora was. But the "mind-blowing" twist that the producers gave the happy couple a million dollars to split was anything but. The reason that most people were suggesting outlandish scenarios (like the women getting to choose Paul over Evan, or that Evan would choose one of the women he dumped earlier) was that giving them any amount of money was an obvious ploy and thus not the way the producers would go. But we are talking about the FOX network, after all, so the obvious choice was the only thing they could come up with. I would have preferred something like this:
Before Evan reveals his choice to anyone, Paul tells Evan that the show's producers have just given one of the women a large sum of money, like $1 or 2 million. Or after he picks one, they tell him that the other one suddenly has lots of money. Now Evan has to choose between love and money. That would have been more interesting than the lame stunt they pulled last night.

Still, it was a fun two hours. The first hour wasn't the stale clip show review I expected; I guess they got that out of the way last week. Instead, we got a closer look at some of the women, including Heidi. Wasn't it amazing that the man she's currently dating is even dumber and shallower than Evan? I wasn't sure that was possible. And Evan's friends that turned up as character witnesses were just as meat-headed as he is. In the second half of the show, Evan did a good job of keeping the audience guessing, even as he gave Zora what seemed to be the brush-off speech. When he gave Sarah the real farewell address, I would have enjoyed hearing him say, among his other platitudes, "...and I really enjoyed banging your rocket body." But that wouldn't have been too prime-time friendly, even for FOX. I'll have to put off recovering my dignity for another week, since I won't miss the "reunion" show next Monday night. I forget who said it, but someone on TV either last night or this morning (it might have been Mark Consuelos subbing for Regis on "Live") suggested that FOX is looking high and low for people dumb enough to fall for this stunt again, since it was such a ratings bonanza. I'd love to see the kind of people, male and female, that would appear on that show.

At the moment, somewhere between six and twelve inches of snow are falling on New York City. I always love the tranquility of falling snow. It silences even the most bustling of cities, and if anything can quiet New York, snow is it. Granted, I stepped outside at 11:40 PM on a holiday Sunday night, during a terror alert, but there are few people on the street and even fewer cars. There's not a police siren to be heard anywhere. I think it's fantastic. I'm growing tired of winter and temperatures below 20 degrees (and I can't believe I'd ever have that thought), but a quiet snowfall is always welcome. We're well-stocked on food and water, just in case we can't get out to the store tomorrow, but I'm not at all worried that this latest blizzard will be a problem for the city. If anything, I'm upset that the only day this week that the snow would be severe enough to close schools and cancel work is the day that I have off for the holiday anyway. I've missed the last few big snowstorms in New York, so I'm glad to be here for one. Maybe we'll go out tomorrow and have a snowball fight in Washington Square Park. This assumes that I can get Liz to leave our cozy apartment. I like to think that since she grew up in Mississippi, she probably doesn't have much experience with snow. Then I remember that she also spent a semester in Russia during college, where she lived a lifetime's worth of winter in six months. I guess I can't blame her if she wants to give this storm a miss and stay inside.

On Monday night, we finally learn which woman Evan chooses on Joe Millionaire. FOX promises a twist that will "blow your mind!" If it's anything like last week's twist where he didn't choose anyone, they can keep it to themselves. I've read the news reports about people who will boycott the final show because of FOX's bait-and-switch las week, and I think those people are full of it. If you've stayed with the show this far, how can you pass up finding out how it ends? I'm as upset as anyone else about last week's lame clip job, but I'll still give my conscience the night off and tune in tomorrow. Then on Tuesday, I can go about regaining my self-respect.