Letter Never Sent

The Machinist (2004):

“A little guilt goes a long way.” I liked this movie a lot. Christian Bale’s skin and bones look was palpably disturbing. It’s one of those movies you’re going to want to read more about after watching it because there are many layers and details to catch. Bale did a great job in this one, but he doesn’t usually make me believe in him in most of his roles. I do think he is a good and convincing actor, I just can’t put my finger on it.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

The last time I watched this movie was about ten years ago. I fell asleep then, although I liked parts of it. This last time I watched it I stayed awake, but it barely held my attention. I do not get this movie. I still don’t. What am I missing? Ten years has changed very little in terms of my experience of this film. There are beautiful moments, but that does not make it great. River Phoenix and Keanu are great in MOPI, but if it weren’t for that, I could not give it more than two stars.

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Liked Al Pacino in this one although his performance was overdone. Johnny Depp and Michael Madsen… not so much. Every time I watch something with Michael Madsen it seems dated now. His squintyness gets on my nerves.

Iraq is about oil as an instrument of strategic control. The rhetoric leading up to the invasion of Iraq is the public justification for our presence in Iraq. In other words, whenever anyone asks why we’re there we trot out the story of the great dictator Saddam Hussein and how we liberated a nation from the grip of a brutal tyrant. This conceals the main benefit of our presence in the mideast, the control of oil supplies. We now have nominal control over the first and second largest proven reserves of petroleum in the world. There was a fantastic article in the Washington Post today: Big Shift in China’s Oil Policy:

(more…)

My eyes are tired. I’ve been up since 5:15am. I woke up right before my alarm was scheduled to shock me out of bed for the weekly Toastmasters meeting. It’s weird when that happens almost as if part of your brain was busy watching the clock. I’m glad I’ve stuck with going even though I’ve belly-ached to the woman about having to be there so early in the morning to talk in front of people I barely know. The people I meet in Toastmasters are from many different walks of life and not people I would have met on my own. I like that about it. I also like that most of the regular people show up even though no one makes them. They have plenty of other things to keep them busy: families, careers, businesses. It shows a great deal of committment both to their decision to be a member as well as their committment to their fellows. These are people who welcome involvement and responsibility. I find that incredibly impressive. So much so that I feel guilty when I feel like quitting because I get uncomfortable extending myself in new directions each week. I’ve decided that it is a worthwhile type of discomfort, although I still get butterflies every time I have to do something else.

(more…)

Words of wisdom get lodged in my head and I like to get them out so they can be shared with anyone else who might find them useful.

• “Good advice never gets old” - JC spotted this one at a gas station on the way back from picking her up at the airport after her short trip to Lubbock.
• “At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.” I think about this Gracian quotation quite a bit, especially as I approach “lionhood”, which is a good description of what I’ve been feeling now that a lot of my shiny surface is starting to wear off and I feel like I’m maturing in some hard to define way. The older I get the more I feel like I’m being either polished or worn down. When I’m feeling optimistic, it’s polish. When I’m feeling negative, it’s being worn down. I thought about the stages one goes through in life yesterday when I was at the grocery store behind an old man while waiting to check out. He look slowed and bowed by time with his modest selections of frozen vegetables and twenty pound bag of wild bird seed. He seemed almost transparent or invisible, and I tried to imagine him in his twenties or thirties and how he might have been different. Surely, he was not preoccupied with feeding birds then. Maybe as we get older and we realize we have more life behind than ahead of us, we take more enjoyment in the natural world around us that will live on after we pass.

1. …you feel weird driving next to other cars when they don’t have wrench icons floating above them.
2. …you hear the endless thp-thp-thp of a helicopter in your head.
3. …you find yourself humming the theme music.
4. …you put off important stuff so you can play for just “a couple more rounds”, which turns into another two hours.
5. …your last three blog entries have been about playing BF2 as if that’s all you do.

A few bug fixes and some useful BF2 patch download mirrors available courtesy of digg.com.

(more…)

I’m a huge fan of EA Games’ Battlefield 2. I’ve played the entire series since my days working at the world’s largest independent game producer (EA!) where I could get discounted copies for my friends from the company store. Battlefield 2 is amazing fun, and I’m getting better and better as I tack on more hours of play time.

I’ve come up with a few simple strategies and tips to help you dominate the enemy and score yourself some points.

Always play in a squad

When I’m playing it seems like most players are playing solo, which makes absolutely no sense. Whether you create your own squad or join an existing one, always play as part of a squad. There is strength in numbers. Each squad leader is a mobile spawn point. This is good for a number of reasons. For example, if your squad leader is near a capture point when you respawn you’ll get credit for assisting the capture. That’s a free point for you. If the enemy has all the capture points you can still respawn with your squad leader if he evades death. If your squad stays together you’ll have automatic backup if you run into enemy forces. Let your buddy be the bullet sponge as you rack up the skulls. Chances are your squad will have several players with different “kits”. Maybe a couple medics, support, engineer, etc. This will keep you patched up with health kits, ammo kits, and repairs. If you’re the one dropping health or ammo kits you’ll rack up points when your squad members pick up your gear. You’ll also get two points for reviving team mates (with shock paddles no less), so if you roll with a squad you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get revive points. Always play in a squad. Squad players routinely top the score board.

(more…)

I haven’t posted in a while since we’ve been moving offices. We moved from downtown over to north central Austin off 183. The area is not as cool, but the space is better and the commute about the same. We have about twice the square footage now in the new offices, which is a big change. There will be more privacy as a result.

I noticed Breen put his BF2 sig up at his website, so I thought I’d put my rank up, which puts me at a Private since I haven’t played much time on ranked servers.