March 2005 Archives

My homebrew PC had finally gotten to the point where I couldn't do anything without it locking up, rebooting, or blue-screening. I got tired of trying to debug whatever hardware conflict(s) was causing it, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new PC. The biggest benefit to buying a completely assembled PC is that you can assume the hardware has undergone some testing to eliminate the ghosts in the machine. The biggest drawback is that PC manufacturers today typically design their boxes in a proprietary fashion, thus forcing you to go through them for any eventual upgrades.

The Dell Dimension 8400 that I got is a 3.0GHz machine which is noticeably faster than my previous 2.4GHz box, and it is considerably quieter. Of course, I had six cooling fans in my homemade PC -- overkill, I know, but those fans with the LEDs in them are so cool! (Or at least they were two years ago when I built the thing.)

So far, so good. The Dell doesn't suffer from the proprietary hardware problem as bad as some PCs I've owned in the past, and it is able to do everything I need it to -- mainly editing and encoding MPEG-2 video for DVDs. The Philips DVD-burner in it is lightning fast too. And it plays Doom 3 without crashing every 15 minutes!

I think I'll keep it.

Vin Diesel is following in Ah-nuld's footsteps, as he makes the leap into comedy. His performance is passable, if implausible. The entire story is quite unbelievable, but the characters keep you engaged, and it is a cute film overall. Vin should probably stick to the action/adventure genre, but hey, it's his career.

This movie is entertaining. Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly cast as the gruff Ranger with a heart. If you're going to see this movie because you like Cedric the Entertainer, save your money and just download the trailer a few more times -- all of his scenes are in it. There was plenty of eye candy, though -- Monica Keena and Kelli Garner may be the four best reasons to see this movie.

The CG is, of course, stunning -- there doesn't seem to be much difference in quality anymore these days from movie to movie. I didn't think this movie was as original as Ice Age and the humor wasn't as sophisticated (there *were* a lot of kids in the theater). Robin Williams seemed to trying too hard (if that's possible for him?) in his vocal performance. Overall it was an average film -- probably best to wait for video.

Will Smith does a good job of playing the straight man to Kevin James, although through the magic of flashbacks he does get to cut up a little bit. This is definitely a chick flick, but it is very entertaining, and thankfully not *all* the funny parts are in the trailer, so there are a couple of surprises.