28 Weeks of Intensity

28 weeks laterWow! Rachel and I watched 28 weeks later last night rented from redbox with a free promotion code. This movie was absolutely great! I liked 28 days later but the intense fast paced parts of the first were my favorite. In 28 weeks later that’s all you get. there’s about 20-30 minutes of slower lead in, but after that it’s none stop action, fast paced evasion and of course you get to see first hand the transformation of normal to infected in detail this time! If you liked the first one you’ll definitely like this one. I give it a 10/10.

If you’re interested check out the trailer.

Brian Regan – The Me Monster

Friday Rachel and I went with a bunch of our friends to a comedy show from one of my favorite comics of all time. This is the 3rd time I’ve seen him live and every time he has great new material. One of my favorite new bits was The Me Monster (I walked on the moon). Watch it below.

Marry Me

According to the New York Times there’s a new trend going on in the world of proposals. People are paying lots of cash to have photographers disguise themselves in order for them to capture the moment. Normally this is a very private and very special occasion however people are beginning to publish everything about their life on the Internet and what’s the sense of leaving out the most romantic part of your life? To that end I’ve decided to share our story for everyone to read.

Our engagement story is both romantic and spontaneous. Maybe that’s the same thing? I had the ring in my possession for months in advance just waiting for the right time to ask. In October of 2005 we found out that our good friend Charles was living in London and he offered us a place to stay. We looked into flights and since it was past high-travel season the flights were dirt cheap. We were able to fly direct to London from jersey for under $300 a piece. After talking with Charles we found out that London would be celebrating Guy Fawkes day in 3 weeks and we made our plans to start our vacation that weekend.

At that time I had still not decided whether to use this opportunity to reveal my intentions or not. In fact until 5 minutes before walking out the door for the airport I still hadn’t made up my mind. At the time I knew of no truly romantic places in London. However, as many of you know, just before leaving the house I did decide to take the ring with me.

Once there, and after talking with Charles I decided that the top of the London Eye would be the perfect place. It took some effort, but I convinced Rachel to wait until the last day of our trip to ride it. This was so we could end our trip with the best part of all (providing she said yes).

Marry me RachelWhen we were finally at the top I asked a gentleman who was in the capsule with us to take our picture, much to Rachel’s dismay. She couldn’t understand why I would want a picture of us at the top when we wouldn’t even be able to tell and she asked:

Why don’t we get some shots of the beautiful scenery?

Then, while she was posing for the picture, I bent down on my knee and she began to ask “he’s taking our picture, why are you tying your sho….ohhhhhH!”

Will you marry me?

and we all know her answer.

In the beginning the only plan I had was to ask a stranger to take our picture at a romantic place and pop the question while he did. I think it turned out beautifully and the spontaneity just added to the romantic feel of the moment. What does this mean? That I’m 2 years ahead of The New York Times.

Making me Fat

Berry Banana BouquetYay! I’m 25. Now that’s over.

Apparently I need to gain more weight despite my thoughts on the matter. Some of what I got For my birthday:

– The Edible Arrangement pictured (left).
– A home cooked Chicken Marsala Dinner
– A home cooked Turkey Dinner
– A new type of Carvel Ice Cream Cake

Sensing a trend here? I did.

That being said it was all scrumptious especially the chocolate covered bananas.

Thanks for the great birthday everyone!

Wiiiiiiiiii bought one

Nintendo WiiSo ever since the Wii came out I’ve said that its nothing more than a controller. I still believe that to be true, and I find the actual console worthless.

So why did we buy one? Well, its complicated.

The first part of the answer is Sony’s fault. There’s just no games to play on the PS3. The second part of the answer is that Rachel and I can both play the Wii and have fun. The third part of the answer is simple, peer pressure.

In any event we have one now, so if you do and you want to friend us either contact us or join the Rochester Wii Group.

Peach Margaritas

Charles’ MargaritaSaturday my friend Charles and I went to lunch at a restaurant in Henrietta that I’d heard of but never been to, Seoul Garden where we had the privilege of paying extra to cook our own food. The food was absolutely excellent and so was the chef. It’s definitely a good destination for lunch with the work crew one of these days.

Emily and LizWe headed downtown after I heard my friend Emily was in town and she and Liz were going out. We met them at the Mex which I’d never been to before. It was a good time and we ended up hitting the Pig and Whistle as well as Monty’s corner.

All being told, a great night. I got to see a bunch of friends that I hadn’t hung out with in quite a while and Charles got to have his peach margarita.

Lutz vs Milton is No More

For those of you who did not go to RIT or did not have the opportunity to take classes with Professor Lutz you missed out. RIT had its very own Milton look-a-like (from Office Space). I saw him at the GENI talk on Friday and unfortunately Milton he is no more. He shaved his mustache and I must say he looks quite a bit different. If you haven’t seen it, what I believe to be the very first side by side comparison is below. This image is in fact how Professor Lutz (as well as the rest of the SE department) found out about his doppelgänger many years ago.

Milton or Lutz

And Now:

Professor Lutz

GENI can't be pushed back in the bottle

Friday some friends from work and I went to RIT‘s first Dean’s Lecture Series talk of the year by Peter Freeman. This talk, about GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation), was informative but a lot less interesting than I imagined. I thought there would be discussion about their thoughts for the next internet and where we might be going. Instead we were inundated with boring generic statements of how GENI will be a testing bed for experiments dealing with the next internet. All of this is available at their website but to summarize, GENI’s primary objectives are:

  • To develop and evaluate ideas for future network design
  • To encourage related research

Some things that struck me during the talk:

  1. The importance of a comprehensive coordinated effort in order to avoid the same defects existing in today’s solution was one of their key points. In almost in the same breath they mentioned the different approaches by Japan, The European Union and The United States.
  2. Their basic architecture included devices named super routers. If these are like today’s routers they’re already building some very blatant similarities into what’s supposed to be a test bed for a new architecture. One of the things they mentioned was changing the TCP/IP stack. Routers are level 3 devices and as such currently utilize the TCP/IP stack. If these new devices are different than today’s routers they should have a different name.
  3. It seemed to me they were concentrating purely on the hardware networking part of things. Isn’t our hardware pretty solid? Can’t we already have 5×1028 addresses for each of the estimated 6.5 billion people alive today with IPv6 (wikipedia)? Can’t we already handle that bandwidth with the existing broadband technology? I would think the bigger concern is archaic protocols such as FTP and HTTP and their underlying stacks like TCP/IP, which have been hacked together over the years. DZone recently posted an article about why FTP Must Die and its definitely worth a read.
  4. If the hardware is redefined but the software and protocols are not, won’t we just end up with one giant hack which fits all of today’s technology into tomorrows architecture? This just seems like adding an extra layer to me.

GENI has a good idea with their general principle. We do need to be looking to the future, some of our current internet practices simply wont be able to hold up when

Every Light switch has an IP address.

However; they’re going down the wrong path and it seems like they’re creating too much (hardware) infrastructure to really inspire the creation of a new and unique solution.

The Universe is wider than our views of it

Moon over ChurchThis Past Tuesday I was at work much later than usual. In fact this has been happening more often than I’d really like. Normally when I Leave its still very bright outside but lately Its been dusk or even dark by the time I leave. However; This has presented me with some unique opportunities.

I’m pretty sure its well known that I enjoy taking photos. I have been meaning to go downtown after dark or at dusk to get some great shots but have yet to do so because Court Street Bridge and Dinosaur Barbequeonce I get home I like to stay there. This week after work I took a few walks around snapping some shots. I’ll be taking my H5 soon so I can do some long-exposures.

Today I went to Dinosaur Barbeque for dinner with my long time friends Charles and Jason and his new(ish) wife Murray who both happen to be in town this week. It was good to see them both and great to finally meet Murray.

2 miles to go

29,998

29,998. That’s what my Odometer read today when I finally pulled into the car lot at Cortese. My Warranty conveniently runs out at 30,000. They say this is when stuff starts to happen. Maybe, but my current problem happened months ago and I just forgot to do anything about it until I was driving home from work today and realized.

holy crap I have 8 miles left on my warranty!

I’ve never cut anything so close in my life, except for maybe that time with the mailbox but that story is much more severe and for a different day. An electric problem for sure, this problem was just with my mirrors refusing to go up and down. I’m interested to see what money I saved by noticing my mileage today instead of tomorrow.

How much in our life happens purely by chance?

How much stuff that angers us happens purely by chance?

Would life be interesting at all without chance?