Checksum Arcanius

I recently got back into movie-watching mode, catching Deja Vu with Little Scott, and Apacalypto with the Brothers Marsh and Little Scott.

Deja Vu was a typical time paradox action flick with a remarkably effective delivery that made the movie much more dramatic than it otherwise would have been. It ended predictably, but it was fun getting there. Lets say B+/3.5.

Apacalypto was something else entirely. Let me preface by saying, if you are not totally comfortable with blood spurting from head woods, blood pouring from chest wounds, and brutal blood-drenched combat, do not watch this movie ever. That being said, I liked this movie, a lot. I think it had a rather compelling storyline and told a story without pulling any punches. I definitely think my enjoyment of the movie was due in a large part to a perspective influenced heavily by Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus and the Book of Mormon. That and my strange and complete callousness to violence. A+/5.0.

Currently still waiting on 304, but otherwise, a very good quarter!

Boo-yeah!

That right, folks, Ryan needs a new car!

May this day and this season bring lasting joy, peace, and gratitude.

And now, my favorite Christmas Hymn, What Child Is This:

What Child is this, who laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom Angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.

This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant, king to own Him;
The King of kings salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.

This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Ever wanted to remove that driver for the hardware you no longer have installed? Well, with this information [techrepublic.com], now you can. Copied here for convenience:

Takeaway: Did you know that unless you uninstall a device driver on a Windows XP machine that it still may be sucking up valuable system resources? Here are step-by-step instructions on how you can view and remove these unnecessary devices.

When you install a device driver on a Windows XP machine, the operating system loads that driver each time the computer boots regardless of whether the device is present—unless you specifically uninstall the driver. This means that drivers from devices that you have long since removed from your system may be wasting valuable system resources.

Follow these steps to view and remove these unnecessary device drivers:

1. Press [Windows]+[Break] to bring up the System Properties dialog box.
2. Select the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button.
3. Click the New button below the System Variables panel.
4. In the New System Variable dialog box, type devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name text box and 1 in the Variable Value text box.
5. Click OK to return to the System Properties dialog box and then click OK again.
6. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.
7. In Device Manager, go to View | Show Hidden Devices.
8. Expand the various branches in the device tree and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers.
9. To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall.

Win32Driver…
javax.comm…

This is ridiculous!

It shouldn’t be this hard, Sun.

One of my implementations:

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday night, the term paper was submitted and I was officially DONE with school for the quarter.

Yay.