July, 21, 2005 archives

from an article in the washington post: “federal regulators accused seven companies wednesday of hiring others to send illegal e-mails with pornographic messages to tempt consumers to visit adult Internet sites. ”

“tempt consumers to visit adult internet sites”? i wonder why they avoided all forms of the word advertise. i guess they needed to sex up the language a bit to make it seem seamier.

i eagerly await the announcement that the ftc has cracked down on the mortgage spammers. i wonder if they will be accused of tempting consumers to visit online mortgage sites.

yesterday i watched the day after, the 1983 television movie about a nuclear exchange with the soviet union and its aftermath. it is showing its age, and its a little amazing to think how plausible that scenario seemed in the early 1980s. there was one little throwaway comment that seemed particularly funny given subsequent events — the conflict between the soviet union and the united states is triggered when west germany is cut off (again), and as a group of students are gathered around a radio listening to updates about what is happening, one of the students says they aren’t worried about the conflict escalating because it is just germany — but she’d be worried if it were in the middle east.

i think the thing that is most amazing to me about the film is that just barely twenty years later, i’m working side-by-side (virtually) with a number of amazing developers in and from the former soviet union.

the day before yesterday, i watched the day after tomorrow. there was a lot of hand-wringing about the politics of the movie when it came out, but at its core it is just an old-fashioned disaster flick. it’s not a terrible film, but it certainly doesn’t rise very far from its genre. and it’s hard to take bubble boy in an even slightly serious role.

i saw charlie and the chocolate factory, and i quite enjoyed it. there are some ways it falls short of willy wonka & the chocolate factory, but it definitely exceeds it in the quality of the special effects. i particularly thought the ending of the willy wonka version was more satisfying. and seeing the other children again near the end was very much a case of one too many special effects.

the gimmick of using one actor for the oompa loompas worked well, but i found it nearly impossible to make out some of the lyrics of the songs, which were amazing aside from that.

i think the heat is melting my brain. i’ve been in a pretty foul mood all week. my apartment has these heater/cooler unit things, but i generally avoid using them because they don’t really have a thermostat. what i sometimes do is crank the one near my bed up for a while to cool things down before i go to sleep. besides apparently causing a foul mood, the heat doesn’t bother me all that much except when i’m trying to go to sleep.

i have a feeling i’ll have more use for them next week when they’re going to be washing the windows in my building during the day and i have to keep my windows closed. no breeze for me.

but it looks like it will be cooler next week, if the dashboard weather widget is to be believed.