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RottenTomatoes.com has it at 37%. 
I
say that is about spot-on… I love Simon Pegg in most of his roles and
say that he did as good a job as he could given what he had to work
with. I never read the book on which this movie was based, so I can’t
say how closely it stuck to the point of the book. Pegg was the only
redeeming quality in the movie. Megan Fox played the role of eye-candy
and showed just how poorly she can “Act” playing the role of an
award-winning actress. Personally, she should stick to just looking
sultry and I’ll be happy.
In the end, I didn’t regret wasting my
time with the movie, but I can’t say that I’d recommend going out of
your way to watch it. If you happen across it on television or want to rent it,
then by all means give it a chance… if for nothing else other than
Pegg.
I am not very familiar with Amos Lee and his catalog of music, but what I am hearing from his latest album “Last Days At The Lodge” are fairly mellow, R&B inspired songs that resonate with something personal to Lee. Apparently, he wrote all the songs that appear on this album, which I applaud. You can tell there is a great production quality to each song.
Few of the songs are of such outstanding quality (lyrically, musically, or what have you) that you will want to listen to them for days on end. However, I haven’t heard a song that I immediately wanted to skip right past, which is a good thing for me. One song that stands out to me is “Street Corner Preacher.” The blues-ish feel just takes me to a good place.
If you are in the market for good music to work to in an office environment, this could be a good choice to add to your collection. All in all, it’s worth a listen, and if you are a fan of Amos Lee, then a must buy.
Rating: 7/10
I have entered the MSN Dream Car Challenge, where I have the chance to win… something. I don’t know, I didn’t read the rules. I signed up for some free Microsoft Points I may get some more points too, if you vote for my car. So, get voting already.
Also, you can find it here: Dream Car Challenge
And remember! Vote for me everyday!
Enjoy!
I was reading Griner’s Blog over at TheSocialPath.com and his latest post had an interesting image of a graph the blog. Of course, I got curious and decided to graph out my blog using this cool web page graphing site:
Webpages as Graphs
I am not sure what exactly it all means, but it sure looks purty.
In my recent testing efforts, I have comes across a desktop windows form (written in VB6) involving updating a data grid and then calculating another field’s value based on those updates. In order to achieve this functionality, the development staffs implemented two events (AfterColUpdate and LostFocus) that, when triggered, would fire off the calculation method.
None of this is obvious to the end user when testing, all they see is enter a number into the grid column and the total field automatically updates with the sum of all values in the column. Easy peasy.
I created my reusuable action in QuickTest Pro and record the entering of data, which yielded the following code:
VbWindow(“frmMain”).VbWindow(“frmChildWindow1″).VbWindow(“frmChildWindow2″).AcxTable(“PaymentGrid”).SelectCell 1,4
VbWindow(“frmMain”).VbWindow(“frmChildWindow1″).VbWindow(“frmChildWindow2″).AcxTable(“PaymentGrid”).SetCellData 1,4, “30.00″
Continue reading Updating ActiveX Datagrids in QTP
Using QTP to Connect to an Oracle Database with Instant Client
by Geoffrey Rodgers
Need a light-weight ODBC connection to an Oracle database for you QTP scripts? Oracle Instant Client is just the ticket, assuming you have Oracle version 10g for your database. Please read the information provided by Oracle to make sure Instant Client is right for your needs.
The Instant Client Driver
I’m not going to rewrite everything provided by Oracle, but I will quickly say (for those of you that did not click on the above link) that Instant Client is a very quick installation and contains less overhead than the full client software that was previously required to connect to an Oracle database using something other than the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver.
Instant Client Driver Setup:
Continue reading Using QTP to Connect to an Oracle Database with Instant Client
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“Be Kind, Rewind” by Michel Gondry was an imaginative adventure starring Mos Def, Jack Black, and Danny Glover. Being a fan of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and Jack Black, I was expecting an off the wall comedy explosion with a unique narrative style. I was not disappointed by the imagination, but a little underwhelmed with the comedy. It’s sad that Mos Def was completely overshadowed by Jack Black in this film.
Gondry shows his brilliance once again with his clever perspectives and artist design. The plot was somewhat flimsy and I never really became truly concerned about the relevance of Fats Waller.
However, I enjoyed the film. The sweded film concept was new to me and I enjoyed it. The “Rush Hour 2″ sequence was highly entertaining. It looked like the actors had a blast making this movie, which made me enjoy the film all the more. This movie is definitely worth the time.
7/10 |
After a busy weekend or partying, house-cleaning, and hosting, Brandy and I went to relax at the theaters. We obviously went to see “Get Smart” according to the title of this post. Here is a brief synopsis:
Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is a CONTROL Analyst who dreams to be a field-agent, working alongside his favorite agent, Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). CONTROL is then infilitrated by KAOS and compromises the identities of all current field-agents. So the chief (Alan Arkin) promotes Smart to the field as Agent 86 and teams him with the beautiful and deadly Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). It is up to Agents 86 and 99 to thwart KAOS and save the world from certain destruction.
Ok, so there’s the premise of the movie. Since it is based off the comic screwball TV series, I was expecting a series of goofball sight gags and a Maxwell Smart that was equal parts Michael Scott (The Office) and Evan Baxter (Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty). However, I was pleasantly surprised to see Carell play Maxwell Smart as the straight man and not the incompetent boob. Not to say he wasn’t funny, which he was.
I would say overall that Get Smart was a good summer comedy, but definitely not one for the ages. The throwbacks to the original series were quaint and obviously treated with a respectful nostalgia. I don’t think this is one of Carell’s best performances, because it didn’t require him to stretch himself. It was safe, but sufficient. Anne Hathaway brought an elegance to the film as a fashionable, yet strong agent. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has certainly come a long way from “The Scorpion King” in this flick. It’s really hard to not like any of these characters. But, my favorite actor in this film has to be Alan Arkin. He steals pretty much every scene he is in. And let’s just mention this… the cameos were great… with the exception of Bill Murray’s odd casting choice. I’m still scratching my head over that one.
All in all, Get Smart is good summer comedy. It will not be the best film of the year, nor will it make it to your top 10 comedies of all time. What it is, though, is satisfying film… just don’t expect the sun, moon, and stars. 7/10
Brandy and I invited several folks over to the house this weekend to celebrate our birthdays. It was a lot of fun and a big thanks to everyone who came out for the shenanigans.
We fired up the grill and pulled out the drinks for all of our guests. However, I completely underestimated the amount of food I had planned to cook. We planned for 2 hamburgers a person as well as corn on the cob and roasted potatoes. MLONF brought along additional hamburgers as well as chicken. Now, I do not have a small grill, but let’s say it took me 45 minutes to an hour to cook all the food on the grill.
We had three varieties of hamburgers:
- Pre-made normal beef patties. Yummy!
- Ground beef and Ground pork mixed with onions and slight seasoning. Yummy +1!
- Ground beef and Ground pork mixed with onions, chipotle peppers, and an assortment of spices. Yummy +2!
For our 17 guests, we ended up with 35+ hamburgers, 12 chicken legs, 16 ears of corn, and 4 small pans of potatoes. This does not include the pasta salads, barbecue weenies, fruit salads, and desserts. Needless to say, we ate well.
Speaking of cake, Christian baked us a special Birthmeh Cake.
Continue reading The Birthday Bonanza
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