Remember back in the 80's and 90's when the term hacker revolutionized the computer geek into an uber cool technocrat that could get past any firewall to hack into the mainframe of the most powerful computer on earth? He wore black and was guilty of usually having the worst and most cliched lines. It even spawned a cult movie that is so bad, that its now good. (see previous post for discussion).
Although I have hacked my Xbox and a few other items like my DS and Tivo, I would never raise myself to the lofty title. I did find a "hack" that has been useful for me in my everyday life and easy. So now I will now share it with you. Welcome to the world of elevator hacking! How To Force an Elevator to Go Straight to Your Floor Without Picking Anyone Else Up:
1) Get in the elevator.
2) Decide which floor you want to go to.
3) Extend both index fingers.
4) Press the button for the floor that you want to go to, and the door close button at the same time, and hold them down for five seconds.
5) Laugh at all of the people that are waiting on an elevator while you go right past them.

This has been proven to work on Otis elevators and a few others. Now go hack away and report back. Hackers disperse!

Not only is the title of this entry a clever name of a Pink Floyd album but also an experience that I had last week. I really don't know why I'm posting this because it doesn't make me look like the sharpest tool in the shed but oh well. If we can't laugh at ourselves then how enjoyable would life be? So stayed up until 3 am one night because I was finishing an Orson Scott Card book. (its one of my favs right up there with Ender's Game and Speaker) Well I was really tired the next day and went into work. I am sitting there at my desk when the building coordinator comes up to me and asks if my name is Ryan W and if I own a Black Matrix. I say yes. She says "did you park on the hill this morning"? At this point I'm thinking, Isn't the whole parking lot on a hill? Well I look out the window of the building and see this:
In case you cant see, my car is on that grassy hill off to the left. At this point I'm thinking "what in the world did someone do to my car?" I go down there and realize that I forgot to set my parking brake and my car had rolled down, jumped the curb, and then turned itself around to back into a wall.

It looked like it was on the verge of tipping over so I had to have 3 random strangers risk their lives by steadying it while I attempted to drive it down the hill. Long story short we got it down with minimal damage.

This is the first time in my entire life that I have failed to set the e-brake and I was REALLY lucky I didn't crash into any other cars.

So now I want to hear from you. When was a time that you did a bone head thing and didn't realize it until it was too late? Help console me in the embarrassment of my stupidity.

Recently, something has been on my mind that I find quite perplexing and I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But first let me set the scene: In my first and second years of grad school I have been dubbed the resident “tech nerd” of the department. I don’t object to this and actually see it as a badge of honor but one thing I don’t understand is how some people just don’t get technology and some of the time it’s those that are brilliant in so many other ways.

Case in point: Our department program director. She is a brilliant therapist and researcher. She is known throughout the world as a guru in using relational therapies to treat domestic violence and is often flying around the US and world to train other therapists… but she cannot operate even a VCR to save her life, let alone a DVD player. (PS she also has a Treo 650, crazy huh?) Then there is my dad. Who also has a doctorate and is quite intelligent but cannot get a computer to do what he wants it to.

In my pondering this question I considered some generational differences. Might it be because I grew up playing videogames and figuring out an operating system, controls, and essentially another world comes naturally? Is it because when I find something I don’t understand it fascinates me and I have a hard time stopping until it makes sense to me?

What do you think? Why is there such a discrepancy when it comes to technology and Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, etc…?

At different periods of my life I've had "theme songs" that really define that part of my existence. Now, anytime I hear them I am taken back to reminisce about that period. Here are a few:
1- 1996 My freshman year at Ricks College was "Stereo" by Pavement.
2- 1997 Was ALL Ben Folds Five, "Underground", and their entire standard works. (throughout my mission I had their self titled album in my head for the ENTIRE 2 years with no way to listen to it to get it out.)
3- 1999 Was any and all Guster songs.
4- 2001 My summer as an EFY counselor was "Feeling Sinister" By Belle and Sebastian. (I hope the irony isn't lost on this one.:-)
5- 2004 The entire album of "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" By B+S. Tiff and I listened to this album all the way to and from Victoria BC for our honeymoon. It's on my desert island cd list.

Yesterday when I was driving home from school on a virtually perfect spring day (70 degrees clear and NO traffic) I was listening to the new Built to Spill album and found my newest anthem. It's a song called "Conventional Wisdom" and its about as close to a perfect spring song as you can get. The last 4 minute jam session of the song is probably my favorite part but the whole song, and album for that matter, is amazing.

Give it a listen here.

What say you? Is there a particular song that always makes you feel nostalgic for a period of your life?

Well well well, in the spirit of my last post which has to do with rooting for underdogs I thought I'd put my opinion out there on the recent Oscars.

So there we all were, myself, Mike and Tiff awaiting the announcement of best picture. Every year we get together and predict who will win what and the winner gets...well...a win. I had won our little competition at this point with 13 correct winners while Mike and Tiff both had 8. I make it a point every year to see ALL of the movies nominated for best picture. The summer blockbusters don't do it for me but the Fall/Winter indie flicks do. Having said this "Crash" was my pick BY far for best picture but I was worried because they didn't buck for Oscar position by releasing it right before the deadline but instead had it as a summer release to actually very few theaters. Don't get me wrong, I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed Brokeback Mountain. There is actually very little I didn't like about that movie, aside from a generic story being told with a gay twist.

But Crash left me pondering my own actions and beliefs of the past. Any movie that challenges your paradigm, examine yourself, and make improvements is worth my $10. So when Crash was announced there was a very loud cheer from all of us in the room because we all felt the same way about that movie.

In my humble opinion Capote or as I like to call it "Chipotle" was the weakest of those nominated for best picture. I thought that A History of Violence and Walk the Line were better movies, but Philip Seymour Hoffman was brilliant in it.

In true sore looser fashion a group of individuals decided to get together and make a stink about Brokeback not winning...blah blah..hateful bigots.. blah blah...Christian America...yadda yadda yadda. They even put together $40K for a full page add in the New York Times. Geez, they sure loved the Academy before Brokeback lost, now that they picked Crash over their darling the Academy are a bunch of right wing fascists. GET OVER IT! Crash was the better movie and save your right wing conspiracy theories for Oliver Stone movies and elections.

PS I hope to be improving my writing by going to a creative writing workshop for 3 days taught by Orson Scott Card down in Southern VA. I'm SO excited about this because of some of the ideas I'm generating for my first novella and OSC being one of my very favorite authors.

I write you today in the middle of one of the greatest times of the year, sports-wise at least. Oh the excitement of March Madness! The Cinderella stories, the big upsets, the buzzer beaters, and the beginnings of new traditions.

This year the basketball gods have looked kindly on me with my bracket and I'm doing VERY well. But I've noticed something in competing with others brackets....and that is that it almost forces you to root for the higher ranked team and curse when an underdog wins because of how much it screws up your choices. This is an unfamiliar territory for me. Growing up loving the movies Rudy and Hoosiers, I'm accustomed to rooting for the underdog hoping, NEH, praying that they win in a sort of David beats Goliath narrative. So I am torn, because my mind says Uconn, 'Zaga, and Nova but my heart says George Mason, Bradley, and Wichita State.

PS Oh by the way, I was watching the Bradley vs. Pittsburgh game when my wife walks in the room and asks "Hey Brad Pitt!" I respond, "What are you talking about?" She responds " Look, it says Brad Pitt where the scores are!" Yup, sure enough. I had been watching the whole game and not even noticed. There it was on the screen the whole time:
Brad 72
Pitt 66

Great stuff.

First off, I'd like to say how upset I am at movies, TV, and other entertainment mediums for how they portray state mental hospitals and the mentally ill. I bring this up due to a recent episode of Lost. I worked at a mental institution for a year in Oregon, yes at the VERY Hospital in which they filmed "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", so people that are struggling with mental illness have a special place in my heart. Most are NOT retarded or developmentally delayed so portraying the majority of them as such is just not true. They are normal people dealing with sicknesses that aren't easily hidden. They just don't get a fair shake with popular culture in my opinion.

That said, they do watch some, er, "developmentally delayed" television programing. Every weekday at 5:55 pm almost the entire ward of 35A would congregate in a frenzy of excited anticipation for the highlight of most of their day. Even some of the more semi- catatonic patients would want to be wheeled in to watch. The show that is the highlight of their day? Walker Texas Ranger. Yup, Chuck Norris himself. I bet I've seen an entire season of this show against my will but I do have to say that it falls into the category of so bad, its good. So I didn't mind too much after the initial shock.

What say you? What are some shows and movies that you think are so bad, they're good?

I'm making the move again folks but I hope that this time it will be a permanent place for my blog. Myspace just wasn't cutting it for me and since it had so much personal information on it I didn't want to make it public.

So I'm un-selling out from myspace to here. I'll still keep my crap over there but my blog feels more at home here.

I'll probably transfer some of my old blogs over so that I can share the love with the newbies.

Enjoy!