Phew

This has been a pretty intense movie marathon for me. Since Wednesday, I’ve seen 14 movies, with only one left to catch tonight at the Coolidge. By Sunday night I started to feel all that sitting in my back and eyes; I felt like my eyes were going to melt when I went to bed that night. I’ve seen some great films, though, and have only really been disappointed by one of them. My goal is to write a review for all 15 of the films over the next few days.

FUMN is this weekend, and I have to say that the back-to-back movie marathons might prove to be a bit much for my sanity. As long as people enjoy themselves it will be worth it. Hopefully people in CSH actually are still interested in FUMN and aren’t just humoring an old man. :)

Beeeeeeeeewwww

Friday after work,

,

, and I left for Rochester…  We hit the road around 6:45pm and expected to arrive some time near Midnight..  Unfortunately, as soon as we were ready to leave, it started snowing..  Apparently in Boston it quickly turned to rain, but we had white-out conditions until the Mass border, delaying us like crazy…  We were planning on driving directly to Nick’s, but had to bail just because we arrived so late.   But we just revised the plans to hit Dinosaur for lunch on Saturday and grab some Nick’s for dinner just before FUMN started… 

We hit up Dinosaur with some folks as planned, and then headed over to CSH to hang out on floor for awhile…  Unfortunately, almost everyone was at some stupid RIT function that ResLife leaned on the house to attend…   I was pretty much set to go to Nick’s before FUMN, but I got guilted into attending

‘s birthday celebration..  It was a great time, but I really wanted Nick’s…

FUMN seemed to be a great success..  The committee picked a fine selection of flicks this year:

The films seemed to be pretty well received, although each flick had it’s detractors, but that’s to be expected..   We might have shown another film, but we got a late start as it was (after 10pm) and finished things up around 4am…  As it was I was contemplating dropping Oldboy and going out to Nick’s, but I decided to make that sacrifice….  :)

Sunday we swung by DiBella’s on our way out of town, which was as delicious as always.  We had a really nice drive back though…  The TomTom did us right, guiding us directly to Garrett’s for his Super Bowl party..  We watched the boredom of the Super Bowl and hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile..   Finally rolled into Boston at 11pm, and crashed pretty quickly…

See, I told you FUMN was Scholarly!

I did a vanity search today for the phrase “fucked up movie night”, and was astonished to find that FUMN was cited in an academic article!

“Besides video and DVD rentals and purchases, the film is still being shown in theatres around the world. Indeed, in January 2001, the Royal Cinema in Toronto played an Ilsa double feature, presenting Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS at 9:15, and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks at its 11:30 PM show. Paradise Cinema in Toronto also showed the double feature. It has also been shown on college campuses. For instance, Associated Students of UC Davis advertised it ironically as “the heart-warming, inspirational World War II epic” for a free-screening, Lewis and Clark College played it during its “alternative movie night,” and Rochester Institute of Technology showed it for “fucked up movie night.””

  Rapaport, Lynn – “Holocaust Pornography: Profaning the Sacred in ‘Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS,'” in Shofar, 22, Fall 2003

I’m not sure what pleases me more, the fact that showing “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.” was enough to get us into a scholarly journal, or that the credit (blame?) for showing the film was given to RIT as opposed to “The Committee”.  =)

On that subject, tomorrow is FUMN #16 at 9:45pm in the conference room below Kate Gleason Hall.    We’ll be landing in Rochester tonight around midnight, and will likely go directly to Nick’s.  Be there or be somewhere else.

Props to Jordan!

Indeed, the organizers of Yahoo Hack Day said participants weren’t even supposed to decide before they arrived what their hack project was going to be.

That clearly didn’t happen. A number of Hack Day participants used the opportunity to strut their existing Web sites (“flipmeat,” in the lexicon of the current Web 2.0 business bubble) in front of potential Yahoo acquirers.

[…]

Then, in the middle of things, a programmer named Jordan Sissel stepped on stage. For his hack, Mr. Sissel said, he figured out how to store large files — pictures, MP3s, even whole computer programs — on Yahoo’s Del.icio.us Web site.

Read the full article.

Warranty Fortune Smiles Upon Me

I had a great time in Rochester for the CSH Welcome Back Party, but I think I might be skipping future Welcome Back parties… More and more of my friends are leaving Rochester, and I know fewer and fewer people who live at CSH. I think this realization comes to all alumni, but I guess I finally hit the sweet spot. It seems that each year I spend more time in Rochester catching up with my friends who are visiting from out of town, and less time doing anything with the house. It occured to us that if all we are going to do is hang out with each other, we can pick a place that’s a bit more fun than Rochester… :P This decision doesn’t effect Fucked Up Movie Night, however, so I still plan on being at CSH once or twice a year.. Of course, it’s very possible that next September I will change my mind and end up in Rochester anyway, so this could all be bullshit.

I have had great warranty luck lately… First off, Apple recalled both of the batteries I have for my Powerbook. This worked out fantastically, because I was just getting annoyed by the diminished capacity of the two recalled batteries. Around the same time, I got an email from Sirius saying that due to supply shortages, my warranty exchange on my Starmate Replay (for a scratchy 1/8″ audio jack) was being upgraded to a brand new Sportster 4, which is a much nicer radio. I got that in the mail the other day, the only sucky thing is that I have to send back all of the original equipment for the Starmate, so I had to rip out the old antenna and install the new. I had the Antenna wire hid very nicely through the trunk, and under the molding on the passenger side of the car, so I had to reproduce all of that again. Also, the Starmate ran on 12V DC so lopped off the lighter adaptor that came with it and hardwired it into the cars power inside the dash. I can’t exactly return that, and the new radio runs on 5V DC, so I will take some kind of hit on that..

and I have been trying to finish up all of the lingering projects around the house. She started staining the doors the other day, and I masked off the bathroom to finally prime and paint it. After it’s painted, the bathroom needs baseboard and door trim, and all of the old radiators still need to be painted. I want to finish all of the woodwork this weekend so we can finally clean up the apartment fully…

The god of renovations finally smiles

The bathroom is finished! Well, the contractor is finished, at least. and I have some small work to do ourselves (like baseboard and door trim, painting, light sanding, etc. — stuff that is easy for us to do but would have cost alot to have them do). Anyway, I took a shower in my own home this morning as opposed to having to shower at work, so I’m a much happier camper.

Anyone know what’s going on with the CSH systems? I can’t connect to anything, and really need to check my mail, I’m expecting a very exciting message.

Death by Steamship

Last night, after some Quake IV with the coworkers, I gave the new game “The Ship” a spin. When I first heard the description of this game, the first thing that came to mind was the real-life game we played at CSH called “Death by Dagger”. The jist of “Death by Dagger” is that each player is assigned a dagger with another player’s name on it. To “kill” your assigned player you have to be alone with them in a room; when you kill them you take their dagger as your next victim. Repeat until you are killed or are the last man standing.

“The Ship” is a video game interpretation of these same ideas. You are a passenger on a cruise ship, and you are assigned another passenger to murder. But before you can do that you have to find a weapon; a fire axe… a screwdriver… almost anything you can pick up.. Of course, if you can’t find anything, and you are lucky, you might be able to lock them in a sauna. Don’t forget, however, that one of the other passengers has your name and is hunting you. On top of the primary goal, your character has “needs”, similar in concept (but cooler in spirit) to “The Sims”. Your character needs to eat, sleep, bathe, and go to the bathroom. So you have to take the time to serve these needs; but while you are doing so you are rather vulnerable…

While the game has a “bot” based single player variant, it is really meant to be played against real people online. I had alot of fun playing last night, and look forward to taking another voyage. But you don’t have to take my word for it!

It’d be interesting to run a server at CSH!