Zixar

dmiller: satori may be a lot of things, but slipshod isn't one of them. IIRC, he had more than casual contact with these men during his tenure in TWI, so he isn't just being nasty or contrary without a basis. And Cynic, while I may not belong to his particular church, has still raised some legitimate Christian questions that could stand some debate. satori: Let me guess--nobody told you why it was removed, either. Right?

This the kind you open and put your own drive into. Actually it's the second brand I tried, but both had that doubly-cursed PL3507 chip in them. The first wouldn't even show up on the FireWire list, but the second trashed my PC, even without installing a new driver. My external DVD burner has the Oxford 311 chip, and works perfectly. It's FireWire-only, though. It's not saying "no operating system". The WinXp screen comes up, and the little blue marks scroll across the bar eleven times, then wham! BSOD, blink, reboot. I've tried boot logging and it won't tell me which driver is killing it. Now that I tried to repair it with reinstalling, it's hangs up on an MSDART.DLL error. I've got a newer copy of that DLL and will try it tonight, but this is just a royal PITA.

Beware of using any external drive enclosure that uses the Prolific PL 3507 USB2/FireWire-to-IDE bridge chip. I just tried to put a new hard drive in one, and the driver caused an immediate blue screen of death and reboot. It would not let me back in to my computer, and so far, it has prevented me from reinstalling WinXP to fix it. I don't yet know how I'm going to get around it, since now I can't even boot in Safe Mode because the XP Setup tanked. System Restore is a joke. I tried restoring to previous restore points five times, and none of them were able to do so. They all died on reboot. Stay far, far away from these enclosures.

We saw it this weekend, too. Pleasantly surprised that it did not suck.

Watch the scene where Frank Sinatra is having a fight in the apartment. When Sinatra goes to karate-chop the other guy, misses, and breaks the table, he actually broke his hand as well. The prop table hadn't been prepared right. In the same scene, the fight choreography got mixed up and he almost got kicked in the face, too. There was a short discussion at the end of the VHS version in which Sinatra and John Frankenheimer talk about all this stuff. It's probably on the new cut of the DVD as well. I probably never would have watched it, but my mother recommended it to me as a near-sci-fi movie. Now I find myself tuning in whenever I see it on the tv listings. Of course, that's just because the Chinese brainwashed me into watching it over and over again...

McKay always was a d*ck on SG-1, but compared to the rest of the cast, at least he's a little more of a three-dimensional character. As far as the latest 2 episodes go, it's extremely common to have entirely-contained episodes early on in a sci-fi series. You have to do that to establish the main characters before you throw them in with too many sapient enemies. Expect to see more branching out later on in the season.

P-Mosh: The original is a classic. Sounds like they messed with the story enough that watching the original might just surprise you. You'll never look at Angela Lansbury the same way again... :)--> Go rent it. Highly recommended.

herbiejuan: What's a "thrid"? :D-->

Oh, good. I'd hate to think one post would qualify for "big fish" status on your site. -->

I kind of doubt that.

The lurking lurker lurketh, and, having lurked, lurks on...

laleo: I don't think I've ever met anyone more perceptive than you. ;)--> Unfortunately, it looks like your keen eyes are once again right on the mark in this case.

Tom: If I were going to "feed the beast", I'd go over to JWO and tell him exactly what I think of him. If you'll go over there and read, you'll see that it doesn't just "go away", either. Why do you think I keep harping on it here? I've seen firsthand that if this sort of crap is not dealt with, an otherwise-innocuous site like GreaseSpot will become JWO-2. Now, if that's what everyone really wants, they might as well quit pussyfooting around and toss all the rules out the window now.

Chuck posted the same thing on JWO, except it had this little preamble attached: It's just another pathetic troll for a fight. Still, the moderators have chosen to leave it, so, Chuck, you might as well come back and fling your filth here.

Tom: The term was on its way out when I was a kid, since all gas had tetraethyl lead in it by the 60s. But like I said, it's just one for the useless trivia files... ;)-->

*yawn*

Atlantis is fairly promising, so far. It still has some shaking-out to do, but I'll give the producers the benefit of the doubt, seeing as how they actually care about continuity--unlike Newtrek.

Jessica Alba was the lead in the short-lived tv series "Dark Angel". Sue Storm was a blonde, though, so they'll have to bleach her hair! I don't see how they're going to get the FX done in under a year.

SBC and BellSouth jointly own Cingular Wireless, but they are not merged in any other way. Tom, if you need more bandwidth, do what I did: keep both cable and DSL and get a load-balancing router. (Xincom DPG-402, $99) Of course, it sounds like you're trying to lower your monthly bill, but if you need the fatter pipe, it's the easiest way to go. DSL modems typically have a built-in router themselves. This can cause a little bit of a configuration headache if you don't know it's there. It generally has a web-based interface that you can turn off the router in the modem and pass everything to your wireless, or you can just have them both act as routers, recognizing that any port forwarding and the like will have to be done twice--once on each router for each application.

From the useless trivia department: Kit: That's because, technically, ethyl gasoline is not available at the pump any more. The "ethyl" comes from tetraethyl lead, the most common anti-knock compound in gasoline since 1923. However, in 1972, the EPA required the phaseout of lead in gasoline, and as a result, "unleaded" gas has replaced "ethyl" gas.

Linda Z: Good to know. Thanks!(bang)

OH! You had me worried there... When you put the exclamation point after "Poster!" I thought you and Steve! were expecting another little bang*-let... * In computer-speak, an exclamation point is sometime referred to as a "bang" in order to relate the old-style Unix copy protocol addressing scheme faster verbally. So "fred!berkeley!edu" could be read over the phone as "fred-bang-berkeley-bang-E-D-U."

satori: Glitch in the buzzword generator. ;)-->

The checks are in the mail, guys... ;)-->

Typically, low blood sugar affects all the brain functions at once because the brain uses so much glucose to keep running. Selective interruption of brain function is not normal. PLEASE go see a doctor. It might be nothing, or it might be the early stages of something treatable. Nip it in the bud! I'm not trying to alarm you, but I'd much rather be wrong on this one than lose you!