Mission Impossible III

Movie had tons of action and storyline was pretty good, but nothing spectacular and out of the ordinary. I think this is the 1st Mission Impossible movie I’ve seen, because I just realized at the end of the movie, IMF stood for Impossible Mission Force. Movie was somewhat easy to guess as I had a pretty good hunch halfway the movie who the real mastermind is.

Official Site
IMDb: 6.8/10 (23,209 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 71% / Average Rating: 6.7/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
My Rating: 7/10

mission impossible iii postermission impossible iii poster

Spoilers: (Show)

The best line in the movie:

Listen, man. I don’t mean to cross the line, but was there something going on between you two? You and Lindsey.

Lindsey was like my little sister.

And you never slept with your little sister, right?

Curious George

He’s so cute!!! A lot cuter than he was in previous cartoons. The movie was a lot of fun, basically a kids movie. And did I mention how cute he was!?!?!

Anyway, I have like 20 movies to review, so I’ll try to zoom past these. I’ll also start giving my rating (Xyon’s recommendation), though I’m not going back to update all the previous ones.

Official Site
IMDb: 6.7/10 (1,426 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 69% / Average Rating: 6.2/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
MY RATING: 7/10

curious george postercurious george postercurious george postercurious george poster

Spoilers: (Show)

Cute Bunny

My queue just keep getting bigger and bigger. I have like 20+ movies yet to be reviewed.

I also spent sometime this weekend migrating my old site’s blog over. Seems to be a long and arduous process. Only got a couple months in 2002. It’s hilarious seeing how my blogging (writing) style has evolved.

I was also burning off a bunch of watched “stuff” to free up space. While browsing for stuff to burn, I remember I haven’t watched the AIR – Summer Special yet. Unforutnately, Potato (the cute puppy) didn’t show up. This special was more about the past between the journey to find the little girl’s mom. However, they did introduce a cute bunny. Click the following images to watch the videos:

air -summer special - cute bunnyair -summer special - cute bunny


Random Crap:

What if Tequilla was a Prescription Drug? (from MS newsgroup) – hilarious advertisement/disclaimers for Tequilla.

Alan Cox’s ThinkPad battery explodes – For a moment, I thought IBM had fallen into the bunch of manufacturers with bad batteries. Fortunately, the title was very misleading and I quote: Telsa does note, however, that the battery was third-party and was bought on eBay, so it may not be an authentic IBM pack at all.

Polish woman caught growing marijuana for cowA Polish woman who grew marijuana to calm the nerves of her cow has been charged with cultivating a narcotic by police in the western town of Lobez.

Court says $32,000 is too much to fondle bosomA fee of 25,500 euros ($32,000) is way too much for a woman to charge a man for fondling her bosom, a Finnish district court ruled.

White & Nerdy (MS newsgroup) – “Weird Al” Yankovic’s new music video, from the album “Straight Outta Lynwood” (in stores Sept. 26) Hilarious music video once again! However, as Weird Al notes on his blog:

I’m very sorry to say that the AOL “First View” Premiere of the “White & Nerdy” video has been cancelled.

Apparently, the video has already leaked online, and AOL doesn’t feel comfortable doing a “World Premiere” promotion for a video that a number of people have seen already. (I can understand songs leaking, but a video? How’d THAT happen?)

Anyway, it’s really a bummer… it would have been great promotion for the album… but hey, life goes on.

So…

I’ll be uploading the video to this page shortly. Tell your friends!

You may also want to check out his other music video (animation) for Don’t Download This Song.

worlds yo-yo contest 2006 1A 1st – Hiroyuki Suzuki (mickey) (from Tera) – I’m not sure if the title implies he won first place, but he was awesome. I obviously don’t know how hard some of these tricks are because there were certain parts in the oooohs and aaaaahs that I didn’t see to be that complicated. Then again, I probably couldn’t do 99% of what he did. The song in the background was actually rather amusing. I had heard the Korean and Japanese version by 이정현 (Lee Jung Hyun) called ワ-come on-. Then Mechy told me about the Cantonese version called 獨家試唱 by 鄭秀文. Now it appears there’s a Mandarin version too!

結婚できない男

Just finished watching this 12 episode series: 結婚できない男 (Kekkon Dekinai Otoko – Man Who Can’t Marry). Series is awesome and hilarious.

For more information, see:
JDorama
DramaWiki

Spoilers: (Show)

I also made some clips from the final episode:

There is a white box below you can click on:
kekkon dekinai otoko - sushi
I was watching this while eating dinner (I believe it was cereal – Frosted Flakes with milk) and then I got the sudden urge for sushi. Unfortunately, it was past closing time for most restaurants. If you want to understand what went on when his door bell rang, some newspaper salesman was trying to get him to subscribe to their newspaper. He’d even throw in a free box of laundry detergent. When his neighbor walks by, he tells the salesman that the lad behind him doesn’t have a subscription yet.

kekkon dekinai otoko - shirt selection
This video clip was made to show how organize he is, even when selecting something to wear; which totally reminds me of my friend Mechy. Although now subtitles are provided, if you want to understand the context, read on. Before this clip, he went to visit his doctor saying he’s feeling queasy (nervous) because he’s about to be on TV in front of millions of viewers. The doctor comments, in that [shirt]? Later, he goes home and takes out all his shirts and lies them neatly on his table and sends photos of him wearing them to the doctor asking for her comment. First one was too dark. Second one made him look too young. Thrid one made him look “cute”. Fourth one was perfect. And what made the situation hilarious was when he told the doctor, “Why am I taking your advice?” The doctor replied, “You don’t have to.” He then replies, “Well, if the million of viewers don’t like this shirt, it’ll be your fault.” She then angrily yells, “Like I would care.” *click*

iTunes Album Views

With the new album views where you can browse your songs grouped together with an album cover, I noticed it was quite inconsistent with the groups, often splitting albums into multiple groups. For example:

itunes heaven album

So I consulted Belldandy (him being the Apple expert). He said this was a known issue with iTunes and the current resolution is to check the Part of a compilation checkbox. I never really touched that checkbox as I didn’t really know what it meant and really never had a reason to. I tried his suggestion and it indeed worked, so I went on and merged the remainder of my albums which were somehow mysteriously split.

However, I then hit the above problem. I had 2 albums called Heaven. Even when I enabled “Part of a compilation”, they didn’t merge, so I played around trying to figure out why they were getting splitted and not grouped together.

It turns out that iTunes will ONLY group tracks together if the ALBUM + ARTIST is the same. If you enabled “Part of a compilation”, it marks the album having various artists and then that allows grouping of an album with different artists. However, in my case above, I have 2 Track #1s on different albums titled Heaven. I couldn’t mark the other track as part of a compilation as it’ll group both albums together. So what I ended up doing was setting one album to be Disc 1 of 1 and that seemed to work as the other didn’t have any disc info.

Did I mention how neat the turntable view is?
itunes turntable

Though it does take up a lot of unnecessary resources.


Random Crap:

And the grad students most likely to cheat are… (from /.) – The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business. Following business students, 54 percent of graduate engineering students admitted to cheating, as did 50 percent of physical science students, 49 percent of medical and health-care students, 45 percent of law students, 43 percent of liberal arts students and 39 percent of social science and humanities students. Business students need to cheat?

Samaritans unwittingly help in car theftPeople got behind and pushed and even offered an impromptu driving lesson to help a boy who was struggling to drive a car — failing to realize that the 14-year-old was stealing the vehicle, police said.

Eat a roach and be the first in lineWhy wait in line when you can just eat a cockroach? That’s the question Six Flags Great America is asking its thrill seekers during its Halloween-themed FrightFest. The amusement park is daring customers to eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach in exchange for unlimited line-jumping privileges.

Sex or a long life? Guess which Britons choseA large number of Britons would be prepared to give up sex if it meant they would live to be 100, according to a survey on Friday.

Brain stimulation produces creepy shadow feelingStimulating a certain area of the brain can produce a creepy feeling that someone is watching you when no one is, scientists said Wednesday. I hate that feeling!

Panda bites man, man bites him backNo one ever said they would bite people,” Zhang said. “I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don’t remember much.

Jerusalem? Never heard of it“Jerusalem. There is no such city!” the Jerusalem municipality said in the English-language version of a sightseeing brochure it had published originally in Hebrew. The correct translation: “Jerusalem. There is no city like it!”

Virgin Atlantic Bans Dell, Apple LaptopsAmid a slew of incidents involving exploding Sony batteries, Virgin Atlantic announced that it won’t allow passengers to carry any Apple or Dell laptops onto flights.

How to Talk Like a Pirate (from /.) – A classroom educational film on the language of Pirate. A rather hilarious video on pirate linguistics.

Mr. Rogers puts in the wrong tape (from RayAlome) – It’s suppose to be a video tape about making hoes (or maybe hose), but someone edited those out and made it about making… You get my drift.

Mad for U.S. beef, herd heads for Tokyo restaurantHundreds of people queued up at a central Tokyo restaurant on Monday to savour a dish not tasted for more than two years — “beef bowl” made with U.S. meat.

Man sets sights on eye-popping recordClaudio Paulo Pinto is looking to break an eye-popping record. Literally. Pinto can pop his eyeballs out of their sockets at least 7 millimeters (0.3 inches), a national record for eye-popping according to RankBrasil, an organization modeled after the Guinness Book of World Records that lists Brazilian records.
eye popping brazilianeye popping brazilian

X-rated font used on third-grade handoutSchool officials apologized after an X-rated font was used on a third-grade spelling packet handed out to parents. The font showed male and female stick figures in provocative poses to form the letters of the alphabet. How does a teacher mess up something like this?

First penis transplant reversed after two weeksSurgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.

Punctuation author collects examples on Web site“Goats Cheese Salad … tomatoes, onions, goats, cheese.” A misplaced comma in the list of ingredients gives diners a totally different dish — and gives British writer Lynne Truss new ammunition in her campaign for the proper use of punctuation. The author, who was totally stunned when her book on punctuation “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” became a British and U.S. hit, has set up a Web site (www.lynnetruss.com) that is collecting funny examples of wrongly used commas and apostrophes such as the above example. Here’s the direct link to the funnies. Not much so far.

Woman accused of hammer attack over gasPolice arrested a woman who allegedly attacked a San Antonio convenience store clerk on the head with a hammer after he turned down her demand for free gasoline on Tuesday.

U-Va.’s One-Year Wonder (from /.) – David Banh, an 18-year-old from Annandale, just graduated from the University of Virginia in one year. With a double major. His college education, almost entirely covered by a patchwork of scholarships, cost him about $200. And he sold back textbooks for more than that. Now he’s starting graduate study at U-Va. with a research grant. So at this point, he’s technically running a profit. … He was helped by the fact that U-Va., as a public school, costs a lot less than most private colleges. And that the university accepted many of his Advanced Placement credits from high school; many of the most selective private schools wouldn’t. As it was, he doubled up on course credits and took more physics over the summer to finish his second major.

USBCELL: Batteries That Recharge Through USBProduced by Moixa Energy, USBCELL batteries are simply batteries that recharge from any USB port. They require no separate recharging devices, cradles or cables and can be used exactly like a normal battery. The design itself is rather like a typical memory stick with its flip top lid and they could be set to deliver the same killer blow to the battery market that memory sticks did to floppy discs. A very interesting concept, but one that would fail due to several factors. It’s only a 1300mAH battery (most digicams require ~2000mAH) and the price of £12.99 (~US$25) is rather steep for just 1 rechargable AA battery. I can get a NiMH charger and a pack of AA batteries for less than that.

The never-ending mortgage (from MS newsgroup) – I first of this from Derek and how there’s a mortgage in Japan that you can pass down onto your children. Appears it’s hit the UK (and maybe the states soon). In a revolutionary move, homeowners would never need to repay a single penny of their mortgage before they die. Instead, the debt would be passed to their offspring, allowing them to slash the amount of inheritance tax they would have to pay. One expert yesterday nicknamed the new mortgages ‘the debt that never dies’ because they can continue to be passed down through the generations.

Here’s some funny math solutions (from MS newsgroup):
expandfind xfractionsfractions

My Boss My Hero

Finished watching My Boss My Hero a couple ago. This 10 episode JDrama finally came to an end. It started out amazing, but the slowly lost its touch. The ending was rather bad. Here’s more info on it:

JDorama
DramaWiki

The English subtitles for this series came out rather slow (serveral weeks behind), so I ended up watching it with Chinese subtitles released by G.P.S. which you can find on D-Addicts.

Spoilers: (Show)

Here’s a clip I wanted to share:
my boss my hero - parent teacher conference
Parent Teacher Conference – when Sakaki finds out that there was going to be a parent teacher conference (really parent teacher student conference – 3 person conference), the above is what he imagined would happened.

The final episode of 結婚できない男 (Kekkon Dekinai Otoko – The Man That Can’t Marry) was just released. Awaiting subtitles currently and will be done with another series. At first I liked My Boss My Hero more than Kekkon Dekinai Otoko, but as the story progressed, Kekkon Dekinai Otoko was a much better story and Kuwano-san has quite a character. From what I hear, HKenshin wants to be just like him.

Veronica Mars

So after hearing this show from Xyon and a couple other friends, I decided to give it a shot. Let’s just say I finished watching 2 seasons worth in a week. Season 1 was really good. Season 2 was good, but I still think season 1 was better. Ending was a bit rushed in my opinion. Given that each episode is ~42mins long and that there’s 22 episodes in each season, that’s about 31 hours of my life.

Veronica Mars – The Complete First Season
Veronica Mars – The Complete Second Season
Veronica Mars Soundtrack

Spoilers: (Show)

Here’s 2 clips I had ripped:
veronica mars - we used to be friends
We Used To Be Friends – I found it quite amusing in the Lord of the Bling episode (S01E13) where they matched up the last 2 lines before the opening song with its first 2 lines in reverse.

veronica mars - gay men
Gay Men – in the I Am God episode (S02E18), where Veronica is investing a drawing on the back of the school bus, Mr. Wu (Asian teacher) makes a rather funny remark.

Enjoy!

My recommendation if you haven’t seen it, GO WATCH IT!

Season 3 starts airing on Oct. 3, 2006. Can’t wait for the next season. Is another season of 24 coming?

Next up, The Wire – The Complete Second Season (thanks to CDMCC)

Discover Card

So I recently applied for Discover credit card: Discover Card: Cashback Bonus

So I’ve had a little history with Discover Card. They’re basically the only credit card that ever rejected me not once, but TWICE. Once in freshman year of college and once again in junior year. Not sure why. Maybe they don’t like college students, so I had actually decided to never apply for another Discover Card again, but I’ve passed up too many good deals they’ve offered and finally decided to try again. Guess what, I was approved pretty much on the spot (no telling me to wait for approval while they process my application).

Anyway, the reason I wanted to share this credit card with you folks was the 5% Cashback Bonus. This changes quarterly it appears. Currently, the promotion is for restaurants, movies, and at the following retailers:

  • AMAZON.COM
  • Barnes & Noble
  • Borders®
  • Circuit City
  • Crutchfield®
  • Napster®
  • Waldenbooks®

This even beats Amazon’s own credit card I think, which gives you 3pts for every $1 you spend there equating to only ~3%.

Anyway, everything else you purchase on the card, you get 1%, which probably isn’t useful anymore.

The hardest thing about a Discover card is that hardly anyone accepts it. Though I have found a couple restaurants.

Anyway, when I was activating the card, the guy mentioned about a special bonus from date 1 to date 2. I didn’t really follow and thought he was trying to sell me some credit protection plan, so I just ignored him and just said declined any offers.

Today I received in the mail about the full details regarding this promotion and here it is verbatim:

Thank you for calling to activate your Discover Card. Now you can start building your Cashback Bonus. To get you started, get $1 Cashback Bonus on your first 20 purchases between 09/12/06 and 10/10/06.*

* Earn up to 1% on purchases. In addition, get $1 Cashback Bonus on each purcahse between 09/12/06 and 10/10/06 up to a maximum Cashback Bonus of $20. We are not responsible for merchant delays in processing transactions. Please allow eight weeks for this special reward to be added to your Cashback Bonus Account. If your Account ins closed or deliquent, you will not receive this special reward.

Pretty neat. If I guess the inevitable comes and I still haven’t made 20 purchase by 10/3/06, I’ll probably go to a supermarket and just purchase how many more $1 bonuses I can get in sticks of gum.