mashby | The personal blog of Michael Ashby

November 29, 2003

The Solitude Of Enjoying A Cigar

Cigars After Thanksgiving the other day, I wanted to become a recluse. Not because I didn’t want to spend time with family, but because I wanted to enjoy a cigar. I have no idea why, but many people find cigars offensive. For this reason, finding a place where you can enjoy one is not easy. Many restaurants offer smoking sections, but very very few of them actually allow cigar or pipe smoking. To enjoy those, your only option is to go to the bar, but even there you might be hard pressed to find a bar that allows it as well. Since Calloway Gardens is geared more towards a family environment, I knew that it might be difficult, but I was going to try.

Staying at the Mountain View Inn, I walked around a bit to see if there were any areas that would be conducive to enjoying a fine cigar. Calloway Gardens is known for golfing and many golfers enjoy a cigar on the links, but that is an outdoor activity, so even though the gift shop sold cigars, I had not expectation that they would allow this activity indoors.

November 28, 2003

The Weblog Review

A couple of months ago, I saw a segment on Call For Help where Leo Laporte interviewed the webmaster of The Weblog Review, Brent Todd. I had never heard of the The Weblog Review, but I learned in the interview that the purpose of the site is to provide an objective review of weblogs. Individuals are encouraged to submit their site and a reviewer will post a brief review of your site, citing things they like and dislike as well as giving it a rating from 1 to 5 (5 being the best). Also in the interview, the Brent gave some tips on how to create a better weblog and some of the things to avoid. I’m always open for constructive criticism and since the intent of The Weblog Review appears to be to help you made your weblog better, I decided to submit my site.

It’s been quite awhile since I submitted my site, but yesterday it was reviewed by ODATT and I was given a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I would have preferred a 5, (who wouldn’t?), but I have to admit that the feedback was quite good. I even had to laugh at some of the comments, because they were on the money. I’ve always said that if you ask me what time it is, I’ll tell you how to build a watch. That point was not lost on ODATT. My favorite comment of his was, “… there is certainly loads of material to be found here, all well presented and written, which will keep the avid blog reader happy for hours, maybe even days.” 😀

If you agree, or disagree with ODATT’s review of my weblog, I’d appreciate it if you’d post your own rating at this link. In addition, I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions as well, so don’t be shy about posting a comment to this entry.

November 27, 2003

I Am A Holiday Voyeur

Holidays are a weird time for me. For most people, holidays are a time for family and for sharing in common family customs. Growing up I didn’t have a lot of these rituals. My father wasn’t around much, I never really had any grandparents, and after my Mom got her divorce, it was just to two of us. When Christmas or Thanksgiving would come around, we would become flooded with invitations to attend the dinner of another family. More often than not, we would go to a friend’s house a celebrate the time of year with them.

Every family has different customs and styles of celebrating the holidays. Since these customs were not my own, I always took on the role of the observer. If it were my own family’s ritual, then I would more than likely take things for granted, because ‘that’s just the way we do things.’ But these aren’t my customs, so I always hang back a bit and make sure I’m going with the flow. It’s not as if I’m visiting a tribe in Uganda. I mean everyone pretty much celebrates Christmas, or Thanksgiving similarly, but there are mannerisms and habits that make each one unique. Also, since I’m not an immediate part of the family, I’ve always been a bit of the odd man out.

November 26, 2003

Virtual Private Hell

I hope you don’t mind, but I need to take a break from all the Matrix Mega reviews that I’ve been doing as of recent. I’m about halfway through with them and I’m wearing a bit thin. 😀 My guess is that you are too, so for the next few entries, I’m going back to my normal types of postings.

For the past week or so, I’ve been up to my ears in learning all about a fairly new technology called VPN, or Virtual Private Networking. You may have heard of it, as had I, but if you’ve never explored this technology on your own, you’re in for a real treat – not!

Here’s the idea – let’s assume that you have two computers that you’d like to network together so that they ‘talk’ to each other. Computer A is downtown and Computer B is in the suburbs. Both computers are connected to the Internet using fast connections (DSL, T1, Cable, etc.), so by using VPN you can create a secure ‘tunnel’ through the Internet and thus connect the two computers. Although both computers are accessing the unsecure and open network that is the Internet, the encrypted tunnel secures the information exchanged between the two computers. The best part is that each computer sees the other as if they were on the same exact network. The concept itself seems rather straightforward, it’s the implementation that’s a killer.

November 25, 2003

The Matrix Saga: Part Three – Enter The Matrix (Part One)

I love playing video games. I got hooked on the Atari 2600 and I’ve been playing them ever since, however when I heard that there was going to be a video game released based on The Matrix, I wasn’t too thrilled. Typically, whenever there is a video game based on a movie, it sucks. I really like the Matrix Saga and although I’ve liked everything that the Wachowski brother’s have touched, the suck factor was pretty high on a video game. Did I want to take the risk and buy the video game?

You might be surprised that I did resist and didn’t run out and buy it the day it was released. I was tempted mind you, but the fact that most of the reviews were bad, I held off. I simply didn’t want to spoil my Matrix experience. After I watched The Matrix Revolutions, I was shopping at Target and I saw that they had it on sale for half price at $19.99. There’s only so much a man can take, so I bought it. 🙂

November 21, 2003

The Matrix Saga: Part Two – The Animatrix

Director(s): Peter Chung, Andy Jones, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Mahiro Maeda, Kouji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe
Writer(s): Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski, Peter Chung, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kouji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe
Category: Action / Drama / Animation / Sci-Fi
MPAA: N/A, but intended for mature audiences
Runtime: 102 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Year: 2003

Plot: Anthology of nine short anime (Japanese animation) films tied in to the 1999 blockbuster “The Matrix” and its sequels. “Final Flight of the Osiris”: The crew of the hovercraft Osiris attempt to warn their city of an imminent attack. “The Second Renaissance, Parts 1 & 2”: The story behind the war between man and the machines, how mankind scorched the sky, and the creation of the Matrix. “Kid’s Story”: A teenager is contacted by Neo, and manages to escape the Matrix. “Program”: Two warriors battle in a samurai training simulation when one decides to betray his crewmates and re-enter the Matrix. “World Record”: A champion sprinter manages to break free of the Matrix by sheer physical effort during a record attempt. “Beyond”: A young girl searching for her cat discovers a haunted house caused by a glitch in the system. “A Detective Story”: Private investigator Ash tracks a hacker named Trinity through the looking glass. “Matriculated”: A group of humans capture a machine scout and insert it into a ‘human matrix’.

Review: The Matrix had a lot of firsts in it. The first movie to use bullet time, the first movie to bring comic book and anime storytelling to live action, etc. On it’s own The Matrix is a landmark film and had the Wachowski brothers left it at that, it would have been enough. Little did we know in 1999 (the year the Matrix was released) that the brothers had much more in store for us.

November 21, 2003

The Rumor In Nashville Is…

Lance Armstrong with his wife Kristin and his son Luc Although this story has appeared in a few small publications here and there, it was a complete shock to me when I heard the rumor from my wife. According to people we know that were there, it seems that Lance Armstrong is hooking up with Sheryl Crow. They were spotted together at the Country Music Awards last week and were seen being quite affectionate and kissing in their seats.

I didn’t even know that Lance and his wife Kristin were planning on getting a divorce, but after a Google search, I found this quote from Kristin Armstrong, “[our marriage problems] were brought on gradually by a number of pressures, rather than one big blow-up. We’ve been together 4 1/2 years, and we’ve had six homes, three languages, three countries, one cancer comeback, three children, four Tour de France wins and one rise to celebrity. You’re not supposed to cram such a huge amount of events into such a small period of time.”

November 20, 2003

The Matrix Saga: Part One – The Matrix

Director(s): Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Writer(s): Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Category: Action / Sci-Fi
MPAA: R
Runtime: 136 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Year: 1999
Tagline: The Fight for the Future Begins

Plot: In the near future, a computer hacker named Neo (Keanu Reeves) discovers that all life on Earth may be nothing more than an elaborate facade created by a malevolent cyber-intelligence, for the purpose of placating us while our life essence is “farmed” to fuel the Matrix’s campaign of domination in the “real” world. He joins like-minded Rebel warriors Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss) in their struggle to overthrow the Matrix.

Review: The movie that started it all. The Matrix came completely out of the blue. No one had ever heard of the directors, the Wachowski brothers. Their only other movie directorial effort was Bound, which no one ever saw. (Turns out, Bound was simply an audition to prove to the studios that they knew how to direct and could handle the project that was The Matrix). The actors were a mixed bag of good actors (Laurence Fishburne, Joe Pantoliano), bad actors (Keanu Reeves) and then unknown actors (Carrie-Ann Moss and Hugo Weaving). The previews gave nothing away. You were simply left with the question “What Is The Matrix?” and a few images of some very cool action. The only thing I knew at the time was that I HAD to go see the movie the night it was released.

November 18, 2003

My Author Went On A Trip And All I Got Was This Lousy Content

All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt I’m back from my trip and swimming in a backlog of work, but that’s to be expected. Otherwise things are slowly returning to normal as I continue to gain mobility in my legs. Seems if I need to move them in any other direction other than in a circular motion I’m in for some surprising pain. 😉
Speaking of cycling, I’ve posted all the pictures from my trip in the Photo Gallery. I’m also making progress in posting the first day of the Travelogue. I don’t expect to have everything up until the end of the week given how much content there is to post. The trip was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about myself along the way, so there’s quite a few entries to post. In fact, it makes the think that their must be a better way to manage this type of content because it’s going to be a bear to navigate, much less read. 😀 Until I come up with something better, I’ve added some navigation to the first entry in the archive so that you can jump to a particular day. As always, if anyone has any suggestions on how to organize my Travelogue content, I’m all ears, please post a comment.

November 12, 2003

Time To Put The Tire On The Trail

The Trail Tomorrow I begin a short 4-day tour of the Natchez Trace by bicycle. I’ve been planning on this trip for quite some time and I’m anxious to begin the ride. Since I don’t know what kind of Internet connections I’ll have while I’m on the road, I don’t know that I’ll be able to make any posts until Monday. I’m traveling solo and I anticipate that I’ll have plenty of time to type on my Dana, but with a 4k limit, the Palm operating system doesn’t make it all that easy to cut and paste entries into a browser or web log client. I’ll do what I can, but I won’t make any promises. 🙂
If you’d like to follow along this little trip of mine, I’ve begun a travelogue to document my adventures. If that sounds boring to you, then you might this instead.