Category: General

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Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon?

Ron Howard and his casting crew got it wrong leaving it open for debate as to who should’ve been cast in this role. Tom Hanks might be a box office draw but the only thing he can possible do in this role is draw this movie down. Robert Langdon, suave, sophisticated professor of symbology he ain’t. I didn’t buy him as a hard nose Captain in Private Ryan either. To me Tom Hanks has always peformed best in sweet, goofy roles like his characters in Big and You’ve Got Mail.

It’s still pre-production Ron – save the film while you can. Obviously I don’t want to see Tom Hanks in The Davinci Code. I want to believe I am watching Langdon on-screen. We need someone more unkown that we can tie to our image of the character. Otherwise you might sell a couple more tickets, but in the end the whole film will just be a sell out.

A few suggestions of more believable choices for this role would have been:

Aidan Quinn

Matthew McConaughey

Mike suggested Jeff Goldblum

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Arch Madness

imageThe final four starts tonight in St. Louis. This reminded me I was there almost one year ago exactly. I imagine a lot of the rich fans and players will be staying in the same hotel P21 holds their annual conference in. I can’t even remember the name of it but it’s right next door to the St. Louis Waldorf.

Carolina’s in it again so there are scrolling TV announcements notifying everyone that several streets will be cosed in Chapel Hill tonight. That might be important tonight (if they can beat Michigan) but won’t be in the championship game. If my dad is right I doubt anyone will beat Louisville.image

My prediction (wrong!):

Louisville over Illinois
Carolina over Michigan

Louisville beats Carolina in the final.

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WRAL.com – News – Head Of Local Company Building Iraqi Government Remains Optimistic

WRAL.com – News – Head Of Local Company Building Iraqi Government Remains Optimistic

This is an interesting headline. We’re now using taxpayers dollars to pay private American corporations to “build” foreign governments. So I guess the people of Iraq are not in charge of their future as the Bush administration claims. North Carolina’s own Research Triangle Institute is.

Note: Just over two years ago I was offered a Sys. Admin position at RTI. I turned it down for the position I held at Glaxo.

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HP DL380 and MSA30 Array

imageHere’s what I’ll be installing if I can find time between interviewing four potential contractors tomorrow. This file server’s about a week overdue in the rack. It’s been built for days, I just haven’t had time to get it to the Inflow data center. It’s a pretty good file server including an HP Smart Array 6i internal controller with four 36GB drives configured at RAID 1+0. The memory is at 4GB with two 3.6GHz. Xeon Processors. Overkill? Hefty for file storage to say the least.

imageThe MSA30 has seven 72GB drives configured RAID 5 for a usable capacity of 407GB which can be expanded by the Smart Array 642 controller. Since it’s a file server this controller’s only got 64MB of battery backed cache. For SQL etc. I would only use 256MB of cache on the card and RAID 1+0 regardless of the loss of usable disk space. After this is in I’ve got an SQL server and another Citrix box to get installed for a P21 Commerce Center test environment. It all needs to be done by Monday morning.

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Amy crashed the Santa Fe

imageAmy really did try to make it to Mary Kay’s duet at church this morning. She was heading down 64 towards Knightdale when a lady slammed on her brakes in front of her as the light turned red. It didn’t help that Amy was watching Connor do something in the back seat. She was doing about 40mph when she ran into the back of a Buick Rendezvous. Always a Buick… I hate those cars. Congradulations to Amy for making it through her first airbag deployment.

imageAmy and Connor are fine. A claims been opened with Geico and I’m certain of a Christmas present from them in the form of a rate increase. I don’t care because like I said Amy and Connor are fine. So’s the lady who was driving the ugh,…Buick. The car’s been towed to Barbour’s Towing and Recovery and Geico’s going to have it moved to a body shop tomorrow.

On a side note: Let me praise the durability of the mighty Olympus Stylus 300 digital camera. It sat completely submerged in a puddle of coffee in the dash compartment of the Hyundai until I arrived on the scene. I wiped it off with my shirt tale and took the pictures above. So far it’s proven to be indestructable.

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Lynchburg, VA

imageOver the river and through the woods…last Saturday we took an eventful trip to Lynchburg. At the beginning of our travels we got stuck behind the Creedmore, NC Christmas parade (think bumbkin) and then near Amherst, VA we watched a dump truck push a car up a highway embankment just 100 yards in front of us. The car came down, hit a pole and rolled on to it’s side. I stopped momentarily but then went after the dump truck which hauled a$$ outta dodge.

Once we finally arrived it was a pretty routine visit to grandma’s house. Everything within Connor’s reach was breakable so Amy and I spent the entire time keeping him away from the antiques. It’s amazing that a table can be full of dozens of objects and somehow he picks up the sharp one or the glass one. Luckily his new favorite word is “outside”.

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December 1st already.

I can’t beleive there’s only 24 shopping days left. When I think of what’s coming over the next year it’s not surprising this one went by so fast. In the next 12 months:

º Connor will learn to walk.

º I will move Dillon Supply’s entire IT infrastructure from a hosted environment to the new corporate location including the construction of a new data center, new WAN telecommunications circuits for 23 branches, a VPN, VoIP and many other deployments in between. Microsoft Project is probably going to melt my laptop.

º I will pick up additional private IT Consulting work (particularly in the are of TAP’s, wireless LAN’s and associated security).

º We might buy a new house (I may postpone this due to the fact that I don’t want the stress of moving a company and my family in the same year).

º And I’m sure there’s about a hundered other things I’m forgetting. All I know is, I gotta get and stay healthy so I can see it all through.