David’s Ramblings

This movie was shown in previews as a simple-minded ‘black family tries to accept white in-law’ movie, but it proved to have its moments that transcended the obvious racial differences. I thought it was rather humorous, so in this mini-review it gets 4π out of 900º. How can you beat Bernie Mac? He’s a funny guy.

Video Game “Second Life”
Rating: 3.7π out of 900º

Second Life is a fairly new game that I caught being advertised on Apple’s website the other day. I decided to try it out and see how it worked for me.

First off, a quite noticeable advantage of the game is that you download a 40mb client and the rest is handled by their servers, meaning quick and easy download (on broadband) and manageable download even on a 56k. The clients are also made for multiple OSes, something I always like to see.

The game isn’t completely free however, and it costs somewhere around $15 dollars to get a basic account to play with. It’s not monthly, just one flat fee. Whether it is worth it is up to your tastes in games, but I’d petition it’s worth looking into their free trial and bailing if you don’t like it (which they make very easy to do — no complex hoops to jump through).

Their main source of revenue is in the fact you can pay a monthly fee to be allowed to own land in their virtual world. Something that you wouldn’t do unless you really started spending a lot of time on.

Anyway, enough about costs and technicalities and on to the gameplay. The basic idea of Second Life is similar to that of the Sims, only with a single character for you and a much larger, more open world to play in with other people. Second Life was put together from the beginning with mods in mind, and they actually have people setting up shops selling vehicles, special haircuts, clothing, etc.

The idea of such an enveloping world is compelling, and was kind of fun to dink around with. My Mac seems to need a bit more RAM to run the game smoothly however, so I didn’t explore near as much as I’d have liked to. I would say that anyone that finds an internet chat room worth investing time in would likely enjoy a game where everyone is controlling a character and running them around without any purpose. And how could you not like the fact that every character can fly? Fun stuff.

If you think you might enjoy looking into a complete virtual world, you might do yourself a favor and try this game out. I’m not saying it’s for you, but you can have a free trial to find out.

Identity theft is a nasty problem. Don’t let it happen to you. I can now tell you from personal experience that identity theft is no laughing matter. I just got my identity stolen 2 weeks ago. Only 3 checks were written and I’m still trying to sort out the issue.

Of course, identity theft is a lot easier for someone that already knows you personally. Watch out for your mom or your dad stealing your identity to buy a Porsche (because you obviously have that kind of credit), and, above all else, watch out for your grandfather stealing your identity. They’re the hardest to catch because nobody suspects old people are capable of anything.

What am I babbling about? My grandfather stole my identity a few weeks ago. A box of checks came in the mail and he went out and started using them. 3 checks later, he was finally caught in his own web of lies and deception and was forced to return the checkbook. An honest mistake? Perhaps, but having the exact same name as your descendants is hardly reason enough to take their hard-earned money and pay it off to the grocery store.

You’d think he’d have gone for something nice and flashy, but Mr David Haslem (or should we call him public enemy number one?) decided to lie low with my identity, paying a bill or two and writing groceries until his wife caught him in the act. Man did he feel sorry he’d mistaken the David Haslem written on the checks as his and not his grandson’s.

Oh well, I’ll have a check back from them as soon as I care to ask. And besides, those three checks he wrote were three more than I’ve written so far. Maybe he did my checkbook a favor by breaking it in. Just remember that identity theft can happen to anyone, especially people that live in the same house with a person that has the same name.

It’s time to catch up with my website updates, so what better place to start with than a Monty Python movie?

Score: 4.9π out of 900º

Though Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’ is an awesome movie, it is not a family friendly one; nor, for that matter, is it a friendly movie to anyone opposed to seeing breasts or hearing musical lyrics regarding the spiritual status of sperm. It is, however, classic Monty Python and thus extremely witty.

The movie, after chasing out idiots that aren’t sure what movie they think they’re watching via a trick feature presentation, goes on to attempt to describe what life is all about through a series of 10-15 minute skits loosely tied together. They never really solve the problem, but by the end of the movie we have no choice to assume that life is about silly jokes and bare-breasted women galavanting about.

Okay, so sex is also a large chunk of the meaning of life, and that’s accounted for too. Ranging from the sex education course with live demonstration to a pianist singing about his penis, there’s a large emphasis on sex throughout the movie. While I’d find it far too crude and tasteless elsewhere, Monty Python just has a way of pulling it off in the right way.

They also have to include fighting each other and death to round out the course of life fully. Rounded off with a couple of skits on birth (including the Roman Catholic singing about how every sperm is sacred, which is why he could not wear a condom and prevent himself from having 400 or so starving children) and a skit on live organ donation this movie turns out to be very humorous indeed. (Though it still gets quite vulgar in parts, mind you)

I left the movie feeling much better enlightened as to the meaning of life, being mainly that Monty Python was a genius group, so I give this the near perfect score of 4.9π.