New PC for me!

Been a while since I posted here, and the wife was making fun of me for not updating enough in my blog. Quick blurb here, will be updated a bit later on.

I'm building a new computer for myself. The last one of its kind was built in the last quarter of 2001... and I've been patching on new technolog as it becomes available ever since. In fact, the computer I'm posting this on from now is that very same computer. To give you an idea of its age, is uses RAMBUS, doesn't have USB 2.0, no SATA, and still uses AGP 8x. I know, I know, ANCIENT. So to give myself a platform on which to last me another 5 years, I got myself a top of the line motherboard from ASUS. It's the A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

Lets just say, this board is beautiful. Dual gigabit LAN. Onboard 8-channel audio. SATA II, built in RAID, PCIe 16x times two (a feature not many boards have). I have ordered all the parts from NewEgg and everything but the keyboard has arrived (wait until you see the keyboard, it rocks!). I'll be taking pictures of the process as I did with the last computer I built, and soon my next post will be posted from the new computer.

All I need is a new name for it.

Real Transformer

Gotta quick post here, just a video of a robot that someone created that transforms!

Happy New Year!

So, 2006. Wow, ten years ago I was a freshman in High School. Now I work for a highly successful company, my position is secure, and they are already looking at how they can better use my talent. Life is good. ('cept my dog sucks, I think he is smarter than us sometimes and has managed to undo any housetraining we taught him, except for the rare times we are in the same room as him and he wants a treat. Then he'll go in his litterbox.)

Car is running decently (knock on wood), holidays are over, Scrubs is new tonight and Lost is new next week, booya. Got me a black iPod 30GB that plays video, and it has come in handy at work, let me tell you. Christmas was insanely busy for us. A few days after, we had something like 14,000 ABANDONED calls in the iPod queue. That's 14,000 people who called in and hung up before they even got to us. Macworld is in a week, and I have a feeling that there will be a release of some new products that will make us even busier. Hope its a new iBook, or Powerbook, with an Intel processor. Intel, BTW, has changed their 37 year old logo to this:


I think it's kinda bland actually, I liked the old one with the dropped 'e'. Oh well, change is inevitable.



Anywho, 2 new Scrubs' episodes in about 30 minutes, gotta go!

Apple

Well, I've been at Apple for 3 weeks now and I can honestly say I think I am going to love this job. It's everything Earthlink was and better. Apple is making insane amounts of money right now because of the iPod, in fact we just finished up the fiscal year and have had the best year EVER at Apple. So that's good. As I may have mentioned before, I am a Tier 2 agent. However, for the first 2 months I will be working in the capacity of Tier 1. This means I have time to adjust to how things work here and learn the ropes without being rushed. The training is absolutely phenomenal. I've never experienced anything like it. Earthlink's training was awesome, Apple's is... without words to describe it. Just plain good. Benefits at Apple are insanely good. Discounts at Apple and affiliates are mind boggling (60% off Monster Cable. Up to $5,000 off a new car through Volkswagon. Etc.) The atmosphere... so laid back. Dress code casual, nearly non-existant. The people are friendly and knowledgable. I know quite a few people already, from Earthlink and even HP. The pay... is the best I have ever received. The only thing that slightly sucks is driving for 30 miles, nearly an hour each way. However in January our lease is up and we are looking at moving to Elk Grove.

If anyone wants/needs a job, gimme your resume. Email me at dnewell@apple.com, dash16@gmail.com, or dash16@mac.com. We are hiring right now. If you are a software engineer, drop me a line. If you are in sales, or tech support, talk to me. I would like nothing better than to have my friends working with me at this incredible company. I used to hate Macs. As we approach the Intel crossover next year, the line between PCs and Macs will blur, and if you harbor an unnatural hate for Macs as I used to you may want to consider opening your mind. I'm not a switcher; you can pry my PC from my cold dead hands. But I will be getting a Mac as soon as I can afford it, an iBook in fact. The way I look at it, a man with one tool in his toolchest is a fool. There are many tools for different problems, and I intend to avail myself of as many of the tools I can.

Dual boot Yellow Dog Linux/ Mac OS X 10.4 baby. Gonna take over the world.

Fable

Been playing Fable: The Lost chapters for the PC. Great game, superb even. Haven't had this much fun since KOTOR 2. Fable has a very intricate morality system. If you walk into a town, go into someone's house and search their bookshelves for items and remove them, you will be punished if someone sees you do it. The owner of the house will run off and find a guard, who will come and offer to take the fine for stealing or breaking and entering or lockpicking or whatever it is the villager reported, and if you decline to pay they will attack you. Different crimes have different penalties, for instance if you kill a guard its a $2000 fine, if you are trespassing in someone's house it is only $150. The key is not to get caught if you are going to break the law. When you build up your stealth skill high enough you can lockpick and steal items from shop owners. At night, when everyone is sleeping and the guards are patroling, you can break into a shop and steal things. Whenever you do something wrong like this you get evil points; when you do good things like kill a bandit or give money to someone who needs it you get good points.

I'm playing through the first time evil cause its easier to do. Even breaking barrels in town for items like healing potions or food is vandalism and stealing, and you get fined for it. Also, sometimes in the heat of combat you could accidentally target a friendly and take them down, evil points galore. Kinda different from most RPGs, where you can walk into everyone's house, break their pots or boxes or open their treasure chests for money or food or items and no one cares. I'm focusing on strength and speed and melee attacks, next time through I'll play the Gandalf/Elminster/Merlin character and be an uber good magic user.

The world is alive, more so than any game I have played. In the wild between cities you will run into traders and people traveling to go to other towns, there is a day and night system so if you arrive at town in the middle of night and need to buy something shops will be closed. You can talk to everyone, maybe not have in depth conversations but there are different actions and expressions you learn along the way. Such as flirting, flexing your muscles, standing in a heroic pose, belching, pretending to be a chicken, and so on. You can have women (or men) fall in love with and marry you. You can buy real estate, fix it up, live in it or rent it out. You can make money by buying goods in one town and selling them for more money in another town. And there isn't an unlimited supply of goods, items will actually sell out until they get another shipment in. You can punt chickens for points (or just for fun), compete in an archery range for prizes, escort traders to towns and have them follow or wait in places while you clear out the bandits or monsters ahead.

I haven't even gone into the elaborate skills and leveling system. Its very easy to make whatever kind of character you want. Offensive magic user, beserker melee barbarian, stealthy rogue sniper. Storyline is decent, kinda cliche/predictable, but maybe there's a plot twist coming I haven't seen yet.

iEmployment

So far so good with Apple. My background check went fine, orientation starts on the 21st. Job will start on the 26th. Only final hurdle is a drug check, and I'm clean.

I've been doing some work for Ashley's stepdad in the meantime for his photography business, mostly sorting and balancing images and updating his website. He wants me to create a shopping cart system so people can buy photographs from him online, but I honestly think it is beyond my current web skills. As much as I think I know, I still have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. I think the shopping cart would take some other programming that I don't know right now, probably something like PHP. I don't know enough even to know what I'm going to need to learn in order to do it.

How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions and Access the Internet Privately

http://www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork/

This is a great walkthrough on how to turn your home PC into a proxy server and how to SSH to it from a remote site.

iJob

So last Monday I got a call from an Apple recruiter. I was having lunch with Ashley so she set up a time to call me back on Tuesday. Tuesday came, she called, I liked what she was offering so she set up a technical phone interview with a supervisor later that day. Supervisor called, I answered his questions with ease, and the recruiter called back to schedule an interview at Apple on Friday.

Apple is in Elk Grove, kind of a far drive for me.

Friday comes, I put on my best clothes and drive on down. The application and interview process took about an hour, I think I did really well. The position they are offering is a tier 2 position, so right off the bat I'd be getting as much as I did at Sutter. Benefits would start day one of working there, and I'd get discounts on Apple products. They even have a 3 week training class to ensure we are ready to take calls.

I should hear back by Monday or Tuesday this coming week. This could be a great job.

Contracting

In this day and age, the common employee is disposable. Take contractors. Being a contract employee basically means you get paid less to do the same job as a full time employee, you get no benefits, and you have no job rights. At any time an employer may terminate a contract employee without having to give any reason at all. They are filler, to get the job done when faced with budget constraints and/or an imminent need for help. The last three jobs I worked at started off as contract work. Earthlink through TAC staffing, HP through Volt Services, and Sutter through TekSystems. Earthlink was nice, I worked 3 months as a contract employee (basically a trial period) and after that I was hired on full time. At HP I was brought in to serve a need; they were outsourcing their call center to India and Canada and needed someone to stay until the transition was complete. Part of the reason I was brought in at Sutter was to help with the additional call volume of aquiring California Pacific Medical Centers in the Bay area, some thousands of additional customers to support. I have felt the good and bad of being a contractor, and today I felt the teeth.

At about 5:10 PM I got a call from my contact at TekSystems, the outstanding man who got me my job and has been nothing but nice to me. He called to inform that my contract at Sutter had been terminated today.

Initial reaction was denial.

I had just heard a few weeks ago from another employer at TekSystems, who happens to the the Sutter liason (and who also is an incredibly nice lady) that my contract had been extended to the end of the year. I was just about to tell him he should talk to her about that when he kept on going, intent on giving me the whole story up front.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and has since not returned.

Apparently I am not a team player. I am not courteous with customers on the phone. I have a bad habit of surfing the internet or reading between calls or while I am on the phone.

The only truth to any of this is my internet browsing. I do not believe it is/was a problem, but the fact of the matter is this: if it was a problem, my supervisor or manager should have approached me and informed me that what I was doing was a problem. I didn't see my performance suffering as a result, I made just as many if not more tickets than most of the people there. Plain and simple, from day one I have been kept out of the loop. No one saw fit to tell me anything that was going on in my job, even things that directly impacted me. Two weeks ago they moved my desk. I was told the day of, a few minutes before the time for me to move to shut down and move my computer. Last week they changed our extensions around. I was on the phone with a customer when the telco technician yanked my phone line. My phone was down for an hour and a half, and the ticketing system was down as well so I literally couldn't work for over an hour. Again, no prior notice. A month or so after I started working, one of the guys there was installing updates on my machine while I was on the phone with a customer, the computer rebooted, and I lost any work or notes I had created for that customer. I basically had to ask them to call back because my computer just restarted. Again, not a word of what was going on to me. Last week we started using a template to record all of our notes in the ticketing system. I was told the day of that I was doing things wrong and needed to use this new way of recording notes.

I took EVERYTHING in stride. Fine, I thought, They can't tell me everything that goes on in my job. I never was unprofessional in any way at any of these times, despite the fact that I was basically given the shaft. The only time I was ever approached about anything was when my manager told me I couldn't wear sandals to work. Guess what? I stopped wearing sandals. I have consistantly been above average when it comes to call volume. We get a weekly summary of the help desk average and our own personal average, and nearly every day I am well above average in terms of numbers. As far as quality goes, I solve a good number of tickets and I route most tickets to the proper place. Its quite hard to be 100% when it comes to ticket routing, even people who have been there for years still send the occasional ticket the wrong way. I have never, not once been approached about my decorum with customers or my "lack" of being a team player. I have never, not ever lost my cool or professionalism with a customer on the phone. Not once. Sure, after the call I may vent, but I don't carry on about it.

This has been a complete shock. I guarentee I was better than most of the other contractors there, I've seen the numbers, I've read the tickets that come back to us. I was nothing but helpful to my fellow teammates, and in turn was told I wasn't a team player. I am respectful and professional with every person that called in to me, every email I responded to, every voicemail I transcribed. I never, not once disobeyed any order my superiors gave to me, I never got into arguements with my coworkers, I never got pissed at a customer and let it show to them while I was talking to them. As far as I knew I was an above average employee, and yet they shut the door on my back without even trying to explain anything to me. They childishly, cowardly ended my employment after I had already gone home for the day, in the middle of the week no less.

I will not let this get to me.

I will be the better man, I will explain myself and my actions to TekSystems, and hopefully they will have me employed again soon.

Addendum: I am a little disappointed. For once, I was using my skills and knowledge towards something worthwhile, supporting hostpitals and the infrastrucute behind them. My efforts were actually going toward saving lives. Maybe not directly, but indirectly. My last jobs were hardly this noble, I wouldn't say helping people connect to the internet or helping a corporate executive sort his email were earth shatteringly helpful, in the grand scheme of things.

Roomba

So we got a Roomba after our wedding, with some of the gift cards we received, some store credit, and a bit of cash. Real nice, vaccuums the whole apartment, even under the sofa. Word of advice? Make sure you know where your dog is when Roomba's doing its thing. Chester left a nice big pile in the wake of the Roomba, and when we found it it was going over the same spot over and over trying to get the crap up.

Brushes, dust bin, grill, wheels... all clogged with Chester doodie.

You don't know haet until you've cleaned dog shit out of your $250 robotic vaccuum cleaner.

Building a new computer, Part 5

I believe I am finished. I actually had to reinstall windows, this time started from SP1. After tinkering with things for a while, I concluded that the problems I was having could be attributed to a crappy screensaver. I downloaded this screensaver that had some pretty cool 3d effects, but after a while the screensaver would stutter and flash white overlay like it was trying to induce seizures. I had applied the screensaver to basically test the 3d card over long periods of time, but have since given up on it. Doom3 runs fine at 1024x768 on high with everything turned on. UT2004 plays flawlessly at the same settings and everything turned to MAX. Thief 3 is a little glitchy, but it may be running better now. Splinter Cell 3 ran great, but I uninstalled it cause I couldn't find a crack.

So windows is up to date (SP2 with all the updates), NAV 2005 antivirus installed, Office 2003, Daemon tools and tons of ISOs. This beast is ready to go.

Happy 7Eleven day, go get a free slurpee already.

Building a new computer, Part 4

Well, the new video card is here. I am posting this from the completed computer, and so far so good. The card I bought was cheaper, faster, and just overall better. Which just goes to show, ordering parts online is the way to go. Here is a screenshot of the desktop with the applied skin:

Building a new computer, Part 3

It's amazing how many problems you run into building a PC. From limitations in software, to hardware incompatibilities, to defective hardware/software, it can be a rocky road constructing a PC from the ground up. The first Windows XP SP2 CD I created had some problems... probably due to the customization I built into the install. I had to create another CD, sans customization, so I can use it on other PCs I build. Now that windows is functioning like I want it to, its time to load up with software. Mouse and keyboard drivers had to be updated with versions from Logitech's website, audio and video drivers all downloaded... I'm beginning to wonder why manufacturers even bother bundling CDs with their product. Odds are you are going to need to download new versions of it to be compatible with everything else. For instance, the mouse software worked fine, in everything except Firefox. Didn't recognize the back/forward buttons. Updated software, now it works fine.

The video card I got from Best Buy needs to go back. I've been wrangling with wierd graphics problems for 2 days now, and I've run out of viable options. I've removed and reinstalled the Catalyst drivers twice now, once with Driver Cleaner to remove any tidbits left behind. I get wierd graphics glitches... occasionally it will stutter, in the simplest things like a 3d screen saver or the 3D view in the Catalyst Control Center. Sometimes the whole screen will spasm with white overlay. Half the games I installed won't even run. Some do run, and they run beautifully, like UT2004 (with all the graphics turned up to MAX). Half-Life 2 runs, if a bit choppy at times. Haven't even tried Doom3 yet, but I'm sure it will have problems. Max Payne 2 wouldn't run, Far Cry had this wierd glitchy thing where it ran really fast, and crashed 75% of the time. I've ordered a new card from NewEgg and am going to have to wait until I get it to continue work on the computer, as you need a display adapter in order to see what is going on in the computer. Can't exactly work blind... although I could try and boot it and remote to the machine from my computer. Nah, better to just give it a rest for a bit, getting kinda burnt out.

I loaded a sweet looking skin for Windows, really goes with the whole blue and black theme I've got going. Will post a screenshot of it once I've got the new card installed.

Happy Fourth of July!

iMario

Taking a break from posting about the computer. It's nearly done, I'll create another post once I'm satisfied. In the meantime, here's Mario.

Building a new computer, Part 2

So, the rest of the parts came today. Err, yesterday... as I write this it is indeed Saturday. As I started photographing all of the parts for this blog, I realized that somehow the video card I had picked out disappeared! It wasn't in the shipment of parts, it wasn't on the order confirmation, it even disappeared from the wish list I put together. So, I've got all the working parts I need, sans video card. A quick trip to Best Buy remedied that, and I picked up some CPU thermal paste while I was there. I spent a couple hours delicately placing the parts into the insides of the case. I must say, this is the nicest case I have had to work with. Thumb screws. rack slides for the optical drives, removable hard drive rack, 3 fans built into the case (Two 120mm and one 80mm on the side), glossy black finish on a air-light aluminum case. Yep, it's purty. Plus its got nice blue glowy lights all over it. The PSU I ordered matches the case, it has a blue LED inside it and the housing is glossy as well, more of a dark grey. The optical drives and floppy drive as well (gotta update the BIOS and load the SATA driver somehow...).



As I write this, the 500GB SATA2 RAID Ø array is formatting, at 50%. It took some doing to get windows to see the array for what it was. I blame Microsoft for shoddy programming. Did you know that windowsXP, pre SP1 or SP2 couldn't see large hard drives for what they were? Anything larger than 130 GB got truncated. Bad, bad microsoft. So I had to slipstream an install CD, load it up with SP2, SATA drivers, unattended install, and WM player 10, and it is formatting right now. I idly pass the time by writing this blog. Whoopie.

I used to be a night person. 3 AM bedtime was a norm for me. I guess when you gotta wake up at 5:30AM for your job, your sleeping habits change.

Another slight hitch was updating the BIOS. I origionally loaded the updated BIOS along with the SATA RAID drivers on the same floppy. For whatever reason, the BIOS update utility was not seeing the BIOS file, maybe too many other files for it to parse. I copied the BIOS onto another disk along with a backup to the BIOS and it decided to see it and update finally, so I am up to F4 on this board, and the dual core processor is recognized. The hardware is connected, the HDDs are formatting, and soon the OS will be loaded and we have a functional computer. My job will nowhere be complete however, arguably the longest stage is ahead of me: software updates and installs. Gotta bring windows up to date, drivers up to date, apps and games to install.


This picture was taken with the flash off to show how nice the blue LEDs play off the inside of this case. Looks actually took a back seat to horsepower in this bad boy, and yet they turned out rather nice. I think my brother's friend should actually consider naming this computer Tsunami... as the case is called that, and it has the name printed on the front of the case. That would actually make for a pretty cool naming scheme... Tsunami, Earthquake, Volcano... naming your network PCs after natural disasters that is. Check Exit Mundi for more natural disasters and end of the world scenarios.

My brain is beginning to shut down, I am rambling. 70% on the format and no end in site. I've never formatted something as big as 500GB before... glad I went with 500 instead of 600. I am a little worried that the drives are not SATA2... there was no mention of the specification on the drives themselves, and they are OEM so no boxes. Well, NewEgg has them listed as SATA2, and if they are not I will have to take that up with them. Lets post this blog and see how it looks, shall we?

Building a new computer

So, I have been commissioned to build a new PC. My brother's friend is back from a 2 year haitus from the world and he needs a PC to do video editing. He gave me a budget of $2000 and told me to go buck wild. Well, not exactly buck wild, but he asked me to build a machine that I would want to have. So, for the next few days, I am going to document the building process of the machine.

We'll start with an list of parts. I ordered everything off http://www.newegg.com. NewEgg is, hands down, the best online retailer of computer parts. Fast, cheap shipping, excellent customer service, top notch hardware. You can view the wishlist I put together for the computer HERE. The CPU and motherboard came today. If you were too lazy to click the above link to see what they were, I'm gonna tell and show you.

CPU

I ordered a brand spanking new Athlon 64 X2. That's right ladies and gents, this is one of those splendiferous dual core processors we've all heard so very much about. The AMD is clocked at 2.2 GHZ, but it's a 4200+, which means in AMD terms this baby performs like a P4 running at 4.2 GHZ.

/me wipes the sweat from his brow

It's hot in California. Oh, and check out the behemoth heat sink below...




That is, by far, the largest and coolest stock cooling device I have seen bundled with a CPU. And look, it's even got heat pipe technology. AMD sure has come a loooong way.

Motherboard

Now, to back up this incredible brain powering the entire computer you need a fantastic motherboard. Quite literally, you can have the best and greatest individual components making up the different parts of the computer, but if you skimp on the motherboard you are gonna pay for it. The motherboard connects all of the parts together. I mean ALL of them. And a bad motherboard can do things like fry your nice expensive components to a crisp. So, ALWAYS spend extra money on the board, you will not regret it.

This board is chock full of the latest and greatest features. SATA2, PCI Express, something like 10 USB2 ports, Firewire B, Dual Channel DDR 400, Dual gigabit LAN, and 8 channel audio. Now, the one downside is currently, there is not an official supported BIOS for this board that supports the A64 X2. I managed to find a beta BIOS, but I am a little weary to try it. It shouldn't be too long before an official supported BIOS is out... I hope. ***Edit: Well, that was quick. Official BIOS is out.***




I'll update again when the rest of the parts arrive.

Our new dog

This is Chester. He is 100% Pomeranian, 75% fluff, 1% annoying, and 3 pounds soaking wet.

So, about a month ago Ashley was jonesing for a puppy. One day over AIM she just kept saying "puppy" over and over again, like she had invented a new language. Puppy, puppy puppy puppy-pup-pup puppy. Also, Puppy. I took the hint, she found one she wanted, and we drove out 30 minutes down to South Sacramento to a private breeder and purchased our dog. Incidentally, the family we bought him from was Vietnamese as well, so our dog is Vietnamese. Chester is so adorable, even the über macho man Tony exclaimed he was the cutest dog he had ever seen.

I am amazed at how smart he is. Already, after not even one month, he is about 75% housebroken and going in a litterbox. We've taught him to sit, lie down, stand up and balance on his hind legs for a short time, and we are working on shaking paws. We are crate training him and have confined him to a small area in out living room, probably will be there for another month or so until he is 100% housebroken. Then we just gotta stop him from chewing on things... but that should come after the teething stage has gone.

Attention Dog Guardians

Thought this picture was funny. Oh yeah, I have a dog now. More on that later. 

Succumb to the Dark Side

This was linked a while ago on Slashdot, but I'll put it here cause its damn funny.

Darth Vader's Blog

This blog is written from Darth Vader's POV, from the beginning of Empire and through Return of the Jedi, probably up until the end. Extremely funny, here is an excerpt of the entry where he froze Han Solo in carbonite:

"Human science experiments. A meditation on sculpture.

Today we put Captain Solo into the carbon freezing chamber, in order to test the system before capturing Luke Skywalker for delivery to my master, Sidious, on Coruscant. Everything went swimmingly -- the punk smuggler was put into perfect stasis. And people question the merits of human experimentation!

Captain Solo's body was half-visible, fused in mid-emergence from the face of the carbon brick. He was frozen in a cry of agony, hands grasping like claws, pelvis turned.

It made a beautiful sculpture. A perfect captured moment of a man in bondage, his heart blackened by hopelessness and pain.

It really spoke to me. Made me feel weird."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Saw the movie opening day with my wife, with Vince, Dan, Stephen, and Tony. I must say, I was a little weary after reading MJ Simpson's short spoiler-free review. He made it sound like an absolute travesty, an insult to Douglas Adams' legacy. Well, I am happy to say that this is absolute bunk; the movie rocked. Yes, it was not letter for letter the same as the book, a lot was changed, left out, or otherwise altered. This does NOT make it a bad movie, quite the contrary. H2G2 is and always will be a story constantly in flux. From the BBC Radio series to the Commodore64 video game (which is now available as a flash game on the BBC website) to the TV series (which I have not seen, but would love to) to the increasingly misnamed trilogy of 5 books, to the towel, the story varies from medium to medium. The movie more so than any other before, but it is still H2G2. Now, you may not exactly get it if you haven't experienced any of these medium, but it is still a good movie. My wife has not read the books, and she liked the movie.

I am currently reading the Ultimate HitchHiker's Guide again, and am surprised to see how many little things were in the movie that were direct homage to the book that I did not notice before. For instance, the book describes Prosser as being a direct descendant to Ghengis Kahn, and as such has unexplained visions of battle and a strange predilection for little fur hats. The movie says none of this, however I believe Prosser is wearing the fur hat. Also, the book talks about the Vogons and how the forces of evolution had given up on them but they did survive. It then mentions the "scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs" (which were in the movie), and the "elegant gazellelike creatures with silken coats and dewey eyes" which the Vogons would catch, sit on, and break their backs. There was a chair that a Vogon was sitting on in the movie that at first to me looked like the dog statue from Friends (with a broken back), but after reading the book's description I realized what it was. There are lots of little inside jokes like this that fans and dedicated diehards will love, such as Marvin from the TV series standing in line at the Vogon paperwork office.

I guess Disney is already talking about filming the sequels. They don't really need to go as far as "Mostly Harmless" or even "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (SLATFATF)", but it would pretty pretty spiffy if they did. Now that I think of it, "SLATFATF" would be hard to pull off, seeing as it deals with the Arthur's return to the Earth. At the end of the movie, they saw it fit to have the Margratheans complete Earth mk 2 but leave Arthur out of it. I guess they could work it in somehow, but they'll really have to start mucking about with the story and that would piss quite a few people off. As I understand it a lot of people are pissed about the movie anyways, but they can all eat their towels as far as I care. I liked the movie dammit, and I wanna see it again after I finish the books again.