Bad Luck Comes in 3's.

Well, in the last few weeks I've seen Spider-man 3, Shrek 3 and now "Pirates 3".

My overall review of all three of them is the same. Don't waste your money on any of them.

Spider-man 3 started off the bad luck. I enjoyed both previous movies but this one went terribly wrong early on. The entire middle section was a complete joke and the ending did little to undo the damage. The only bright spot I could find in the whole movie was Kirsten Dunst. For someone who isn't my type she still managed to sizzle while onscreen. Everyone else looked like they were walking through it. I also thought Thomas Haden Church was entirely miscast and that his character was terribly written. If they continue on, they're going to have to re-group and start over.

I can't even recall large swaths of Shrek 3 and I just saw it Friday night. It was totally forgettable. I don't know that much could have been done about it as this story really was about the uniqueness of it all. Once that was gone, there really wasn't any point. This one felt like it should have been released direct to video. I started to type the number of times I recall laughing and now have to edit that to say I don't recall laughing even once. A smile and possibly a light chuckle here and there is all I could conjure up. I'm hoping this is the last we hear of Shrek, at least as a full motion picture.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End fared no better. In fact, I would say I enjoyed Shrek 3 more and if you just read the above paragraph that about says it all. The movie was 3 hours long and that was 3 hours too long. I found none of it rewarding. The funniest part of the movie was the small monkey and even then, rarely. It was a total mess of a story. We all kept asking each other what the hell was going on. Little of it made any sense. There were too many ships and too many people to keep track of. It also appears that the writers entirely forget that Johnny Depp was the reason for the success of the first movie. He was reduced to being a caricature of his previous performances in the role. No meat at all here. I also am shocked to say that we saw WAY too much of Bill Nighy as Davey Jones. I love this guy in anything he does but I was just worn out with him almost immediately. Yes, the effects were interesting but we've been there, done that. The funny part is, I wouldn't mind revisiting this "franchise" but they need to completely go in a different direction if it continues on. There's been talk of telling Barbossa's story but I was sick of him by the end too. My best hope for these movies is that it energize Disney to get off their asses to finally renovate the theme park attractions. They were novel 35 years ago. Now the attraction just looks that old.

What a bust. For me that's roughly $100 down the tubes on the trio (tickets for the family and concessions.) It's $100 I'd rather have back.

It's amazing to me to think that when we first heard these three movies would be out within 3 weeks of each other in May that it would represent some incredibly amazing movie history and a great lead-in the summer movies. Instead no one is talking in those tones any longer. They're all making decent money but nowhere near the blockbuster status that was predicted.

The other funny thing is that these movies generally fill you with previews wetting your appetite for a bevy of summer films. Instead, the only preview that looked strangely interesting was for The Transformers. The animated movies all look like decent product but without any true stand-outs in the bunch.

So, I still find that the two best movies I've seen this year were both foreign (The Lives of Others, Black Book) and thus pretty obscure and unknown. Even the French comedy, The Valet, was more interesting than all three of sequels above.

Fun with Virtumonde

What the hell is Virtumonde you ask? I'd like to tell you but it seems I can't quite get anyone willing to commit to exactly what it is.

You see, the other day I got an invitation to try out the new Internet-based TV service Joost. After installing it my PC began to act very strange. I can't say for sure that Joost was the cause but some cursory evidence suggests it might have been involved. Joost, it turns out, is put out by the same people who brought us Kazaa. Kazaa was the P2P file sharing tool that came loaded with all sorts of spyware, etc.

Anyway, not long after watching a bit of overly-compressed video shows my PC started popping up ads all over the place. I launched Lavasoft's AdAware which has always been good at this sort of thing and it came up empty. I have had a sense that AdAware just isn't what it used to be and that my previous investment in it may have run its course.

I then ran Eset's NOD32. NOD32 is the best damned virus protection engine in the world as far as I'm concerned. It's small, fast and effective. I've seen it run circles around the bloatware that is passed off as protection from the better known providers. In fact, 90% of the time I work on cleaning up other PC's it's those mainstream "protection" products that are causing much of the problem. The concern here is that NOD32 didn't see anything either. However, once I started poking it did block further attempts to infect my system.

The most telling symptom I had were the websites that my PC kept trying to access. I did a search on these and Google immediately kicked back a slew of hits for Virtumonde. I also found a few people who claimed that Spyware Doctor from PC Tools was effective at finding and removing it.

You have to understand that you need to be careful with recommendations like this. Half the time the product being recommended is a scam. There are loads of products out there sold as spyware and virus protection that do nothing else but add the very things they claim to protect you from. However, I found some solid reviews of this one on trusted sites. Further, I have a fond spot in my memory for "PC Tools". I'm pretty sure this company has nothing to do with the PC Tools of my memory. That DOS-based utility was indispensable in its day. Based on all of that I decided to give it a shot. It was $29.95 so it wasn't going to break the bank either way.

I was glad to see that it quickly identified several instances of Virtumonde and also actively started blocking continued attempts to spread. That alone made it worthwhile. After a full scan and removal I rebooted and ran again. More instances were found. This is typical with this sort of thing as it often will take a reboot or three to get free. I repeated this a few times and each time I was confident that I'd emerged clean only to be hit within a few minutes of rebooting.

So much for complete protection from any of the tools I had. Back to Google. I found several references to another free app called Vundofix that seemed to work for people. It's a tiny single .EXE file but be patient when you run it. It'll take a LONG time. At the end of running it I was surprised to see that it had identified 10 DLL's that were all seemingly randomly named as infected. It removed the ones it could and marked the ones it couldn't to be deleted after rebooting. On reboot it did indeed remove the others. However, the problem continued to persist and Vundofix continued to find new variations.

I then decided it was time for me to dig into the tool many people use but that I'd managed to avoid all this time--Hijack This. Hijack This is essentially a power system scanner that shows you everything in your system that gets loaded that could possibly be harmful. It includes everything so you have to be very careful here as you can easily remove perfectly sound elements that are not in any way infected and could take away something vital to the OS.

The log it produced immediately pointed out several attempts to load random DLL's, INI files and curious Windows Logon attempts. I removed all of these and now seem to be Virtumonde-free for now. I also uninstalled Joost and don't plan to return to it for now until I see a lot more feedback from people on it with regard to what it may or may not install.

The funny part in all of this is the passing of the buck I ran into when posting about his. The NOD32 community tell me it's spyware and, as such, NOD32 shouldn't be expected to deal with this (even though NOD32 features suggest it does target this sort of thing). Spyware Doctor reps say it's a virus and outside the scope of its software. Ah, you've got to love living on the technology edge.

What the Hell is Wrong with Sean Hannity?

How does this guy get any respect from people what-so-ever? I firmly believe 75% of the support he gets come from intellectually-challenged people. He continually says things that are just entirely ridiculous and often hypocritical.

He's now trying to suggest that former Senator John Edwards doesn't understand the nature of the battle in the war being waged against us. Okay, nothing wrong with that. But what is it that he points to as the reason for this? He points to the video of Edwards fixing his hair before a TV interview.

In his view no one that does that can possibly understand what we're up against.

Are you kidding me? Has this moron looked in a mirror lately? The guy clearly has his own primping issues. His own co-host, Alan Colmes, pointed out that he's seen Sean Hannity doing the same thing. Hannity's response is that he only take three to three and a half minutes to do his hair.

I can't recall the last time I took more than 30-45 seconds on mine so I guess in Hannity terms I must be a military savant.

Sean Hannity continues to just spew out hatred and bias at every turn. He only gets away with it because so many of his viewers can't or won't put his own comments and actions together. Like I said a bit ago, he ripped Senator John Kerry for voting against funding the troops but then had nothing negative to say when the President vetoed a similar funding bill two weeks ago.

If this guy is your idea of a "Great American" please, go back to watching Jerry Springer and Cops and stay out of the political arena.

$7.25 an hour or Death in a Desert

Great job Dems. You really showed the world. You've now given our poor two options. Work for $7.35 an hour or go join our forces in Iraq and risk your life for a tad more.

None of the Democrats that voted for this spending bill should be returned to office in 2008. If either Senators Clinton or Obama had voted for it, that would have been reason enough for me not to vote for them in 2008.

How poor is a party that, with control and a lame duck dufus of a President, they still cannot enforce the will of the people who put them there?

We've been sold out for $2.10 an hour.....

Gardening Dress Code

I've been living in my current home for about 8 years now. During this time I've had some of the same neighbors for the duration. Two original owners that were here moved out and younger families moved in. Such is the way of the cycle of neighborhood life I suppose.

However, one neighbor that's been here the whole time, has been doing something for all 8 years that just today struck me as odd enough to comment on it. The couple that live in the house are very good neighbors. They're always ready with a friendly greeting and never give you cause to complain about anything. If anything I'm always the one that's concerned that they're the ones that have reason to complain about things, but of course they never do.

It's Saturday on a nicely bright, if a bit chilly, day. The neighbors are out there working on their property cleaning up the yard. As is his habit, the husband is in his usual gardening attire. Now understand that when I work on the lawn, you may not want to actually come up and engage me. I most likely didn't get a shower that morning, likely am wearing something I know I won't mind getting torn or impossibly dirty and potentially just look tattered in general.

This is anything but the case with this neighbor. There he is, out there in the yard, in his sky blue buttoned-down dress shirt, tan khaki pants with a nice brown belt, a pair of incredibly white sneakers (though I suspect he'd call them athletic wear) and perfectly clean work gloves. How the work gloves remain clean I can't say but they just do. He's also clearly freshly shaven and clean. I have no doubt that he'll be taken a second shower (of possibly three?) once the job for the day is done.

I guess it's just me. I don't get it. Why would anyone get dressed up to work on the lawn? It makes me wonder what he does if he has to work on the plumbing.

White House Continues to Support Gonzales

Wow, what a big surprise. The big baby in the White House continues to support his buddy, Alberto Gonzales. Who is shocked at this "news"?

We have the makings of a tiny dictator in the White House. The Congress needs to stop playing around and put this man in his place sooner rather than later. This administration continues to openly ignore and ridicule the will of everyone else and to treat the country like their own personal play thing. It has got to stop.

I'm starting to grow concerned that George W. Bush will just up and decide, as The Decider, that God doesn't want him to leave office until "the job is done". I wouldn't put it past the guy to try to actually find a loophole to keep him in power. As no other section of the Constitution means anything to him, why should something as simple as term limits get in his way?

What has to happen to people in this administration before we toss them out of their jobs?

White House Supports Wolfowitz

The White House and President George W. Bush have announced that they support embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.

Does that come as a surprise to anyone? How is this even considered newsworthy at this point? This administration will back any of their friends regardless of their offense. At this point its clear to everyone but the administration that their support is anything but helpful to their cause. How many times do we have to remind these guys about Michael Brown?

Karl Rove could be caught red-handed sodomizing orphaned children, having sex with corpses and training terrorist agents to blow up the Sears Tower and this administration would jump out there to tell you they support him completely.

I can't believe we have no other realistic option but to have to ride out the hideous mistake made by half the country to re-elect this group. I think we'd do better governing the country by using a Magic 8-Ball.

Typical Hypocrisy on the Right

As I post this President Bush is preparing to veto the troop spending bill in front of him. He'll be making a statement afterwards about his comments on the situation.

As expected the media on the Right all have ruffled feathers over the entire situation. Congress is irresponsible. Congress is acting like traitors. Congress is crazy for not sending a clean bill to the President.

First, President Bush has been in office for 6+ years and this is the first time I've heard him make a big deal over the need for receiving a clean bill. Why were pork-laden bills fine while the Republicans were in charge of Congress but now they're a problem with Democrats in charge? Hmm...

Second, this is all hypocrisy. During the 2004 election all we heard about, time and again, from these same people was how John Kerry voted against funding the troops. The bill in question was for $87 billion that President Bush requested for the troops. Kerry got skewered for saying, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." What he did was to vote for the funding in a clean bill and then voted against the bill the Bush administration put forward that was laden with special interests.

Why is this any different? It isn't and that's the point. The President has the bill in front of him to fund the troops. He doesn't like what else in in the bill? Hey, go ahead and veto it but then he should send people out to say they were wrong on Kerry's comments in 2004 and never raise this sort of objection again. Of course that's just not going to happen and of course this is all just typical Washington politics.