Movie Review: Iron Man
May 9th, 2008 by matt
Wow.
That’s really all I need to say about it. This movie was fantastic. The acting was superb, with no one feeling like they were typecast (i.e., no Gary Oldman in the role of a villain). The direction was great, something I never saw coming from Jon Favreau back in his Swingers days. Don’t get me wrong, Swingers was a great movie, but who could see a special effects extravaganza like Iron Man coming from Swingers?
The only thing I didn’t like was some of the dialogue in the very beginning was slightly over the top. Like, the scientist who was in the cave with Tony and helped him to escape, some of his lines were very obviously said in order to affect a great life change in Tony. It was just a little bit of being hit over the head with those lines. But, this is such a very minor quibble.
Definitely go see this movie. If you want a bit of a cliffhanger, stay until after the credits. I won’t say anything more than that.
Florida Teachers are Undersexed
May 6th, 2008 by matt
What in the world is going on in Florida? First we had Debra Lafave, who plead guilty to having sex with a minor. Now there’s news of three more Florida teachers, all women, who have been arrested for allegedly having sex with minors.
Apparently Florida is the place to be if you’re an underage boy and you’re looking for some hot action with a female teacher.
Somewhat related is the news about Tiffany Shepherd, another Florida teacher, who may have been fired for taking a part time job as a bikini-clad fishing tour guide. I’m just waiting for someone to discover that she had sex with an underage boy, too.
Grad School: Access Denied!
May 5th, 2008 by matt
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m moving to Raleigh in order to go to grad school. And to get out of Northern VA. The two reasons are pretty equal, actually. Turns out I won’t be starting grad school when I planned.
I only applied to NC State because they have a program that is specifically designed for working professionals, such as myself, to attend part-time. That and the other big schools in the area had deadlines much sooner than NC State and I missed them because I’m an expert procrastinator.
The program is an MCS, which stands for Master of Computer Science. It’s different than their regular MS program in that it’s a terminal degree, which means you couldn’t use it to go on to get a PhD, which is fine with me. The program requirements are also a little more lax than the normal MS program.
Somehow, I managed to apply for the regular MS program instead of the MCS program. I don’t know how I did that. But since I was being considered for the MS program, which is a heavy research-oriented program, and being that I only have a CS minor and my GRE scores were just OK, my application was declined. Oh well.
I guess no one actually reads the statement of purpose you’re supposed to include in your application, though, since I very clearly spelled out that I was applying for the MCS program on a part-time basis. You’d think someone would read that and it would raise a red flag since two + two is not adding up to four. But I digress.
So now my plan is to retake the GRE’s, this time giving myself more than four days to prepare, and to take a CS class or two on a non-degree basis so I can bolster my CS knowledge (on paper, anyway). I’ll reapply in the Spring or, if they don’t allow that, in the Fall. And if Duke or UNC has a program that would work for me, I’ll apply there too.
I just have to somehow trick my inner procrastinator.