Wanted was a great film, in more ways than one.  Of course, I just had to do a little research on whether it's even plausible to curve the trajectory of bullets.  It turns out that it might be, but not in the way it was presented:

• The bullet would need to be spherical, and spinning in a similar way to a curveball (to obey the Magnus effect)
• The Coriolis effect, due to the spinning of the Earth, could possibly curve the bullet, but only over very long distances and by a very small amount
• The bullet would have to exhibit an electric charge and then be acted on by a strong magnetic field
• For a moment in time, there must have existed a large gravitational force, so much so that space and time distort (obeying General relativity), causing the bullet to curve into this distortion.  I think we are off topic here, though

(Some of these sites were somewhat informative)

The Office Space parallels were also amusing.  Overall, a great movie.

Is it just me, or has Comcast severely overengineered their network?  I realize counting hops is not a great indication, but jeez, look at the route from Carteret, NJ to Sarasota, FL:

 1  *
 2  ge-2-2-ur01.avenel.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.220.105)  12.709 ms
 3  po-10-ur02.avenel.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.230)  9.448 ms
 4  po-10-ur01.union.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.234)  14.094 ms
 5  po-10-ur02.union.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.238)  11.804 ms
 6  po-10-ur01.jerseycity.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.242)  11.263 ms
 7  po-10-ur02.jerseycity.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.246)  9.671 ms
 8  po-10-ur01.narlington.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.250)  102.193 ms
 9  po-10-ur02.narlington.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.158.178)  10.928 ms
10  po-70-ar01.verona.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.209.254)  11.799 ms
11  te-0-7-0-7-crs01.plainfield.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.72.18)  13.150 ms
12  te-4-1-cr01.newyork.ny.cbone.comcast.net (68.86.72.17)  14.084 ms
13  te-9-1-cr01.philadelphia.pa.cbone.comcast.net (68.86.68.5)  15.406 ms
14  te-9-1-cr01.mclean.va.cbone.comcast.net (68.86.68.1)  19.489 ms
15  te-9-1-cr01.richmond.va.cbone.comcast.net (68.86.68.113)  24.101 ms
16  te-9-1-cr01.charlotte.nc.cbone.comcast.net (68.86.68.109)  29.698 ms
17  te-2-3-ar01.augusta.ga.augusta.comcast.net (68.86.72.130)  33.294 ms
18  te-9-3-ar01.leesburg.fl.lakecnty.comcast.net (68.85.229.241)  44.113 ms
19  te-1-4-ar01.sumter.fl.lakecnty.comcast.net (68.85.210.2)  44.614 ms
20  te-7-1-ar01.venice.fl.westfl.comcast.net (68.85.229.245)  48.950 ms
21  te-9-1-ur01.palmerranch.fl.westfl.comcast.net (68.87.238.22)  48.943 ms
22  te-8-1-ur01.proctorrd.fl.westfl.comcast.net (68.87.238.38)  49.611 ms
23  GE-0-1-ubr02.proctorrd.fl.westfl.comcast.net (68.87.239.102)  49.894 ms
24  c-68-56-242-97.hsd1.fl.comcast.net (68.56.242.97)  59.860 ms

Half of those locations aren't even Comcast-serviceable areas (Charlotte is, ahem, Time Warner Cable).  So why all the routers?  From what I can gather, the packets ride local regional transit first, then hits the C-Bone (Comcast-to-Comcast transit?), then rides regional transit in Florida to the destination.  Compare that to a somewhat shorter trip from Ontario, CA to Charlotte, NC via Time Warner Cable:

 1  *
 2  cpe-76-89-176-1.socal.res.rr.com (76.89.176.1)  8.926 ms
 3  76.167.9.229  11.056 ms
 4  76.167.9.197  11.759 ms
 5  tge3-0-0.lsanca1-rtr1.socal.rr.com (76.167.2.76)  25.372 ms
 6  ae-3-0.cr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.66)  21.038 ms
 7  ae-0-0.cr0.lax30.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.5)  21.610 ms
 8  ae-5-0.cr0.dca20.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.3)  86.679 ms
 9  ae-0-0.cr0.dca10.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.30)  84.306 ms
10  66.109.6.81  92.312 ms
11  gig5-0-0.chrlncsa-rtr1.carolina.rr.com (24.93.64.20)  95.224 ms
12  srp1-1.chrlncdnb-rtr1.carolina.rr.com (24.93.67.165)  103.886 ms
13  gig0-1.chrlncdnb-ubr2.carolina.rr.com (24.93.65.162)  90.738 ms
14  cpe-071-075-164-178.carolina.res.rr.com (71.75.164.178)  105.334 ms

Aside from some missing PTR records, we ride regional transit to LA, hit the T-Bone to Ashburn, VA (Equinix), and then ride regional transit through Charlotte.

Check this out.  Click and drag the video.  360°.

(reminds me a little of the Star Trek: Captain's Chair software, only better)

Since I recently moved some of my lab VMs off of tacolinux, I chose to reinstall the box with something different (variety is the spice of life, right?).  I chose OpenSolaris 2008.05, codenamed Project Indiana.

Supposedly OpenSolaris has come a long way in the last year.  Sun hired Ian Murdock last year, so I figured package management in OpenSolaris is much improved by now.  I also wanted to play around with ZFS, since it's the fad as of late.

Unfortunately, my plans were cut short due to a crappy Silicon Image SATA controller:

Oh well.

I've always avoided Starbucks, mostly because I'm a nonconformist, and also because I don't drink coffee or believe in most high-priced 'popular' things.  I suppose that's an idealistic view of myself, but whatever.

Anyway, I saw this the other day:

Not bad.  Whoever you are, I agree!

Looks like Google Maps got some street view data of Charlotte:

Now I wish Adobe would release an amd64/x86-64 build of libflashplugin.so.  nspluginwrapper is prone to lockups, it seems :-(

I wanted some warmer weather, but this isn't what I had in mind.  It was 95°F here in Charlotte yesterday, and today it reached 99°F.  I got a sunburn yesterday :(

It also looks like the 12th floor (XO) of 111 8th has been getting toasty during the heatwave:

I hope stuff doesn't start burning up.  A good portion of the international Internet connectivity for the east coast goes through that building.

If you're into trance, I suggest checking out Armin van Buuren's latest album, Imagine.  One of my favorite tracks to far is In and Out of Love, featuring the vocals of Sharon den Adel (from Within Temptation).

Oddly enough, freedb tagged the artist as "Various Artists" instead of Armin van Buuren.  Weird.