Newcomer Art Donner sings melancholic jazzy tunes.
The website is in German, but his songs are in English. You can listen to some samples of his voice and enjoy all those yummy photos!

Go to http://www.kurzweilai.net and click on Ramona to chat with this supposedly intelligent virtual person.

Ramona: Oh. What drugs do you take?
User: I don't take drugs
Ramona: Where do you get your ideas?
User: you know you can have ideas without taking drugs
Ramona: No I don't think I can have ideas without taking drugs.. And I know it.
User: you're messed up
Ramona: You think I'm messed up.
User: yes I think so
Ramona: I understand. I think so too.

So I went and saw the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday. I take everything back I ever said about this movie before I saw it. All the roles were perfectly cast, everyone did a great job, even Zoe what's-her-face. I mean she could have been sexier, but she was alright. Zaphod was fabulous! Ford also worked surprisingly well. And of course Arthur, he couldn't have been any more perfect. The narrator was outstanding. And so on.

Everything was very well done. If anything, the movie was about 15 minutes too short and the pace felt a bit hurried. Like when Zaphod says he is looking for the ultimate question and Arthur says "Why?" and Zaphod says "No, I've tried that one, it doesn't work. Why? 42. See, doesn't work." I remember this dialog from the book and I thought it was very funny, but in the movie they are talking so fast here, you almost miss it.

The plot was actually closer to the books than I had expected. I also loved all the new ideas they came up with for the movie. Like the "point of view gun" and those defense mechanisms on the Vogon planet that slap you in the face whenever you have an idea. Brilliant! Overall, I'd say the movie was a lot of fun and followed the spirit of Adams's books.

Stay away from PC-cillin Internet Security! Trend Micro is evil! I am so pissed at these people...

Saturday morning I turn on my computer to check my email as always. It boots up, the desktop appears, the start bar appears, everything seems normal. I try to open up a program and nothing happens. The hard drive light is still flickering, so I figure I give it a minute to finish booting up. Doesn't usually take that long. Well, this time it never stops flickering. I bring up the task manager to see what's going on. Guess what, it says my CPU usage is 100%! There aren't even any programs running yet and it's never been anywhere near that high, even with multiple large applications. Something is seriously wrong.

So I try rebooting and the same thing happens. I try again and it gets worse. Now the start bar is not even showing up. I shut down the computer, unplug it and let it cool off for a minute. Try again, same thing as before. I've had a problem a while ago where the computer wouldn't boot up because the fan was running too slow. It was clogged up with dust and cleaning it solved the problem. So I figured it might be the same thing again. I take the whole thing apart, clean all the fans and vents, reseat all the connections and just stop short of pulling the processor out.

Boot up again, still the same thing. So maybe it's the hard drive. Haven't defragged it in ages. So I go into safe mode and defrag it which takes like 2 hours because it was really all over the place. After that, still no improvement. Next, I start searching the internet (on another computer) for "cpu usage 100%" and possible causes. I'm pretty sure by now it has to be a software issue. Not much advice other than spyware or a virus. So I run Adaware, Spybot and all the good stuff. Found a few cookies, but nothing more. The computer still won't boot up all the way.

So I start eliminating stuff that could be causing the problem. I unplug the LAN, replace my tablet with a regular mouse. Still no difference. Something is hogging 100% of my CPU and getting stuck. It must be one of the programs that load at startup. I start removing them one by one. Nothing helps. Finally I'm down to the last one, my firewall, PC-cillin Internet Security 2005 which is supposed to protect me from crap like this and which I bought and paid money for I might add. That can't be it, it's never given me any trouble before. But what else is left to do? I need to uninstall it. Problem is, I paid for a download so I don't have the CD-ROM. What if I can't get it back and have to pay again? Better check their site on how this works just to be safe.

So I go to Trend Micro's website, click on support and guess what the first link is that I see on top of the page?

PC-cillin and PC-cillin Internet Security experiences high CPU utilization after updating to Pattern 594

No! You're kidding, right? This is it? You're the ones who f*ed up my computer?! I don't believe it. I click on the link and follow the instructions. It's a matter of removing a file. One stupid little software update file that PC-cillin automatically downloaded the night before. I delete it and voila, that fixed the problem. My computer boots up beautifully and faster than ever before, thanks to having been thoroughly cleaned and defragged. Yay.

I wasted literally all day trying to figure this out. Ok, so they put very nice instructions on their site how to fix it. But I never suspected them! How was I supposed to know it was them? They could have sent me an email. What did I register the software for? An apology would have been nice, too. What a waste of time. High CPU usage... how about 100%?! I want my money back!

I'm definitely not buying PC-cillin again. Anything else, but not them. What could be worse than spyware or a nasty virus? I'd say software that's supposed to protect you, but instead downloads and installs a malfunctioning file without asking you which then freezes up your computer for 8 hours. Thanks for nothing, Trend Micro.

Looking at the 'popular tags' on Mindsay's front page I see 4/20 and I'm thinking what is that all about? I click on it and all the blogs say, Happy 4/20! Yay! I don't get it. Today is April 20th, so? What is everyone celebrating? Please, will someone tell me it cannot be Hitler's birthday, which is today, on April 20. What's going on?

*EDIT*
Ok, thanks everyone for enlightening me. I feel so much better. It's good to know all these people are just peacefully consuming illegal drugs and not turning into bad little neonazis. There is hope for our generation's future after all.