Micheal Espinola Jr's Blog

Ian McKellen has confirmed that he will reprise his role as Gandalf the Grey in the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit. Let the world rejoice in all the goodness of Ian McKellen‘s portrayal of my all-time favorite archetype wizard.

But alas, learning of such things usually exposes me to more information than I need or want to know. Such as Peter Jackson handing the reins over to Guillermo del Toro to direct this Lord of the Rings prequel. BDT directing is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. I love what he did with Hellboy and El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)… but … come on … why isn’t PJ handling TH’s parts 1 & 2?!

I attribute this near-travesty to New Line Cinema for succeeding in ticking off PJ enough that he went and attached himself as director to Steven Spielberg‘s upcoming animated film, Tintin – before getting the issue resolved. I say “blech” on both counts.

I’m pleased as punch that PJ will executive produce the two-part prequel, and that he has agreed to collaborate with BDT on the project. But, in the long run I think his priorities have perhaps become en-lodged in some netherplace detrimental to his career. PJ instantly created himself a legacy with his extraordinary work on the LOTR trilogy. To relinquish that creative control and insight into establish character and storyline modifications, and to hand it over to another distinctly creative director with fantasy genre credibility … well, that just strikes me as a huge mistake to make regarding this franchise. I fear it will be something to be remembered and noticed for all time – blemishing one of the only truly good trilogies of my, or any time.

Google Lisa McPherson.

’nuff said.

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again. Where are you?
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Clearly, there is something going on (see: wrong) with Comcast’s definition of unrestricted Internet access (see: Comcast/BitTorrent interference lawsuit). They say they are not blocking anything, and in fact, they are telling the truth. So if you call Comcast to complain about a service problem; do not use that verbiage. If you do, and you are persistent, they can and will will deem you a disgruntled or uncooperative caller and ignore you.

What you need to do is play their word game.

Their word game is not to call the teakettle black – but to say that it is less reflective to light due to its dark color. I.e., they aren’t blocking ports outright – they are hindering normal communication or doing something to affect it in a way that causes it to fail.

By using this type of wording and phrasing, I was able to get Comcast to admit that they block ports – something they are currently denying in court and normally never admit to. See below for the quote I got from a tech support representative.

However, in case you were wondering, I was not calling to complain about BitTorrent. I was calling to complain about their interference with other protocols; in my case, it was RDP for use with Windows Remote Desktop, as well as DameWare. These protocols/services have begun to be “interfered with” for me in the past couple of months, although they used to work flawlessly. Now they do not work across the Comcast network at all. Being a network administrator and having knowledge that nothing has changed on my home or work networks, I knew the problem had to be with the man in the middle: Comcast.

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You are riding on a beautiful white horse. On your left side is a drop off. On your right side are several ostriches being chased by a lion. In front of you are four large gazelles which won’t get out of your way and you can’t seem to overtake them. Behind you is a stampede of horses. What must you do to get out of this highly dangerous situation?
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