I've just about given up on movie theaters.

Karen and I wanted to see Fantastic Four this weekend, but apparently it's not out yet. So we saw Bewitched instead. Not only was it not as bad as the critics have made it out to be, I probably would have enjoyed it except for the other patrons.

First, of course, there were the kids. Apparently, parents around these parts don't think it important to instruct their children to be quiet during movies, or to refrain from kicking the seats in front of them. We moved to different seats before the trailers were even halfway through.

Some people came in and sat next to us. They were the fabled "Lowest Common Denominator" that Hollywood panders to; they laughed uproariously at even the lamest things in the preview. One of them had a cellphone that went off during the fake trailer that was really a "please turn off your cellphones" message. She answered it and kept right on talking. We moved to the other end of the row.

And people kept talking all the way through the movie. They answered cellphones. ("Yeah, I got three days off this weekend!") They explained plot points to each other. They even advised the on-screen characters about what course to follow.

Forget chivalry; even basic courtesy is dead.

As to the movie: cute. I loved the conceit; it was so much better than a straight remake. The casting was great (Shirley MacLaine was perfect as the actress who played Endora). I wasn't crazy about Nicole Kidman's ditzy voice (or behavior), but overall it was a fun picture.

Looks like The Daily Show actors are doing well; both Steven Colbert ("It's French, bitch!") and Steve Carell had rôles. Carell doesn't do quite as good an impersonation of Paul Linde as Seth MacFarlane, but he wasn't bad. (Arrgh — as if we don't have enough remakes, Carell will be playing the titular character for the remake of Get Smart. Okay, so chivalry, courtesy and originality are all dead.

Which reminds me, I'll lay down a bet George Romero's next film is going to be about zombie landscapers. I'm sure you can figure out the pun yourself.

Well, falling, at any rate. I've had dreams like this. Almost gruesome, but oddly hypnotic. I'd love to see the code for this one.

According to The Weather Channel, about eleven thousand people in Tallahassee have lost power, and the streetlights are out downtown (even though Dennis hasn't yet made landfall, and it's coming in about 160 miles to the west). Fortunately, my building is on its own generators, so I still get to go in to work bright and early tomorrow.

I wonder, what do people in other parts of the country see on The Weather Channel when there's a hurricane? Do you get to see your own local weather forecasts, or are you forced to watch the same wall-to-wall hurricane coverage we get in Florida?

Yesterday, Karen and I prepared for the storm by watching Monster, a film about the Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos. I'm shocked the picture didn't win any awards for makeup. Very intense film, though not on the same level as Hotel Rwanda.

Well, it took a bit of doing, but my universal remote control is finally the equivalent of five other remotes. (It'll be six when we can find the remote for the stereo and CD player.)

Of course, it wasn't quite so easy as just punching in the codes for each device. Oh no. Nor was it as easy as calling the remote company and having the remote learn the new codes over the phone, or having it learn the infrared data from the original remotes. Oh no again. The only Hauppauge upgrade code they had was almost perfect — except for the arrow keys, which made navigating the PVR's menus pretty much impossible. And since just about everything on the PVR involves menus, what's the point?

And they tried teaching it two different codes for the DVD recorder, neither of which worked at all. And the universal remote's learning memory was exhausted after about half of the DVDR remote's 44 buttons.

But not all was lost! Thanks to a community of people who like hacking these devices, I found the instructions necessary to build an interface cable between my computer and the universal remote, and the software necessary to construct my own upgrades.

So now I have a logical, almost completely consistent button layout for all my devices. The volume buttons always affect the TV, regardless of what mode I'm in (though when we find the stereo remote, I'll make an exception for that). And I could actually cram all of the 44 buttons on my DVDR remote on there; no hunting for the original remote if I want to zoom or change audio tracks.

Via Fark, a slightly photoshopped mugshot of a guy arrested for huffing paint.

I've got two computers at my desk at home. There's Theseus, my primary machine, but I threw together a second machine out of spare parts for odd jobs: running as a game server for LAN parties, surfing the Web while Theseus was thrashing, or as a rendering machine for 3D animation.

The power supply died a while ago, and by the time I got around to replacing it, my animation software had moved to the point where it requires XP to run. I don't really feel like buying a fourth copy of Windows XP (it was running ME since I already owned that), so I guess rendering is now out of the question.

So it's been sitting around doing nothing. This week, someone in a Fark thread mentioned Knoppix, a Linux distro that runs directly off a single CD, so I downloaded the ISO and gave it a try.

Anyway, it's up, and working, and I've spent the weekend adding in packages. (How long does it take to compile KDE, anyway? This thing's been at it for at least an hour.) Despite the fact that it's an older machine, it seems quite snappy; perhaps I can find a good deal on a no-longer-top-of-the-line laptop and throw Linux onto it.

That would be a fun project.