jeffrey robert lange

See it!

Genre: Humor

Interesting: Yes

Popular: Probably. It has Will Ferrell in it.

Timeles: Not Likely

So I have decided that I will be reviewing movies with a “see it” or “skip it”. I hope you like it!

After watching the Chicago bears pre-season game tonight, I have strong confidence in the bears newly acquired quarterback Caleb Hanie. Wearing number 12 and hailing from Colorado State, Hanie threw the ball well, ran the offense, and even showed some fancy footwork with some scrambling. This is very exciting to see after an upsetting loss in the 2007 Super Bowl and a less than promising quarterback by the name of Rex Grossman. With one touchdown and 54 yards, this may not sound great, but Hanie is not turning the ball over, which is huge. Although the Bears lost 24 to 20 to the Kansas City Chiefs, they put on a good show and played a great game, especailly for a pre-season game. Hopefully we can see Hanie develop into a great quarterback.

1. SDTV - We all know that HDTV is coming soon to the US, so let’s just get rid of it now. It’s ugly.
2. Dial-up - Especially AOL. Hasn’t this company gotten the idea that they should just stick to AIM? You can get faster internet for cheaper than most dial-up anyways. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of old compu… wait.
3. Old Computers - I think I speak for all IT specialists when I say that nobody wants to try to remember how to fix your old computer. Besides, they’re usually slow, outdated, and the hardware in them is probably covered in dust. Unless you can manage the computer by yourself, get rid of it.
4. Flash Intro Pages - Nobody likes these. Really. And besides, they usually serve no practical purpose.
5. Mac/PC Wars - Let the user choose what computer fits them the best. There is no real one size fits all computer, so stop trying to market them!
6. Child Molesters - They’re just creepy and disgusting. If you have a valid argument against this one, I’d like to hear it.
7. Blocked Names/Numbers on Caller-ID - I think that you should have the right to know who’s calling you, and from what phone number. I know of too many scams that could have been avoided if everyone knew the number from which the scammer dialed from.
8. Babies at R-rated Movies - seriously, a crying baby really ruins the suspense.
9. High Food Prices - I don’t really have a solution to this problem, but it sure would be great if my food was cheaper.
10. Double Standards - If I can’t go into a ladies room, then how can two ladies just walk into a guys room with no punishment?

During times of war, it is common for any type of government to become more aware of its enemy. In the second World War, the United States openly targeted people of Japanese origin, and after the attack on the World Trade Center the United States became suspicious of people with Arab-Muslim background. The biggest recent step that the United States government took towards enforcing racial profiling was the act called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act). Although previous political movements are hailed as terrible, the USA PATRIOT Act could be enforcing racial profiling. However, the USA PATRIOT Act has done a fine job at protecting our borders from the real threat of terrorism.
The USA PATRIOT Act goes against Read the rest of this entry »

Part of the American dream is to obtain success, however, there are infinite ways to obtain true success. Do we as aspiring individuals need to know what success is in order to achieve it? In my opinion, success is having a life that makes one feel comfortable and secure.

Success can be tricky to understand because the media can blur the true meaning of success. While watching any television infomercial about success, the selling company would like the viewers to feel that success comes with money, cars, jewelry, homes, land, privately owned business, a certain occupation, or all the technological toys that you could imagine. Many people feel that the only way that they can be successful is if they have more material things than the neighbors next door. The media flaunts people with large houses, several cars, and tons of gadgets and gizmos that most people could only dream of owning. This false idea of success is what makes success so easy to misunderstand.

What success truly means is being comfortable and content with what we have as individuals. If one person wants to graduate college and they reach their goal by making it through all four years, then they have achieved true success. Although we usually have to achieve something great to be considered a success by the general population, one can achieve success by doing several small tasks that add up to one large success. For example, someone who starts off in a low-income neighborhood and eventually ends up with a nice neighborhood with their own house would be considered a success to themselves, but maybe not to their neighbors.

Another way to achieve success is by making something out of nothing. Making a cake from scratch is notably harder than making a cake from a box mix. People that come up from a bad neighborhood and becomes a CEO would be considered a success in most people’s minds. What does not impress people is when we have many talents and we don’t use them or don’t push ourselves to achieve something great.

The measure of success is best measured by oneself. Success can not be forced onto someone by another individual. In order to feel truly successful, one has to be content with oneself. Although success can be brought attention to someone, it still takes the successful individual to come to the realization to really feel the success. A big success can last a lifetime, such as curing a disease or building a house, but less important success can leave one feeling unaccomplished. Small success can actually motivate people to keep on striving for perfection, which might lead to a slight loss of sleep.

It is strictly up to the individual to determine what success means. Since ideas can not be forced into our brains, we have to come to the conclusion of success on our own. Although money and other material objects can come along with success, like happiness, money can’t buy true success.

This is in response to my experience in my local public library. When I’m in the library, the only noise I make is the pressing of my keys on my laptop, which, thanks to HP, is quite quiet. There are notes in the library that you should turn off your ringer for your cell phone, pager, or any other noise maker. Regardless of this clear and easy to folow warning, people still leave their phones’ ringers on. If that isn’t bad enough, people will answer their phones in the library. The library tried to prevent this problem by making cell phone reception terribly weak in the library, but still, calls get through. So when these people try to answer their phones, they end up roaming around to try to get a signal, doing their best impersonation of the “Verizon Wireless guy” asking, “Can you hear me now?” They just never get to say “Good!” at the end. This is not the 1990’s, where cell phones are new, uncontrollable devices. On my four year old phone, all you have to do is press pound for three seconds to turn off the ringer. Those three seconds save me lots of trouble, though.

Basically what I ask for is a quiet environment that isn’t disturbed by cell phone ringers. All the rest of the noises are fine, but some are easily controlled.

As the Fourth of July rapidly approaches, I, along with three of my friends, will be traveling to Washington D.C. to meet up with yet another friend. This trip has been in planning for quite some time now, but the excitement is starting to get to me. I usually don’t get excited about things before they happen, but I have never been to D.C. before, and I miss my college friends, especially my girlfriend. Hopefully our travels will go safely and we don’t go crazy on the 10 hour trip. I’ll be taking tons of pictures and putting them in my gallery.

After a week of rest, I’m back to work at Applied Systems. Most of the people are still in school, so there aren’t many of us interns yet. I’m anxious to visit with my old friends and meet some new people, too. I’m not calling like I did the previous years, so that’s sweet. I can listen to my zune without worry, which helps the time fly by. I think we’ll have a better group this year, plus the layout of our cubicles is more separated, which, in my opinion, helps keep us calm. It also helps that I’m surrounded by really quiet girls. I got 238 activities today, so that’s pretty good. I think I’ve matured a lot since college started in August.

I wanted to figure out how to split a large .VRO file into many .MPG files. The reason I needed to find out how was because my dvd burner recorded a thirty minute tv show onto a dvd. I wanted to burn this dvd for archiving. The process was:

1. Record the tv show onto dvd.
2. Copied the .vro file onto my computer
3. split the large .vro file into 5 files using chunk
4. used DOS to rename the 5 files to .mpg files
5. used Windows DVD Maker to burn the 5 .mpg files to DVD

Here’s a shot of the DOS command I used. Please note that the chunk.exe file was in the same directory as the source file. The /n5 means 5 files. You could use /n2 to split the file in half. There are more directions on how to use chunk on their website.