Craig profile picture

Craig

mrquake666

About Me


My life is my job, with little moments of clarity scattered inbetween.. at work I do quite a bit... servers, network infrastructure, system integration, security, door security systems, vending machine communication systems, POS cash registers, fiber optic backbones, ethernet cabling, tape backup systems, virus protection, wireless networking, satellite and cable TV... if it's networkable and involves computers, I'll probably be involved.
Onto what fills the spare time I have... Over the last several months I have devoted my spare time to the study of classic Ragtime, specifically the works of Scott Joplin. Aside from ragtime piano, I've been reliving the genius of the dearly departed Mystery Science Theater 3000 through the Digital Archive Project (http://www.dapcentral.org) and the omniscient BitTorrent network (keep seeding!). I mess around with computers and networking in my spare time, and try to keep up with the flurry of computer games. I build my own PC's because I'd rather pick the parts that go into than than let someone else decide for me.. besides it's a lot of fun building your own computer! I also enjoy watching movies at home in progressive scan and a nice 5.1 sound mix, and of course in the theater... preferably three rows back from the front so I can soak the experience in. There's nothing like watching a movie on the big screen.
So, I'm a big movie buff.. I used to follow genres pretty religiously, but lately I've been really into specific directors, and to a lesser extent, actors. My criteria for a good movie, though, is if I'm entertained and I don't feel the time I spent watching it was wasted... I try not to be a snob when it comes to movies. After all, if I can enjoy riffing bad movies along with Mike and the bots on MST3k, I can't afford to be too discriminating :)
As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time messing with computers at work, and that usually spills into my free time as well. I play a lot of video and computer games, throw the occasional LAN party, and mess with networking and non-Windows OS's like Linux and Solaris for fun. I'm not a complete nerd though (I'm probably pretty close), I enjoy playing pool, bowling, poker, board games, taking the occasional road trip, and just hanging out with friends and having a good time.
So I ran one of those personality type generators based on your birthdate, and this is what I got. Scarily enough, this is very close to the truth. Too bad they didn't work on their grammar as well as they did on their predictions:
(copied verbatim)
***Your Birthdate: February 4***
You have an extraordinary character - moral, responsible, and disciplined. Your sincerely and honesty shine through in almost every situation. Driven and focused, you rarely let your emotions get the better of you. You're level headed and rational. People count on your to look at things objectively.
Your strength: Your unwavering loyalty and ethics
Your weakness: Your rock solid stubbornness
Your power color: Navy blue
Your power symbol: Shield
Your power month: April
Yet another one of those quizzes that attempts to analyze your personality based on answers to a half-dozen broad questions. This one is slightly more accurate for me than most. See any patterns here?
You Have a Melancholic Temperament
Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything. You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life. You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you.
Given enough time alone, it's easy for you to find inner peace. You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life. Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times.
At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you. You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others. You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult. What Temperament Are You?
Your Taste in Music:
Heavy Metal: Highest Influence
80's Rock: High Influence
Progressive Rock: High Influence
90's Alternative: Medium Influence
Classic Rock: Medium Influence How's Your Taste in Music?
The Part of You That No One Sees
You are aloof, mysterious, and distant.
People feel like they really don't know the true you...
Yet they're still drawn to you, almost by magnetic force.
Underneath it all, you don't even really feel like you know yourself.
It's easier to put on a front than really think about your life's purpose.
You tend to seem pretentious, but it's just a mechanism you use to push people away. What's the Part of You That No One Sees?

My Interests

Computers, music, movies, piano, video games, computer networks and security, Linux, cars, MST3k, home theater, Star Trek, old toys and cartoons (Transformers, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K.)

I'd like to meet:

You, as long as you're not a computer-generated viral marketing MySpace profile asking me to CLICK HERE TO SEE MY NUDE PICS or CLICK HERE FOR A FREE IPOD.It's bad enough that I get spam by the hundreds in my mailbox each day, but I have to weed through my inbox here too cleaning out all the bogus friend requests and messages.So, if you're a real live breathing person on the other end of the tubes, and you like what you see here, drop me a line.

Music:

Iron Maiden, Metallica, AC/DC, Rush, Tool, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Fu Manchu, Spirital Beggars, Black NASA, Motorhead, Danzig, Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage, Grip Inc., Pantera, Mastodon, Audioslave, Guns 'N Roses, Velvet Revolver, Buckcherry, Nine Inch Nails, Dragonforce, Pink Floyd, Queensryche, Jamiroquai, Bob Dylan, ZZ Top, Thin Lizzy, The Who, Jethro Tull, The Police, The Doobie Brothers, Eagles, The Offspring, Minibosses, Johnny Cash, Rage Against the Machine, Van Halen, Van Hagar, Journey, Genesis, Phil Collins, The Black Crowes, Boston, Queen, Ice Cube, Dick Dale and his Del-Tones, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Scott Joplin, any classic ragtime, Seu Jorge playing David Bowie on the Life Aquatic soundtrack. And, anything you can raise the devil horns to.

Movies:

2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, The Indiana Jones Trilogy, Big Trouble in Little China, The Mad Max Trilogy, Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Star Wars Ep. IV-VI, the Star Trek movies, most of the James Bond movies, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, Fight Club, Pirates of the Caribbean, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Heat, The Hunt for Red October, Three Kings, Snatch, Seven, Minority Report, The Godfather, Lone Star, The Silence of the Lambs, Blade Runner, The Spanish Prisoner, Airplane!, American Splendor, Melvin Goes to Dinner, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Super Troopers, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Napoleon Dynamite, The Sting, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, Requiem for a Dream, Dazed and Confused, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Goodfellas, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List, Borat, Miami Vice (2006), The Mission: Impossibles, Blood Diamond, pretty much anything by: Michael Mann, John Sayles, David Mamet, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, The Coen Brothers, Tim Burton, and Wes Anderson

Television:

MST3k, The Shield, Arrested Development, 24, The Sopranos, The Wire, Heroes, Firefly, The X-Files, all the Star Treks minus DS9, COPS, Airwolf, Knight Rider, NYPD Blue, The Real World, Penn &; Teller: Bullshit!, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, FutureWeapons, Anderson Cooper: 360, Keith Olbermann Special Comments, The Benny Hill Show.

Books:

1984, Moby Dick, The Shining, Gulliver's Travels, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Slaughterhouse-Five

Heroes:

The Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson, Marlon Brando, Michael J. Nelson, Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage, Mike Rowe, and Scott Joplin. And of course, Jack Bauer/Kiefer Sutherland.

My Blog

YouTube

As usual, I'm late to the party but I've joined the YouTube revolution.  More videos, including some bass guitar bragging, here:http://www.youtube.com/user/craigrjanssen...
Posted by Craig on Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:05:00 PST

Cloverfield.

My headache is almost subsided, and I'm left with a greater appreciation for Cloverfield than I had while I was watching it.  The reports are true, if you try to concentrate too hard on the scree...
Posted by Craig on Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:17:00 PST

No Country For Old Men.

After a couple stumbles in screwball comedy land, the Coens are back.  No Country For Old Men harkens to their more serious works like Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing, shrugging off the typica...
Posted by Craig on Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:29:00 PST

American Gangster.

Let me preface by saying that this is one of the rare occasions where I actually enjoyed the trailer for a movie a lot more than the movie itself.  Not that "American Gangster" was a bad movie, b...
Posted by Craig on Sun, 04 Nov 2007 01:59:00 PST

Metroid Prime 3

Ok, there have been a couple requests for a Metroid Prime 3 review, so I present my opinion on the conclusion to the Prime trilogy.Overall, this is a worthy conclusion to a consistently great series o...
Posted by Craig on Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:08:00 PST

3:10 to Yuma

I'm usually not a big fan of westerns, but 3:10 to Yuma has two actors that I admire, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, and a director that I know has talent, James Mangold (Walk the Line, Girl Interr...
Posted by Craig on Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:07:00 PST

Death Sentence

Death SentenceIn case you haven't heard already, Death Sentence is the spiritual successor to the Death Wish series... it's the direct sequel to the Death Wish novel (the three film sequels took liber...
Posted by Craig on Sun, 02 Sep 2007 10:49:00 PST

The Simpsons Movie

So here it is, the movie 18 years in the making.  At this point, all the characters are as familiar as a worn shoe.  They're the perfect sitcom characters: the kids don't grow old, the actor...
Posted by Craig on Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:17:00 PST

Live Free or Die Hard.

Live Free or Die HardWell, it's been a while since we've seen John McClane, and I have to say, he's aged well.  He's every bit the hardass he's been since Nakatomi Plaza back in 88, still punctua...
Posted by Craig on Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:14:00 PST

Transformers!

TransformersI'm a big Transformers nut, so I'm going to try to keep the fanboism to a minimum... but let me just get it out of the way that it was a damn trip to see all those great characters re-envi...
Posted by Craig on Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:06:00 PST