Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Must Love Dogs is no Grosse Pointe Blank

Monday January 2, 2006

My beautiful bride and I just finished watching Must Love Dogs. I am a huge John Cusack fan, as is Lynn. However, Must Love Dogs barely bubbled up above the “sure could have done something more enjoyable with the last two hours of my life” mark. It was a cute film, to be sure, and those involved did decent-enough jobs. Christopher Plummer was excellent, as always. It just seemed like it was a really long, drawn-out, wholly predictable, average romance movie (guys–read: “chick flick”). And this was no fault of John Cusack, honestly. I mean, really, it seemed like he was intentionally left out of most of the movie. And the ending, when they finally did realize that they loved Read more…

Life in General

Nate Eagleson and the fine art of Origami

Nate Eagleson, ladies and gentlemen… Now this is absolutely hilarious. Note that the above image gives good detail on the tear. At first I refused to make the tear, fearing it might damage the purity of the art, which had involved only folding and thumbtacks to that point, but eventually, my passion for realism (and pseudo-legible characters) surpassed my passion for artistic purity. Many thanks to the Rite Aid Corporation, for providing the IS team with a digital camera that was sitting abandoned in my cube. I can completely understand why we would need such a thing. You might not find the humor in this, but having worked at Rite Aid for 13 years, I feel able to say that Read more…

Life in General

Merry Christmas and Brother, Can You Spare a Car?

Friday December 30, 2005

Dang, things have been totally nuts lately. We of the relocating-Kasper persuasion have had a tumultuous couple of months. Our home in Harrisburg has sold, thanks to my good friend and Real Estate agent, Tom Waller. (Thank you so, so, so much again, Tom!!) Our family is all back together again, finally!! We’re all in a temporary apartment, graciously provided by CVS. But the important thing is that we’re all together again. I will never, never, never go ahead of my family like that again. Lesson learned. We thought we found a house again just yesterday, put an offer in on it, and found out last night that someone else had just put a full-price offer in the night before, Read more…

Music

Gorillaz – Dare Video

Sunday December 4, 2005

WOW!! This has to be the coolest video I’ve seen in years!! The art and animation is absolutely gorgeous! And to mix it in with the intentionally out of place live singing head… BRILLIANT, I tell you! Genius, I say! =;) The song itself is awesome. Catchy beat, great execution, love the strings, love the vocals, dig the synth, love the deep grinding base lines!! Fantastic! But the video…. WOW. So incredibly cool. I’ve had the song on my laptop and Clie for 2 days now and it’s just about all I’ve been listening to, interspersed with Pink Floyd here and there. =:) Did I mention how cool the video was??? Seriously, the video makes the song so much cooler. Read more…

Movies

K-PAX

I think I’ve mentioned before how much movies affect me. They really do. And the really thought-provoking ones affect me the most. Duh, I suppose. I just saw K-PAX this evening. How I managed to miss this until just now is beyond me. Comes with the territory of having a hectic job, a beautiful wife, three amazing children, a very busy out-of-work schedule, outside-of-work hacking ambitions, and an Xbox, I suppose. Now, the film intentionally leaves you guessing as to what the problem is, to quote Mr. Lawrence (I LOVE that line!!). And it’s unnerving to me to walk away from a film without having a clear idea of what really happened in its imaginary universe. Vanilla Sky drove me Read more…

Apples, Life in General, Music, Open Source

Ecto, Amarok and Pink Floyd

Saturday December 3, 2005

I’ve long-been wanting a nice WYSIWYG editor for my WordPress blog. And, let me just say… there’s not one that I could find for Linux, which both sucks and is honestly quite a surprise. And yeah, I know there’s a partial resource in kdepim 3.5, and I had it on my TODO list to look at helping to finish it/get it working, but that’s obviously not happened yet. Oooh! Maybe that can be the itch that I need to scratch! But anyway, I’m sure I missed this killer app in my searches and there is, in fact, one out there, but I sure as heck couldn’t find it. So, it occurred to me that I now have one of those… Read more…

Desktop, Life in General, Linux

Desktop Linux and Me

Tuesday November 29, 2005

This little excerpt is very exciting, I think. If the eWeek report is correct, and this truly does have the backing of the corporations listed, then it sure seems like people are starting to get serious about the real possibility of a Linux Desktop that has a chance at challenging the Windows desktop market share. I’m guessing that they’ll first be targetting end-user desktop market space, which shouldn’t be all that difficult, imho. Heck, I’ve been doing it for 10+ years now. What would be really interesting, however, is if they can target the corporate desktop environment. Now that’s a different animal entirely. Someone, please pay me to help develop the Linux desktop?!?!? =:/

Life in General

State of Stressfulness

Monday November 28, 2005

Toby Mac’s song, Gotta Go has a particularly poignant refrain that keeps bouncing around in my head… I need some time with God and a mental vacation Yep, definitely.

Life in General, Work Stuff

Caterpillar into a Butterfly

Sunday November 27, 2005

metamorphosis (met-uh-mawr-fuh-sis) : A change in an animal as it grows, particularly a radical change, such as the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The last few weeks of my life have been very… interesting… to say the least. To be more precise, they have been very disruptive, frustrating, stressful, maddening, confusing, difficult, sleep-depriving, and hard. After having worked for the Rite Aid Corporation for 13 years, I was offered a job by the CVS/Pharmacy Corporation. The last position I held with Rite Aid was “Master Systems Engineer.” The position I have accepted with CVS/Pharmacy is “IS Architect, Technology.” It certainly seems to be a step up from a career standpoint. This change requires my little family and I Read more…

Life in General

newegg.com is awesome

Thursday November 17, 2005

Just had to publicly give the guys at newegg.com praise. I ordered 1 Gig of Laptop RAM (DDR333, PC2700) for my brand new, shiny, pretty powerbook. First off, they had a great price–$109 for Kingston. Secondly, they have an amazing level of service–very timely, informative e-mails letting me know how my order is doing. Third, I placed my order on the night of the 15th at 11:30 PM. I just got my RAM delivered to me today–basically one day later. Wow. Color me VERY impressed. I’ll definitely be back. Nicely done, newegg.com! I heartily recommend them.