I was born in Havana, Cuba on October 31, 1962 (Yes! Halloween !). For the first five years of my life, I lived in Cuba and then moved to the United States which is where I have been living ever since. I have spent most of my life living in New Jersey and recently moved to South Florida back in 1988.
I have been involved with computers ever since my senior year in high school back in 1980. My very first personal computer that I ever owned was an Atari 800XL computer and in a sense, I still have it today since I have an Atari 8-Bit emulator for my Apple Powerbook G4 17 inch monitor which I now currently own. For those curious types that need to know everything about people, my current computer specs at this writing are the Apple Powerbook G4 17 inch monitor with 1 Gigahertz speed, 512 megabytes of ram, a 60 gigabyte hard disk and I use Safari as well as Netscape Communicator version 7.1. I had the Panther OS X for the operating system. The modem that we have in our house is a 2 Wire Router which allows for home networking. I connect using the PC Port device via the USB connection of the Powerbook.
Anyway, besides computers, my other interests include sports, chess, classical and new age music, reading, science fiction, role-playing D&D games (I love Multi-User Dungeon games especially ( MUDS for short)), and comic book collecting. I have a rather small collection of comic books which I have placed into a Microsoft Access data base to keep track of their value. Those of you who want to discuss with me any of the above topics, please e-mail me so that we can discuss any of the above based topics. I can reached by email at the following address:
Those of you who may have seen the Superman movies from Warner Brothers that began with "Superman the Movie" in 1978 will recognize the background music that is currently playing in the background as this file loaded. I have tried to make sure that the code that plays the music in the background is generic code so that it can play the background music with just about any browser. So far I have been able to get it to work with the newest version of Netscape as well as the older versions of Netscape. While the code works with the older versions of Microsloths Internet Exploder (Microsoft Internet Explorer to the rest of the world), it appears that the new version has a problem with the code and does not play the background music. It seems that this is something that Microsloth is good at. Writing programs that are not compatible with older versions of their own programs. I found this midi file on one of the sites and I thought I would include it as the background music for this page since it is short (only 70K) and plus it goes perfectly with the picture of myself above.
By the way, for those of you who are fans of Superman like myself, I highly, highly recommend the DVD version release of Superman the Movie. I can't say enough good things about this new release of that classic movie on DVD. Unlike some other movies that have been transferred to DVD, Warner Brothers did a very good job to enhance the DVD release. First, Warner Brothers used a state of the art digital transfer process that restored the film pretty much to the quality of its theatrical release that occured back in 1978. Remember that Superman the Movie was originally released in December of 1978 and like a lot of films, it has aged over the years but with the digital transfer, it has retained most of its original theatrical quality.
In addition, they have remixed the audio of the film and placed it on the DVD version and it really helps to enhance the film. Now when Superman flies through the air, you get a much stronger whoosh as he flies through the air. I have a sub-woofer on my computer and it really makes the explosions that occur in parts of the film that much more dramatic. If enhancing the quality of the film wasn't enough, they included scenes from the film that were cut off of the theatrical release. One of the cut scenes was really, really good and I felt should have been left in the original theatrical release. This scene is the "Gauntlet" scene where Superman is going after Lex Luthor and has to go through machine guns, fire, and cold. It was excellent job of special effects and some of the best special effects of the film. The film itself won numerous awards for its special effects and this "Gauntlet" scene should have been kept in the theatrical release. I am so glad that Warner Brothers decided to include it in the DVD. The also included some other deleted scenes that were not used that would have helped develop the story for the movie a bit more.
In addition, there are 3 documentaries on the DVD that discuss the process that the film went through from its original inception by the Salkinds in 1973 to its actual theatrical release in 1978. There is also a documentary that tells you how the award winning special effects were performed for the film. When you consider that there was no real computers used for the film, it is amazing of the quality of the film. It was interesting to find out that originally the film was to be shot in Italy but when the English pound became a stronger currency than the Italian Lira, the producers of the film, The Salkinds, decided to shoot the film in England instead of Italy. The only problem with changing the shooting locale of the film to England was the fact that the original director that was chosen for the film was not allowed to leave Italy for more than one month in a whole year because of arrangements made with the Italian government. So they had to reassign Richard Donner as the director for the film. Richard Donner had just recently done "The Omen" at the time that he was selected as the director of the movie so having to do a light fantasy like Superman after having done a horror film like "The Omen" was quite a switch for Richard Donner but Mr. Donner did a great job as the director of this film. If you pay attention during the film, you will see Richard Donner doing a cameo just after Superman's first night when he mentions to Clark "That will be the day that a man can fly". This is the scene where people are milling around a series of TVs in front of a store. Again this was another scene that was added to the DVD that did not appear in the theatrical release and adds to the quality of the film.
One last thing about the DVD that I
wanted
to mention is that it has some of the screen tests that were done to
see
who would get to play Superman as well as Lois Lane. You get to see
Christopher Reeve as he was trying out for the role with other
actresses as well as
Margot Kidder who would eventually win the role of Lois Lane. Again,
another
nice touch on this DVD. By the
time that Christopher Reeve got the role, he began working with a body
builder to give him more muscle on this body to look more like Superman
should but seeing him as he was then where he was sneaky is an
interesting site to see. Again, I truly
enjoy this re-release of the film on DVD and can't recommend it enough.
I just wish they could have done something similar with the other 3
films
in the series but only this one received any kind of special treatment
by Warner.
I have had a few people ask me why I use the name "ace942". Well, here it is in a nutshell. Back when I used to go to Montclair State College (now Montclair State University), I used to have a fondness for a particular Laser-Disc game put out by Don Bluth and Cinematronics called Space Ace. Space Ace was very similar in style to a previous released laser disc game called Dragon's Lair. Space Ace was different however from the earlier Dragon's Lair in the sense that while it too was a interactive cartoon where the correct moves at the correct time kept your character alive, it had a particular feature that Dragon's Lair did not have. Dragon's Lair had one set of moves to learn and that was it. Space Ace had branching points in the game where you decided which way you wanted to proceed. This made it harder to learn all the correct sequences but it did provide more variety in the game play. I played the game so much that not only did I have the all-time best score at the place (Hoagies Big Mouth and Pizza) that I used to play it at but I also got tagged with the nickname "ace" by a good friend of mine in college and I have kept that particular nickname ever since then.
As for the numbers that are
part of my handle, the number 9 is one of my favorite numbers and 99
was the number worn by my all-time favorite hockey player, Wayne
Gretzky. Having spent most of my life in New Jersey, I had the ultimate
experience of having 4 professional teams within 2 hours driving time.
We had the NY Islanders, the NY Rangers, the NJ Devils and the
Philadelphia Flyers all close via
driving distance. I was a Devils fan and I really enjoyed it when they
won
their first Stanley Cup back in 1995. They have also won the Stanley
cup in the year 2000, and 2004! They also came close in 2001 of
repeating but lost game 7 to the Colorado Avalanche. It is so great to
see them have so much success after having had so many seasons of being
a poor team.
I am also glad that the New York Rangers finally broke the curse created by the former owner of the New York Americans. He was the one that created the curse when the New York Rangers won the prior Stanley Cup back in 1940. The New York Rangers were more popular than the New York Americans who shared Madison Square Garden at the same time as the New York Americans. The Rangers popularity finally bankrupted the Americans and the owner of the New York Americans vowed that the Rangers would never win another Stanley Cup while he was still alive as a result of their destroying his team and it seems that the hex did take effect since it wasn't until 1994, 7 years after he died in 1987 (hmm..7 years…did someone repair a mirror as opposed to breaking it?) that the Rangers were finally able to win another Stanley Cup.
As for the number 42, this is the ultimate answer from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy of 5 books (read the series then the last phrase will make sense) that was written by Douglas Adams and is one of my all time favorite sets of books. I am saddened to hear that Douglas Adams died a few years ago. The world lost a really great funny writer as well as a great human being. If you like British humor like I do, then I suggest to start reading and enjoy. I am also a fan of lots of British shows like Benny Hill, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Doctor Who (Tom Baker is my favorite of all the actors who have played Doctor Who ).
COME BACK SOON, YOU HEAR?
Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed your stay on my little pit stop on the information super highway and I hope that you come back real soon! Please e-mail me with any of your thoughts or suggestions regarding this page as I am trying to make improvements as I learn more and more about HTML (hyper text markup language) which is the programming language used to create web pages. Feel free to say anything you want as even bad comments will help me in making this web site even better. If you do happen to send some bad comments, please let me know why you feel this way since this will allow me to make improvements and adjustments.
Thanks again for visiting!
