just a few links....

the dread...

here's a gun...

and here's an article about the gun.

"Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee (HMMWV), any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable?

That would really be something, wouldn't it? Some of you might be wondering, "how big would it be", or "how much would it weigh"? Others might want to know what it's ammunition capacity would be. These are all good questions, assuming of course that a weapon like this were actually possible.

According to its inventor, not only is it possible, it’s already happened. An updated version of the weapon will be available soon. It will arrive in the form of a...

there's a video, which makes me laugh because it's so poorly produced. the whole thing feels like a 'spoof' to be honest, but, it looks like a bloody amazing weapon. it's 'futuristic', as if the future is now... it's worth taking a look at.


grand canyon is... how old?

read this article... it's short, but very funny.


man attempts to steal a hotel...
doesn't quite fit down the pants...

this article is just funny, at least from a headline perspective.


ps3's are not as profitable as people hoped...

there's been a substantial decline in the grey market of ps3's, according to this article. his thought is that video game systems are NOT something for investment purposes.


saddam's execution

this wiki article tells the ongoing story of saddam's execution and the worldwide reaction. it's mildly interesting to read the reaction of various nations.


and that's that...

i haven't much to say about me at this point... so, i'll instead go to bed. good night internet.

so much, and so little...

saddam hussein was executed...

it's over, he's dead. he was never tried for all of his crimes, he'll go down in the history books as 'accused of...' for most of his crimes. obviously he can't be executed more than once, but it still seems like justice is not served by acting with such haste.... but i digress, i don't mourn his departure, or really care so much that he's dead even, which almost makes me feel callous, but then i realize that he's a terrible person who's commited a lot of evils and really only got what was deserved.

pan's labyrinth

my good friend mike sent me a link to this site today. on it you can find trailers to this new and gorgeous looking film. after reviewing the site, and doing some 'research', i've decided that this looks great. i've now got two films in 2007 that i am very much looking forward to seeing. frank miller's 300 and pan's labyrinth. sure, there are a few other films coming that look good, but these looks, quite frankly, phenominal!

the plot of the film from imdb's pan's labyrinth page (listed as "el laberinto del fauno" under it's orignal spanish name) reads thusly:

"Pan's Labyrinth" is the story of a young girl that travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband in a rural area up North in Spain, 1944. After Franco´s victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.

the film is written and directed by the great guillermo del toro, who is responsible for such films as mimic, hellboy, and one of my personal favorites, the devil's backbone. the plot listed above does not do justice to the sheer beauty that this film seems to possess, where it has the feel of a darker alice in wonderland and labyrinth, it seems to follow the story of a young girl not trapped in another world, but actually creating it. it's artisticly invigorating, and i just enjoy looking at it.

according to the wiki article, pan's labyrinth is salted as an informal sequel to the film the devil's backbone (el espinazo del diablo), which, after thinking for a moment, i recalled very clearly as a film i enjoyed very much. it tells the story of a young boy left orphaned in 1939 in a run down mission in mexico near the end of the spanish civil war. it's a great film, if for no other reason than it's got a ghost in it. it's one you should definitely watch as well.

of course, i say that a lot.

either way, i'll see this, hopefully you will too, and when i write my review, we'll all be on the same page. ;)

watch out for the fish...

the sign makes them look so unassuming, all under the water, but clearly, they felt there was a danger worth noting. i'm curious as to what exactly they'll be doing that i should be watching for... jumping, walking, flying, firing large caliber rifles from high in the trees...? the mind boggles....







BEES!!!

somethingawful.com has long filled me enjoyment, whether there's a man claiming to be an insider at the whitehouse and spilling secrets about rumsfield and his flatulence, or the goons just happened to find a photo of something normally mundane and transform it into something so much more than the sum of it's parts.

this thread, however, is about a man in florida who goes mano e. beeos... er.. well, frankly, all you can do is click the link and check out the photos. there's a lot of photos. all of them make you want to laugh, in that sad laugh that's normally reserved for watching those with mental handicaps do things that shouldn't be funny, but is.

12/23. never forget.

something about a book...

damn... now it's all over...

i believe that i mentioned in a previous installment that i had gotten, and was reading anansi boys by neil gaimann (there are links in the previous, i just don't feel like jumping through those hoops again right now, it's nearly 5 am for christ's sake).

that was, i am certain, 6 days ago, and tonight i finished, in what i would call the 'push for the final third'.

all i can say is that it didn't disappoint. there is a reason the gaimann is such a revered author. when you read his work you get a sense of reading something that is written by a real person, rather than some sort of book generating automoton. it was, as usual, paced well, filled with words that make you think from time to time, sprinkled with just enough british phrasery and topped with a plot line that, while visible from about two and third miles away, still makes you feel good reading it.

that would, actually, be my only real complaint about the book. that last bit i mentioned there, the story didn't really have any solid 'twists'. perhaps it was just me that felt that way, but by about 1/3 of the way through i was already predicting with good accuracy what was going to happen. luckily, it's written very well and you feel good when you reach the end anyway.

for me, it struck a nice chord, because there's an interesting realtionship between father and son, and by the end, it feels so much better. the best part of the entire book was the way he managed to wrap the whole thing up into a neat little package you wouldn't mind giving to a poor sick child, not unlike those of the make a wish foundation, tiny tim, or poor violet (a rediculous pop culture reference that, if not given your ability to use the internet, i would gladly pay money to you for giving me it's source...).

anyway, after that last paragraph, i'm quite certain you are ready to be done reading. as stated, the linked article has links, or else, you might find yourself using the great google search engine, or just hitting up amazon.com to find out more. i'd recommend it as a book, because it's just enough different to make you special for reading it, and it's good enough that you can relish the feeling.

now, i just need to figure out what i'm reading next. i have a couple of books that i've borrowed here, but for some reason i can't seem to get myself to read them. gaiman did just release that collection of short stories...

for those with an interest...

not a lot tonight...

i've been busy, as inpiration has been my friend of late, i've been working on some of my writing. if you have any interest, i've set up a seperate blog, ad pedem litterae, for these works.

i have it set to list a single post, which will be a table of contents, which i will update as i update the writing. for now, there are only three of the several pieces i am noodling away on at the moment, but i hope to get more up soon.

i'd appreciate any constructive criticisms you might have.

a video worth note...

a friend found this fantastic video, it's a freefall from space of a pair of boosters off a recent shuttle launch. it's about five minutes long, the sound is incredible, and the view is also quite astounding. it's worth a watch.

some poetry...

in a place where words have no meaning,
and thoughts get lost in a tangle of questions
that have no answers.
you will find me,
alone.

in a time before the beginning,
long after the end.
where sleep is lost to the turn of the earth.
there i will be,
timeless.

when the tragedy is complete
and words cannot express,
feelings come in waves, pain at the crest,
there will i be,
expressionless.

in a way that's so clear and perfect,
with logic unfailing so that
the truth cannot be denied.
i will be there,
unknown.

forever i will be; lost, alone, unkown.

it's that time again...

we'll start with some ctrl-alt-del news...
because i'm a nerd.... get over it.

winter-een-mas is fast approaching, are you ready for it? that lovely winter holiday based entirely around video games... how can you deny it?

really though, i want people to watch these (it's about 20 minutes in total, but it's ok to skip ahead here and there...):





tim was kind enough to show some video of him creating the recent christmas comic, and it's just fun to watch. the big thing for me, though, is that he's using a wacom cintiq, a 22" lcd monitor / pressure sensitive tablet at 1600x1200 that i would kill to have. well, perhaps i wouldn't kill for it, but i would love to get my hands on one, because they are sooooo much amazingness filled with happiness and wrapped in a bow of joy. of course, the price tag weighs in at just over what i still owe on my car, so, i don't see myself making such an investment at this juncture, instead i will stick with my little wacom graphire for now... but someday, right? hell... i'd take a damn intuous even.

absolut
ly great site...

although i'm not an absolut kinda guy, i don't mind it, but if it's going to be cheap, i'd rather suffer the smirnoff, and if it's not going to be cheap, i'd rather enjoy the stolichnaya....

what was i talking about? oh, yeah. abolut has built a great website for their current marketing scheme, 100 absoluts. it's pretty damn well done. there's a great mixture of media and music and interface. being a web geek, i had to poke around it for a while.

it's one of those things that you can't help but be amazing by. it's done entirely in flash, and i can't imagine the hours of actionscript (read: the devil's language) coding involved in just their main site, let alone the 100 aboluts subsite. put on top of that all of the relatively smooth animation, the great music system, which segues nicely into video to show you various 'commercials'. it's just really well done.

don't get me wrong, i'm all for clean design and interface, and i have known and loved a great many other sites, this one just struck me today.

please note, for some reason you have to be 21 just to look at their website. i'm not sure if somehow you are going to end up a little inebriated just from looking at it, i certianly (unfortunatly) did not. but, you've been warned little ones. (lol interwebs!)

thanks for the 4 course meal... here's Mex$1000.

time.com featured this article. apparently there's a push for a new restaraunt format, whereas you pay what you can and feel is fair for your meal.

as someone who doesn't automatically tip, and will flat out NOT TIP if the service doesn't meet my opinion of at least being on level with mediocraty, this seems like a very 'what could go wrong?' kind of situation. but hey, it seems to be working for them... i guess.

honestly, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. those who can't afford anything are encouraged to put in an hours work around the place, sweeping, weeding an organic garden, washing dishes. meanwhile, those who are more affluent are encouraged to help offset those who are in need by chipping in a little extra here and there.

sounds great on paper, but i personally wouldn't want to try and make a profit off of it.

ps3 kiosks freeze up...
on purpose?

this article from destructoid.com made me laugh... not really out loud, but in my head, a sort of mild chuckle that comes from reading about sheer sillyness.

the story goes: playstation 3 kiosks across the country are freezing up, more than just a little bit, it happens a lot. at first thought, you might think that the massive behemoth of a machine is working hard, heating up, and not very well ventilated. we shall forgive them, perhaps. but then, a rep says, "no, it's on purpose, so that people don't play them all day."

oh.

does anyone remember the old ps2 demo machines, perhaps the gamecube, the n64, or even the original NES? they used an interesting trick, they would have their software (whether onboard, or in the 'demo game') set up so that after a set period of time, perhaps 5, 10, or even 15 minutes, the machine would either just flat out reset, or drop to a message thanking the person for playing, and asking them to get the fuck out from in front of it so that someone else might play.

here we are, the 21st century, and sony cannot manage such high end software coding? i can imagine why quite easily, their software guys are all probably quite literally on hiatus, not to be seen until the much anticipated playsation 4, which will be released sometime in early 2012...

i'm going to step right up and call shenanigans on the whole thing.

could it be true???
dateline december 1?

ign.com posted this article a little while ago that i only now became aware of. it states in no uncertain terms (meaning, a source they don't cite, whith no comment from universal and a denial from joss whedon's camp) that there is to be a serenity seguel designed for air as a made for tv movie on the sci-fi channel. could it be that the massive firefly following might actually have pulled heads from their respective asses?

one can only hope.

maybe i should split these up...

they seem to be all over the place...

blood diamond

another movie review, this time of blood diamond, which i've just seen. blood diamond is a very powerful film about the world of blood diamonds, and the problems in sierra leone during the latter years of the last century. blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, literally refer to diamonds mined in places under conflict. the problem with conflict diamonds is how they are mined and produced, and they have been banned internationally for a long time.

the film stars leonardo dicaprio as danny archer, who gives a very solid performance, despite being leonardo dicaprio. for me, i think the issue i have with leo isn't that he's a truly poor actor, as a matter of fact, he's done quite a few films i've really enjoyed, it's the fact that he's got a teen beat sort of fame that just sort of bothers me.

leo plays a man who's lived the hard life in africa, and after being in the army for many years, only to discover it's futility, he decided to get his, and became smuggler.

in one failed attempt to smuggle diamonds out of the sierra leone, he fails to bribe a soldier and ends up in a jail cell, where he overhears a conversation between an ruf soldier and solomon vandy, played by djimon hounsou, where an extremely large diamond is being sought after. when released, dicaprio goes after vandy in the hopes to getting his diamond. he offers to help the man get his family back after hearing the story vandy tells of being captured by the ruf, seperated from his family, and forced to pan for diamonds as a slave. he also tells of what is likely one of the largest uncut diamonds in existence.

the story follows these two, and a young reporter (jennifer connolley) who's taken a fancy to leo, and also wants to break a big diamond story, a win-win. they travel across the country, and you can see a fairly accurate representation of the world a african civil war.

the tale draws you in very well, and, throughout the entire thing, you begin to feel very close to the characters. most notably, you can't help but to be moved by vandy's repsonses to certain stimuli, such as finding his family, only to discover that his son is still missing.

one of the biggest things i've heard against this film are in regards to dicaprio's accent, but in all honestly, throughout the entire film, i was actualy very convinced that he was, in fact, of africa, white or otherwise.

i definitely recommend it. it's powerful, it's moving, it's shot well, and acted well (even leo).

chad vader - episode 5 (holiday special)

they finally released the next episode.



epa to change the way it's rates mileage...

i found an article about vehicle mileage esitmation. it seems that some of the amazing numbers we've been seeing are about to start coming down to a more realistic value. it appears that most hard hit by these new values, however, will be the hybrids:

Hybrids will be hit harder because the new test eliminates some of the all-electric driving that helped them produce impressive results under the present system, Wehrum said.

the new tests will be more real world, closer to the ways that cars are actually driven:

In part that's because the agency's current test doesn't include much stop-and-go traffic or lead-footed acceleration. Air conditioners — notorious for lowering mileage by sucking up engine power — aren't turned on, and all testing is done under conditions that simulate a 70-degree environment.

The new system will use more high-speed driving, partly in 20-degree cold. Air conditioning will be on some portion of each driving cycle, and there will be more stop-and-go and rapid-acceleration driving.

The mileage for gas-electric hybrids probably will be 20% to 30% lower than present estimates for city driving and 10% to 20% lower on the highway. These vehicles quickly lose their all-electric advantage when operated in cold weather or quickly accelerated, Wehrum said.

and amazingly, testing will be required for the larger medium duty pick-ups, vans, and suvs.

some music to check out...

someone i know from the interwebs is in a band called theripoffs. they just played glasgow's notorious king tut's wah wah hut, which is akin to new yorks cbgb's in terms of famousness, a place where bands like oasis got their start, and like radiohead have graced the stage. you can check out a video of white wine and angels being perfromed there on youtube, it's actually not bad. ;)

the secret world of comic book artists

sean galloway (aka cheeks-74) is a solid (gold) comic book artist, a younger guy who's most recently worked on the book teen titans go #37, his full issue in the world of comicdom, was plugging a new flick by a guy named howard shum. his blog has a number of links, and it's in your interest to follow them. ;)

the secret world of comic book artists looks to be humerous in the vein of kevin smith. the acting doesn't look exactly stellar, but it seems like the screenplay is written fairly well, and filled with humorous, although dated, pop culture references. it looks like it's worth a watch, whenever it gets around to being show someplace someone might be able to see it.

here's what's been posted on youtube, check 'em out.
















in news of me...

there really isn't any... i've been reading anansi boys, listening to tons of music on my zune, and now that there's a little more room, i've been adding music to my collection left and right (i finally got around to checking out fort minor, good shit... and there's a new the shins album coming out, and it's not bad).

made a new wallpaper for the first time in a while... it's different than all the photography i've been doing...


lost in the agenda by ~fyrephlie on deviantART

so this is christmas...

today... i feel...

pretty good, just a little depressed that there's nothing in the way of a real christmas happenning for me. the family did everything yesterday to accomadate the fact that i had my girls on christmas eve and on christmas this year, so now that it's christmas day, there's really nothing to do, except enjoy the internet, watch some movies, and, well... this thing i'm doing now. the great and wonderous blog. well, later i may get back to one of the stories i've been working on, since i had some ideas anyway.

i guess when i put out there the amount of relaxing i'm doing today, it really doesn't sound so bad after all. it's all good. ;)

i do have some photos over the last couple days, so if you are interested, you can check out my picasa web galleries.

'twas the day before the day before christmas

'twas practically christmas...

a scanner darkly

i thought i would take a moment and review a scanner darkly, which i just watched last night, and enjoyed quite a bit. it's basically a live action film, rotoscoped into vector animation to give it an almost cartoon like feel. it's trippy to say the least.

the film is directed by richard linklater, who has done a few movies i've enjoyed, but nothing i'm immensely big on. it has keaneu reeves as the main character rob arcter / fred, and also includes some other big names in the supporting like, winona ryder, woody harrelson, robert downey, jr., and rory cochrane. on top of that, big names like steven soderbergh and george clooney are in the executive producer spots. there's enough big money name dropping involved on this one that it's almost bound to do well just on name draw alone.

a scanner darkly is based on a novel by the same name written by pillip kindred dick. pillip k. dick is responsible in no small part for many infamous sci-fi movies, including blade runner, total recall, and minority report the screenplays for which are based on his works, a man that had died in 1982 his legacy has lived on, and probably will for some time. current in the works is the film next, which is based on his story the golden man.

the story of a scanner darkly is a futuristic tale of the world and it's addiction to a new drug called 'substance d', a highly addictive psychoactive drug. under cover narcotics officers outside of the the seedy underworld they are trying to bring down wear special 'scramble suits' which resample their appearances and voice patterns constantly so that they cannot be identified, they wear these suits even when in the police station so that no one, even those directly superior to them, can figure out who they are. inside the seedy underworld i referred to earlier, however, they take copius amounts of drugs, and therein lies the basis for our story. substance d has a longterm, and violent affect on the users brain, causing the left hemisphere of the brain to begin to fail until the right hemisphere attempts to compensate, causing hallucinations, and general visual impairment.

robert arcter, a narcotics officer known as fred to the precint, is already beginning to feel the affects of prolonged use of d. he feels his mind unraveling around him, and as he's ordered to spy on himself and his friends using holographic scanners, the title of the story takes on it's meaning, as he wonders how the scanners see him, clearly, or darkly? the story has several twists and turns that, while somewhat predictable, still give you the feeling of being yanked around, and you feel in the dark, as if suffering with arcter throughout the entire thing.

the acting is actually fairly good, considering the cast. i'm not a huge fan of ANY of the names in the film, but being that half the main cast are real life drug addicts and activists, i suppose the acting wasn't too hard for them anyway.

the big draw for me, at least at first, was the artistic value. it uses a technique called rotoscoping to produce vector keyframes which are interpolated and leaves you with a beautiful and incredible visual spectacle. it, of course, is meant to add to the feeling of bizarre drug induced sight, which works really well. had the film been merely left alone, it would not have had even near the effect it had original.

my opinion? i really enjoyed it, it doesn't exactly rank on my top 10 list by any means, but it's fantastic and definitely worth an hour and a half of your life to watch.

jericho

as you may, or may not be aware, i'm a bit of a television junky. i'm very selective about what i get involved in. i'm a huge fan, right now, of heroes, and previously, i'd been a big fan of lost, although that has lost a lot of it's appeal to me. i also enjoy things like how i met your mother, scrubs, family guy, and various other sitcoms and comedies.

a friend i work with, however, knowing that we have similar tastes suggested to me that i check out jericho. so, i did, finaly.

first, to me, it's a lot like lost, but more post apocolyptic. the premise of the story is simple. a man comes back to his home town of jericho after being absent for 5 years, just for the day. he manages to dodge questions about where's been for the last several years, but you get the impression here, and throughout the series, that it's rather clandestine. on his exit from the city, in the distance, on the horizion, from the direction of denver, co. can be seen a mushroom cloud. all communication and media goes dead, and suddenly the town is left, quite litereally in the dark. over time, snippets of information come in, here and there, and we know that the country, and the entire world, is now a very different place.

there's a lot of things that happen throughout the series that are a little unbelievable, but on the whole, it seems like a very plausable story line (unlike lost, ahem). it's acted fairly well, and you really have a need to come back each week to find out more.

the show, like so many others right now, is on hiatus, and will not return until february, but if you check your listings, you might find that they will be running a recap of the first eleven episodes soon, and it would be worth catching up.

it's one to watch.

zune, one week later

here i am, one week after becoming a (reluctantly) proud owner of a brown zune (chocolate as i like to think of it...), and i'm loving it (sorry mcdonald's, don't mean to steal your thunder). it's still gorgeous, and filled with music and movies, comfortable, and just about the most wonderful thing ever. it's nice to retire my old ipod, with a screen that reminds me of the horrors of the original gameboy.

i laughed today to read the tycho, while trying to buffer his words, mentioned on the penny-arcade news page that he just became the proud owner of a brown zune as well. good times.

in the interest of christmas...

i found this article on independant online. it poses, and answers, the question: how does santa do it? personally, i believe.

;)

some good news...

the washingtonpost.com featured an article about the bald eagle. apparently, the creature is being delisted from the endangered species list.

"By February 16th, the bald eagle will be delisted," said Marshall Jones, deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We'll be clear so people won't think, 'It's open season on bald eagles.' No way."

rocketman...

burning up his fuel, out there... alone!

not really, but a swiss man has developed a jet pack that is pretty impressive. check out his website here. although there is very little grasp on the english language, and seems to be very mistaken about what the comic character of 'batman' can actually do, he's got a jet pack, and it works. there's video on the site, as well as on youtube, so, check it out.

WebOSes... wait, there's more than just the googleos rumor?

alright, i, like many others, have been curious about the rumors of a google os, which would be, purportedly, a webtop os, basically a website with web based applications that can be accessed anywhere in the world via a web browser.

this is similar to things you may have seen at various retailers and even in your own job, where the things you need access to are freely accessable from a page on screen, which no other access to the machine. this is usually done via webtop, but of course there are other scripting methods, as well as various flavors of linux which are built for just such a purpose.

either way, an article on franticindustries.com rounds up various webos's and lays them out for you. it's hard to beleive that there were 10 to even list, but there were, and some of them look pretty damn intriguing. there's nothing that i'm about to go switching too as a permanent solution. but, there's some interesting entries anyway.

that's it for today... see you on the other side.

today in my life...

GIANT SQUID!!!!

alright, while that headline might seem a little over zealous, but for some reason, everytime i've ever heard about a giant squid i get excited.

an article on discovery.com discusses a giant squid that's been caught on film, possibly the only one to be filmed ever.

they attempted to capture it, but it died in the process, which is pretty sad. the big problem i have there, is that there aren't exactly a lot of them seen, does it really seem like it's in the best interest of these massive creatures to 'capture' them?

still, there's some interesting pictures to look at anyway.

you don't know jack

literally. i was excited when penny-arcade featured a link to a web based ydkj, and although it's in 'beta' and merely dis or dat... it's still tons of fun.

jellyvision, inc., the company that produces it, has a great article about how they do it: the jack principles. it's pretty interesting to read what they say about how to make the game fun and interesting.

so check it out, 'cause you don't know jack!

interview with an assassin

indepentant online has an article that piqued my interest. nikola kavaja is a 73 year old man who has a great deal of story to tell of his life, to quote the article:

Christopher S: Stewart You were a Second World War prisoner, a Communist soldier, a CIA hitman, a hijacker, and now a fugitive on the run (among other things). Where to begin?

Nikola Kavaja: Write down my name. N-I-K-O-L-A K-A-V-A-J-A. You can call me Nik.

i'm not entirely convinced that the story is 100% true, mostly because it seems so fantastic. it seems more like a character, cleverly written by a tom clancy fan, than a real person who's actually sharing their life. of course, that might be the draw of this particular story for me, because it seems so hard to know whether it's believable or not.

it's a very good read, either way.

another console war article

gamasutra has an article from a designer's point of view. yet again, it looks like the 360 get's another nod, but some of the perspective is pretty interesting, at least to me. check it out.

rambling discourse on my life again...

last night was interesting, though i use the term lightly, i went up to play texas hold 'em again. i went out pretty quickly though, mostly because i missed a crucial cue from another guy, but also because i wanted to go watch players that are actually good duke it out (and hang out with melissa, 'cause she's fun.). afterwards, we were actually supposed to go over to dave & busters for a while, but it didn't happen because the people we were supposed to meet over there dipped really early. which sucked, because after the poker's over at kelly's it gets pretty dull around there. so, the latter half of the night was kinda dull, but oh well, it was still better than watching paint dry. i did, however, upset melissa when i said it was kinda boring that i was going to leave, she got the idea that i was saying that she's boring... which doesn't make a lot of sense. veronica understood what i was saying, but, in the end melissa just sorta took off on me without a word. not a stellar night, but there's always tomorrow, right?

something funny though, i saw ben phenow, which is pretty hilarious, because i see the kid everywhere. we always recognize each other, because we've known each since 4th grade at champlin elementary. but, he and i were never in the same social crowd, and he still keeps up with a lot of people from high school that i only really knew in name. so everytime i see him, there's a lot of, "hey, do you remember so and so", and i say, yeah, i do. there's rarely a story about this person, it's just like he wants me to remember them. last night, however, he did tell me about a guy from our high school that actually just died in a car crash, which, while i wasn't exactly friends with the guy, i knew him, and now he's gone. it's a little odd to hear news like this, and i've heard similar news a lot over the last couple years, it seems. it just seems impossible that these people should be gone already.



christmas is upon us, and behold its wonder. i'm amazed at the number of presents under the tree this year, yet again. the last couple of years i've said that i wasn't going to go crazy over my girls, and every year the tree is held up entirely as presents. i can't help myself.


i'm excited last night i picked up anansi boys neil gaiman's follow up to american gods, which i immensly enjoyed. i've been looking to pick this one up for a while now, and can't wait to crack it open!

the concept of american gods is elegant in it's simplicity. it's all about the united states as a melting pot, and draws on the concept of various cultures migrating here over the many centuries. as people came, they brought their gods with them, but over time, they lost their faith in them, being seperated from their own cultures for so long. the gods, however, didn't just disappear, they mostly had to get real jobs, or, as is the case, use their (now dwindling) powers for their own personal gain. in edition, there's new gods cropping up, all based around current 'worshipers' of things like the internet and television. the story is a clash between the old gods and the new, all orchestrated in a very humerous, although wildly epic way.

conspicuously absent?

i've been missing a couple of days...

the last couple of days have been fairly busy, the final days of the holiday shopping season have resulted in long hours both early and later in the day. in addition, i got a new toy for christmas, and have been playing with it quite a bit, you'll have to see below for information on that... also, there's not a lot going on in terms of links and things, i've not spent a lot of time in from of the computer, nor have i really seen or heard anything that's caught my eye, but all that changes... NOW.

prepare for links!

first, in the interest of christmas....

as i mentioned previously, i've been bitten by the christmas spirit! and, to that end, a link that was posted for my perusal is now being reiterated, the fanpop christmas spot!

the christmas spot is a massive link to various media outlets across the interwebs for full length christmas joys! they include things like 'how the grinch stole christmas', 'the star wars christmas special', family guys' 'merry freakin' christmas' and so many others! to be precise, there are 101 links, although, whilst clicking, i did notice that several had been removed due to 'copyright' violations, but most were still up. so, sit back, relax, and bring on that fucking christmas spirit! ;)

speaking of copyrights...

this article about a ruling regarding hyperlinking to copyrighted material in australia.

Judge Branson of the Federal Court bench wrote:

"I conclude that Mr Cooper infringed the Record Companies’ respective copyrights in sound recordings by in Australia authorizing internet users to do acts comprised in those copyrights, namely make copies of the sound recordings. I also conclude that Mr Cooper infringed the Record Companies’ respective copyright in sound recordings by authorizing operators of remote websites to communicate those sound recordings to the public in Australia."

basically, it's just as bad to show people where they might find something that is copyrighted as it is to steal the copyrighted materials yourself....

it's interesting to me.

9 minutes of japanese hilarity

just watch this... trust me!



i got an early christmas present!!!

...from a rather unlikely source too. a friend from work was kind enough to present me with a microsoft zune for christmas. it was a bit awkward as i'm not able to give him anything near as extravagent for the holiday, but he was insistant that he do soemthing for me, and i finally caved.

now, something to say up front. i've been very skeptical of the zune... it's not exactly gotten a lot of great press, good reviews, or ownership... yet. (note, that sun times article is written by a macworld contributor... just a note. ;))

however, there are some great reviews, funny stories, cute ipod fanboy arguments, funny video spoofs, and there are people out there that love there zunes... i'm fast becoming one of them.

it looks good... at first i didn't like the plastic case, but it's scratch resistant, and comfortable to hold, way more comfortable to hold than my old ipod, or the new ipod videos. the interface is excellent, and navigation intuitive, and the graphics are breathtaking, it's leaps and bounds ahead of the plain jane ipod. the 3" screen is pretty as hell, and the videos run without a hitch. it sounds good, works great, and has a lot of avenues that are being explored even as i write this. there's soemthing that has to be said right off the bat, i don't think anyone has ever release a 1st generation product that has been so solid right out of the box... honestly, it's fabulous.

there are a lot of things you can do with the zune, and more coming everyday, and i'm glad to have it. i would never have paid for one myself, not without trying it, but now that i have it... i can't imaging dealing with a click wheel again.

some things already being done...

use your zune as harddrive - it's true, microsoft didn't like the idea of it's zune being used as a mass storage device, like almost every other mp3 player on the planet, but who cares, nerds can fix anything!

video options? - so, my hard drive does contain a 'few' divx / xvid options that aren't supported by the zune, but there's plenty of ways of converting those to mpeg4 or (ugh!) .wmv, in edition, i own movies, why shouldn't i be able to play them on ANY device i own too?

tear it apart? or maybe put linux on it? - ooooohhhh yeah... it's a closed ended product... you know peeps are gonna tear it up!

why not add a bigger hard drive? - WHY NOT DO THAT THING!!! man, the beauty is that it's not all the hard, and it works! a 40gb will fit in the case, but sooner or later we'll be able to cram a 160, 300, or a full terrabyte (of course, that will be around the time the zuneboxcube 360/540 is released).

so... fuck it, i like my zune, now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to watch an episode of jericho on a 3" screen... just cause i can! ;)

of car crashes and men...

so, this evening, as i was driving home from work, i reached the intersection of county road 81 and zachary lane in maple grove (map). i had pulled up in the far right lane going northbound on zachary to wait at a red light. we were there for a good minute when suddenly a late model, grey, chevy suburban in the right right lane going southbound just drove into the intersection. he made it through the west bound lane of cr-81, but as he drove through the east bound lane he was t-boned by a silver chrysler pt cruiser. i watched the entire thing as if in slow motion. the chrysler impacted lifting the still moving suburban near the rear tires on the passenger side, both vehicles went air borne, rotating around each other, similar to watching a scene from the matrix, when it was all over, the chrysler was facing the opposite direction right in front of my car.

i pulled out the cell phone and dialed 911 while i went to check on the driver of the chrysler, the driver of the car next to me, in the left lane, went straight for the suburban, which was now right next to him. the woman in the chrysler was breathing, but non responsive, i couldn't get her to roll down the window, or even acknowledge that i was shouting at her.

before too long the police showed up and took statements, and shortly after that i was on my way home, still pretty shaken. it seemed everyone was alright, but the police really wouldn't tell me anything, so, i can only hope.

and still i wonder why people seem to find it so difficult to pay attention to what they are doing on the road.

i hope the guy in the suburban was heavily insured, because i have the feeling his ass will get nailed to the wall...

thoughts on christmas....

mobile post:

This is the first year out of the last several that I'm feeling real Christmas spirit... now, if I could just slow down to enjoy it.

today at work was interesting, i'm limping around, and i'm thinking about the coming holiday. and realizing that, for the first time in several years, i'm actually pretty excited about christmas. the problem is that i'm so busy right now, i don't seem to have time to think about it.

the worst part is that this year is also the first year that i don't have my kids on christmas day since laurel and i seperated. it's a little sad, i mean, i'll have them christmas eve, and we'll do christmas that day, i even sent a letter to santa to ask that he deliver some of their presents at my place a day early as a special treat. so, everything is set, and i can't wait to watch them open their presents and play with them.

i don't know, it's an odd mix of happy and sad, and i guess i really just don't know what to do with it right now.

the passing of an era...

joseph barbera... legendary cartoon giant, dies at 95

a post on one of the forums i frequent contained these links:

the washingtonpost.com

bbc world news

the other half of the great hanna-barbera duo passed away today in his home. he and william hanna brought to life tom and jerry, the flintstones, the jetsons, yogi bear, scooby-doo, and a plethora of other great and wonderful cartoon classics.

you know their legend will live on for years to come. r.i.p. joe. :(



for more info about hanna-barbera, check out the wiki article

a visit to the great sandy claws!

tristan and moira visit santa

(clicking the image above will take you to my picassa web album all images are small sized for web friendliness, expect something on my dA page soon...)

so, this day i took the girls down to visit santa clause. now, i have typically gone to ridgedale mall in minnetonka, mn every year for the santa visit, mostly because i was convinced that the santa they hired was in fact actually santa. however, last year, ridgedale lost him to the mall of america, and i'll be damned if i am driving out to bloomington to wait six hours in a line to see him now (although i can't fault him too much, i'm sure the MoA can pay him tons more, and i'm sure the elves have unionized by now, which means he needs every cent he can to keep his workshop running). last year, we went to southdale shopping center in edina (edina, you see, is an acronym for 'every day i need attention'), however, the santa there was not as good as the photos on their web site indicated (to be exact, the man, while looking similar to santa was not even remotely jolly and had the cheesiest smiles i've ever had to endure from a paid celebrity that's never appeard on baywatch). luckily, ridgedale managed to aquire themselves another santa who was almost as good as my favorite, so this year, the drive wasn't as bad, and the santa was passable.

we arrived in the early afternoon, and we were issued a pager similar to those that restaraunts use. it was an hour and fifteen minute wait, so with time to kill we went to the new apple store where i saw all of the ways that steve jobs and co. would like to seperate me from my money. the girls played some games in their child storage area. unfortunately, their attention was not near as rapt as i might have hoped, so, we went back to the middle common area. the girls played around with some interestingly painted ruffage (which got their fingers all painty, and i spent a good time humming 'we're painting the roses red' from disney's alice in wonderland). then they danced around.

eventually the pager erupted in a flurry of buzzes and flashing lights, which scared moira half to death. we went back to santa's 'cabin' and then stood in a line. yes, you read that correctly, the pager was to let us know when we could go wait. within about 15 minutes they were finally in to see the big guy. all of that waiting and it was over within 3 minutes. rather anti-climatic if you ask me, but the girls were excited. santa seemed a little burned out, which is why i usually take them much earlier in the season (that, and the lines seem shorter in late november / early december). their minimum package was 2 5x7" prints for $19.99, which seemed a little steep, but what can you do? i got plenty of decent shots on the digital, so, if i want to spread the santa love, i can do it for a mere 19 cents a print from someplace like target.

all in all the girls had a great time, and we have another santa visit under our belts. i'm sure one of my prints will be donated to their mother, because it seems like that's how things work between us... bah.

enjoy the photos people! ;)

EDIT:

these are the photos that made it to my dA gallery.

prepare for links!

the seinfeld horror spoof! (and other seinfeld related bullshit...)

i want to go on record as saying that i hate seinfeld... the show, the man, everything about it... jerry seinfeld is not funny, elaine is annoying, the fat guy wasn't interesting, kramer was pretty much the only thing about the show that was even mildly entertaining... and as it stands, he's clearly a biggot... which has sparked some amusing things all over the internets.

however, this link just showed up in an irc catch... someone posted this from break, and i think it's briliant. it's actually really well put together, all things considered, and could nearly pass as a real horror trailer. i thought it was funny.

lolusb!

can't remember where i found this, but it's the greatest use of computer technology since the mouse's inception.



caribou managers are whining...

the star tribune featured this story, and i couldn't help but laugh. this is some of the most ridiculous whining that i've ever heard in my life. so, here's the situation: a group of caribou coffee managers are upset and suing for 'overtime' they feel they deserve because, as salaried managers, they spent most of their time doing the jobs of those they should have had charge over without any real managing taking place. of course, for me anyway, this is funny merely because that is the way of almost every 'retail / service' job on the planet! read the article and laugh too.

damn entertaining use of stop motion!

just watch this... it's great!



keep an eye out!

or you might poke it out with some lawn darts!! there's a great list of the 10 most dangerous toys of all time. watch the shelves this holiday season for the next maming piece of child enjoyment!

my god, i wish i could be this happy...

whiskey tango foxtrot!!!



and last, but not least...

this is fucking hilarious, in a sick sort of way. this guy thought he might be some kind of genius...

wow... it's like i lost a few days or something...

not really... but almost...

so, here's the deal. i haven't really been home for the last 3 days or so... i've been out almost every night, and it's been quite a 'weekend'. it all started thursday night when i went with some friends to bostons (again). i met up with josé and matt and some of thier friends. melissa also came with josé. justin also showed up for a little while. i work with all of the people whose proper names were just mentioned. we had a few drinks, and some good times, and upset the wait staff and a management when we got a little 'rowdy'.

some events of note about thursday... i met matt's girlfriend for the first time, although i've heard about her constantly since they started dating a couple months ago... matt, you see, is a younger guy, and never really had a relationship like this, and i think it's really cute, actually. ashley is a lovely girl, and i think he rightly thinks himself damn lucky to have her. this whole thing would make a lot more sense if you'd met matt, but you'll just have to take my word on it. ;)

at one point i spilled beer all over my shirt and therefore made josé give me his shirt, just because. melissa treated us to a faux strip tease, which was quite entertaining. i didn't get home until around 2:30 in the a.m.

this brings us to friday night, the day, was quite uneventful, but, that night was quite different, you see, josé graduated from the art institute (a 4 year in arts... lol :P), and therefore, much merrymaking was to be had. we started at boston's (again, again) around 7:30, where i had myself jack and coke and a pitcher and a half of guiness. many wonderful people were there to celebrate with josé, some of them i knew, some them i work with, and some i'd never met before. around 9:30 everyone was off to the new dave and busters, i, however, went to meet melissa at kelly's where i had a couple of sam adam's and played texas hold 'em with her and her friend veronica. she, however, was tired and not a lot of fun (she warned me, but i didn't listen). all too soon she was going home, so i met back up with josé and party at d&b's.

i just want to go ahead and say that dave and busters is a fantastic idea that i wish i'd had! it's like a chuck e cheese's for grown ups! it's fantastic.

anyway, once i got there i did a shot with brandon (another guy i work with) after losing to him in a game of drunken air hockey. i then tried to meet some of josé's other friends. i really don't remember them though. at this point i had some new castle, and spent a lot of time playing air hockey, and some video game that involved firing a fake gun at bad guys that jumped out from every which way, which was a ton of fun. most people were leaving by around 12:30 am, but we'd convinced one of josé's friends from highschool to drive down from st. michael (about this far away), so he, pruse (maybe that's how you spell it, he's an interesting cat anyway), and i hung out drinking some more and playing more games until katy (maybe... you know how many ways you can spell katie) showed up, we did some shots and then tried to get her to play some games too... she was reluctant at first, but eventually gave into the pressure... more drinking, more fun, then they closed the place down at 2 and we had to leave.

saturday i went to work, closed the store down, it then turned out one of josé's friends was having a birthday. this time, we went across the parking lot to houlihans... we had more drinks, i met more new people, matt, melissa, josé, yang (another guy i work with)... again, there was a lot of drinking, and a lot of fun. the first couple that left accidently locked their keys in their car... luckily i was there to save the day with my cell phone and the knowledge that the maple grove police handle lock-outs. the birthday boy, tony, had a lot of booze, and we were all amazed that they didn't stop serving him. we closed that place, at 1 am, and everyone at that point either went home, or back to another guy's place to play video games, or some shit. josé, katy and i went back over to boston's (again, again, again) and had a couple more pitchers and invented a rousing game of 'sex-tac-toe', which was hard, because it's merely just 3 people playing tic-tac-toe, with the letters s-e-x. that's not easy to win at, even when you're trashed. sex-tac-toe escalated to the new sexual hangman, which was simply hangman with words that revolve around sex. we closed bostons talked in the parking lot for a while, where i did something stupid that resulted in twisting my ankle again (an old injury...), i got home around 3 am... less than 5 hours later i was up getting ready for work...

here it is sunday... i'm invited to go drinking again tonight... but there's no chance. i can't possibly go for round 4. call me a wuss... but i gotta draw the line somewhere. i want to mention, at 25, over the last 4 nights, i have been the oldest person attending any of these little 'get togethers', i guess maybe i'm just getting too old for this shit.

This is merely a test of my mobile blog skills.

toys i want...

light brix

i was trolling around, and found this blog: *Terramia*.the hehe assoc. have developed something they call 'lightbrix' which are just NEAT... i didn't realize they would



i didn't think too much of it until i went to their site and found this video... wow, they just look like tons of fun... really really expensive fun...

a couple of shameless promotions...

so, in my last post i mentioned that i didn't know who Maximhuz was... so, instead of taking the easy way out, i just looked, 30 seconds later i'd uncovered his profile on pimpmydesk.org, where he has submitted my mario desktops (before they were removed from dA for not being 'original artwork') here. his website and deviantArt page are pretty slick, although i can't read anything on the website (he's apparently polish). so anyway, i sent him a note on dA thanking him for submitting my stuff, 'cause i think it's pretty cool.

also, while googling my nickname, i came across this forum thread (the relevent post is near the bottom), it's in french, so i had to use babelfish to figure out what the hell they were saying (i mean, duh, it's a 'post your desktop thread' but i was looking for what they were saying about the desktops...)... anyway, this is the shot of one guys desktop, which he gives me credit for my dragon wallpaper! there's also 'the original' version) :)

anyway, it's kinda neat to see your wallpapers actually getting credited to you on teh interwebs! i wonder though, how much more of my crap is not credited back to me, or on pages which aren't indexed by google.

the internots are a strange and wonderful place...

and today we have...

about me...

so, i went to see the doctor yesterday. i was informed that reason i've been having problems with getting well is that blood pressure is up again, and that i've been fighting some sort of bacterial infection. he prescribed some meds... hopefully this means everything will be cleared up soon...

copy cat has kittens...

the old fashioned way! yet, they let this über expensive clone from texas a&m wander around the alley and get knocked up. msnbc has an article here. seems all is well for mother and little ones... man, clones having babies. seriously, you'd think if we have clones and things, we'd have hover cars by now, too!

a new strap on wii-mote

hehe, strap-on... so, nintendo announce, finally, that they are replacing the straps on the wii-motes. it took them a little while to admit there was a problem... but now that they have they are manning up enough say... 'whoops'. so many broken straps... so many broken tv's.... so many dental bills.

save the world....

and win $50,000? huh, you've got to be kidding me. a bbc news article tells of the asteroid that will pass near to earth in 2029. it poses no threat at that time, but when it comes back in 2036, it's orbit may have been affected enough that it could smack right into us... the solution? offer would be saviors and superheros $50,000 to save the earth! that's right, you are the planet's best hope of continuing it's hurtle through space, and if you save it... we'll give you enough money to buy 1/4 of a modest house in the suburbs. thanks.

now, of course the prize is actually for merely tagging the rock so that it can be tracked, but i am certain that it's the closest we'll see to full planetary rescue in our lifetimes... at least until those recessive genes begin to mutate and we have super heroes and super villians.... and the reason they want to track it isn't to stop it from smashing in to the planet, they just want to watch it do it's thing so that they can say, "see, our math was right, we're safe!"

some actual irony, perhaps?

an npr article discusses the fact that one of the firms helping to build the massive u.s. / mexico border fence just got busted for hiring illegal mexican immigrants...

need i say more! except: bahahahahahaha, stupids.

maybe you weren't curious...

but here's how to play dreidel... and a clear point of fact: jewish kids learn to gamble (poorly) at an early age!

and the stupidest thing i've seen in a while



a mustang wagon? omg... we've had mustang 4 cylinders, mustang hatchbacks, mustangs in pink... but seriously... a mustang wagon? that's almost as dumb as having our american muscle designed by an italian... oh, nevermind.







and one last thing...

i'm not sure who 'Maxmihuz' is... but he submitted some of my mario based wallpapers to pimpmydesk.org before they were taken down by deviantArt for not being 'original artwork'... i dunno... that kinda gives me a warm fuzzy in a wierd sorta way. ;)

i'm actually planning on finding some way of rehosting those and making a few more in various sizes. people really enjoy retro mario / retro gaming stuff. :)

amd's going to try something new...

well, this isn't unusual... a techreport.com article discusses amd's announcement that they are done with the 'core' race.

it appears that they don't feel the core race is a worthy endeavor, and is merely a repeat of the previous 'megahertz' race of years past. they feel that they and intel could easily start adding 'hundreds' of cores to their processors, but the next step actually lies in 'APU's'... accelerated proccessing units. basically, these would be addition processing units on the die that would work at specific needs, whether it's for specific applications, graphics, physics, even a.i. and other tasks. it's intriguing.

their quad core processors are slated for 2007.

they also announced their plans toward their new mobile processors, which include some very interesting things in terms of 'hybrid' technology. including hybrid harddrives, which are a combination of flash and magnetic media. as well as 'hybrid graphics' which is supposed to be a mix of a discreet and dedicated graphics chips... both technologies are meant to give you much better battery life from your laptop.


man i love technology...

tiger army is in the studio!!!

one of my favorite bands, tiger army! is in the studio recording according to their news page. while i hate myspace, i did wander over and check out their (like so many others) hard to read page... they last mentioned going to the studio in september, but it appears then nick thirteen discussed going into their first day in the studio in november, it just took them a while to put that info on their site, and for me to find it.

i'm pretty excited, they are saying that recording should run through january... but that hopefully means that by next halloween we might just have a new tiger army cd wear out in the car.

by light of day....

it's nearly noon

i'm still feeling light headed and nauseas. my finger has finally stopped bleeding on regular basis, it opened up on me a few times while i was sleeping i think, because the band-aid™ was pretty much soaked in blood. i'm going to go see a doctor this afternoon if i can get in.

sony wants a cookie?

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America

aww, their blog now features an apology. maybe they want a hug. i'm sure someone is kicking themselves, because i imagine that this particular type of campaign with zipatoni wasn't cheap...

install multiple versions of ie?

yes, you can! tredosoft has developed this, and it's not 100% perfect, yet, but it's being worked on. it's just interesting, anyway, to see. most people aren't interested in testing, even for ie4 anymore, but, it's still nice to find out how your hard work is going to appear in older browsers that are, amazingly, still being used. it's a nifty utility for developers, and worth taking a look at if you have any need to test web page functionality.



bring on teh hawt manatee on manatee action!

"guh?" you say? yep... but, if you're a fan of conan o'brien, you may already be familiar with some of these hot bits of manatee pr0n. so, head over to HornyManatee.com, and get your freak on... no one's looking. i promise. if you prefer real people... you can take a look at this, which is equally absurd.

fallout mmo?

i now officially hate tim, creator of the great ctrl-alt-del!

you see, in tim's latest news / blog entry, he 'mentions' the possibility of a fallout mmo! this news is based on a filing with the SEC by interplay... yes the same interplay that produced my beloved descent series, then folded due to financial problems but have recently returned, quietly.

so, here's the deal. someone at blue's news spotted the SEC filing, and posted it. it has spread across the net since, sites like 1up.com relaying the story and suggesting that perhaps interplay should announce it.

maybe this is the kick in the ass bethesda needs, and they will finally finish fallout 3... you see interplay sold the rights to the fallout series to bethesda some time ago, but retained the rights to an mmo, and while it might be expensive, an mmo might just be what interplay needs to finally get back into the game!

i'm not a huge fan of mmo's, because i don't feel they qualify as a 'game'. you see in a game, someone 'wins', but with an mmo, the only people who win are the one's making the money off you. HOWEVER, i'm a huge fan of fallout, and i feel i can speak for the rest of the small, dedicated fan base, i'm trying hard not to get my hopes up, it's just too soon... we aren't likely to see the game until 2010! if we see it at all...

my day, a perspective...

at 4 am

here it is, 4 o'clock in the morning, and i feel compelled to share a little about my day... or night, i should say.

why my night? well, faceless asker of questions great and good, it's simple. my day was acceptable, my night, however, was a literal disaster!

when i left this very blog, my day continued in an un assuming sort of way... i had some lunch, prepared for work, and by 2:30 in the afternoon, i was on my way to the store. i arrived just before scheduled, punched in and was immediatley sent to help a customer. this isn't unusal... it's the holiday season in retail.

all was alright, and i was even prepared, you see, i was scheduled to work until well passed closing, midnight to be exact, because it's easiest to rearrange entire sections of my department when not bothered with pesky customers (arguably the worst part of ANY job...).

while busy, the night continued fine, until after closing, when i began work on pulling down a display case. shortly after 11 pm, i sliced my finger open on a thin piece of metal meant to hold the front frame of the case to the shelving above.

i didn't realize the problem for several minutes, when i noticed that my finger was numb, and that my hand was wet. i looked for the source of this unusal damp / numb combination to find that i was bleeding profusely. after washing my hand, i saw that what initally looked like a mere scratch was actually a fairly deep gash on my right forefinger.

i tightly wrapped a band-aid™ around it, and got back to work. it seemed fine for a while, though numb, but after about 20 minutes it began to throb. terribly. shortly after that i began to feel a sort of vertigo, a light headedness that progressed to the point where i just fell down (well, i sort of plopped on my ass, it seemed preferable to falling on my face). this continued to come in waves over the next several hours, and then began to mix with feelings of nausea.

long story short... i got a boo-boo and it sucked.

now, the scheduled end of my shift, midnight if you recall, had long since come and gone. it was nearly 3 am when we finally left. (sarah and i). we had filled out the required osha paperwork, noting that i had not sought medical attention, but that i might should i feel any worse.

trying to fight a feeling a near drunkenness (it's the only way i can describe it). i piloted my little car home. reveling in the near desertion of roads at 3 am on a thursday morning, i moved along at a decent clip. it was the last stretch of residential street where i cross a creek (elm creek), that something worse happened.

i bumped into bambi.

no, i mean that literally.

a doe (bambi's mom), darted out in front of me, and i hit the brakes and swerved to avoid her, as i watched her gate off into the woods on my left, my peripheries picked out something else moving. it was a much younger doe (bambi, or she bambi is you will), who felt embiggened (see: the simpson for this reference) by her mother's safe passage and attempted the same feat.

instead, the front of my car impacted the middle of her body at around 15 miles per hour. luckily i was still braking, because if i hadn't, she would have most certainly suffered more than getting knocked on her side into the street.

by the time i got out of my car, she was already getting up and half limping into the same break in the trees her mother had leapt into... i can only assume that she's alright... and to my relief, so was i, and my car.

i drove home... it's been a long day.


a note on virtual taxation

this one's been floating around for a little while, but howstuffworks.com just did a little piece on it that i think has some good explanation. it helps to seperate the truth from editorial (which i'm now probably going to re-add) in most of the stories floating around this great internet rumor-mill.

Does the irs really want your WoW gold?

the short answer? probably. the long answer, however, is a little more complex. the article does a great job of explaining how we got to this point. and helps to expand on 'why' it's even being discussed:

...theoretically speaking, for tax purposes, anything that has a real dollar value is taxable once it changes hands.

basically it's like everything else in this country of ours... if it's worth something, the government wants their cut... bottom line.

the article discusses a lot of things that parrallel this phenominon and why it might be more likely than some people think. basically, they've started taxing things before that seemed outside of their perview, they'll likely do it again.

something else interesting the article mentions, and no matter how many times i hear it... if you steal something, you have to report it as taxable icome when filing for the year in which you stole it, according to IRS tax code part 525.

SONY SUCKS!!!!

alright, you may not know this, but i hate sony.

i can already hear people's heads bobbling and gears working.. the invariable sounds of 'sony... guh?!?!'

the exact reason WHY i hate sony. they truly seem to have one thing going for them: name recognition.

they haven't made a GOOD product in over 2½ decades. "but, playstation! TV's! cameras! the vaio!????" you might ask. you're right, those are things they make. that doesn't make them good.

most people, when they buy sony, do it because they know the name, and are content with owning a product that will likely fail within 2 years of buying it, because, they know the name, and everyone else knows the name, and everyone knows the name means they paid more for it.

sony does not make good products. that's the end of the story. yet, if that's the end of the story, there's a sad epilogue that accompanies it.

sony makes shit products that all but require you to buy more of their shit products just so that everything works. in terms of sheer proprieterity, they are #1, even ahead of apple (who are actually licensing more companies as third party vendors for their products), and microsoft (oh yes, i went there!). let me expand, if you buy a sony product, you are buying something that contains components made almost exclusively by sony. that means that if company X makes a component, and that's all they make, and it would be cheaper for sony to pay for the license and include it, they will almost always instead make the component themselves, thereby raising the end cost of their product, and increasing the chace that when the (not better component) fails, you will have to get the replacement from them, and likely have it repaired by them. ka-ching! sony makes the money baby!

next, they are the number one company for ridiculous trickery! i'm serious. they know something, and they knew it very early on. have you ever noticed, when driving at night, that blue glow from peoples windows? they are clearly watching a television. but why blue? it's nearly ALWAYS blue, isn't it? the human eye percieves blue more readily than any other color in the spectrum. sony's response? crank the blue levels to a near eye shattering point on their televisions and monitors, then, when am unassuming customer is drawn toward it, they'll say... man, sony makes a nice looking TV. this applies to their brightness as well... every product they offer is usually 1.5 - 2.5 times brighter than their competitor, again, so it will stand out in the show room. of course this is pointless, because when you get that tv home, you are watching under very different conditions... but it doesn't matter... they have your money now. oh, and you'll need their special mp3 player and camera that uses their memory stick products so you can see the pictures and listen to music on that tv through their 'magic gate' technology.

also... their tvs have killed more little kids than any other. (ok, i don't really know about that, but there was a point in time that a few kids were crushed by the 40" XBRs because it was a very front heavy tube (duh!) and the proprietary stand for it was VERY poorly constructed, kids died in circuit city stores people!!!)

so, their latest scam involves thinly veild group of poorly done youtube 'viral videos'. luckily, it was uncovererd quickly by the goons at somethingawful.com. and has cause many people to just shake their heads in utter frustration. of course, they'll probably still by sony products... because they know the name.

i really enjoyed tycho's well worded take on the subject, and rather than compete with his incedible skills at the wordplay, i encourage you to just read it...

so good. or bad, perhaps.

man, that was a lot of build up, wasn't it?

in conclusion

watch the latest frank miller's 300 trailer. the beauty of this thing... man, the only metaphor i can come up with is: an oil painting in action. just marvelous!

i'm very tired, and going to bed... i don't believe i will be working tomorrow.

goodnight (morning) interwebs...