For some reason the ice coffee in my fridge froze. I've never had anything freeze in there before, maybe the fridge is getting more efficient over time?

At Giant on Friday, Kate and I took the little blood pressure test that they have by the pharmacy. It said I have high blood pressure! As if! I'm far too relaxed for that. My mom likes to remind me that I have a genetic predisposition for high blood pressure, but I never really took much notice of it until now. I was always banking on my being secretly adopted. These people couldn't really be from the same genepool as me! Now I'm reading food labels for sodium content. It's a sad day. Tonight I'm going to a basketball game with some of Kate's friends. My first professional basketball game ever.

(joe gets out-saracasm'd on gchat)
me: i just like to keep things in my calendar
me: the night you're leaving is the same night of the thermals concert, btw
kate: lol
kate: oh good
kate: I was worried about that thermals concert
me: worried? why?
kate: no
kate: I don't even know what you are talking about

Haven't posted here in a while. I'm a lazy blogger.

Been busy the past few weeks. There was an end of the quarter crunch that was worse than I've ever done before. I think my supervisor probably isn't happy about it so I'm trying not to fall behind before the mid-year review. Then when he's like "Joe, this end loading has got to stop." I'll be able to say "Oh, I've learned my lesson, look, this quarter I'm totally caught up!" I sorta have learned my lesson too. Feeling like you're part of a science experiment on the effects of sleep deprivation isn't very fun. I went out to dinner with Kate's visiting siblings, and went to Eric's going away party, and both events are kind of a blur. I don't think I held my own in a conversation about FPGAs with Chris Toombs, and then some guy at the party thought it was funny to ask me if he could get my a roofie. I wasn't sure if that was some sort of pickup line, or if he was just joking around for his buddy or what. Eric has some of the weirdest friends. Just goes to show that a friend-of-a-friend is not at all close to being a friend. It's really only a tiny step (tiny, tiny step, depending on the friend in common) better than being a complete stranger. Maybe the situation would have been funnier if I had been more awake but I suspect not.

Today I again considered getting myself some Star Trek dvds as an end of the quarter present, but again I couldn't bring myself to do it. Too many discs, too many hours of video, and too much money. Someday I'll work up the guts to just buy it and damn the costs/time/non-nerd image.

Kate and I saw "I Love you, Man" and it was okay. I thought the parts with Jon Favreau were hilarious, but Jason Segel's character was annoying and Paul Rudd was kinda boring. Making new guy friends is a hard task to rush, but I still would have been out of there as soon as Jason Segel tried to get honest about his or my sex life. I don't ask my friends about those things, but it isn't because I'm feeling constrained by societal norms and I secretly wish that I could. Kate didn't like the fiance, but I thought she was alright. She's kinda cute in a "the office" sort of way.

Last night I watched about 15 minutes of "His Girl Friday". It was a little interesting, but also exhausting. One of the netflix reviews says "Cary Grant plays Cary Grant" and it's true. Though it's not his fault that he doesn't really have time for much acting because the dialogue moves at such a frantic pace. They probably went through a normal movie's worth of dialogue in that 15 minutes that I watched. I don't think I could date a girl who talks that quickly and intensely all the time. Though I'm not a great listener (as Kate could tell you), but if she talked that much I'd probably start to worry about missing something important.

Next week I think I'm going to see the Watchmen. Anyone want to go?

(user comment to a washington post article about the $825 Billion stimulus bill. I like the Demowussy part)
Tom333: You want to stimulate the economy, Obama? Stop the embargo on UFO techology. We already have the technology for zero point energy and space warp drive. We back-engineered it from crashed UFOs. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both promised to end the UFO secrecy but they wussed out. Don't be a Demowussy, Obama. Disclose the UFO secrets. Before some other coutry beats you to it. England is already disclosing UFO files. We had a shooting war with UFOs in the 1950s. Full Disclosure. NOW.

I was going to write up this big long post about an argument I had today on my stairs with a lady, but then it got too long so here's the abriged version: I walked back from the grocery store to find a lady in the act of stealing a delivery package from my front steps. She was doing this weird thing where she picked up the package and knocked on the front door, and then as I approached she tried to tell me that it had been delivered to her house (though I had spotted the package waiting on our porch about an hour earlier when was I heading off to Giant) and she was just trying to get it to the rightful owner. Then she tried to take off with the package ("I'll just bring it back later") but I stopped her and insisted that she leave it with me instead.

Thieves these days are so pushy. On the upside she said "you have a blessed day" when she gave it to me. And I am feeling better today (the past two days I've been sick). Now I just have to get an impossible amount of work done before Monday.

(Friday is Emoc- Banjolina Jolie's last performance before Eric moves and, coincidentally, Kate's brother Daniel is visiting this weekend)
me: btw, if you and daniel are looking for something to do on friday night.. i heard there's supposed to be a pretty good band playing at solly's
kate: by pretty good do you mean not so good but your friend's in the band?

I wasn't planning on posting today, but XKCD today is too good to not mention. I have had that exact dream before. (And thought exactly "shitshitshit!") My work is coming along, though this morning my laptop's network card decided to stop recognizing my router, and I don't have the permissions to mess with it. I love it when my laptop has problems and it doesn't give me permission to fix them. Hopefully when I restart it a little later it'll work itself out, otherwise I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the office this biweek (yuck!).

(netflix user review of the movie Southland Tales)
There's a story about the film "Team America: World Police" that I would love to know is true. Supposedly, in one of the screenings of the film for Paramount, as the film opened with old-fashioned marionettes (before pulling back a wider shot revealing more elaborate puppets) that a studio exec exclaimed, "Oh, God, they f**ked us!" I can't help but wonder if studio execs at Sony might have had the same reaction from their first peek at Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales."

Why is it when you have more than one attorney, it's called a harem of "attorneys" but if you have more than one power supply they're spelled "supplies". Surprisingly, if you look around you can find a rebel website or two who call them supplys, though that word looks awkward.

Pretty busy with work, among other things. Quick update here. Recently I mangled my first attempt at homemade mojitos, mangled my first attempt at my mom's style fried rice, and discovered I'm developing an increasing double chin (Kate says I'm not nodding vigorously enough).

(commenting on an article by Scott Jones, editor of "crispy gamer" website, about how he voted for Fallout 3 as game of the year even though he secretly disliked the game)
Baby Arm: Note to parents: if your child has a vagina, don't name it Scott.

This is my 100th post on here.

Eric is moving to San Francisco. I haven't seen the kid in a couple months, and in the past year or two haven't seen him very often at all, but there's something about his moving away I find quite depressing. First Dave, now Eric. I am now roommate free. Kate has pointed out that San Francisco is a great city to visit, and she's right. It's definitely a nicer visit than Kansas or Ohio, where I was thinking of moving a few years ago. Plus I have a few other friends who live in SF. Eric should like the weather out there, it's always slightly too cold.

I'm sampling the band These United States because they're linked from the Page France myspace page. I'm digging this song "Honor Among Thieves". Sadly, all their other songs on myspace are much softer. Not sure I'll get this album.

My desktop has caught some malware. When I open firefox it opens a large popup in IE advertising random software or software-related books on amazon. I was just searching for a flash tutorial on google, honest. And I downloaded a flash plugin without thinking about it much, maybe that was the problem. For now, I've routed IE through a fake proxy so that it can't connect, and disabled all my unknown firefox extensions. I'll reinstall the OS later when I have more time.

quote pending

Just spent a fun weekend in Woodstock, NY with my sister, cousins, their friends and Kate. We spent some time in the hot tub, sitting by the fire, and playing drinking games. The SUV I rented turned out to be totally unnecessary and pretty expensive, but that's alright. Also it turns out that it's impossible to rent an SUV that has 2 cigarette lighters. I wanted to run a gps device and my fm transmitter at the same time, but instead we had to swap the music in when we hit long stretches of highway.

I got pulled over by the police today for the first time ever. This was in dc. After dropping kate's things off at her house I was giving her a ride to her office and then I was going to go on to return the car at the airport. A cop pulled in behind us somewhere around Logan circle, and I watched her (it was a lady cop) in my rear view mirror. She drove up, looked at my license plate and then punch it into her little computer. (The rental car for some reason has georgia plates, so I thought this was the reason she thought we were suspicious.) She followed us though the circle, for 2 or 3 blocks, and just when I was discussing with Kate how you could tell whether the cops wanted you to pull over or not (because they routinely drive around with their overhead lights on), the cop lady beeped her siren at me and pulled me over.

Now, I'm not totally sure what happened. Maybe Kate has a better understanding of the events. I was busy focusing on not arguing and appearing compliant so that I don't get dragged out of my car and beaten.

Cop: I pulled you over because your tags are out of date, and you just ran a stop light.
me (surprised): Really?
(This was a real surprise because I noticed at the exact instant that the cop car pulled into the street behind me, and I usually pay attention to stop lights even when there isn't a cop behind me. But circles can be tricky so it's possible.)
Cop: Are you from around here?
me: Yeah, though I don't drive often.
Cop: Can I see your license and registration.

(I gave her my license and she took it back to her car. Kate and I did some fishing around in the glove compartment for any registration information but came up totally empty except for some insurance stuff that didn't really have account numbers or anything. Quality Alamo car rentals.)

Cop (hands me back my license): You know, if you don't feel comfortable driving in the city then you should let someone else drive.
me (very mildly): Well, I do feel pretty comfortable driving.
Cop: It's a rental car, right?
me: Yes.
Cop: (At this point she babbled for a good 30 seconds. It was something to the effect of: it turns out that the vehicle is registered, it just doesn't look that way from the stickers, and so she got mislead. Somehow I think she admitted to messing that up, but made it sound like it was my fault)
Cop: I'm going to let you off with a verbal warning. You need to stay alert and be careful when you drive.
me: Thank you. Okay, I will be careful.

When I got down to the airport and the car rentals, I told the guy that I got pulled over and that the cops said the stickers on the car are out of date. The guy said "No they aren't, come look." Sure enough, the sticker on the back says "10" for 2010.

Now the question of me allegedly running a stop light in logan circle. Kate (who was awake and sitting in the front with me) didn't see me run anything, I didn't see myself run anything. And we both knew there was a cop behind us (we were discussing it the whole time) so you'd think it'd occur to one of us if I ran a stop light. Also, Kate says that the cop said stop sign the first time, and then corrected herself and said stop light after I said "really?". It's a fishy story. I wonder if the dc cops know that it's okay to be in the intersection when it turns red, so long as you're already inside the intersection. I should have asked the lady cop what, exactly, her definition is of a "red" light. Now I'm imagining my future re-tellings of this story where I act much more manly or cunning. Perhaps lying about being an ignorant tourist, or pulling some macho "Woman, don't you realize you're about to try to give a ticket to a man!?! I'm an alpha male!"

(about Revenge of the Sith)
"What kills me is that Spielberg saw this movie and cried. He wept!! That means that Spielberg is either the biggest Star Wars nerd in the history of Star Wars nerds...or it means that he knows nothing about directing great movies and just gets lucky everytime out. Unless he cried at how inconsistent and unfulfilling it was."