back and busy

Frustrated at work. Some brilliant coworker of mine thinks it's okay to walk up to the group printer and grab his printout from the stack while leaving everything else just sitting there. He must not understand that the printer offsets at every other printing and, if you just take one out of the mix, the printer will drop the next printout right behind the previous and nobody will find it. I just spent 10 minutes fishing through there trying to find my missing printout. I should wait in the print room someday. Bring in a newspaper and some coffee. Then when I see this guy snatch his printout off the top of the stack I'll be there to smack him over the back of the head with the paper and shout "Bad!"

I'm back from a fun time in Colorado (where it was warm, for once) and now have to do 200% at work. I also have to get up to NYC this weekend for my sister's art show, we'll see how I manage that. At least we're having a pleasant heatwave this week. 100 degrees today.

I have a caffine headache.

(an Amazon.com customer review of William Shatner's "The Transformed Man")
"The hallowed words of Shakespeare, Lennon-McCartney and Bob Dylan are trampled and tortured in Shatner's patented overripe acting style, turned up to eleven. Shatner's anguished cry of "Mr. Tambourine Man!!!!" at the end of that song is so unexpected and frightening, it would kill a strolling minstrel dead in his tracks."

movies!

Bored at work today so I went on a blu-ray buying spree. I got:
Enter the Dragon (somehow I don't have the dvd of this, and the amazon reviewers say this is the best picture transfer yet),
Troy (I have the dvd of this, but the blu-ray has the director's cut and I thought the movie had some great photography. It should be good in hd),
Underworld (one of my favorite Bill Nighy roles, this is some kind of extended version that I don't have also), and
The Patriot (this movie is cheap because it was one of those that you could get for free if you ordered a ps3 early so there're lots of unappreciated copies out there. It's super long and extended, and I remember enjoying the original).

I also go Virtua Fighter 5, because after playing Tekken for a while I've gotten tired of being juggled by everybody and his mother and not being able to do anything about it. Seriously, it's so realistic. I know every time I watch a UFC match on tv one fighter will uppercut the other fighter into the air and then wail on him with a 6-hit combo before he falls to the ground. Happens all the time.

I thought about getting GTA 4, but I don't have enough time these days for that kind of game.

Finally I got a rice cooker. I'm tired of paying $6 per lb at the lunch buffet (and $9 per lb at Wholefoods!!) when 3/4's of my meal is rice. This thing is going to pay for itself in less than a month. The only trick is going to be washing it. I only have a bathroom sink.. I guess I'll be stopping by Eric's occasionally to wash it out.

Lest she think it's unimportant to me, last weekend Kate came down to dc to visit and I had a great time taking a long weekend off work and hanging out with her. She has some friends in the area so I met some of them. They're all so young and cheerful. Yep, they're new to the dc area.

Tomorrow is Reynoldstock!

(a guy in a forum comparing the story of GTA: San Andreas with GTA 4)
I'll admit that the story and missions of San Andreas could leave you with a nasty taste in your mouth, but this stems from the fact that you were playing as a punk ass no-balls bitch who, if I remember correctly, was raped by an ass-ugly chick in the country at one point.

Yours For Now in NYC, running through a downpour, and computer issues

I went to NYC last weekend, from thursday through saturday. It was a good time, I saw a bunch of cousins and a bunch of my sisters friends whose names I didn't remember, and probably won't remember again next time. That's the problem with having only met people when you're drinking. My brother in law Doug and his friend and my two cousins Brian and Linda are in a rock band up there called Yours For Now. And they were really good. I was expecting more garage-band level stuff, but they were like standard indy-band quality like you'd hear in a paid-for concert. Maybe some day they'll be my claim to fame, since Eric's musical aspirations have apparently petered out (I'm still uncertain about Banjolina Jolie, but that might be just because it's not my style of music).

I got dinner with Dave Saturday and tried to go to Kate's birthday at Marvin aftwards. On the walk to the bar it started raining, brewing itself into an unbelievable downpour in like 5 minutes so that we were half-soaked by the time we had run to the bar. When we got there Jamie gave a disbelieving "Is that the line!?!" A good 20-30 people were waiting outside in the rain to get into the bar. It was pouring down super hard, and most of these people didn't have umbrellas. In retrospect maybe I should have stuck around for the wet t-shirt contest which was sure to follow. But instead I huddled for a few minutes under a tiny overhang around the block with Dave and Jamie, and then ran home and worked on my computer for the rest of the night. But I finally fixed it.

The computer was doing this thing where it'd get about 1/3 of the way through installing Windows and then power shut off. I unplugged everything, tried installing on different hard drives, tried with different Windows cds, reflashed the BIOS, but nothing worked. I was confused becsause the computer had been working fine until I uninstalled Windows, so it didn't seem likely that it was a motherboard issue. I was frustrated for a while. Finally, Saturday night, on a whim I took out the second RAM chip, leaving only the primary, and then it miraculously installed smoothly. Apparently this motherboard can't cope with dual-channel memory without special windows-level driver software installed (I had assumed it'd be in the BIOS), and it can't just ignore the second memory either. Anyway. Now I just need to find the right driver for this onboard network card. I love how foxconn doesn't collect, mirror, or even link to the drivers you may need for their motherboards, they instead tell you to go hunt it down from the manufacturer. I don't even know who manufactured this thing. I'll figure that out later.

Maybe I should start tagging some entries "nerdy" or "computer" when I talk about that kind of thing. I know you're all anxious to get my collected technical wisdom onto a single page.

(from a netflix user review of Dead Man Walking)
Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn are sensational in the lead roles. (Sarandon won an Oscar and Penn wuz robbed). By the end of the movie, when you look at Susan Sarandon you see a nun, which is an achievement in itself.

updates

Had to wait 2 hours yesterday while my ps3 downloaded and installed a system update. First of all, I'm worried about the frequency of these updates. I just updated the ps3 last week, and it took 2 hours then also. Is this going to be a weekly event? I sure hope not. Secondly, why does it take so long? My computer can download an install an update in one tenth the time! The ps3 has some kind of bandwidth overhead issues. And third annoying thing: after running and installing the update they give the little notice about what features were updated. And the only feature listed with this one was the Sony Store. They updated the online store interface. Awesome. I couldn't play tekken online because my sony store wasn't quite up to date.

My sunburned face is peeling. I look like a lizard man.

(Comparing the "factory" star forge from KotOR and the Death Star)
"I feel that a factory is a better use for a giant space station then a super laser that destroys planets (seriously, what was the Emperor thinking when he heard Tarkins idea for that?). Seriously, what strategic value would the Death Star have? Now compare that to the value of an ever growing fleet that can still destroy a planet if it feels the need too. Oh and the Star Forge wasn't destroyed by 2 hits to a two meters wide hole. Oh and the Star Forge uses the force, something the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to."

spying

Saw this article in the washington post today. Then I went and found the girl on facebook.

Now I feel kinda guilty about spying on her. She seems like such a normal (somewhat wild) girl. I guess we all do stupid things sometimes.

Tonight I'm working late. Then heading out for a weekend in the mountains. Hopefully I won't get sick.

(whitney feeling confused about a doctor who said he liked her and then broke up with her)
whitney: why did i fall for this?
joe: you fell for the doctor act
whitney: yep.
whitney: i did. i liked making out with his stethoscope.
joe: yeah that sounds hot
whitney: we'd be watching a movie and he'd go get it.

Whole Foods food

I picked up breakfast at whole foods this morning. Finding edible food at whole foods is really more of an art than a science. I used to go down there for lunch with my coworker Spittle, but he refuses to go now because every time we went he'd end up with something terrible. You have to have an acute sense of smell, like I do, to be able to guess what's going to be good. Or maybe it's my just having grown up around the Northern California hippies.

Today I'm not so lucky though and this morning's eggs and sausage are just okay. They didn't have the popcorn shrimp that I usually like in this buffet this morning. Not to be an over-taster, but the popcorn shrimp mixed with the spicy sausage jambalaya is pretty delicious. It's a litle spicy, but not too spicy. One of the few foods worth the rediculous $10 per pound or whatever rediculous price they're now charging. These eggs were a bad call. I guess it can't be sunny every day.

The lady in front of me in the checkout line paid $418 for her groceries. She had 2 carts full of food, but still, that seems like too much to be paying for food. Where do hippies get so much money? Definitely the highest grocery bill I've ever seen. Hopefully it'll last her a while. That's probably more than I pay in a month!

Today I'm going to be busy doing lots and lots of work.

(Gene Weingarten interviews Karl Savage, a high school English teacher from Silver Spring, who leads an international movement called the No Work on Leap Day Revolution. He thinks that the Februrary 29th that happens every 4 years is an extra, free day and we shouldn't automatically have to spend it working.)
Gene: I think there may be a logical problem with your suggestion that we're not paid for Leap Day.
Karl: Actually, I didn't do the math.
Gene: Me, neither. Two of the greatest mathematicians in the world did the math for me. Curtis McMullen at Harvard is a winner of the Fields Medal, which is math's equivalent of the Nobel. Terence Tao of UCLA won the Fields Medal and a MacArthur genius grant. I talked to both of them, and they both said that, mathematically, because most of us work for an hourly or weekly wage, most everyone is compensated for the extra day. Only people who are paid by the month lose a day's pay, but they're already getting overpaid in February, because it's so short.
Karl: Oh.
Gene: So.
Karl: But, see, this isn't the point. I'm not a mathematician, but I understand poetry. And there is an inscrutable logic to the fact that this day is extra.
Gene: Don't you mean immutable logic?
Karl: No, inscrutable. It can't be scruted.

a coke catastrophe

Listening to Warp 11's song Section 31. It's sort of a imitation of the 007 theme, but with a trek twist. It reminds me of that Next Gen episode where the Klingons and the Federation are doing and officer exchange program to learn more about each other's cultures so they placed Riker as an officer on a Klingon ship and received a Klingon officer (who turns out to be Worf's brother) on the Enterprise. It was a great episode. The first thing Riker did when he got to the ship was beat up a huge Klingon soldier who was questioning his authority, because that's what Klingons do. Then there was some emergency and Riker ended up totally taking command of the Klingon ship and saving the Enterprise. The Klingon crew totally respected him by the end of the episode and Piccard was all startled when he thought the Klingon ship might attack them so he hailed the ship and Riker showed up on the view screen sitting in the captain's chair and smirking. Such a great show.

I was just listening to Lewis Black while I did some work, and drinking a coke with my feet up on my desk at the same time. Apparently it's a bad combination because Lewis Black said something really funny and I started laughing with coke in my mouth. With my laidback posture I somehow enhaled it all. Next thing I know I'm doubled over coughing up coke onto the office floor and gasping for air. Got coke all over my pants and shirt too. I was gasping for a good 30 seconds. My officemate was worried he was going to have to come over and perform the hemilich maneuver, something I'm glad he didn't try to do.

(from a forum about the movie "Meet the Spartans". A sequel to "Epic Movie" and even the preview looks horrible)
"The only good that will come from this movie is that it will herd anyone dumb enough to pay to see it into a single area (the theatre) so that we can plan for extermination."

some future-officemate gossip and musings about having nothing in common with girls

Saw my future officemate's profile on facebook. He sure has his shirt off in a lot of photos, I hope he's not some frat-type guy. And he's an electrical engineer working in GUIs, which seems strange. Hopefully he knows about GUIs because I won't be much help in that. Someone was just in here setting up the computer he'll be using. I asked if the ergonomic keyboard he was getting is standard issue now, and the guy said "I dunno, it's all I could find so I'm installing it." I guess he'll get used to it. I thought about taking his computer's speakers but I think I actually like mine more. Well, according to our online system, he's moving in tomorrow.

The metro driver this morning wouldn't stop babbling. He carefully explained all how to transfer to the different lines, what important stops we'd be making on the way to Huntington, what the current time ways, all sorts of extra stuff. I was a litle irritated.

Yesterday I talked to Kate about how little we have in common. We don't really have all that much in common (we like the same cereals), but it doesn't bother me. I mean, today I like Star Trek and I could go out and try to find a trekkie girl. I mean she sounds kinda cool now, but tomorrow I might like Star Wars instead, and I'm certainly not going to be dating any trekkie girl when I'm a Star Wars fan! She'd be such a hopeless nerd! I suppose what I'm saying is that people change, and liking someone because they happen to agree with all your tastes is a sure route to disliking someone (or just being bored) in the future.

Besides, it's best not to have too much in common with girls, then you're not tempted to try to understand their strange ways. Like it says in the Bible: "When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations." Yep, it's talking about the women-folk.

(Spittle sees a photo of me wearing a "Go Vegan or Die" shirt)
Spittle: You're not a vegan joe.
me: I know I'm not.
Spittle: Are you going around lying to girls?

Sweeny Todd in the mountains

I had a very fun MLK weekend out in the mountains. It's freezing cold out there but pretty quiet, sort of like living in a ski resort town. And nobody up there has heard of the movie Tron. My shirt got blank look responses. Kids these days have no respect for history.

I saw Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It started a little slow, but then picked up speed about 20 minutes in. The unusual combination of Johnny Depp's cheerful song and the the montage of him systematically cutting people's throats and dropping the bodies down a shoot so they fall on their heads made the scene pretty funny in a morbid way. Kate was pretty disturbed and I probably wouldn't sit through it again, but we all thought it was very well done movie. I'm getting the soundtrack.

My new officemate's name is on the door. Grant Johnson. He sounds like a president... I guess it's a very caucasian name. He doesn't have a computer or supplies in here yet, so he probably won't show up until late this week. Maybe Friday. Then I'll have to be a role model. No more naps. I'm planning on laying out some ground rules as soon as we meet. I'll let you know how it goes. He works in GUIs, which sounds like a stupid thing to have a patent on, but whatever.

In other news, Eric got punched in the side of the face while walking to a party near Potomac Avenue metro this weekend. He told me about it last night. A bunch of guys were going to rob him or worse, but he managed to run away after getting hit. I'm not sure what factors are to blame, but generally I'd say don't walk around SE at night, don't walk around sketchy places while wearing your headphones listening to music, and keep an eye out. But any number of things, including bad luck, probably contributed to Eric's incident. My coworker Spittle would say this is why we all need to carry guns. He's a moron about some things.

(about the nicer local restaurants and their dress codes)
Kate: They're not really fancy. Just fancier than you can get into wearing your ringer.

because someone has to think about it

I don't really mind sitting next to fat people on the metro. They always sit on the ends of my coat because they overflow their seat, but that's alright. I can accept that some people just don't like standing and it doesn't bother me when people sit next to me.

What does kinda bother me is when fat women sit next to me and we're going over the bridge over the Potomac. I always think, "What if there's some kind of accident and the train derails into the water?" Julie probably started me worrying about that, because I never did until she suggested it. If my train does derail, I tend to think that I'll be okay. The bridge is probably only like 20 feet above the water and the fact that it can't all derail at once means that it won't be a straight drop. In fact, we'd probably hit the water relatively softly. Then it'd be every man for himself, and I can hold my breath and swim pretty well, and chances are decent that I'd be alright.

Now put an overweight older lady next to me. It's a well studied fact (I know from seeing many movies) that in an emergency she's either going to pass out and trap me against the wall, or latch onto me and start wailing in panic. When your vehicle goes into the water pretty much ever second counts, you want to get out before you sink too deep. I bet the time spent trying to either detach the wailing old lady ("You're never going to make it, Granny!") or else lever her unconscious mass out of the seat enough for me to squeeze out, those wasted seconds at least halve my odds of surviving.

Just something to keep in mind.

me: You haven't seen many movies. But that's okay, nobody's perfect.
Kate: I don't have as much free time as you.
me: You usually get out of work around like 5:30. Where does all your free time go? Do you have a hobby I don't know about?
Kate: A hobby? Yeah, my hobby is another man.
(that would be both hilarious and sad if it was Kate's break up technique. But I don't think it is.)

Townsville, Australia

My newest hobby for spare time at work is to look for cities with the best weather. The problem with most places is that it's either too cold in the winter (getting below the 50 is problematic) or too warm in the summer (above the mid-80's is uncomfortable). The only exceptions I've found so far are in Hawaii and Southern California. Hawaii is probably too isolated for me though, and Southern California is so crowded and expensive and I'm not sure if I approve of that whole OC culture. Today I was examining a weathermap of Australia. Most of it looks too warm, and the south-east is too cold, but Townsville looks promising. It's on the coast in the north-east . It only gets down to the mid 50's and up to the mid-80's. Maybe I'll retire there. Though I'd have to start thinking in celsius... and learn to get along with a bunch of descendents of criminals. People for whom crime is in the blood. Hopefully they'll give me a permit to own a gun. It's a good thing I can look like a thug when I need to.

(Yesterday I called my dad)
me: Hi Dad.
dad: Hi Joseph.
me: Happy Birthday!
dad: Hahahaha. Okay, we'll write you back into the will.
me: Yeah. Wait, what?
dad: You know when my birthday really is, right?
me: Shoot, is it tomorrow? I thought it was today.
dad: Haha. It's January 3rd.

napping in an office chair

Not that I ever nap in the office, but I've independently discovered that napping on an office chair that's similar to my office chair leads to very strange dreams. When you lean my office chair back, it tilts back somewhat awkwardly such that your head and shoulders are leaning a little further back than is comfortable and it takes a lot of effort to lift yourself out of the chair. It's probably harder to pick yourself up when you're lying down flat and napping, but at least when you're lying down you can roll onto one side. You can't really move at all in my chair. Anyway, often in my napping dreams, in this chair very similar to my office chair, I dream that I'm lying in a chair and am either paralyzed or heavily medicated and can't lift myself out of the chair. It's a very strange experience. It's not frightening or anything, but a little distressing at the time and later on I always wonder if I was really half-awake and trying to rock myself out of my chair. You all should try it sometime.

Nice weather today, and again I'm leaving early. I've worked 7 hours so far this week.

Charlie: So how did you meet her?
(Charlie was asking me, but Spittle jumps in as though the question was addressd to him)
Spittle: He met her on World of Warcraft! Joe saw her riding on a bearded dragon mount and told her "Wouldn't you rather be riding a Joe Schell?"

Illness and a poem

I've been sick for a while. Since like thursday last week. But I managed to briefly get out for a turkey frying at Eric's (which was fun) and a Brand New concert out in Baltimore with Rachel and Eric (which was okay). Probably the last time I'll see Brand New, the just get more and more pretentious and showey and less substantial with each tour. They didn't play a single song off their first album, and the lights were set to flash right in the eyes of the audience. I think the lead singer must have been having a bad hair day or something because they didn't once use lights from overhead. Oh well.

I'm watching a youtube clip from South Park, where they explain evolution (probably the funniest explaination of evolution I've ever heard) and one of the brilliant youtube users wrote a nice little poem in his comment. Is it a explaination of evolution? Refutation of evolution? Who can say, he left no other hints. There's something admirable in the poem's simplicity and lack of proper grammer at its conclusion, as though to say, "You are retarded." Not sure if the first line is a typo or intentional so I'm leaving it.

Rabbits look similar to squirrles
Rhinos look like hippos
Man looks like monkey

knocked up

Just watched Knocked Up for the first time. Pretty funny, but it would have been better without the pregnant chick. That's right, I said it. The parts with the guy friends are funnier. And this chick stopped being hot as soon as she started whaling up. Whitney has tried to insist that pregnancy is beautiful, but it's not really. Disproportionately fat girls are not hot, irrationally angry girls are not hot, and newborn babies are all slimey and disgusting. Wow, i'm being so negative.

My new computer is working. I'm give away this old one. If any of you need a moderately crappy (though fully functional) computer just let me know.

Oh, and some new photos were posted.

Whitney: coach, louis vutton- or something spelled like that
Whitney: kate spade-
me: what's that, brands?
Whitney: all good brands.
me: ah
me: the girls i know carry tiny little bags that can't really hold anything
me: what brand is that?
Whitney: stupid.
me: stupid because you don't know?
me: buuuurn
Whitney: ohh.
Whitney: burn. it was.

"Nada Mucho"

This Thursday I have a test at work, and I was supposed to study last weekend but I totally forgot. Having a test at work sounds kinda weird, but we don't do it often. It's only for the employees that management suspects are a little too slow for this job. Ha, not really. I don't think my supervisor suspects that yet.

Went to a post-halloween party in Columbia Heights last Saturday. I was a goth "blind date from hell", complete with a wilted flower. Liza helped me spike my hair using blue hair gel, and it came out surprisingly well. Dave said I should consider it as my permenant hair style. I don't think I'm going to do that just now though, maybe later.

I'm listening to Manowar. They're a heavy metal group, and so, so much better than Metallica or whatever else you'd consider trashy heavy metal. I don't really understand their fetish for illustrations of heavily muscled mostly-naked dudes, nor am I generally impressed with Norse mythology, but some of their songs are really great. You have to sift through a lot of drool overly-dramatic crap to find it, but when you do it's like striking gold. They have maybe 10 albums. I went through them all, and sorted out maybe 45 minutes of glorious rock anthems. Well worth the trouble too, if they only played these songs in concert it would be the best concert since Andrew WK's first album. Unfortunately the concerts are probably filled with barely clothed bodybuilder guys with long hair and dripping sweat. Possibly the least attractive mosh pit ever. And they only tour in Europe, so there you go. All that and BO to boot. I'll stick with the albums.

(we may have new rules in the office soon that limit a client's number of RCEs)
Spittle: They told me they're not allowed to RCE because of the new rules.
me: The new rules aren't going into effect yet.
Spittle: Yeah but they're worried that it might go into effect retro-actively and they don't want to bust their nut early by using one up.
me: Umm. You probably shouldn't use that phrase around the office.
Spittle: Hey, that's what the lawyer just told me on the phone. He said "We don't want to bust a nut too early."

computer issues

I got my new computer yesterday but it does not work. It's probably my fault. First, I'm not sure if my old power supply is powerful enough. I bought the thing like 3 years ago and have no idea what it's wattage is. Second, I'm using a 20-pin power supply for a 24-pin power plug. I read on the internet that it should work so long as you line up the right pins, but who knows. And finally, I manually adapted a special super-quiet cpu fan I bought so that it works on this cpu socket that is wasn't designed for. The whole operation involved shaving plastic off the cpu mounting socket with a pen knife and putting a piece of sponge in as extra material to press the fan down on the processor. It's kinda shady. Now the computer powers up, as far as I can tell anyway, but nothing displays on the screen. I should plug in a harddrive and see if it tries to access it. Also I think I'm going to pick up a better power supply after work today at best buy. I wish there was a better computer store in the area but there isn't. Oh well, I'll figure it all out eventually.

Listening to Warp 11. They're not a very popular band, but I like them. They imitate other bands' musical styles and only write songs about star trek. Star trek mixed with sex, in every conceivable way. They're constantly mentioning Kirk's alien-girl fetish, weird borg sex with Seven-of-Nine (and through her, the whole borg collective), holodeck porn, and my favorite: "Prime Directive's gonna make my dick explode." Classy stuff, that's why I like it.

(from a "Dungeons & Dragons" movie review)
"Irons here jumps from crazed overacting to the ultimate overacting experience of a lifetime. If overacting as a villain was a fuel, Jeremy Irons would have just powered the entire planet from now until the end of time. He goes beserko! "

Weakerthans, Dual Monitors, and Apple Fritters

Saw the Weakerthans yesterday. It was a really early show, and its kinda soft music. Plus I couldn't drink too much because I had to get into work early today. But I was still decent. The drinking with Dave and Eric beforehand was probably a little more fun.

Today I disabled my dual monitors at work. 2 monitors isn't really conducive to productivity with this job. I remember when I was programming at home, you can look at the source code and the program results and do a cross-analysis to debug your program code. But here I end up using one monitor for work and the other monitor to read the news or videogame reviews and the two monitors together tire my eyes out 5 times as quickly. This will be better. Maybe I'll read fewer useless reviews.

Why do Apple Fritters have to be so big? The tastiest part is the edges, where it's not so apple-tasting. The middle tastes moderately disgusting, they should just make them normal sized. I don't need a 5 pound donut in the morning. My supervisor saw it sitting on my desk and told me "Stay healthy, Joe."

(from a Eragon movie review)
"Unfortunately, the dragon suddenly hits puberty and becomes a woman in about three seconds, and returns fully grown and able to talk psychically to Eragon in perfect English. So perfect, it has an English accent and sounds a lot like Rachel Weisz. She tells Eragon her name is Saphira, and that he is her rider. I guess he will be made a man, if beastiality counts! "

flu shots, etc.

Got a flu shot today from the hottest doctor-lady I've ever seen. (I managed to refrain from sexually harassing her.) Last year I got the flu despite getting the flu shot, which Whitney predicted because they were giving out shots for the wrong strain of flu. But Whitney tells me the shot's good against 3 of the 4 possible strains of flu and "pray to ur lucky stars u foot catch the fourth!" (Whitney gets lazy with her phone-texting sometimes.)

I'm wrapping up an entire week of waking up before or at 7 to get into work early for a class. It has been exhausting.

The kid who sits infront of me in the class is separating from his wife. We've been in class almost 2 weeks, and it started about a week ago. The kid is probably a year or two younger than me, and he doesn't get upset or anything when he talks about it, but I have noticed that he's developed a stutter. He and his buddies are completely convinced that the problems are all 100% the wife's fault. It's kinda interesting to see. "She used to make me coffee in the morning and fix my lunch. She can be very nice when she chooses to be, for some reason she's decided to be a bitch lately!" Well, who knows. Probably a better approach would be to admit that you're confused by the situation, and maybe talk to your soon-to-be-ex-wife, instead of clinging so firmly to "why's she being such a bitch?" But I don't really know the kid so I won't butt in. He's a mechanical engineer (working in foot pedals), so you know he's a little unbalanced from the start.

(from the "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert" facebook group's message board)

Kyle Hamilton (CSCC) wrote at 2:21pm
ah, pop culture fags... comedy central = creditable news??? just a bunch of mindless fodders being lead to slaughter...

Zachary Foster (UF) wrote at 2:21pm
Kyle you go to community college

Michael Clayton

Went to see Michael Clayton with Dave yesterday. Dave picked me up from work at about 1:30, and we drove over to the AMC theater in Alexandria, only to discover that all the parking in the parking lot we went into were marked "reserved". I guess there's some business in that same stripmall that reserves the spaces during work hours. So we tried to get over to the next parking lot and were forced by the street to get onto a highway going north over the railroad tracks. We quickly got back off that, did a U-turn, and crossed back over the railroad tracks, only to find that there was no exit to get back to the theater! We went down, did another U-turn, and came back up to discover that there was no exit from north-bound either. So we went further south, took the exit immediately before the theater, and ended up going to down other street with no way to get across the little stream back to the theater. It was frustrating, apparently the theater has railroad tracks on the north side and a stream on the south side, and the only way to get there from our highway (as I discovered on a map later) is to be on 495-E a few miles West of us, or 495-W a few miles east of us. So we should have gotten on the highway, gone down 2 exits and gotten off and re-entered the highway coming back. But instead we went to the theater out by Target near crystal city.

Michael Clayton sucked. All the critics on rottentomatoes are raving about it, but it's basically a stupid knockoff of that old John Travolta movie called A Civil Action. It's hard to go into the reasons it sucked without giving the whole thing away, but it did suck. The critics are saying that the storyline is subtle, but it's not really. Unless you really read (a lot) more into the dialogue than is implied by the characters or the story (ie, you stretch). And they're saying the characters are realistic, and I guess they are. The antagonist heistates and maybe tears up a little when she orders someone murdered, and the main character realizes he's a clog in the unethical industry of the practice of law, and it disillusions him. None of it makes the story AT ALL unpredictable. There were no twists, no surprises, and no character development (besides one guy going crazy, which in a way was a development). I give the movie both thumbs down.

Btw, exciting photos from the rafting trip can be found on my facebook profile, if you know where that is.

(I overhear one of my coworkers describing his job)
Guy: First, I find a reference. Second, I read the reference. Third, I make something up that the reference doesn't say and I send out a rejection.

on videogames

Got an email from Dan saying he's saving up money for a ps3 to play tekken online. I just looked it up, and somehow at the beginning of this month they came out with tekken 5 playable online without telling me! I knew the japanese had it (those bastards), but didn't know it was available in the states.

So I was looking into getting a ps3 (I have a little more spending money than Dan), but I was just checking and there are no really good games for the ps3! I went to gamerankings and did a search for the top 40 RPGs on the ps3 (RPGs are really the only games worth playing). And it came back with a list of 4! The only one that got decent reviews was that Elder Scrolls: Oblivion game too, a game which is almost definitely better on either the xbox or pc, and I'm not really interested in playing it anyway. The PS3 has like 4 games that have gotten decent reviews, and they're all either sports or stupid action games.

So, what to do, what to do. I'm not sure. Is it worth $500 to endlessly humiliate Tekken pseudo-players nationwide (besides Dan occasionally) and not play another game until Tekken 6? It might be. Or I was also thinking of just getting a Wii instead (getting both sounds overindulgent) because I want to play Residet Evil (yes, I have zero interest in Zelda). Though the Wii is kinda hard to find, and I refuse to pay more than MSRP. I refuse to get price gouged like a sap, or propogate the culture of price gouging. I still have my dignity!* They should make a multiplayer counter-strike-esque shooter for the Wii. Normally I don't like shooters, but that'd be kinda cool.

I'm busy at work this weekend, and I haven't had any time for videogames in at least the last month. But I'm looking forward to it soon. I was also thinking of buying the Office DVDs and Rome season 2, but I may have too many dvds as it is. I hate to accumulate stuff. Though Rome is a great show and the second is the last season.. I'm such a consumer.

(from a review of Def Jam: Icon, a fighting game for the ps3)

"[The control scheme] takes a while to learn, because the game moves at a much slower pace than most fighters. Maybe that's because the MCs, or their digital counterparts, are bigger and thicker than most fighting characters. It might simply be difficult to react quickly wearing a massive parka."

(I remember thinking, while playing Def Jam: Fight for NYC years ago, that the rappers fighting in their huge jackets and chains and whatnot seemed even more rediculous when than when they were interacting, boasting about how badass and hardcore each one was)


*109th Rule of Aquisition: "Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack."