Is It Weird ?

Is it weird that I stopped updating? Or was that something you expected all along.

I certainly had aspirations to keep going, but finding content to make it relevant was certainly more trying than rewarding. While I now someone, somewhere, links their way here on the odd occasional fancy, no one stays and talks to me. So I get lazy. I forget to upload pictures and talk about my day. It's just not worthwhile, or interesting, for that matter.

Yet, here I am, I'm back. Or I might be. I'm going to leave this up as the main attraction at the top of the blog for the next week. If you're still out there and want me to keep blogging, IM me, leave me a wall post, or comment here just so I know you care. Otherwise...

Hell, I'm on post 99 of the new blog. Post 100 will either be a vindictive tirade or a triumphant return with pictures of my new PS3 and a travelogue of my Mexican adventure.

Celebrate the century mark with me.

Another Wasted Opportunity

I spent all of yesterday tracking a coupon code that was giving $15 off any order (should have been off 200+) and I placed a couple orders for stuff that I'd been interested in for awhile. Unfortunately, despite shipping orders for other people and keeping the code active for over a day, it died this morning and all my orders have been canceled.

Sucks. I was really hoping to get my new G15 Keyboard and Z5300e speakers from Logitech. Oh well. Wasted some time generating VCCs and saved myself a couple months of waiting on 80+ in rebates.

Video of the Week: Cause I'm Horny

I just started watching Flight of the Conchords today and (apparently Yuan's known about them for awhile now...) they're really funny. The TV show is really dry, but awkwardly humorous and the songs they use to fill time are hilarious. This one is my favorite so far, so if you like it, just check out the show.



And sorry about the lack of updates. I've been out having fun. I'll throw up some pictures and recap later.

Me and McLovin'

Haha. Awesome.

Are you SuperBad?

I hope you are.

I went to screening for Superbad last night at Shattuck Cinemas and from my initial exclamations, you can tell it was a very good time. I'll start with a couple pictures, then I'll jump into the narrative of the day.



So, I get off work at around 5:40 and meet up with Maggie near VLSB, knowing that we needed to get there early in order to get in. Expecting a relatively large crowd for a relatively small theatre, I had to get there early. Maggie even made some snide remark about actually waiting in line for something since I never bothered to rush for any of the musicals that I've seen with her.

We get down to the Shattuck area and I grab a quick mocha just to perk up after a long day's work before we head towards the theatre. From two blocks away I could see the huge mass of people piling up on the sidewalk waiting to get into the theatre. Some of the them were eating food, others playing cards; luckily, the line hadn't turned the corner of the block by very much and we settled in somewhere "comfortable". We wait for about 30 minutes before a pair of ladies walk out to check ID's (I think to make sure that we were 17+) and to pass out tickets. I grab a pair rather greedily, satisfied by my early going accomplishments. Too bad we had to wait another 30 minutes before actually walking into the theatre.

By the time we get in, I realize that we made it into the second to last group. I count my blessings and say thank the lord a couple of times. Of course, before going in they do a search of my possessions and steal my camera and my camera phone just so I'd be deterred from making illegal CAM with them - in camera quality glory...

In the theatre, there's this huge middle section taped off as "reserved", but I've got no clue who they're reserved for. I watch people get up and sit down in them, only to be kicked out a few minutes later, so I decide against tempting fate. Instead, Maggie and I grab a pair of seats in the left aisle. I settle in and give Maggie a few bucks for a popcorn I promised I'd pay for if she came along. Then I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Finally, some guy from some country music station comes to the front, says some crap about how awesome country music is, and thanks everyone for coming to the screening. After what felt like forever, he finally starts the film. No trailers, no frills, just Superbad. Sweet.

Now, I won't spoil the movie or anything, but if you've seen Knocked Up...this is very similar. Maggie didn't enjoy it quite as much, but she still had fun with it, so that's saying something. I had a blast. Some scenes were awkward, but that just contrast with the hilarity of the dialogue and the situations the characters were put into. To be perfectly honest, it felt like a more mature American Pie, and I appreciated it. There were some points that definitely lacked a decisive conclusion and the ending was awkwardly perfect, but it was sentimental, and it really felt like it meant it. The performances by Chris Mintz-Plasse, Seth Rogan, and Bill Hedar were exceptional, stealing the movie from the leads Jonah Hill and Mike Cera (Not to hate on their performances, which were great, but expected I suppose).

I love the movie, and after the movie, the three leads - Chris, Jonah, and Mike - came out and did a quick Q&A session. It was funny, although a little uninformative and shortwinded. Michael Cera busted out with a line from The Thong Song, a girl asked for a hug from Michael Cera (which enticed Maggie to want a hug), and someone drew a dick and got it signed. After that, I push around to get my camera and camera phone back from the theatre and rush back to grab a quick photo and chat up the guys before they leave. Maggie gets my flyer autographed and gets a few photos too before we leave. Then I steal a movie poster and run away.

All in all. Great night. Great fun. And definitely not super bad.

Here's a quick clip, enjoy:

Video of the Week: I Remember Everything.

The lack of updates has been disconcerting, I know. I've been slacking off and I've been doing very little of interest, but I'll recap a bit. I finished reading HP7. I got a new 42" TV to go with my 50" TV, and I went to work.

Dull.

Anyways, the next few weeks should be much more exciting. I'm probably going to Great America and I hope to watch The Simpsons Movie at some point, but the biggest thing coming up is the final chapter of the Bourne Trilogy - Ultimatum.

I can't wait to see it. I've already picked up HD versions of Identity and Supremacy and have started to rewatch them in anticipation of what critics have called "the best action film of the year and best movie of the summer". What's not to like about that?



Oh, and there's a screening of Superbad here in Berkeley tomorrow. Michael Cera and the other guys of Superbad are going to be there to do a QA session. If you want to go, let me know, cause I want to see it. Seats are limited to the first 300 people, so I'm probably going to early to wait in line.

Join me?

Anyone Need A TV?

So uh...long story short...Overstock sent me a 42" Plasma TV anyways.

I got it this morning and I don't know what to do with it. Uh...yeah...

So...if you're interested in buying a 42" Plasma TV for pretty cheaps, let me know cause I've got one that I'd like to move.

Maybe, It's Time

I don't know.

If you haven't already noticed, I've taking down the ads. I made all of $.01 on it and I think Google closed my AdSense account for lack of activity or something. At any rate, until I close my personal blog or I can get more than 10 hits a day, I'm gonna keep the ads off.

Does that mean I'm done with the blog? I know I haven't written anything in awhile, and I don't think there's a great excuse for it, but it's there, just not prioritized right now. I haven't even played much poker, so it's inevitable.

The plan is to write something about Harry Potter, something about the upcoming movies that I want to watch, and something about hanging out.

But for now. I bought Crocs.

I jumped the shark...but I'll be comfortable in my ugly ass sandals.

The Final Chapter

I finished reading Harry Potter. Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been engrossed by a few other things, like staying up until 4am reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have a few thoughts on it, but I know a lot of people haven't gotten around to finishing, so I'm gonna hold off on commenting for a week or two (just so a few more people can catch up).

It's Over

Jerry Yang won 8.25 million dollars. With a 5 to 1 chip advantage he calls 23M with pocket 8's preflop against AQ. The Queen hits the flop, but Yang hits runner-runner for the winning straight.

I wish I were that lucky.

Interesting Crazy Wow

Let's begin with the big news of the day. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows is now officially on the internet. Go to your favorite website/linksite/torrentsite to find it if you want to spoil it for yourself. I, of course, spent my money buying it from Amazon, so I'll wait for my hardcover to get here before I do anything rash.

As a disclaimer: No, I don't know what happens. No, I haven't read the spoilers. No, Harry doesn't die. (J/K? Rowling? Appropriate...maybe...)

Moving on, a Hmong guy from SoCal is currently tearing up the final table of the Main Event today. In the first 4 hours, he busted 4 people and went from 8M in chips to the chip lead with over 72M. He's donked off another 12M in the last 6 hours, but he has twice as many chips as second place, so he's looking good. Most of the expected favorites have busted already, so it's donk-city + push-botting the rest of the way. Let's hope it makes for mildly amusing television...

Finally, it appears that the TV issue has been settled. After finding a federal law that gives me the right to do whatever I please to a shipment of unordered merchadise, a little hinting was just enough to make Customer Service do a complete 180 on their stance. At this point, they're letting me keep the TV and they're looking to see what they can do to update the warranty. Not bad for a little fight...

Video of the Week: He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Does Something-That-Can't-Be-Said

I'm sure this is irrelevant, but I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this weekend with Maggie, Yuan, and Kenji. It was pretty good. Worth seeing if you've read the book, probably worth reading the book to see, and all in all enjoyable. Probably not worth IMAX, but that's up to you to decide. I'll give a more detailed trip report when I feel like it, but I've been hassled with dealing with Overstock, my new TV, and work, so it might be awhile.

Anyways, enjoy this trailer to whet your appetite, if you haven't seen it already:

The Uniter, and Overstock Blows

So, I got a new TV for the living this past week and I've been wrestling with some issues. After a few days, the buzzing and the sparkle issues have been a little less noticeable, and for the first time ever, all of the people in our apartment were in the same room playing Super Smash Bros: Melee on the Wii. It's amazing progress for a group of people that rarely if ever came out of their rooms, but its terribly distracting. It's like going to KTYD's apartment, but every day and two feet away. Still, they're bad at SSB, so I win(and kill more) more often than not and it makes me feel better than when I lose to David after being up 3 to 1.

A quick note on the GC functionality of the Wii. Once you're in GC-mode, the Wii doesn't let you back into the Wii menu and the Wiimotes don't work. Anyone know a way around it without a hard shutdown using the console buttons?

Now, all this unity and group bonding is great, but what we're missing is still finality in keeping the TV. With all my dealings with Overstock, what ended up happening was that they weren't going to charge me for the TV, but they were going to send a guy to pick it up and delivery me the correct item. I'll quote some of the email I got to demonstrate how ridiculous their response was:

Thanks for shopping with us. I apologize for the delay in getting your Vizio 50-inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV picked up.

I would also like to apologize that this Vizio 50-inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV was received instead of the 42-inch television you ordered. I was sent a request to have the Vizio 50-inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV picked up. The freight carrier will contact you to set up a time to come by and pick that up. It will need to be boxed back up before they can pick it up. Due to this being a large item, we will need to have a large item freight carrier pick this up, but it can take up to 10 business days.

The warehouse will be delivering the correct television at the same time as picking up the 50-inch television. Please inspect the 42-inch television thoroughly before accepting shipment, including plugging in the item to make sure it is working. If you find any damage to the item, please refuse shipment, and call 800-843-2446 immediately.

Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience we may have caused. Please visit us again soon for great savings on name-brand products.

Yeah, like you're doing me some great service by taking away the one good thing that's happened to me in awhile. Saying your sorry for sending a better TV. That it's an inconvenience that I have 8 more inches. That we're sorry it's taking so long to get the return, even when I never explicitly asked for a return. Seriously, this fakeness is killing me. I hate it. And I'm worried their gonna try to take it away from me. Of course, if I don't authorize a return, can they really just assume they made a shipping error? Or maybe I was "mistaken". I don't know.

The real problem is that I won't be able to get the receipt or conformation fixed, which means my warranty with Vizio and my warranty with Overstock is pretty much null. But this one is so much better than what I was supposed to get that it might just be worth the risk...

What do you think I should do? Keep the TV, or let Overstock off the hook and get service on what I bought in the first place?

The TV From Hell

So, I've been raving about the new TV I was getting soon. A new Vizio 42" Plasma. It was supposed to arrive last week at some point, but after calling into the holding depot, they discovered that my order had been placed on hold and that they would need to call back east to find one. Great, so I wait. I called Monday to find out that the TV was in SFO and that they'd call Tuesday to deliver it. They called Tuesday to set up an appointment for Wednesday and today is Wednesday. But my TV didn't come.

No, I didn't get my 42" Plasma TV like I had hoped, I got 50" Plasma in its place. I didn't even notice until it was out of the box, on my stand, and playing pictures.



My apartment mate noticed that the model was a P50HDM, not a P42HDTV like I ordered. There was no coaxial input, no TV tuner, nothing. But to make matters worse, there was a scratch on the screen glass from a puncture hole in the box that it arrived in.



Now, I wasn't too worried about it, since I didn't want to have to ship it around again. I decided to plug it in and check it out. We turn it on, plug in the Wii and there's this monstrous buzzing sound coming from the power board and red spots flickering on the screen. Here's some screenshots of the Wii and 300.



They aren't terribly noticeable, but it's there, so with all the problems mounting, we decide to call Vizio Customer Service. After about an hour of runaround and an email with a PDF of my order receipt, they tell us they can't service it because we don't have a receipt for the right model.

What do I do now?

I call Overstock.com, notorious for their poor customer service. Actually, I used their Live Chat. I hate dealing with scumbags that work CSR (Sorry to the nice people who try to make a difference, but I know most people despise the job and what it stands for - which is not helping people so that the company makes a larger profit margin). At any rate, I mention the whole debacle and she starts quote me the return policy that's in their website FAQ. I'm telling her that I don't want to return the item, I just want a correction on the receipt to mention that I received a P50 instead of a P42. She says she'll forward it to a supervisor and that they'll email me tomorrow. Then she quotes me the price of the TV. WTF?

I'm kind of tripping out here, because I'm not prepared to pay 1500 for a refurbished television that came cracked, buzzing, a flickering out of the box when the item is definitely not what I ordered. More importantly, there's no way I'm paying return shipping for an item I don't want to send back unless I can get a better one for the same price I paid for what I wanted. So if I get an email tomorrow saying that they're going to charge me the difference, then I'm calling Visa and disputing the charge and Overstock can fight me for it...and I'll never buy from them again. And I'll tell everyone not to buy from them again as a personal vendetta. They're already bad, but my experience with them will be bar-none, the worst customer experience ever.

Gah.

I Gots Paid

I went to pick up my paycheck today. They didn't have my direct deposit set up or something, but I got the check for my 64 hours of work. Gross total of my paycheck - 677 and some change. After taxes, 604 and change. So for about 12% in taxes and medicare and stuff, I made out ok. I love being in the lowest income bracket without worrying about not having any money to go to school and paying rent and eating food.

Gonna go cash it tomorrow. Woot.

No, not that woot.

Dude, Where's My Money?

Surprisingly, I have no money. Where'd it go? I can hardly tell, but I have an idea.

Once I pay off my credit card bills, I'll have all of $20 in my checking account. I'm so broke that this is getting ridiculous. Of course, I'm getting paid back for bills, on the order of a couple hundred, and I'm getting my paycheck soon, but it's still depressing.

Part of the reason my money is gone is my buying of a TV, part of it is buying clothes that I don't really want (which I'll talk about at some other time), and part of it is not collecting debts. Sigh.

Oh well. If I'm broke, I'm broke and I'll pass on that debt to a credit card for a bit until my finances are resettled. Hopefully it won't be longer than a week...

As for my life...Midterm on Thursday. I haven't studied for it. I really should.

Video of the Week: Spiderpig!

I know, I'm about 20 hours early on this, but this is just too funny not to post up.

The Simpsons movie comes out in a couple of weeks (BTW: Harry Potter is Wednesday, and we will be seeing it on IMAX as per Maggie's instructions, so I'm forced to invite you people to go see it with us...). In order to promote the new The Simpsons Movie, Fox and 7-11 have teamed up to convert a select number of 7-11's into Kwik-E-Marts and have introduced various Simpsons themed products in their retail locations (i.e. Buzz Cola, Squishees, and Krusty-O's). The only thing missing (they even have real Apus...) is the Duff, but that's apparently because they want to target a PG-13 appropriate audience with their marketing.

While I don't have huge hopes for the movie, which I probably won't go see in the theatres (atleast for a few weeks barring reviews), I still think that this is brilliant. I've enjoyed the show for a long time and I'm happy to rediscover the magic by buying a case of Buzz and grabbing a Squishee to go.

Now if someone wants to check out the real thing, there's one in Mountain View next to the Google campus. So if someone wants to arrange a trip down there, I think it could be good fun. If not, I found some pictures that are probably worth sharing just to highlight how cool this promotion is.

Check them here: http://www.boredstop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=125&Itemid=35

Now, to the movie. This is a pretty good trailer. Deep, dramatic, comedic. And full of footprints on the ceiling. Hilariousness on a stick that must be watched over and over again. Enjoy it. Please.

The Swede, the Rat, and the Robot

Lots of things that I need to write about from this week that I've been too lazy to talk about until now, so I'll get started. I suppose fast and furious is the way to go about it, but this'll probably still be long (atleast I hope it is; I haven't had a long post in a really long time. I'm starting to think I've lost my verbosity...)

So, I mentioned on Saturday that I went to IKEA and Bay Street in Emeryville with a bunch of people. I posted a couple pictures of me and the iPhone and said I'd write up more later. It's been five days since then, so my memories might be a bit rusty. Bear with me.

The Swede:

Let's start with the Swede. IKEA is a giant from the Scandinavian country we all love to hate. I can't say for sure whether it's because their socialist, or it's because they beat Finland for Olympic Gold, but either way, the Swedes are perfect targets for our malicious fury. Now, to be honest, I'm not sure what they've really ever done to me or my kind, but they make crap furniture, so that has to count for something...right?

I kid. IKEA is great. I love IKEA. There's so much to love about IKEA, I probably can't even start to finish a list about all that IKEA means to me. They have crappy furniture for so little money that I won't feel bad about trashing it when I move out of my apartment in two years. I have a lofted bed, a mattress, a desk, and a dresser from IKEA that I picked up for less than $500 total last year. It's great. And the food? I <3 lingonberry.

So, I decided to get a bunch of people together for IKEA lunch and a movie at AMC Bay Street. My motivation? I needed to pick up an entertainment center for my new 42” plasma TV and look around for a bookshelf for my room. Maggie and Coral needed to look for a bookshelf for their living room. Yuan wanted a bookshelf (notice a pattern...yeah, I have friends that read books, or atleast have books). Joyce wanted something and Edlyn wanted to see me. Oh, and Kenji, Kris, and Tyler decided to tag along for lunch and a movie.

We plan to get there around noon for lunch, but Kris has to drop off a futon and some other stuff at his apartment, so it takes awhile before we can leave from Berkeley. We get there a bit after 1pm and we meet up with the car from FC. They're lounging around in the living room showroom on the sofas, so I take some pictures and we get moving. I stop around a little bit to look at TV stands, but everything looks kind of shady or is way too expensive for my budget even though they're having their July 4th sale. There is one on sale that fits my budget, my living room, and gives me shelves to put a DVD player and Wii, so I note it. Everyone is moving ahead though, and just so I don't get lost, I don't pay too much more attention to the showroom and start scooting ahead. At some point, we jump through one of those IKEA shortcuts into the Kids section where the girls start going crazy.

Two side notes here: First, what's up with girls and kids stuff like toys and cute stuffed animals? If I could get the same reaction as a stuffed Nemo out of Maggie, I think I could be much happier...and more self-confident. It's very bruising to a man's self esteem when an inanimate representation of a fish is more attractive to his girlfriend than he is. Second, what's up with crazy IKEA shortcuts? They're like portals from the office world into some other world. Like those special super pipes in Super Mario Bros that take you from World 2-2 to World 5-1, except there are no goombas and I'm not an Italian plumber that spits fire.

Anyways, the Kids section is right next to the lunch cafe where we were planning to eat, we were running late, and I was hungry. Instead of continuing my search for furniture, my stomach ordered me to “grragrragruch”. Roughly translated, I think it means “Eat some food, bitch”. When your stomach swears at you, you know its time to settle it down. What better way to ease that hunger pang than with some delectable swedish meatballs and swig (or a gallon) of lingonberry juice. Say it with me - “Yum yum lingonberry”.

Of course, not all was rosy in our IKEA dining experience. I ordered the plate of meatballs, like I usually do (my one time here), but instead of potatoes like I wanted, they gave me steamed vegetables. I end up having to steal half a potato from Maggie and her shared plate with Coral and Joyce. Of course, I end up having to trade a broccoli for it, but I think I made out okay on that deal. The largest disappointment was the watered down lingonberry juice though. It was light pink, like a vitamin water, and it had almost no taste to it. Talking to a few people, we all swore that the lingonberry juice was darker and sweeter the last time they were here. We were right. Ten minutes later it was back to good – nice, dark, and sweet. By the end of lunch I finished three glasses and was working on a fourth. It was good and I was happy.

After lunch, we went downstairs to the warehouse and went looking through a bunch of cheap crap. Like a flock of misdirected sheep, we started wandering around looking at random stuff. I hit someone with a cheap metal pot. No was hurt, proving how poorly constructed they were, but I suppose that was fine. I wasn't going to buy it anyways. By the time we actually got the furniture floor of the warehouse, we were running short on time and decided to come back later to actually get things. We never made it back (I will be going back Saturday), but that was ok, cause I got to hit up the Apple store and play with the iPhone.

/iGasm

The Rat:

AMC Bay Street. 4PM. Ratatouille.

The newest Pixar masterpiece came out last Friday. Although it opened to a tame $47M, rottentomatoes has it at 96% fresh and viewer reviews have been nearly unanimously positive. So what did I think about it?

It's been awhile, so my memory is sketchy, but I'll preface by saying that it was good, but not that good. Charming, but unremarkable. I think the biggest allure was the quality of dialogue and the beauty of animation, but what it had in charm and flow it lacked in conflict. It was obtuse and undirected. The villain lasted about half the movie and the ultimate villain wasn't really a villain at all. What that left was this unsatisfied feeling at the end. There wasn't a payoff for watching the movie like there was with Finding Nemo or The Incredibles. Sure, there was some morality. “Anyone can cook” - which is to suggest that anyone who puts their mind to something, has a super talented friend, or is a mutagenic freak can do anything they want...

Of course that's not what makes Pixar who they are, and that's not to say Ratatouille is a bad movie. It's quality stuff, it's just not at the level of the greatest few animated movies ever. Too much voice-over narration. Too few characters to really care about. Too much moralism. Too much for too little payoff. But I'm being critical.

It's exciting, it's clever, and it's very endearing. There are moments that are truly tense and dramatic and truly light and comedic, striking a very fine balance between emotions. I love the interaction between the characters, especially with Remy and his family and the end was enjoyable if not provocative. All in all, it's quite the movie-going experience and I would recommend it with moderate expectations.

The Robot:

California Theatres. 7:15pm. Transformers.

Like I said last night. Autobots, roll out! Woooooooo...

What a ride. I'd like to say that I was especially underwhelmed by another predictably overbloated Michael Bay action thriller, but it was better than that. It was good. I'll preface my review with that. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So did Coral, so did Rbs. That's validation enough to see it.

Why was it good? It was action-packed with unbelievable special effects. You might have heard already that the transformations were seamless. They were better than that. They were a dynamic visual feast that made me drool. Just sick. Put that stuff on IMAX and I don't think I'd be able to get up after the movie. Put that stuff on a smallish screen with weird eerie blue ambient light and I'm stuck talking about it 24 hours later like it's the second coming. It was awesome.

The first 90 minutes were tense, dramatic, and relatively well done. Shia Lebeauf played the awkward nervous kid perfect. His dialogue wasn't forced or awkward, but fresh and lively. Real. Bernie Mac's early cameo was precious and I felt like the movie was really coming together. Even Megan Fox played her role stunningly (literally...she was hot). Then you had the military story arc which intertwined with the Lebeauf storyline and layered the tension very effectively. Things were happening, you knew it. Things were connecting and you were doing the connecting and the Transformers were here, brutally devastating the world, but the answer was still some beat up Camero that didn't do anything cool, but could given time. The only complaint that I had with the first 90 minutes was the introduction by Optimus Prime when they introduced the All-spark as “The Cube”, luckily it was at the beginning of the movie and I could forgive the terrible screenwriting as it was quickly replaced by fast-paced action fighting and the wit and delivery of Shia Lebeauf hawking wares on eBay to his class.

Unfortunately, the plot holes started to add up, and the tone of the movie started to grow uneven. It got too into itself, growing overly dramatic at times, before trying to lighten the mood with caricatures and one-liners. The dialogue got overbearing and robotic rather than lively and real like it was at the beginning. And they started letting Megan Fox act. Her emotional control was awful. Her delivery was stiff as cardboard. And she was beat up and not as hot. Three strikes. Her performance left a lot to be desired by the end.

Then there was the action scenes at the end, which were awesome, but could have been EPIC. Think Lord of the Rings epic, like the battle at Minas Tirith. Instead the action scenes were short, uneven, and a little unrealistic. At one point, Bumblebee and Rachet? (I can't remember the names of the Autobots for the life of me...) transform and stop missles from Starscream from hitting the armada, but while Bumblebee has his legs blown off, Jazz in his Porsche stays in disguise and backs up, instead of transforming and actually fighting. Serious oversight. Then, during a chase up a building, Shia Lebeauf manages to outrun a leaping Megatron to the top of building. Finally, during the supposedly epic battle between Megatron and Optimus Prime, the movie decides to crap on itself and show a bunch of F22's getting blown up by Starscream rather than dedicate 10 minutes to the biggest, baddest, robot fight ever. Think Neo vs. Million Smith's but turn Neo into Optimus Prime, Smith into Megatron (it works too...Hugo Weaving voices Megatron), make it graphically more impressive, add an awesome soundtrack, and it would have been the best animated special effects action scene ever made. Instead they cut away, after a small little fall from a building and a tussle, have Megatron blown up by F22 missiles, have Optimus Prime be neutered and useless, and have “The Cube” in the hands of Sam Witwicky save the day. Disappointing.

With all that negativity, you'd think I hated the movie. But nope, I said it before. It was good. I'll see it again, not because it satisfies my childish urges to have transforming robots, but because it was a solid movie (better than Spiderman 3 and Shrek 3 for sure). I'm only negative because I see so much more than could've happened with this movie to make it a real film, a classic film, instead of the summer blip on the blockbuster radar. I saw a chance for this movie to be unthinkably unbelievable because of what the people at Industrial Light and Magic did to make the robots real, because of how good Shia Lebeauf was, because of how good looking Megan Fox was. I wanted this to be ridiculous. Instead, it was only awesome.

You'll have to see it to believe me though, so see it. Recommended.

That just about wraps up everything I've wanted to say over the past week, so sorry if I'm a little blogged out the next few days or if you're tired from reading all these small little words. I think it was worth it, but I suppose that's up to you to decide.

Autobots...Roll Out!

I just saw Transformers with Coral and Rbs. Trip Report later.

Video of the Week: Light The Darkest Hour

A tribute to Transformers (releasing this Tuesday). The climax to the original movie and the most ridiculous name ever.

I give you Rodimus Prime:

I Lost My Hair...

Long story short. Or short story long.

Either way, it's come to the point where I've lost my hair. I could say that I got cancer and had chemotherapy and lost it all, but that wouldn't be fair to the people who really have cancer and have needed chemotherapy. I could also say that I decided to join the monastery in Tibet, or that I've decided to emulate Mike, but that wouldn't be fair the monks or to me.

So what happened? I got my head shaved. I look like a little monk or a cross between me and William Hung...with a bit of Mike. Either way, it's gone.

I went to get my hair cut, and I wanted what I usually get - shaved to 1 on the sides and a scissor trim on the top. The stylist misheard me and gave me a 1 on the sides like I asked, but then started buzzing the top off. By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late. My hair had disappeared and I had a hole missing in my matte of hair. What could I do, but to let her take the rest of it off too.

So now, I'm baldish and I won't look normal for another 3 weeks or so when I grow out and get it cut again to fix it.

Quick Post Before I Sleep - iPhone Update

Yeah, I made a quick blog this morning about the iPhone. Little did I know that they had an Apple Store in Emeryville where I got hands-on time with the new iPhone. I'm gonna put up some quick pictures and post a more in-depth recap tomorrow with tales of IKEA meatballs, lingonberry, and a rat's ratatouille.

This first one is the photo I took with the iPhone and sent to my email, the rest are with my digicam.

iPhone Day? iPhone Day!

iPhone was released nationwide yesterday to the masses of people lined up from New York to San Francisco. Even Woz stood in line at Valley Faire just to pick up a couple more iPhones for his kids.

Did I get one though? Nope. Not a chance. I really wanted to, but I don't have the money to pay for one. Although, if you've had a chance to read any reviews, the iPhone is almost revolutionary, and I really want a widescreen video player, so I may just wait until the iPhone hits 3.5G (instead of the slow EDGE network) and swap then. I won't be cutting edge that way, but atleast I won't be annoyed out of my mind with slow load times and poor call quality.

Did anyone get one yesterday? I'd be really interested in playing around with one and seeing how the interface looks. And flicking. Flicking extremely fast.

It's Fantasy Football Time!

I'm starting a new fantasy football league. Year-to-year keeper, 10-12 teams (hopefully), and a lot of fun and exciting smacktalk with people I know. I'm excited.

I'm gonna kick some ass. Or something. It'll be awesome.

Signing up for Yahoo public leagues like always. I'm excited.

If you're interested, send me a line!

The Migration

I've been fooling around with Ubuntu, the GNOME based debian linux distro, for the past few weeks on my laptop, but it never really stuck with me. It's probably because I never had the willpower to tough it out and figure out how most of the stuff worked. But today, I started doing some work in R and AFNI and I figured it was best to collaborate with the lab in the OS that the lab uses (they actually use Fedora 6, but its similar). So I spent most of the day fixing up the linux environment, install codecs, an NTFS read/write/mounter to access my windows partitions, created network bookmarks to my shares for easy access and install a bunch of google applications.

The only thing that's keeping from making the full jump and moving ubuntu up to #1 on my grub loader is my lack of a notetaking program on the linux boot. I really want to use OneNote like I've been using for awhile, so I'm trying a virtual machine to boot into windows and run OneNote in a separate task. The problem that worries me is whether the interface will work well, whether it'll be fast enough, and whether I can live with it at whatever speed it is...if not, I'm really hoping that Google Notebook updates to be usable offline with Google Gears.

Until that happens though, I'm gonna try to make it work.

Oh, and I installed a media server on my desktop, so I can access my TV shows from anywhere. I think. I'm gonna try it out tomorrow in class.

Long Day In The Bay

First day of summer classes for me resulted in an unbearably long day.

I had 2 hours of lecture in the morning, followed by an hour of discussion, followed by 4 hours of work, followed by a lot of reading.

Professor seems nice enough, but I have a feeling I won't be challenged. That means I'm probably not going to keep up and I'm going to be annoyed at the dumbing down of the material (like today's description of van der Waals interactions which was depressingly bad...). At any rate, I'm current caught up on reading for the next day...which is actually a significant hundred pages or so, but I skimmed a lot of it since it was review. I really hope I can keep it up, but if I can't, you'll know why...

Uh, a couple more things to note. I did buy a TV, but for some reason overstock is cancelling a lot of orders (most of them didn't get the 2-year protection plan, but some did). Some people are calling in and reporting that their TVs are confirmed and will ship in the next 1-4 days, and my order is currently "Accepted" and my warranty plan has "Shipped", but I don't know what's going on with. Just crossing my fingers I suppose.

Finally, since I didn't tell this story yesterday, I'll tell it now. It's about a Corona:

I had dinner with Maggie, Coral, Kristina, Yuan, and Tyler last night and we sat around Asian ghetto for a bit while we ate. After awhile, Kristina had to go home, and I figured we'd be walking back, but Yuan was looking for a ride back (cause he's lazy and he lives far away) and we kind of followed Kristina home to see her new apartment.

We get up and I see a empty case of Corona on the floor and ask. At the same time, Yuan opens the fridge and grabs a bottle of Smirnoff Ice just to fool around. I follow suit and grab a Corona (which apparently was an "apartment" thing and not Kristina's...my bad...). I ask if I can have it. Kristina asks her roommate who says yes. I take it. Now, these weren't the screwtop bottles, but I'm fidgeting with it trying to get the cap off. I try for a good ten minutes or so before I get frustrated and start rummaging around her kitchen for a bottle opener. I look and look, but there's nothing but knives in the drawers. I start thinking about whether I should use a knife...but I hold off.

At this point everyone had migrated from the living room into Kristina's room, so I follow suit, still playing with the bottle top. After getting frustrated for the second time, I ask Kristina if she has a bottle opener. She has to ask her roommate, who replies that they don't have a bottle opener, and that I should use my hands. I try, but again, no go.

A few seconds later Kristina's roommate walks into the room, grabs the bottle, and starts bashing it against the bathroom sink to try to pop it off. I'm starting to laugh cause Kristina says something about this talking way too much effort. The cap still doesn't come off though and they start moving to the kitchen to use a knife (I was gonna do that myself...). Anyways, they finally get the cap off after much more effort than was probably necessary (GET A BOTTLE OPENER!) and I enjoyed a free after dinner beer (which was more bloating than I thought it'd be...).

Of course, Kristina kicked us out before I had a chance to finish cause she had to go to Safeway and I had to walk around the streets at night with an open bottle...underaged no less. Yuan called my a retarded drunk while we were leaving since I couldn't find the elevator (which wasn't really my fault since I wasn't paying attention on the way up). Luckily my drunken stupor hadn't settled in and I made it home without getting lost in People's Park and falling in a trap, getting raped, then waking up in the morning with a hangover. Atleast, I got home...safe and sound...and sadly unimpressed with my free beer.

Thanks though.

Video of the Week - Knocked Up

Wow, what a great movie.

I saw Knocked Up today with Maggie and Yuan at the local UA7. We ended up sitting in the wrong theater to start with and noticed that we were watching a Marvel film (Fantastic Four 2) instead of the movie we had intended. Oops. That was a mistake. We rush over in time to miss the opening credits, but we managed to make it to see the hilarity that ensues. I was absolutely captivated by the whole premise of the movie and while it could've been less vulgar, it was hilarious. The dialogue was witty. Everything flowed well together (except the random interludes to make it clear that time was advancing) and the chemistry was solid throughout the movie.

I give it a mighty thumbs skyward. Watch it. Seriously.

Here's a clip :P

I'm Fun! I Swear It

My apartment is going to be awesome. Awesome! Oh!

I just bought a new, refurbished TV - 42" Plasma from Vizio - for $650 and I'm gonna split the cost with my roomies. Hook up a Wii, a DVD player, and digital cable...and...awesome. I'll have an excuse to invite people over to my place to watch stuff. Throw in an HTPC, my enormous collection of stuff on my hard drives, and it'll be such a distraction...

Oh god. I'm so not getting good grades next year.

Super Cool

Dear Undergraduate Major Applicant:

We are pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the
Psychology Major. Your petition to declare the major has been signed
and sent to the College of Letters & Science. The College should
process your declaration shortly and you should have no difficulty
entering upper division psychology courses through TeleBears.

Boom. I'm in. Hot Fuzz.

I Need A Better Karmic Guide...

Seriously. This week has to be the most karmically depressing week ever. I don't think I've had one thing go right, which is entirely disappointing. At this point, I'm gonna wake up at 3:00am and puke in my bed, even though I'm not drunk. (I did have two glasses of sparkling white zinfindel though...)

I suppose I shouldn't say anything about my lab work, but this week has been sadly depressing. It just feels like people are giving up, and I'm really ready to start babysitting people in the room. Maybe it's the lights. I'll try turning the lights off tomorrow.

So many random things keep happening that go against me. Both MRI scans I sat in on were a mess which botched runs, projectors blowing out, and remote abortions of a scan by the guy that runs the scanner. Total chaos on something that (when things go well) should be nearly automatic.

Then there's my new shoes, which are a size too big, but I don't want to return them cause they don't have a size that fits and I really like the shoes. So I don't know what to do.

Then there's my $400 downswing in poker, just as I started to peak at +$350. I know it's only been 6000 hands, and some bull about variance, but this is definitely a week of negative variance. Terrible luck all around.

Now, I've got to hope I didn't accidently insult the great Ganesh or Vishnu or Shiva or something and that this is just one of those cyclical elements in a string of random events. Otherwise, I'm screwed for the rest of my life.

/whine

Oh, and MCAT prep costs $1699. Tack on prep books, interview books, essay books, and Med School review/guide books...and my suit, shirt, tie, belt, and maybe shoes...and application fees. I'm looking at spending over $5000 just to get into medical school. For a job that forces me to work 80 hours per week for 40K every year. That makes me feel so good about my career choices. Atleast I get to save lives, cut people open, and kill people. It's a crazy life.

The Media Is An Interesting Demon

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2875680

Last winter ESPN surveyed Hall of Fame voters and found that only 20.4 percent would have voted for Sammy Sosa if he'd been eligible.

And now...the experts agree, after his 12th HR this season (and 600th of his career), Sammy Sosa is Hall of Fame material. What!?

I love the media. It enlightens us. Provides us with information. But sometimes...(like always)...it slants and it skews and gives us nothing of value. You look at what they give us these days, and its a bunch of watered down crap, without any real sense of what's right with the world these days.

Seriously. When did all this support for Sammy Sosa come about? Just because he hit 600HRs instead of 588? Sammy Sosa? A Hall of Famer? Please. This is a guy with a swing for the fences mentality, that came back this season only to be in the top ten in strikeouts in the major leagues with an on-base percentage under .300. This is a guy who is, and always has been, a liability on the field. He's been called a bad teammate. And he's a guy undeniably linked to Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and their Home Run chases. But he's not them? He never did steroids?

The only reason Mark McGwire didn't make the Hall of Fame last year was because everyone was embroiled with the steroids scandal. This is a guy who actually had the home run record for a few seasons. This is a guy who was a fan favorite everywhere he went. Yet, when he was unwilling to divulge his innocence to Congress, he effectively said to the world, "I'm guilty"?

We see the steroids issue every time Barry Bonds inches closer to Hank Aaron's all-time record. Did he do it? Sure, he had to have. He hates us (by us, I'm suggesting the media). He's big. He hits home runs. He was associated to BALCO. Definitely 'roided up. But, he was a five tool player in his days in Pittsburg, a multiple MVP, and potentially the ALL-TIME HOME RUN KING. He also took his team to the World Series. Yet, the writers are still unsure about whether he's Hall-worthy.

How does Sammy get his support, if he's not even half as good?

With Sammy, these writers excuse his association to the steroids home run era by suggesting that he was never implicated, not guilty. They praise his charisma or his charm. They even used the fact that he's a KNOWN cheater for corking his bat as a excuse for him not doing steroids. Please...spare me. Someone willing to cork his bat, isn't willing to push his physical limits a bit farther with steroids? That's awful logic.

Sammy Sosa has nothing but home runs for him. He never made his teams great for a plethora of reasons. He's not a first ballot HoFer.

If this man gets into Cooperstown, McGwire better be there with him.

Oh Man...

I hate Ticketmaster, but more important...man...The White Stripes...

They were gonna be at the Greek in September. Tickets were general admission and were on sale starting last Sunday. And they're sold out. Seriously...wtf? I wanted to go but I wanted to convince someone to go with me. Now? I can't even go, unless I sit outside like a bum and listen to the show from goodness knows where.

Atleast Projekt Revolution tickets for the lawn are still available. Too bad Ticketmaster sucks with its unbelievable service charges ($6/ticket for facility fees? $9.25/ticket convenience fee? $1,000,000/ticket for I-dunno-we-feel-like-raping-you fee?) Sucks.

Keep Trying To Think

I keep trying to come up with clever things to write about, but I'm stuck right now. I've been playing some poker, but since I know no one cares, I'll just say I had a sick awful day today and leave it at that. And...besides work, I just haven't had a chance to really do anything else with my time...

Funny story though, MTV was doing a $10 off promotion with another 10 in the mail for a future purchase at their online store. It got posted up on various deals websites this morning, and thousands of people bought tens of thousands of free DVDs and discounted things that MTV was selling. I was one of those people. I picked up a Wii component cable for $3, a Nyko Wii-mote charge station for $14, a wool MTV hat for free, and 2 DVDs for free. Unfortunately, all of those orders got canceled. Sucks. Stupid MTV.

I just started to watch 30 Rock tonight. It's a lot better than I gave it credit for and it's quick and painless enough for me to get through it without stressing myself like I did with 24. Still have Lost on the blocks and getting The Sopranos soon, so I'll have to see how well I deal with my time...

Video of the Week: Can You Dance?

This is Maggie's favorite routine from last weeks So You Think You Can Dance. I might be inclined to agree. It's good. Just watch it.

They Needed A Home

I saw them at the Disney Store in Union Square...but I didn't bring them home. Still think they'd be cute for my computers. I named them Huey, Dewey, and Louie...

Huey is broken at home and needs fixing, Dewey just got reformatted and better than ever, and Louie is my lappy (now running XP + Ubuntu).

Now you know. AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.

The Horror, Oh How Horrible

My PC might be the quirkiest in the entire world.

Lately, I've been troubled by the random processes, admin services, and slow boot-ups on my PC. It eventually got to the point (after installing Adobe CS3) that IE7 failed to connect and I couldn't do anything about it. So I decided it was time to do a full reinstall.

Now, for some reason, my DVD-RW burns perfectly, but it can't read a boot disc to save its life. It might be because its on SATA or something, I'm not sure, but it doesn't work. My other DVD drive boots, but it only boots off of DVDs. Every single CD that I put in there failed to boot...strangely enough. I threw in two version of Windows XP, a copy of Ubuntu that I installed on my laptop, finally reverting to my old Windows XP DVD and a DVD Fedora 5. Only the DVDs worked. What now?

I ended up burning the CD images of my new Windows XP onto DVD's, which ended up working quite well, but for some reason, I felt like I should try to set up my RAID. It's been the bane of my PC since I built it. I could never quite get a slipstreamed XP install to work with NVRAID and I'd always spend hours trying before giving up and installing in two separate partitions. So, instead of being smart, I rush things and wipe my hard disks and set up a RAID0 array with them. Of course, by this point, my floppy drive was fubar and I couldn't make a RAID driver disk to set up my raid (like I was hoping to...) so I'm stuck again trying to get my floppy working to make an NVRAID disk before reinstalling Windows with RAID. Unfortunately, my floppy was just messed up. Nothing I could do about but give up again...

But, thanks to new technology and savvy computer programmers around the world, someone devised a program that lets you add slipstreamed drivers. I downloaded nLite on my laptop, extracted the windows image file, added the RAID drivers to the disk, set up the slipstream...and VOILA. I'm half way through my installation and it's working! By golly-gee! It's working!

I feel like Marlow when he finally reaches his destination to see Kurtz. It's finally come together like I've always wanted...yippee.

Btw, does anyone want to join a 8-12 man keeper fantasy football league this year? I think I want to run one in perpetua. And should I think about buying Settlers of Catan for myself, just so I don't have to rely on other people to have it around in order to play? Just a thought. Shoot me a line.

My Day With The CSR

The CSR.

The ubiquitous customer service representative. What a day.

I ended up talking to three different customer service reps today and it just amazes me at the level of courtesy that some of these companies demonstrate.

This morning I found out that Comcast in Georgia was having a promotion on high-speed internet for existing customers, so I called in to see if that same promotion extended to Northern California. Unfortunately, because Comcast doesn't actually do nationwide promotions (technically), they couldn't offer it to me. Still, this lady on the phone was upfront and nice enough to initiate the conversation about the promotion while still telling me that they couldn't do anything for me at their branch, but to check in with the national service number and transfer to my local office.

Following her lead, I called the national toll-free number and get redirected to another CSR. I lead in and start something about hearing about some promotions for existing high-speed internet customers and whether those promotions were available in the area. She says no. We don't offer promotions from existing customers. Then she asks me what cable service I have. I respond by saying that I have digital cable. She then looks in my account to see if she can offer an upgrade or anything and the best she can do is give me the Triple Play if I upgrade to Comcast Home Phone service. Of course, reading other forums, I thought I might be able to get the Triple Play (@33.95/month) without getting the phone service, so I ask. She responds with a very snippy, "Sir, we aren't a promotions company" followed by "and it says you don't even have digital cable" (which I don't, I thought I did, but apparently I only have standard cable). Now, I'm sitting there thinking "WTF?". You're a service provider, which is competing against other service providers. If I wanted to switch services, and said so, I'm sure you've got instructions to give me whatever deal I want just so that you don't lose my business. And this CSR accosts me for a simple consumerist question and mistake? At that point, I basically say thank you and hang up, since I obviously wasn't going to get through to her and get any sort of deal.

Now, I now it's a bit selfish to want a better deal on my cable service, but at $100/month for internet and cable, I'd like to get some sort of discount that everyone else gets. I really want to switch to Verizon FiOS, but they don't offer it here...

Then, later in the day, I had to call Logitech support about my refurb MX Revolution. that couldn't sync and wouldn't work. I ask about my receiver and they don't even ask if I've tried anything to fix it. They just asked what it was, where I got it from, then told me to deal with woot to get an exchange, since they didn't "deal with refurbished items". Of course, I know I've heard of people getting sent exchange items from logitech for broken items before, so I know that some of that is bull. Especially since if it's under 30 days, it should be more of a concern than after 30 days when their end kicks in. I guess they just wanted to shirk responsibility. Anyways, they tell me that they can exchange my receiever dongle, out of courtesy, then as they're trying to get my RMA#, they tell me that they don't have any more in stock and they won't know when they'll get some. Sucks. They tell me that if I want one, to call back later to see if they're in stock, otherwise deal with the seller. Nice cop out.

So I check woot to see if anyone else has a problem with these refurbs and lo and behold, everyone does. Apparently, no one thought to sync the dongles with the mouse, so you can install everything and it won't connect. I'm forced to install SetPoint 4.0, then sync it with this long and awkward reconnect process (hold left click, turn off, then on, right click five times, then let go of the left click). After doing that once, I get a response, but my mouse does this quirky thing where it only goes left and right. I try and try, but it doesn't go up or down. I try it in two different ports, then I unplug my other mouse to see if there's interference, but when I reboot, I get an IRQ conflict. Great (lesson #1 don't install setpoint over another version of setpoint, it sucks). So I go back and reconfigure everything to they way it was before and try it again, this time with the receiver in my PC USB slot. Same thing. Left-right, but no up-down. I'm starting to get frustrated, so I check the mouse in my laptop. It works. Wow. I uninstall setpoint again. Re-plug in the USB dongle into another port. It works...hmm...ok...I install SetPoint. Boom. There it is again. Left, right; but no up or down. SetPoint is screwing up my drivers to the point where I can't use it. I check on the Logitech forums and everyone is complaining about the 4.0 version of the software and most people can't get it to work the way it should. I take their advice and end up uninstalling SetPoint, deleting all instances in my registry, then install SetPoint 3.30. Gold. My new mouse works, I didn't need to return it, and I get to be happy for a day. Gold.

Oh, and I bought new shoes. Almost got a TV, but I backed out of it after thinking some more. And I made $120 in an hour of poker. Gold.

RSS Feeds

I added a new RSS of Interest widget on the sidebar so I can share some of the more compelling articles I read throughout the day. Enjoy them.

Majority Of Republicans Are Idiots

Sigh. Do you know what's wrong with this world? It's run by a bunch of half-moronic apes that can't figure out the difference between their ass and their head.

New Gallup poll suggests that the majority of Republicans favor creationist and intelligent design models over evolution.

The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.

You can read the rest here...http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=27847

I Just Worked A Long Time...

I worked about 7 hours today. I'm tired. Of course an hour and a half was listening to a lab meeting presentation, but hey, that's what I'm paid to do. I was productive though. I ended up designing a new E-Prime task with user input for a working memory span test. I have to debug and fix typos tomorrow, but the mechanism works, and it records the data that I want, so I'm happy.

I've got a longer post coming up later, whenever I figure I want to write it. It'll be interesting though. I promise. I hope. What's it going to be about? Let's just say, I'm going to try to resolve the staggering issues that restrict Strip Poker and make it a viable game.

Can it be done?

I dunno, but it'll be fun to try it in my head. I'm gonna sit across Jessica Alba and see if I can win.

I Guess I Need To Relish The Moment And Ketchup On Videos

I've been out the last few days celebrating Maggie's birthday in SF, then going to FC to hang out with people, especially Mike before he leaves for Coast Guard boot camp (to drill).

I was hoping to have some pictures, but since I left my camera at Maggie's house, I'll have to be briefer in my update.

On Thursday, I took Maggie shopping in SF. We went around Union Square to find all the bigger stores. At one point, we hit up the Apple store and overheard people trying to pre-order the iPhone. I guess that means people want iPhones, and are willing to pay through the nose for it...

I got to stop into the Giorgio Armani store, though. They have a lot of discounted suits, so I might end up there to pick one up later. I enjoyed trying some stuff on. I think Maggie tried on a jacket and made some comment that suggested she'd never be happy wearing another suit again. I'll share those sentiments. It was cool. Impressive little cafe too.

Later that night, we went to Cheesecake to eat dinner. It was pretty good. I still have leftovers that I need to tackle tomorrow, but I was happy with the service and the food. Unlike the last few times where we were left hanging on our food, the pastas came quick and our cheesecake to go didn't end up missing a corner.

Anyways, I went back to FC on Friday, kind of on a whim, since I was planning to stay in Berkeley, and I ended up eating dinner with Maggie's family and then seeing Ocean's Thirteen with a bunch of people. Magically, it was enjoyable, even if it was a bit shallow. A lot of things happened, and even though you knew they couldn't fail, it was fun watching how they did it. The Oprah bit is probably the most comedically touching moment in the film, so if you go see it, keep an eye out for it. Otherwise, the movie was charming, fanciful, tasteful, and not bloated like every other movie I've seen this week.

Saturday I ended up waking up ridiculously early to go see Andy on his first day back from Japan. I took the 6:30 Millbrae BART to Dublin/Pleasanton to meet up with him before heading down to San Jose (in the most roundabout way) to play in Magic Regionals with a borrowed deck and no preparation. Needless to say. I lost pretty badly. But so did Andy, and he tried harder than I did. So I guess I'm ok. I had planned to go back to Berkeley afterwards, but I ended up going back to FC and hung out with people again. We ended up watching The Prestige (which I had seen before) and then burned time with 20 questions. Nothing special, but it was nice just hanging out.

Today, I slept a lot, trying to make up for my early mornings and late nights. At any rate, I didn't do anything all day except watch Mythbusters and Law and Order: SVU with Maggie. Apparently, you can't die from your own flatulence...and you can die if you rape a frat pledge...who knew? Tyler, Mike, Yuan, Maggie, and I then went to BJ's for dinner (after Yuan and Mike had already eaten dinner), watched the Cavs suck some more, then hit up the local pool hall. We played 8-ball and 9-ball, and some ridiculous variants. Trying to speed up the game, we played speed 9-ball where people had to hit the ball in three seconds before the last ball stopped moving from the last hit. It was ridiculous watching Yuan run around the table trying to get to the ball before it stopped, then missing wildly, scratching anyways. Awesome. Too bad I still suck at pool, cause I missed way too many easy shots, but oh well. I'm not worried about getting hustled anytime soon, so it shouldn't matter how awful I might be.

Oh, and just so you don't miss out on a video. We watched an SNL re-run, which I thought was hilarious...and appropriate given that he just lost his title a few weeks ago.



This was actually really hard to find, since NBC Universal likes being copyright nazi's on YouTube...but it's there.

Mr. Selanne Meet Lord Stanley

WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

DUCKS WIN THE STANLEY CUP!!!!!!!

A messy game, but the Ducks beat the Ottawa Senators 6-2 in Game 5 of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals. Captain Scott Niedermeyer won the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player (leapfrogging JS Giguere) and Teemu Selanne celebrates his first championship.

I'm excited.

I'm buying a hat.

These moments are the ones you dream about as a life-long fan, rooting for a sub-.500 team that everyone else in the league makes fun of. Unbelievably awesome. Growing up in Detroit, I'd watch the Red Wings dominate the regular season, eventually breaking a 55-year streak without a Stanley Cup, only to win 2 more after that. I was spoiled in that regard. But my team was the Ducks, lead by Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne. In NHL 97, I'd trade for Mike Modano, put him between Kariya and Selanne and go to town. They were my team even before people started calling me a duck. Today, they made me proud to call myself a fan. They did it. They won a cup.

After coming heart-breakingly close in 2003, ending a magical series - a magical playoffs - to New Jersey; after dominating the playoffs last year, only fizzle out in the conference finals to Edmonton; after picking up Chris Pronger and watching them zoom to the top of the NHL only to falter with injuries. They finally won it all.

WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

A Very Long Weekend

Alright, so Maggie just left for home, I just got off work, and I've got some time to write about my weekend.

I got home on Thursday from San Diego and decided to rearrange my room. It cramps up a little bit of my space, but it opens up the room a lot and improves airflow, so I think it's a good thing.

Friday, I went to Davis with Mike, Parker (his girlfriend), Brian (who just got into Berkeley, yay!), Coral, and Yuan (who was not in the car with us, but would arrive later after moving into his new apartment). I'm ready to go when Mike calls me and tells me he's going to be late, then calls me and tells me to burn a CD when he's 10 minutes from my place. I have a rush to burn something which results in a half coaster that plays songs, but skips through most of the tracks, making it useless. The ride up is pretty uneventful...I might've slept through it, but I can't remember now. At any rate, we get up there and meet up with Rbs and Katie.

We get the grand tour of the place, but I'm complaining about being hungry (along with everyone else), so we drop off our stuff and head into Davis for lunch. We stopped at some Pita place (Pita Pit?) and I get a Philly pita that ends up looking like a munchkin next to everyone else's pitas. Not exactly sure what happened, but I think they lost some meat and understuffed the lettuce. Oh well. It was still good to eat. At lunch, CDB and Karen show up to meet us, before we head back to their duplex.

Can't really remember what happened after that besides playing Settlers of Catan, having 2 cities on a brick 6, next to a brick port, only to have 6 rolled 4 times the entire game (compared to over 10+ for 8 and like 7-8 times for 10). I'm pretty sure 6 came up less than 11. Safe to say. I lost. We played it again later, except this time I had a lot of 8s. This time 6s came up a lot, but not 8s. Safe to say, I lost again. Still haven't won a game of Settlers yet. Sigh.

Oh, and we watch Mike's favorite movie: The Guardian. Yeah. It was ok. The ending was over the top and anti-climatic. But it was ok. Somewhere along the way, someone decided to get ice cream floats. Coffee + Coke = gold.

Oh, and we went to Pasta? for dinner. I had a Spaghetti Tarantina (w/ mussels and calamari). It was good. Also had a lot of bread, which seems to be the staple food during dinner at any Trattoria.

Next day, we go paintballing at Davis Paintball. We play for a few hours in the blistering Central Valley heat, causing several people to get heat exhaustion and stop playing. I get hammered in the beginning since no one really knows how to apply cover fire and I'm not aggressive enough to take anyone out before they can bunker in, which forced me to bunker in and lose.

We play some regulars on the field, and one of the guys has a semi-auto paintball gun. Pop-pop-pop. I peek out and get hit three times. Great. At one point, we have a 6 vs. 3 game with me, Rbs, Mike, Ryan, Yuan, and Junior vs. 2 guys with guns and a ninja with a stick. We get owned. Hard. All six of us are out before we even get one of them. But, after that game, we split up a bit, and we learn a bit of strategy (and names for the inflatable structures). A couple of games later, Rbs and I are holding to back corner, taking angles, and popping people over the top. Definitely fun. Pretty soon, I'm out of CO2 and I'm tired as hell, so I go in while Mike and Rbs screw around some more in the field. After they're done frolicking, we finally get ready to go and return our gear; but, before we leave I grab some pictures.



We get back, shower, then Mike, Parker, Brian, and I head back to FC. I'm excited because I get to see Maggie for the first time in almost 3 weeks, but disaster strikes before we even leave (sort of...). As we leave Davis, I notice that I don't have my keys on me or in my messenger bag, so I call Yuan to look around in Davis. Half an hour later, they can't find it anywhere. Oh damn. If I've lost my keys, there's no way I'm going to be able to go home. I'm panicking in the car. I double, then I triple check my bag. But it's not there. Yuan feels bad, but he can't really do anything about it. Then I think about my duffel bag. I think about how my keys might've fallen into a side pocket. I hope. When we get to Maggie's house, I rush back to the trunk to look. Bam. It's there. Thank goodness. Crisis averted, etc.

That night, we headed over to Arts and Wine. I get conned out of 10 bucks for some crappy carnival games. I meet Kristina's new boyfriend. He seemed nice enough. Maggie and I got some Coldstones, then went back to Berkeley with Kristina and the new boytoy. This picture pretty much sums up the whole night.



Yesterday, Maggie and I spent the day celebrating our 5-year anniversary. We went to see Shrek the Third. It was ok, but there was definitely too little character development and too much Timberlake. Three movies into the blockbuster summer and there's still not awesome movie (although I need to see Pirates). Next up is Ocean's Thirteen, but I'm waiting to see Knocked Up. Reviews say that it's really good. I hope so.

Oh, and Transformers. Looks. Awesome. See it with me.

Video of the Week: Ocean's Thirteen

I've got a lot of updating to do since my last post. I went to Davis for a couple of days and took a few pictures, so I'll blog about that tomorrow or something. But today is my five year anniversary with Maggie, so I'll be busy with that and I'm not sure when I'll get around to it.

Just to stay on top of things, Ocean's Thirteen comes out this Friday, and this is the video trailer for it. Most critics are saying that it's even better than the original (which means better than the first sequel), so it's probably worth a look (atleast when it comes out on DVD). If you want to check it out, let me know and we'll set something up. Otherwise enjoy the clip.

I Rearranged My Room

I rearranged my room today. I got home to Berkeley, picked up everything, and moved it around. Improves airflow, lighting is a bit better, but it cramps up the space a little. I dunno. We'll see if it's really an improvement.

Oh, and if you didn't get it. I'm back in Berkeley. Yay. Call me.

(btw, Ducks win game 2. Awesome)

I'm Evil, Sue Me

I really didn't want to do it, but since no one shows up anyways, I figured why not?

I've pasted Google ads and various referral deals in various unobtrusive and yet still visible areas on your screen. If you want to click on one of them, go ahead, it only helps me (but I'm technically not allowed to say in what way). The cooler feature is the added search bar in the top right. If you have something you want to check out, go to the search bar, type in something and if you're looking for it in google, it'll be there; if you're looking for it in my blog, it'll be there. Cool.

Anyways, if they're too annoying, and you prefer the content to be all clean and not crapped up with these ads, let me know and I'll think about pulling them.

Super Amazing Flying Finns?

I love hockey. I love the Ducks. And Teemu Selanne...let's just say it can get a little homoerotic when I'm talking about my other god.

It's Stanley Cup playoff time and the finals started tonight with a bang as the Ducks, once Mighty, banged home the winner in the third period, dominating the Ottawa Senators of Canada. Now, it's a home game, so they're just holding serve, but they punished the Senators over and over again, causing turnovers, sloppy mistakes, and creating great scoring opportunities. At the same time, they played fast and wow, take a look at the second goal of the game by Getzlaf and you'll see a beauty of a backhander. This should be exciting (hell, the took 7 dumb penalties and gave up two power play goals and still managed to win). If the Ducks can keep it up and win Wednesday...look out, I'm buying myself a new Ducks hat with a cup on it (and maybe a black sweater with Selanne, 8, and the A on it).

Love that Finnish Flash.

My Med School Plan and the Video of the Week: Miserably Funny, Kermit Hurts

I'm gonna start with a recap of the day, then move on to my video.

I went shopping today for Memorial Day sale stuff. I ended up picking up a new WD MyBook from Office Depot (500GB for $110 after tax), a new white blazer from Banana Republic (for more than I usually pay...), and two pairs of pants (one from BR, one from Gap). After we finished that we went to UTC and stopped in Nordstrom to try on suits so that my mom could get an idea of what I'm looking for.

I'm prepping for Med School interviews way in advance because it's the only way I'm going to sell myself beyond my random stats. I keep thinking about what there is to do and the plan is really three-fold. The first is to prepare responses to essay prompts as a way to demonstrate a passion for the profession and to submit my primary AMCAS and secondary applications in a timely fashion (like ASAP instead of my usually two days before the deadline). The second step is the prepare for the interview by thinking about common questions, uncommon questions, and my responses to those questions. Without a solid game plan, I'm going to flounder, and I can't afford to screw it up that late in the game. With that in mind, I'm going to practice, prepare, and practice some more on that front. The third step is to look amazing. From the shirt, to the tie, to the suit, to the shoes on my feet, to the haircut. Everything is going to be planned and perfect. That was the purpose of today's trip to Nordstrom.

We went in to get a gauge on my size for the jacket and to figure out some colors and brands (I'm a 36R, but will probably get a 38S and tailor it down to size; I want a black Armani, but the CSR recommended navy or charcoal for a lighter accent). I tried on this ugly pied grey jacket (mostly because it was the only 36R on the rack) and it fit pretty well, besides being ugly. Then I got to the Armani...$1800. It's expensive, but I'm trying to convince my parents that somewhere in the range of $1500 shouldn't be out of the question (especially since it'll likely be my money that goes into it). Like I said before, I've got to look perfect, and it starts with the suit. I've still got to figure out whether I want black or navy, but to be honest, I can't really tell the difference without the colors side-by-side, so it may not matter. The more important issues are the cut, the tailoring, and the accessories. I've been told white or light blue shirt with a yellow tie. I'm not a huge fan of the yellow tie, but I like the idea of a light blue shirt inside a black suit. We'll have to try it out and see...I suppose...

As for the video of the week...I think NIN's Hurt might be one of the best songs ever written. It is so candidly depressing and hauntingly vivid that it demoralizes you in a way that makes you want to do it all over again. This video recaptures a lot of that angst and pain in a cover of the original, sung by a fake Kermit who does things no man should ever have to do...

Enjoy. Unless you object to gay muppet sex, masturbation, and drug abuse. Then look away.

My Day With Kenji

Spent the day at UCSD today, hanging out with Kenji. I went down there pretty early in the morning because my dad wanted to drop me off while he was going to work. When I got there, Kenji had just woken up, so he looked completely out of it, but he showered real quick and showed me around ERC before his history lecture.

I had originally planned to stop by Joyce's place during Kenji's lecture, but I realized that I didn't have her number, so I went in to audit a lecture about modern case studies in developing countries. Let's just say I'm glad I don't go to UCSD. I was extremely unimpressed by the quality and the content of the lecture. She kept trying to contrast British Imperialism in Nigeria to British Imperialism in India, even though a resulting ethnic violence out of a heterogenous colony occurred in both situations. She said that democracy in Nigeria was more unstable because they weren't united, but millions of people lost their lives in the partition of India and Pakistan because of the lack of unity. I don't know. It just felt like they were skirting the real issues just to make rash generalizations of case studies.

Anyways, after lecture (which I'm sure Kenji slept through), I called up Joyce (after calling Tyler for her number) and planned to meet up at 3. So, to burn time, Kenji and I went to Panda Express for lunch, then headed back to his place to play some NBA Live 07. Let me say this: despite being a fun rendition of NBA Live, the inability for anyone to stop the superstars like Wade and LeBron is ridiculous. I lost by a million because Nash can't shoot and Wade can't miss. Ridiculous.

After two hours of NBA Live, we managed to meet Joyce at her place, half way across campus. She showed us around, noted the uncleanliness and the lack of anything to do, and took us over to her boyfriend's apartment to sit around. We ended up watching Scrubs for a little less than an hour before we headed back to get food and Laser Tag.

I went to Lazer Tag (I think with the "Z") with Kenji and a bunch of his hallmates from last year that I meet last time I stopped by in SD. They were celebrating birthdays or something, so I tagged along for the ride. After grabbing tickets for a game, we headed over to In-N-Out for dinner. I got a 3x3 with animal style fries. Exceptional. The game on the other hand, was...fun...kinda. We got our asses handed to us (except Kenji cheated and switched teams). I was like 25th of 35 people because one team kept camping from this top loft and other people kept following me around shooting me as a respawned. They really need like a temporary invincibility, but oh well. It was still fun and I would have done it again had it not been kind of late. After the game, we hung around the parking lot, took some pictures. Right about then my mom called telling me that they were nearby and could pick me up, so I pretty much had to get ready to go, ending a much enjoyable day in SD than usual.

I've got pictures on my digital camera that I plan on uploading soon, so keep your eye out for them.

Interesting...If Only...

So, Digg killed the link to the story, so I haven't had a chance to really check it out, but, a girl apparently snuck onto the Stanford campus and lived in the dorms pretending to be a student. She acted like a Freshman and faked transcripts, bought textbooks, went to lectures, and pretended to study for exams. Took 8 months for Stanford Residence/Undergraduate Administration to figure it out.

Unbelievable. I wonder if I could do that. It's freaky for one, it's sad for another, but I certainly am impressed by the level of dedication that she shows for the school that she felt pressured to dream of. I certainly didn't have the bravado to try it in my dreams let alone in real life...

Of course, she's getting fined and has to pay room/board for the year she spent there...but hey, still cool.

Oh, I'm gonna try this tomorrow at UCSD. Watch out for me in Kenji's History lecture.

Success!

Ducks win game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the Wings. They play the Ottawa Senators next for the Stanley Cup. Melrose says the Ducks in 6, citing the big pair of Niedermeyer and Pronger along with the huge force that is the Perry, Getzlaf, Penner line in front of the brick wall of Giguere as the main factors in shutting down Ottawa's Alfy/Spezza/Heatley line. I concur. In actuality, I think the Senators are going to break up that line before the series is over, much like Detroit did with Zetterburg and Datsyuk. With the defensive pairings the Ducks have, and the physical play of their young line (of Perry/Getz/Penner) and their checking line (of Rob Nieds/Pahlsson/Moen), it's gonna be hard for anyone to find much space 5v5. Now, if the Ducks take as many penalties as they did in the Wings series...uh...who knows?

Oh, and I finally had a positive day playing poker. I'm back on the horse baby.

How Do You Stop Jack Bauer And An Exploding Man?

Well, I have to admit, that while SD is more boring, it hasn't really set in yet. I'm playing poker again (albeit losing money...I had a guy stacked and I ended up splitting, and lost money with Aces and Kings, which is always gonna end up with a losing session) and I'm watching season finales. It's good fun, I assure you.

I watched The Simpsons and Family Guy finales on Sunday. They were pretty good (Quamire kids...giggity...), but the 400th episode of the Simpsons was missing that special something, that pizzaz, and that closure that you'd like to see in such a publicized episode. Oh well, the 24 motif one for #399 made up for it. I <3 it.

Speaking of which, 24 wrapped up the mediocre sixth season in which we find everyone in the Bauer family dysfunctional and the Chinese as the ultimate terrorists in the whole plot. Interestingly dull and terribly contrived even by 24 standards. The finale managed to salvage some credibility and the ending was moving, if not melodramatic. It's not the cliffhanger that was season 5, but it was definitely powerful in a way that most of the rest of the season was not.

Unfortunately, the real lack of resolution still makes this the worst season of 24 ever. The writers never made it clear what the ultimate goal was and what we, the viewers, were ultimately responsible for taking away from it. There were too many interconnected, but tangential, plotlines that failed to really wrap up before moving to the next one. We're constantly reminded of the nuclear bomb, but what of the islamic terrorists? Is that threat that had the whole country up in arms for months suddenly over? Is Fayed's death the end? We don't know because we pick it literally two minutes after Fayed dies with the Chinese calling about - *gasp* - Audrey. How dumb.

The finale definitely could have used some Daddy Bauer talk, something appreciable, something meaningful, something that could really drive Jack up the wall. But all we got was a mean stare and a pathetic attempt to save his sons life and his life's legacy. (Oh, and Chloe got pregnant. I dunno why that matters, but meh, we'll see).

I seriously hope season 7 is something cool. Seriously.

Now how do we stop an exploding man? The Heroes finale finally tries to show us how it's done. First step: Find superhuman hero that can explode. Second step: Find superhuman archvillan that can do awesome stuff, but is hellbent on saving the world his way. Third step: Throw in a random conspiracy organization that's trying to do something. Then, blow it all up. Yeah, the Heroes finale did something, but I'm still trying to figure out what. Peter Petrelli went nuclear, Hiro stabbed Sylar, Nathan flies in to save the world by flying Peter into space, Sylar didn't die, Hiro is in the past between two warring samurai clans, and uh...there's an eclipse? Overall, a pretty weak finale, definitely mediocre. I still think the third to last episode, Five Years Past... was the best Heroes episode, but I guess they have to save something for next season.

Now the question is...what? There's gonna be 24 more episodes in "Volume two: Generations" and then 6 episodes at the end called "Heroes: Origins" where the lucky winner gets to stay for season 3. Already? Planning for season 3? Meh, make season 2 amazing, then I'll think about season 3.

Still though, this is gonna be a long, long summer. Next up for finales: House.

Video of the Week: Ducks Win, Teemu Great!

I apologize for this being late, but it was either a Starcraft 2 video, or this great game that NHL Videos has to put up on YouTube half a day after it happens. At any rate, this game was great, I listened to the radiocast on the Ducks end and the commentator said twice that the two Ducks goals might be the biggest in franchise history. I'm almost inclined to agree (if they win game 6 or 7). Great game, the tension was absurd, and the goaltending was amazing. Hasek may be the best goalie to ever play the game (yeah, even better than Roy), but Giguere has been ridiculous for the Ducks.

I have to admit though, I'd probably be excited for either team to win, but I'm making my claim for the Ducks right now since I like Teemu just a little bit more than Lidstrom.

As for the video, if you're not into hockey, try to watch Lilja's drive to put the wings up by 1. It's a beautiful shot. And try to fastforward to the last minute or so for Neidermeyer's mad flip into the net (which was rather ugly) and Selanne's ridiculous steal and backhand (which was another absolute beauty). I promise, hockey is the best playoff sport in the world. I love it.

Ok, So I'm Double Posting

The last thing I posted was meant as a separate thought that I had from last night/this morning.

This post is a recap of my day so far.

I went to a community fair (like Arts and Wines) today where they had some live music, old people dancing, and little kids playing. Fun. I ended sitting around reading the new JRR Tolkein novel, The Children of Hurin. After finishing it, I have to say that the melodrama was overwhelming, and the character development was a little sparse for my taste. Action was good, dialogue was good at points, but you can definitely feel the rough edges where Tolkein meant to polish it. If you're a huge LoTR fan (to the point where you've read The Silmarillion then I suggest you pick this up for a good short read; otherwise, meh, you don't deserve to read it...

I also started playing poker again today. Sat down at about 4 tables of .25/.50 NL for an hour and a half. Managed to lose $3 or so, but that's because I'm an idiot more than anything else. Hopefully, I can avoid talking too much about my exploits, but it's definitely something to note since I haven't played since January (and I need money, so I kinda want to get back on the horse).

Also, if you haven't noticed, I threw together a small web album of my favorite uploaded pictures and slideshowed them in a widget to the left. As always, I try to make the site more presentable, so I hope you enjoy looking into my life, through the eyes of my camera.

Oh, and Ducks win game 5. Awesome game. Teemu Selanne took a giveaway and made it 2-1 in overtime. I'll try to throw up a clip as soon as I can.

Watching My Parents Wii

I have to admit that while the Wii was fun, it was in limited settings since I rarely played it with other people (part of why I want to get a TV). But, yesterday, I watched my parents swing around the remote trying to play tennis and it may have been the funniest thing I've ever witnessed.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that my parents don't get involved in much, but video games have definitely not been one of the things that get them riled up. But my mom was so excited when she when beat my dad in her second match, I couldn't help buy smile and chuckle. It's a development worth watching, to see if they get any better. I know my sister creamed my dad in bowling this morning (see bowled like 150+), but I wonder if the novelty will keep them coming back for more...

I'm Home

I landed in SD about 2 hours ago. I'm home. I set up my Wii downstairs and I heard the sounds of Link in the Legend of Zelda for the first time. Of course, I got my new Rayman game only to have it not work right out of the box. I'm trying some solutions to get it to read the disc since the splash screen works and it proceeds to part of the opening (once) before giving me a read disc error. We'll see.

Also, check out starcraft2.com, they've got some really awesome videos up. Like I said yesterday. I'm dead :P

And, if you're still in San Diego and you want to hit up some clubs or bars or something outrageous, let me know. I'm sure I'm gonna be bored :(

It's Official: My Life Is Over

I'm already planning out my summer spending, looking into picking up a refurb 37" LCD HDTV for my apartment so I can play Guitar Hero 3 when it comes out for the Wii later this year. Once that happens, I'm pretty resigned to wasting most of my time Guitar Hero'ing. Still, I can usually function with one obsession holding me back.

Today. Blizzard announced the killer blow. Starcraft 2. Dear goodness me. Doesn't look like much changes from Starcraft, though. From early reports, it looks like a few more units, a new race, and new and improved graphics, but nothing dramatic in terms of gameplay. Don't know if that matters or not, but I'm sure it'll absorb me much more than it should.



So, Adieu. Glad I knew you.

Live blog of Blizzard's Worldwide International @IGN

A Season of Finales

Last night was a big night for TV season finales. And, if the Gilmore Girls fans will excuse me, probably the most important night of finales of the week. Since I went out last night, and since a lot of my sources of TV watching were messed up early on, I didn't get a chance to watch anything until this afternoon. It was well worth the wait.

Of course, I usually watch these shows with Maggie, but since she's out of the country, she gave me permission to watch them ahead of time just to satiate my undying need for something to do.

First, The Office. I love it. It was a great episode with a lot of loose ends that will progress into next season. If you haven't seen it, I won't ruin the ending, but it's sweet. Jan's boob job is fun, too, but kind of awkward. At any rate, I loved the storyline and the sheer potential, on top of a Spamalot cameo...

I also made a new blog because of it. During one scene in the episode, Creed talks about his blogging exploits. He gives the website www.creedthoughts.gov.www/creedthoughts. Trying it out (since in 24, the phone # they give actually works and directs you to the "fan" phone), I got nothing. So, I stole the email address creedthoughts at gmail and made a blog called creedthought.blogspot.com (someone already has creedthoughts...). Now I haven't actually done anything with it yet, but I signed up for an AdSense account for it and put some tracking software on it as a precurser to what I'm planning to do. If all goes well, I could possibly, maybe, design a CSS scheme that integrates a popup video showing clips from The Office + Previews + Guest appearances of stars, as well as link to various articles and write various reviews/link to reviews about our favorite hit show, The Office. I may even eventually migrate to a real webhost/webserver and take the domain www.creedthoughts.com, and publish with wordpress, but we'll see. It's got potential, so I thought I'd be entrepreneurial and make a move.

Next up though, I went through an episode of Scrubs (one hour double episode) and even though it was an emotional rollercoaster, it ended in one of the most dramatic cliffhangers of the shows 6 season. A lot happened (and a lot of stuff didn't matter) but the personal relationships that drive the show really shined in the two finale episodes. I can't wait to see what's coming up next.

Finally, the ever-present girly-man show. Grey's Anatomy. It was good. Not awesome. Definitely surprising, but much more in character than any of the last month's worth of episodes. One intern fails his test (and no one knows what's going to happen), one person gets to be Chief of Surgery, another gets shafted out of Chief Resident, and...Derek isn't an ass? Oh, and Meredith's half-sister is on the show now. Cool. And I feel really bad for the end, it's sad. Real sad. *sniff*

If you get a chance, definitely take some time to check these out. NBC and ABC are pretty good at webhosting the episodes after they air, so go there first. If that doesn't work (or you're computer literate and love your divx avis), check out some torrents for TV Rips. Otherwise, have a great day, and I'll see you in sunny San Diego tomorrow!