Story and Lifefeed

sticky ntoe

2005-12-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

This sporadically updated blog will be going on an indefinite hiatus.

The Metrosexualization of the Hummer

2005-08-11T12:13:00.000-04:00

Within three generations of development, the Hummer has changed from an intimidating military vehicle to an extremely easy and metrosexual car.

Look at the original Hummer:
Straight lines, hard corners, and very very ugly. It's a fairly functional vehicle.

Look at the H2:
Still some straight lines, but some curved lines too, and a smaller and almost castrated front hood. All in all a simply more palatable vehicle.

Look at the upcoming H3:
Even more curved lines and softer corners. The grill managed to get even gentler. It now looks like a regular SUV. The H3 is just cute as a button.

The H3 is obviously trying to target a different type of consumer than the original. Even on their website, surf over to their sketches of the H3, they're all done in shades of yellow, blue and purple.

I can think of a few reasons for this:

Women make as many as 80% of the car-buying decisions in the family. Even the Hummer commercials are targeting women, showing a suburban mother dropping off her kid on the first day at school.

Women prefer curves.

The market for general car-buyers is simply much larger than the market for enthusiasts. It's true. I don't even have to link this.

To prove my point beyond a shadow of a doubt, I've uncovered an exclusive image of what the next generation Hummer will look like, tentatively (and imaginatively) called Hummer: H4.

whois microsoft

2005-08-05T17:39:00.000-04:00

I don't know if you've ever typed in "whois microsoft.com" into a command prompt, but wow—I actually wasn't expecting this.

MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZZ.DNSW.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZ.IS.0WNED.AND.HAX0RED.BY.SUB7.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.SLAPPED.IN.THE.FACE.BY.MY.BLUE.VEINED.SPANNER.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.WAREZ.AT.TOPLIST.GULLI.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.WANADOODOO.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.SUX.BUT.PYROFREAK.ORG.RULEZ.AND.DIOXYTECH.NET.DELETED.GANDI.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.SMELLS.SIMPLECODES.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.LIVES.AT.SHAUNEWING.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.HOSTED.BY.ACTIVEDOMAINDNS.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.AS.COOL.AS.SIMPLECODES.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.IN.BED.WITH.CURTYV.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLSHIT.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.HUGHESMISSILES.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.FLINGS.POO.AT.MONKEYCORE.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.GO.FUCK.ITSELF.AT.SECZY.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.ARE.GODDAMN.PIGFUCKERS.NET.NS-NOT-IN-SERVICE.COM
MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT.EXEGETE.NET
MICROSOFT.COM

microsoft.com.wanadoodoo.com is my favorite, not that it actually goes anywhere.

I really want to know how people get that stuff in there.

Strawberry papple

2005-06-10T10:39:00.000-04:00

From an old interview with George Lucas:

In one of the scripts there is a Wookie planet. It's a jungle planet and there was a whole sequence where the Empire had a little outpost on the Wookie planet and Luke [Skywalker] gets involved with the Wookies and he fights the head Wookie. He wins the fight but he doesn't kill the Wookie and the Wookie says, okay, you are going to be the son of the chief and all that kind of stuff. He rallies the Wookies and the Wookies all attack this imperial base. The imperial base has tanks and all kinds of stuff and the Wookies beat them off, and then Luke and Ben [Kenobi] and Han (Solo] and a bunch of people train the Wookies to fly the fighters, and it is the Wookles that go after the Death Star, not the rebels that were on the planet.

I just like funny hats

2005-05-03T14:43:00.000-04:00

I was at work, and I went to download a program called phpMyAdmin. Its web site gave me the option of choosing which country I'd like to download it from, probably with the idea that I'd pick the closest one for the best speeds. I get to make this choice often at work, but since I get bored and my job isn't really speed-intensive, I normally decide to choose a country I'd like to visit one day.

This is honestly one of the highlights of my day.

Today I decided I would be downloading from Moscow, Russia, since I was just in that kind of mood. But it oddly listed Moscow, Russia as being in Europe, which I never knew.

I decided to go ahead and download it from Moscow, Russia, Europe, when suddenly the download failed, and wouldn't start back up. I assume that wherever Moscow, Russia was, it packed up and left for someplace that isn't Europe, and did it before my download finished. Which bothered me because I was looking foward to wearing the funny hat.

So instead, today I'm visiting Paris, France.

And this is how I spend my days.

I just won

2005-04-01T09:35:00.000-05:00

I just won four free songs by recomending one blog to another blog, and now I've decided to write about it on my blog.

It's a blogged, blogged world.

Tetricide

2005-03-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

It's not even the fact that there are different versions of Tetris, or that they've changed the gameplay in small ways that aren't necessarily better. It's not that they managed to make the instruction manual for Tetris so confusing that it needed a two-page glossary, or even that they then didn't even alphabetize it.

It's the fact that Tetris now has a plot, and Tetris should never ever ever have needed a plot. Someone should kill Alexey Pajitnov just so he can start spinning in his grave.

In case you're curious, your mighty little adventure is this: Six tetrinaughts have been sent out on a mission to unlock the secret of the Tetrion stargates in order to escape your dying Minos homeworld and start terraforming other little tetroid friendly worlds. You play a tetrinaught, I think. You even have your own customizable tetrian avatars, that sit there and watch your falling blocks like a cat watching a dustbunny.

It'd be like opening up a chess tournament with a monologue on the mighty battles of the proud white kings versus the gloomy black knights.

Was there really a point in the redesign when some manager stood up and said "Y'know, I think more people would play Tetris if only they had a story to latch onto." I just really don't understand it.

In related news, I miss Howard & Nester. Here's hoping for a comeback tour.

I drive like a buddhist monk

2005-03-08T08:59:00.000-05:00

There's nothing in the world like driving a pickup down a major highway sideways. It's not as much driving as it is serenely moving the wheel and touching the brake pedal—wondering if it will really do anything—as you pleasantly float down a four-lane highway at highway speeds.

It's nice—you can see the incoming wave of traffic much more clearly out of the side window than you could out of the rear-view mirror. And if that window is too fogged up for you, just an panicked turn of the wheel and the truck will do a 180° to let you watch them out the other side window.

Eventually, after continuing like this for a while, you'll be left wondering whether the sporadically placed guard rail will hold against a barrelling truck. But it does, and the tale of fun ends in a manner surprisingly far less messy than was possible. And you feel kind good about the whole thing. (Until the the same thing happens again two weeks later.)

Things I learned in Doolittle, Missouri

2004-12-30T15:09:00.000-05:00

Any time is miller time.

Chewing tobacco when you're a child will likely stunt your growth.

When there's nothing left to do, drink.

"Are ya nekkid?!" is an acceptable way to begin any speech, toast, or conversation.

Missouri has no open container laws.

Black people don't exist.

With a little love, a trailor home can look far more homely and feel far more comforting than any place I've lived in during the last 8 years.

Rap music is just crap without the C.

Netflix has destroyed me

2004-12-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

I joined Netflix, and in a weird way, it gave me an existential crisis.

Like all sites even remotely related to products, Netflix lets you rate things, and, like all sites, doing so will help it recomend random stuff that has no relation to the things you've rated highly.

The side-affect of this is that you can see a total count of how many movies you've rated. I've rated somewhere close to 900 movies.

Nine hundred.

Assuming I've been watching movies since I was ten, thats more than 57 movies a year. Even if you knock off a couple hundred of those ratings as TV shows, that's still around 42 movies per year. That just seems wrong to me, and I don't know why.

I blame the aliens.

I'd offer to refinance their penis size

2004-10-29T10:38:00.000-04:00

Undecided voters have taken a turn for the worse recently. They used to hold the future of our country in their hands. Now they're pariahs.

It was really the last debate that crystalized these feelings for everybody. The question is: After watching all the debates, exactly what are these people waiting for? What piece of news or what campaign promise are these people looking for in order to decide? There's nothing new that's going to come out between now and the election. Every piece of news from every candidate will be nothing more than unverified attacks.

The only non-spin content we ever had to look foward to were the debates, and those are over. The only new news these undecided voters will be getting is be the election-equivalent of spam.

And that's what will to decide the fate our country? Election spam? Our election will be decided based on whether they prefer John Kerry offering to refinance their mortage at low low rates or George Bush's offer to increase their penis size?

That's what it comes down to?

On the last post....

2004-10-24T01:04:00.000-04:00

Fact: Over the lifetime of any blog on any subject, the odds of a comment on politics appearing steadily approaches one.

Kerry is my daddy

2004-10-21T01:33:00.000-04:00

RED SOX!

Of course, the one aspect of the Red Sox winning that I've been thinking about constantly: how will this affect the November elections? An underdog from Massachusetts coming out to defeat the reigning champion?

It's great.

Times when I am truly happy

2004-09-16T21:27:00.000-04:00

Venn Diagram

I could be replaced by an animate object

2004-08-10T14:45:00.000-04:00

At my work I created a macro to make the next few hours of my job easier. But then I realized that the next few hours of my job could be done by a monkey. Or even one of those little plastic birds that dip up and down, it could be set up to just push a single button once every few seconds.

It's kind of depressing.

I'm consoling myself by catching a nap as I push the button over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

My girlfriend was in the bathroom sobbing loudly from the pain

2004-08-09T01:00:00.000-04:00

My girlfriend was in the bathroom sobbing loudly from the pain, holding her damaged hand tightly against her body. I stumbled in and saw huge droplettes of blood on the floor. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my bleeding arms. I kept trying to keep pressure on all of the wounds, but I kept failing because they were on all sides of my arms. Eventually I start to feel dizzy, probably from the pain, so I go into the living room and laid down on a pile of clothes. Soon after she comes out, her hand already swelling from infection, and I say to her, "We need to get to a hospital." And as one of the most ridiculous things she's ever said, she replies with, "No, we'll be fine. We should just sit down and let this thing pass."

I cannot enter a title, because it is a title

2004-08-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

The most absurd UNIX thing I've encountered:

$ rmdir zc_install/
rmdir: zc_install/: Is a directory

I don't know how to explain this to non-UNIX types. It'd be like in Windows, if you went to open a file, and instead of opening it you got an error saying, "Error: Cannot open this file, because it is a file."

I didn't know I'd have it this long

2004-08-05T08:51:00.000-04:00

There's nothing like pulling into a gas station to get some air for your tires, and having a cop follow you in and park his car so that he's blocking you from walking away. It gets better when you think about how your car failed its last inspection, and that was six months ago. And how you also don't have insurance. And how you're supposed to be in work in 3½ hours and you have a 3½ hour drive ahead of you.

Amazingly he only wanted to see my license. He had run my plate and the actual owner of the car had his license suspended. Luckily, my license is good now after my experience with the DMV.

Amazing how close that was. Time for a new car.

I think the homeless guy won this round

2004-07-09T20:34:00.000-04:00

How to deal with a suspended license due to a moving violation.

Go to the police station. They'll tell you that you need to go to City Hall, which isn't open now. Or if you want, you can wait until you car gets booted, and then they can deal with it.

Decide to go to City Hall in the morning.

Wake up the next morning, go to City Hall. Get shuffled between two floors before getting told that you're in the wrong city.

Drive to the right city.

Go to the City Hall of the right city. Get told that you'rein the wrong building, that here in this city you need to go to the courthouse.

Walk to the courthouse.

Walk to the other courthouse, because apparently you went to the wrong one.

Finally get to the right floor, in the right building, in the right city. Pay the fine. Get redirected to the DMV.

Get told by the DMV that you don't even have a license in this state, and that although they can reactive your license in this state, they can't do anything about the other state.

Ask how you reactivate your license in the other state.

Get told to go to the city hall in the other state.

Leave the DMV perplexed, walk past an homeless black guy, and for some reason he'll tell you 'Congratulations'.

It's clear who the dominant one is

2004-07-09T20:31:00.000-04:00

"We need to talk."

"Okay."

"I'm not happy things."

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"Yes."

"You're not breaking up with me."

...

...

"oh."

There's a ring on my table

2004-07-07T18:26:00.000-04:00

What in the world would convince a bird to go attack a biker's helmet while he was riding, then sit in the middle of the road and not fly away from tires of the big honkin SUV bearing down right behind the biker?

On the downside a little bird died, and probably in quite a lot of agony.

On the upside there was a big poof of feathers when it got hit, and that was by far the most comical thing I've seen all year.

The glass tumbler from the grassy knoll.

2004-06-23T20:01:00.000-04:00

Three weeks ago I ordered a phone line. Two weeks ago I checked on my status and they said that my order doesn't exist and never had. Last week while I was considering another phone company I recieved their first bill.

I only just hooked up my phone yesterday, and today I got my first telemarketer.

He didn't even try to sound professional, just young. He was selling long-distance plans. I was without one, so I bit. Then just as he was verifying my identity another person got on the line. The telemarketer said, "Justin?" The other guy said, "Nope, wrong number." And then they both hung up on me.

I got it later

2004-06-16T04:00:00.000-04:00

I was on my way to work when I passed a scrolling marque outside an off track betting building, it had a memorial up for Reagan. It said "Reagan". Then it said "1911 - 2004" and I thought how nice it must've been to have lived so long. Then it said "9:15AM" and I thought: Wow, he died about the same time it is now. Then it said "83°", and I thought how odd it was that they would release that kind of information about the state of his death.

If you're curious: the pig painted it's spot back on

2004-06-13T16:23:00.000-04:00

We were lying bed when she asks me for a story. I open my eyes, look around, and the first thing I see is a blue, stuffed pig on her mantle. My mind kicks into gear and I start telling her the story of the pig who was insecure about his one big blue spot. My pig had already encountered a witch and was running happily home, spot-free, when I notice that she'd fallen asleep. I didn't know what to do. Of course stopping the story is inconceivable, so I just keep on going, right up to the end.

I even do an afterward to provide a nice bit of conclusion.

It was kind of weird, since I was basically talking to myself. And it's not like when I normally talk to myself in the car, then at least I can have conversations with the other cars around me. This was nighttime, and she was listening, but then she wasn't, and my story had just put her to sleep, and it'd never done that before.

The story was done and I slowly drifted to sleep kinda unsure about things. Right before my head sunk through the pillow I opened my eyes and realized that even though she was asleep, she probably still heard me talking, and what I said has probably gotten into her mind and has infected her dreams.

I started to think: this story, it became like a virus, and that's kinda a nice goal.

For some reason that made me happy. After that I fell happily asleep.

Bella doesn't really care

2004-06-06T10:57:00.000-04:00

I had just come out of the dank hallways of the PETA building where I had tricked their hypocritical dictator into getting eaten by his own robot bodyguard, the same robot that he had used to intimidate me when I first came in. I went over to the elevator, pushed the down button, and got on when it arrived.

There were three other people in the elevator, and just as the door was about to close I saw Nic Cage get dropped of by a heliocopter and run into the bank right next to the PETA building, holding a giant sack. The elevator didn't move anywhere, and a few minutes later it just opened back up again, at the same floor/place when I got on, but now a very bloody Nic Cage was standing there and got on.

Everybody was staring at him, and he was trying to make up a story where he didn't just attempt to rob a bank and got brutally shot. His ankles were bleeding like hell. Then one of the other elevator-passenger's started talking. He was obviously military and said he used to fly planes.

You think you're going to die. Your entire body is telling you that you're going to shut down soon. But you know what I was told? You're body was born with a slow death wish. Every individual organ in your body is waiting for the moment when it can finally shut down and stop all of it's hard work. But when you put all of these individual organs together, for some reason it creates a body that wants nothing more than to continue to live as much as possible and at any cost.

Then the elevator doors opened up to an empty cliff face and I heard the roaring of the heliocopter a few seconds before it lowered into view. Nic Cage jumped on and the heliocopter roared off. The elevator doors closed, and that was that.

My cocktail took the brunt of the impact

2004-06-02T20:38:00.000-04:00

Just moved. Now living in a new home with one new roomate. Same old truck and one previous roomie.

Moved everything in on one day. That was Monday. Memorial day. The previous landlord showed up at the previous house on Sunday with the new tenents, and was a bit shocked that everything was still there and not here. At least that's what his weird, paranoid note said-- neither of us were actually there. The note talked about how we cost him a half a month's rent and accused us of delibrately avoiding him. This coming from a practically absentee landlord who once left a gaping hole in our wall for the first two frosts of our first winter.

The other roomie met up with him on Tuesday, and reported back that the landlord seemed very happy with the job we did moving out and cleaning. That means I have no worries left in the old house, and I can concentrate on this new place.

That means lots of unpacking.

Unpacked stuff gets squeezed in whereever there's room, and there isn't a whole lot of room in my new bedroom. I could do with a couple bookshelves, a media rack, and a closet organizer-- lacking those, my organizing plan so far has been to make more space by reconstructing the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a corner.

It wasn't leaning when I started it, it just ended up that way.

Dip it in a cup?

2004-05-21T22:04:00.000-04:00

You go to the video rental store, pick out a nice girly movie that you know your girlfriend will like. You come home, she puts it in, and brings out the liquor and stuff. The movie is turned on. Suddenly a half hour later you realize that the movie doesn't make sense. The more you watch, the more it continues to not make sense, or it's flat, or it's plain plain bad. You have to wonder, is it the movie, or might it be the liquor and stuff?

The next day, out of a masochistic curiosity, it gets watched again. And you realize that you called it right the first time. It's just plain freakishly bad.

It's not that it was a bad little thing...

2004-05-11T14:17:00.000-04:00

It's just that there were a few things that I wanted to be able to do with the last one that I never quite got around to doing, and I think that I'll have more fun and it'll be easier to do that stuff here. Plus I was never quite sure what features they gave me free and what I had to pay for.

Anyways, I've always been a fan of Zeldman, so even though I didn't choose his template style, I respect that they chose him to design one.

Go Blog.