Not dead!

I'm not dead, it just turns out that I rather enjoy writing for myself instead of leaving breadcrumbs online.


-- Post From My iPhone

Future updates

Reviewing iPhone apps.

Movie reviews.

Economic news, interpretation.

Financial planning topics.

Indy top to bottom.

Touring classic comics from a 21st century perspective.

The AFI top 100 lists - comprehensive rundown.


-- Post From My iPhone

Nonsense on sports

Nothing very profound, but damn do sports exlode in november. As far as I'm really concerned, baseball is the only realistic option from April through October. Right at the end of October we suddenly explode into football, hockey, and basketball. Damn. That's a lot of crap to follow.


-- Post From My iPhone

DATA FLOW REACTIVATED

Waiting for my damn MacBook!

It was coming all the way from Shanghai, got to Chicago, but then had to bounce to Memphis for Fed Ex routing. The longer it takes, the better I feel considering I won't even be back in town for another few days.

Excited and thinking about seeing how long I can go before installing a game!

Am I really a writer? We will find out. Oh yes, we will.


-- Post From My iPhone

Bad choices in my life.

I will add to the list of bad choices in my life eating a giant burrito before my flight to Seattle. Sub-optimal planning there, champ.


-- Post From My iPhone

In search of...

Need a good resource for dirty limericks.

Does anybody have favorites?



-- Post From My iPhone

Xbox gamercard.

I look at my Xbox live gamer card and it has:

Williams Pinball Hall of Fame
Pinball FX
Rock Band 1
Rock Band 2
Beatles Rock Band

Hmmmmm.

Ha!

Wow. I look back at that last entry after I've gotten some more sleep..

Good thing I'm not writing this with the idea that anybody is reading it!

Whew!

Sick day. Stiff fingers.

Recent thoughts, in no particular order. Perhaps this will help me remember what I wanted to elaborate on.

Pinball – dying/dead, but like bowling, should be kept around. Would love to get a few tables.

Video games – adulthood sadly brings time restrictions. Personal betterment sadly brings even more. Instead of quality gaming being the refuge, I can only play microburst games with a clear conscience. Luckily this includes pinball games.

Comics – Single issues are a sucker's game. Except for indie books. The industry has changed so that reprints are abundant in single issues – this eliminates the value that comics may have had previously in the short term. Only if the audience keeps growing do current books go up in value due to demand. In addition, all mainstream books are essentially headed straight towards the real money these days – trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Much more convenient, the nice collections can still go up in value. The real scarcity is in the small print run books – Casanova, Transformers, Battlestar Galactica. Scarce in the first place, short print runs in trades also – if at all! Not that I would recommend to anybody that they could make money in those, but if you happen to enjoy comics.. Buy the small print run single issues, wait on everything else until it's out in trade or hardcover form.

iPhone – Dear god, give me a bigger battery life. I may need to buy a supplemental battery or leave music playing to a dedicated device. I can successfully drain a battery 100% between taking it off the charger in the morning and getting home at night. I can guarantee I will run out of recharge cycles before my two years is up to get another one. Will have to think deeply on this.

TV – Digital distribution and full collections are insanity. There is so much quality content out there that is readily available now. I would feel like a normal, well adjusted person if I did what 'normal' people did and watched things as they air. But why? I have to sit through commercials, wait week to week, be held to their schedule. But I can drop a few bucks and have the entire first season of the Twilight Zone, or all of Spaced, or the IT Crowd. You lose that connection with people, though.. Meh.

Internet – THERE is the firehose. For info junkies, you just jack in and let the feed flow. Marvelous. Lovely. A little adrenal squirt every time you flip stories.. Ah….

Williams Pinball Hall of Fame – Xbox 360

Oh lordy did I love me some Williams Pinball HoF for the Wii. The physics engine was the most authentic I've experienced and the tables seemed so well modeled. The flippers just felt right with the wiimote/nunchuk combo. My wife may have been looking forward to the 360 version coming out more than I have just so that I would stop talking about being excited to get the whole deal in for real HD.

As context, I have actually been talking about planning another trip to Vegas just to visit the Pinball Hall of Fame again for a few days. That's how much I enjoy playing pinball. Having the Wii version tickle me just right is a very magical thing.

I got home, ripped open the Amazon package, and fired up the 360. I admit, I've only played a few tables, but.. There's just something wrong with the flippers. They're mushy. They're slow. They're what would make me tell the arcade operator they might need some maintenance. I'm going to give it some more time, mostly because I can milk some easy gamer points out of it J BUT, I do so with GRAVE reservation. Even remapping the flippers to the bumpers instead of the analog triggers didn't do it.

I feel kind of empty.

It's still the best pinball for the 360 - definitely superior to the deal of the week of Pinball FX - but I dreamt of so much more.

Update - OK, you get used to the lagginess of the controls.  Just the additional boards available over the Wii version make me feel better.  If you've got a choice, I'd still lean towards the $15 on Amazon Wii version, but this would be great at $30 on Amazon for the 360.

Raiden IV

Everything that I've read about Raiden IV online has boiled down to essentially hemming and hawing about paying $40 for a Raiden game when Raiden Fighter Aces is two games for $20.



None of them has acknowledged the awesomeness of Dual mode in Raiden IV, though. One controller, both ships. One stick for each, triggers and bumpers to control main fire and bombs. I almost wet myself playing, it was that stimulating.



Of course, it's BS that they're charging for the two additional ships you can get when they obviously should have been included with the entry price. Oh well. I'm a big boy. I'll stomach getting nickel and dimed for now. I just hope it sells well enough that they come out with some more marquee shooters like this.

Update - Guess I hadn't paid attention properly to Raiden Fighter Aces - it's actually 3 games.  

Another test post

Testing to see if updated domain still feeds the same RSS feeds.

 

Also, for some reason Word loves crashing now when I hit the big Microsoft button.

Word 2007 blog posting evaluation

Well, that was easy.

I can't vouch for how well it would work with richer media content than plain text, but it was pretty damn simple.

No wonder people do this all the time!

My one qualm is that it apparently doesn't securely transmit your login information, which I *think* does happen when dealing directly with the Blogger web interface.

May have to try creating a secondary login for Blogger.

Testing out Word 2007 blog posting

So, when creating a new document in Word 2007 you have the basic options of doing a new blank document or a new blog post. How does it work? That's what I'm trying to figure out. There's something sexy about a blank swath of white sitting on my screen, waiting to be filled up.

 

HITTING GO BUTTON NOW

Mr. Mom?

The topic of being a stay at home spouse came up at work yesterday and everybody seemed to be agreeing that if they didn’t have a kid at home, they would just go crazy. I got some odd looks when I said “oh, I’d probably start writing if I was designated the stay at home parent.” Is that so weird?

I look at it this way – my brain produces weird output. I take massive amounts of input. If I connect the two, I should be able to write a decent amount. Right?

Of course, it’s not likely to really be insightful unless I crack down and set my mind to it. If I *don’t* take it seriously, though.. I’ve seen a lot of people get good mileage out of media remixing and review.

At the very least, it would be interesting to get a chance to concentrate on a longer form than haiku. Not that there’s anything wrong with haiku! It helps keep my brain pressure under control during times of too little stimulus!

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Dreaming my dreams

Had a dream last night that I was Superman. Everybody was afraid of my alien powers and origin so I had to win them over. Decided making them hamburgers would do the trick. Turns out Superman makes shitty hamburgers.


-- Post From My iPod

Spinning head action.

Falling asleep thinking about social security, plastic instrument compatibility charts, near death situations, mouth to mouth resuscitation, pension plans, health care, super hero noir, where all the dead spiders on my cat's head came from, librarians, new wireless networking specifications, fuel economy, and German board games.

Not quite what you'd call falling asleep well.


-- Post From My iPod

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
- e e cummings

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
- Dan Rather

On moon hoax discussions

On reflexion, it's really not worth it to try to convince some people we really landed on the moon. For example, if they vilify weathermen for not being 100% right all the time for their specific neighborhood. Or if they believe doctors have no idea what they're doing and could do a better job themselves.

If your worldview is based on that mentality and distrust of experts or people that 'know things' then there's nothing that could possibly make you look at the evidence and decide that experts could possibly manage to get men on the moon.

Sometimes I really hate the people in my office.


-- Post From My iPod

Thumbs and such

Who has two thumbs and is getting jazzed about Gencon?

This guy! (my thumbs are pointing at me, FYI)


-- Post From My iPod

Multiscreen reader

I desperately need reader software that will show web pages and PDFs flowing across multiple monitors. When I get to the bottom of one column, I look to the next screen to continue. Does this exist?

-- Post From My iPod

Project Natal

As a gamers that may pick up Project Natal for his xbox at some point, what guarantee do I have that the cats that harass me while playing already won't be picked up by the scanner and horribly ruin ganeplay?

-- Post From My iPod

Josh Hartnett

Josh Hartnett, who knew I would only respect you after 30 Days of Night?



-- Post From My iPod

On growing old.

I hope that I grow to be horrendously old and have a ton of kids because I'm going to be the craziest old man and I'm going to need a lot of people to terrorize.


-- Post From My iPod

The wisdom of movies: 30 Days Of Night

The wisdom found in 30 Days Of Night is that in rock, paper, scissors vampire wins.


-- Post From My iPod

News?

Turned on the tv when I got into work and was shocked, SHOCKED, that MSNBC was talking about some bullshit with Obama in Russia, working on foreign relations issues.

Thank god there's Fox news. I flip over and they have Geraldo on doing a rundown of doctors who might have been prescribing Michael Jackson painkillers. To add to that they had two inlays on the screen showing the staples center and, I think, the place the funeral was being held. Now THAT is hard hitting coverage of news that affects me.

Seriously, this needs to end tut suite.

Oh, now Leann Rimes is on speaking out for psoriasis awareness. Nothing like tv making me feel like I'm visiting from another planet and don't understand the alien ways of the natives.

It really is left to the Internet to tell me how Mousavi feels about important things. What do the head clerics in Theran think about the death of Michael Jackson?

Written at 7:45

-- Post From My iPod

Breaking clout story!

In other news, apparently a second(!) clout story is brewing in our education system. Early reports indicate that a significant number of applicants are being admitted to schools ahead of more qualified students. This is an even more pervasive and shadowy issue than the current big story of political clout getting substandard students in.

These other clout beneficiaries are being admitted solely on their ability at sports! What sort of madness are we dealing with when your ability at an extracurricular activity gets you into advanced educational intlstitutions ahead of more academically qualified individuals?

Unless this is actually adressed as an issue, I refuse to give a shit about the Sun Times headlining this damn clout admissions story every other day. Talk about blown out of proportion and misprioritized.

Written at 8:05

-- Post From My iPod

No rhyme or reason.

I wonder if my office building is pulling some kind of scam where they just use free samples of toilet paper from suppliers. For he last few months it's been such a random swing in quality of the paper. Sometimes it's quilted double ply, sometimes it's low grade single ply. Once in a while it's even both kinds on the rolls. It ruins the concentration I can achieve in my little fortress of solitude. Sadly we are in the days of full on single ply again.

I'll soldier on as I can, but genius just can't work under these conditions.

-- Post From My iPod

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
- Saki

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
- Mark Twain

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
- Thomas Jefferson

http://www.ocelopotamus.com/217_stephen-colbert-behind-the-maniac/

Simon rendezvous!

Sunday on WGN they have this hyperactive French guy doing a call in show. There is just something great about his heavily accented rants that I would recommend to all. Can be streamed on wgnradio.com.

-- Post From My iPod

Sounds like delicious soup.

-- Post From My iPod

Libaries

Dem libaries are purty neat. They's like a Netflix fer books but free.


-- Post From My iPod

4th of July weekend.

Too Much Light this weekend. Maybe I'm just getting older or something, but the actors just seem so young. All the touching personal plays seem scarce and the humor is much more juvenile and non-literary. It was still fun but lacks the magic of the original founders.

Did the fireworks on the 3rd at Monroe harbor. It was nice but happened way earlier than anybody expected. Had a great walk down the middle of Lake Shore Drive. Too bad I didn't have a proper camera for pictures off the bridge.

Stopped at a bar instead of fighting for a train home. Tried a Black Tire. It's like a black and tan but with Guinness and Fat Tire. It was good, but didn't bring much more to the table than regular Guinness.

Looks like I'll need more toilet paper soon...

Technology marches on

Great. Now I can post from the crapper. What an enlightened age. No more 140 character limits for me! I can just blather on and on. Possibly realtime bowel movement commentaries.


-- Post From My iPod

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
- Isaac Asimov

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
- Douglas Adams

I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.
- New York City detective

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.
- Fran Lebowitz

So much still to read!

So, off the top of my head I still have to read(aside from CFP stuff):

Forever War
Green Mars
Air
Annihilation Classic
Some random bag of stuff the Hennings handed off to me
Bone

Who knows what else? I probably have boxes of things I haven't read yet. I don't think I ever finished reading all those X-Factor issues I assembled either.

On a related note, the iPod Touch would be really useful if I decided to start tracking down complete sets of different books. That would be kind of neat. Except I really should just get trades. Maybe just post on Craigslist what I'm looking for?

Need Brain AAA

The whole damn brain has just stalled out! It's not really turning over and I really need to get back on the road. If somebody would just stop by and give me a jump or something, I've got a lot of deliveries in the back seat that are rotting away. Maybe some bits need replacement or maybe I've just been running it too hard. Damn boss just kept trying to jam other boxes in and the ones in there already are getting dented. Maybe I'll just buy a bike.

I'm so screwed if I go blind.

So much reading this weekend.

Finally read Impaler. That was pretty solid. I think there's been some actual printed books put out leading up to this story, but I'm a big fan of taking extensive backstory as read. It really kicks in fast and doesn't dwell too much on the side stories. I'm not a huge fan of the ephemeral nature of the vampires, though. And I'm not sure if the repercussions of the final page are handled quite right.. A great read for $10, though.

Also reread House of M. I guess I love the concept, but on it's own as a story arc it doesn't quite blow me away as much as it does in context with all the other books coordinating. Still wonderful seeing Layla Miller's beginning again and jumping from there to the latest issue of X-Factor. She's very nice all grown up.

Then there was all that tax stuff. I feel like I should have spent more time on it, but I always feel that way. I'll need to go back over some chapters to brush up on the fine details, but I think I'll do ok on the final.

Caught up with the last 3 issues of Jack of Fables and loved it. The twist about who Jack is? Awesome. Babe the Blue Ox? Still wondrous. The Page sisters? The baddest ass librarians. Then The Great Fables Crossover kicked in and I already had the first two-thirds of it - very nice. Some of the lines in there work so very very well. Trying to imagine what could happen in the last third and that, like many other things in Fables, is almost literally impossible to predict.

Also, Spider-Man - The Short Halloween - good stuff. Amusing hijinks. Knocked out Spidey gets swapped with drunk guy dressed up as Spidey. Each of them handles the other's nemeses quite satisfactorily. Kind of expensive at $4. Them's knocks, I guess. It's not like I'm on an allowance anymore.

Also, beat all the events and smashed all the billboards in Big Surf Island - new island for Burnout Paradise. Definitely digging the smaller area - much more tightly knit and very good flow. In love with the toy DeLorean I unlocked. So cute leaving flaming tire tracks off the mega jumps.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
- Plato

Netflix as a personality test?

Not sure if I should take this too seriously, but Netflix recommends the following genres to me:
Violent Revenge Dramas
Suspenseful TV Shows
Critically-acclaimed Cerebral Comedies
Inspiring Action & Adventure
Romantic Movies from the 1950s

I guess that works. But where is the Inspiring Romantic Revenge Dramas from the 1950s genre?

FOUR BAD STATES - 10.6% of all mortgages in the state of Florida were in some stage of foreclosure during the 1st quarter 2009. Nationally, 3.9% of mortgages were in some stage of foreclosure. Excluding the states of Florida, Nevada, California and Arizona, only
1.0% of mortgages in the other 46 states were in the foreclosure process during the 1st quarter 2009 (source: Mortgage Bankers
Association).

Idea nuggets.

I'd love to see the steampunk versions of CNBC, FOX News, CNN, MSNBC. All the tickers along the bottom would be hand set and mechanically run. All the spinning graphs and logos would be physical entities breaking down on the air - greasy guys in overalls frantically trying to get them running again. Perhaps a variant of TV Wheel would help.

Freecell quest

I have beaten Freecell layout #1.

999,999 more to go.

I will complete them all and assume my pure energy form.

Appropriate expressions of anger.

Driving in today John Williams had a psychiatrist on the line talking about the use of physical outlets for anger. The psychiatrist said that unmitigated venting of anger by beating the crap out of Gatorade machines really wasn't healthy. An individual should strive to subvert these impulses into more socially acceptable outlets like exercising or talking things out.

It makes me consider that maybe my perpetual urge to just start smashing the crap out of everything might be a sign of some repressed anger and frustration. Yeah, there's probably a lot of that. What to do about it?

Many a man who falls in love with a dimple make the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
- Evan Esar

CFP and knowledge acquisition.

In the middle of a 6 week course on taxes that is part of a larger 9 month series that will satisfy the education requirement for becoming a certified financial planner(tm). This pace is insane. There is so much information in this material and the midterm is on 7 chapters after only 3 weeks. Wow. The lecture sections seem to be of limited use - I can follow and acknowledge things as sensible with relation to the material, but that is useful only to a multiple choice extent. In the world of free form answers you need to know the fine details of all these topics, not just the gross outlines. I know I'll feel better when I don't have moving on my plate to deal with, but this shit is stressful. To the max.

Facebook and Twitter

I have come to the conclusion that the pretensions of friends lists and followers leads to no good whatsoever. I think I need to treat a blog as a personal observation post that others can comment on, but are not essential to the format. With the long form, I create a dialogue with myself. With short form like Facebook or Twitter, it relies on the interaction with others. I will solo this.

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
- E. B. White

The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.
- David Brinkley

A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
- Segal's Law

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.
- Henry Fielding

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

A beautiful day to change a tire.

Ready to head to work this morning. Walk out, back right tire is flat. Blah. At least the torrential downpour dropped to a sprinkle and I was able to get the spare on without too much drama. Now it's just to figure out where to get new tires, what tires to get, and whether to do two vs four.

My joy lies in that Lauren needs to get new glasses, I just dropped over 4 grand for a class, and I'm getting new tires, and our savings are surviving. Huzzah.

It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it.

My task today? Fitting ten gallons of shit in a five gallon hat.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
- Thomas A. Edison

Memo to myself - do the dumb things I gotta do.

- Touch the puppet head
- Haircut
- Buy powder for carpet, apply tonight to sit for a day.
- Finish Chapter 2 and first half of Chapter 3 for tax book.
- Finish all end of chapter questions - type responses just in case.
- Look into buying new work clothes.

Today is a day where I don't know if I'm getting sick or if I'm just depressed or something. Body tired. Getting twinges in my knee - that could be leftovers from working out, though. Achey over a good part of my upper body, which I haven't been working out much aside from juggling for a while last night.. Arthritis? Blah.

You don't know how I tried
to forget what it was like.
I remember now.
I remember now.
Why they called it Thunderbird.

More dreams.. Cable news based this time.

Dream last night - ran into Dylan Ratigan - ex-CNBC anchor - in the airport. Nothing real interesting.. Just said I missed him and that he had nice hair. Told him that I was sticking with Erin Burnett and the drunk guy, though.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard Feynman

Pulled out the jump rope yesterday as a warmup for running. Damned if the jump rope doesn't kill me. I probably only made it 3 or 4 minutes before I couldn't get high enough to make it over the rope. Instead transitioned into situps and pushups in apartment. Will have to work on that some more so I don't feel so lame.

The odd couple.

It felt like I was getting the silent treatment this morning from Jif. I suspect he is angry at me for outing his food burial techniques online.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
- Robert Frost

unedited dream recollections

Weird dream last night. Rediscovered self teleportation and phasing. Had previously known and knew others but had forgotten. Involved having an orange in your pocket. Had kids to teach this to. Remembered like it was in a dream. Involved having gravity lose hold.

Other night had a post apocalyptic dream. Ground based civs went feraland zombielike. Giant airborne warships held last normal people. Multiple trips down into old skylines. Ballistic weapons still used by ground based.

Buy my crap!

Make an offer - whatever you think is fair!

Book History is Dead - A Historical Zombie Anthology - edited by Kim Paffenroth
DVD Star Trek - Complete movie collection - all 2 disc editions - Movies 1-10.
DVD Cowboy Bebop Vol 1-6(the whole series!)
DVD The Right Stuff
DVD Stripes
DVD What Dreams May Come
DVD Escaflowne Vol 1,2
DVD Glengarry GlenRoss
DVD Blade Runner
DVD Kite
DVD Powerpuff Girls Vol 1,2,3
DVD Suicide Kings
DVD The Temptations
DVD Black Mask - Jet Li
DVD Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Eegah
DVD Android Kikaider Vol 1
DVD Total Recall 2070
DVD Vandals - Oi to the World
Games Assassin's Creed - PC - unopened
Games Supreme Commander - PC
Games Supreme Commander - Forged Alliance - PC
Games Empire Earth II Gold - PC
Games Company of Heroes - PC
Games Rainbow Six:Vegas - PC
Games Quake 4 - PC
Games Duke Nukem 3D - Atomic edition - PC
Games Far Cry 2 - PC
Games FEAR Gold - PC
Games Civ III Complete - PC
Games Guitar Hero II - PS2 (w/guitar)
Games Darwinia - PC - Import!
Games Metroid Prime - Game Cube
Games Donkey Kong Jungle Beat - Game Cube (controlled by bongos)
Games Donkey Konga - Game Cube(controlled by bongos)
Games Resident Evil 4 - Game Cube
Games Kill Doctor Lucky - Fancy Edition Board Game (plus his little dog!)
Misc. Army of Darkness - Ash Bobblehead
Trade Paperback Authority - Human On The Inside
Trade Paperback Exterminators Vol 1
Trade Paperback Battle Royale Vols 1,2,3,4
Trade Paperback Those Who Hunt Elves Vol 1
Trade Paperback Rahxephon Vols 1,2,3
Trade Paperback Cowboy Bebop:Shooting Star Vol 1
VHS Fight Club
VHS Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Facebook marketing has successfully generated interest in me for the band Morningwood. I know I've heard one of their songs before in Burnout 3, but it didn't quite grab me. Then I find out that Jimmy Urine is married to the lead singer and suddenly I'm snagging all I can and trying to find their European release.. Nice poppy music, good hooks, cute singer. Definitely gets stuck in my head. Favorite tracks - Best of Me, Nth Degree, Bipolar Bear, Jetsetter. Sounds a lot like Veruca Salt sometimes.

What if news broadcasts had to end their murder reports with how many babies were born in the affected area that day?

Ask a deeply religious Christian if he?d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don?t seem so bad lately.
- Scott Adams

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
- William Hazlitt

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
- Leonardo da Vinci

This is freaking me out. Morgan Stanley, Allstate, Lehman, and WaMu all closed exactly even today.

I wouldn't have thought, but the internal speaker on the iPod touch is a killer feature.

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
- Booth Tarkington

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
- Bertrand Russell

Three blades of lameness.

Overslept yesterday but still needed to shave from the weekend's growth. Had found some Mach 3 cartridges while cleaning the other day and figured I could give that a swing, just to make sure my new safety razor lifestyle was as awesome as I thought.
Verdict? Mach 3 fail. It felt like an ineffectual toy. I went with the grain and, compared to my safety razor with the grain lazy shave it was woefully inadequate. Sure, it takes a few more minutes when I do the full two-way shave, but it has a much better final product with waaaaay less ingrown hair.

Just had a dream come crashing back that I had last night. I knew I had an awesome one, but it took a lot of work to tease it back out of my brain.

The dream was that I had not seen the first episode of Mad Men, but I was watching it in the most vivid way possible. It turns out that the first episode deals with Don Draper being a time traveller from the future that had to be born in the past in order to travel there. He was very disappointed with where he was born. So he grew up unhappy, married several times in different parts of the country, always knowing what the future was going to bring but angry with how the time travel worked out. He keeps restarting his life in different places while trying to evade those that were sent from the future to prevent him from interfering. This first episode even has his kid figuring out that his dad is from the future. Eventually he finds his way to Madison Avenue and becomes crazy successful because he can just recall what successful advertising campaigns had happened. It also explains why he doesn't vote or care about politics - he knows he can't change the future.

Hmm.. Will today be the day that breaks the pattern of horrible Tuesdays? Things look promising so far.. Perhaps my head straightening last Wednesday has proved effective.

Free advice is worth the price.
- Robert Half

Exercise

Ran/walked 2.5 miles. Sprinted another 1/8 mile. 30 pushups before, 20 pushups after. Would have worked on the machines in the main room, but it was a madhouse in there.

On benchmarks..

On a benchmark note, my car turned 50,000 miles today. I took a picture, to timestamp the event. I wonder how the Civic feels about it? Lauren got it a nice inside and out wash, so hopefully it feels good. 40,000 miles I've put on it since November '06. An average of 1,481 miles a month or 17,777 miles a year. Vroom vroom.

Thirty something something.

Well, it's happened. I've gone beyond the veil. When I was young, I always felt like I was simultaneously existing as an older person - somewhere in my 20s. Then when I was in my 20s, I felt like I was simultaneously existing as that younger self. When I read Slaughterhouse Five I almost freaked out because that was exactly how my life felt.

The other simultanaiety that started when I was about five was with death. I suppose when I am dying I will feel that simultanaiety with every point in my life.. But it really has skewed my mental processes all my life - knowing innately that I am going to die and feeling like there is nothing on the other side.

So, out of those two dualities, one is apparently gone. It feels like I'm able to focus a little more on things. It IS the first days of the rest of my life. I work with people who have had twice as much life as I've even gotten past. I know I'm supposed to respect that, but after having conversations with them, I mostly feel more self-respect for what *I* know and am capable of. So that means that all the stuff I've accomplished in the last 30 years are a platform for getting a really solid 30-35 years of shit done. And I'll get to where these other people are and I'll feel even better.

I can finally get past the "I don't want to be where that guy is when *I* turn 30" fear. I don't live in my parents' basement. I have a degree. I have an awesome wife. Guess it's time to stop worrying about where I'll be at 30 and, once again, get shit done.

Perhaps I need that as a tattoo somewhere that I can see. Maybe on my knee, so it will remind me when I'm sitting on the can. "Get shit done." It?ll serve multiple purposes. Perhaps a test run with a Sharpie is a good idea, though.

On the theme of the big three-oh, I'm already testing my focus-ability. This week is reading week. I have the dining room set up as the reading room and that will be where my ass stays when I'm not working out. I have books on Creationism, financial planning, asset allocation, and the origin of Wolverine to get through. All enlightening, I can assure you. (you, meaning me, who is the one that reads this.)

Ach! Mein Playlist!

I've been listening to so much music lately, it's broken my super automatic playlist. All of the subsections of the playlist that are supposed to pull music from certain criteria and not played in the last 3 weeks are suddenly running out of things to play. It's supposed to be 150 tracks total, but could only pull together 135 when I synched this morning. Guess I'll have to deal with it or let songs cycle faster... Hmm..

A bad sign

It's a bad sign when your wife visits your workplace and you spend part of the time regaling her with stories about the interesting quarters you've gotten as change from the convenience store in the lobby. Yeah, it's weird that you got so many 1965s, but..

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
- Robert Orben

While sitting in traffic today and meditating upon the 'baby on board' sign on the car in front of me - you know, trying to figure out what kind of sign I would put on my car to say it's ok to hit me - said car decided to pull into oncoming traffic on Roosevelt because the person they were following was going too slow. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. He did end up stopped at a stop light about 5 seconds later, though.

"Let's start with a premise that I don't think a lot of Americans are aware of. We have five percent of the world's population; we have 25 percent of the world's known prison population. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice," - Jim Webb whose criminal justice reform bill has won some encouraging support on the right.

DSC00362

The nice thing about..

The nice thing about being the only one here for another 40 minutes or so?

Complete control over the light switches.

AKA One man dance party.

"I just want to dance with my shirt off."

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
- Paul Gauguin

exercise

I swore to break 50 pushups today.

I did 20 25 pound curls on each arm.
I started off with 40 and my arms crapped out.
I ran half a mile to the train tracks.
I did 40 pushups and my arms crapped out.
I ran half a mile back home.
I did 10 burpees and had to call it quits.

I swear I will do 50 consecutive tonight, but fuck is it hard.

edit:Advanced move - don't know how long this would be useful for... Hyperventilate beforehand, get the blood filled with oxygen. The failure is in the muscles running out of gas. This will have to do until the piping to the area upgrades.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?
- Jay Leno

Two dreams remembered from this weekend.

One involved my playing Battleship and deciding I could just put one ship on my board with only one peg on the board - the rest hanging off the edge.

The other, much longer dream involved my car being stolen and replaced with a junker van. Then some girl infects my life with a virus - it intercepts all communication with people I know. She feels bad that she infected my life, but can't say no to me. I'm talking about a life glitching as if from a virus. My host file was replaced so that all attempts to contact no individuals resulted in talking to strangers. Also, I could fly. Not unusual in my dreams, though.

Idea to work on

Children's shows for adults. How would Mr. Rogers help adults deal with the world?

Dear blog.

Dear blog. I'm sorry I left you for Facebook. I will likely be back shortly since they deprecated hard returns.

New dream setup

So now that my brother has taken back his monitor, I'm stuck with an unused video output for my computer.

I can get a 24 food HDMI cable for 30 bucks, run that to the TV so I can use it as a secondary output. This saves me from wanting to repurchase games for the 360. Win.

Other than that.. I dunno. I guess I have small dreams.

Sadly touching

Sad is when one of your cats is separated from their brother for months. Sadly touching is when they see each other on the computer screen via web cams, recognize each other, and one starts pawing at the screen to reach them. When that fails, trying to get to the other side of the screen where they obviously must be.

Jif absolutely recognized Luke when he was sighted sitting in Lauren's lap. He cocked his head from one side to the other, trying to figure out how Luke got into the screen. Sadness... I'm pretty sure Jif's theory these days is that Luke is actually hiding in the bedroom closet.

Exercise

The cooling units were out at the Y again today. It wasn't even that it was the smell of sweat there, it was the smell of misery. Everybody looked absolutely miserable. So I followed my first instinct, turned around, and went to the track upstairs. Bet you thought I was going to just leave!

So I ran 72 laps on their tinyass track. 3 miles in 35 minutes. I'd say I did ok for my random speeding up, cramping, slowing down to recover, and zooming again. I figure it builds my stamina. I would have gone for a fourth mile, but my right foot was feeling twingy like it wanted to cramp. So I dropped, did 30 pushups, and headed out.

When I went to log my running in the exercise room it was even hotter than it had been before. Now that I know I can trust myself to keep at it on the track, I may head straight for that in the future.

exercise

Only ran two miles today. It was blazingly hot in there when I showed up. I just can't operate in those elevated humidity environments.

fight club haiku

worker bees can leave
even drones can fly away
the queen is their slave

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
- Eric Hoffer

http://www.xkcd.com/210/

http://www.xkcd.com/217/

http://xkcd.com/231/

http://xkcd.com/262/

http://xkcd.com/280/

A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.
- Evan Esar

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.
- E. V. Lucas

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.
- Janet Long

exercise

refamiliarized myself with how much it burns one's lungs to run under freezing.

ran to drop off rent then back home.
drove to the Y.
RAN FIVE MILES!
OMFG!
I can't believe I did it.
I almost gave up at 2 miles.

Excellent joke

A mathematician, a physicist, and a biologist see two people walk into an empty building. A while later they see three people walk back out. The biologist says "they must have multiplied". The physicist says "no, our initial count was likely off". The mathematician nods sagely and says "actually, if one more person walks into the building then it will be empty again".

Exercise

Did 50 pushups this morning.

Went to the Y, had too much water, ran 3.15 miles in 35 minutes. Had to alternate between running and trotting to not get stomach cramps. Bleh.

Will set up for sit ups in a few.

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.
- Michel de Montaigne

My thinking expression.

My thinking expression.

You can't have much more fun than that.

You can't have much more fun than that.

Parking lot love

Parking lot love

DSC00341

My brain feels like this vibrating, spinning, blinking thing right now. I think I just heard it scream.

Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.
- Marilyn Manson

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
- Ernest Hemingway

And I ruuuuun.

OK, I am not nearly as out of shape as I thought. I ran 3.2 miles - a fricken 5k tonight! AND SURVIVED. Sure I didn't do it real fast - I averaged a little under 5 miles an hour for about 40 minutes. I can't be sure about the exact numbers because 1.6 miles in some chick dropped a basketball that jammed under the back of the treadmill. I freaked out for a second thinking it was about to explode, not knowing that she had done that behind me. Huzzah!

Reel Big Fish - Whatever their new album is called.

So, saw the new RBF album when I was shopping down in Quincy - couldn't pass it up at $10. Should've passed it up at $10. Their absolute best bang for the buck is still their double live CD. This one is just a batch of uninspired covers. Which is odd because they do some of the most inspired covers I've ever heard. Sadness..

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Raising Sand

I really like this album, but I'm conflicted on it all being covers. I have a special love for covers, but should they win a Grammy for album of the year?

Such a haunted and ethereal album for most of the tracks. It's like what would waft into the room from the other plane during a seance. The upbeat tracks are splendid.

There's just something that grabs me about the line "Please read the letter that I wrote".

Comic media and wasting time on Netflix

So I've started making my way through The Tick live action series streaming on Netflix. I'll have to pace myself since there are only nine episodes.. It was the series that had to be made, if only because it would be criminal for Patrick Warburton to die without being the character he was born to play. The show isn't anything that special - I don't picture a Flaming Carrot or Mystery Men TV show being very distinguishable from this. However, Bat Manuel was ticking off some nerd-sense as I was watching. Turns out the same actor is the mayor in the 180 degrees different Dark Knight that you may have heard of. I can't imagine the filming of that movie going by without somebody asking him to do his Bat Manuel role. I would kill for the outtakes from that.

Did you know?

Quincy, IL has more comic shops than book stores.

To do tonight.

Work out.
Laundry.
Respond to people on Facebook.
Output.
Have Netflix streaming horrible movies the whole time.

Brainstorming a song - work in progress.

Don Draper, I Love You

(backup singers repeating title of song to counterpoint lyrics through)
Don Draper, Don Draper, you beautiful man.
Smoke like a chimney, you sexist dog.
It’s perfectly normal to live in that fog!
Life in the 60s so carefree and fun!
Madison Avenue is the ride that you’re on!
“Will I sleep with a jew?” is the question for you.
Yeah, nail that groovy hipster!
Betty needs some lovin’ too.
(I don’t want to give you a bad rap, but I hope alcohol is a cure for the clap.)
Is there space in your world for me?
Would you pay me off to flee?
JFK, Nixon? Given my druthers I’d pick Tricky Dick over all the others.

The start of a song for the future - futurist folk music.

Everything is Super Green

Science solved our problems.

Hunger is no more.

The net has caught our minds.

So why are we so bored?

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.
- Hesketh Pearson

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I love the Wikipedia 'Random article' button.

Because I never would have looked this up.

Vanity post.

So the Y was just crazy last night and I wasn't going to be able to get my preferred elliptical in any reasonable amount of time. So, against my own judgement I hit up one of the treadmills. It may not sound like much, but I was able to run 2 miles again. There must be something different between the Oak Park and Indianapolis machines - whenever I checked my heart rate in Oak Park I didn't hit more than 155 or so. Down in Indy it was telling me I was up at 180. BIG DIFFERENCE!

Also, I think I'm successfully making a habit of 30 pushups, 50 situps every morning and evening. There's something that feels fundamentally fulfilling about being able to do that consistently. Ideally I'll be pushing those numbers up over time.

Faith No More - NESTLES

Creative pustule nearing bursting stage.

Given more time to myself, I'm more and more gravitating towards my typewriter and seeing what I can bang out there. Surely I can be creative more than 140 characters at a time.

I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
- Jack Handey

In a mad world only the mad are sane.
- Akira Kurosawa

If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.
- Emerson Pugh

This has been a preparedness drill.

I didn't watch the game last night. I was on the road for the first half, and I just wanted to redo that but with more running drivers off the road for the second half. However, I flipped over just in time for The Office opening after the post-game.

That 2 or 3 minutes was some of the best time I've ever had watching TV. I can only imagine how much better it would have been if I had just had an hours long drinking session during the game.

For your own sake, please consult hulu.com and watch the opening.

Then proceed to not talk to me about the rest of the episode, because I went to bed.

Is there something going on this Sunday?

I'm looking forward to the roads being wide open when driving back from Indy Sunday. I wish I could get more excited about football..

WGN Radio offers Blago afternoon slot.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/01/26/chicago-radio-station-offers-blagojevich-a-show-of-his-own/

I've heard Blago plenty of times on Sports Central, and he's just not that great unless he's talking about himself.

It's fun to stay at the..

Finally started a structured exercise program at the Y. I'm scheduled to be in 3 times a week and they've got me set up in the tracking software that integrates with the machines. In terms of difficulty of the assigned workouts to start things, they're a bit under my level. The important part is just getting in there 3 times a week and making a habit of it.

It'll be a month until they start adding anything but cardio to the workout assignments, but hopefully I can break my 40 pushup barrier before then. I've hit 42, but I have to do them fast and they kill me. We'll see how it goes with me doing them mornings and evenings.

I think it's time to get back up to my 100 situp benchmark again. Not that I'm having back problems anymore, but it couldn't hurt.

Also, what if I need to move? I need all the muscle I can get for all this crap.

Blah Blah Blago

What exactly does Blagojevich hope will come of his nonsense media circus? Is he thinking that there will be some groundswell uprising of the people in this country that will lynch those impeaching him? There's no possible realistic outcome from all of these appearances in lieu of actually showing up at his impeachment.

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.
- Larry Hardiman

I'm thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level.
- Dana Carvey

Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.
- P. J. O'Rourke

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
- Dr. Seuss

Ultimate X-Men Vol 19:Apocalypse

Dear god this is horrid. I think I'm officially buying no more Ultimate X-Men. I love Kirkman's other stuff, but there's just too many characters, not enough interesting things happening, and I kind of hate everybody.

Testing data flow. Electrons launching. All systems go.

A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
- Bob Edwards

Full dance card

Tutoring, date night, computer house calls, trainer meetings. I still feel like I'm not doing very much, though. Back to school?

The Walking Dead Vol 9 - Here We Remain

Back to the slow burn. This book is mostly an endcap to the first 8 volumes with Rick bonding with his son and dealing with phone conversations with his dead wife. Some characters are regathered, then set in motion for what I assume is the next super arc. If you read this series, you're safe waiting on buying this until Vol 10 comes out and doing it altogether.

The post to keep folks away.

So I pushed my high score up to 42 pushups. Damn if it doesn't get hard past 30. Most of the time I just stop at 30 so I don't cry afterwards for being a little girly man.

I flipped on the new Xbox when I got home from work and was treated to having footage of all the high points of the inauguration instantly available. Even the 18 minute rock star speech. I don't know who can bitch about Obama after the direction he laid out there.

I'm really falling in love with the Xbox Live Arcade. Physical media is so passe! My ideal is becoming reality - just laying there on the couch and not having to fiddle with discs if I want to become a gaming grazer. I can move from area to area - a little puzzle here, a little shooter here, some freakin Uno, jump over to Netflix to browse through my queue and watch a few minutes of something. If only I could teach my cat that it's ok to actually lay on me while I'm on the couch. He will learn.

Nothing insightful.

I don't have anything insightful to say about tomorrow. I just know that there's a magical feeling in the air with the changing of the guard. I don't care if Obama fucks up. At least he'll be somebody with a rational stated position on whatever happens and you know he's actually *thinking* about it.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
- Ernest Rutherford

New Year's Resolution Updates

Still having trouble breaking through on the pushups. Am staying in the 30-40 range. Need to start doing it spread around the day.

No McDonalds is holding steady. I got it once on the weekend and it was a nice breakfast treat. I may have lost a few pounds from this already.

I've got some tab printouts for the harmonica from harptabs.com. I also picked up an inexpensive 10 hole blues harmonica. I've almost got When The Saints Go Marching in down, but I feel guilty practicing at home. It seems that the harmonica is a natural enemy of felines.

No progress on other resolutions aside from limiting video games well. The temptation is there, but my quotas are sticking.

Today's Twitter output so far.

It solves everything if I crosspost, right?

negman Fun fact: Blankets are too complicated. about 1 hour ago from web

negman Fun fact:Early model Tandy computers from Radio Shack had edible CPUs. In fact, they are still edible to this day. about 1 hour ago from web

negman Funfact:If moving your house, put the desired destination as the return address, drop in mail, and it will be returned for insuff postage. about 2 hours ago from web

negman Fun fact:Used motor oil is an excellent fertilizer. about 2 hours ago from web

negman Fun fact:They Might Be Giants are not, in fact, giants. about 2 hours ago from web

negman We have declared war on Russia. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles were launched 15 minutes ago. about 3 hours ago from web

negman Best winter storm of the year. Little enough that I could pull out no problem. Enough that it plugged the asshole lane. about 3 hours ago from web

Bloggity blog blog

So, somehow I've gone from nothing to writing this blog, a diablog with my wife, a blog that tracks my comic pull lists, and a twitter feed. As far as I can tell, the only person reading this one is my brother, my wife reads the second, nobody has a reason to look at the third, and nobody follows me on twitter. Is this unhealthy or should I continue enjoying leaving my little trail of breadcrumbs?

Discuss amongst myself.

It's raining man OR The man who fell to earth.

So I managed to make it to the top of Agency Tower in Crackdown last night, which was exciting. The problem was that, in trying to figure out the best jumping off point for the dive into the bay, I slipped and took the very long fall to my untimely doom. Sadness! Perhaps I will try again tonight. How many random people can I kill dropping grenades from a mile high?

bands to check

(15:07:12) flansclone: Cloud Cult - The Meaning of 8 is a pretty solid album
(15:08:54) flansclone: Deer Tick - War Elephant is something I mean to listen to more, caught me on the first few playthroughs.
(15:09:03) flansclone: Bishop Allen is a great band if you've never listened to them.

Crackdown mini-review.

It's like Pac-Man with guns, cars, and you can kick the ghosts off buildings.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
- Don Marquis

New Years Resolutions

No more McDonalds breakfast on weekdays.
Be able to do 100 pushups - can do 40 now.
Learn to play 5 songs on the harmonica.
Write a short story.
Paint a minature.
Get insurance licensing.
Gaming on weekends plus 1 weeknight unless travelling on weekend. Then 2 weeknights.
Learn to make chili.
Be less anti-social at work.

Enforced obsolescence.

Due to assorted government programs the government has forced a stimulus plan by obsoleting analog TVs with no input connections, used baby clothes, and domestically produced small run toys. The TVs will be useless when the analog signals stop - forcing them to be replaced. The used baby clothes will all be thrown away because stores can't afford lead testing on them with new laws - forcing parents to buy new clothes. The domestic toys can't afford to be produced because they would need to have each product tested for contaminants at prices that would unrealistically explode the bottom line. Go government!

Xbox Live Arcade - Castle Crashers

I feel that old familiar pain. The ache in my wrists from playing a button masher for too long. When I beat the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4 player brawler solo I couldn't bend my wrists for almost a day. Turns out just an hour of Castle Crashers now will do that to me. Not sure what happened that we can't play online, but it's still pretty fun local with two players. Little cartoony knights killing ridiculous things with magic powers and swords? Sounds like a win to me. If arcades were still relevant, this game would have an extremely prominent position in one. If only..

Kittensense tingling!

It turns out that I have a part of my brain now dedicated entirely to tracking cat location, whether they're doing something bad, if they have food, and if they're trapped in a room. When you remove the cats from the vicinity that part of my brain starts sending out missing cat alerts constantly. I get a sense of panic when one doesn't come to bother me for too long. I wake up in the middle of the night realizing that I haven't been walked on or meowed at. I experience panic if I'm in the kitchen and I don't have an escort in the pantry making sure I remember where the canned food is kept. I really hope this goes away quickly, because the first night of it has left me a wreck.

For me to check out at home

http://www.dealhack.com/archives/2009/01/50_bestselling_2008_mp3_albums.html

Sooo.. I guess I like Jazz.

Good John Coltrane mp3s available cheap from Amazon today. My Favorite Things EP.