New Cove on July 7th!

My friend David and I finally signed the papers yesterday to move out of on-campus housing and into the Quarry Apartments. A couple of friends of ours hosted poker for us in their apartment at the Quarry, and I initially thought they were paying quite a lot to live there. But when I found out that they were paying LESS per month than I was with on-campus housing, I began pondering the possibilities. We took a tour of the place yesterday, first looking at the Sapphire configuration and then the Topaz configuration. We liked both of them, but the Sapphire configuration felt a bit bigger and only cost about $40 more, and we found out later that it came with a free garage if we decided to get the Sapphire on the first floor, so the deal was pretty much sealed right there once we heard that :P Also, the list of perks is absolutely huge too. I set up the gas and electric stuff today, but I'm still debating between getting either SBC DSL or Road Runner. I think SBC will be cheaper since they're offering it for $14.95/month if you sign a year contract, but we probably need to get local phone service with them too. Anyone have experience with both?

In poker news, when you get a fortune in your fortune cookie at lunch that looks like this, you know that the poker cards will be falling your way :P Well, the fortune proved to be true again as I managed to claw my way into the winner's circle last night in poker. Guess I should finally go get Guild Wars now since I've won enough to cover the costs :P

Google Earth

At this rate, AAA will go bankrupt from the lack of map sales.

Click here to see the awesomeness!

2.5 Billion Pixel Picture

Check it out here! There is one glitch in this pic, so see if you can find it ;)

Progress Report

So far so good with my biking plan. For the first week I managed to rack up 73.8 miles of trekking, which is way more than I expected, but hey, I like getting off to good starts :) I think I'll keep it at 50 for now since the weather had been pretty sunny for the past week, and I was able to get out whenever I wanted to get the miles in. In case you're wondering, I bought an odometer for my bike to measure the miles and have a sense of how fast I'm going. So far I've been averaging around 14 or so miles per hour on the trails. As for my weight, I weighted myself at a gym and currently I'm at 183 or so, down from my initial weight of 187, and I can sort of see a difference as the fat around my stomach is slowly disappearing as well. Unfortunately, I treated myself to 5 Arby's Melts in one sitting at lunch :( But then again, I didn't eat dinner today, so hopefully it'll all balance out :P

Cute Comic of the Day

Mama duck figures out a way to dry off her ducklings after a long swim.

Being a male geek may not be so bad after all....

As this report points out here.

Miscellaneous videos

Check out the video (9.4 megs) of this nifty little RC toy. Now I want to get one :P

Crazy Asians...this video is so stupid it's funny :D

111!!!!EnohpAnanaB o_O

Just when you thought you couldn't get enough bananaphone, right click and save here for Bananaphone backwards! o_O

All in once again, but just came up short.

This past night was poker night once again, except this time some of my friends are working out at Dayton, so several of my friends and I drove out there to play. To make a long story short (because I need to get my Zzzz's in -.-), I came in 2nd place this time, but it was a crazy crazy game, so I feel pretty fortunate to make my money back :P

Riddle of the Day

If you tie a helium-filled balloon inside your car and then accelerate your car all of a sudden, which way will the balloon lean? Post your answers in the comments :) I'll post the answer tomorrow if enough people inquire :P

UPDATE

The balloon will lean foward in the direction you are driving when you accelerate. The reason for this has to do with the difference in density between helium and the surrounding air in the car. To imagine this a little better, imagine you have a sealed cube half filled with liquid and the other half is just air. If you sit that cube in the car and then accelerate the car, the liquid will slosh backwards while the air will go foward. For a more scientific explanation, go here.

Deal of the Day

Go to your nearby Chipotle and if you buy a burrito, save the receipt for a free burrito up till this Sunday!

Early morning call...

For whatever reason, I managed to wake up first at 5:31 am this morning, and then I finally got out of bed at 5:48 am after laying back and trying to get back to sleep without success. I think I know the reason why, but I'm not gonna bore you guys with the details.

Back in day, Addie came up with her own jogging plan called the "Nifty Fifty" where the plan I think was to be able to jog/run/rollerblade up to 50 miles in a month. I've decided to borrow that name and see if I can do my "Nifty Fifty" every week on my mountain bike. Sitting down at the office all day doesn't do much for the body, so it's time to get fit one mile at a time! There's a nice bike trail right next to campus that's pretty well shaded and lenghty, so I'm going to take advantage of it as much as I can. According to the BMI calculator, at 5 foot 11 inches and 187 pounds, I'm considered overweight >.< Target Weight: 175 pounds. Hopefully the occasional visit to the driving range will help too :P

Freakin Brothers...

All I have to say is o_O

Click here to see an interesting way of playing piano...

Duck Sightseeing

Since it was a nice day outside and I wanted to clear my head a bit, I went out for a walk with my digital camera and caught some pics of the ducks near Crystal Lake. I also caught what I think is a video of ducks mating, but it's pretty violent o_O.

Hey! Why're you sniffing my tail feathers?!?
Mama duck leading her ducklings on the dangers of jumping from high ground.
2 Ducks cooling off with some refreshing lake water
Penguin Mama Duck looks after her ducklings
Video: Male Ducks gone wild! (9.8 meg)
Video: Mama Duck and her Ducklings (5.2 megs)

Only in Japan....

would you ever find Gel.TV. But I got a good laugh out of it, and you probably will too :P

PSA of the day

It's Father's Day today, so don't forget to give your dad a call and tell them how important they are ^_^

Batman Begins....and rocks the house!

I went to see Batman Begins on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, and I must say it's definately the best Batman movie to date. While the last two Batman films have been sort of cartoony and have laughable villians, Batman Begins brings the audience to a more gritty and darker time, and the way the movie unveils the steady transformation of Bruce Wayne into the Dark Knight is simply brilliant. There was very little use of CG in this movie, which brings out sort of a mysteriousness in watching Batman take down the villians. I only have 2 complains about the movie. The first complaint I have is that the fight sequences were filmed a bit too closely, as in the camera was so close to the action it's difficult to follow what's going on. The second complaint was Kate Holmes' character. She really don't bring that much overall to the movie except maybe to be Bruce Wayne's companion. But besides that, the movie is well acted and made, and Christian Bale pulls off the caped crusader very well. I saw it in a PACKED house on Friday night, and the entire crowd was into the movie the entire time. And if you need one more reason to see it, I have two words: the tumbler. :)

Pic of the Day: Awwwwwwwweeeeeee! :) (You may need to copy/paste the URL)

Triumph strikes once again!

When you combine Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and fans lining up outside the Michael Jackson trial, poop is guarenteed to hit the fan.

The final product looks like what!?!?!

Here's a pretty funny but true comic showing the development of a product.

All in for teh win!

After some mediocre showings the past several weeks in poker, I finally break through once again to the winner's circle :) Actually, I didn't even know that there was going to be a poker night this Thursday, but I figured hey, might as well go in and have some fun. I played pretty conservatively in the beginning (actually, most of my hands sucked pretty hard), and there was one guy named Brian who began chopping people out of the game with his various "lucky" hands.

Eventually, the group of 9 phased down to 4, with me being the low stack with around $600 or so, and Brian was way ahead of the group with a huge chip lead. In the 1st or 2nd played with the group of 4, I get a pocket pair of 5s. Usually, a low pocket pair wouldn't do too much in a huge group, but with a low number of people, it can be a decent hand to play. The blinds were already up pretty high at $50/$100, so I pushed all my chips in hoping that no one else had a pocket pair or decent hand. Two drop out, and it was left to Brian to decide. After deciding for a while, he finally decides to call my hand. I turn over my pocket 5s, and I was sort of shocked to see that he called with a 3/6 offsuit, which probably worked in my favor since his chances of making a straight are greatly diminished since I had half the 5's in my hand :P The flop, turn, and river cards come out, and my pair of 5's hold up! Hurray for doubling up! A couple of hands later, Brian puts in a significant raise in one of the hands, and I look down to my cards and see pocket aces :) Well, all in I go again, and Brian once again calls. This time his hand is better (Ace/King off-suit), but I'm still ahead, and I ride the aces to teh win once again ^_^ From there I played pretty conservatively and won the few hands I played in, and eventually held off Brian at the end by winning on a flush on the river card :)

I've also discovered how my Razr is able to take some pseudo-decent pictures, so here're some for your enjoyment :P

Dog with a diaper
KFC decides to raise their prices since people think their chicken is irresistible

Now this has sort of an interesting story to it. It was one of those really hot days early last week, and my friends and I were at Penn Station getting some lunch when David points out this interesting person standing outside. Apparently this person was the president of some sort of "happy" society and was handing out smiles.

I just think these mini tents are cute ^_^

This isn't from my camera, but my friend David took this amusing picture :P

Phear teh cuteness!

I think Kabitzin should submit some pics of Sydney here and see how Sydney stacks up with the rest of the pack as kittens battle for the title of cutest kitten!

In other news, I picked up some new golf clubs at Target that were on sale. So far, my new clubs and I have hit it off pretty well during my two trips to the nearby driving range. I had been using one of my friend's set, but the set I have now for some reason react much better to my swing as I've been able to get the ball up in the air on 4 of 5 shots using the irons. The set even came with covers on the woods, and the golf bag has these nifty stand-up feet that come out when you set the bag down at an angle. So look out Tiger Woods, Kungfucius will be on your trail in a few years! :P

Last note: Go see Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Addie and I caught a showing last night and we both agree it's a great popcorn flick with good humor and action!

Lern yor txt lingo hEr!

Although I dun uz txt msgN dat much, Im suR som of U wiL git a kick out of trying various combinations & CN wot U git!

clik me!

Burger Inflation

After buying my brother's birthday present today, I headed to Wendy's to get some dinner. Normally, I order off their 99 cent value menu since I like their 99 cent burgers (and I don't like fries that much anymore), but today when I went to get my usual Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe, I saw that Wendy's has now raised the price of the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger to $1.29! But since I had $4 in Wendy's gift certificates to spend, I figured I might as well take the blow and eat happily rather then sulk about it.

For my brother's birthday, I got him a nice and hefty poker set shown here!

Phear the Alumium Case!
Those are 11.5 g Chips in there.

On a different note, this pizza man should be given a big tip for the trouble he has gone through to deliver pizzas.

Smack talk

My Icelandic friend David showed me a webpage from his friend Ryan, who according to David has put a lot of programming effort into it.

Click me!

You know it's hot

when a can of soda does this inside your car.

Intel Inside an Apple confirmed!

In what could be described as Hell freezing over in the PC world, Apple and Intel have decided to join forces, and next year on June 6, 2006 (666 :P), Apple will begin to ship out computers powered by Intel Pentium chips. Apparently every iteration of OS X had both a PowerPC and x86 version, and Apple was just waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. About a year or so ago, Steve Jobs had promised that the Mac would hit 3 GHz, but apparently due to IBM's lackluster efforts, Macs have still yet to hit 3 GHz. Although I'm not completely up to date on the details, an Intel-powered Mac will apparently be able to run BOTH OS X and Windows, but those looking to run OS X on their current x86 PCs will be disappointed to hear that OS X will only run on an Intel Mac. This transition is projected to last 2 years.

As far as I can see, in the short run, Mac sales might take a big hit since there will be people (like me :P) who will probably wait and see how the first iteration of the Intel Mac will run. Although Apple said they will likely continue support of PowerPC applications, other software writers may drop writing for PowerPC altogether since it would likely save time and money, making a PowerPC Mac even less attractive. The next 2 years will definately be interesting for Apple, but if they manage to offer a Mac Mini with a dual-core Pentium M, 1 gig of ram, and a decent graphics card for $499, I'll be the first to line up and get one :)

Neat Illusions

Check out this website chalk full of visual illusions :)

Duck Tales

My friend David (not you David, my Iceland friend David :P) and I did some bike riding on Saturday along some of the bike routes nearby on campus. We planned to ride out on the path and stop at a nearby shopping plaza to get lunch and see the cool stuff at Microcenter. Well, we got to the plaza and were biking past a K-mart when we heard some car beeping ahead. I looked ahead and saw two cars looking like they were both trying to make the same turn, but neither could agree on when to turn. So I didn't think too much of it, but for some reason I kept watching the cars, and lo and behold, it wasn't road rage causing the cars to beep, but a duck was waddling on the middle of the road! David and I continued to watch the duck as we biked closer and closer to it, and the duck peered at the entrance to K-Mart, and started walking towards it looking like it wanted to go shopping! A k-mart employee then came out and blocked the entrance. The duck stared down the employee, but then turned around. K-mart must have had some big discount on duck food or something.

Behind this van...
The duck appears!!!
The duck walks away a disgrunted shopper

Get your cheap gas searching here!

Check out this site and see if you can find some good prices on gas where you live :)

Intel Inside.....an Apple?!?!

This should be interesting for the PC/Mac industry if this news article turns out to be true. If they have an aluminium Powerbook running on a Pentium M with 6 hour battery life, sign me up!!!!

Now we just need to have your dog get a cell phone....

Have a 3 year old? Now you can equip them with their very own cell phone! However, I do admit that these cell phones look very cute ^_^

If you're looking for something more evil, check out this list of things you would do if you became an evil overlord!

Improved Customer Service?

I know Kabitzin is a fan of Ikea furniture, but I don't know if he would like to get some customer service from Anna, the online bot.