Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Off to Vegas...

I'll be gone for the week, but I'll be sure to bring back a lot of pictures :)

Monday, August 29, 2005

City Placement

From Kabitzin's blog...

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Your personality type is RCOAI
You are reserved, moderately calm, organized, accommodating, and moderately intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Tucson, Dallas/Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Memphis, Milwaukee, Orange County, Los Angeles and these international countries/regions Indonesia, Ukraine, Denmark, Middle East, Czech Republic, India, Caribbean, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Guam, Israel, South Korea, Norway, Mexico

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
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Sunday, August 28, 2005

I need a vacation....

After cooking for half the Icelandic army yesterday and coding for a good majority of the day today, Wednesday can't come soon enough :( David and I had a BBQ so that my and his friends could meet with his parents and many relatives, and I was the designated Grillmaster/Dishmaster for the day. And since I'll be gone on Wednesday, I was working pretty much all day on some code for my research this Sunday. Hopefully my advisor won't nag me too much on it.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

They call me "The Boat"...

Despite not playing that much poker in between poker nights, luck has definitely been looking over my shoulder. Last week I came in 2nd place in the field of 11, and tonight I came in 1st in a field of 10 :) All this without my daily lucky fortune cookie :P In case you're wondering about "the boat" reference, a "boat" is a full house, and I luckily managed to make a boat on the 2nd to last hand I played to beat out a flush.

I will say though that everyone must download Google Talk and use it if you have a Gmail account (and add my gmail address to their list :P). The talk feature is truly excellent, and it even has a ringtone signaling you're calling someone when you initiate a voice call. The interface is clean and minimalistic, and hopefully Google will have it support all other chat protocols out there in the future. Once that happens, Trillian will be heading to the recycling bin.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Ice Climbers

Here's a nifty flash game where you maneuver your mountain climber to his multiple cabins at the top of the mountains.

Click here!

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Burn baby burn...

A bunch of my friend and I went to the Quarry pool yesterday since the sun was out in full force and the Quarry maintenance department had recently replaced the pool filter. Needless to say it was pretty refreshing to be in the pool and act like kids as we pelted these squishy hacky sack water balls at each other :P The sun got me pretty good though as my chest and back were pretty red for the rest of the day, but fortunately my skin complexion is dark enough that it doesn't burn too much, and I can at least start to get rid of the farmers tan that I have with my arms.

One note I want to pass to my friends playing GW: I probably won't be playing the game too much anymore. It just hasn't grabbed my attention as much, and the PS2 and HDTV has basically taken over whatever gaming I want to do now a days. So Velius, if you want to buy my CD key, feel free to send me some mail and we can work something out.

The end of the month is coming up, and on August 31, I'm heading to Vegas baby! I was searching around this morning for Blue Man Group tickets, but $70 seems to be the lowest they go for the nosebleed seats. If anyone knows of a cheaper way of acquiring BMG tickets, I'm open to hearing them. I'll be staying at the Mirage, which provides pretty easy access to the rest of the hotels since it's basically centered along the strip. I might try my hand at a few poker tables there, and one of my friend's dad said I should learn how to play craps since the odds are almost 50/50 versus the house. So far, I promised Tochi a new laptop if I hit it big, so if any of you out there have a reasonable request if I hit the jackpot, I'll be open to hearing it :P WSOP...here I come!

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Men in Coats

Check out their performace here. It's too awesome to describe!

Monday, August 15, 2005

Now showing...

When I went to see Wedding Crashers this past Saturday, I think I said clearly to the ticket attendant that I wanted to see Wedding Crashers, but the ticket I ended up getting was for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I asked the ticket attendant "this is for Wedding Crashers right?", and he nodded his head. Ah well, luckily they don't check tickets at the particular theater doors to the movies. I guess I wasn't in the right mood to see Wedding Crashers since I wasn't laughing as much as all my friends and everyone else around me, but if I were, it's definitely one of the funniest movies to come out in a while.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Dancing Village Elves

Some of you probably have seen this before, but it's too funny to pass up :P guaranteed to make you say WoW!

Right Click and Save! (3.5 megs)

Training for the World's Strongest Man Competiton

The hot summer days here in Ohio must be brutal for the numerous cars around here as they probably have to do double the work to cool down the engine as the AC is running. Anyways, David's car battery decided to die on him yesterday just as he had gotten through the entrance to the Quarry, which is sort of good since he had moved his car out of the way of the busy intersection outside. Unfortunately, we live uphill, so David and I did our best Strongest Man impression as we both pushed the car up steadily to our apartment garage. The steady climb was ok, but having to push the car over speed bumps while going uphill was pretty brutal :( Add the 90 degree heat, and we got ourself a burning intense exercise for both of our leg calf muscles.

Today, while David and I were with our friend Kevin at Barnes and Noble, Kevin decided to buy me the first book of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I've already heard Kevin and David discuss the various aspects of the book, and Kevin thinks that the Wheel of Time series rules all and wants to spread the word, so now I'll have to start my trek in the Wheel of Time series.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

The ever increasing cost of living...

After holding out for a while, I finally took my mini-van to the gas station today...and rang up a $43 gas purchase @ $2.23/gallon :( The gas prices here in Columbus have so much variation, with the highest I've seen at $2.45 for regular, yet it seems like people are just willing to bite the bullet and just pay for it. It's just amazes me at all the stuff we pay for now a days. Cable, cell phone, various bills, gas...the list continues :(

In more cost effective news, David had a friend who gave us a dining room table for free, so our apartment now has all the basic furnishings!

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

It's all about the money...

Last Friday I watched on TV as Baidu.com went IPO, and it pulled a Google as it jumped from around $20 up into the stratosphere at $100 or so. But as you can see here, the hype doesn't last forever as Baidu's stock price has gone down steadily the past 2 days. Although I had recommended Google for my mom to buy despite it's expensive starting price since we all know Google is awesome, I don't know Baidu will undergo the same sort of jump that Google underwent despite the huge first day jump. Ah well, that's the crazy stock market for ya. In case you're wondering what stocks I own, I have some stock both in QQQQ and Intel. I'm in the red a bit with QQQQ since it was bought pretty early while the stock market began its downfall back in 2002 or so, but Intel has been pretty good to me so far.

Meanwhile, flash to the present, and David and I find ourselves with a $100 electric bill :( Looks like we're gonna have to turn down the A/C to conserve some power.

In some better news, Seagate send a refurbished hard drive to me today, so I finally was able to get my desktop back up and running. Although I'm happy to have it back up running, I'll miss the silence I enjoyed just from using my laptop.

Monday, August 8, 2005

iDog

Here's one of the niftier accessories I've seen for the iPod: the iDog. Cute like the Aibo at 1% of the cost and with the ability to confuse other dogs, how can you go wrong? :)

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Gun Vs Sword

Fight! (10 meg video) There're some interesting slow motion clips of the bullets getting cut in half by the sword half-way through the video.

Tuesday, August 2, 2005

10th Planet discovered?

Check out the news here where some scientists debate whether UB313 will be considered a planet.

ZOMG...Apple introduces a 2 button mouse!

After living in the computer stone age with their single button mice, Apple finally introduces a mouse which not only has two buttons (albeit hidden to make it look like their one button mouse) but other interesting features and dohickies.

Introducing the Mighty Mouse!