thoughts to blog

So back on January 1st, I bought a new TV. A 37” LCD to be exact.

I <3 it.

Yes, I am prepared to take all of the shit that will be given to me from these pictures, but when a man purchases an expensive, large TV… he just goes insane.

Well I have one annoyance with the TV so far. When I have the OSD setting to normal… there was a static label of what channel I was on all the time. This sucks for games. I don’t need to see “GAME (AV1)” in the night sky while playing Oblivion. If I changed the setting to Minimal, the TV displays NOTHING on the screen. AT ALL. No volume levels; nothing.

Luckily, since we live in an age of technology where TVs are getting complex… I downloaded a nice little firmware upgrade from the product site today… plopped it on my usb drive… put it in my TV. Voila! Instant upgrade so that the static channel label isn’t there anymore!

Love it.

Seriously… what the heck is up with the marketing crew at Nintendo.

They had a super cool code name (Revolution) for their nex-gen console…

and now…

it’s name is…

Wii

…

…

…

Yeah, I don’t know. The only funny thing involving “Weeee” is this video:

As I was sitting in traffic the other day, I was listening to some songs and was curious as to what the artist was really saying… let’s just say that the enunciation was less than par.

So I got home… typed a small lyric I did remember into google… the song came up as expected.

Here’s what I don’t get. Why do lyric sites compete to be the better lyric site? When lyric sites add more lyrics, all they are doing is making google a better lyric search site. Especially when the permalinks and content are easily indexed.

Granted it’s a symbiotic relationship… if the lyric site didn’t have lyrics, then google wouldn’t index it…

But then I couldn’t find the song/lyric I want…

Does this mean that I can deduce that google is thus evil? I mean… it’s essentially taking the competition out of competing lyric sites. Which could end up meaning that google will have to start storing lyrics. This could then be applied to all kinds of other content… and thus, google stores everything, is everything, including evil.

:: shrugs ::

As you may have read, earlier this month… I lost my iPod Shuffle.

It was a sad day…

Fast Forward to today. I just placed an overnight order for:

4GB iPod Nano (White) - $227.94

Griffin iTrip Nano FM Transmitter - $34.98

iPod Radio Remote - $47.49

A total savings (including overnight) of $30.00 over Best Buy.

Beautiful.

I know they will come out with 6GB and 8GB Nano’s this year, but it’s just like any other technology… it’ll get replaced once again… and now that it’s nice out and I’m riding my bike, I need something.

Second… the Griffin iTrip is SWEET! It integrates with the “FM” tuning functionality and screen of the iPod. Complete integration is KEY.

Third… the FM remote is pimp for while I’m at work or riding… listening to some B96 or something… “Lay low, avoid the radar and no matter what happens, when they come for the car… save the radio!”

I’m excited!

so the weekend was pretty damn good… here are some highlights.

Started it off with a few drinks in Burnsville…then to the High Timber Lounge (read: super (not)classy hotel lounge with Karaoke a few blocks from my house) for some entertainment.

Saturday morning I woke up at the brisk time of 7:30AM to meet up with Phyliss for some volunteer work…

Team Rectilinear was formed:

It was an awesome time… met some super cool people!

Saturday night was geared up for some serious action when I got an invite from Katie and Vish about an “Iowa Party”, to celebrate all things Iowa… We were encouraged to sport our school colors.

Here’s (left to right) Me… Becky… Vish

And just so people aren’t laughing too hard… here is what I had to deal with that night ;) Man… it was SOO TOUGH! (/sarcasm)

Of course Sunday was a day of rest… but I ended up watching Wolf Creek and building a pallet with Greg. Good times.

Hopefully the week goes by quickly and I’ll have more time to play.

Based on true events, Wolf Creek brings terror that matches the great Texas Chainsaw Massacre in both scenery and suspense.

As in any typical slasher, the story starts off with young women and macho men, in the outback of Australia at a crater site called Wolf Creek Crater (which is actually a real place).. I won’t get into plot details as I don’t want to spoil… but let’s just say that it gives you an interesting, yet confusing look into what is about to happen. You’ll easily be confused by the long plot setup… but don’t worry, the frightening, “Do I need to change my pants?” moments are about to follow.

With the super slow start… you have no clue what the rest of the movie is going to be like. With most of these suspensful, killer on the loose movies, the killer looks like some freakish… overgrown ogre, but not in this case.

The plot takes a sudden turn and BAM; you’re slammed right into the horror.

I’ve seen a lot of scary movies… and I have jumped a few times, but this movie had me questioning if there really was someone behind me in my actual apartment.

Overall, I would classify this movie along side of Texas Chainsaw Massacre… but the real mix of the movie is more like Texas Chainsaw Massacre + Signs (you’ll know why when you watch it) + Crocodile Dundee. Since this movie has quite a few scary scenes which make up the entire effect of the movie, I’d reccomend renting the DVD (or borrowing it from me)… it might loose all of it’s glory the 3rd or 4th time through.

Definitely a must see for any slasher fan.

It looks like JaG has a case of the emo.

She’s wonderful. Hopefully someday I will get to meet her!

Everyone: stop by her blog and leave her some love.

and by sick, I mean fucking awesome.

So there’s a banned Xbox 360 Commercial that has been floating around…

Well… it looks like a flashmob at the University of Florida decided to recreate it. Fucking SICK!

love it.

You know, driving for 6 hours gives you a ton of time to think about things…

life, people, friends, family, my career, money, the world, females

and who would win between a pirate and a ninja.

about life: Things are going well… could be better in various areas. I’m still
very young and should be living it up as much as I can. Greg and I will be skydiving soon… June or July.

about people: The people in Burlington (aside from family and a few select individuals) suck.

about friends: My dumbass friend Mike is looking to get himself into trouble… of course
he won’t listen to me… I saw a few other people I haven’t seen for a while, that was nice.

about family: It was really nice to see the family and my pups. My aunt has a really nice
bakery shop that’s doing very well… Things are trucking along like normal for everyone. Which
is kind of weird, but at the same time, expected.

about my career: Things are still going very well… I’m putting in 50 hour weeks now, but
it’ll pay off. I really want to push harder to get myself more noticed and to work on some
sweet “after-school” projects, but there needs to be more time in the day for that.

about money: It’s always about money. There’s never enough it seems. Taxes suck. Credit Cards suck.

about the world: Gas prices suck, good thing I get money from work for gas. Hopefully
the whole Iran thing gets resolved peacefully. I want to see more of the world, desparately.

about females: Up until I came home on Monday, I thought things were going well with Amy, but
apparently not. I got the boot on Monday. Oh well… there are plenty more for the picking. It’s weird
being in the dating game… typically I start dating a girl and it quickly progresses into an
exclusive relationship, I’ve never done the dating thing… until this last February. Even then I
constantly felt the need to try to be exclusive or wondered if what I was doing was wrong. :: shrugs ::
With the great girls that I’ve dated in the last few months, I’m confident that there are more like
them out there and that I can snatch them up!

who would win between a pirate and a ninja: ninja. easy.

So it looks like my run on 25peeps.com was stopped after 6 days… not bad at all.

You can see me, currently ranked 19th in the Hall of Fame.

19th

571,203

online for 6 days.
156 clicks, 39 referals.

Thanks to everyone who clicked and sent the referral link! I did NOT expect to make it thus far!

Now back to my non-ego-filled reality; who am I kidding? heh

So I made it back from Iowa… dirty SOUTH! I’m alive and well.

Some highlights:

• In Illinois, the bars don’t close till 4am… Guess where Jake was on Friday and Saturday night?


• Just like every other time, I see a few people I want to see and I see a whole bunch of people that I don’t.


• I brought my Haro BMX bike back up with me! w00t!


• Grilled food… yes, corn and pork were both included.


• I got to see my pups.

Other than that, just the average Iowa trip…

It’s good to be back…

I’ll be heading all the way home to Burlington, IA tomorrow through Monday.

I’ll try to put a post up while I’m down there, in between me driving over all of the idiots I don’t like and spending time with my family.

Have a great weekend!

So I was reading Joystiq today (this article) about Silent Hill (The Movie). They were discussing the isnpiration for the movie coming from a very creep town.

Centralia, Pennsylvania (Aerial Photos)

“In 1981, over 1000 people lived in the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. But twenty years earlier, a poorly contained trash fire had set an underground coal vein alight. The mines and subterranean shafts continued to burn, making the area a danger zone, so an evacuation of the residents of Centralia began.

It never finished, however. 11 stalwart Centralians remain, even though all the town’s buildings have been condemned and the borough’s zip code has been revoked.

You can read a brief piece on Centralia, which screenwriter Roger Avary discovered while conducting research for the Silent Hill screenplay, here. In a way, the film version of the village of Silent Hill is inspired by the real-life Pennsylvanian burg.” - IGN Film Force

Now imagine this… driving down this road:

and seeing something super creepy like this:

photos courtesy of offroaders.com

Most of you know that I’m a huge supporter of subversion. Well, at least those who read the geektacular articles…

Here comes another. This article will focus on one aspect of subversion that will help when using more than one project / repository that makes up your project.

The easy example, you have a Typo blog with the Brighthouse theme and when you want to update using subversion (svn update), you want them both to be updated.

The concept is simple, use svn:externals. It’s a property for subversion that allows you to point sections of your svn managed directory to other repository locations. The only caveat about doing things this way is that commits have to be done separately still. This will only work for checkouts and updates.

So how do you do it? Edit the svn:externals property for the directory to point to the location.

Here’s the application in our example.

[.]$svn checkout svn://typosphere.org/typo/trunk typoroot

[.]$cd typoroot

[typoroot]$cd themes

[typoroot	hemes]$svn propedit svn:externals .
brighthouse http://www.height1percent.com/svn/brighthouse/brighthouse

[typoroot	hemes]$cd ..

[typoroot]$svn update

This will cause typo AND brighthouse to update itself.

There we go, now subversion is behaving properly… and you are now that much more lazy!

Fellow blog readers… it seems as though it’s my time to be on the top.

What I need you guys to do is click the link below to support my blog:

http://www.25peeps.com/r/366

Cut and paste this and send it to all of your friends… post it on your blogs… on your myspacees.

I’ve been placed into the top 25 for the day and I want to stay there! :)

So when I was little… I was always outside. Either playing with Hot Wheels, GI Joes, Micro Machines, or biking around trying to find the latest spot to build a fort… and when you spend that much time in the dirt, you often find creatures.

Sure I found possums, cicada killers, garden spiders…

but the other day, during a hike… I remembered a giant green caterpillar (which when I was describing it, ended up being a foot… rather than it’s real size of 4” - 6”) that I found in my front yard. I took it to a field office for one of Iowa’s universities and it was identified.

I present… the Tomato Hornworm

Obviously… when a young kid stumbles across one of these monsters, there’s nothing that will stop the kid from playing with it or wanting to know what it is.

These things are pretty huge. It was something that I’ll never forget running into as a child.

I love Fox Trot

today strip:

reminds me of my brother and me.

So it’s Friday… and if it weren’t for the long hours spent driving and working overtime for the client… it would be pretty damn good.

What is everyone doing this weekend? Anything exciting?

I’ll probably be feeding my normal addictions… Oblivion, writing code, watching movies, eating, sleeping, and if I’m super lucky… seeing Amy.

You know… I broke my fast food burger joint thing I had going on (for like 2 weeks :: blushes ::)… and made the mistake of going to McDonald’s. bleh.

But what was the importance of said lunch trip… it got me thinking about fast service places like that. Not just fast food, but other places where you order something and a clerk retrieves it.

Where’s the technology there? They have super fast POS systems and reasonable ordering system… but there are a few visible problems.

• Where are the LCD touch screens for self ordering? Why does a human still have to stand there and take orders?


• Where are the LCD screens showing you what’s available? To me it makes more sense to have a controlled system like that instead of some human making the mistake of putting a 9 instead of a 6 for the Premium Cicken Value meal on those slide boards (replaceable letters).


• Why can’t there be a visible board of orders coming in and out to see where you are in line? Show me that there are 4 or 5 orders and mine is being taken care of quickly…

Some places are starting to get it though… take Azia and Solera (and a few more) local Minneapolis restaraunts use Open Table for reservations online. It’s pretty sweet. Works like a charm.

It’s still rare to see self checkout services at department and grocery stores here in the midwest.

Come on.

Back to the weekend… Will this day ever end? I’ve been spinning in code for 10 hours a day this week… ohh the agony! :)

While chatting away on Windows Live! Messenger today… I see this.

Thanks!

BOOO!

My iPod Shuffle has gone missing… The period of time and locality of where I lost it is small enough for me to retrace every possible place it could be… and it’s not there.

This sucks… Now what am I going to do? Stick with an iPod Shuffle again? Maybe a new Nano… Maybe even a different platform?

So at 5:04:03am on February 1st, 3000 it will be 05:04:03 02/01/00

and at

01:03:05am on June 9th, 2011 it will be 01:03:05 07/09/11

or if you like prime numbers which also happen to be Mersenne primes

02:03:05am on June 13th, 2017 it will be 02:03:05 07/13/17

ooooHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhh

Weren’t you all just begging to know what make’s Jake smile when preparing a meal… or quite possibly, were you just curious as to what Jake’s diet is all about?

Maybe Jake is hungry and when he’s hungry, he talks in the 3rd person.

No but seriously, if there’s nothing else to blog about on a Monday morning, why not food?

Quite simply, here are some dos and don’ts when it comes to feeding me.

1. Don’t, under ANY circumstance, feed me beans. You won’t appreciate the response just as I don’t appreciate the pasteyness of beans.


2. Do make it spicey.


3. If it comes from Chipotle, I’ll eat it. (Though be mindful of Rule #1)


4. I’ll eat anything that isn’t moving or is in a shape/taste/color of a bean.


5. When preparing a steak, ensure that there is no red/pink in the meat.


6. Incorporate potatos into anything you can.


7. I’m adventurous, so if you wan’t to feed me an eel roll, feel free.


8. I don’t watch what I eat (yeah I know it’s bad), so don’t worry about that.


9. Grilled food better be prepared on a charcoal grill… or a George Forman. Skip the propane.


10. Give me vegetables raw preferrably.


11. I love simple stuff… inquire inside for small quick recipes.


12. A favorite meal: New York Strip (well done, lean cut, 16 o.z.) with a loaded baked potato, small ceasar salad, and some very good bread.


13. If it’s a soup, make the soup really good.. I like clam chowder, vegetable, fajita soup, potato, or tomato.


14. Favorite desert: Pretzel cream cheese strawberry dessert thingy.


15. Last One: Don’t be affraid to cook for me, you will be handsomely rewarded.

See, that wasn’t so bad was it? :) Off to lunch…