Most of the spam e-mail I get is a bunch of gibberish and is either plugging cheap “enhancement” drugs or penny stock recommendations. But once in a while, I get one that has a cool subject line and has an entertaining body that’s worth spending the time reading. So I wanted to share these semi-artistic masterpieces with the world.
The first one in a series of many yet to come:
(more…)
Yesterday I bought a mispurchased camcorder — a Sony DCR-TRV280 — from someone for only $100 (was originally bought for $256) and today I got two Digital 8 tapes at the campus bookstore. ($6.19 each? Damn, tape is expensive!) I promised the guy who sold me the video camera that I would submit a movie to the next Robotmedia showing; one of the themes going to be “imaginary friends” and I already have a few ideas in mind.
I might start doing a little bit of videoblogging like walking around the city with a camera or making short films and use YouTube to host the videos. The only problem right now is that I have finals to study for and I don’t want to be too distracted by messing around with my new hardware. Also, I’ll have to figure the subtleties of where is it okay to film and where is it not. Anyway, this gives me another reason to upgrade my RAM to 1GB or higher.
The main reason I never want to join a housing association and/or a planned community is that the committee imposes rules on you when you move into the neighborhood and is strict in enforcing them. I remember this one episode of the “X-Files” where Mulder and Scully have live in a gated community to investigate a case. Mulder rebels against conformity by pouring orange juice on an askew mailbox and practicing his jump shot at night on a basketball hoop out in the street. I don’t think I saw the end of that one but I still remember him sitting in a lawn chair on the front porch, watching his mailbox.
Anyway, on to the news story. A woman in southwestern Colorado is being fined $25 a day for not taking down a Christmas wreath in the shape of a piece sign. Earlier this year, there were stories about people in other communities being asked to remove American flags and “Support Our Troops” signs from their lawns. Although the homeowners are bound by the terms of the contracts they signed, the exercise of those rules so as to not offend anyone seems absurd and overly politically correct to the common person.
Also, I would consider the actions of the association president — getting rid of whoever disagrees with you — as constituting an abuse of power:
Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn’t say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.
Yesterday was a university holiday so I didn’t have classes that day. I rode my bike to Burger King to get a free Whopper, with purchase of fries and a drink, by filling out a survey code on the back of an old receipt. All summed, it cost me $2.16. Outside the restaurant I picked up an errant receipt lying on the grass and found it something interesting about it. This guy bought $14 worth of food including and used a $100 bill (at least I infer that) to pay for it. This guy bought his stuff at around 8am Tuesday morning so I assume he’s a commuter but those kinds of bills in your wallet…wow. (I’ll try to update this later with a scan of the receipt.) [Scan put up late night 11/14.]
After eating lunch, I tried to go home a different way and ended up on a road north of where I wanted to go. So I decided to take it all the way to a shopping center that has an EB Games in it and the EB store conveniently had a Wii demo unit. The GameStop that is closer to where I live still hadn’t gotten one yet as of Tuesday. An off-duty employee was playing ExciteTruck and I ended up racing against him four times. The tilting controls are very sensitive and it certainly takes a while become acclimated to it and make more subtle turns. By the time I got to the fourth race, I barely beat the other guy and managed to crash into trees noticably less often.
It was a very fun and challenging way to spend a half-hour and I’d like to try it out at another store to see how they handle the Wiimote issue. Gamestop/EB’s structure of taking your drivers’ license as collateral is a good way to ensure the controllers aren’t stolen and I don’t know how a big box store like Target or Best Buy will have demo units arranged within their stores.
Before I departed back home, I stopped by the Blockbuster in the same center and wandered around. I didn’t buy or rent anything but I did found out something I didn’t really want to know: there was a sequel to “The Butterfly Effect” with the same plot as the first but with unknown actors.
I attended a Voting 101 event tonight on campus even though I had already participated in early voting on Thursday. I was only there for the free food (Subway catered) and because I had a class right before it. The thought occurred to me on my way back home: I have a philosophy midterm on the same day the nation is taking theirs in “political science”. Both require studying and both have consequences based on how people vote/perform.
Election day is pretty much the only day of the year normal people can talk about politics without coming off as wingnuts. Because there are local non-partisan measures to weigh in on for voters in every precinct, citizens don’t have to feel entitled to care about which party holds control of Congress next year — although that is one of the biggest stories of the year. For example, there are measures that could change who supplies power to my city, establish a Target in the north part of town, and how city council members are elected. These are issues not to be taken lightly.
I always get excited about elections and will likely be up until 2am refreshing the county’s elections website along with CNN and other news sites. I’m proud in myself that this year I didn’t vote entirely down the party line. I’m a registered Democrat and voted for Arnold (Republican) for governor and Bruce McPherson (Republican) for secretary of state; I also picked a third-party candidate for insurance commissioner. Although I am a social liberal, I am a fiscal conservative so I voted against the five multi-billion dollar bond measures. Finally, evoking the libertarian in me, I voted “no” on a proposition that would track sex offenders via GPS for the rest of their lives and restrict their living arrangements to places more than 2,000 feet away from any school or park.
I know this blog has a very minute reach, but if you are in America, please vote today (Nov. 7th). You don’t want to fail a midterm just because you forgot to show up, now do you?
Midterm elections are only two weeks away and the buzz all year has been Democrats having a serious chance of retaking Congress. One of the arguing points recently has been how much the winning margin will be in the House, the Senate or both, if they even manage to take either chamber. The Democrats should not become overconfident in these final days of campaigning; instead they should work hard down the home stretch to sway indecided and independent voters in order to finish strong. Recall how Kerry was supposed to win in ‘04 according to the polls and see how that turned out – don’t let yourselves get disappointed again!
On the way home from my mini-vacation, I happened to be listening to Michael Savage’s radio show (“The Savage Nation”). Now normally I don’t listen to talk radio but I managed to not change the station for a while because he made some good points, one of them about Nancy Pelosi possibly becoming the next House Speaker and her focusing on social issues in her first days instead of the war against terrorism (he said the word “gay” MANY times to emphasize a certain part).
If the Democrats want to have a serious chance of making further congressional seat gains as well as winning the White House in 2008, they should select a more centrist Democrat than Pelosi, who represents most of San Francisco proper. That she represents such a district says something by itself. A less-radical speaker will likely direct party policy in a way that will attract swing voters to go Democrat in ‘08 instead of frightening them away with seemlingly-extremist policies.
I also heard two clips of audio that struck my ears as insightful, at least somewhat. The first was President Bush joking about the Democrats making “a lot of predictions” and that “they might be measuring the drapes”. Where has this wit been hiding all these years, Mr. Bush? You need to make these tongue-in-cheek jabs more often.
The second was Karl Rove saying that this upcoming election is not a national election but rather it is hundreds of local elections. Rove is correct that if you get down to basics, people are voting in individual districts and and not national ones. Although the Iraq war and the Mark Foley scandal have affected national poll numbers, issues that have more local relevance (e.g. immigration, water use) ultimately are the ones that determine midterm elections.
In other political news, junior Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) might be the first formidable rival to Hillary for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. He’s only been in office for two years and lacks foreign policy experience; however, the election in ‘08 will be an “open seat” one since Cheney won’t be running. Being the first-ever African-American nominee would probably attract swing voters across the country and steal a fair number of Southern votes from Republicans. Then again, it’s still 25 months away and that’s a long time in politics. Remember Howard Dean in 2004 or John McCain in 2000?
This morning (7:46 AM EDT), the American population reached three hundred million (300,000,000) people according to the US Census Bureau’s population clock (link). The last big milestone was 200 million, which was reached in 1967 — 39 years ago. Meanwhile, the world count is at a little over 6.55 billion.
It is estimated that America will have 400 million living in it by 2043 but there are significant fears of how the land will be able to sustain that many people. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting five-article series on how we got this point as a nation as well as the problems we are currently and will face as we acculmulate another hundred million. I hope I’m living in another country in 37 years…
I watched the premiere of “1 vs. 100″ with Bob Saget last night and I have to say it’s better than “Deal or No Deal” for a number of reasons.
1. Winning actually requires knowledge
Unlike “Deal” in which you just pick a suitcase and hold onto it until you chicken out, “1 vs. 100″ requires you to have a level of cultural literacy. For example, some questions involved the Venus de Milo, the earth’s mantel, and a perfect credit score. I tend to like game shows where contestants need to think to succeed and not simply have blind luck.
2. Bob Saget is less annoying
Bob Saget has previously hosted “America’s Funniest Home Videos” but this is a little different. Still, he had a quick wit when contestants and members of the mob made verbal slips. Howie Mandel’s transitions to commercials are just plain cheesy. Also, Saget has more hair on his head.
3. It has a better catchphrase
“The money or the mob” just sounds better than “deal or no deal” and might have a little more staying power than “is that your final answer?” or “you’re fired!”
4. There is a variety of faces
After each contestant leaves, those in the mob who missed questions are replaced by new people while those who scored perfect that round stay. This puts in new blood and more chances to say things like “we have 9 teachers (or 7 surfers) in the mob”.
5. It flows faster
There’s no silhouetted banker making offers or families trying to tell you to take the money. Instead there is only you, the mob, and Saget. Well, and the studio audience of course.
Fourteen questions were asked in 42 minutes; that’s about three minutes per question asked. Then again, since this was the first episode and the rules had to be explained, I would guess the average is closer to 2:30 per question which is fast recalling how long some people took on “Millionaire” to answer questions using lifelines and thinking out loud.
Alas, the show isn’t perfect. Twice, there were plugs within the show for the one that airs before it. You guessed it, “Deal or No Deal”. The first instance was three “briefcase girls” in the first mob; the second was within a question involving how many numbers on the 26 briefcases used on the show are evenly divisible by 3. Believe it or not, 18 out of the remaining 65 mob-mates (28%) missed this basic math question, netting the contestant $36,000.
Another mistake came within a question about slang. It was “In contemporary slang, what would you do with your ‘badunkadunk’?” Anyone who has watched Chappelle’s Show knows that the proper word is “badonkadonk”. Even Google offers a different spelling when you type it in.
Just another instance of NBC failing at trying to be hip, I suppose.
By the way, Mr. Chappelle was the answer to a previous question about who walked away from a $50 million deal with Comedy Central.
Today was both a good and bad day for me as a sports fan. First, the good: my college football team won its home opener against Central Arkansas and I got a free shirt. It was a pretty good game with the Aggies blocking an extra point and returning for a safety during the Bears’ first drive. At halftime it was 19-6 Aggies and the final tally was UCD 33, UCA 13. I ended up grabbing a corn dog at the end of the game when the refreshment stand was giving them away but I was pretty full having a polish dog and a bag of chips.
Next, the bad: Oakland were officially swept in the ALCS when Magglio Ordonez hit a 3-run walk-off home run off Huston Street with two outs in the 9th. The score was reported as 3-2 A’s during the fourth quarter of the football game. By the time I got home and turned on the TV, the game was tied at 3 in the 7th. They had the bases loaded in the eighth, but Scutaro got jammed and popped out to Pudge for the third out. This whole series Oakland had struggled hitting against Detroit’s pitchers in stranding baserunners and also in general. Prime examples are Frank Thomas going 0-for-13 and Scutaro 0-for-15 for the series.
I guess I can take solace that Oakland managed to win a series this postseason but it’s depressing to get swept right after you’ve just swept another team. Both the Niners and Raiders are sucking right now, so I’ll have to wait a couple weeks to start feeling good about pro sports again when the Kings begin their season.
For about four months, I have been blogging about anime and Japanese culture over at Part-Time Otaku. It has been nice to have a particular focus in mind but over that time, I encountered a whole bunch of other things I wanted to blog about that didn’t fit into my self-imposed niche. So I decided to create this side blog, which is creatively entitled “PTO: The Side Blog”. The subdomain would have been ‘pto-sideblog’ but WP.com allows only letters and numbers, no dashes or other characters. Boo. Don’t worry, I still plan to post on PTO; I just will be blowing off steam here rather than over there.
I plan to write entries on a variety of topics such as news, politics, music, television, sports, philosophy, and technology. Basically whatever strikes me fancy and gets the gears in my mind spinning with such force that I must transcribe my thoughts and get them out into the world. I’m not aiming to become a top-read blogger but if that happens, I will try not to get full of myself as I consider myself to be a humble individual and nothing special. Besides, I mostly keep to myself and so I wouldn’t know what to do if I became well-read. I honestly think I’d be scared of the attention.
“If you’re ‘nothing special’, then why should I waste my time read your blog?” you might ask. Good question. As I do not have high levels of influence in any particular field, I am an ordinary person in regard to the world’s social structure. But is that necessarily a bad thing? The blogosphere is full of ordinary people who write about their passions. YouTube is full of ordinary teenagers dancing to music in their bedrooms and adults talking about politics and religion. I do not exactlt believe in the wisdom of crowds but I do believe that if more people contribute to a medium, the more likely consumers of that medium are to find something that piques their interest and eventually come to like.
So who AM I? I’m a third-year college student, majoring in philosophy and hopefully minoring in linguistics. My favorite sports to watch are baseball and soccer. I am a registered Democratic but my actual political bearings are lean more toward the center — center-lefitst — with high importance on liberalism and personal freedoms. I like to try my hand at the crossword puzzle in the daily newspaper and occasionally poke at Sudoku. I love wordplay and watching movies that make me think. I hate annoying people and incorrect grammar. I want to make short films but I can’t afford a decent video camera. I’m almost always willing to try new things, provided that there is no significant risk to my health involved. I am a proud omnivore and I don’t think I could live comfortably without meat. I feel bad when I leave novels half-read because I’m busy but I forget to pick them up again when I do have enough free time. When I’m walking on a busy street or in a crowded building, I overhear snippets of other people’s conversations that I overhear and snicker at their overexaggerations of petty problems.
Sorry about the last paragraph being cramped and hard-to-read but I promise that the stuff in the future will be more organized and concise. I’ll try to make a couple entries this weekend. However, don’t hold me to my word because my apartment building’s floor is having a party and I don’t know when I’ll wake up tomorrow. Hopefully in time to make the afternoon football game…
