Two Fairly Entertaining Vids.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZpPf-q2_es

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1f1_1174786021

Enjoy!

Rome is over.... = (

I've never enjoyed a series so much before, but now it is through. They wrapped it up well enough for my tastes. Even the way they played Vorenus in the end was to my liking. Mark Antony found his own way, as well. And, of course, Titus Pullo swaggered his way through death and history to come out shining. I liked his character and the way Ray Stevenson portrayed him. With luck, he'll pick up some good movie roles.

Other than that, it's been a fun and busy weekend... ok, except for lazing about here tonight... I believe I have eaten my weight in food since Friday night!

My Bad!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-20-alaska-fund_N.htm?csp=24

Ever have one of those days?

UBI

Thought I'd post it here so Rob can see the pic. UBI released Silent Hunter IV this week and it is readily apparent that all they did was doctor up an add-on to SH3 and call it a new game. Low development costs, more $$,$$$,$$$s.

UBI will definitely be releasing some major patches since the "game" is basically not complete yet. I doubt they even beta tested it. Thankfully, the Silent Hunter following is a dedicated crew and the coding can be easily modded. I've already gone in tweaking some things.... one of which being this initial Pac News radio report which I shared with the Subsim.com community. =)

Grand Canyon Skywalk: Forget That!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070321/ap_on_re_us/grand_canyon_skywalk

Go to the link and then scan through the Pics / Slideshow section.

In person, I'd probably have no problem walking out there and I'd enjoy it. But the angles on some of these pictured have me getting vertigo from here. The glass is high enough to block accidental falls, but you KNOW people are going to jump off that thing.... and I don't just mean base jumpers.

I wonder how many people will manage to walk all the way out before having the panic attack and having to crawl back? Or how much it will sway on windy days and make everyone puke. Or how wonderful it must be to enjoy such a breathtaking view only to be snapped back to reality by some kids jumping up and down to test the flooring next to you.

And why am I picturing the thing dropping off the cliff while loaded with people.... and then one of the Xtacles from Frisky Dingo comes flying back up into view saying "Jet boots RULE!"?

Scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUY9UCZHsIc&mode=related&search=
Quote comes in at timestamp 40seconds.

Fun With Squirrels

::evil grin::

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f5d_1172741350


Also.... Thanks to everyone for making this a very happy birthday for me. Woo! It felt more like a three day celebration and I enjoyed having people around. Let's do it again next year.

Q - would anyone be interested in getting a group together to go do the Go-Kart track here in Wallingford? Look, I KNOW it sounds lame... but they are neck-snapping fast and you'll be smiling ear to ear the whole time. Let's do it!

HGTV

Oh, the excitement. It's March 18th and later on tonight HGTV will be revealing the winner(s) of this year's Dream Home in Colorado. Somehow, my mom got me to enter the darned contest practically every day for two months. I know I'm not going to win, yet I can't help but remember how unnaturally lucky I always was as a young person and just how fun it WOULD be to win. In reviewing past Dream Homes which have been given away, I much prefer those from Texas and North Carolina for their overall design and setting. This one in Colorado has a wonderful appearance from head-on, but the ads have all been VERY careful not to show that another house is practically 10 feet away on the left side. LOL! Likewise, there are two great rooms in the front with impressive views as well as a small deck or observation lounge on the second floor.... but when you really look, the rest of the rooms all feel dark and, at least from the online photos, appear to have a limited number of relatively small windows. Still, there is enough panache to the design to make me like it. Especially when one does not have a place of their own to live in! From THAT wonderfully bleak perspective, it's a WONDERFUL house! =)

Hmmm... what to do if I won it. Obviously, the first thing I would do is change locations for a while and see how it is for a season to a year. Quite an adventure, yes? I wonder what people in Colorado are like. I've done my share of traveling. Are they stoic (depressed) like people from Maine? Are they generally good people with simple lives like in Des Moines? Given the area, I tend to think they would all be out-of-towners... and as one myself, I'm sure I can imagine how the locals feel about outsiders: tolerable by social standards, but still darned annoying.

And.... of course.... would I be able to keep the GMC vehicle which would come with it all? Common sense says: duh! The old Yankee in me still feels quite the grudge against Chevy / GM over their indelicate handling of very simple yet amazingly persistent warranty problems with my Corvette. I swore I would never give them another dime of my money, and while I would not directly be paying for said GMC, it would still be supporting their business. It probably speaks volumes that I would rather soldier on with my trusty cheap old Crown Victoria with 111 thousand miles than risk my life in another GM product. My buddy Ryan works for a machine shop nearby which produces pins used by GM in the production of the new Corvette seats. His company suggested a three-step process to making the pins since it would make them stronger and add just cents to the bottom line, but GM declined and opted for a two-step process. Wouldn't you know it? New Corvette owners ran into problems with the seat locking mechanism (when you adjust the back angle forward or back) breaking and dropping back. Only after it becaome a "common" occurrence on the Corvette forums with owners complaining did they finally opt for the 3-step pin. At least, that is how the story was conveyed to me. Pure genius.

Having just gone and re-read the last paragraph, I suppose I would have to rid myself of the GMC. I could use the money to get some new tires for the Vic. =) Talk about earning loyalty points. On the one hand you had the Flagship GM vehicle and American Icon that is the Corvette. Literally on the day I took delivery it had problems which originated from the factory. Minor stuff though, and I had a new dream car so I was still overjoyed. But in three years of ownership it took someone like myself who was a GM die-hard and turned him into a GM hater. Literally, in the final 18 months of ownership the car spent roughly 9 months either: at the Chevy dealer waiting for repair, going BACK to the dealer before even leaving the LOT, disabled in my driveway waiting for parts to be delivered to the local dealer, or just broken and sitting there with me not willing to drive it for fear of the thing trying to kill me..... which it finally DID try to do in the end. So here's this big flashy car that everyone dreams about, but it turns out to be a POS. Then there's my Crown Vic, which I bought when I was in management as a clean, classy vehicle which was not overstated for my position. Easy maintenance, ready parts availability, and just a big comfortable All-American land yacht. I bought it used, obviously after being submerged either in a flood or an accident, but everything was in good shape. I used to put an average of between 60 and 100 miles on it a day going 90mph the whole way, depending on which building I was working at. The only problem I've had with all that abuse was a water pump early on and a few coils which I replaced in 3 minutes. Other than that, its due for some new pads and rotors which are in the trunk and waiting for a warm weekend day to be installed.

Ford earned some MAJOR loyalty points from me with this car, especially in light of the GM fiasco and their negligent repairs and customer relations. I guess they would have been an easy act for any other manufacturer to follow!

Anyway.... would love to win that house! Would LOVE to win that GMC! ;) But with my luck recently it'd go to my sister (no offense, Shelley, and good luck all the same!) or some family who will turn around and sell it to make a few bucks. Time will tell. I'm crossing my fingers for everyone I know who entered the contest. Good luck! I hope it makes some positive changes for you, and if you sell it... use at least a little of the money to do something positive for someone else. =)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Everyone's Irish today. Some of us remain paler and thirstier than others, but today you're all our brothers.

Hat's off to beer, me boys!

I've got my collection of drinking songs blasting off the walls at this end waiting for Tori to show up so we can do some pub crawling. She doesn't know that yet. =) Shhhhh.... Don't worry, she's no lush. She can hold her own like a good Irish/Italian girl.

Happy St.Patrick's Day to you all on this March 17th, 2007.

ROB!...... I had a thought........

You were showing me the Airsoft stuff the other day and that was pretty cool. Then just now I was watching this nerdy thing on YouTube about Star Trek vs Star Wars......


So you KNOW where I'm going with this, don't you?


What if we made or modified some Airsoft guns to be replicas of various blasters Star Wars or Star Trek?

My inner geek is smiling. My inner techie agrees.

.................. a decent project?

B

Stranger and Stranger....

I find myself rocking out to.... Michael Jackson today. Specifically, his Number Ones collection. Yeah, I'm dancing in my seat. Yeah, I'm ok with that. LOL

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Different

Had a dream or series of them last night which were interesting. I almost never have dreams relating directly or indirectly to people I know in real life, but last night the main two dreams dealt almost exclusively with people I know or have known. Mostly friends and lovers. I blame Shelley for getting me hooked into the movie yesterday, Baxter or The Baxter or something. The topics didn't mimic the movie, but the way people floated in and out did. It was all mildly entertaining to watch in a fairly waking state, but I snapped-to at the end when I was alone with someone who sort of broke through the dream bubble and said, "The bad [people] are waiting in the shadows."

What? That had NOTHING to do with what was happening in the dream. Nor did the way my attention was focused so clearly on this. It was strange, and left a mark on me as I woke up. Bad people? Bad things? Waiting for me? Shadows.... do I need to "shine a bit brighter" to ward it off? Does this dream come equipped with halogen lamps? And.... quite frankly.... where does the author of that dream get off leaving me with such a cliffhanger as I wake up? I'm writing a letter of complaint!

Small World

You know, I could SWEAR I ran into Mr. Baldwin today while waiting for my dad at the bank. I didn't realize it until he had already gone inside since I was fiddling with the radio trying to find the Tom Petty song I had just flipped past. I would have said hi if I'd caught on soon enough. Just as well, I probably look like a hippy to him now with my budding beard and longer hair. Still, it was an interesting coincidence.

I Ought To Be Asleep

...but I'm not.

Just sitting here inputting data on a spreadsheet and making pretty numbers. The play I've developed seems to be very strong. I still am only looking at it against the Euro, trying to identify, understand and learn to avoid the pitfalls. The play itself takes some stones to sit on for 5 to 9 days, but the targets are amazingly clear. So, too, are the exits when they go against you in a fast dash.

The reason I'm beating myself up extra hard on this one is that it painted once last month and is painting again perhaps tomorrow. But BOTH instances are the most ambiguous examples I have seen, giving me no "definite" feel for one side or the other.

What a bummer!

I think tomorrow I will branch it out to some other symbols for the first time and see how well it fits or not. If it DOES work elsehwere (and it ought to) then that ought to make it a regularly playable indicator.... good possibilities there. We'll see, yes?

I was reading in a forum over the weekend where this guy was mentioning a program that accurately predicts hands in online poker games once you build up a database of cards. I thought that was pretty cool and wished there was something like that for the stock market!

CLASSIC

I received a phone call from a gorgeous ex-girlfriend the other day.

We lost track of time, chatting about the wild, romantic nights we used
to enjoy together.

I couldn't believe it when she asked if I'd be interested in meeting up
and rekindling a little of that "magic".
"Wow!" I said. "I don't know if I could keep pace with you now. I'm a
bit older and a bit balder than when you last saw me."

She just giggled and said she was sure I'd "rise" to the challenge.
"Yeah." I said. "Just so long as you don't mind a man with a waistline
that's a few inches wider these days!"

She laughed and told me to stop being so silly. She teased me saying
that tubby bald men were cute, and she was sure I would still be a great
lover.

Anyway, she giggled and said, "I've put on a few pounds myself!"

So I told her to f**k off.

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