Teasers

Sorry for the long, long delay, but I've been busy and sick and only now are things returning to normal. The good news is I have several exciting things to tell you all:

1) At least one sparrow hit me in the neck
I was walking down the sidewalk with Maria when *wham*, a sparrow flew into my neck. As it flew away it turned out to actually be two sparrows either fighting or getting romantic. I can't be sure if one or both hit me, as I have nothing to judge the impact against, but it felt sort of like getting hit in the neck with a balled up rag. It was very strange. About five hours later I developed a bad sore throat. Coincidence? Investigation continues.

2) Two more days of the train
I've decided to start driving to work, beginning April 1. I'll be driving the truck at first, which will be entertaining to park amongst the rich people cars. I'm considering some sort of daily picture of the truck sandwiched between the most expensive cars possible. I'm almost done spending two hours of my day packed into a train car with dozens of annoying, smelly Chicagoans. How will I spend the extra hour-or-so per day that I'll save? Stay tuned.

3) I'm in the preliminary stages of a car hunt
Tightly related to #2, I want to buy a car in about three months. I'll put up my thoughts at some point in a massive and nerd-tastic post, but for now I'll just say the front runners are a Saab 9-5 or a VW Passat. More on that later.

4) Maria graduates soon
In like seven weeks! I'm pretty excited for that, as it's going to be a big change and very quickly reveal what our lives will be like for the next couple years at least. Where will Maria be working? Will she be picked to lead some sort of government think tank? Will she buy me a Ferrari when she sells her first million books? Only time will tell.

5) Spring is filling up quick
And finally, most of my spring weekends are being spoken for left and right. April 21st, 28th, June 12 and June 19 are already booked. If a Madison weekend is to be put together, it'll have to be in one of the remaining gaps. Can that be accomplished??

New Movie Gallery

My relaxing evening on the porch has yielded results: check out the new movie gallery. Obviously there's still a lot of work to be done on this thing, but it's better than nothing!

Yet Another Beautiful Night

While I didn't tell you, I wrote yesterday's brief post from my porch at around 8pm while it was still 50 degrees outside. Today I'm outside at 7pm and it's still 70 degrees (according to weather dot com - it actually feels a bit cooler than that). Also, possibly the best part, the sun's still up! Holy moly, this is great. This looks to be the nicest day for at least the next month or so, so I figured I better enjoy it. I cut out of work a few minutes early, beat the rush home, and I've been playing around on my laptop on the porch ever since. I really hope you all did that same (assuming it's nice where you are too).

This weekend is going to be a fantastic three-day affair in Minneapolis with Joe, Chris, Mark, Kris, Jes, Brigitte, etc, etc, etc. I'm really looking forward to getting away for a couple of days and hanging out with these guys, who I don't get to see very much. If you're around Minneapolis and you feel like hanging out, Saturday night is looking to shape up as a night on the town, so give somebody a call.

As spring approaches, I find myself more and more enraptured by the idea of going out and buying some sort of fun, old car. I especially like the idea of buying an old Saab 9-3 or BMW 5 series with a stick shift and a moon roof. I have to put these urges off for now, but who knows, maybe next summer. I'm also starting to think that an Audi A6 Quattro might be a good alternative to the rarer and more expensive VW W8 Passat that I've been eying up as my current realistic dream car.

There's a squirrel in a tree about ten feet away from me screaming at me right now. I wonder if it's the same squirrel that walked past me on the railing oh so cautiously yesterday. Maybe he has to cross the porch to get back to his house. It's kind of scary having a squirrel that close to you - they're so twitchy they always seem to be about to attack. Still, I'm pretty confident in my chances against a one-pound rodent (I'M TALKING TO YOU, PAUL!) (Psych! Just kidding!) (Oh, and I saw your girlfriend today.)

The SEO of my company came to talk to me today just to ask which Arcade Fire album he should buy. I enjoy that; I doubt any of the rest of you have those types of conversations with your CEO.

Alright, I'm going to watch the sunset now. I love spring.

I Hereby Declare Facebook Cool Again

Remember that week in college when Facebook was awesome? Well, guess what? It turns out that between then and now they've actually added all kinds of great functionality and entertaining features to make the site worth visiting! Now, I know I'm the last person under the age of 25 to find out about this, but until I say it it just isn't offical.

Just in case anyone else is woefully behind the Facebook times, the coolest thing by far is the way the let you tag photos. You can upload pictures, then tag who is in them. They actually link the photos to people's profiles, so I can go into my profile and see all of the pictures that other people have posted of me (so long as they've tagged them, of course). It's pretty cool, and a fun way to waste some time, especially when sitting on your porch on a beautiful 50-degree evening!

Friday Entertainment

In what's quickly becoming a tradition, it's Friday again! You get a doubledose of fun today, as I just so happened to buy a really stupid toy that arrived yesterday. I present to you, what may be the first in a series, Look at the Stupid Thing I Bought!

Look at the Stupid Thing I Bought!

I'm sorry, but when I see a three foot long Nerf sniper rifle for twenty bucks, I'm going to have to buy one. Behold, the Nerf Longstrike (or something). Here it is, sitting on my kitchen table, looking totally awesome and just itching to kill. As you can see, this particular Nerf sniper rifle comes complete with fold-down bipod, scope and bitching color scheme. What you may not be able to see is that this baby is actually clip-fed and can easily shoot darts at a pretty good speed all the way down my hallway. Oh, and also, it's two guns too.


What? That amazing sniper rifle also breaks apart into two not as cool but still pretty neat Nerf guns? Yeah, I know. The coolest part about this is that assembling the gun feels an awful lot like being some sort of ridiculous assassin - I just wish I had a padded suitcase with exactly shaped holes for each piece. For a half second I had the idea to bring this thing to Minnesota in that fashion before I decided 0.51 seconds later that bringing a toy gun onto a plane is a really really really really bad idea. Having two separate guns also lets you have duels in the hallway.


Just in case you're still having trouble grasping the scale of this thing, here's a picture of me holding it up. Notice that the gun extends to the very top and bottom of this picture; it's absolutely massive. The back half alone reminds me a lot of the machine guns the marines used in Aliens, that same unnecessarily bulky feel. All in all this is a pretty stupid purchase, but I think it's going to be pretty handy to have around.

Friday Video
This is sort of a two-for-one inside of a two-for-one, but I'm cheating. Both of these things made the rounds on Digg this week, but they're both fantastic, so I hope they're new to some of you.

Our first video comes to us from Montgomery, Alabama, and is a commercial for some sort of flea market that sells only furniture. I can't quite get my head around what the store is, though, I mean, what the heck is a flea market, and what on earth would I buy there? Gosh, it's so confusing, if only someone would explain it to me...


The second one is located on YTMND, and you can watch it RIGHT HERE. This thing made me cry at work.
UPDATE: Apparently it's been deemed NSFW (not safe for work) by some visitors, so you have to enter a birth date that makes you at least 18. I'm not sure why, as it seems pretty clean to me, but just in case you've got an extremely strict work place you may want to watch it at home (there are a couple of words that are almost swears).

Maybe I could be a Programmer After All

I stopped programming the instant I got out of college (except for sweet, sweet Excel macros) mostly because after two years of high school, two years of technical college and four years of university CS classes I wanted to cry, but also because I definitely thought I was a below average programmer. Then today I read this article. That may not translate for everyone, so I'll summarize by saying that apparently over 99% of applicants for programming positions can't write a program that looks like a first assignment from my freshman programming course.

Good to know if I ever had to fake my way back into the programming world I could probably do it.

300

Thanks to Ted, I got to see 300 a couple of weeks ago (in the same theater of Roper! Hooray!). With it coming out later this week, I thought I'd offer up my opinion. Basically, there are flaws (especially with some of the acting and some of the pacing), but the farther away the viewing gets, the more the great stuff burns away my memory of the bad stuff.

It stays pretty true to the book, with a couple of bits missing (I don't really understand why they cut stuff, but I didn't mind it), plus a rather major plot added about what happens back home (to give the queen a bigger role). All in all the movie isn't perfect, but the visuals are beautiful, it sounds great, and the fighting is bad-ass. Basically, but best review I can give is if you think this trailer is amazing you'll love the movie:



They do a great job of recalling the feel of the comic most of the time; they use slow motion and fast motion alternating to create that sense of watching fights frame to frame, and certian images really stick in my mind afterwards, sort of like individual frames. I love the spartan breaking arrows off his shield, the elephants falling off the cliffs, and the way the spear wall opens up in perfect precision to let spears stab through. The fighting is awesome, so if that's what you want, you should enjoy yourself.

Predicted Ratings
Paul Jackson: A-
Joe Pfeiffer: B
Chris Polley: D+
Pat Hayden: God only knows (alternating every 0.1 - 24 hours)

Friday Entertainment

Here are great things for you to enjoy on this blustery Friday (at least in Chicago).

Joe's post about music that crystallizes times in his life is a good read. For me its Spiritual Machines; always makes me think of driving the Neon around during senior year of high school.

Go check out this guy's blog: Gabe Swarr. Looks like he does work on Dexter's Lab and some other Cartoon Network shows, but the thing I like the most is his work for the 8 bit art show. He's got a few Mario paintings posted now, and I've seen some of his other work. My favorite drawing of his is one where a giant Bowser has a tiny Mario in his mouth; good stuff.

Ben, Ted, Paul and I started a blog called Pie Traynor's Glove. It's going to be all about sports (especially baseball). We've yet to really start cranking on it, but Ben's put up some pretty entertaining stuff already. Watch for my essay on how pre-playoff NBA trades are totally ridiculous.

And finally, it's Friday, so I'm going to post a video. I meant to post that video of the bear falling out of a tree and onto a trampoline last Friday, but it slipped my mind. To make up for it, I'll double up today with my two favorite Turk moments from Scrubs.

Auditions for the hospital lip-sync band.


This was on the lame-ass clip show yesterday. I made Maria watch it at least three times.