Initial B
For those of you who like buying CDs of good artists, I have a recommendation. Coming soon to a Best Buy near you will be the release of an album by an artist called Britney Spears.
The exact date of release is November 18th and the title is "Get Into The Zone". I don't know about you, but I am definitely looking forward to getting into the zone 2 months from now. Britney is also on this month's cover of Rolling Stone. I highly recommend for all red-blooded, heterosexual men out there to check it out.
Currently playing in my head: Britney Spears - Autumn Goodbye
Not on any of her albums, but one of my favorite Britney songs of all time.
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Initial D
For those of you who like buying DVD sets of TV shows, I have a recommendation. Coming soon to a Best Buy near you will be the DVD release of a Japanese animated series called Initial D. It's about the world of street racing in the mountainous regions of Japan. I was first introduced to this show a few years ago by a friend, who downloaded the first season episodes off the internet and got me semi-hooked on the plot. Later, he bought the DVD sets in Japan while vacationing there and let me and Olivia borrow them. After watching the first 2 seasons (there are only 2, plus a movie), me and Olivia became pretty big fans. The DVDs for the movie are sitting on my desk right now, so we'll probably finish that sometime soon too.
Anyways, the show has a lot of quality racing scenes with cool drifting sequences, and also is packed with all the drama, laughs, and girls with high-pitched voices and huge eyes that we all love about Japanese cartoons. Well, I'm not a big fan of all that "anime" stuff, so I mostly just like watching the races and the parts when they talk about cars. There's some sweet cars in there, like the Skyline R34, Lancer Evolution ("Lan-Evo"), RX-7, while the main character dominates everyone with a old beat up 1986 Toyota Corolla. But yeah, even though this show might not be of the caliber of 24 (which I have still yet to see a single episode of), I recommend anyone who is even mildly interested in cars to check out Initial D when it becomes available in this country.
For those of you who like buying DVD sets of TV shows, I have a recommendation. Coming soon to a Best Buy near you will be the DVD release of a Japanese animated series called Initial D. It's about the world of street racing in the mountainous regions of Japan. I was first introduced to this show a few years ago by a friend, who downloaded the first season episodes off the internet and got me semi-hooked on the plot. Later, he bought the DVD sets in Japan while vacationing there and let me and Olivia borrow them. After watching the first 2 seasons (there are only 2, plus a movie), me and Olivia became pretty big fans. The DVDs for the movie are sitting on my desk right now, so we'll probably finish that sometime soon too.
Anyways, the show has a lot of quality racing scenes with cool drifting sequences, and also is packed with all the drama, laughs, and girls with high-pitched voices and huge eyes that we all love about Japanese cartoons. Well, I'm not a big fan of all that "anime" stuff, so I mostly just like watching the races and the parts when they talk about cars. There's some sweet cars in there, like the Skyline R34, Lancer Evolution ("Lan-Evo"), RX-7, while the main character dominates everyone with a old beat up 1986 Toyota Corolla. But yeah, even though this show might not be of the caliber of 24 (which I have still yet to see a single episode of), I recommend anyone who is even mildly interested in cars to check out Initial D when it becomes available in this country.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Monday Blows
So, the routine continues. I walked out of the house this morning to find that it was cold. Which made me realize that hey, we're halfway through September. Seriously, what happened to August? Before I know it, I'll be digging my car out of a pile of snow every morning just to drive 3 miles to work.
I noticed that my blog has been mostly an informal diary and running commentary on the media/pop culture lately. It makes for regular updating, but I think I'm gonna try to write more challenging entries again (in addition to the other stuff). I guess I haven't been in an introspective mood that much lately. But anyways, if you are a regular reader of this blog, like it or not, there will probably be more of those entries coming that scream, "Hmmm, better just skim this one". Maybe I'll try writing more on the weekends again too, but we'll see. Now, on with the diary/running commentary...
Friday evening, I took the first good nap I've had in a long time, quite a noteworthy event in this exciting rock star lifestyle of mine. I fell asleep with the Sox losing 4-3 in the 3rd or 4th inning, then woke up exactly one Billy Koch outing later, when it was 7-3 or so, with my face mashed in a drool-soaked section of my pillow.
After watching them lose officially, I stopped by Lameworks in Streets of Woodfield and did something that I hadn't done in a long time: Play arcade games. I miss the days when I would go to the MKII machines, beat the guy there as a crowd gathered to watch, and impress everyone by doing a certain "Babality" or "Friendship Move". Or, be one of the people who knew how to drive the "Advanced" or "Expert" tracks on Daytona USA. Hey, when you're in Junior High or High School, people are easily impressed. Now, other than the occasional game of 4 player Blitz, I don't know any of the games well enough to play them anymore. I don't remember a single finishing move in MKII, not that there are any arcades that still carry that game anyways. I can barely even pass Advanced in Daytona nowadays, and all but forgot every single shift in Expert.
Oh, I also got to hang with some old peeps from college. We even took a sticker picture, which I definitely haven't done since high school. Of course, Will the idiot forgot to close out his tab that night, so he was in the area again Saturday morning. But it was a good opportunity to take the following pictures in my driveway:
Riding in his coupe was a pretty cool experience. The car feels a little sportier than mine, but a little less luxury. I guess it depends on what you prefer, even though the differences aren't that huge. I don't think I'll ever buy a 2-door car though. Just so used to 4-doors by now that I can't see myself driving anything else.
The other major sources of excitement for the weekend were football and cards. Even though I can feel another MNF-screwing about to hit me, and I got eliminated twice in poker with a River card draw, I still must admit that it was all good fun. The battles between me and Greg are starting to rival the classics between me and P. In football, it's gonna be another nail-biter tonight. Everyone is highly encouraged to root against Jeremy Shockey and Freaky Barber, and root for Roy Williams to get 2 interceptions returned for TDs.
So, the routine continues. I walked out of the house this morning to find that it was cold. Which made me realize that hey, we're halfway through September. Seriously, what happened to August? Before I know it, I'll be digging my car out of a pile of snow every morning just to drive 3 miles to work.
I noticed that my blog has been mostly an informal diary and running commentary on the media/pop culture lately. It makes for regular updating, but I think I'm gonna try to write more challenging entries again (in addition to the other stuff). I guess I haven't been in an introspective mood that much lately. But anyways, if you are a regular reader of this blog, like it or not, there will probably be more of those entries coming that scream, "Hmmm, better just skim this one". Maybe I'll try writing more on the weekends again too, but we'll see. Now, on with the diary/running commentary...
Friday evening, I took the first good nap I've had in a long time, quite a noteworthy event in this exciting rock star lifestyle of mine. I fell asleep with the Sox losing 4-3 in the 3rd or 4th inning, then woke up exactly one Billy Koch outing later, when it was 7-3 or so, with my face mashed in a drool-soaked section of my pillow.
After watching them lose officially, I stopped by Lameworks in Streets of Woodfield and did something that I hadn't done in a long time: Play arcade games. I miss the days when I would go to the MKII machines, beat the guy there as a crowd gathered to watch, and impress everyone by doing a certain "Babality" or "Friendship Move". Or, be one of the people who knew how to drive the "Advanced" or "Expert" tracks on Daytona USA. Hey, when you're in Junior High or High School, people are easily impressed. Now, other than the occasional game of 4 player Blitz, I don't know any of the games well enough to play them anymore. I don't remember a single finishing move in MKII, not that there are any arcades that still carry that game anyways. I can barely even pass Advanced in Daytona nowadays, and all but forgot every single shift in Expert.
Oh, I also got to hang with some old peeps from college. We even took a sticker picture, which I definitely haven't done since high school. Of course, Will the idiot forgot to close out his tab that night, so he was in the area again Saturday morning. But it was a good opportunity to take the following pictures in my driveway:
Riding in his coupe was a pretty cool experience. The car feels a little sportier than mine, but a little less luxury. I guess it depends on what you prefer, even though the differences aren't that huge. I don't think I'll ever buy a 2-door car though. Just so used to 4-doors by now that I can't see myself driving anything else.
The other major sources of excitement for the weekend were football and cards. Even though I can feel another MNF-screwing about to hit me, and I got eliminated twice in poker with a River card draw, I still must admit that it was all good fun. The battles between me and Greg are starting to rival the classics between me and P. In football, it's gonna be another nail-biter tonight. Everyone is highly encouraged to root against Jeremy Shockey and Freaky Barber, and root for Roy Williams to get 2 interceptions returned for TDs.
Friday, September 12, 2003
Fun With TicketBastard
So this morning at 10 am, tickets for the Sox potential first round playoff games went on sale. I thought about taking the day off and lining up at the US Cellular, but that was not an option. So my only remaining course of action was to rely on my least favorite vendor in the world, TicketMaster Online.
Starting at about 9:50, I started clicking the link to the ticket purchase page over and over. I must have gotten about 100 windows telling me "Tickets go on sale on 9/12/03 at 10 am". Finally, at around 10, I got through to an actual "search for tickets" page. I searched for 4, "best available", and it took me to a page where it shows you a picture of a distorted word and tells you to type it in the box to verify that you aren't an automated ticket buying system. Those distorted pictures of words disturb me. Either it reminds me of some horror movie when stuff is written in blood on the walls, or it just looks like the handwriting of a retarded 8 year old using a fat crayon. I don't know which one scares me more.
Anyways, the next page was a message saying the following:
"Your wait time is less than 1 minute. If you refresh or hit the back button, you will lose your place in line!"
It also included some sort of moving bar that didn't tell really represent any useful information about your waiting status, it just kind of hypnotizes you with a weird pattern of movement. So I guess I had to patiently wait for this page to refresh itself until it "found" some seats for me. My favorite part was when the page refreshed, and my wait time went from "less than 3 minutes" to "less than 5 minutes". That was always fun. Why don't you biatches just kick me in the nuts while you're at it, and we'll call it even?
Well, eventually I was given a page telling me that section 554, row 25, seats 5-8, would be reserved for me for the next 2 minutes. Where is section 554, you may wonder? Well, let's put it this way. When I went to the game on Tuesday, I turned to Chras, pointed to the far left field corner of the Upper Deck (all empty seats, I might add) and said something like "Man, those seats must really suck. Look how high up and steep they are." Of course, after consulting the seating chart, I found that section 554 was located in pretty much the heart of that exact area. SWEET....
With my 2 minutes quickly melting away, and seeing that each seat was $30 plus $5 TicketMaster fee, my final decision was, "Pork that, I ain't paying $35 a seat to sit in that hell hole, even if it is a Sox playoff game". For kicks and giggles, and because I enjoy self-inflicted suffering, I tried searching a few more times, and either came up with "no seats available" or even worse seats each time. So the conclusion of the story is, I didn't get any playoff tickets. Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up in the course of telling this long, drawn out story. Oh, another conclusion is, TicketBastard sucks.
*****
Mr. Burns: And to think, Smithers, you laughed when I bought TicketMaster. "Nobody's gonna pay a 100% service charge"
Smithers: Well, its a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.
So this morning at 10 am, tickets for the Sox potential first round playoff games went on sale. I thought about taking the day off and lining up at the US Cellular, but that was not an option. So my only remaining course of action was to rely on my least favorite vendor in the world, TicketMaster Online.
Starting at about 9:50, I started clicking the link to the ticket purchase page over and over. I must have gotten about 100 windows telling me "Tickets go on sale on 9/12/03 at 10 am". Finally, at around 10, I got through to an actual "search for tickets" page. I searched for 4, "best available", and it took me to a page where it shows you a picture of a distorted word and tells you to type it in the box to verify that you aren't an automated ticket buying system. Those distorted pictures of words disturb me. Either it reminds me of some horror movie when stuff is written in blood on the walls, or it just looks like the handwriting of a retarded 8 year old using a fat crayon. I don't know which one scares me more.
Anyways, the next page was a message saying the following:
"Your wait time is less than 1 minute. If you refresh or hit the back button, you will lose your place in line!"
It also included some sort of moving bar that didn't tell really represent any useful information about your waiting status, it just kind of hypnotizes you with a weird pattern of movement. So I guess I had to patiently wait for this page to refresh itself until it "found" some seats for me. My favorite part was when the page refreshed, and my wait time went from "less than 3 minutes" to "less than 5 minutes". That was always fun. Why don't you biatches just kick me in the nuts while you're at it, and we'll call it even?
Well, eventually I was given a page telling me that section 554, row 25, seats 5-8, would be reserved for me for the next 2 minutes. Where is section 554, you may wonder? Well, let's put it this way. When I went to the game on Tuesday, I turned to Chras, pointed to the far left field corner of the Upper Deck (all empty seats, I might add) and said something like "Man, those seats must really suck. Look how high up and steep they are." Of course, after consulting the seating chart, I found that section 554 was located in pretty much the heart of that exact area. SWEET....
With my 2 minutes quickly melting away, and seeing that each seat was $30 plus $5 TicketMaster fee, my final decision was, "Pork that, I ain't paying $35 a seat to sit in that hell hole, even if it is a Sox playoff game". For kicks and giggles, and because I enjoy self-inflicted suffering, I tried searching a few more times, and either came up with "no seats available" or even worse seats each time. So the conclusion of the story is, I didn't get any playoff tickets. Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up in the course of telling this long, drawn out story. Oh, another conclusion is, TicketBastard sucks.
*****
Mr. Burns: And to think, Smithers, you laughed when I bought TicketMaster. "Nobody's gonna pay a 100% service charge"
Smithers: Well, its a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Regular Blog
- The Sox game yesterday was a good time. Thankfully, they put up some runs in the later innings and didn't blow their lead entirely. It was nice to just hang out at the ballpark for a night, watch some baseball, talk sports, drink beer, eat brats, point out some hot chicks, and shout at each other about those silly Jumbotron games (which hat is the ball under, Pizza race, Plane race, frog race, etc.) with the boys of old school Pact. I really wish we could do this kind of stuff more often, but unfortunately a lot has changed since college, and it's not as easy anymore.
A highlight was watching (and participating in) a pretty strong Wave that went around the lower deck for about 10 minutes, when the Sox were up 8-2 in the 8th inning. Even though the Wave goes against pretty much everything a true fan stands for, it was so hilarious to me in its retardedness, especially in light of the game situation at the time.
Some pics from the game (mouse over for description):
- This week at work has been pretty hectic. At COB (Close Of Business, for those not hip with corporate lingo) last Friday, the USN (United States Navy) annouced that they were awarding the contract for RTC_SS (Reconfigurable Transportable Consolidated Automated Support System) to McDonnell-Douglas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing. For anyone who happens to be interested, a link to the DoD (Department of Defense) announcement follows (see Navy section):
http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/2003/ct20030905.html
RTC_SS was the project I've been working on since around May. Between myself and a lot of people here at NGC-RM (Northrop Grumman Corporation-Rolling Meadows), we spent so much time and effort on preparing to build this thing. It's a weird feeling to know that after all the arguing about the design, the construction of the lab for this station, the stressing out to meet deadlines, all of that became more or less a moot point, summed up in a short paragraph of which all of our combined effort hardly even composed a few words of a press release, "four offers were received".
To me, the loss of this contract doesn't hit terribly hard, because I'm just a little guy. Actually, it probably means that I won't be super busy through the rest of the year, which would have happened if we got the contract. I'd still rather be able to work more extensively on a project, though, and gain some good experience doing so. But for some people here, the announcement was a pretty big blow. Especially to a lot of the contract workers, who were counting on being needed for the duration of the program, they now have a lot of uncertainty. I guess that is the way this industry works... I'm just kind of unaccustomed to the idea that it would be "all-or-nothing" like that.
- In brighter news, I've now been working here for almost a year, and today my boss called me into her office and officially informed me that I should be seeing a 4% raise starting with this week's paycheck. I guess when I think about it, 4% isn't a huge amount, especially after taxes and everything, but hey, I'll take it. I'm just an engineer anyways, not exactly the most glamourous way to get rich quick, right?
- The latest video to dominate my mornings is "Stacy's Mom". At first it was just an annoying little song, but then it was stuck in my head all day at work. I guess I underestimated its catchiness, and it made me pay by creeping into my head and multiplying. Stacy's mom has got it going on........ doo-doo doo do doo do doo doo doooo....
- Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary (is that the right word for a tragedy?) of 9/11. I tend to wonder if the world has succeeded in banding together to become a safer, happier place during these past two years. Or if conditions have actually deteriorated from where they were before, and the terrorists are succeeding in sucking the lifeblood out of this planet.
- A while back I talked about my observation that the words "analysis" and "analog" both begin with the word "anal". If you enjoyed that fact, I have a couple more examples of my immaturity at work to share:
1) There's a maker of electronic connectors called Assmann Electronics. A link to the company site is here for those who don't believe me. Once, when I was looking at some of that company's connectors online with an older engineer, it took every ounce of self-control in my body to avoid busting out laughing at the name. He kept pronouncing it "OSS-MONN", but in my mind, I kept hearing "ass man" and snickering to myself, Beavis and Butthead style. huh-huh... Ass Man.... huh-huh huh-huh
2) One of the products I had to study at work today was called Built-In Test Exerciser and Sensor, better known by its acronym, BITES. That's an actual trademarked name, no joke. Again, for those who doubt me, I'll provide another link here. So anyways, I guess it shouldn't be that funny, but I wasted a good deal of the morning enjoying my own clever thoughts about the irony of the situation - how it was funny to me that spending hours reading up on a product called BITES, indeed bites. I wonder if there are any other products out there called SUCKS or BLOWS, that would be two more mornings I could waste with immature thoughts about such aptly named acronyms.
- The Sox game yesterday was a good time. Thankfully, they put up some runs in the later innings and didn't blow their lead entirely. It was nice to just hang out at the ballpark for a night, watch some baseball, talk sports, drink beer, eat brats, point out some hot chicks, and shout at each other about those silly Jumbotron games (which hat is the ball under, Pizza race, Plane race, frog race, etc.) with the boys of old school Pact. I really wish we could do this kind of stuff more often, but unfortunately a lot has changed since college, and it's not as easy anymore.
A highlight was watching (and participating in) a pretty strong Wave that went around the lower deck for about 10 minutes, when the Sox were up 8-2 in the 8th inning. Even though the Wave goes against pretty much everything a true fan stands for, it was so hilarious to me in its retardedness, especially in light of the game situation at the time.
Some pics from the game (mouse over for description):
- This week at work has been pretty hectic. At COB (Close Of Business, for those not hip with corporate lingo) last Friday, the USN (United States Navy) annouced that they were awarding the contract for RTC_SS (Reconfigurable Transportable Consolidated Automated Support System) to McDonnell-Douglas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing. For anyone who happens to be interested, a link to the DoD (Department of Defense) announcement follows (see Navy section):
http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/2003/ct20030905.html
RTC_SS was the project I've been working on since around May. Between myself and a lot of people here at NGC-RM (Northrop Grumman Corporation-Rolling Meadows), we spent so much time and effort on preparing to build this thing. It's a weird feeling to know that after all the arguing about the design, the construction of the lab for this station, the stressing out to meet deadlines, all of that became more or less a moot point, summed up in a short paragraph of which all of our combined effort hardly even composed a few words of a press release, "four offers were received".
To me, the loss of this contract doesn't hit terribly hard, because I'm just a little guy. Actually, it probably means that I won't be super busy through the rest of the year, which would have happened if we got the contract. I'd still rather be able to work more extensively on a project, though, and gain some good experience doing so. But for some people here, the announcement was a pretty big blow. Especially to a lot of the contract workers, who were counting on being needed for the duration of the program, they now have a lot of uncertainty. I guess that is the way this industry works... I'm just kind of unaccustomed to the idea that it would be "all-or-nothing" like that.
- In brighter news, I've now been working here for almost a year, and today my boss called me into her office and officially informed me that I should be seeing a 4% raise starting with this week's paycheck. I guess when I think about it, 4% isn't a huge amount, especially after taxes and everything, but hey, I'll take it. I'm just an engineer anyways, not exactly the most glamourous way to get rich quick, right?
- The latest video to dominate my mornings is "Stacy's Mom". At first it was just an annoying little song, but then it was stuck in my head all day at work. I guess I underestimated its catchiness, and it made me pay by creeping into my head and multiplying. Stacy's mom has got it going on........ doo-doo doo do doo do doo doo doooo....
- Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary (is that the right word for a tragedy?) of 9/11. I tend to wonder if the world has succeeded in banding together to become a safer, happier place during these past two years. Or if conditions have actually deteriorated from where they were before, and the terrorists are succeeding in sucking the lifeblood out of this planet.
- A while back I talked about my observation that the words "analysis" and "analog" both begin with the word "anal". If you enjoyed that fact, I have a couple more examples of my immaturity at work to share:
1) There's a maker of electronic connectors called Assmann Electronics. A link to the company site is here for those who don't believe me. Once, when I was looking at some of that company's connectors online with an older engineer, it took every ounce of self-control in my body to avoid busting out laughing at the name. He kept pronouncing it "OSS-MONN", but in my mind, I kept hearing "ass man" and snickering to myself, Beavis and Butthead style. huh-huh... Ass Man.... huh-huh huh-huh
2) One of the products I had to study at work today was called Built-In Test Exerciser and Sensor, better known by its acronym, BITES. That's an actual trademarked name, no joke. Again, for those who doubt me, I'll provide another link here. So anyways, I guess it shouldn't be that funny, but I wasted a good deal of the morning enjoying my own clever thoughts about the irony of the situation - how it was funny to me that spending hours reading up on a product called BITES, indeed bites. I wonder if there are any other products out there called SUCKS or BLOWS, that would be two more mornings I could waste with immature thoughts about such aptly named acronyms.
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