create your own south park character
http://images.southparkstudios.com/games/create/
'nuff said.
Happy Halloween!
Sex ID
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/index_cookie.shtml
There is a cool little quiz that will determine how masculine or feminine your brain functions are.
What do you score?
Start up Sound
http://prangstgrup.com/startupsound/
That is the best laugh I've had in a while.
By the way, I have a mailing list where we send funny stuff like this.
If you would like to subscribe, send an email to;
stuff-request@disturbed.org
with a subject of subscribe.
Warrant for Tom DeLay's Arrest
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4358830.stm
The House Majority Leader Tom Delay has had a warrant issued for his arrest. Pretty funny.. The squeaky clean Republican party isn't so squeaky clean after all.
weather, cycling, and school
I like the weather we're having. As Lori and I drove around this evening it was between 71 and 67. If only that temperature was there withouth the rain I could ride my bike. Sure, I can ride my bike in the rain and wet, but it makes my bike a mess, which is a living hell to clean up. All that sand mixed with water gets in the drivetrain. Speaking of which, I haven't been good about riding my bike the last couple weeks. I need to get better at that.
So I had my first day of school today. University of Phoenix Online offers to "walk you to class" on your first day. For some reason that's just hilarious to me.. So let me give you the overview of how this works. You post to a newsgroup twice a week to count as attendance. Then the instructor sets their limits for participation posts. For instance, my instructor is requiring 2 posts on 4 days per week. The participation counts for attendance. The last week of the class there is no participation required, just any random two attendance posts. I have multiple papers to write individually and in groups, and two discussion questions I must answer per week. Apparently some classes include discussion question replies as participation, but this one doesn't. I also need to do reading as is expected in any college class anywhere. It all seems pretty straightforward so far, but it will no doubt get interesting once the group work starts.
Bill O'Reilly is on the Daily Show right now and I have to say this is hilarious. Not quite Jon Stewart on CNN funny, but pretty hilarious.
cool list
The 100 oldest domains;
http://www.jottings.com/100-oldest-dot-com-domains.htm
dback haters
So I got an email tonight from the Diamondbacks thanking me for watching them this year. Very nice. What I thought was hilarious was how it was signed;
Sincerely,
Shawn Green - #15
Luis Gonzalez - #20
Chad Tracy - #18
Bob Melvin - Manager
Tony Clark - #34
Troy Glaus - #25
Craig Counsell - #4
Does that mean the rest of the team doesn't appreciate me showing up? =)
I know I boo'ed the pitchers a few times, but come on guys.. no hard feelings!
it's times like these you learn to live again
The Foo Fighters are blasting and I'm in a good mood. The lyrics from their song "Times Like These" that is currently playing are the topic of today's post.
I just made one of the easiest dinners
ever. I bought one of those microwavable pouches of rice, you just rip
the top open and cook it for 90 seconds. Then I cooked a can of corn
while I defrosted some shrimp under water. Then I mixed it all up and
added soy sauce. As Emeril might say, BAM! I even have some leftovers.
So I am all set up for school to start tomorrow. I am enrolled at University of Phoenix in the Bachelor of Science in Business Management program. My first class is "Skills for Professional Development" which seems to be a welcome back to school, here is what you forgot and here is how to go to school on the Internet class. I've been online this evening reading the syllabus and assignments while adding the applicable due dates in to my palm. None of the work looks that tough, there just seems to be quite a bit of it. We'll see once I actually get in to it.
For the geeks among you, you're pretty much stuck with Windows here. The class discussion/interaction seem to be mostly done in news groups which look completely NNTP compliant, so no Windows needs there. For writing papers and using their website you need MS Office and some Internet Explorer specific javascript requiring you to sport some MS OS.
While looking at some stuff earlier today I downloaded the OpenOffice 2.0 RC3. wow. This looks like a very viable drop-in for Microsoft Office. This thing has come a long way since it was first made open source. The State of Massachusetts (and multiple European countries) recently announced they were getting rid of Microsoft Windows in favor of the completely free Linux and OpenOffice. I thought they were being a little overzealous with the OpenOffice, but I take it all back. I am really impressed. Unfortunately the MacOS Release Candidates aren't out for 2.0 yet so I can't take full advantage over there. I don't have MS Office on that machine, so I'll plan on using OpenOffice on that machine now.
It's good to see free software make an impact like this.
life sucks
So three Sundays ago I wrote a blog entry about being unhappy.
What happened you might have asked?
Well, after my bike ride I put my bike on top of the car and drove home right into the garage.
Total damage;
Car - $1800
Bike - $2500
Rack - $400
House - $50
The two upsides to the mess were that my rental car was a new Pathfinder, which was fun to drive, and I got a nicer bike.
I ended up paying out $1500 in deductibles to two insurance companies to clean up the mess.
That's kind of when things went downhill. I got distracted from work dealing with insurance companies, getting my car fixed, and buying a new bike. At the beginning of October one of my co-workers left our department and I picked up the majority of his work. So now I'm behind because of the accident and have a ton more work. Not a good situation.
Then Lori and I went to California for a vacation last weekend. I think that trip is probably the only reason I'm not a stressed out mess right now. We had a really good time in Anaheim at Disneyland and California Adventure. I have to admit, Disneyland is not something I'll probably return to unless there are kids involved. It's smaller and less exciting than it was as a kid. Thankfully I had good company. I'd never been to California Adventure before, so that was a fun time. It was more adult oriented and I had a better time there. Lori was amazing as she had hurt her ankle before the trip and still managed to walk around for two days. I'm pretty good with pain and I don't even know if I could have dealt with it that well.
So this week I've worked too much. I just finished up an 11 hour day. I hate that. There is light at the end of the tunnel though, so by the end of next week I should have things a bit more under control.
I feel like I let my home life slip when I have weeks like this. I haven't had time to spend with Lori the last few days, the laundry is piling up, the kitchen is a mess, the garbage didn't make it to the street this morning. Thankfully weeks like this are few and far between. Serves me right for driving in to the garage with my bike on the car.
And for those interested, here is the new steed;
For the bike snobs, it actually has dura-ace cranks instead of the FSA pictured there. I also moved my ultegra pedals and fizik aliante saddle over.
Of course, pictures of the crash are in my gallery at;
http://www.disturbed.org:8888/pictures/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=crash
So there you have it.. that's what I've been up to.
Oh yeah, and I start school on Tuesday. Scary, but exciting.