Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for August, 2007
People With No Common Sense
01725 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I don't believe I've mentioned this, but I'm back at school for another fun semester. Two classes this time…Software Engineering (my last programming related requirement) and World Religions (a course just for the credits). World Religions was tonight.
During the break in the course, I was wandering around campus and saw this sign for the college anime club…
I would like to draw your attention to the first bullet point listed here. Now…I dunno about you, but I'm not sure I'd be advertising the fact that your club has over 750 Gigs of pirated Japanese animation movies/shows just sitting on a hard drive someplace. Especially not on a campus that's patrolled by actual police officers.
Just doesn't seem the smartest thing to do…
QotD: I'm A Completist
01726 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by dutterman.
Yep. I do for a bunch of groups actually.
- Dream Theater (of course)
- Spock's Beard
- Ayreon
- Transatlantic
- Liquid Tension Experiment
- OSI
- Symphony X
- Trans-Siberian Orchestra
And I'm trying to complete my collection of Porcupine Tree albums, but there's a TON of them because Steven Wilson enjoys taking all of my money.
QotD: Book Recommendations
01727 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Where do you get recommendations for new books to read?
This is one of the hardest things (for me anyway) about being an avid reader. Looking for new books to read. I'm constantly struggling to find good recommendations.
I mostly enjoy fantasy/science fiction based novels when I'm feeling in the mood for some fiction and there's a TON of crap out there in the category. It's really hard for me to sift through that. Amazon.com's recommendation system is generally pretty accurate when it comes to narrowing down what I might like and what I won't, although it's not infallable. I turn to message board threads a lot for ideas too. For example, I learned about A Song of Ice and Fire based on a thread on the mikeportnoy.com forums, I believe.
Friends are also a good place to turn, when tastes overlap. For example, I'm reading the Xanth books because a friend recommended them.
When I'm in the mood for non-fictiony things, a lot of the books I read are based on (and this is sorta sad in a way I guess) the interviews they do on The Daily Show and The Cobert Report. If they're talking about a book that seems interesting and the author doesn't sound like a total bore, I'm more likely to pick up that book later on. I don't grab every book that they talk about, and I also usually check reviews before reading them since having a TV interview doesn't necessarily mean they're a good author…but generally that system has worked out well for me. Web forums also play a role here too.
QotD: If I Had Guaranteed Success…
01727 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could never fail?
Submitted by BeckyPink.
If I knew there was absolutely no way I could fail, I'd drop everything right now and turn towards a career as a professional musician. I keep flopping back and forth as to which instrument I would learn, but…hey, this is a "never fail" scenario right? I'd play everything!
It just feels like an interesting thing to do. You get to travel around all over, meet interesting people…contribute creatively to the collective mass of human culture. That kinda stuff. It's just too risky to really consider trying without knowing that there's no way I could fail at doing it. Especially when you consider I really can't play anything at the moment…
Over A Year Later…
01728 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I just realized that I've been working on this blog for over a year. My first post was August 13th 2006 and I've been continuiously posting ever since. This is a total shock to me…I thought I'd get tired of doing this after a couple weeks.
And now look at me…still going over a year later.
I celebrated by baking some oatmeal cookies that smell, look and taste like oatmeal cookies should. Go me!
Stupid Power Outages…
01729 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I had yesterday all planned out. I was going to go out and see if I could located something to prevent my fish from being sucked up into the filter again as well as a few more books and a shower head…It was a very eclectic shopping trip you see. After that I had one activity planned and that was to watch Apollo 13. I haven't seen it in a while and I've never seen it in widescreen with 5.1 sound and it's one of my favorite movies, so I got it from netflix and was going to watch it.
I left here around noon, got back around 2-3 and just as I was getting ready to start the movie a huge storm came through through. Sheets of rain, lots of wind, the works. Just as the storm died down the power flickered and died.
Crap.
I started reading one of the books I bought (Centaur Aisle…part of the Xanth series) and after a half hour I called the power company. Their automated message said that they were going to have the power back by 5:45pm, so I figured I'd tough it out . 5:45 passes and still no power. By this time I've read about 50 pages into my book, played several games of solitaire and installed the new shower head. Therefore I was running out of stuff to do.
I went over to my parents for some food since my stove refuses to work with no power and they have a gas grill over there and to play a game of Monopoly which I lost very quickly. Stupid Railroads…
After that I went over to some friends who had power to escape for a bit because the power company was giving a 6am estimate. And then I got home from there and the power was back on, but the internet was dead. Arrgh! Thankfully it's all working now.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need go watch a movie before the power goes out again.
Vox Hunt: Who?
01730 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Show us an owl.
Here's the freakiest looking owl ever from the National Zoo in Washington DC
QotD: Drivin' & Talkin'
01731 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Should driving while talking on a cell phone be outlawed?
Submitted by Soup.
I'm a bit conflicted about this one. First up, perspective. I live in New York, so I'm in one of those states that does actually
ban cell phone use while driving without the use of a handsfree device. Occasionally I do answer my phone while driving, but I'm never talking very long.
On one hand, I've seen plenty of moronic cell phone toting drivers not paying attention to the road. But, then again I've also see plenty of moronic non-cell phone carrying drivers who weren't paying attention to the road either. I understand that it can be distracting, but I'm also a little worried about what else the government might decided to make a law against. Changing the radio station is distracting. Talking to a passenger…also distracting. Reading roadside advertisements…distracting. Where does one draw the line on what's too distracting and what isn't? Most states, I'd assume, even already have laws that say the police can pull you over anyway if you're doing something stupid, like putting on makeup or reading the newspaper while trying to drive.
But, then again, it's a public safety thing for the protection of other people on the road which I can't really complain about. So I'm not totally against it. I'm just a little concerned about where the line of what's banned and what isn't is going to move in the future. I also think the government has more important things to do with it's time…
The Great Fish Escape
01732 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Well, I almost lost another Zebra Danio this morning. Well…more accurately last night.
Last night I was working on the weekly (well, at that point weekly + 1 day) aquarium cleaning. Changing out the water, sucking up the crap in the gravel, that kinda stuff. It had been about a month since I last cleaned out the filter so I figured I should probably do that. My filter has a little basket thing that contains all of the sponges and gravely stuff that does it's cleaning magic. So I took that out while leaving the filter still running since it's a pain in the butt to unplug it all the time. So I pulled the basket out, cleaned out the stuff and put it back in…no problem, filter still works, all that stuff. I re-fill the tank, and then I went to bed.
Cut to this morning…I went to feed the fish and I noticed that I seem to only have two Zebra Danio's left instead of the three I was expecting. After looking around the tank for a bit, I decided to check the filter. I opened it up and started to pull the basket out. When it was about halfway out of the filter I see a danio make a flying leap out of the back of the filter and behind the tank. I watched horrified for a moment as it started flopping around and then I frantically tried to find something to pick it up with since it wasn't in an easy to reach location.
My plan was to grab a paper plate and try to get the fish to flop onto that so I could deposit it back into the tank. By the time I grabbed a plate though, the fish had already flopped off of my counter and onto the floor near my computer desk. I dove over there, and tried to get it to jump onto the plate but it wasn't cooperating. I ended up making a grab for it's back fin, pinched it between two fingers and quickly snapped it up and dropped it back into the tank.
He seems to be doing fine at the moment…but I'll have to see if the stress freaked him out too much or something. As near as I can tell, he got sucked up into the filter while I was cleaning it. Oops.
I Love cdbaby.com
01733 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I ordered some CDs from cdbaby.com this morning. It's a really nice store for independent and/or smaller bands. There's a ton of crap on there, but there's also some hidden gems if you wade through it all. Anyway, a band called Melodramus caught my attention over there so I nabbed their CD.
I love their shipping confirmation e-mail. It's one of the reasons I keep ordering from them:
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Wednesday, August 22nd.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh…
–
Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
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