Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for September, 2007
You're Probably Tired Of Penguins By Now…Well Too Bad!
01694 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Yesterday was definitely action packed. My friend Wassy and I were left alone because my friend Jay went to a LAN party this weekend. I didn't attend because of my desktop computer situation. Namely the total lack of one. Anyway, it wouldn't have been very fun for me to fight with the MacBook all day (and night)
Anyway…the day started early. The plan was to go out to the Syracuse Zoo and pick up my drunken penguin wine holder for my bottle of penguin labeled wine, then wander the Carousel mall for a bit, then head back to her apartment for some music listening, apple crisp baking and general hang-outing. I picked her up at her place and we headed out to Syracuse for a stroll around the zoo.
I had thought that the fact it was a little chilly yesterday morning would prevent as many people from showing up at the zoo with their screaming little kids. Apparently I was wrong. Instead, we ran into an entire tour group of little hooligans and their support staff. Bah! We got some time at the penguin cove alone though, which was nice because it rarely happens.
I know I have like 800 pictures of these penguins up here, so I only posted one additional one. They were all sitting on their rock warming in the Sun. I guess it wasn't warm enough out for them to be swimming all over the place.
After we finished looping around and looking at all the animal type things the zoo had to offer, we hit the gift shop where I was able to purchase my drunken penguin wine holder (pictured to the left) which is absolutely awesome. I need to come up with a better location to put it though now. I'll come up with something.
After that, we went over to the mall to grab lunch and do some shopping. I got to play with the new iPods over at the Apple store for a bit, which was cool, especially the Touch. My friend finally purchased something at William-Sonoma after years of browsing around there. I figured I'd record the occasion here so there's some proof if somebody doesn't believe her when she says she did it.
We were also on the hunt for the Game Cube remake of Resident Evil that my friend thinks that she's going to make me play a lot of. Hah! Anyway, we went two the two Game Craze locations out there and came away empty handed, but hit the jackpot on our way back to her apartment at a local shop Game Nutz (located in the same parking lot as a NASCAR store, it seems. There appeared to be an event happening while we were there).
After swinging by a few local stores to pick up some baking supplies for her (and some apple cider for me…yum) the music listening and baking portion of the day began. She made Apple Crisp with some almond type topping stuff. It was good. We also found some more music type stuff she liked.
All in all, a fun filled, although exhausting day.
Vox Hunt: What The Weekend Holds
01694 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Show us what the weekend has in store for you.
A little too late to show what the weekend holds. How about what it did already:
Yep, I went to the Zoo and picked up my drunken penguins. They're now holding my wine. Woo.
Since I was at the zoo, I snapped a couple of mandatory pictures of animals. So here we go.
I'm too tired to post much more right now though, so a full roundup of today's activities will be forthcoming tomorrow at some point.
3 Hour Classes Should Be Illegal
01697 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Ughh…Last night's World Religion class was fun! We're just starting Hinduism (or what's classified as Hinduism anyway, considering it's a whole lot of more fractured religions under one banner..but I digress) and, as much as I enjoy my professor, she has a problem in that she knows too much.
You might be thinking that this really isn't a problem at all…but, consider also the fact that she also gets off track easily, so she tends to be all over the place during her lecture, going off the specific topic quite often. It's usually pretty interesting offtopic-ness but it inflates her lectures like you wouldn't believe.
It really starts to get annoying when she keeps talking for two and a half hours. With no breaks. Every 20 minutes last night she said "Just a few more slides then I'll give you guys a break.." And eventually, at near 9pm, she did. She was going to give us 20 minutes but she only had 3 more slides of her powerpoint presentation to go through, so we bargined her down to a 5 minute break because, at this point, what the heck is the difference anyway?
But still. Two and a half hours. That's entirely too long. She normally goes for somewhere along the realm of just under 2 hours, which is still too long for my tastes. I dunno about anyone else, but after listening and absorbing stuff for that long, I'm in need of a little break to space things out. I'd learn more if she, say, gave us two ten minute breaks, spaced about an hour apart each for some breathing room. Arrgh!
QotD: U.S. Presidential Debates
01699 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What issues do you look forward to hearing about
in the upcoming U.S. Presidential debates?
What do you mean by "upcoming"? They've been debating since what seems like last year!
Seriously, nothing. Everything said in the debates is a carefully constructed rehearsed statement which tells the viewer nothing except that the candidate has a PR guy. Every politician falls into this trap, making the debates a waste of time, really. Pre-formulated questions with pre-formulated responses (that might not even be related to the actual question) and in the end the pundits debate who "looked" more presidential. They're not even really debates. It's just two (or more) people talking past each other, just brushing the surface and never going into the details.
You know what…I'm going to go as far as to say that televised debates are the worst thing that's ever happened to the political process in this nation. It causes too much emphasis on presentation and not enough on the actual content of the message which is the important thing. If you don't come across well on TV or had a bad makeup job or something, boom, that's it. You're written off as being "not presidential" even if you were the guy with the best ideas and the ability to make it work.
But if you really want to know what I'm most interested in hearing some straight talk about, it would be mostly Iraq. I'd like to know what the candidate's plans are for getting out of there in a controlled fashion that's not going to cause any more harm than we already have. I'd also like to know if anybody else has plans for attempting to take it upon themselves to spread democracy around the globe (aka, Iran) because I'd like to know who not to vote for. Narrow the field down a bit. And people wonder why the US isn't viewed favorably outside it's borders…sheesh.
Man, it's been a ranty couple weeks around here.
Vox Hunt: Extra Extra!
01699 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Show us where you go to read the latest headlines.
I usually use Newsvine for all of my headline reading needs. I like it because it pulls from the AP for it's main content along with user generated stories. Users can also place seeds on the vine, meaning linking to other stories on different sites they thought were interesting enough to share.
I really enjoy it because of the (mostly) intelligent user debate. You can count on interesting comments on news stories, assuming that a story has enough interest. Also the stories that get commented on are a good indicator that this is something important to read, helping to sift through the large amounts of uninteresting stuff that comes through.
Continual Addiction
01702 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I thought I had escaped it's clutches! I was home free…running away from the horrible addiction, but then it pulled me back in.
Yes, that's right…I started playing Peggle again.
Well, I bought the Orange Box from Valve so I could play Team Fortress 2 (which rocks, by the way…very fun) and it included a free extra: Peggle Extreme. A Half Life 2 themed version of Peggle. Well, I was playing that and after it was over, the urge bit me again…
And then here we are. Addicted again. Bah! I'm not going to get anything done this weekend…which is bad because I actually have to do some schoolwork before my World Religions class Wednesday.
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QotD: Fall Films
01703 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Which new movies are you looking forward to seeing this fall?
I couldn't think of any new movies that were coming out that I was interested in seeing, so I actually looked up a list of new releases. Nothing. From here until the end of the year there's no movies I'm interested in seeing.
And based on the standard cycle of movie-goodness…there's going to be nothing new I'm going to be checking out in the theater until next summer. Fun. At least I've got my Netflix.
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Rant: Charitable Giving
01703 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Ah…fall. Leaves falling from the trees, kids going back to school, relief from the hot summer temperatures (sorta)…All good things. Of course, it also means the beginning of the annual charity fund raising drive. I want to preface this rant by stating that I have no problems giving to charity. The specific charity in question does lots of really good stuff to help the community. It's just the way the fund raiser drive is handled here. I want to repeat again that any cynicism you detect here is not because I don't believe that people aren't going to benefit from contributions. Heck, if they just passed the forms out I'd probably donate more money per year. But…read on.
My current place of employment is a trend setter organization, meaning we have our fund raising drive first. This usually involved having a mandatory meeting where you would go in the morning to listen to a representative of the organization talk, as well as a guest speaker who attempts to make people part with more of their money by explaining exactly what they did with the funds. After this you were given out your donation forms and told to turn them back in by the end of the day. Cut to one year ago. Instead of having the meeting in the morning, it was turned into a mandatory catered lunch/meeting and you had to turn in your forms before you went back to work. This irked me because I prefer to use my lunch to get away from people and to relax during the day. Not listen to what amounts to a sales pitch, usually the same one I heard last year (again, I know that this charity does good things for people).
This year takes the cake though. Not only were we expected to go to a lunch/meeting, we were expected to drive to another office to do it. This was the last straw for me. I'm not going to drive out to a different city (wasting gas mind you) to hear the same speech I've heard for 4 years now. I ended up using some vacation time to take the afternoon off, which was handy because I needed to do some homework anyway.
I should also point out that 100% participation is also pushed…heavily. One year, I was late handing in my form, so they sent out a memo listing the people who hadn't turned in their forms yet. To the entire office. Nothing like a little public humiliation in the morning. The feeling is that if you value your job, you should probably donate. Oh, and the prize for 100% participation? A Pizza Party. Yup. Pizza Party. What are we, in elementary school?
I don't mind giving to charity. I mind it when it's pushed onto me as something I have to do. If they just handed out the forms without the rest of this junk, I'd give more money each year. I just don't think it's any business of my employer to tell me "you're going to donate to this charity!"
Ok, rant off…sigh. If you excuse me, I need to find my checkbook.
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QotD: Banned From the Karaoke List
01705 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What song do you wish would never show up on a karaoke list?
The absolute worst song I've ever had to sing Karaoke to was Aretha Franklyn's "A Natural Woman".
You know the one. "You make me feel…like a natural woman…". It was horrible.
It was during one of the Karaoke Revolution matchups that occasionally I have with Wassy. She made me sing it because I kept beating her at the other songs.
"I Will Always Love You" is another song I could do without…
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