Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for August, 2008
Dexter Season 2
01361 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
![Dexter: Season 2 [Blu-ray]](http://derango.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/6a00c2252137ea8fdb00fa96963e670003.jpg?w=205 "Dexter: Season 2 [Blu-ray]")
I don't watch much TV. Heck, I think I may still be the only person on the planet that doesn't have cable. But I do enjoy a couple shows…mostly Heroes these days. I much prefer watching on DVD to on TV because showing up at a set time every week seems too much like work to me.
However, Wassy recently introduced me to Dexter, a really interesting show from the perspective of a serial killer who's trying to take out other bad people. I never thought that I would identify so much with a serial killer, but…here we are. The writing and acting is just top notch.
So Wassy purchased season 2 on DVD last weekend and watched the whole thing in pretty much 2 days. Then I borrowed it from her and did pretty much the same thing. I NEVER do that. I usually get bored after one or two episodes of sitting there and watching, but that wasn't the case here at all. I even stayed up later than I had expected to because I just hit a critical part in the show and couldn't go to sleep.
Now I need to wait a year for the next DVD to come out :-/
If you've never watched Dexter, I highly, highly recommend going and checking out the DVDs. It's a very excellent show.
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QotD: Habit Forming
01362 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Do you have a habit you wish you could break?
I chew on things. Not my fingernails, but…objects. Any object that happens to be in range and isn't totally disgusting. It happens a lot with pens and combs especially when I'm concentrating on something. I don't realize that I do it, but eventually I suddenly become aware that I'm chewing on my pen or my shirt collar or a hammer. Or something.
It helps a lot if I chew gum, but I can't chew gum all the time, so…look out.
I wish I could break it because (as evidenced by a recent experience of Wassy's) I know I'm in line for a chipped tooth no matter what. It's just a matter of when…
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Limbo
01363 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Nothing much is happening around these parts that's of note. It's kinda like I'm in limbo, just waiting for it to hit this weekend so I can head out to the state fair and give summer the proper goodbye. However there's a couple of random things that are worth mentioning.
First up, I got an extra GB of memory for my laptop. I was having some problems in City of Heroes with my existing 1GB and checked to see how much memory various things were using and it totalled up to something like 1.8GB. Which explains why I was having so many performance issues… So I went over to crucial and picked up a 2GB kit for $40. I got it last night and installed it. Everything is running MUCH smoother now, so that worked out.
Another thing was an expansion in my world of tea. I've been drinking green tea for a while now and I've been happy with that, however, I decided to branch out a bit. So In my latest tea order I picked up a sample of Earl Grey (for Wassy as I don't really enjoy black tea) and some Oolong to try out, as well as a wild strawberry herbal tea that I had last night. The strawberry herbal tea was quite nice. And it seems I can brew a good cup of black tea too as that went over REALLY well.
And a quick one: I tried Sushi for the first time last night. Very tasty although it took me a few bites to get used to it. I think there will be more Sushi in the future.
Is it the weekend yet?
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Culture QotW: At Your Fingertips
01365 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
With the news being so easily available online, do you find yourself purchasing less newspapers and magazines?
I never purchased a newspaper anyway. I was pretty much getting all my news online from the start because when I became more interested in world affairs coincided almost exactly with when the internet started to become more relevant as a news source.
Magazines though, yes. I used to be subscribed to PC Gamer magazine, Maximum PC, as well as Popular Science but I found that while both sources were interesting to read at the time, once the internet came along, the 1-2 month (at the time) lead time for the magazines ended up delivering me news that was really, really old. The value just wasn't there for the price that I was paying, so I let my subscriptions lapse. This mostly applies to PC Gamer and Maximum PC. Popular Science was a magazine that I was subscribed to when I was a little younger.
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Yet Another Weekend Update
01366 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Remember last week when I said I would stop doing these gigantic condensed weekend posts? Well, that'll be starting next week apparently.
Friday
Friday was the day of the company picnic, which I mostly look forward to only because I get paid for going to a park for 4 hours. I'm not a very social creature you see. My mom (for those who don't know she also works here) ended up bringing Beasely (the puppy) along so at least there was something to do for a while. I mostly spent a lot of time wandering around with the dog. Which is a fine conversation started by the way. People always want to know how old she is and such.
The one thing I should mention would be the egg toss contest. These were some really, really tough eggs. People were tossing them straight up in the air as far as they could throw them and they were bouncing when they hit the ground. So needless to say, this event took quite a long time to complete.
By the time we had to leave, I was totally beat and felt just like sleeping when I got home, but I somehow managed to stay awake and get in a little work on my various projects before I realized that I was just too tired to get anything useful done.
Saturday
The main plans for Saturday involved getting together with my friends for general hanging out. We watched some more anime stuff. Ah! My Goddess this time which was pretty good. I can see it has potential for being pretty entertaining. Then some more MST3K and a couple episodes of season 2 of Dexter which were very good. I highly recommend checking out Dexter if you've never seen the show. There was some frozen margarita action going on too, which served to make the suggested Trivial Persuit game later in the evening very entertaining (as per usual with such things). All in all not a lot to discuss but it was very relaxing.
Sunday
Sunday was going to be my serious work day. But first I had to spend an hour in grocery store hell. Seriously, it was every single slow moving and inconsiderate person on the face of the planet. It started out when the deli counter person who was waiting on me couldn't find anything I asked for. And thought that ham (what I didn't want) was turkey (what I did want). It was…not fun. That was followed by getting held up by people who park their carts diagonally across the asile, People who stop at the entrence to every asile in the middle of the store to check their shopping list blocking everyone behind them. The lady who paid by check. The lady with the wad of coupons. The person who wouldn't move their cart so I could start unloading my groceries. And finally, the woman who decided she would wait for her husband to bring the car around by standing in the doorway and parking her cart so nobody could get through. It was not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination.
However, I managed to escape and got home to work on Wassy's website a bit more. I made some pretty good progress before I had exceded my limit for useful time worked and then spent the rest of the evening watching the closing ceremony for the olympics which was…cracked out as per usual. The chinese really do know how to put on a good show though. The amount of planning this must have taken is amazing. I'm really sad to see the olympics go because I thought it was a pretty fun year and a good year for the games in general.
So that was basically my weekend. Hopefully I'll be motivated to split it out to seperate posts next weekend because it's the weekend of the state fair.
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QotD: It Came and Went
01367 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Any last minute summer plans for the weekend?
Not this weekend, but next weekend my friends and I are planning on attending the New York State Fair. That's the last big summer thing that is being planned.
It's been quite an eventful summer. Concerts, Renaissance Festivals (well, only one festival…), visits to parks, lots of outside activities. It has been a very good summer all in all. With very good weather for doing things.
This weekend is going to consist of some general hanging out at my friends place. We were originally intending on going out to Green Lakes state park, however, it's going to be a little too hot out today for that so plans have changed.
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Vox Hunt: Spell Check Anyone?
01369 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Show us a funny news headline.
It's not the headline that's funny…it's the mental image you get. It's just awesome.
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QotD: Feeling Blue
01370 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What is something that can always make you feel better?
Submitted by meehshell
Not to put too fine a point on it, but my friends. I've been lucky enough to have some of the best friends one could possibly hope for. Not those people who run at the first sign of trouble, but those that'll stick around and help you deal with it.
Specifically Wassy. She always seems to know how to make me feel better, no matter what the circumstances are. From just being there to talk to to surprise gifts just at the right moments. I dunno how she does it, it's gotta be some kind of a sixth sense or something.
That's not to say my other friends don't help either. But she always seems to know what to do to cheer me up when I'm feeling down.
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Bubbles Bubbles Everywhere!
01370 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Just a quick post to share a new Betta development! I was hanging out watching the Olympics with Wassy (standard mid week get together) and I looked over at Fish to find that he had constructed his own little bubble nest.
Betta's create bubble nests to hold the eggs after they've been fertilized by the male during breeding. The male takes charge of protecting the eggs in the bubble nest that he creates by taking air from the surface and blowing bubbles to create a collection of bubbles at the surface of the water. Here's what it looks like from the top:
All of those are bubbles of air in the water.
I didn't think Fish would ever make one because the current is a little off. But, I'm glad he did because it means he's a pretty happy little fish and feels comfortable in creating a nest for himself. Unfortunately for him…there aren't going to be any Betta females wandering by that he can ask out.
And The Gold Medal Goes To…
01371 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Don't you hate it when you've taped a sporting event, or even a TV show and you go into work and the first thing somebody says to you is "Man, I can't believe that they lost by that much!!" or "Did you expect joe to die?!?"…and then you sigh heavily and then you sulk off to your desk to try to figure out what you're going to do with all that free time you suddenly have that evening?
Yeah, imagine NBC doing that to their own Olympics coverage.
I was interested to watch the woman's gymnastics individual uneven bar finals last night because it's one of the more interesting pieces of equipment to watch. I knew they were running it tape delay and I knew that I was going to have to be careful with visiting news sites or I might get the results spoiled for me. Wassy already had the results spoiled for her due to MSN having a giant front page banner with the headline and the details (and a button you can click to hide them if you don't want to see them…after you've already seen them).
Unfortunetly, I got the top two places spoiled by an accidental glance at a sidebar box on newsvine.com. And then I went to the NBC Olympics website to check when it would be on and was greeted with a front page story totally spoiling the results. On their website. That you have to go through in order to see the TV schedule so you can watch what they just spoiled.
Arrrgh!! Why do they do things like this?!? If they want to report it fine! But don't use a descriptive headline until AFTER you've broadcast it! "Unusual Ending To Uneven Bars Finals", "Judging Questioned On Uneven Bars", something like that…anything, not exactly what happened! It takes a bit of the suspense out of it. I cannot believe that NBC Olympics.com had a front page story that totally ruined the result of the event they were going to be showing later that night.
Oh, and they did it again for tonights ballance beam finals. Sigh.
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