CTHB: May 2002 Archives

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May 29, 2002

Parking the Car

I'm still trying to puzzle out how this was done. I don't think it's real, because I would think that the strike to the car would have left structural damage that isn't evident as it settles down in its spot. My best guess right now is bluescreen technology and creative camera panning.

Courtesy of Michael, through the office grapevine.

Update: It's from "Shaolin Soccer," a thoroughly silly film from Hong Kong starring Stephen Chow.

Update: And it was composited digitally.

Posted by KinCross at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2002

Your RPG life will never be the same...

After a round with this game, I think just about anything will look better. Check out the sixth file in the download section for the random effects after the character sheets.

Posted by KinCross at 03:05 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2002

Working on that telekinesis thing

I want a light sabre. I'd probably just use it to fish stuff out from under the bed, but... hold on, I need to wipe up some drool.

This is one of those really illogical "I want" things. I have absolutely no use for it and don't ever plan to dress up like a Star Wars anything, but this is just cool tech. Okay, now I want a long and a short one so I can do some funk ass samurai thing for Halloween.

Posted by KinCross at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

Gift Registry for Julia and Lou

They're big Final Fantasy X fans. Maybe they'd like a pair of Tidus' pants.

Courtesy of Lesley.

Posted by KinCross at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

A DJ and some David Blaine

David Blaine Randomly, here is a picture of DJ Hyland, with a little bowl of cream or custard, after getting nailed by a birthday chorus over the weekend.

Plus, while walking home from work yesterday -- more accurately, walking cross-town to Port Authority to catch the bus across the Hudson -- I stumbled across the David Blaine stunt in Bryant Park where he jumped into a mass of boxes from a really high pole. I like David Blaine, or at least I like his magic. I was told by a coworker who knows an ex-girlfriend of his that he's rather full of himself, but I've never met the guy, so who knows? Anyway, David Blaine's got some awesome magic. Alas, I was more interested in the Law & Order season finale than I was with watching the magic show on ABC, so I missed out on all but one of his tricks and didn't catch the actual jump from the pole into the boxes. However, I managed to snap a few pictures about five hours before he took his dive.

Posted by KinCross at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2002

Still haven't seen it

Makes me wish I'd gone to see the movie on opening night with a Pets.com sock puppet, though.

Courtesy of Mata (and Conan O'Brien).

Update: Okay, so it's Triumph and not the Pets.com sock puppet.

Posted by KinCross at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

Let the circus begin anew

They found a body in DC. They think it might be Chandra Levy. Of course, so early in the investigation, it's all speculation, but they're reporting it as if it's news.

Posted by KinCross at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

Cuz Julia asked for it...

1. My name is -- secret asIAN man.
2. I may seem -- flippant and inattentive.
3. But I'm really -- too sleep-deprived to care.
4. People who know me think I'm -- not living up to my potential.
5. If you knew me you'd probably -- want me to get off my ass and follow through with my dreams.
6. Sometimes I feel -- like I've lost any passion I had for anything.
7. In the morning I -- really loathe to get out of bed.
8. I like to sleep -- as much as I can, but can't get to bed early enough to sleep as much as I need.
9. If I could be doing anything right now I would be -- massaging suntan oil onto gorgeous female bodies.
10. Money is -- a means to an end.
11. One thing I wish I had is -- a higher Willpower stat.
12. One thing I have that I wish I didn't is -- debt.
13. All you need is -- a positive self-image.
14. All I need is -- to clear myself of debt.
15. If I had one wish it would be -- to live a Chairman Kaga lifestyle (maybe without the frilly outfits).
16. Love is -- overhyped and misunderstood.
17. My body -- would look so cool "dead" on Law & Order, but it could still use a little more exercise.
18. If an angel flew into my window at night I would -- have to reconsider my religious beliefs.
19. If a demon crashed into my window I would -- have to call the super in the morning to get it fixed.
20. If I could see one person right now it would be -- my bride-to-be. I don't have a fiancee, but if I could see her now, I'd at least know who she is.
21. Something I want but I don't really need is -- a car.
22. Something I need but I don't really want is -- self-control over spending.
23. I live for -- a new taste experience.
24. I dare you all to -- say nice things to random people.
25. I am afraid of -- failure.
26. It makes me angry when -- my fears prevent me from acting to bringing about change.
27. I dream about -- getting enough sleep to actually have dreams that can be remembered.
28. I daydream about -- hot Latin booty.

Courtesy of Dazz.
--------

Posted by KinCross at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2002

More Ogle.com

By the by...

Registrant:
OGLE cg/fa (OGLE-DOM)
P.O. Box 2061
Mill Valley, CA 94942
US

Domain Name: OGLE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Abouaf, Jeffrey (JA12651) jabouaf@DNAI.COM
OGLE cg/fa
P.O. Box 2061
Mill Valley , CA 94942
415-388-3100
Technical Contact:
XO Communications, Hostmaster (CNCXCH-ORG) hostmaster@XOHOST.COM
XO Communications
1400 Parkmoor Ave
San Jose, CA 95126
USA
408-817-2800
Fax- 408-817-2810

Record expires on 19-May-2010.
Record created on 18-May-1995.
Database last updated on 21-May-2002 15:54:06 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.CNCHOST.COM 207.155.248.5
NS2.CNCHOST.COM 207.155.252.5

Posted by KinCross at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

Ogle.com

Looks like Google is doing something to change its corporate presence or is just having a little fun with itself. Whatever it is, they managed to get Scott Adams in on the stunt, so all this week, you get to see the Dilbert characters mucking around with the Google brand name.

"We could drop the first two letters."
"That's a no go idea."

Posted by KinCross at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2002

Breaking New Habits

It's been just over two months since I came back from Hong Kong and I've only now kicked the habit of wanting to feed my Metrocard through the exit turnstiles. It's interesting, really, how I can spend three weeks in HK and get so accustomed to the way their subway system works, that I would have trouble with my own.

In Hong Kong, you swipe your card (branded an "Octopus" card for reasons that I didn't find out) both when you enter and when you exit. The fare you pay depends on the distance between your stops. In New York, you swipe you Metrocard once when you enter and it's a flat fare systemwide. On average, the HK ride was cheaper than a NY ride and the stations and trains were significantly more pleasant. I'll bitch about the NY subway system some other time, like when it's 100 F outside and 110 F inside with 110% humidity.

I rode the subway so much in HK that the process burned itself in my mind and every time I left a subway station in NY when I got back, I would reach for my pocket for my card and be forced to check myself. The fact that I probably rode the subway more in three weeks in HK than the previous six months in NY probably accounted for much of it.

Along the same vein of reverse culture shock, I had an odd little time of getting used to TV ads when I got back, as well.

There is a decidedly different style to ads in HK, brought about by a more European structure to broadcasting and the differences in language. Pretty much every night we were there the TV was on. There are very few stations -- four, compared to the seventy or so that I get with cable -- and a very limited pool of commercials, which means we saw the same ones over and over again.

I can still hear the odd mix of Cantonese and English in the Orange advert for some cellular promo. I keep expecting to hear the kids talking about what a box could be in the Discovery Bay (a new real estate development) could be.

Posted by KinCross at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)

The road comes to an end

Done. Three days, five slots. GM'ed one and played in four. It was a fun time, with the last one probably being my favourite. It was great to see all the people again, but the weekend was too short.

Posted by KinCross at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2002

The road is black

I'm out for the weekend, starting now. Going to The Black Road for a gaming weekend up in Marlborough, MA. See you all on the other end.

Posted by KinCross at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

Hi, you've just been busted

Local radio station KTU (103.5 FM) has this bit that they do in the morning based on this craze over prank calls. They call theirs the Ball Buster and it's done by one of the DJ's, Balthazar. Now, this guy sounds familiar and I could have sworn I heard him over on Z100 (100.3 FM) a few months back doing it under a different title, Nutcracker. Anyway, it was infrequent on Z100 but it's daily on KTU. The basic premise is that someone calls in and asks him to do a Ball Buster on someone they know. Play a practical joke on my friend on morning radio, basically.

Yesterday, I heard one that really made me scratch my head. It's not that it was funny, because he's had some pretty good success ripping into some people in the past, but the thing that came up yesterday just sounded like an incredibly stupid thing to do on the part of the person commissioning the Ball Buster. The victim was a college student. The instigator was her roommate. Apparently, this college student had purchased a term paper in macroeconomics off the Internet and submitted it. The instigator had Balthazar call up the victim pretending to be the Dean's Office busting her for submitting a paper from the Internet.

Okay, sure, maybe that's all in good fun and it sounded like the victim was laughing it off when she found out it was just a joke, but...

The poetic justice vigilante in me wants some administrator from this girl's college hear that on the radio, check in on the open confession that she made on-air, and bust her ass. Boy, wouldn't that roommate feel like a real dipshit then...

Posted by KinCross at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)

Our President, Bush

With a name like that, you might wish that he'd be forward thinking enough to announce a national Orgasm Day, but who are we kidding? This is a guy that chokes on a pretzel.

On a related note... damn, I love those Brazilians.

Courtesy of Bazima (which sounds like vagina).

Posted by KinCross at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2002

That 90% Feeling

You know that feeling, the one where you're not quite all there and you can feel it slipping from your grasp as you descend from Healthy to just plain Sick.

I think mine started on Wednesday, when I was locked up in an alternatingly cold and hot server room -- cold and hot because we had to periodically turn the A/C on to keep the computers from melting and then turn it off when the hairs on our genitals started to get rigid. I think I was too tired the next day to notice, since I left the client -- I think I'll start codenaming my clients; this one's called The Skittles -- around 5:00 a.m., stopped by Koreatown for some food on the way home, got home, showered up, and went right back to work for 8:30. Needless to say, I was a walking zombie for the rest of the day, but I scored a comp day on Friday.

I finally got some rest Thursday evening and hopped out to Fall River, MA, for the monthly Feng Shui gaming session, albeit after making an emergency run to the grocery store to buy the kittens some food. Friday, it wasn't so bad, but I started to get that runny nose with acid snot feeling. Saturday, it got a little worse. I thought it might've been allergies at first so I sucked down some Travist, and that seemed to help a bit but it put me to sleep. By the time I was on my way home to Hoboken, again by way of a stop in Koreatown for food in the middle of the night, I was beginning to feel pretty bad.

Sunday was all about the headache, the general achiness of the body, and the sore throat. And about watching Ottawa not holding onto its early lead against Toronto, forcing a Game 7.

Today, the nose is still running, the sore throat's died down, but now I'm coughing.

Some people get sick like gas barbeques. It comes, it's hot for a little while, it goes away. I get sick like a charcoal grill. It's slow to start, burns hot for awhile, and then lingers on into the night. At least I haven't been getting acute bronchitis like I did in college. One year it stayed with me through three different cycles of antibiotics and two months.

Anyway, I've lost that healthy feeling and I'm just wondering if or when it's going to get bad enough for me to just call it quits and go home.

On a side note, I discovered a new dish that I really liked in Koreatown this weekend, which is the best place to go for that late night munchies fix. They're opened 24 hours, y'see, and when the buses stop running at 1 a.m. and my only choice to get home is a cab or the PATH, well, it's an easy sell to go down to Herald Square, grab that late night Kimchi Jigae, and then hope the PATH across the Hudson. This weekend, though, feeling a little under the weather, I tried out something called Hae Mool Dol Sot Bap, which ended up being a varied assortment of seafood chunks (mussels, scallops, shrimp, etc) over rice in a hot iron pot. It was very hearty and a most excellent meal. There was also enough of it that I actually bagged something to take home with me, which hasn't happened in a long time.

Posted by KinCross at 07:40 AM | Comments (0)

Gimme a Volvo

Ah, Maggie and Elston, you're going to hate me, but there are a bunch of pictures of really nice cars that are all busticated.

Courtesy of B3TA.

Posted by KinCross at 07:26 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2002

Clue: got one or looking for one?

I'll let you make your own judgements about the following two petitions, but I suspect that you won't have to think very hard on it.

Rename "The Two Towers" to Something Less Offensive Petition
Keep the Film Title "The Two Towers" Petition

As of this posting, the latter was leading the former by a roughly 8 to 3 margin.

Courtesy of Mata.

Posted by KinCross at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

Shitty Shitty, uh, Morning

It's 2:08 a.m. as I begin to write this post and it's been, well, it's only been two hours and eight minutes of this particular day, technically. Of course, it was preceded by a day that sucked the big round ones.

I'd almost say that it started off nicely, since the beginning of the work day wasn't bad, but that's probably because I forgot about the part where I slept through my alarm. That in itself is not a bad thing because I can usually sleep through my alarm and still have enough time to get ready and get out the door and get to work on time.

But not today.

I found out later something was going on at the UN today, so there was all sorts of traffic disruption going on. I suppose that might explain why I spent an hour waiting in tunnel traffic and didn't arrive at work until 9:15, some 45 minutes late. At least the oatmeal was good (and free).

The morning went by uneventfully. I met with a project manager about one of the projects I'm on that's in a holding pattern right now. I looked over a bunch of things regarding another client where I'm managing support for them and was hacking away happily at documentation for the better part of the morning. Or, at least as happily as you can be when you're doing documentation.

But it all starts so innocently: "Ian, are you busy?"

Head goes up and around and there's the aforementioned project manager. "Well, I was working on some documentation."

"Could you do me a favour?" Uh oh.

"I guess so. What is it?"

"Client_Name's accounting server went down yesterday. Could you go take a look?" Oh shit.

That was around... 11:15 a.m. I grabbed lunch on my way out to flag a cab, which was how I found out about the UN and traffic patterns as my curmudgeonly cabbie was so fond of telling me why he hated his day.

I've been here now for... 15 hours. I'm 2 hours into my third consecutive work day without breaks, unless you count the time waiting for things to happen, like this backup tape reading the files so I can tell it to restore them.

Ottawa lost 2-1 against Toronto tonight, tying the series up at 2-2 with the game going back to Toronto on Friday. sigh

At least the end is moderately in sight for tonight. I know what has worked and what hasn't and I know what has to be done in the morning. The bad news is the system is still down. The good news is as soon as the accounting depertment decides how far back they want to go to recover their files, we know what has to be done to bring them back online. At best, though, it'll be lunch before they can work.

And I ran out of hair gel this morning.

And I didn't get to grab that haircut I was going to get.

And I had to cancel out on seeing Spiderman with Jeanne.

And I still don't have that cute paralegal's phone number.

And now, I hope, for the fifth time, this msdb database will restore from tape.

It did.

Rock on.

I can go home, now.

Or maybe go back to the office and sleep under my desk.

This, my friends, is my glamourous life. All I can say is, "It hurts while it happens, but damn does it feel good when it stops."

Posted by KinCross at 12:08 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2002

The greatest thing about New York

On the topic of food, I just wanted to say to anyone who's planning to visit New York. The sights are fine, but honestly, if you're just hitting the McDonald's for your meals while you're here, you are missing out on what is probably New York's greatest asset: the incredibly diverse and excellent dining experience. From the inexpensive diners and delis to the bank-breaking restaurants like the Russian Tea Room, you really have to just try all of the varied cuisines available here that you will likely never see anywhere else in North America.

Posted by KinCross at 06:48 AM | Comments (0)

A new approach to shrimp

Yeah, go figure, I'm going to talk about food, one of my favourite topics. Last night, as I was coming home, I walked by Kodama Sushi on 8th Avenue and got a hankering for some sushi. Alright, it's not hard for me to get a hankering for sushi, but I was resisting in the interests of my wallet. Anyway, I broke down and went in. Rather than go nuts on a platter, ordered a few rolls instead: California, negihama (yellowtail and scallions), and spicy tuna. That was a pretty decent meal and I was happy with it, but when I was done, I happened to glance at the specials board and they had something called botan ebi (large sweet shrimp). Well, it looked awfully tempting since I love ama ebi (sweet shrimp) and so I figured I'd drop the extra $3 for it. It was fantastic. The raw shrimp nigiri was blissfully sweet and not as pasty in texture as ama ebi can be. The kicker, though, was that the nigiri wasn't all there was too it. The nigiri was made from the shrimp's tail as most shrimp sushi is, but they also lightly battered up the torso of the shrimp and fried it up. Man, that was good. It was sorta like soft shell crab in taste and texture, though a little crunchier than the crab. All in all, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Posted by KinCross at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)

Which Episode II character are you?

According to this test, I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi. Guess I ought to start staking out the prime cave-dwellings now.

Courtesy of Top Banana.

Posted by KinCross at 06:38 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2002

"Who's your prisoner? Who's your prisoner?"

Probably the funniest thing I've heard since Joey Paesan's Switches. I believe the woman making the call is Wanda Sykes, a comedian.

"I'll lick you cross-eyed."

Courtesy of Davezilla, by way of Xkot.

Posted by KinCross at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2002

One step up the pyramid

It's done. The conference quarterfinals have Carolina, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal as winners in the East and Detroit, Colorado, San Jose, and St. Louis in the West. The second round starts tonight and I just can't wait.

Last year, Toronto eliminated Ottawa in the first round in just four games. I'm looking to return the favour this year, sending the Leafs to the golf courses early.

I also want to see St. Louis beaten down like nobody's business.

Sentimental favourites for this round: Ottawa and Montreal in the East, Detroit and Colorado in the West.

Posted by KinCross at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)

Can you feel my kung fu?

My favourite is the first one:

Barbarian Twist of the Unjust Monkeys
Cerulian Sacrifice of the Loves
Claw of Imperial Saviors
Fatal Uncounted Automatons Stretch
Fox's Spin of the Blessed Teeth
Grab of Variable Obedient Hawks
One Million Unwise Flames Press
Profane Tackle of the Demon
Southwestern Touch of the Ant
Twelve Innocent Orbs Thrust

Make your own with the Martial Arts Move Generator!

Courtesy of William A. Peterson.

Posted by KinCross at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)