Personal Dork Assistant

Isn't it ironic that the

Isn't it ironic that the leading lady in The Queen of the Damned is dead? Yeah, so I'm only the 29,198,191,382th person to notice that.

Yet more evidence that it's

Yet more evidence that it's all about the swag. The new iMac comes with a soft grey cloth for polishing the 15" LCD monitor. After spending $1800, before taxes, for a computer, it's the little things that allows one to justify the cost. Homages to the grey cloth has already sprung up. I don't need another computer, but I could use a nice polishing cloth. I believe that the Apple 22" Cinema Display comes with one of these grey cloths. Hmm...

Of course, there's the iKlear screen-cleaning kits for twenty bucks at Fry's. But what fun is that?

A new tanning salon just

A new tanning salon just opened nearby. Their slick new banners promises a grand opening special: unlimited tanning for the low, low price of $25 per month. Now, there are lots of services which are great with a set-price, unlimited-use model, but tanning doesn't sound like one of them. Talk about melanomas-R-us.

Another entry in the Silly Signs Dept., the Rock Bottom Brewery is advertising "Gartini Night," featuring cigars, martinis, and jazz. Each would be great on their own, but the combination sounds forced here. This just isn't the sort of thing for clean-cut suburban micro-breweries. Maybe The Village Vanguard can pull it off. When I saw "Gartini" in big letters, I thought they were serving Garlic Martinis for happy-hour. Now that's something a clean-cut suburban microbrewery might do.

Had to reboot my FreeBSD

Had to reboot my FreeBSD test box, since Sendmail was starting to get flaky. Lost my 10-month uptime in the process, though. I'm not all that hung up about uptime, really. Just need to remember that it's not the length of the uptime, it's what you do with it (mostly as a procmail filter).

Looks like SD Transit got

Looks like SD Transit got themselves some new busses. They run on natural gas, which is better for the environment (although not in the greenhouse gasses department), but the real spiff new feature is the back door. They actually open by themselves! No more waiting for the green light to turn on and pushing them open. No more of those awkward pauses when you step outside and have to decide whether to let go or hold the door open for the next person. I'm just wondering what took so long for this to happen?

Okay, you know NBC is

Okay, you know NBC is hard up for material when they're running infomercials for the Mormon church and showing figure skating exhibitions. I'd rather see heartwarming stories of atheletes' struggles. Or more runs of the women's giant slalom.

Are You a Dido?

If your CD (or MP3) collection includes 12 (or god forbid, more than 12) of these albums, then you might be one of the Dido Demographic. I only score 5 out of 25 and I already know I have dangerously bland musical tastes. On the other hand, if you don't own any of them, you might be out of touch with the mainstream or perhaps you're just too damn prententious to be associated with it. Personally, I would make the list much longer. I can easily double the size of this list of inoffensively semi-hip music.

1. Dummy by Portishead
2. Tracy Chapman
3. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill
4. The Joshua Tree by U2
5. Parachutes by Coldplay
6. Jollification by the Lightning Seeds
7. The Man Who by Travis
8. Play by Moby
9. Is This it by The Strokes
10. No Angel by Dido
11. Urban Hymns by The Verve
12. OK Computer by Radiohead
13. Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morrisette
14. White Ladder by David Gray
15. What's the Story Morning Glory by Oasis
16. On How Life Is by Macy Gray
17. Graceland by Paul Simon
18. Different Class by Pulp
19. Legend by Bob Marley
20. Protection by Masssive Attack
21. The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem
22. White on Blonde by Texas
23. Bedtime Stories by Madonna
24. Carry On Up The Charts by Beautiful South
25. Solitude Standing by Suzanne Vega

Whoa. Earthquake.

Whoa. Earthquake.

Strange image that came upon

Strange image that came upon me: Car Wars vs. Critical Mass.

You can tell that you're

You can tell that you're in the Physics department when the bathroom urinals has that whiff of excreted coffee. Although that smell isn't really all that different from the smell of the departmental coffee pot around here. Maybe the women's bathroom smells the same way. I wouldn't know.

NP: Golden Smog, "Until You Came Along"

It's hard not to root

It's hard not to root against the USA when watching the Olympics, just from the visceral antipathy against the rah-rah coverage, even though NBC isn't that bad about it this year. Figure skating is actually fun to watch, since they aren't falling all over themselves these days. Except the ice dancers, of all people. Go figure. Of course, the rah-rah stuff goes off the scale when it comes to lady's (why are only the figure skaters called "ladies" anyway?) figure skating, but it would be nice to see Michelle win. Especially after Nagano when some little twirp had one good skate and immediately went off to cash in her gold medal.

Just saw Sweden lose to Belarus in hockey. This was probably an even bigger upset than the Miracle on Ice in '80, but they probably won't be replaying endless footages of this game twenty years from now. What a nightmare for the Swedish players, though. Even I had a sick feeling in my stomach as the clock ticked down.

On the good news front, the USA women's curling team made the medal round. Which means more curling coverage on TV!

This is the first time

This is the first time I've ever seen somebody espouse PowerPoint as a sign of technological progress. At a baseball arbitration hearing, of all places. I guess I'm not surprised that PowerPoint does pass for a technological marvel at MLB. The prof for my TA class does all his lectures as PowerPoint presentations running directly from his laptop to a VGA projector, and I'm still undecided if that's a pedagogical win or not. Sure, it's pretty, and it's great when he whips out the animation of his large-scale structure formation models, but most of the pictures are straight cut-and-paste from the textbook's accompanying CD-ROM, and it's hard to stay awake when it's just a series of pictures flashing by. It's nice to have physical transparencies which you can scribble on occasionally, to highlight points, and give the students a reason to pay attention once in a while. Although his mini-Vaio sure looks cool.

After a weekend's worth of

After a weekend's worth of Krispy Kremes and double-doubles, it's time to get reacquainted with Mr. Stairmaster. The exercise helps to hold off complete cardiovascular atrophy, but it's more of an enabling mechanism than anything else. The 150 calories consumed in the process is not even worth half an order of fries.

Grocery Store-y

The life of the painfully bourgeois: Buying overpriced, mediocre grocery store sushi. At least the sushi lady was there, so the rolls haven't been sitting in the icebox all day. Is there anything more fungible than chlorine toilet tablets? Actually, it's perchlorate ions that's doing the work rather than chlorine ions, but I guess chemical accuracy isn't important when it's going into the toilet tank. Even with the magic of double-coupons, it's still cheaper to get the generic brand, and they're all fungible anyway. Isn't it fun to say "fungible?" Accidentally picked up turkey Italian sausage instead of pork. Yucko. The whole point was to get some pork fat and flavor for the sauteed onions. I'll pick up a roll and make lunch out of it, I guess.

Sometimes it's the little things

Sometimes it's the little things that make me lose faith in humanity. Went to get some donuts from Krispy Kreme. Decided to go for the assorted dozen this time, since it's not that much more expensive than getting half a dozen: six original glazed, 4 chocolate iced, and 2 maple iced. That was what I yelled into the drive-through microphone, anyway. By the time I got the big box of donuts home, what I ended up with was 6 original glazed, 4 chocolate cream-filled, and 2 apple cinnamon filled. Huh? I almost tossed the apple-cinnamon donuts, but damn it, I'm not so spoiled to be throwing away perfectly good food. Hopefully the donuts freeze well, because there's no way I'm eating a dozen donuts before they go stale. Those things are a diabetes case waiting to happen. I can feel insulin receptors pop like bubble wrap when the sugar rush passes through. Goes well with coffee, though.

Is it just me or

Is it just me or is men's doubles luge the gayest sport ever, in more ways than one?

I knew it was a

I knew it was a bad idea to pick up the phone. I'm usually not rude to telemarketers. I mean, I usually at least say "hello" or something. But when the lady on the other end said that she was from Great Expectations, I was reduced to indignant sputtering before hanging up. How low is it for a dating service to be soliciting on Valentine's Day, of all days. Geez.

It's a bummer of a

It's a bummer of a way to start out the day when the breakfast danish is stale. At least the coffee was decent.

29. Never allow a conversation

29. Never allow a conversation with a woman to go on longer than you are able to have sex with her. Keep a stopwatch by the phone; Hang up if necessary.

You gotta give props to

You gotta give props to NBC for covering all the sports in the Winter Olympics. Actually, the coverage is better for the obscure sports, since they actually run live on the west coast on the NBC cable channels, unlike the NBC primetime coverage (a.k.a. Figure Skating Central). You just can't beat the excitement of live, at-the-moment biathlon action. Part of the fun is to see how the announcers handle all the Scandinavian and Russian names. And there's curling! Too slow for total live coverage, unfortunately, but they do show the skip's rocks in the important ends. I love all the jargon. There's real, thinking strategy involved. And competitors range from German punks to Japanese housewives to Swedish grandmas. The American team members look like extras from Fargo. Hey, it's only once every four years.

They're redecorating the hallways of

They're redecorating the hallways of the apartment complex. There's about a million gallons of flat latex paint sitting in pallets of buckets outside my door. They put in some nice light sconces on the walls to complement the overhead fluorescents, and there are rolls of new carpet sitting outside. I suppose it's good to see the rent money going into something tangible.

BTW, happy new year, everybody.

BTW, happy new year, everybody.

I've been in grad school

I've been in grad school too long. After reading the comments to this Slashdot story, all this "work" stuff seems perfectly awful. Why bother? Unless you have kids to feed, etc. Most people are just plowing that cash into more and more stuff anyway (Exhibit A, Exhibit B). It's like watching the American Middle Class getting flushed down the toilet.

Hard to believe that we

Hard to believe that we exist in the same plane of reality. "The trio of salespeople that day was wearing the latest look--plumber-butt bluejeans and spiked heels." -- LA Times column

Food and Drink

Picked up a steak burrito combo, ranchero style, from La Salsa. Their food is pretty good and reasonably authentic for a chain. Although the La Salsa in UTC does violate the Golden Rule of Ethnic Restaurants, i.e. it can't be any good if nobody of that ethnicity eats at the place. The steak has that char-grilled flavor, and the whole thing was covered with a mole-type sauce and melted cheese. Their pico de gallo is fresh and goes great with the tortilla chips. The black beans is a little bland,but nothing that a little sour cream and salsa can't fix. Anyway, it's a lot of food. The problem with Mexican take-out is that it just doesn't reheat very well. The sauce and cheese soak in and congeal, so the whole thing becomes a goopy mess. Chinese takeout definitely makes for better leftovers, as long as you keep the rice separate.

Had a coupon for the filter, so I dug out my dusty Brita pitcher to give that another try. When you amortize the cost of the filter out over its lifetime (40 gallons, according to the instructions), you don't save much over bottled water. The filter takes out all the supposedly harmful stuff, but it can't make the water taste better, so the water still taste as if it's been sitting in a concrete aqueduct for a thousand miles. Which it has been. Blech. It does work well for coffee, though.

I'm always a big

I'm always a big sucker for the whole Olympics thing, even if the whole process is terribly corrupt and costs way too much money ($1.5 billion in tax dollars at last count and rising). I'm not sure if hiring the same producer for the Opening Ceremonies as the Atlanta Olympics was a good idea, but at least there were no pickup trucks involved this time. No matter the host country, though, they always manage to trot out the blandest imaginable pop for a theme song. LeeAnn Rimes sure lost her country twang in a hurry.

Fry's went with a Happy

Fry's went with a Happy Valentine's Day theme for their big Friday ad spread this week. Does that count as real irony or would it be like Alanis-irony? Valentine's Day is probably about as important as Arbor Day for most of Fry's loyal customers. The best suggestion I've seen calls for renaming Valentine's Day to Singles Awareness Day. Kinda like how Berkeley renamed Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. Anyway, if you're really looking for a Valentine's Day present at Fry's, you can't go wrong with Jet Li's Enforcer on DVD, or perhaps a bare Athlon 1800+ motherboard. Both on sale!

It's funny in a sick

It's funny in a sick way that the first article that comes up when you search for "ACL" on WebMD is about Shea Ralph, "after she hurt her left knee again while playing with her dog." A woman's basketball game is like twenty ACL surgeries waiting to happen. Here's a significant breakthrough in physiology just waiting out there for somebody to figure it out.

BofA upgraded the local ATM

BofA upgraded the local ATM to the latest and greatest model, complete with color screen, sound effects, and dancing bears. Well, no bears, but then the only ATM trick that could impress me would be free money coming out of the slot. As I sucked on the teat of capitalism, the fancy graphics promised me exciting new offers soon to come. Does some junior advertising executive somewhere believe that he's going to come up with an exciting advertising campaign on colorized ATMs that's actually going to persuade anyone to buy anything. Or persuade anyone to hate BofA any less. Maybe junior advertising execs are all delusional. Of course, once I got into the actual money-grubbing screens, the display reverted to the same old boring format that's probably been running on the same system for twenty years. That's probably a good thing.

Alright, I had potato curry

Alright, I had potato curry on rice for lunch and now I'm in starch-overload mode. Which would be great if I were running a marathon tomorrow, but not so hot when I'm sitting in front of a computer all day. I figure that all the blood should go from my brain to my stomach just in time for my discussion section this afternoon. Lovely.

Television Time-Out

The Big Bad from Alias was on Sex and the City the other night exposing himself and his Versace briefs to Sarah Jessica Parker. As SJP said, "Pants up!" On the other hand, the 21-year old blonde girl in the three-way action = holy *#%(@!*). I wonder what Sydney would've done if Sloane dropped his pants. Probably something that involves a major ass-kicking. Ally McBeal gets a kid. Is that the kiss-of-death or what? Well, the show went off a cliff when Billy died, but now it's really hit bottom. Of course, the reproductive process happened in vitro. Not even DEK would inflict a hormonal Ally on the viewing public. Not to mention the sight of a bloated Calista Flockhart would be flat-out freakish. At least we skip over the cute-baby phase.

A Walk to Remember just

A Walk to Remember just showed up on the local movie marquee. If movies didn't cost so damn much these days it'd be worth seeing just for the camp value. It's yet another example of sick and twisted media synergies. Mandy Moore tries acting in a movie adapted from a best-selling novel. The last thing we need to bring this to a perfect symmetry would be if Nicholas Sparks sang on the soundtrack. That and if Mandy got nekkid.

Super Bowl Sunday

Ah, the one day of the year when it's politically correct to lay back on the sofa, eat junk food, and watch TV. Unless you're some sort of left wing liberal Commie who hates sports and doesn't own a TV, in which case you shouldn't be living in America anyway.

Pre-game meal: Italian beef sandwich with giardinera sauce and grilled onions, with a big side of onion rings, courtesy of Chicago On A Bun, where one pays five bucks for a hot dog, even if it's hot dog done right. Washed it down with a bottle of Pilsner Urquell. Tasty.

If it weren't the Super Bowl, it would've been a pretty pedestrian football game, last-second heroic drives aside. Aside from the fact that I have zero reason to care about either team, now Patriots fans like ESPN.com's Sports Guy will be going on and on for weeks, possibly even intruding on Spring Training. Because there's nothing more insufferable than a man whose favorite sports team has just won the championship.

I'll miss the weekly Edge NFL Matchup show, though, especially with Suzy Kolber hosting. There's something to be said for a hot mama who can talk serious football X's and O's and sound like she knows what she's talking about and enjoys talking about it.

After letting Morpheus run for

After letting Morpheus run for most of the week, I finally got a cracked copy of WinXP running under a cracked copy of VMWare so I can watch pirated anime DivX;-) files. VMWare keeps all that warez d00d stuff in a nice virtual sandbox so it can't fuck with the real-work stuff. I get about 75% of the full RC5 keyrate in the virtual machine, which is pretty good. The video performance is lousy, though. Maybe a faster AGP video card would help, but I like the fanlessness of the PCI Voodoo3.

This P2P stuff is way

This P2P stuff is way overrated. Everything takes forever to download and half the downloads just sit there aimlessly making zero progress. If I'm going to be pirating, I damn well expect the downloads to be filling up the pipe. And what kind of idiot would open up their computer for sharing anyway? Especially since most broadband connections have asymmetric ratios. The next step is ad-blocking software, so I can remove the ad space in the software and I'll be a complete leech. Good thing the new PSU and CPU cooler is quiet enough for me to leave the computer on 24/7 for the download to finish. And with the recent chilly weather the Athlon makes for a nice space heater, too.

There's a decent little curry

There's a decent little curry place in the local mall's food court, and I went by to pick up a Tandoori Combo Plate for dinner. There was a "Coming Soon" sign plastered outside an enclosed storefront for abercrombie. Notice the all lower-case, and apparently poor Fitch just isn't hip enough for the target demographic, which the poster stated clearly to be "7-14 years old." Limited Too is directly across the way. We should start strangling babies. It'll be for their own good.

What I learned from The

What I learned from The Naked Chef today: Use olive oil to sear the scallops, then add butter in the end. So the scallops get some color but the butter wont burn.

So you think people have

So you think people have figured out that the Super Bowl is the biggest letdown in sports? A 14-point spread. Yikes. Not to mention the 53-point over-under. Actually, I'd take the Rams, give the points, and bet the under. The Rams defense still doesn't get enough credit. I sure wouldn't bet my own money on it, though. The annoying thing is that the Super Bowl ads probably won't be good this year, either, with the stock market and all. Well, the .com ads weren't that great, but at least they're wacky. Now we're just going to get a bunch of flag-waving beer ads. Bleagh. The good news: 19 days until pitchers and catchers report