Sunday, May 30, 2004
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
U-Haul does not make moving easier.
So, last Tuesday or Wednesday I reserve a 14-foot U-Haul truck to move a washer/dryer, two couches, a coffeetable, an exercise bike, and 3 or 4 boxes to my dad's house. So Saturday morning I go to pick it up, and they don't have it. (Immediately the Seinfeld episode comes to mind... "you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation.")
Please call the 1-800 number...
After 15 minutes of holding, I get a service rep who says that there are no trucks in the Nashville area (see above photo), but one should be turned back in soon, and we'll call you when it's available, maybe 30 minutes to an hour. Two hours later, we're still on hold (my mom and Anthony Brooks are also on hold trying to get through), and finally Anthony gets ahold of someone (Teresa), and uses his uncanny skills of persuasion to have them call us back in ten minutes, yea or nay.
Five minutes later, Teresa calls back and says that they don't have a 14-foot truck, but they do have a 26-foot truck. Sure, why not? (I wasn't driving, anyway.) So we put my few items in the truck, and there was room leftover to put my car in there too, except the truck's wheel wells got in the way.
Sometime later, we're on the road to Lexington. An hour out of Nashville, we find an accident on I-40W, and traffic is stopped. So after 15 minutes of sitting in my car, people are walking around, I'm reading a book, and someone knocks on my car window. It's Mr. Mallard, my college art professor. So we talk for about five minutes until traffic starts moving again, and it went about 20 mph for the next ten minutes.
I never actually saw any wrecked vehicles, either. Hm.
Labels: life
How to make our military more effective and polite:
Clone Patton. I mean, if one Patton can drive a swath of destruction through Rommel's forces, imagine what an entire clone army of these sonsa$@%&#es could do. General George S. Patton, Jr. was quite the literate high-society type, too, so they'd be quite well behaved. Plus, they'd kill the bad guys dead, because they know that you can't win a war by dying for your country.
Labels: geek stuff
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Floyd's Fake Death Review
Andy Kaufman has returned from the dead – or at least from the upper west side of New York City. Click here for the press release. And if you read it on the web, it must be true... Maybe Kurt Cobain will be next – I could really use a new Nirvana album.
But really, what we all want is for General George S. Patton, Jr. to come back and settle this War on Terrorism, Al-Qaeda, and Cobra Command once and for all. "You don't win a war by dying for your country..."
Addendum (2004.06.02) — Well, I guess he's really dead after all.
Labels: geek stuff
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
BREAKING NEWS!
Dateline: 2004
Gasoline prices soar out of control!
This photo was on cnn.com. Can't we just go ahead and make Iraq the 51st state? I'm all for the Imperial America Doctrine (with me in control, of course, haha, haha, ha, hahaha). This is getting old. Or at least couldn't they start marketing those Mr. Fusions that Doc Brown used?
Labels: geek stuff
Monday, May 17, 2004
There are no such things are MURPs™. Shame, really.
Also, the air conditioner in my office building is obscenely cold, and we're pretty sure that the thermostat controls we have access to are purely cosmetic. I have to put on a jacket everytime I go inside...
Labels: life
Introducing MURPs™ — Mobile Urban Residential Places!
We have taken the concept of PODS (Portable On-Demand Storage) and developed it for residents. For less than $1000, you can purchase your own Mobile Urban Residential Place (MURP™), a complete room for you to live in. While sealed from the environment, MURPs™ have central heat/air connections and are wired for electricity, phone, and broadband internet. By installing one of these into a MURP™-compatible house or apartment block, you can enjoy all the conveniences that you would experience in a normal room, but! if you have to relocate, don't worry about packing! Just call our MURP™-Movers and they will move your entire MURP™ to your new residence and reinstall your room into your new MURP™-compatible house. Imagine! Moving without packing! And everything will be just as it was, except in a different place. All the convenience of an RV, with all the solidity of a house.
Q: How will the MURP™-Movers treat my stuff?
A: You should probably tie everything down. We assume no responsibility for broken items, assuming we don't wreck our truck along the way.
Q: What if my new house/apartment isn't MURP™-compatible?
A: Oh, come on now... EVERY new house is MURP™-compatible.
Q: I think you're making all this up.
A: Duh. I'm a cartoon character. MURPs™ are as real as me.
Labels: science/tech
Friday, May 14, 2004
"Woman! Where's my super-suit?!"
On November 5, Pixar will be releasing what may be their last movie for Disney, and it looks like it'll be great. The Incredibles is about a team of superheroes, and stars Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson (see above picture). Pixar, of course, is the genius CGI company that brought you such fine films as Toy Story, Monsters Inc., etc. It is being directed by Brad Bird, who also directed The Iron Giant, which is a good movie, too. Check out the trailers at the Apple Quicktime website.
Labels: film/tv/books/arts, geek stuff
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Geek Update by Floyd:
Things to do in Bespin when you're dead...
So, the Star Wars Imperial troopers are clones, right? So what do we do about the fact that the old-school Episode 4-6 stormtroopers have different heights, voices, and apparently far less skill than their Episode 2 predecessors? Well, according to George Lucas...
"Well, they start to turn to different sources when they need it, that's why you get the differences," offers George as an explanation. "We get a model that isn't the Jango version, that doesn't bump his head on doors [ed.-see above photo]. But then we get versions that can't shoot straight," he laughs. "I can see the corruption in the Empire: someone says to the Emperor, my cousin would like to fight in the wars, but he doesn't want to do any of the actual fighting. Can you clone him? Well, can he shoot? Ah, yeah. Sure he can." (From the 8/13 Set Diary)Right. I wonder if that might have been "Cousin Jar-Jar"? Hmm. My guess is still that he'll make a Special Special Edition after Episode 3 and try and fix all the inconsistancies (and bad CGI from the first Special Edition). Also, here's a picture of the trooper helmet development. The middle one is the Episode 3 one.
Have a day!
Labels: geek stuff
Friday, May 07, 2004
"File Under: Ring" (well, actually, "over")
I pull into work this morning, and this woman (who works in the same building we have our office in) pulls her Suburban in next to mine. As we get out, she asks me if I can help to move a filing cabinet (aquired at a yard sale) in the back of her vehicle – not actually out of the vehicle, but just to lay it down differently so that it doesn't fall over and break a window while she's driving. It's steel and very heavy. So I go to the back door and she goes to the side door, and we get it turned down properly, and my hand gets stuck underneath it, but cushioned by the carpet on the floor. She says, "my hand is stuck." I say, "so is mine," but she apparently didn't have the benefit of the carpet as I did, since I was at the back door and she was at the side door. So I get my hand free and help to raise the cabinet up so she can get her hand out. Unfortunately, the cabinet squashed her wedding ring to where it was cutting off circulation in her finger. So I got some pliers out of my trunk and had to squish her ring from the side so that she could get it off her finger. It was still bent really bad. Fortunately, she took it to a jeweler at lunch and he fixed it for free. That was nice of him.
Labels: life
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Geek update.
This summer, we will see the release of the original Mega Man series (parts 1-8) on a single disc for Playstation 2 and Gamecube. What's Mega Man, you ask? Mega Man is arguably the best series of old-school Nintendo games around. The main character's name is, you guessed it, Mega Man, and his mission is to go around and stop a mad scientist, Dr. Wily, and his evil robots from wrecking havoc on the world. Usually, there are eight levels (which you can play in any order) with one robot boss each. When you defeat a robot boss, you gain his weapon. Once you've beaten all the robot bosses, then you venture into Dr. Wily's multi-level hideout for a final showdown. The trick is to figure out which order to defeat the bosses, as certain weapons are more effective than others in various situations. There's a good breakdown of the first six Mega Man games at this site: Mega Man Matrix.
In the meantime, to help you get into the spirit of things, you should check out a band called The Minibosses. They are a 4-piece garage band (2 guitars, bass, drums) that play instrumental covers of old-school Nintendo video game music. They do a 9-minute suite of music from Mega Man 2. They're lo-fi and they rock. It's fun. In addition, a couple of guys called Project X have recorded most of the music from Mega Man 2 and 3.
Rock on.
Labels: geek stuff
