Category: Uncategorized

Woohoo, go Markko! He only one a single stage of the entire rally, but “slow and steady wins the race”. Ok, in all actuality, having your strongest competitor get slapped with a 5 minute penalty wins the race. If you don’t want to read the link, basically Petter Solberg had some electrical issues before the start of a stage. He and his codriver tried to push the car uphill to make it to the starting line in time. There were already 4 minutes late, giving them a 40 second penalty when the officials realized they received help from the spectators to reach the starting line. That tacked on an additional 5 minute penalty eventhough neither the driver nor codriver asked for the help. With a final time difference of 3 minutes and 14.7 seconds from Markko Martin, Solberg would have won. As Russ said, he probably wouldn’t have pushed so hard if it wasn’t for that 5 minute and 40 second penalty.

Setting: A Gameworks or some sort of gaming facility. Lots of old people, dimly lit, similar to a casino in that respect. Basically, it had the feel of a Gameworks, casino and bowling alley combined.



First scene: I’m sitting down and playing some sort of matching game, seems like Mastermind, with quarters. An older lady approaches from nowhere and demands to know where my gamer card is (If you have been to Gameworks or Dave & Busters, you know that instead of using quarters, you get a credit card of sorts that you can put money on. I show a pocket full of quarters, implying that I’m just playing with quarters and she storms off. She returns about 5 minutes later and hands me a large stack of gamer chips (4 $25, 2 $10, 2 $5, 4 $1) and a fist fill of Twizzlers. The look she gives me as she walks off was, “I’ve been in your place before, kid. Have some fun and enjoy the sugar!”. Possibly she thought I was poor since I only showed about 5 dollars with in quarters. I vaguely remember winning a lot of money on the Mastermind game and then being given a tour of the facility. The man in charge was giving the tour and reminded me of Tom Poston from the Newhart show, but with a suit that Rod Roddy would wear. Well, a suit he would have worn, since he died of breast cancer. During the tour, I remember passing by a small room in the back with mirrors on the walls and a rainbow motif adorning the ceiling. He said that was in case anyone felt like dancing and could also be rented out. Oddly enough, it was empty and the lights were off. I can only imagine how those rainbows would look with the full house lights! I know I would want to shake my groove thang, and probably go suck on a popsicle or eat some sausage.



Second scene: The dream gets fuzzy for a bit, but I remember after the tour there was this one counter way in the back with no one around it. The person running it is none other than Beth Manoongian, an “acquaintance” from school. This game was a trivia game with a twist. The questions are extremely difficult but the prize for answering a single question runs in the millions of dollars. I decide to give it a shot, hoping that Beth will help me out a little bit. As she pulls the question from a long box of cards, she places it on ledge face down in front of me, then gets a phone call. While she isn’t watching, I try to see what the answer is, but can’t quite make it out. It looks like “Yeh” to me backwards. The question was something like “What is the beach on Jo Beach?”. Sort of a trick question, but I thought I already had the answer. I hem and haw for a bit, then exclaim “Yeh!”. The answer was actually “Lev”, which doesn’t make sense to me in the dream or in the waking world. Since playing the game is free, I have her pull out another card. By this time, someone else has joined me at the counter. This person seemed to be between 18-22 years old, male, dark hair, reminded me of a frat boy. The next question wasn’t even a question, it was something along the lines of “(SomeForeignName) is furious.” I think the riddle was that you had to figure out the country that would give out a name like that then give the translation for “furious”. The random guy and I looked at each other trying to figure it out and then I woke up.



I should rent out my brain for studies into the abnormal.

So the first inline hockey game was yesterday! Lee and I got there 1.5 hours early so that we could sign up for the league, meet the team and do a little bit of practicing. The facility is fairly ghetto, located in what looks like an old warehouse. It is seperated into a little practice field for soccer, the inline rink, then a larger soccer field. The rink itself is in good condition with an interesting plastic flooring that reminds me of the plastic used for milk crates or toddlers blocks (not the shiny kind). We only got about 20 minutes of practice in, but it was tiring. I know that when I got off the rink at the start of the game, I was drenched in sweat.



We ended up losing 5-4, but I scored twice and Lee scored as well! We both received praise during and after the game which made us both feel a bit better about playing. Everyone seems very nice and laid back which is exactly what I was hoping for. Our first practice is tomorrow (yes, we had a game before we practiced) so hopefully my sore knee and arm feel better!

New Scientist: Does anyone else find it completely asinine that tobacco is the number one killer in the United States, accounting for 18.1% of all deaths in 2000? Does anyone else find it completely asinine that obesity is about to overtake tobacco as the number one killer? Also, 64% of Americans are overweight or obese. Pathetic. Ironic that I’m posting this to the web while sitting on my ass, but I’m not overweight, you pudgy MFs!

New Scientist: It looks like the “fact” that mammals do not produce new eggs after birth may be incorrect. With a study done on mice, it appears that the number of living eggs decreases too rapidly for the number of eggs available at birth to persist until menopause. To test if new eggs were created, an ovary from a normal mouse was inplanted into a mouse that was genetically modified to generate a glowing protein in all new cells. After transplant, eggs were observed with the glowing protein, practically confirming that new eggs are created after birth.

An update to my hockey purchase: a detailed cost breakdown!

As a side note, I understand spending almost $100 to protect my noggin, but only $4 to protect my bits?

Ok, so my friend Alicia got hit on by a guy at a party last week, but they didn’t exchange digits. Instead, since this guy is a complete putz, asked a mutual friend for her AIM screenname! She isn’t going to date him, but they have talked a bit and she found out he has a vanity site: Morris Singer.


Signs you are a PUTZ:

1. You place a picture of yourself in your title graphic.
   

2. Your site is “Under Construction”: No one with a modicum of web design ability has used “Under Construction” on their site since 1995. Go put your crap on GeoCities.
   

3. You copy all of your columns, and screw it up! How many instances of “Restroom Revolution Gathers at Stonewall” are on that page? Hard hitting journalism, at that!
   

4. Your photo galleries are Javascript pop-up driven garbage.
   

5. Your bio is written in third person perspective.
   

6. You do not have a job or a degree yet you have a business card.
   

7. Your tagline is a warning: “Thank you for visiting my site. Do not duplicate this information, content or design without written permission from me.”
   

Yeah, I know, someone could rip apart my site as well, but I can take it.

Amazon.com: Restaurants: I’m not really sure what to make of this just yet, but Amazon now has the full menu of almost every restaurant in the greater Seattle area on their site. Reminds me of the monkey.org page for Ann Arbor, but Amazon has almost 800 menus to monkey’s 45.



I wonder if the menus are ever updated, considering places like Waterfront Grill changes their menu nightly. Well, I just checked the menu for Waterfront and it advertises an event on July 16th, 2002, so that answers the question about updates but also poses the question of how long has Amazon had this feature? What else does Amazon offer that I have missed all this time? I know they do movie showtimes, oddly enough, as well.

How sad is it that my car is worth less than what I currently owe on it? I mean, obviously that would be the case if I had just bought it or if I paid a very low down payment. I put down $4k and the car is now 9 months old (and a 2003 model). Gotta love almost 50% depreciation in less than a year. Sigh.

NASIOC Forums – Pulled over in my STI: Woohoo, same thing happened with an STi!