I’m a real sucker for a good pun, and I have quite a few saved up, some original some not, waiting for that one time where the opportunity arises to just zing one in there. I mean, how often do you get to say “The trumpets were lost at C!” (rehearsal letter ‘C’)?. Anyway, here goes:
Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft; it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
Let’s walk through 4 days in the life of Matt:
Friday: $205 parking ticket downtown, goes to $410 if I don’t pay within 45 days
Saturday: Fine. (Whew!)
Sunday: If you were in traffic around seven PM on I-45, that was me. I was cruising along comfortable at around 70 miles per hour when all of a sudden the car starts shaking violently and making terrible noises. I manage to stop it, but unfortunately I’m in the innermost lane, and there’s no shoulder. Hazard lights are on, luckily no one hits anyone, but traffic is starting to pile up behind me. I get out and walk around the car to see what it is, it looks like my rear right tire has completely exploded, as seen in the pictures below. I’m already on the phone with AAA and they say they’ll put the call on “rush.” About fifteen minutes later, traffic is backed up a least a mile and I’m still sitting in the lane with my hazards on, waiting for the tow truck to get there so I can get out of traffic. A very kind man stopped behind us and said he would help us get over to the shoulder; next thing I know, he’s walking out on the freeway stopping traffic, and I manage to get the car to limp over to the right shoulder. I thank the man profusely when he comes over, and he asks if there is anything else he can do and then drives away. A few minutes after that the first tow truck pulls up, not AAA, so useless. Another one about a half an hour later, same story. I get back on the phone with AAA and they are no help at all, they say the call is being taken care of as fast as possible. More time passes, and by now we’ve been there at least a hour and a half, possibly more. Finally a third tow truck pulls up—I walked up tentatively hoping that this could be the one. He tells me he’s with AAA but he isn’t the one they sent, he just saw me on the side of the road and stopped. After another call he gets approval and fixes everything up just fine. However by that time my study group that was meeting at six was long gone.
Monday: I hope that this is the stupidest thing I do all year, but I am ashamed to say I actually ran out of gas. My gauge is erratic in its reporting, and I’ve had it be where it was today for a couple of days before, but today the car just stopped running. Luckily it was on a side street; unluckily it wasn’t in the best part of town. There was a gas station only a block away though, but they didn’t have any gas canisters. So Mat and I ended up carrying about a gallon of gasoline in various containers to and from the car until it had enough to start and actually drive to the gas station.
Although things were pretty bad, they could have been much worse. On Sunday I had actually left my cell phone at IHOP that morning, so I was without communication that day. (I did get the cell phone that evening; a manager had picked it up and nothing had happened to it.) Luckily Sarah had her cell phone and we were able to get in contact with AAA, even if their truck never came. Also the company was good, and the only thing that got a scratch on it is that tire. I’m ready to pick up and move to the mountains though :).
I laughed out loud at Shawn Yeager’s “Special Interests?” Read it outloud for the full effect. I just wish he had made it a bit bigger, and maybe used less compression.
I had the most terrible dream last night that I on death row and today at three I would be put to death. They were going to let me meet Tim-Berners Lee though, who apparently worked across the street from the place. I need to stop mixing late-night snacks with reading W3C specs. Anyway, tho thoughts of my mortality nicely dovetailed with an interesting article on cremation at Wired. I want to be the frisbee :). Warning: article is full of terrible puns.
I’m trying out different email clients, because my mail is now all IMAP and I’m not tied to Outlook anymore, and I noticed something very interesting: when Outlook XP was running Eudora would not install. It just struck me as funny. Another funny thing I noticed when I was trying to set up someone’s computer yesterday was that Windows XP will not allow a user called “Bob.” Since the person I was installing XP for actually went by the name Bob, this struck me as a little annoying. It must be a feature.
You start thinking $ indicates the start of a string and ^ means the end in your regular expressions. (It’s actually the opposite.)
How better to learn about the proper use of apostrophes then from an angry flower? An appropiate follow-up to the smart quote script I just posted :).
I’ve just come across a comic artist who has some very biting cartoons that are really amusing to read. Although I disagree with many of his viewpoints, he presents complex ideas and thoughts with an uncanny editorial effectiveness. Also the quality of his drawings seems to be above what you normally see in the papers. Congrats on his Pulitzer Prize.
“It’s a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer,” – open relays are bad. The people running the ISPs in question do have some valid complaints though, such as the manuals not being written in their language. It should be interesting to see where this story goes and if politics end up playing a part in it.
Time for a little reverse chronological order: Just got in from another late night; saw the midnight showing of The Neverending Story at the River Oaks theatre. It was quite different from how I remembered it as a child, with many parts being unintentionally funny from bad acting and/or effects. Still the thesis of the movie, a child being part of a fantasy book, has always captivated my interest, and did so tonight. Saw the movie with Emily, Emily 2, Sarah, one of Emily’s friends, Joe, and Rene.
Earlier today I attempted a one thousand piece puzzle with Emily and Bridget, but I’ve decided that I’m just no good at that. Puzzles are harder than they look! The edge was pretty easy, but the interior was pretty hard, at least for me. Oh well, the food/music/company was good. Also had some Oreo ice cream and Dolce and Freddo with the same people, and it was my first time there. Honestly I didn’t see what made it any better than any other ice cream Iଁve had, and it seemed a little overpriced. Maybe some of their other flavors are better.
Finally today I picked up my books from the college bookstore. The most interesting of them is the ‘textbook’ for Psychology, which is actually a $114 password to an online site where the text is located and you can turn in assignments and such. It sounds interesting, if expensive, and I’m looking forward to that class even more now. The other books look pretty much like all the other textbooks I’ve had all my life, but I hope the classes won’t be like that.
I also picked up the audition music for the big band, a decision which in some ways has been bothering me the past few days. Since the beginning of the summer I have been debating how/if I should continue in music, whether should I even stay with the saxophone or go to piano, or just compose full-time, or nothing at all. Well my thoughts really started to come together after Joel Fulgham, a wonderful Houston jazz drummer, said to me, “Sometimes I meet people that are grumpy and they don’t know why. They used play but for whatever reason—day gig, parents, whatever—they stopped. They’re grumpy because there’s a whole in their life where the music used to be. And it’ll bug you till you don’t know what to do with yourself if you don’t stay true to your heart.” I love playing the saxophone; I love jazz; I love improvisation and the moments of instant composition without a safety net and harmony in music and life that music in general and jazz in particular provide in my life. I can’t turn my back on that.
Mark Pilgrim has an very interesting list that I think adequetely describes the current state of the entire HDTV fiasco. The people I talked to in DC about this (no names) thought the whole situation was funny, like a catfight, so I think the list is espescially apt in capturing that feel. Will the market actually smooth this all out? Eventually. It always does.
On another TV related note, I watched it for the first time in over 7 months yesterday. At the encouragement of my friend Julie I turned on Seinfeld, then watched Friends, and finally an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. I’ve decided that I haven’t really been missing much; the same old reruns that were playing before were on tonight. Just a note, some people get confused when I say I “haven’t watched TV,” and look at me strange, so to clarify I haven’t watched any broadcast or cable programming in the past 7 months at home. I’ve watched televisions as a medium for displaying DVDs or videos, and I’m sure at some point I saw broadcast television in a waiting room or some other similar situation, but I’m not counting that.
I come to bury IAmCarbonatedMilk.com, not to praise it – A hilarious look at some expired domains.
Okay, anyone else think it’s funny that SysAdmin appreciation day is on winter solstice? 🙂 Update: I meant summer solstice. But when I checked it turns out that was last month. Bummer.
In other news the first revision of the GRX570 review is up. Let me know what you think.
Unbelievable! I couldn’t make this stuff up:
Yes your eyes are not decieving you. Apparently the genius known as Windows XP is having trouble installing the SYSTEM!! I’m typing so hard I think I might hurt my laptop, so I am going to stop now. Grrrrrr. Appparently, despite a small setback setup should complete in “9 minutes,” we’ll see.
Just when you think Mac users are smarter, something like this comes out.
Oh how I like it when they make the spam clever:
Amazon claims they ‘lowered the hurdle’ with their free shipping offer….at Buy.com we just ran that hurdle over with our free-shipping truck.
Josh has a series of webcam comics up, very funny stuff.
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction: Bride shoots truck thief hours before wedding. What’s funny is that he actually got away, albiet wounded and with a broken truck. I wouldn’t want to mess with this lady.
I saw MIB II on the IMAX screen yesterday, and it was impressive. I don’t think the movie was quite as good as the first one, if anything it seemed to be a bit of a spoof on the first one. It was quite funny at times, it’s just the plot struggled sometimes. But the screen was amazing, and the company, as always, was great.
