Eight Legged DJ's Domain

2004-04-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

Are you the corporate slave type?

Although my time in the big corporate world has been rather minimal (besides a short stint at IBM, I've only been working in small-ish companies), the following quote still strikes me as reflective of the fundamental truths of how big business operates.

The farther you get from work, the dumber you get because you spend more and more of your time convincing others that you are worth something and less time actually producing something of worth. 'Management decisions' contrary to popular belief, do not benefit the organization, they are purely political. True business success, when it happens to medium/large organizations, is not caused by genius managers but by truely random evolutionary processes. ( Somebody HAD to win, but it was nothing more than luck. )

In med/large companies you will not rise if you give a damn whether the company goes out of business. If you happen to know a problem can be solved for $1.95 and you can keep that fact secret and solve it for $1,000,000.00 and claim 'success' you will gain MUCH more mojo and rise MUCH faster than if you solved the problem for next to nothing. Genius would solve the problem for $1.95, but the People-Genius knows that solving it for $1,000,000.00 pays better. Another word for this type of genius is 'parasite'.

So if you are a true genius, start your own business and 'miraculously' survive, cash strapped, against the big boys by solving million dollar problems for a couple bucks. Don't be a labor-aphid for the parasites to feed off.

Comments?

The Lame Link Section ™

I was wondering - does anybody ever click on these? Am I just wasting my time collecting these for your pleasure? I get to do quite a bit of web surfing, so these links represent the best of the best out there. Each one of them is packed with utterly useless info you can use to surprise your friends and one-up your enemies. So, without further ado...

Googledorks - This is what happens when really bored really smart people start messing around with a really good search engine. Google as a hacking tool?!? Awesome....

Voynich Manuscript - The Voynich Manuscript has been dubbed "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World". It's a centuries-old book written in an unknown language with pictures of unknown plants and such. Very possibly an ancient hoax, but an interesting read nonetheless.

Ultsearch expose - I got nothing but respect for this guy. Sure, he is pretty much a search engine spammer, but his idea is brilliant and the profits are astounding - he makes six-figure numbers a DAY!

Punk-o-matic - Sorry for stealing the link, Luce :-) This is most entertaining time-waster EVAH!!!!

History of Video Game Controversy - This will be interesting to those who just can't get enough of Carmageddon and Grand Theft Auto.

WTF?!? - OK, I really can't explain this site. But it's mesmerizing as fuck. Go ahead and explore it - I dare you...

The Clear Channel Controversy - You know what happens when a totalitarian regime establishes itself? They take control of the media. Now, I knew that Fox was the conservatives' TV outlet, however I never realized the extent of their relationship with Clear Channel Communications, by far the largest radio conglomerate out there. A nice little liberal rant here.

Ghost Town - This is truly one of the most amazing websites I have ever visited. A Russian woman, a hi-speed motorcycle, and ghost villages, towns, and cities of the Chernobyl area. And LOTS of incredible photos. You see, when the big nuclear reactor meltdown happened twenty years ago, everybody was quickly evacuated from the neighboring areas. Since then, those cities have been empty (sealed off by the government), a silent testament to the communism era of days long gone. Absolutely breath-taking!

Hikikomori - This is one of the strangest disorders I've ever heard of. Sounds like bullshit to me, though. Japan is probably the only country this can happen in. There's more here.

Cool CyberSex Logs - ROFLMAO! These made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. Some of these are pure genius. Fucking around with people who want to cybershag - what could be better?

Thai Boxing - Just a really funny video clip. Kiyaaa!

PostScriptum

OMG! I just signed myself up for the beta of GMail!!!! I'm the shit! :-)

2004-03-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Movie Reviews (Now in Technicolor!)

Haven't done those in a while, and since I've watched three foreign movies in a rather quick succession recently, I decided my opinion was needed to brighten the otherwise colorless days of your pitiful existence (I kid, I kid!).

The first two movies are actually nothing to write home about.

Zatôichi is new Japanese flick by the, uh, critically acclaimed master of cinema Takeshi Kitano. You may have seen him in such movies as Johnny Mnemonic, Battle Royale (and its sequel), and Brother. He is the Tarantino of Japan, with a cult of cinemagoers formed tightly around him (not unlike Takashi Miike, another master of directing I could care less for). Now, I will give Kitano another chance by watching Brother in a near future, but so far I'm not impressed. This movie on paper looks pretty damn entertaining - a blind samurai dude goes around and chops everybody to pieces. Fucking this up is akin to making chicken taste like shit. Rather hard, if you ask me. Sure enough, Kitano accomplishes just that. With aplomb. What could be worse than a confusing story with bland characters and unexplained motives? How about a retarded kid who runs around naked thinking he is a samurai, or a man pretending to be a geisha and liking it, or a man who likes the man pretending to be a geisha, or a shape-shifting cyborg from the future who is trying to kill John Connor before he leads the resistance against SkyNet. OK, fine, that last one is from Terminator 2, but seriously, even ninjas (who normally can make any movie worth watching) could not redeem this long-ass movie. The music was pretty good though. If you want to see a good samurai movie, watch Twilight Samurai, which is conveniently coming out in the US on April 2nd.

The Gods Must Be Crazy is another movie that looks somewhat interesting on paper. No, it's not Jamie Foxx on the poster above. It's actually a real bushman from Africa. For the uneducated and unbathed among you, the bushmen are a primitive folk living in the Kalahari desert - they are not aware (for the most part) of the civilized world and just live out their simple lives in small family groups without ever knowing what's happening a mile away. The movie is centered around said bushman finding a Coca-Cola bottle. Now, this movie was made in the eighties, before the era of recycling, so the bottle was not made out of that thin plastic we see today, but something that appeared to be rather thick plexiglass. To the bushmen, the strange object is a godsend (literally) - it is the hardest substance they've ever seen and they start using it for everything. Eventually, they start fighting over the bottle and the main character (whose name in real life is N!xau) goes on a journey to throw the evil thing away. Personally, I can't think of how to make a good movie out of this, but it sorta kinda seems like it should be possible with the right approach. Right? Whatever the right approach is, this ain't it. Eighties slapstick humor, outlandish African terrorists with a megalomaniacal leader who looks Cuban and has the appropriate evil accent, clumsy characters, idiotic frame speedups (remember that passe comedy trick?) all add up to, essentially, zero. Oh well, at least I learned that the clicking sound in the African languages is written down as "!x", that rhinos stomp out forest fires, and that that last bit is actually a legend and there have been no sightings of rhinos doing that. Eh... go figure... at least I watched a Botswanian movie - how many of you can say that?

Dogville. Let's look at some stats - European drama, has Nicole Kidman in lead role, minimalistic sets (there's literally very little in terms of sets - the whole movie takes place on one big stage it seems), three hours long. It has all the makings of a movie I would hate with passion (Lost in Translation comes to mind). Alas.... this turned out to be one of the most brilliant, astounding, intelligent movies in recent memory. I'm not one to give such praise lightly, but I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a movie that made me Think - about the story, about the characters, about the underlying ideas. Wow. It would be an understatement to say that I was affected by this movie. Props to Ms. Kidman for pulling off a performance precisely required by the role. I will definitely be watching out for other movies by Dogville's director Lars von Trier. As far as the story goes.... well, I'm not going to spoil it for you - this movie requires a blank state of mind. Go ahead and watch the trailer though, if you want. Dogville is actually coming out in a limited release in the US (LA/NY) on March 26, so I'm not sure how you could legally get a hold of the movie. EBay could work, I suppose, as I see multiple postings with the DVDs. As for illegal means... well, we won't go there ;-)

2004-03-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

Comments for a Commie

Well, looks like my free annual membership for a blog comments service has recently expired. Holy crap, I can't believe I've had this li'l page for over a year! I realize it is but a pale shadow of its former glory, but don't fret - updates are coming - look forward to more movie reviews, impulse purchases, and (no joke) consensual cannibalism.

Oh.... as I was saying... the comments thingie expired, so I replaced it with another one - all comments were unfortunately lost, but alas, such is the nature of the beast.

2004-02-23T21:24:00.000-08:00

Farm Sluts

Sorry for the lack of updates - nothing new to write about (got the new car, dropped the martial arts, started learning web design, blah blah blah). In the mean time, check out this hilarious (sans the ending) 17-minute movie: Farm Sluts.

2004-02-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

Legalese iz da shiznit, yo

I've added a disclaimer to the bottom of this page. Whaddya all think?

2004-01-14T14:02:00.000-08:00

He's crazy, I tells ya!

If you've been following this blog for some time now, you probably remember the post about a thought from the beyond (insert scary ghost sounds here), i.e. an idea that I got during a dream that I managed to scribble down right after waking up. (Look in the archives for "Mutato", if you can get those damn things to work)

Well, today I bring you another dreamed (dreamt?) up sentence. Drum roll please...

A detective by profession and a vixen by nightfall, Jenna certainly knew what was up.

I like how by is used here, as well as the play on knowing what was up. I'm one subtle motherfucker.

Coooooooooookie Crisp!!!! %)

These images are actually chalk drawings on pavement. Really. Abso-friggin'-lutely unreal. I urge you to check out all of the images - they only get better!

One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven - Eight - Nine
Ten - Eleven - Twelve - Thirteen - Fourteen - Fifteen

2004-01-13T18:11:00.000-08:00

Word of the day

Lackadaisical - Lacking spirit, liveliness, or interest; languid.

I saw this gem in a Yahoo! News article about a French reality series called "We Changed Mothers". Figures. An even better word can be constructed, according to dictionary.com - lackadaisicalness. Awesome!

Among other points of interest...

Today the following has happened to me:

Il Buono: I found out that I'll be picking up my brand-spanking-new 2004 Toyota Celica GT Action Package on Saturday.

Il Brutto: A got a voice-mail from a car dealership that started with "Wake up!". Bizarre...

Il Cattivo: My dentist called me a nerd today. Can't say nuthin' to that - at least, not when she's performing a root canal on ya. After that she proceeded to put down Chinese TA's at Berkeley, what with their hard-to-understand accents and all. Seemed just a tad weird coming from an elderly Asian lady with the last name of Chan.

(For you lazy folk out there, Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo is the real name of the Clint Eastwood flick The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.)

2004-01-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?

These pics almost make my root canal pain go away. Almost.

2003-12-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Lame Link Section ™

Yeah, yeah, I haven't updated in ages, blah blah blah. When I have time, I'll post something with a bit more depth to it, however for now, here are some links you might want to check out if you have time to waste:

Effects of different drugs on spider web-weaving - Because you've always wanted to know! (Here's something similar from friday's Yahoo! Front Page News - scientists find drunkenness gene in worms)

Top 10 Most Overpaid Jobs in the U.S. - Orthodontists? Wedding photographers?? Office clerks in the docks??? Maybe I should consider a career change...

419 Eater - If you have used e-mail for any significant amount of time, I'm sure you have received a Nigerian scam e-mail at one point or another (also known as 419 scam, according to the number of the article in the Nigerian law that forbids this sort of thing). This group messes with the scammers' heads (who are apparently not very bright at all!) and otherwise causes mischief. Read their hilarious correspondence here.

Microsoft Matrix Spoof - Wow... Microsoft's top honchos (Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer) star in a Matrix spoof. Ballmer is Neo (Steve-o, actually) and Billy G is Morpheus. Seriously... wha?!? The link contains a ton of screenshots and the first half of the video.

Singers to Become Obsolete - Soon enough, technology will be good enough to simulate any singer's voice. Can't wait for the "Doctor's in da house. Dre's favorite Christmas carols" collection... (free registration to NY Times might be required)

PC for PC's? - The County of Los Angeles has requested that computer equipment vendors avoid using the industry term "Master/Slave" in product descriptions and labeling. WTF??

ATM Fraud - Hey, that's pretty smart. If I were a crook, I'd totally go for this after reading the article!

Fuck That Job - If you've spent some time looking at online job advertisements, you've probably noticed that a good deal of them asks for an impossible amount of qualifications, crazy work times and minimum wage (if you're on your best behavior). This site is dedicated to such ads.

Time Travelers Needed - An interesting story about a guy who deeply believes that aliens altered our timeline in order to get him. He decides to do something about it - sends millions of spam e-mails asking for time machine parts. Hahaha... sad in a way, though. I've never received this guy's spam, have you?

Cloth Folding ... TO THE EXTREME!!! - Chances are you've had to fold clothes (particularly t-shirts) at least once in your lifetime. I'm here to inform you that you weren't doing it the right way. This video will show you the light at the end of the cloth folding tunnel. It will change your life!!!

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not - In this case, NOT. Have you ever wanted to know what it feels like to be caught cheating on your significant other in front of a large audience? How about being that significant other? Now you can find out in this sound clip. Snopes actually has a story on this.

My Cousin - Hot or Not?

Hahahahah. My cousin is gonna kill me for sure, but this just has to be shared with the world. He doesn't really look like this in real life ... does he?!?

That's all, folks!

2003-11-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Oh, how mighty have fallen

Matrix 1 - Holy crap, what an awesome movie! Can't wait for the sequels!
Matrix 2 - Eh. The third one better be good.
Matrix 3 - What the fuck? Give my goddamn $10 back, you pricks!

So sorely disappointed...

2003-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

GOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, lucky for you I will not be writing about soccer in this post. Nor will I be providing tips for, uh, scoring, if you know what I mean. Nay, I shall adress something akin to New Year's resolutions.

Although my subject is not quite resolutions.
And it's not quite New Year's yet.
...
anyways...

Thaaaat's right, I'll be talking about short (more like middle, though)-term goals.

For the longest time (this year, to be exact) the following were my goals to be achieved:

1. Get a new job
2. Get a new apartment
3. Get a new car

Numero uno is in the bag. The second one will be completed within a week or two. And the third one will be addressed some time before the end of this year. Also, some medium-priority goals have been fulfilled in the mean time as well (such as taking up martial arts again, more on this in later posts). So, what shall my goals be next? To quote Dr. Evil's Russian supermodel spy/assassin Ivanna Humpalot, "Wot to do, wot to do?"

So on a whim I decided to learn all I can about investing. Stock markets, mutual funds, and such. Well, not really on a whim, because I think I caught the "investing bug" (those little bastards are contagious!) from a friend of mine, whom we shall call Igor for the sake of argument. :-) After work today I stopped by Barnes & Noble and wasted over a hundred bucks on the following books (to be read in that order): Personal Finance for Dummies, Investing for Dummies, Mutual Funds for Dummies, and If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!. All come very recommended. Yeah, I'm a total n00b (that's newbie, for you luddites) when it comes to money, hence the Dummy books. Hopefully by the time I finish the books (not anytime soon) I will actually have some money to invest.

Oh, did I say that I wasted the dough on the books? I meant invested :-D

2003-10-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

...

After ~3 weeks of working on some stuff at work, it was reviewed today and here's the verdict - I need to change it around in a major way and, since this piece constitutes about 1/3 of the final functionality, finish the last two thirds. All before the deadline of 4pm, Friday. The word FUCK comes to mind.

Update

You know what's worse than having two 16-hour workdays in a row? Having two 16-hour workdays in a row and then going to work again on Sunday. That totally, and I mean TOTALLY, sucked. However I was told today (it's Monday currently) that I did a great job and my part of the project works absolutely correctly (it was stress-tested yesterday), which is super important, as it was one of the most critical parts to have working. Yay, I suppose.

2003-10-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

Expect the unexpected

Saturday - I was looking for a new apartment. Found an ad on Craig's List that looked interesting. Scheduled a visit for next day.
Sunday - Checked it out. Realized that this was the place of my dreams. In fact, much better. This was a good deal better than anything else I've ever seen. Started really wanting it.
Monday - Submitted application. Received answer - I got the place!

Wow.

It's a studio in Walnut Creek (awesome neighborhood, quite a change from thuggish Richmond). It's a studio with two frickin' rooms! Have you ever seen a studio with a bedroom and a living room? Me neither. It's located in a gated community, which is absolutely beautiful, like a little piece of heaven. Check out the amenity list - 21 acre complex w/3 pools & spas, 4 lighted tennis courts, sports court, golf putting area and other recreational facilities, 6000 sq. ft. Clubhouse w/ kitchen & dining area, lounge area, pool room and sports / gym facilities. All of that for $850/month!

Check out the pics below - it's a resort, for chrissakes!

One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six

Once I've moved, I will start looking into buying a new car. So far, I have settled on 2004 (maybe 2003) Toyota Celica Action Package. I still need to test-drive it, but that is what I really want right now. Here's what it will probably look like:

One - Two - Three

2003-10-20T01:12:00.000-07:00

Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass...

Alright, I'll be the first to admit it - I'm easily influenced by the mass opinions on movies. I tend to turn to the User Reviews section on Yahoo! Movies as opposed to the Critics' Reviews. I find that most of the time my opinions about the movies coincide with theirs. However an occasional movie comes that everyone is raving about - best movie ever! must-see! instant classic! The incessant jubilant chattering gets me all excited, possibly akin to little Billy finding a torn page from Playboy and jacking off to it in the back yard, or maybe akin to little Jenny fantasizing about how she will tell all of her five hundred friends and ten thousand acquaintances that she saw little Billy jacking off in the back yard, or whatever the hell else little girls get excited about.

But I digress.

So my hopes ramp up. I fully expect a best movie ever. A must-see. An instant classic. At those times, I wish I would've just seen the movie without the prior years (decades! days!?) of hype surrounding it. No matter how much I try, though, I feel excited about the movie. Shit, a million people raving about it can't be wrong... right? That's when I should remind myself of the bumper sticker I saw once - "Eat shit - hundred million flies can't be wrong".

And it's not that I get disappointed... The movies are thankfully not that bad. However, it's usually more of a "what the fuck is the hype about?!?!" moment. The theme of this post, however, is not some particular flick I want to rant about. I'd like to talk about a couple of directors, who have cults formed about them which I just don't get. Well, there are more than two, but the other ones are not as famous (Kevin Smith, Luc Besson, and Takashi Miike, if you wanted to know). So, let's begin.

Akira Kurosawa.

Everybody has heard of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai". Oh, what a great movie! Three and a half hours of wholesome enjoyment! Stands up to the test of time! "Bollocks!!" is what I would have said was I British. Fortunately for me, I am not, however I shall not say what I do think in order to avoid distressing the lovely damsels reading this here garbage of a website. OK, OK, I'm too hard on poor ole' "Seven Samurai". It wasn't THAT bad, but fact is - the only good thing I remember about the movie is that one character by the name of Kikuchiyo, a crazy dude who probably had to be subjected to a crazy combination of a gallon of warm sake with a pound of speed. Or some other upper they used in Japan of olde. This is a drama, for chrissakes! I shouldn't be remembering some fucked up guy with possible substance abuse (ok, I'm kidding, he was actually a good actor) in a *drama*!! An over-three-hours-long pointless drama! Another drawn out epic of Kurosawa's I've seen is Ran - again, an OK movie, but NOT a classic for the ages in any way! But, moving on...

Quentin Tarantino.

I've seen "Reservoir Dogs" a while back, treated to the showing by a big fan of the movie (and, coincidentally, a future roommate of mine). The movie was alright, but I didn't understant the obsession. In fact, I knew nothing about Tarantino or his movies, so I quickly forgot about Mr. Blonde and the gang. Recent excitement over Kill Bill got me, though. The previews looked promising, the name of the master (that's Quentin, for the uninitiated) was thrown around, great reviews, blah blah blah. I was predisposed to liking this movie. Let's see - I like weird movies, I like over-the-top action, I like old-style kung-fu. Why wasn't I in love with Kill Bill? Frankly, I can't say - it just didn't click with me. No, I enjoyed it, of course, to a point. But 5 stars? Best movie of the year? Come ON! I'm all in favor of second-chances, so I decided to give Tarantino a benefit of a doubt and just watched his Classic (with the big C) - "Pulp Fiction". You know what? No click again. Enjoyable somewhat, but not a gonna-watch-that-bad-mofo-again kinda movie. Both movies, in fact, seemed to lack a point. People seem to attribute all sorts of things to every frame of each movie. Bullshit, I say. These are the same kinds of people as the ones who consider "Star Wars" to be the pinnacle of filmmaking - hype for the sake of hype, leading to its infinite perpetuation.

"Pulp Fiction" did have some great quotes, though...

2003-10-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Fo' shizzle, dizzle!

Consider the following passage (painstakingly typed up by yours truly):

You are alive now, a consciousness knowing itself, sparkling with cognition amid a debris of dead and dying cells; alive while the atoms and molecules of your body die and are reborn. You are alive, therefore, in the midst of small deaths; portions of your own image crumble away moment by moment and are replaced, and you scarcely give the matter a thought. So you are to some extent now alive in the midst of the death of yourself - alive despite, and yet because of, the multitudinous deaths and rebirths that occur within your body in physical terms.

...

In your present situation you arbitrarily consider yourselves to be dependent upon one given physical image: You identify yourself with your body.

As mentioned earlier, all through your lifetime, portions of that body die, and the body that you have now does not contain one particle of physical matter that "it" had, say ten years ago. Your body is completely different now, then, than it was ten years ago. The body that you had ten years ago is dead. Yet obviously you do not feel that you are dead, and you are quite able to read this with the eyes that are composed of completely new matter. The pupils, the "identical" pupils that you have now, did not exist ten years ago, and yet there seems to be no great gap in your vision.

I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about these words. This passage attempts to demonstrate in understandable terms the disconnectedness of the consciousness from the physical body. For a believer (of a religion, of metaphysics, or otherwise), it seems to me the argument is presented rather lucidly and believably.

Non-believers, i.e. atheists, are then faced with the following concepts:
- "I" am not the same "I" from 10 years ago. In fact "I" am currently an entirely different person. Therefore the "I" of 10 years ago (remembered by this present "I" and by others) has pretty much died of physical causes.
- When did "I" from 10 years ago die and the current "I" emerge?
- Uh oh, I think I'm dying.
- Who or what is this "I" that identifies my persona as a whole?

What do "You" think about all this?

2003-09-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

I wish I was an Oscar Meyer weiner

Santa Clara, CA (AP) - HotJobs, the popular internet job search site, announced today that it had attained its goal of becoming 100% useless.

"We're delighted to have reached this milestone," said Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo, the parent company of HotJobs. "Yahoo has been striving to make HotJobs the absolute worst in job search sites since its acquisition last year, and we have succeeded beyond even our most optimistic expectations."

According to statistics from Jupiter Research, HotJobs now carries more fake job posts than its chief rivals, Monster and DICE. Alex Stone, internet analyst at Jupiter, stated that passing Monster was an astonishing achievement for HotJobs. "This shows that the HotJobs strategy of recycling the same bogus job posts over and over, month after month, has really paid-off handsomely," Stone said. "HotJobs has perfected the ability to provide users with completely useless, dated and fake jobs, regardless of the search criteria that users provide."

Yahoo's Semel indicated that there are more exciting developments ahead for HotJobs. "We have made tremendous advances in our JobSpam and RecruitScam technologies," Semel said. "In the future, users can expect that all their friends and family members will also receive email notifications for completely irrelevant jobs and recruiting come-ons. This opens whole new markets for us."

HotJobs, acquired by Yahoo last year in an effort to compete against the likes of Monster and DICE in the $7 billion bogus job search business, was once a somewhat useful job search engine. Now, with the changes brought under Yahoo's new leadership, it is completely, utterly and irretrievably hosed.

"We worked hard to achieve this level of uselessness," said Semel. "Yahoo is well on its way to becoming a fully-integrated, one-stop piece of shit."

When asked to comment, competitors Monster and DICE stated that, while the HotJobs achievement is impressive, users should not expect the competition to remain idle. "We anticipate that our site will become 107% useless in the third quarter," noted Scot Melland, CEO of DICE. "We're not going to allow HotJobs to grab a monopoly on uselessness." A spokeswoman for Monster echoed these sentiments. "We've been the absolute worst since day one, and we fully intend to remain the market leader in crappiness."

2003-09-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Muahaha......I'm 99000!!!

Check this out, so there's this online petition to place the Star Wars Kid (see below) into Episode III with some minor role (killing Jar-Jar is one proposed idea). Normally, I wouldn't give a flying you-know-what about this sort of thing, but I signed it nonetheless. Why? Well, maybe the fact that I'm exactly NINETY NINE THOUSANDTH person to do so had something to do with it. Follow the link and check it out yourself - the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Now, I wish I had something more relevant to say in the comments section - something about world peace, Berkeley alumni pride, or my love of ninjas. Fortunately, I didn't. Number 99001 swooped in swiftly right after me, hoping to take the prized place, but failing in his feable attempt. Victory is mine! Resistance is futile! Sufferin' succotash! If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands! Beeyotch!

... and as the last cell of his tortured by thought brain matter vanished into painfully vague nothingness, the Eight Legged DJ came to terms in a sudden flash of pure self-realization with the fact that he is, in fact, a mothafuckin' P.I.M.P. ...

2003-09-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

Big Brother is watching

Do you see that visitor counter at the bottom of the right-hand menu? Clicking it provides tons of useful (useless?) info about the people visiting this here blog. Granted, the number of visitors is directly proportional to the frequency of updates, so it would be an understatement to say that the page you're currently reading hasn't been a hotbed of activity as of late. Hmm, upon re-reading the previous sentence, the convoluted double-negatives jumped out at me and attempted to perform some sort of a sadistic ritual upon my brain, not unlike the Hamster Dance official music video or that one French movie called "The French Twist" (Now available at Blockbuster! Doubles as a Home Brain Surgery Kit!!). Now, what was I talking about?

Oh. Right.

Clicking on the counter takes you directly to the so-called Site Meter. I can usually figure out most of the visitors judging by the domain name provided: berkeley.edu - check, microsoft.com - check, occasional random visitor - sure. Sometimes, however, I just can't come up with an explanation. For example, almost every single day since September 9th somebody from the stanford.edu domain has visited my blog. Who are you, o mysterious stranger? If I may add so, Stanfurd sux! No offense intended, of course.

Even more interesting (hah! just when you thought that was not in any way possible!) is a single visit from the NIPR.mil domain. Wondering who from the military could be interested in my humble little excuse-for-a-page, I naively typed the address into the browser. "Screw you, beyotch" barked the browser back at me with the Cannot Find Server error. A simple search on the web revealed the following info: "Nipr.mil is not a single domain but a hush-hush web proxy that acts as a gateway for hundreds of U.S. military domains in order to hide their identities."

Charming.

Naturally, the prospect of the military interested in my words piqued the curiosity of the James Bond within me. Now, those of you who know me personally might remark smugly that the James Bond within me is not very much pronounced, if at all. Fuck you.

Where was I? Oh yes, so I decided to put a whole bunch of terrorism-related keywords in the following paragraph to see whether that will result in any interesting visitors (a venture akin to the Jam Echelon Day). Now, without further ado... terrorist, bomb, al qaeda, barney the purple dinosaur, bin laden, 9/11, mujaheddin, casper the friendly ghost, anthrax, world trade center, saddam hussein, teletubbies, george dubya bush, al jazeera , hamas, jihad, iraq, taliban, hugh grant, echelon. I shall inform you of any results in due time.

42

Douglas Adams is da man. I have long suspected this, but having both started and finished reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy before breakfast today I can confirm that notion. True, it is quite possible that eating breakfast at 4pm might not have been the brightest idea of mine (some might argue the contrary), but the book was damn hard to put down. It actually reminded me of Scott Adams' Dilbert cartoon. Neither really makes me laugh out loud, but I find both to be highly witty and amusing. The fact that both authors share an identical last name seems too improbable to be a coincidence. If you know what I mean. Anyways, below are some of quotes I really liked from the book:

Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges. "Haaaauuurrgghhh..." said Arthur, as he felt his body softening and bending in unusual directions .... He wound his eyes desperately around in Ford's direction. "Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

"I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good."

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

2003-07-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

BAM!!!

Since I don't have much time for posting (as has been the case lately), I'll just give you some links I've found fascinating recently.

Star Wars Kid - Yep, this is the latest Web fad. You haven't heard of it yet? Well, sir, in that case I have the misfortune of telling you that you have your head stuck deep in your @$$. In any case, check it out - it's a video of a high-school kid who had the misfortune of taping his "awesome" "Jedi" "skills" and having his prankster friends release it on the net. First download the original. Then get the Dork Clones video ("Every generation has a legend... Every journey has a first step... Every Jedi has a semi-retarded clone..."). Finally, download the other 50 remakes.

Three-year-old basketball prodigy - Bah! This is just crazy... Have you ever seen a little 3-year munchkin make 18 shots in a row, using a real basketball and a 10-foot-high net (NBA is 12 feet)? I apparently have. Jeez, just watch it. Reebok is really betting on this kid. Fifteen years left to find out if he really is all that.

Flash mobs - I like random humor - it's the funniest one. Therefore I was destined to enjoy reading about the so-called "flash mobs" (hmm... looks like Yahoo picked up the story now, too) - randomly-forming groups of people (well, appearingly randomly) doing random shit and then rapidly dispersing. All with the higher purpose of screwing around with people. Well, that's how I see it, anyways. Brilliant.

My sister in LA Times!!! - OK, so it's the Calendar part of LA Times. But still.... very cool! Today's edition :-D

2003-06-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Ay, Que Estupido

Well. Today I sent my girlfriend a card, commemorating the sixth-month anniversary of our going out. After calling her later in the evening to reiterate the fact, she pointed out that June 10 minus January 10 does not six months make. Besides the humorous value, I cannot think of a positive spin to put on this...

What is wrong with me???

Did I fall a lot when I was a child? Did the monkeypox finally affect my brain? Did Bush magically transfer his thinking abilities unto me?

I blame the last math class I took - Discrete Mathematics, the class that killed math for me. Now, Calculus.... ahhh.... beautiful, simple Calculus....

Speaking of Calculus, I thought of an interesting analogy as I was speeding at 85 mph on tight freeway corners in my death-trap (read: car). I was comparing my car's steering to that of a normal vehicle and the following came to mind - normal car's steering to my car's steering is like computing area under a curve using an integral to computing that same area using a Riemann Sum. In a normal car, the wheels turn in very small (you could say, infinitessimal) increments, therefore making the whole experience of turning at high speed a very smooth one. In my car, it seems that the angle of the turn is large and happens at some time interval. As a result, the car feels like it's about to slide out of control. Now I have yet another reason to hate Riemann Sums. How I loathe thee, Riemann.... (Euler too - damn you for inventing a shitload of theorems and having each fucking one called the Euler Theorem)

Egads, What're We Gonna Do Tonight, Brain?

As you can see (and I assume that you have been blessed with the miracle of eyesight), there haven't been many updates to this blog as of late. A lot of things have happened - I have been to Los Angeles, to Las Vegas, I have said goodbyes to friends whom I won't see in years (if ever), I have worked my first week, etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately, my work schedule does not allow me to post frequent updates here. Three hours of commute per day (at least) take away the majority of my free time. And writing here takes surprisingly a lot of time (an hour for an interesting, by my standards, post would not be uncommon). Posting during a weekday is thus out of the question. Frankly, I have been toying with the idea of calling it quits, but hasn't come to any particular decision yet.

...

Meanwhile, following the relative success of Mutato, I have come up with a couple of other names. One is also a name for a superhero - I came up with it in that other place where creative, errr, juices flow: the bathroom. It is Herman - the hernia man. And no, I do not have a hernia, nor did I hit my head on the toilet a-la Back to the Future. Another cool name I came up with is actually a very possible future replacement for the Eight Legged DJ (heresy! heresy!) - it's.... DJ BJ :-D Is that great or what?

2003-05-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Intellectual whores and cuddle bitches. Oh my!

Ugh. It's 12:45am. I am getting up in 7 hours (am going to LA tomorrow). I haven't even started packing yet. Yet I spent the last hour and a half surfing the forums on www.intellectualwhores.com. If you've never heard of the Ladder Theory, set aside half an hour or so and read it! Seriously. I love getting people's reactions on it.

2003-05-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Mutato - An Unlikely Superhero?

I had a dream last night. I don't exactly remember what it was about. What I do remember is waking up in the middle of the night thinking that I must write a particular phrase down. Before I continue, I must mention that at several points in my life I have woken up at 4 or 5am with a genius idea that might change my life, possibly even revolutionize the human society as we know it. Or maybe I thought of a phrase so philosophical in nature, it would be remembered for centuries for its simplicity and insight (one of such phrases was related to my sudden understanding of God). I invariably decided that the idea was so deep, I would surely remember it in the morning. And so I went back to sleep. Invariably, besides recalling the fact of wanting to write something down, I didn't remember jack shit. This always pissed me off, so last night I forced myself to get a pen and write out my thought. And so, deep from the misty tunnels of my mind, I bring you, the reader, the following insight (as gathered from the chicken scratches on the back of a crumbled receipt):

Mutato - a giant mutated potato, that will solve the world's hunger problem ... by eating half the people.

Huh. It would appear that my unconscious mind has a twisted sense of humor. Disregarding the ridiculousness of the sentence, it actually makes a certain amount of sense. The tongue-in-cheek quality certainly is baffling. I've never been aware of humor in my dreams before. Does that mean I'm funnier when I'm unconscious?? That is certainly a conclusion that does not surprise me.

Roman's Movie Reviews

Three movies. Three Asian countries. One heroic reviewer.
Who will prevail?
Don't miss the next episode of the Teletubbies!

Hard-Boiled - One of THE classic action movies of Hong Kong cinema. Such heavyweights of Asian cinema as Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung and John Woo were involved in its production. Plot - during a shoot-out in a teahouse, a cop loses his partner. Meanwhile, two rival gangs involved in a fight for territory are infiltrated by an undercover agent. The agent and the cop together take on their common enemy. OK, so the story is a little thin - "You kill my partner. I must take revenge or I lose face!" However this movie must be watched for action. And action it delivers. Damn, I could never imagine that action scenes so beautiful existed back in '94. Chow Yun-Fat once again proves that he is the Rambo of the East.

Suriyothai - Biggest Thai production ever, this movie was sponsored by the royal family. As far as I know, this movie also happens to be the only one to feature elephants in epic battles. This is one long movie. One VERY long movie. Three and a half hours to be exact. It follows the life (and eventually death) of Suriyothai, a princess in one of Thailand's many provinces. The bones I have to pick with this movie are the length, the absence of any acting ability, and the fact that all characters have long-ass names. Strange, unpronounceable names. Very hard to follow due to the sheer number of characters involved. However I still recommend this movie for its epic scope, amazing detailed visuals, awesome battles, court intrigues and ambitious rulers. Great for one-time viewing.

Hong Kil Dong - Whooohooo! I've been wanting to see this North Korean movie for 14 years (since 1989 in case your math skills are lacking). Back then, it was hugely popular with teenage boys in Russia, and in fact I fell in love with martial arts due to this movie. Needless to say I was quite exstatic when I got it, with the original Russian dubbing no less. The film is about Hong Kil Dong, a Robin Hood-type figure, who rescues villagers from bandits and destroys evil ninjas. Oh yeah. The fights in this movie are surprisingly good (well, on par with Chinese/HK period movies of that time). Unfortunately, there are not as many fights as I had remembered and the ninjas appear only towards the end. However they do exhibit all the characteristics I attributed to ninjas when I was young - throwing stars, disappearing in a puff of smoke and burrowing into the sand. I could really care less for the love story though. Interestingly, the communist propaganda did not permeate the movie. Only two moments stood out - when all the people in the province (good and bad) united against the evil Japanese ninja invaders, and when Hong Kil Dong with his family and friends are sailing off on a ship to look for a land where everybody is equal and there are no rich or poor. All in all, very recommended only for those who have already seen the film and remember it with nostalgia.

Duct Tape - Hot or Not?

2003-05-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

LOL, as I'm reading this article at work, the subject seems vaguely relevant.

Oh well, at least I'm not the only one. The following e-mail was passed around the office today:

We always hear "the rules" from the female side. Now here are the Rules from the male side. Please note: these are all numbered "1" ON PURPOSE!

1.Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up,put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1.Sometimes we are not thinking about you. Live with it.

1.Sunday = sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

1.Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1.Crying is blackmail.

1.Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one, Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it! We'll get it for you, but just LET US KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!!!

1.We don't remember dates. Mark birthdays and anniversaries on the calendar. Remind us frequently beforehand.

1.Most guys own three pairs of shoes. What makes you think we'd be any good at choosing which pair, out of thirty, would look good with your dress?

1.Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1.Let us know about that funny noise in your car engine as soon as you hear it.

1.Anything we said six months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after seven days.

1.If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us. We refuse to answer, but still love you.

1.If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

1.Christopher Columbus did not need directions, and neither do we.

1.The relationship is never going to be like it was the first two months we were going out. Get over it. And quit whining to your girlfriends.

1.ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows
default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what Mauve is.

1.If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.

1.We are not mind readers and we never will be. Our lack of mind-reading ability is not proof of how little we care about you.

1.If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1.If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.

1.When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really, you look fine!!!

1.It is neither in your best interest or ours to take the quiz together. No it doesn't matter which quiz.

1.I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape.

2003-05-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

It is a Good Day to Die!

You will die. In fact, you have less than a week to live. Hell, I can give you the exact date of your demise.

How often do you hear such categorical statements? Unless you are Angelina Jolie, starring in crappy movies, probably not very often. No, I'm not talking about a trivial passing away here (feel free to discuss the triviality of your passing away :-), I'm talking about a full-blown end of the world. I vividly remember the last time the Judgement Day was predicted. It was late November, 1993 in Russia and the news of the day was the prediction by the White Brotherhood of the coming armageddon on November 24th. No, the White Brotherhood was not a white supremacy organization. They were a bunch of religious fanatics, who managed to brainwash (literally) and recruit thousands of youths, following a belief that Christ has returned in the form of one Maria Davy Christos. It was disturbing to see young people (late teens, early 20's) with white robes, short hair and blank stares on their faces (probably their scariest feature), giving out pamphlets on the bus stops and in the marketplaces. November 24th came and passed, and after a number of mass suicides and incarcerations of the leaders the movement was, for the most part, disbanded. Wow, almost 10 years ago.

Why do I bring all this up? Well, two sects predict the coming of the doomsday currently. Granted, they are not as big as the White Brotherhood once was, but peculiarly enough, their judgement days both fall on May 15, 2003. One group is called the Panawave Laboratory cult. Based in Japan, its followers worship a magical seal (the animal), who could potentially be the savior of humankind, and believe that squares of white cloth would protect them by neutralizing the effect of electromagnetic waves allegedly generated by left-wing guerrillas in Japan. Imagine that. Sake - it does a body good.

The other cult is a bit more interesting - they are called the Zetas, and they believe that a so-called Planet-X (Nibiru) will pass by Earth on May 15, causing cataclysmic changes. The information is (of course) channeled by space aliens to the cult leader, Nancy Lieder (who by the way posts on the Usenet quite a bit). While absurd, the ideas are based on a series of books written by a Sumerian scholar Zecharia Sitchin over the past 25 years or so. I heartily recommend the books - they're quite a fascinating read and they WILL make you believe. When I have time, finishing up the rest of the books in the series is definitely high on my to-do list.

I guess we'll see in couple of days whether the magical seal decides to rescue the mankind, huh?

Sit, Sat, Sut

Check out this article - it is a very entertaining account of one man's struggle to achieve the life's ultimate goal - lowest score ever on SAT's. Very detailed, with photographic evidence and such. Did you know that the essays we all wrote were not graded by humans? Apparently a computer algorithm looks for keywords, making the grading standardized. So, theoretically, you could cheat by writing out the necessary keywords if you knew how the algorithm worked. Cool.

Obligatory Family Guy Quotes

Doctor: Mr. Griffin, I'm trying to tell you you're fine.
Peter: Oh, now you're coming on to me?
Lois: He's not coming on to you, Peter. He is trying to tell you that you're healthy.
Doctor: ..................Can't it be both?

[Chris and Peter are at the aquarium]
Chris: Dad, what's the blowhole for?
Peter: I'll tell you what it's not for, son, and then you'll understand why I can never go back to Sea World.

Brian: (babbling in Spanish)
Mexican guy: Oh, that's not too bad, but you forgot to accent the 'e'.
Brian: Oh, you speak English?
Mexican guy: No, just the previous speech and the sentence I'm speaking now.
Brian: You're kidding, right?
Mexican guy: Que?

Brian: Peter, this is the final plague!
Peter: Good, 'cause this is starting to get really old.
Brian: Peter, the final plague is the death of the first-born son.
Peter: Oh no, Stewie!
Brian: The first born son.
Peter: Meg!
Brian: Your wife.
Peter: Chris!

Peter: I'll handle it, Lois. I read a book about this sort of thing once.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't... nothing?
Peter: Oh yeah...

Reporter: I'm standing in the bedroom of Judy and Glen Issac: 10 years married and still in love. What's their secret? Judy has an inoperable brain tumor the size of my fist, and that just happens to be Glen's fetish.

Stormpoopers - Hot or Not?

... In totally unrelated news, Salam Pax has commenced blogging again. Looks like right now, Internet access in Baghdad costs about five dollars an hour. Damn, and I thought AT&T was ripping me off...

2003-05-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

Main Screen Turn On

Being a programmer, I see tons of ugly code. Hell, I'll even admit, I've written tons of ugly code. Experience, thinking ahead, and more experience are the only remedies. Did I mention experience? It's easy to write bad code. Yeah, it'll work, but its (often spaghetti-like) structure will confuse anyone who will dare look at it at a later date. Never mind modifying it. Then there's beautiful, elegant code. A rare beast indeed. Not your run of the mill code, no. This piece of art will take a seemingly impossible or incredibly difficult problem and solve it in a non-obvious manner that is still easily understandable. I admire such code. I marvel at it.

I have just run into such a problem. Easy to explain, hard to get started on. Looking around (thanks, Google Groups!), I found a solution for a similar problem on a different system. After modifying it to suit my needs (all one line of it), I spent five minutes admiring and another five writing this mini-essay. This is why programming kicks ass. There's no doubt about it - I've made the right career choice.

Annoying Microsoft Helpers

One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven - Eight

2003-05-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

The following are actual chat conversations, culled from bash.org. You need to have some knowledge of IRC in order to understand some of them (i.e. what +m and +o mean).

<Beeth> Girls are like internet domain names, the ones I like are already taken.
<honx> well, you can stil get one from a strange country :-P

<AgentSmith> It seems you have been leading two lives, Mr. Anderson. In one life, you are Robert Anderson, assistant cook at a Jack in the Box in Mesquite....in the other...you go by the chat alias "Randerson"...spreading homosexual propoganda, lying, and being a generally immature pest...
<AgentSmith> One of these...has a future.
<Randerson> LMAO OMFG where's the phone, I have to tell Dean about this
<AgentSmith> How can you use the phone when you cannot...speak?
*** AgentSmith sets mode: +m

<studdud> what the fuck is wtf

* dregan kicks Yamucha in the nuts
* dregan stamps on Yamucha's neck
*** ChanServ sets mode: +o Yamucha
<dregan> Oh shit.

(morganj): 0 is false and 1 is true, correct?
(alec_eso): 1, morganj
(morganj): bastard.

<Raize> can you guys see what I type?
<vecna> no, raize
<Raize> How do I set it up so you can see it?

<Mikkel> If you went camping and you got REALLY drunk with your friend and you
woke up the next morning with a condom stuck up your ass would you tell anybody?
<Celestya> i dont think so
<Mikkel> Wanna go camping?

<h|tler> HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU TELL THAT I'M 13 BY LOOKING AT WHAT I'M WRITEING?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

<Thumb> do you know of any major organizations that are similar the CDC?
<Lucent> who?
<Thumb> center for disease control
<Lucent> i said WHO
<Thumb> what? i'm asking you
<Lucent> World Health Organization

<reuben> somebody keeps jiggling the doorknob on my front door, then running away
<reuben> i don't know if i should call the police, or hook up some electricity to the doorknob
<cristobal> why don't you put ice on the stairs
<cristobal> and heat up the door knob
<cristobal> and swing paint buckets down from your two story foyer
<cristobal> then a few years later, fade from the public eye.....

serluny: how long did it took u to learn c?
ReDPriest:4.5 minutes
serluny:how did u do that?
ReDPriest:i downloaded it into my brain..i got a program to do
that
serluny:what program
ReDPriest:download shit into your brain v3.1
serluny:how do i download it?
ReDPriest: go to www.downloadable-shit-for-your-brain.com
serluny:i cant download it something is wrong

<turno> I want to fuck Michelle's brains out with my huge fucking cock, over and over again .. and then her sister can come and join us too.
<Seeker> Err turno, your mom reads the quotes on bash.org?
<turno> I'll fucking KILL YOU! !
<Seeker> Your mom does work for the church ? If she reads what you just said she'd be pretty angry right?
<turno> Dude you have no fucking clue, don't seriously... you'd be ruining my life.
<Seeker> Don't worry, I won't post it.
[Privmsg] <Seeker> Hey dude, I'm gonna paste something - will you post it on bash.org?
[Privmsg] <opiate> the turno thing? haha you fucking bastard!!
[Privmsg] <Seeker> hehe his mom's gonna fucking kill him, drag him to that church they go to and get the priest to sodomise him.
[Privmsg] <opiate> yeah and then he's gonna come fucking kill us, still I reckon it's worth it;)
[Privmsg] <turno> You're not gonna post it are you ? Please don't .. I'm begging you.
[Privmsg] <Seeker> I'm not gonna post it:) and even if I did she'd never know that your nick turno was her son Michael Savu .
[Privmsg] <turno> *phew* spose you have a point

The Lame Link Section ™

eBay Feedback Comments Left by andy46477 - Hahahah. You know how you can comment on buyers and sellers on eBay? People usually put stupid shit like AAAAAAAAAAA+++++++!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, etc. This guy is different. See the link for comments along the lines of "Has intestinal FORTITUDE!!! Eats PORTIONED meals!!! Enjoys NOURISHMENT!!!" or "Prompt, yet VAGUELY malodorous. Will CERTAINLY do more business. Has POOL!"
What Dick and Jane can't read - In order to stay as politically correct as possible, the American children's textbooks are now censoring words and expressions that might cause even the vaguest discomfort to someone somewhere. Apparently that includes the words "snow cone", "hot dog", "fireman", "Chief Sitting Bull" and "Mother Russia." WTF?
Matrix in IMAX - Somewhat old news, but since I forgot to mention it before, might as well enlighten those who are not aware. It appears that a couple of weeks after the Matrix sequels open in movie theaters, they will also be showed at IMAX theaters. Having never seen an IMAX movie before, I can't wait for the "IMAX experience."

President Bush - Hot or Not?

Here's the caption for the picture, taken straight from Yahoo! News - "President Bush recoils after hitting his head,Thursday, May 1, 2003, as he boarded Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House."

2003-05-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

I GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, so it's not a permanent position, but still - an 8-week internship at IBM working with totally awesome technologies (data mining, business intelligence) gotta count for something. None of the details have been discussed yet, they'll give me a call within the next 2 weeks, but I was assured that I have the spot (one of four). Just gettin' my foot in the proverbial door.

Life is good.

2003-05-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

Puzzles for Blondes

One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven

2003-05-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

Analyze This

1) Person "A", who is a non-drinker, lends his car to person "B" who is sober at the time.

2) "A" knows that "B" is a habitual drunk and often drives in that condition, but they are friends at the time since "B" is backing up "A" in a dispute with person "C".

3) "B" gets drunk, drives "A"'s car and is involved in an accident which kills or maims 17 people.

4) "A" turns up at the accident scene, saves 3 of the injured, and executes "B" for having committed vehicular manslaughter with his ("A"'s) vehicle.

The moral question is, What responsibility does "A" have for the 14 deaths, and the injuries of the 3 survivors, and is "A" morally justified in executing "B"?

What The Hell?!?!

Ow, my eyes!!! (DISCLAIMER: Not to be viewed under influence of drugs and/or alcohol. There's 3 links there, check them all out.)

That's Some Nice Wood You Got There, Son

2003-04-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

al-Sahhaf: Our initial assessment is that they will all die

You know, I grew to expect just about anything from our current administration. Screw the NATO? Been there. Attack Iraq on circumstantial evidence? Done that. Ally yourself with a terrorist organization after spouting all this "war on terrorism" crap? Oh my, yes. Surprised I am not. It appears the US has reached an agreement with the terrorist Mujahedeen where they get to keep all their weapons, apparently to protect themselves from the evil and oppressive Iranian regime. Damn those bastard Iranians for keeping your average, innocent terrorist down. Damn them!

In other news, our good friend Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf has apparently landed a TV job on an Arab TV news network. Good for him! Not sure if he knows about it just yet though. Latest rumors have him in his aunt's house in Baghdad trying to surrender to US forces for protection and not being taken in due to not being on the list of the most-wanted people. Poor guy can't get no break from nobody.

2003-04-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Anonymous No More

I have gotten into the habit of analyzing the logs of the people who visit this here humble website. You can check them out yourself by clicking on that little icon to the right with the number of visitors. Recently, I noticed that some are being redirected here from Yahoo and Google search engines, where they were looking for things like "technology+in+the+matrix" or "mensa puzzle solution 13=ufs". It hit me - holy crap, my blog is being indexed! True enough, putting "romandawg" as the search parameter into either Yahoo or Google results in this page. At the top.

I'm a firm believer in that once you mess up on the web, someday it will eventually come back and bite you in the ass. See my newsgroup post in one of the older entries where I'm the one doing the biting. Until now, I was sure that my identity was more or less hidden. Search engines only had records of my old chess tournaments. Newsgroups only had my old CS posts. Even the page you're reading right now never worried me - only select people would see it and maybe some random visitors, blog surfers and such. Or so I thought.

Now just about anybody, a random newgroups user, a recruiter - anybody! can make the link between my e-mail and this page. True, there can be multiple Romandawgs out there, but everything currently points to me. Let's see, after a bit of investigation of this page and its comments, such a person will discover my first name (duh), last name, university I attended, my political views, my picture, etc. Yeah, it could be worse, but what happens when a Republican job recruiter reads my essay on Bush et al.? You think that wouldn't happen? Welcome to the Internet-enabled era, my friend - it's happening already, and has been for a while.

Yeah, I could fight it. Maybe not with this blog, but if you have an actual server hosting your pages you can prevent their indexing (to a certain degree). Will I be on the losing side of the fight? Hell yes. Like it or not, eventually all our lives will be online, good *and* bad. Until then, enjoy your relative anonymity.

Oy Vey!

I just went to the printer room to get a printout of a document, when I noticed a thick pile of papers with familiar layout. It appears at some point last week I accidentally clicked Print when I was reading a Slashdot article (the one with the review of the Microsoft questions book) and so it printed out. Along with hundreds of comments. I was too scared to look at the number of pages I wasted - there were at least 50 there I'm sure. Scarier even was the thought that they were just laying there for the past 4-5 days or so. That can't be good. No, sir.

Roman's Movie Reviews

Once again I bring you my unbiased opinions on movies I recently had the misfortune of seeing.

Versus - A strange Japanese movie (aren't they all?) about Yakuza and ... zombies! That's right - this is a hack-'em, slash-'em, shoot-'em-in-the-head-multiple-times zombie flick! Plot - no friggin' clue. Seriously. There was something about reincarnation, prison escape and a magical forest. I'm at a loss when it comes to tying all those strings together. I don't think plot was at the forefront of this production. The action is alright, some nice camera shots, couple of funny moments, but overall the whole thing is a B-movie experience, corny one-liners and all.

Children of Dune - A continuation of 2000's Sci-Fi channel's miniseries "Dune." Plot is way too involved to discuss here. This 5-hour movie suffers from the same ailment as its predecessor - extreme overacting, pompousness and flowery speech. I've never read Frank Herbert's books, unfortunately, so I cannot compare - but it appears to me that things that seem grand in books are ludicrous when acted out. Come on, people, nobody ever talks or acts that way, royal families included! This is still head and shoulders above the 80's rendition of "Dune," with Sting and Patrick Stewart. Too bad there weren't any large-scale battles in this one. In any case, I still enjoyed it. It's good 'ole sci-fi after all. And I'll be waiting for the next episode of the saga, which will hopefully come out in 2006. Until then, "fear is the mind killer!"

Bend it like Beckham - A very nice little comedy about an Indian girl, living in Britain, who wants to be a soccer star just like her idol, David Beckham (famous UK soccer player). Unfortunately, her traditional parents oppose her involvement with the game and insist she learns to cook like a proper Indian woman. Hardly a masterpiece, this is nonetheless a very enjoyable, very kind movie. Yes, there was a lot of cheesiness throughout, but it never descended into the deep fiery bowels of lameness hell that are romantic comedies. Well, it did a couple of times, but fortunately came right out. Made me wanna watch "Shaolin Soccer" again too, which is definitely a plus.

Visitor Q - Very very disturbing Japanese movie. Definitely not for those with weak stomachs. It deals with issues such as incest, rape, necrophilia, prostitution, family violence, murder, drug-induced chronic lactation, and yes, you got it, microphone sodomy. The approach follows Kubrick's quote that the subjects are so difficult, that they can only be presented through comedy. Howerver, personally I found nothing funny in the succession of clips that this movie really is, excepting a few moments far and between (think necrophilia, now think rigor mortis). The plot follows a very screwed up family which eventually overcomes all of its problems to become united. Husband reunites with his wife when they both dismember a woman he killed and raped. Parents reunite with their son when they murder the kids who bullied him. They reunite with their daughter by... well, you get the picture. My open-mindedness has its limits and yes, at times I was disgusted by what I was seeing, but you know, at the end of it all, you feel calm, you *know* that the family will be alright. I shall be seeing some more (less extreme) movies by this same famous director, Takashi Miike, namely "Ichi the Killer" and "Audition." Judgement is still out on Japanese cinema.

Who You AIM'ing At, Fool?

The Lame Link Section ™

Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? - A very interesting essay by Jared Diamond, author of best-selling "Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies." Scroll down a bit to get to the actual text.
Spam, Spam, Spam, Lovely Spam - An informative article on the origins of spam and the fight between spammers and anti-spammers. You can use Google Groups to find the very first spam message (April 11, 1994). Very cool.
AOLiza - What do you get when you pair one of those dumb AI chatterbots with your average AIM users who think they're talking to an actual person? Long meaningless conversations, that's what. Read them yourself here.

2003-04-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a Genius

Well, according to Mensa. Supposedly. Try to solve as many problems in this puzzle (it's an Excel file) - score of 23 and above means you are a genius. So far I got 27/33 (The first one is not counted, obviously). Here is the list of the problems, but you should still download the file to check your solutions. The ones I solved are in bold. I also added some comments. DO NOT POST SOLUTIONS IN THE COMMENTS AREA!



0	24 H in a D		(Sample Problem. Answer: 24 Hours in a Day)

1	26 L of the A

2	7 D of the W

3	7 W of the W

4	12 S of the Z

5	66 B of the B

6	52 C in a P (WJs)

7	13 S in the USF

8	18 H on a G C

9	39 B of the O T

10	5 T on a F

11	90 D in a R A

12	3 B M (S H T R)	(*)

13	32 is the T in D F at which W F

14	15 P in a R T

15	3 W on a T		(Accidentally saw Masha's correct solution. Oh well.)

16	100 C in a R

17	11 P in a F (S) T

18	12 M in a Y

19	13=UFS		(Damn that U. I have a reasonable idea of F&S)

20	8 T on a O

21	29 D in F in a L Y

22	27 B in the N T

23	365 D in a Y

24	13 L in a B D	(Minor typo in the answer here)

25	52 W in a Y

26	9 L of a C

27	60 M in a H

28	23 P of C in the H B

29	64 S on a C B

30	9 P in S A

31	6 B to an O in C

32	1000 Y in a M	(Typo in the answer here)

33	15 M on a D M C

(*) Kinda cheated here. I solved 3 B M, but I knew for sure I wouldn't know the rest. So I searched for 3 B M (well, for the real words) on Google, and found what (S H T R) is. So it's not really that bad of a cheat, since I figured out the important part. If you solve this, you'll know what I mean.

Respect to the Man in the Ice Cream Van!

Sweet, I'm going to the second round of interviews with IBM. They don't interview on-site for this position, so it's also gonna be a phone interview. W00t, w00t!

2003-04-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

There is no Fighting Here! This is the War Room!

If you had the choice of renting an apartment anywhere in the United States, Berkeley should be your prime candidate. How many cities are there that offer rent control? How many cities are there where the judge is on the tenant's side even before the hearing of the tenant-landlord conflict starts? Previously, I hoped for that. Now I believe it. Me and my ex-roommates took our ex-landlord to court today for non-payment of the security deposit. I don't want to jinx it, but we're reasonably sure that we won (We get the results back in the mail in a week). The judge was giving the landlord (whose initial smug grin was soon wiped off his dastardly profile) a real hard time. No shit, that's what happens when you're a lying, scheming sack of processed donkey excrements (whatever the hell that is). Special thanks are going out to Masha & Sasha Inc., who ran the show, so to speak. Job well done, girls! Greets are also due to Eugene and Alek, who (along with yours truly) came as witnesses and did in fact witness the total debacle that is the small claims court system. Now, when did I ever get so poetic?

Oooh, Baby, Now YOU Google ME

An e-mail seems to be making rounds about the supposedly new (and supposedly oh-so-scary) feature of Google, where you type in your phone number and it returns your name and address. Instead of replying, I decided to set the matter straight publicly. Here and now. Yes, the feature is there. Yes, it works, I tried it. I actually saw this this about a month ago. I was a bit surprised that Google had this service, but that's about it. First of all, this is NOT new for Google, it's quite an old feature as far as I know. It's only been publicized everywhere as of late. Secondly, this is called (I think) a reverse phone lookup - services like this were available on the Internet since the dawn of time. I remember doing similar searches back in '97 (if not '96). So there, you know the truth. I do admit this is still cool, somewhat disturbing, stuff. It's fun putting in numbers similar to yours to see who your neighbors are :-)

Microsoft Interview Question

Was reading a review on Slashdot of a book dedicated to Microsoft interview questions. Looks like a lot of interesting stuff - interviews with interviewers, philosophy of such questions, and of course plenty of questions themselves with tons of answers, including the ubiquitous "manhole cover" question. This is a joke, posted by one of the readers. I find it totally hilarious, unfortunately unless you are Eugene, chances are you won't get it. Nonetheless...

Interviewer: How would you make a critical, large, distributed application more secure?
Interviewee: Round!
Interviewer: Congratulations. Welcome to Microsoft.

2003-04-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

Oh Boy

"A powerful and damaging earthquake that could cause billions of dollars in damage has a 62 percent chance of striking the San Francisco Bay area within the next 30 years." Read more here. Scary, scary stuff.

On the positive side, I have found a movie that I really really want to see. Suriyothai is a Thai production, and the biggest, most expensive movie Thailand ever made. Check out the link for absolutely gorgeous pictures from the movie.

2003-04-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's Nice To Be Important, But It's More Important To Be Nice

I got a call from IBM yesterday. Confused the hell out of me initially - turns out I applied for an internship whereas I thought it was for a permanent position. I wonder what the interviewer thought of my initial brainfreeze. Anyways, I recovered, began answering his questions. It striked me as odd that I was sounding totally uninterested, despite the fact that I'd be working with stuff I would REALLY enjoy (data mining, business intelligence). Unfortunately, this is not a development position - more like technical writing. I'd be writing an actual book though, ISDN number and all. But the guy did say that a permanent opportunity is possible afterwards. So the way I see it, I'd get my foot in the door (assuming I get this *crossing fingers*) and then maybe try to get into the development area, seeing how I'd have all that expertise. I mean, hell, I would've written a book about it. :-D

The shock came at the end of the conversation, when the interviewer started requesting things to send him. Some professional references - fine. Sample of writing - no big deal, still got my kick-ass papers from Technical Communication. Faculty reference - HUH?!?!?! Now, I assumed that I wouldn't be going to grad school any time soon, so I didn't feel it was necessary to suck up to professors and get to know them. And there's no other way in a class of several hundred people. I'm thinking, alright, I had a good relationship with my Tech. Comm. professor, I'll easily get his recommendation. The interviewer says - nah, we'd like a CS professor. Now, try to think of ten curse words. Now think of all possible permutations. That's exactly what was going through my mind at that time. Not only did I not know any of my CS profs, but I didn't even have high grades in those classes. Usually B's and B+'s.

Looking at the list of classes I took, I stopped on two possible candidates. One taught a class last semester and I got a B+, so I figured there's a good chance he'd do it. Tough shit. He replies back, saying that he doesn't know me and a B+ doesn't warrant a recommendation. Better luck with the second guy, though. He says that he doesn't really know me, but if he's my only chance, he'd do it. One problem - he is the professor of the very first CS class I took at Cal. Freshman friggin' year. Not only will that recommendation probably have no weight, but it is likely that the interviewer will assume that everything went downhill from there. Which it did :-\ Ah well, I finally decided to send him as a reference, bundled with my Tech. Comm. prof. Hopefully they'll call him first.

Let this be a lesson to you, kids - don't apply to IBM.

The Lame Link Section ™

The Brain: Intelligent MP3 Plugin - Wow. I was waiting for something like this to come out eventually, but had no idea that the technology is already available. I haven't tried it yet, but according to descriptions it analyzes the music you play and picks the songs that are close to your style. So if you're into rock, it will be picking rock songs from the playlist. Even cooler, Metabrain - search for music that is similar to your tastes. I can't wait to search for all the cool techno songs out there that are similar to stuff I like.
The Man Who Hijacked Napster - Interesting story about John Fanning, the man behind Napster (Shawn, the guy who actually programmed the thing, was just a figurehead).
Glitches In The Matrix ... And How To Fix Them - A long-ass article that explains the main technology in "The Matrix." Did you wonder how the red pill works or why the characters need actual landline phones to get back into the real world? This guy has all the answers. He also has WAY too much time on his hands and needs to get a life.

Kwote Off Zee Dey

"We resolve to lead a healthier existance by eating all the vegans" - MAXIM's New Year's resolution

2003-04-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

Move Zig

The site that hosts my comments has been acting up recently, so I am removing the comments link until they fix their stuff. No other news, really. Watched another Korean movie called "Attack the Gas Station" yesterday. It was supposed to be this really funny comedy, but I didn't see *anything* funny there. The plot consists of a bunch of retard kids attacking a gas station (twice in a row!), holding the employees hostage and then screwing around with the customers and various passers-by. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Also, I found out that one of my favorite childhood movies (a North Korean (!) 80's martial arts flick called "Hong Kil Dong") is now being sold on tape in Russia. That news pretty much made my day - eventually I might get a hold of a copy. I went to the movie theaters several times about 12-13 years ago to see it. Ah, memories...

2003-04-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Learn Something New Everyday

Did you know that apparently all the major news networks design obituaries for old famous people while they're still alive? what, you want proof? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE PROOF! Or is that truth? Anywho, I saw a link on Fark today to a hidden development area on the cnn.com website that had obituaries for Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope and the Pope. Just as I was going to post the links here, CNN pulled the plug on the website, damn fast too (within 20 minutes). Well, thanks to the folks at The Smoking Gun, you can see the obituaries for yourself here. I saw all this stuff on CNN's website today, so it's all real. Although I doubt that Dick Cheney is "UK's favorite grandmother" (looks like they pulled the template straight out of the Queen Mother's obituary).

Roman's Movie Reviews

I decided to make this a semi-regular column, where I shall bore you to death with unnecessary details of my unfortunate movie-watching experiences. Maybe some fortunate ones too, if you behave. Here's the stuff I watched since "2009 Lost Memories":

Shiri - This is THE movie that kickstarted the Korean movie industry. Plot - North Korean army decides to take matters into their own hands and unify the Koreas by force, using secret agents and such. Great cinematography, great action, great story - everything a guy needs. Unfortunately, I must not have been in the mood or something, as the movie had no real impact on me (except maybe for the ending). Not sure why - when I think about it, I should've really liked the movie. But I just didn't. Maybe I'll watch it again some time in the future...

A Man Apart - Vin Diesel flick. Plot - A DEA agent goes after a drug lord, a pursuit that soon becomes personal. Not much to say here. Typical Vin Diesel (although I *did* like xXx). I wonder if he is as one-dimensional in real life as all his characters are.

Shaolin Challenges Ninja - I've been wanting to see an old-style ninja flick for a while. An IMDB review promised one of the best kung-fu movies of late 70's, and it looked like it offered the best of both worlds - Shaolin AND ninjas. Hells yeah. Plot - hahahahah. Oh, were you serious? OK, here it is - Chinese guy marries Japanese girl, Chinese guy insults Japanese martial arts, Japanese girl goes to Japan and brings back the best fighters (including a ninja), Chinese guy proceeds to kick their asses. Pretty lame movie, I must say. If they focused on the ninja guy instead and maybe, just maybe, killed or at least injured (!) one of the fighters, the movie would've been much better.

Joint Security Area - Another popular Korean movie. I'm not sure how to review this one - you can practically break the movie into two parts, one is absolutely brilliant and one is plain stupid and totally inane. *Sigh*, this movie had the potential to win foreign movie awards, I'm sure, but they fucked it up completely. Plot 1 - Through a string of random circumstances, border guards from South and North Koreas become friends and illicitly cross over to visit. This part is nothing short of amazing. The comaraderie that develops, the humanity of their frienship convey a simple yet powerful message that touches your heart. Wow. Plot 2 - An investigation by a neutral party of an incident that involves those guards and leaves some people dead. Total idiocy here. From supposedly English-speaking actors, who can't act OR speak English to the plot holes and unexplained motives. I was just thinking "WTF???" throughout this part. Ah well, probably still worth watching.

Kwote Off Zee Dey

"I speak better English than this villain Bush" - Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

2003-04-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

There Are No American Infidels in Baghdad. Never!

Ah, a new Internet fad is in the works - a rather rare, but all-pervasive phenomenon. What is the new object of adoration of the net crowd? Why, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf of course. I pity da fool who doesn't know that name. He is (well, was) the Iraqi Information Minister during Saddam's rule. If you are not familiar with his antics, you might as well skip this entry. Everybody else check this out. Make sure to look at all 17 pages - there's quite a few gems in there. You can also visit a fansite of his.

That got me reminiscing about net fads of old. I shall try to list the ones I remember (most recent on top) - see if you recognize any of them or can add additional ones.

StrongBad - I don't know how much of a fad that actually was/is, but my sister knows about it, so that must surely mean something.

Yatta - Very popular in limited circles. Occupied its own niche, but still very bizarre and fun. I spread Yatta awareness to the best of my abilities.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us - If you spend more than 20 minutes on the Internet a day, chances are you know about this.

Hampster Dance - For inexplicable reasons I still have a music video, spun off the popularity of the website. And at one point I *knew* how to do the Hampster Dance. Shoot me. Shoot me now.

Dancing Baby - Made popular with the masses after the Ally McBeal show, this animated toddler was well-known throughout the Internet community long before.

Mahir's "I Kiss You" page - OK, this is for you hardcore oldtimer net surfers out there. I actually wonder if any one of you remembers him? If you doubt the fact that the fad was real, read this Salon article. At one point one of the now-defunct dot-coms (eTour) sponsored his visit to the U.S. Mahir was already old-news during the boom. Here's an excellent parody - Maul's "I Kill You" page.

What did I miss?

Kwote Off Zee Dey

"People are more likely to be injured by a hamster ... than by a shark." - Yahoo! News

2003-04-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

Life or Something Like it

Entry was removed, but here's a gazillion Family Guy quotes instead:

[Peter and Lois buying a car]
Lois: Peter, this car has dents in it... And it's got a cardboard steering wheel.
Peter: Yeah... yeah... just a second, honey.
Lois: And look, there's no engine. It just has a drawing of an engine.
Car Salesman: But it only had one previous owner... JAMES BOND!!
Peter: I'll take it!

Lois: Peter, wake up! Stewie's covered in fleas!
Peter: That's nothin! When I was his age, i was covered in ticks!
Lois: It's not a contest!
Peter: Well, it was back then.

Chris: Dad, what would you say if I wanted to quit scouts?
Peter: I'd say come again. And then I'd laugh because I said "come."

Woman at Child Services: Please give me my son back! I promise I won't do it again!
Clerk: Alright, I'll give you your son back... But remember, next time we won't just take him away... We'll kill him.

[Beer Commercial - two girls nearly naked interacting on a lawn]
Woman 1: Boy, that lotion sure feels good.
Woman 2: Sure is hot!
Woman 1: And it just got hotter! Here, now let me do you!
[Woman 2 takes top off, they laugh, camera moves to beer bottle]
Narrator: Pawtucket Patriot Beer. If you buy it, hot women will have sex in your backyard.

Peter: Why did all the dinosaurs die?
Museum Tour Guide: Because you touch yourself at night.

[Man is robbing store]
Robber: Give me all the money in the register!
Cashier: I can't open it unless you buy something!
Robber: Alright, give me some Skittles! And a horoscope scroll!
[Reads horoscope scroll out loud]
Robber: Financial transaction will benefit you today.
Cashier: Oooh! Weird!

Quagmire: I was always in bed by 8:00... and home by 11:00. OH!!

2003-04-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

Grown Men in Diapers - Hot or Not?

I don't know why, but I find the following picture absolutely hilarious! I just had to share the joy with the world...

2003-04-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Breaking News Flash!

CNN/Reuters: News reports filtered out early this morning that US forces have swooped on an Iraqi Primary School and detained 6th Grade teacher Mohammed Al-Hazar. Sources indicate that, when arrested, Al-Hazar was in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square and a calculator. US President George W. Bush immediately stated that this was clear and overwhelming evidence that Iraq did indeed possess weapons of math instruction, and predicted a Protracted war.

More Stupidity

Stupid Guy with SARS - Guy shows symptoms of SARS. Guy ordered to go into isolation. Guy goes to work. 197 co-workers now must go into quarantine.
Stupid Bush and Blair - Bush records "You will be free" message to the Iraqi people. Blair records similar message. Both peace messages broadcasted on former Iraqi TV channel frequencies. Too bad Iraq doesn't currently have electricity or television.
Stupid University Officials - The University of Bradford and Bradford College join together. Must choose new name. Hire consultants, who spend three months and £20,000. Study produces three alternative names - Bradford University, University of Bradford and The University of Bradford.

2003-04-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

I can't stand stupidity. I can instantly think of two places, where stupid people rear their ugly-ass heads without any remorse - Yahoo! messageboards and freeways. I witness the first case every day - only God knows why I keep coming back. The latter one, however, is unavoidable. As I was just coming home from work, for at least two miles I was stuck behind a Corvette. A shiny, brand-spanking-new Corvette. Also, a very fucking slow Corvette. It was the rightmost lane and the cars on the left were going even slower. That guy, though, had TONS of space in front of him. Why the HELL do you buy a Corvette if you're going to drive slower than a dying camel? No, that bastard took his time. He seemed to think that 100 feet is the appropriate safe distance and braked (broke?) at the same time as the guy in front of him (if you can even say that). The way I see it, people in fast cars shouldn't even be allowed in slow lanes. "Shot on sight be, they should. Yeeeees," said Yoda, a local Jedi. "A woman it probably was. Hmmmmm," he added.

After that turd finally left the lane, another asshat tried to pass me on the right after we clearly passed the "Lanes are merging" sign and the separating line already disappeared. What a world...

My whole body is covered with mosquito bites. Where the hell are they coming from? All this scratching distracts me from thinking - an activity I indulge in occasionally. Oh well, at least I'm not this guy (see entry for April 7th) or this guy (added to sidebar)... Also, after failed attempts to display the Flash movie Mystery of Britney Spears' Breasts here (comes up very small and doesn't resize), put it up on the sidebar too.

2003-04-09T18:40:00.000-07:00

All Your Code Are Belong To Us

Was just reading an article about (among other things) possible future regulation of software by the government. The entire idea seemed absolutely asinine, until I came across the following interesting quote:

The legal line between speech and action will blur dramatically during this century. The new technologies, from nanotechnology to the online economy, will be created and implemented with computer language, which by nature is both "expressive" and "functional." How the courts untangle these two aspects of "code" will define 21st century attitudes toward new ideas and their regulation. Even Kaplan acknowledges that, legally, code must be treated as speech: "It cannot seriously be argued that any form of computer code may be regulated without reference to First Amendment doctrine. The path from idea to human language to source code to object code is a continuum." What he painstakingly argues, however, is that in contrast to the "expressive" component, protected by the First Amendment, the "functional" component of computer code can be regulated by government. "Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement," he writes.

Something to think about...

2003-04-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Why Do YOU Blog?

Chances are, you have a blog. Why do I say that? Well, the major volume of my comments (heh, that's not saying much though) comes from people with blogs. All 3 of you. Oh, and myself. Or maybe people with blogs understand better that comments are a major part of web logging experience. Truth is, comments (even the occasional ones) demonstrate that somebody is reading the stuff I post. This blog is a way for KIT-challenged me (ooh, did I just invent a word? did you understand it?) to communicate random tidbits of my life to you, the reader. I'm not much of a phone person, and e-mail just doesn't suit the random talks you might have with friends. AIM isn't my forte either - there's now 10 different people talking about random shit to you at a time. Too difficult to keep a normal conversation going in such an environment. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, comments. Once a month passes with nary a comment, I will just assume that no one's reading this here blog and banish it to the deepest bowels of hell to be reunited with the likes of Hitler, Roseanne, Teletubbies, and people who cancelled Family Guy. That is why comments such as "UPDATE UR BLOG CUHZ!!!!" warm my heart and cause a posting spree.

This is not a plea for comments. Please don't take this post for one. To tell you the truth I don't know what I just wrote about. I shit you not, dear reader. I just re-read the whole damn thing and I haven't got a clue as to what I was trying to say. Or how the title relates to the actual paragraph. I think the original idea was - "Blogs are a great communication medium. Unfortunately if you don't have a blog, you probably aren't doing any communicating (in which case you're in majority). Well, that's what I think and that's why I blog. Why do YOU blog?" Hmm... just goes to show that Family Guy is relevant to just about any topic out there.

GNU's Not Unix

Gotta love an operating system, where the following is a perfectly valid string of system commands:

gawk; talk; date; wine; grep;
touch; unzip; strip; touch; gasp; finger; gasp; mount; fsck; more; yes; fsck; gasp; eject;
umount;
make clean; make mrproper;
sleep

The Lame Link Section ™

Gulf War 2 - A Flash movie, based on the game Civilization. Check it out even if you've never played Civilization. Funny, yet scary scenario, which could definitely come true (especially judging by recent Turkish announcement that they will attack Iraqi Kurds should they seize control of oil-rich Iraqi towns).
The Campanile Movie - Wow, way cool stuff. These guys took some aerial photos of Berkeley's Campanile and generated a CG flyby. Definitely download the movie. This technology was later used in the first "Matrix."
GoogleWhack - This is a game with very simple rules: try to find a combination of two words that will give you exactly one page as a result in Google. I came up with "antiballistic skulduggery" :-)

2003-04-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

Korean Movies Kick Some Serious Ass!

Wow. Just watched a Korean sci-fi flick, called "2009 - Lost Memories." It's been about 40 minutes, and I just can't stop thinking about it. Wow. What an awesome movie! Amazing visuals, amazing action, amazing story for chrissakes! Here's the gist - in 1909 in real life Japan ruled Korea like it's own land. Then a Japanese governor was killed by rebels and after a while Korea gained independece. That's what happened in real life. In the movie, the assassination was foiled and Japan completely subjugated Korea, siding with US in WW2. It's 2009 and the plot thickens :-) Damn.... I've seen only 3 Korean movies so far, but the production values and direction have been absolutely top notch (supposedly a given in modern Korean cinema). I'm definitely intending to see more - "Shiri" and "Attack the Gas Station!" are next...

2003-04-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

If Only Real Ads Were Like These

Check out the nifty little script I wrote to swap the images... Am I cool or what? (See Ad #3 for answer)

One - Two - Three - Four - Five

2003-04-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

Kim Jong-il - All Your Triplets Are Belong To Us

Holy crap, according to this story, all North Korean triplets are being seized and moved to orphanages. While something like this could certainly happen in NK, I wonder if the story is in fact true. All mentions of the seizure point to this story only - I can't find any independent corroboration. Nonetheless, scary shit...

2003-04-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

You Are On Your Way To Destruction

So I spent the last 4 hours tweaking this website. What a magnificent waste of time. I should probably go cook some dinner now - it is 10:45pm after all. Anyways, tell me what you think...

P.S. To give credit where it's due, I'd like to thank Eugene's camera for the picture of myself. Thank you, oh digital one!

2003-04-02T18:39:00.000-08:00

InQuira's Inquiry

Just had a phone interview with InQuira. Somewhat disappointing. I was told to expect a 45-50 minute interview at 4:45pm today. Instead it started at 6pm (they called to reschedule) and lasted under ten minutes! WTF? I came home after half the workday and spent several hours reviewing various tech interview questions. It appears I wasted time and lost money. The interview itself was alright, mostly they wanted to know if I'm right for the job - despite a few blunders (which I gracefully recovered from), I think I presented myself in a pretty good light. I wonder how much of what I said they will call bullshit on... Turns out this is not really an engineering position. Eh.. better than being jobless. Oh well, I'll find out what's up by the end of this week.

Museums Ad Nauseum

Museum of Unworkable Devices - Pictures and descriptions of various impossible devices, attempted through the ages (think perpetual machines).
Museum of Hoaxes - Very cool site, with detailed descriptions of famous April Fool's Day hoaxes, hoax photos and websites, college pranks, scientific tall tales and much more!

2003-04-01T15:25:00.000-08:00

Tengo Un Gato En Mis Pantalones

Good ole' Yahoo just posted an article on a plane being quarantined in San Jose airport because of signs of SARS-like illness. Read it here. Swell... Update: Looks like everything is fine. Oh well, it's just a matter of time.

2003-04-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

Tech Toys A Go Go

Crap, I was going to give you a link to a cool NY Times article, dated March 23rd, but just found that the website charges you for old material. Bastards!

Anyways, here's the gist. This one inventor guy created a device which can project sound "inside" your head for distances up to 250 feet (or more if he gets necessary funding). The sound waves are at a frequency that is not picked up by ears, so people next to you won't hear the sound. However when those sound waves bounce off your skull, it transforms into something that only you can very clearly hear. Well, that's the way I understand it anyways. The device is very mobile and the inventor demonstrated it by aiming it at random people across the street with sounds of the jungle - monkeys and all. Needless to say, the passersby were quite startled.

The commercial applications are plenty - coke dispensers that ask you if you're thirsty (without disturbing anyone else), car stereos - people in the front can listen to one thing and people in the back to another, military applications (did you know that the sound of a baby crying played backwards interlaced with some other tone, induces vomit and causes you to lose conscience?), etc.

Who cares about all that crap though, when potential for mischief is so enormous? Talk to a priest with Satan's voice and tell him he's going to hell, mess with students as they're taking tests, or be one of the students and cheat without anyone knowing, tell a shrink that you're his second identity, chant your name to a girl you like so that she will eventually fall in love with you (or so I assume). On the other hand, you don't want terrorists to get their hands on such a device. Cool stuff, nonetheless.

An interesting concept I came upon recently is the so-called WorldBoard. It involves tagging real world objects with data. Sort of like digital graffiti. You can think of it in terms of virtual post-it notes pinned on any object anywhere on Earth. After you pin one on, anybody with say a palm pilot or a head-mounted visual display (in the far future, anyways) will be able to read/see it. Take the concept a bit further and you can attach not just text, but also pictures, videos, etc. There's a more detailed description here. I can think of so many cool things to do with this technology. Unfortunately for you (or most likely, fortunately), I'm too lazy to write about them.

Allah Akhbar

I just found out that Iraq's only Internet Service Provider, UrukLink, has been down for the past few days. I think that would explain lack of any posts on Salam's blog, if you follow it at all. On a lighter note, here's a parody of Salam's blog as written by Saddam (if you clicked the link before 7:50pm today, try again - this is the complete version).

Wow, what a humor-lacking post this is. It's time for...

Obligatory Family Guy Quotes

[TV commercial]
Doctor: Mrs. Lipstein, I'm afraid I have some bad news - the tumor is malignant. I'm afraid you only have six months to live.
Mrs. Lipstein: Oh my God!
[pause]
Narrator: Got Milk?

Peter: I'm gonna go microwave a bagel and have sex with it.
Quagmire: Butter's in the fridge!

Stewie: Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but you're a total bitch.

Peter: I once knew a guy that bought a car out of a magazine, then ten years later - BAM! Herpes!

Rabbi: Mr. Griffin, why does your son want to become Jewish?
Peter: I don't know... he's bi-curious.

Homicidal Snowmen and Suicidal Legomen - Hot or Not?

2003-03-21T12:36:00.000-08:00

Salam Pax

Added a new blog to the sidebar (Where is Raed?) - it's an Iraqi man currently living in Baghdad, describing his experiences. There are various conspiracy theories floating around, denying the existence of any such persons. They range from a CIA cover-up, to a Republican Guard disinformation unit, to a Lebanese prankster. Those are unsubstantiated rumors though. Some people have done various research on the man and have come to the conclusion that most likely the blogger is who he says he is. I do wonder though how he can speak such perfect English (and so can the other Iraqi techie poster). Nonetheless, interesting news from the battlefield, so to say. It's like a fresh breeze after a stenchy gust of US propaganda.

2003-03-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

Pornucopia

Today I was thinking about the meaning of the phrase "watching porn." I mean, do people actually watch pornography? It's boring as hell! I'm talking about the full-length adult feature films. Can a person actually stay awake through the entire movie? Yes, it's exciting for maybe the first 2-3 minutes, but then the dullness sets in, as the movies tend to play out the same scene for eternity. The Internet changed the landscape somewhat - it demonstrated that short clips are invariably better than one big boring chunk of pornographic dullness. Hmm, am I repeating myself here? But therein lies the problem - it takes time to track down and download a bunch of clips, or so I hear. This whole discussion is theoretical, by the way :-) Anyways... this is where my brilliant idea comes in. Take a bunch of short videos on a variety of subjects, put 'em all together, distribute on tape/DVD, make shitloads of money. I call it... Pornpourri (all rights reserved). Seriously, our market research shows that this is perfect for the short attention span of an average porn junkie. We got inconclusive data to support the far-fetched results of our unrepeatable experiment.

Oh man, I'm so bored. You have NO idea. I can't work, I can't think, I can't even surf the web. Argh. I wanna watch Shaolin Soccer again for no reason whatsoever. What a great movie..

Computer programmers - Hot or Not?

2003-03-13T17:51:00.000-08:00

Vote Democrat

You know, I really don't care about politics. In fact, I don't give a rat's ass about it. I'm one of those people who believe that my vote doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. I know, I know, if everybody thought like that.., blah blah blah. Point of the matter is, if I changed my mind about it, everything would still stay the same. But you know what? I'll be voting next year. For Democrats, who haven't even appointed a candidate yet. Anything to get Bush out of the office. I'm reasonably sure that Bush will lose the election, but at least I will be confident that I have contributed to that.

And it's not just Bush - I hate all of his Republican cronies. One of the reasons that I normally could care less is that both Democrats and Republicans, two opposite poles, have slowly been moving towards the "center" by becoming more and more moderate. They have similar stances on a lot of issues and so, normally (and I stress that), it doesn't even matter who's in the office. Normally. It appears that this is not the case now. I have reached a conclusion - this country is presently run by idiots. There are many reasons for this, but an example (that actually provoked this whole tirade) is "freedom fries." WTF are freedom fries, you might ask? Well that's the new official name for french fries served in Congress in opposition to France, obviously. Let's skip the fact that french fries actually come from Belgium. The House is wasting taxpayers' money, MY money, to sit around and vote on the new name for french fries. Unbelievable! Come ON, surely adults don't act this way. "Oooh, Frankie said that I'm bad and a liar. Well, I'll write 'Frankie sucks' on my backpack, that'll show him" Jeez...

And Bush. Oh, Bush... Who the hell does he think he is?? The entire world hates the US. That IS the truth. Bush's foreign policy is non-existant, he disregards the rest of the world, he disregards the UN, he does what he feels like doing. So now he feels like waging war. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for kicking Saddam's ass. But NOT the way Bush is doing it. DON'T say that you want peace and press for war, DON'T disregard your allies, DON'T spread propaganda and lies that american public will surely eat up. Oh no, Saddam has biological this and chemical that. Ooooh, he can deploy Weapons of Mass Destructions. Won't somebody think of the children!?!? Here's a question for ya. Did you know that the only WMDs on Earth are nuclear bombs? Chemical and biologicals weapons are NOT WMDs, because they're incapable of inflicting major damage. Go read The Real Deal if you don't believe me. It's written by an Army veteran. Panic is what Mr.Bush is going for.

Bush, you misunderestimated the world and the American public and during next year's elections they will kick your nucular ass. Good day.

Whew.. sorry about that :)
I'm simply obligated now to go on to...

The Lame Link Section ™

My post in a newsgroup - Somebody offers a registration key to a sotware program illegally. I decide to have fun with the stupid person and trace their identity :)
Online Mind Reader - This actually freaked me out. Took me several tries to figure out how it works.
Windows RG - Really Good edition. Funny shit, check out the paperclip in Word.

2003-03-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

Lemme see that crack

Started learning how to crack programs yesterday. After the drudgery of learning some assembly, actual process or cracking (basic as it was) was rather entertaining. Microsoft's Hearts and Freecell felt my wrath last night. I modified Hearts so that it would let you put any card on the table, like say a diamond onto clubs, even if you still have clubs left. Freecell put up a bit of a fight, but as we know anything that starts with a "Fr" and has a "ce" in it surrenders at the first sign of trouble, so half an hour later I was victorious - I could put any card anywhere in any order. Hell, I could win the game by stacking all the cards in only one column in whatever order. Fun fun fun. Remarkably easy, too.

Speaking of Fr..ce. Don't you just love it when a news article refers to the French as "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys?" :-) Unfortunately I'm a nerd enough to know that that's a Simpsons quote. In any case, the veracity of the quote can only be corroborated by Alice.

Obligatory Family Guy Quotes

Peter: Make like Siamese twins and split... and then one of you die.

Lois: Peter, what did you promise me?
Peter: That I wouldn't drink at the party.
Lois: And what did you do?
Peter: Drank at the pa-- ...Whoa! Almost walked into that one!

Lois: You should spend more time with our kids, Peter, and with me.
Peter: Uh, what could me and you do together?
[Lois giggles]
Peter: Lois! You've got a sick mind!
Lois: Peter, I'm talking about making love.
Peter: Oh! I thought you wanted us to murder the children and harvest their organs for beer money.

Yasser Arafat - Hot or Not?

2003-03-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

The Lame Link Section ™

The (new) color of money - Sweet, the $20 bills are not going to be green any more!
Doogie Howser goes raunchy - Did you ever wonder what the hell happened to Doogie Howser? I know I didn't. I just sorta assumed he was still practicing medicine in some backwards hospital up in Utah, saving the world one Mormon at a time. Well, that's what I'd like to believe anyway. Anything but the horrible, horrible truth - check the link for the story and the exclusive pic of your favorite underaged M.D. ... in GOTH! Oy vey...
How you can tell if your neighbor is a time traveller! - Weekly World News. Here's one of the telltale signs - "Despite efforts to study our time period, they may mistakenly use phrases that are a few decades off." Gnarly, man.

2003-03-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

Andorra, land of opportunities

Today I had to create a simple batch script at work. I sent out the completed version by e-mail. A co-worker asked me (jokingly, I presume) how would he know that I didn't send him a virus. I was not in a joking mood, so I sent him the following (dead serious, might I add) reply:

"Actually this is all part of an elaborate plot to introduce a trojan into the system under the pretense of a "Parts Database" which will give me total and absolute control over the network upon my departure and leave at my disposal a host of metamorphic, self-replicating virii which will do my bidding by gathering credit card numbers stored on the system and using them to purchase Andorran goods on eBay in order to stimulate that country's economy, so that I can move there later to become an evil, reclusive and eccentric billionaire."

The co-worker then proceeded to forward this to everyone at the company. Little does he know that that's also but a part of my oh-so-deliciously evil plan. For, you see, this is how I recruit my loyal minions. Andorra, I shall bestow my presence upon you yet....

Obligatory Family Guy Quote

[Setting - Oprah style chat show. Diane Simmons is the host]
Diane: Erica, it's time for Mario's little confession.
Mario: Erica, you know I love you, but I gotta come clean. I'm.. I'm not really a man, I'm a woman.
Erica: Oh my God, you're a woman!
Mario: Well, actually I'm not really a woman, I'm a horse.
Erica: Oh my God you're a horse!
Mario: Actually I'm not really a horse, I'm a broom.
Diane: OK, OK... So how do you feel?
Erica: To be honest with you Diane, I'm surprised.

2003-03-03T23:20:00.000-08:00

All your base are belong to us

If you were wondering what the topic means, I believe this link will make everything crystal clear. That is, if by "crystal clear" you mean "mindnumbingly incomprehensible." Don't forget to turn the speakers on, by the way.

2003-03-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

Carpe Diem

Finally, it has happened. After months of procrastinating, I decided to start my very own blog. "What the hell is a blog?" you might ask, thus revealing the fact that you've been living under a rock for the past couple of years. Well, it's like a journal. Some people keep blogs to entertain their friends and annoy the enemies, some people just post a bunch of interesting (but in reality rather lame to everyone else) links, and some keep a personal log of events, for themselves only. Well I scoff at the notion of personal journals, soooo this here blog will be a mixture of the first two types, a record of the daily minutiae of my rather meaningless and unexciting existence, spiced up with personal tales of humorous nature and day-to-day hijinks. Made up no doubt.

By the way, you can also reach this page from www.romandawg.tk - you can get a .tk top-level domain for free! Unfortunately there's a pop-up ad that comes with the domain, so if you were to bookmark this page (and I know you will) or, say, make it your homepage (everybody does it!), you'd probably be better off using this address.

Oh, and if you feel like starting your own blog on Blog*Spot, or if you're Lucille (Hi, Lucille!), I can show you how to get rid of the annoying banner at the top! :-D HTML is my bitch.

And now, without further ado...

The Lame Link Section ™

Mr. ABC - Heheheh. This one cracked me up two years ago. I just recently discovered it again and found that it hasn't lost any of its original charm. Make sure to pump up the volume...
Housewife finds Hitler's head in garage sale bowling bag - Aahhh.... Weekly World News. Tabloids at their best.
MotoTrials - Very addictive motorcycle game. Pretty hard at first, but once you get the hang of it - fuuuun. Ask me for more levels once this becomes way too easy (which it is).

To Be Continued ...