Music is rad

So I came home tonight after a long day meaning to play some mindless video games. See I installed Age of Empires II again last night. We used to play this game for hours and hours at my last job. So much fun we had while we thought we were working hard. I miss those days, not the pay mind you, but the good people and playing games during and after work. AOE is a load of fun, kinda like chess only more fun. Anyway, I never got around to playing tonight as I started up WinAmp and browsed through the WinAmp Videos. I'm not watching a 30 song play list of streaming videos.

I miss how into music I used to be. I don't care what the press says, I bought more music, listened to more music, went to more concerts, and shared more music with my friends back when Napster, mp3.com, and the like were around. Today music has gone back to the pre-internet days when everything we hear on the radio or TV sucks. Just plain sucks. It's all crap. I have no idea what bands are good anymore and I've found myself at too many jam band concerts. Some how I seem to think that because they are some jam band that's not on the radio they must be good. Well they suck too. I don't want to dance for 3 hours to music that has to release. I want tension and RELEASE!!! I want big loud guitars and drums, huge wanking guitar bends, slapping bass solos, screaming lyrics that no one understands! What happened to all the good music? I have a feeling it's out there, but we don't know about it because Clear Channel won't play it and the record companies pour all their money into Jennifer Lopez, Brittney Spears, and Justin Timberlake. bah...

I'm pretty excited about NIN and Weezer releasing new albums. Maybe they'll be decent at least. Maybe I'll actually pay for them. That is if they aren't $17.99.

dead whale on the seafloor attracts an array of attendants

Maybe I should go into marine bio... This stuff is rad.
Natural History Magazine | Feature

Exploding Toads Puzzle German Scientists

Exploding Toads.... cool. Not for them of course...

ABC News: Exploding Toads Puzzle German Scientists

Back from Pittsburgh

Over the weekend Anne and I took a great trip to see her family and home town of Pittsburgh PA. We made it back safe with only minor cases of jet lag and smoke inhalation.

Some highlights:
* Not working Friday and Monday and actually leaving my laptop in California
* Coming out of the fort Pitt tunnel to see the downtown skyline and the ball parks for the first time.
* Seeing embarrassing childhood pictures of Anne and Dan plastered around the house
* The Red Room bar/lounge and meeting Karen, Anne's bestest friend.
* Karen's face when she discovered the "special" house drink at the Marti Graw bar is a screwdriver.
* The small lake near Anne's house
* Waking up hungover at 10am, re-waking up at 10:45am sans hangover
* Dinner at Monterey Bay Fish house with the whole family.
* Talking golf, law, cars, houses, computers, mp3 players, country clubs, jazz, and art with Anne's dad
* Snow
* Locking myself out in the snow for an hour.
* Jody driving up to visit for an afternoon
* Hanging out with Jody and Anne eating Panini Brothers sandwiches (which include french fries and coleslaw ON the sandwich)
* Warhol museum
* Anne's mom bbq'ing outside in the snow
* strawberry shortcake
* Meeting Aunt Jane
* Lunch with Walter Anne's old boss from Family Services.
* Sunset from 30k feet on the way back to San Diego.

The only lowpoints:
* Locking myself out in the snow
* Leaving my mp3 player in Pittsburgh
* Having to wake up for work today. Vacations should never end.

So many stories to tell! I even made a list of things to write about. I wonder where I left it...

Wandering drunk flash game

Die Wagenschenke - Das Partyzelt am Albanifest in Winterthur.

ABC News: Cruise Ship Returns After Wave Damage

ABC News: Cruise Ship Returns After Wave Damage

Octopus Camouflages Itself

Wow! Super cool.

Octopus Camouflages Itself

Removing Red Wine from Carpet

So I managed to spill a full wine glass of deep red port on my new carpet last night. I'm still not sure what happened, but some how my laptop hit the glass and it went off the table and made a nice big stain with tons of little splattered marks. Believe me, I wasn't so happy. Ran upstairs to grab the instruction manual for my carpet (yes, I have an instruction manual!) and it suggested ammonia. Now if you're a twenty-something male who lives alone, why would you have a bottle of ammonia? I sure don't, but somehow I thought about Windex. Windex claims to have ammonia in it, so wtf, I'll give it a shot. I've tried just about everything else at my last place and that carpet looks terrible.

Windex removes red wine stains instantly!!!

It really is amazing. A little squirt of Windex and Anne and my jaws dropped. After soaking up the Windex with some water and letting it dry overnight it is very hard to find the stain and so far, no adverse effects from the Windex.

Even though I stained my new carpet I'm pretty excited to discover Windex.

At the Zoo on Yahoo! News Photos

At the Zoo on Yahoo! News Photos

YARRRRR!!!!

Three cheers for Savetoby.com

Savetoby.com | Only YOU have the power to Save Toby!

This has to be the best thing online in years! Two college kids claim to have raised $27k already with their Save The Rabbit campaign. If their donation thing worked, I'd give them money too. This is too genius and friggen hilarious to pass up.

The fact that they get daily death threats from people is astounding and just plain sad.

So who's with me? Let's savetoby! w00t!

AM lawn mowing

Why is it that gardeners think it's cool to cut the grass early in the morning? Every place I've lived, some schmuck gardener decides to cut his grass early and wakes my ass up. Today I woke up thinking, "Is that a lawnmower? It's sounds far away. There's only a 3ft by 4ft patch of grass outside, he's probably not coming here." Well, he did. The best part is since it's morning, the grass is wet so his mower got stopped up 3 times on that little patch of grass. Maybe I should enter the gardening business and present my novel little idea to the board of gardening directors. Cut the grass in the afternoon! It's dry then and no one normal is sleeping!!!

Man arrested for paying in $2 bills

This is sad, and funny at the same time.

AnandTech - More proof that Best Buy is actually "Worst Buy": Man arrested for paying in $2 bills

Why corporations are bad

Anne and I had a great conversation at dinner. We discussed sueing Blockbuster for late fees. This got us talking about corporations and such and me talking about how it's totally lame that corporations have the same rights as persons. For Anne, here are some links to read, learn, and get angry about:

Ending Corporate Governance: Revoking Our Plutocracy

Corporate Personhood-Demeaning Our Bill of Rights - Reclaim Democracy.org

Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie"

Wikipedia:Corporate Personhood

links about corporate personhood