pres.umptuo.us

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind won for Best Original Screenplay, and Brad Bird got his Oscar for The Incredibles, and that’s all that matters.

What was up with having the presenters standing in the audience? It just seemed too informal and odd. Next year they should just start handing out awards as people arrive on the red carpet. That’ll get the show moving faster.

I drive with a lead foot regardless of the weather. This hasn’t brought any bad omens upon me in the five or so years that I’ve been driving. Then last Monday I ate it hard as I tried to pass some cars in the left lane of the 5 South.

The storm system going through Southern California last week had drivers going at 50mph on the freeways. A good, safe speed, yet intolerable to me. At the 10/60/5 junction, an extra left lane on the 5 South opens up and I took the opportunity to make my move. Accelerating, I spot a pothole ahead, and go over it with relative ease. But right after, I spot another pothole, and this time my car goes into it with a loud “boom” sound followed by an, “Oh shit,” from me.

“That must have given me a flat,” I think to myself. I let go of the steering wheel, and sure enough my car pulls hard to the left. I flick my blinker on and make my way over to the next exit and pull into the first gas station.

First thing I do: Call mommy. I’m lucky it’s President’s Day and I’m the only member of my family working. Next a call to Triple A (Change a tire in the rain? Yeah, right. We’re paying for Triple A for a reason), where I discover that I’m no longer under the plan, but if my parents call for me it would be perfectly fine. Which leads me to a quick aside to wonder why we even need the whole family under Triple A when it seems just having one person with the service will do fine.

Guy comes, tire changes, and head back home to swap for another car since I can’t go over 50mph on the spare, which is painted a bright yellow color that just screams, “Look at me! I’m a spare tire!”

After this ordeal, I find out that my rim got bent, and is most likely why I got the flat. Order is placed for new rim: $297. Then when I finally get the time to get it put on, I discover the tire has a gash that is unfixable. Order placed for tire: $220.

There goes Chinese New Year. I’m now paranoid of potholes on the road. I feel myself get tense as I see one approach and do my best to swerve around them. Stupid potholes.

Today I ran across The Complete Calvin & Hobbes Collection online. Most likely not legal, but it’s great while it lasts (hint: save it to your hard drive before it disappears). Calvin & Hobbes is undeniably one of the best comic strips, that luckily ended its run before it started to feel old and unfunny. The fact that Bill Watterson never sold out and went on a crazy merchandising run gives the strip that much more respect.

Something that I glossed over when I first read the strip as a child is the way Watterson handles serious topics in his comic strip. Take for instance the storyline of a dying racoon. Simple, a bit childish, but still very adult in the way it’s handled. That’s some good writing.

Now for random fun. This strip has always made me chuckle. The ones where Calvin’s dad explains to him how things work are always great (sorry no link), and the last strip that ran is sufficiently poignant.

Oh, almost forgot. It looks like they’ll be releasing a hardcover collection of all the strips soon. Hooray.

Update: I’ve found a mirror site and the links have been updated accordingly. Hopefully this one stays up longer.

Apple has announced the latest “revision” to their iPod line. Nothing really of note here other than some size upgrades and price drops. The iPod Mini now has a 6GB model, the gold color has been dropped, and apparently the existing colors have been “kicked-up”.The regular iPod stays the same, and the iPod Photo now has a 30GB and a 60GB model.

Not terribly exciting.

MyBodyIs4Sale: i wanted to say it so bad
MyBodyIs4Sale: but man
MyBodyIs4Sale: i would get reemed
MyBodyIs4Sale: like a xerox
valloq: …

MyBodyIs4Sale: oh dude, do you have yazoo - don’t go
MyBodyIs4Sale: i remember this song
valloq: nope
MyBodyIs4Sale: its super ghey
MyBodyIs4Sale: you would totally know it
valloq: wtf does that mean
MyBodyIs4Sale: its like the most famous beat evar
valloq: “it’s super gay. You would totally know it”
MyBodyIs4Sale: lololo
valloq: bitch
MyBodyIs4Sale: i didnt even realize that
MyBodyIs4Sale: lolo
valloq: ah huh
MyBodyIs4Sale: i am really lololol
valloq: yeah, you go lolo

Doing kottke.org as a full-time job. Jason Kottke has quit his web design job and decided to blog full-time, living only off donations. It’d be interesting to see if he can actually pull this off…I’m a bit skeptical.

How to Find Nameless Songs. Nice feature of iTunes that I had totally forgotten about. Great way to find new music.

I’m still not a big fan after seeing Ted Leo and the Pharmacists perform live. The good is that he sounds exactly like he does on his albums, just not my cup of tea. A little too…hard, I guess would be the word. I need my mellow stuff. He did a great set though and had a lot of fun with the audience.

Opening Band USE was fun and their music was very dancy, but the electronic-synthesizer voice got boring after being used in every song. Let’s not discuss The Joggers that played after them; Somebody forgot to tell them that good singing is a requirement for being a band.

The Galaxy is a cozy little venue. We arrived early and snagged a booth so we wouldn’t have to stand during the whole show. The food sucks though, and don’t listen to what they say about a two drink minimum or the $10 food per person - they didn’t bother to check. I’m hoping that more good bands play there in the future.

Saw this last weekend and left unimpressed. It just felt empty.

I Heart:

1. The Onion
2. Pasadena 110 Freeway
3. Kurt Vonnegut
4. Ice Cream

valloq: have you visited central park to take a gander at “The Gates” exhibit?
calkidd32: yeah
calkidd32: pretty awesome
valloq: how is it?
valloq: sweet
calkidd32: my dell should be coming in tomorrow
valloq: uh ohhhh
calkidd32: i’ll send some pics
calkidd32: when i get it
valloq: lol
valloq: wait
valloq: pics of the dell
calkidd32: i’m gonna crash
valloq: or pics of the gates
calkidd32: lol
calkidd32: gates

I totally forgot to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year. Last week was a very tiring week for me and I thought of things to blog about but was just too lazy to get around to doing so. A Happy Chinese New Year to everyone; I hope you all had a lot to eat and enjoyed the red envelopes. Yes, even you white people, you can celebrate as well.

the_girlz’s blog has shut down. Tim’s POTD hasn’t updated in two weeks, Pzycho’s pretty much MIA, and most of the other wannabes post new entries only every so often. Oh well.

Happy Valentine’s, as well. Yipee.

Something I’ve been working on/off for the past couple of months, I finally did the launch last night of the redesigned Writer’s Block. The hardest part came in figuring out the right template tags to enter into my html code, and the archives are a sort of hack job at the current moment.

The search templates still haven’t been designed, and I think a comment preview template as well, but they’ll come in due time. My main emphasis here was to just get the text as readable as possible seeing as how that’s the point of the site. I wish I’d taken a screenshot of how the site looked before, but at the same time I’m glad I didn’t cause it seriously looked like crap.

Hopefully a redesign of my site should be down the line, but with my productivity levels, I wouldn’t be surprised to not see one until the summer.

It’s been about a month now since I began my job in Newport Beach and my daily commute of 80+ miles. The trip from home to work is usually around an hour and a half, while the drive back is a lot faster at only an hour, but still requires sitting through some traffic.

I love driving. Driving in traffic is another matter though. The commute has yet to get to me to the point where I dread it, and the extra time does give me a good opportunity to catch up with people over the phone (Ooh dangerous driver!).

But I really hate bad drivers. My road rage tends to stay in check, and I haven’t had a total blow out yet. I rarely give any one the finger, which I doubt I ever would do just cause it seems like a pointless gesture. And I only honk to avoid an accident, cause using the horn shows weakness. It’s a hell of a lot more effective to just cut in front of people, or better yet, slowly inch your way across the dotted line to invade his space and confuse him as to whether you’re changing lanes or not. It’s an agonizing torture.

One day I’m bound to start flashing my highbeams at people who are going too slow in my lane. I already reached the point this week where I dropped into 4th gear and started weaving in and out of 65mph traffic at 80-85mph. That relieved some good tension.

The 405 always sucks in the morning. There are no accidents at all, it’s just slow. The 5 and the 605 are actually fairly decent, just that danged 405 with all the stupid cars on it.

The Pasadena 110 Freeway is my happy place, though. I’m probably psycho to go 80 in the fast lane (Not suggested in the rain; I almost lost control just going 60 because of all the flooding on Friday from the rain), but I think if I totalled my car while going that fast on that freeway, I’d be stupidly happy.

So please, if you’re on the 110, stay out of the left lane unless you plan to go faster than the posted speed limit. That’s my danger zone.

Highlights from this week’s issue:

Awkward Tension Mistaken For Sexual Tension.

Onion Love Coupons

Words I’ve found inspiring as of late.

We talked into the night. The kind of talk that seemed important until you discover girls.
Stand By Me

There are on many campuses, moreover, local papers, weeklies or monthlies, that publish short stories but cannot pay for them. What the heck, practicing an art isn’t a way to earn money. It’s a way to make one’s soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut

Do-It-Yourself Smart Radio Station. Excellent write-up on how to make a playlist to get the most out of your music collection. I commonly run into the issue of only listening to a small selection of my music.

jenn: did his mom really pick his name to be eric
jenn: b/c its an anagram of rice?
jenn: that is pretty goddamn clever of her if she did

Doughy637: you wanna do something tonight besides sex?

Following up on my previous gripe about efficient ways to share music, Abdul keyed me in to the idea of using Gmail as a shared repository. With the 1 gig of space that is offered, it seemed like a pretty good way to go.

I noticed today that I had 50 free accounts to give out (Um…does anyone still need one?), so what the heck. It’ll be as simple as giving out the username and password to people who are trustworthy and won’t randomly give it out/delete existing songs/change the password, and just uploading music at will.

There’s two issues to tackle: First - a way to alert people when new music has been put up. Two - a way to sort and archive the music and choose which ones are deleted. In the meantime, I’ll fiddle with gmail to see if any of this can be easily achieved.

Car vs. Telephone Wires in Texas. Witnesses also reported that the driver jumped down from the vehicle and ran to catch a bus prior to the arrival of Engine 2 and the Harris County Sheriff’s Department.

Tunewear Aluminum Clip for iPod shuffle. There’s a nice little accessory that is actually really handy. I’ve yet to see a shuffle in person though, so I wonder how secure the cap is.