pres.umptuo.us

• All Hallows by Jim Coudal. More good writing. How apt for the eve of NaNoWriMo.

  Tuesday October 31, 2006

• My Rapist. Very well-written.

  Tuesday October 31, 2006

• The Ministry of Transportation. That’s some sweet Soviet architecture.

  Tuesday October 31, 2006

I went to Mazda Zoom Zoom Live! yesterday and got to drive the Mazdaspeed6, RX-8, Mazda3, CX-7, Miata, and Mazda5. It was awesome fun. The Mazdaspeed6 is really fast, and I had forgotten how much fun it is to throw the Miata into turns. We used a stopwatch on the matched time course and I got within .004 seconds of the target time.

I got a couple of The Cardigans’ albums to answer the question of “Whatever happened to those guys?“, and they’re pretty damn good.

I am signed up once again for NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck.

• Fuwarinka Functional Candy and Gum. These sound so strange that they must work!

  Monday October 30, 2006

• A Look at the Numbers: How the Rich Get Richer. Ah capitalism.

  Tuesday October 24, 2006

I got my MacBook back. It took well under the 24 hours they said it would take, so props for that. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a good way to test if the problem has been fixed, and I’m too lazy to look for one, so I shall take them for their word.

There was some sticky black gunk on my Maclop which I easily cleaned off, but still. Damn dirty Apple geniuses. And they removed my origami solution for the squishy trackpad!

This morning my Macbook began to randomly shutdown on me. I had heard of this problem before, but didn’t think I was affected considering it’s been four months since I first purchased my Macbook.

A quick search on the internets revealed the problem to be related to the heatsink, and that Apple is well aware of the problem and how to fix it. I sign up for an appointment at the Genius Bar online, and head over to get it fixed.

Ironically, I sat down before my scheduled appointment and made sure the shutdowns were still happening. At first it shuts down just like before, but afterwards it runs just fine. I explain my problem to the tech at the store though and he completely understood. Didn’t even ask me to show him, just said it would take 24 hours and the heatsink would be replaced. Sweet.

So there goes my good track record with the Macbook. I’m assuming this heatsink fix will work though, and would actually recommend all Macbook owners to get this replacement done, regardless of whether you have the problem or not. I’ll update tomorrow on whether the problem is fixed or not.

• The 9th Incarnation of ShaunInman.com. It’s like someone finally brought artistic expression to blogs. Love the color fading idea.

  Tuesday October 17, 2006

1. Do not forget your wallet, or else you will never hear the end of it for the remainder of the trip.
2. Kicking your friends’ asses at Tetris DS is extremely satisfying.
3. It’s even more satisfying if done while drunk and taking a dump in the bathroom.
4. You will only win at roulette if you use an extremely dumb method to choose the winning color.
5. I have aged a lot in a span of three months. I went from being carded at every casino to being carded only once.
6. I do not like Jägermeister

• Jobless man asks judge for jail time. Both funny and sad.

  Friday October 13, 2006

You know what sucks? The five paragraph esssay (aka funnel method) that we were all taught in high school. It’s great to begin with, but for some reason nobody ever told us to stop using it and learn to write like you know how to write.

Hello neglected friend. I seem to have forgotten that the entire point of a blog is to journal about my life regardless of how boring it really is, in the hopes that other people will read and find it interesting. What a strange concept.

I’ve been playing a lot of Company of Heroes. Just for the record, I am an avid pirater of games simply because so many games I play are crap and not worth the asking price. I bought Company of Heroes based on the demo and have found it to be completely worth $40.

The gameplay requires a lot of micromanagement and is definitely on the strategic end of RTS games, so don’t expect to just amass a group of tanks and send them on their way across the map and hope they destroy the enemy’s base. There’s a lot of tactics that can be applied, and multiplayer is a whole other affair when working with a partner, as I’ve found in my games against the computer AI with Ron.

Tetris wi-fi sucks me in cause it’s so easy to think, “Just a quick game.” And before I know it, I’ve played for an hour. Plus, the DS is the perfect size for smashing against the wall in frustration when I get beat by some crazy Japanese player. It’s more fun when they have an English name, cause then I can scream at ‘em when they beat me.

Sufjan Stevens has kept me very happy these past few weeks with his music. I went on a Sufjan fix after seeing Little Miss Sunshine. He manages to combine the best qualities of music. Horns? Check. Clapping? Check.

Meanwhile, the new Killers’ album is very mediocre. Shame.

• Why Writing is Harder than Programming. It’s all so true.

  Tuesday October 3, 2006

• Making of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Awesomeness.

  Monday October 2, 2006

• A Pale Blue Dot. Putting things in perspective.

  Monday October 2, 2006