Mercury

As I was watching TV late last night, somewhere between flipping between sports, infomercials, and old episodes of Cowboy Bebop, I saw that MTV was actually playing some music videos for once (WTF!~). Naturally, this caught my eye, and I tuned in to watch a truly enjoyable video: I Believe in a Thing Called Love, by The Darkness. Call it what you will, but I thought this was such an awesome song. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to any rock songs, but the mixture of big hair, Queen-esque Freddy Mercury-like lead vocals, and guitars shooting lightning at the fake alien giant octopus (OMFG, I am so serious) sent me over the edge. There was even a wailing guitar solo that looked like something you’d play on an air guitar. It was so nice to finally see a video that did not incorporate scantily clad background dancers and massive amounts of bling bling. I went immediately to my computer and downloaded all the songs from The Darkness’ Permission to Land album. I think Bunky hates it, but Bunky hates all music that isn’t either by Alicia Keys or on TRL.

Oh yeah, I also caught some more of The Apprentice. How did not one person on the Men’s team think to push sales at the bar? I can’t help watching this show, but it definitely feels like a Trump commercial. And Trump is such an awful host! I saw him interviewed by a newswoman, and when she asked if he would say his “famous two words (i.e. you’re fired)” he said “I could never fire someone as good as you, or as good looking as you.” WTF??? I almost threw up in my mouth.

The newswoman took it all in stride and just laughed him off.

Three-Fingered Salute

Apparently David Bradley, who came up with the infamous Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination as a way to quickly shut down an uncooperative program/OS/computer, is retiring from IBM. While speaking about his “three-fingered salute” on an IBM tech panel, he remarked that “I may have invented control-alt-delete, but Bill Gates made it really famous.” Fellow panelist Bill Gates did not join in on the ensuing laughter.

To be fair, I’ve had reasonably few failures with Windows XP. I consider it a vast improvement over the horrific Windows Me. And it doesn’t freeze up or slow down the way Windows 2000 at work does. People go on and on about how evil Bill Gates and Microsoft is, but it is just a different way of doing business. Listening to Apple enthusiasts, this really becomes clear. Sure Apple has a superior product in terms of usability and design. But as the market has shown, simply having the best and geekiest product doesn’t translate to market dominance. Microsoft has simply done a much better marketing and distributing job. I’ve used Macs, and I appreciate how smooth and thoughtful their OS and computers are, but they are not without their own flaws. They’re generally too expensive and hard to upgrade. Developers are often uninterested in making their software Mac compatible (including people who write viruses…). And I really, really hate the one-button mouse.

Speaking of technology, how teh roxxor is My Virtual Model? Hahahahahaha.

I’ve been pretty lazy lately. Due to inclement weather conditions and inclement motivation conditions, I haven’t been to the gym in over a week. Pretty much all I’ve done lately is watch anime and play FFXI. It’s all Ender’s fault. Here’s some quickie reviews of what I’m watching:

1) Full Metal Alchemist: This show has been holding down the fort in a somewhat mediocre anime season. I probably look forward to these episodes the most when I search for torrent files. The emergence of Roy Mustang as a real comedian only enhances my opinion of this show. Armstrong is also very brawny. I’m glad they’ve eased up a bit on the short jokes. Someone else mentioned that they were getting older than the Lina flat jokes in Slayers.

2) Chrno Crusade: I heard this show was crap, but I tried it anyway. It started out kinda mediocre, but has recently picked up quite a bit with its flashbacks. The voice acting is very good. And I absolutely adore engrish.

3) Naruto: This show is lagging big time. Did someone fire all the good animators and bring in directors from DBZ or something? The manga is so long that there is absolutely no reason to drag this show out the way that they have been doing. Skip forward to the swirling chakra balls and the lazy Fifth already!

4) Mezzo DSA: I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s kinda stupid, but kinda entertaining. The series is still young. Some of the stories are so unbelievable, as in they are so absurd you cannot suspend your disbelief. The main voice actress has already graced the viewers with some horrific karaoke.

5) R.O.D. TV: The fansubbers apparently drowned with the sinking of Hong Kong. The next episode needs to come out mucho pronto. I need to know what happens to Zah Paypah damnit!

More Car Fun

Legend has it that there is another way to get the to place I work, besides the road I usually take. I was not, however, able to find this mysterious road of wonder; instead, I was forced to park 20 minutes away and walk to work. I tried using a map, but I ended up simply driving around in a big circle. With the snow on the roads, I decided that today was not the day to go exploring. The sidewalks were mucho icy, and the fellow who was shoveling them was muttering expletives to himself. I did what I’d always done in Ithaca (4 years without a single freaking snow day), and just walked on the grass. Then I made a beeline to the hot chocolate.

I later found out (through discussions with coworkers) that the alternative route utilizes a cleverly hidden side-road that is as dangerous as it is hard to find. Guess I’ll be hoofing it until they unblock the main road. Hopefully it will warm up in the next few days.

I’ve posted a few screenshots from yesterday’s FFXI action with Ender. 1) Here we are collecting gil for a local charity, 2) This is us pretending to be in Callister’s class, and finally 3) Some fellow gathered all these suckers and destroyed them with an area -ga spell, but we ran in and stole the credit (we even have the screenshot to prove it!).

Za Car

This weekend I had quite a few interesting car activities. For instance, I finally got the car registered in Virginia and got new plates. Unfortunately, this involved waiting at the DMV for about 2 hours. Then, at 11:59 a.m. (1 minute from closing time), I heard the magical electronic female voice croon: Now serving D423 at window number 2. Phew, JIT!!! The “Heritage” license plate was chosen (dogwood and cardinal), and the plate even spells out something in Engrish/1337-speak. While I was waiting to be called, I also had a spicy hot dog at the 7-11 across the street; this brought back memories of Richmond (eating hot dogs every day to conserve money and sleeping on an Aero mattress in a room with no a/c). It was quite yummy.

Then yesterday, I was on my way to do laundry. The road was coated in ice and snow, because of the snow storm, and was a bit slicker than it looked. As I turned out of the driveway I totally fish-tailed or something. I made sure to turn the wheel in the direction I was sliding in so I would move in a tight circle. I’m not sure if this is what you are supposed to do, but I sure as hell didn’t want to spin the wheel the other way and flip over/land in the ditch by the side of the road. I pulled back into the driveway and pulled out a lot slower after that… Thank goodness there were no cars on the road that night!

Today, the road that I take to go to work was blocked off and closed. It looked kinda treacherous, and I’m not sure how to get to work the other way, so I took the day off.