FeralBlog

• The Morning News – The Omarosa Experiment, by Keith Hollihan
  (tags: realitytv psychology)
• ComputerZen.com – Scott Hanselman – Scott Hanselman’s 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List
  (tags: tools software utilities asp.net freeware)
• The Software Chronicles: How The NSA Really Finds You
  (tags: government privacy nsa software)
• ted: torrent episode downloader
  one step closer to automated computer-based tivo
  (tags: bittorrent tools video)

Thanks Joshua!

The Onion A.V. Club | Savage Love

I’ve never actually seen an extremely beautiful goth girl myself; most of them seem to have weight problems, which has always struck me as strangely contradictory. From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, “O, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!” From the neck down, their look seems to say, “I’ll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.”

(giggle snort)

so, in the spirit of valentine’s day, i saw a post on gawker that linked to the black hearts party. i started reading through, looking at pictures, and then realized that it all seemed a tad familiar. i went and looked at the archives, and came across BHP IV. “New Brunswick, NJ”? waaaaaait a minute… i was totally at that party! oh yeah, that part about the impromptu penis viewing? yeah, that was me. what can i say? i was young and silly. anyway, i was quite pleased to see that i made the writeup.

got a lovely package delivered to the office today. i see i’m also in the “hall of shame” for the next two weeks. very much made my day… so thanks to whoever did it.

update: it was dave. thanks dave… wait ‘till it’s your birthday.

nothing too exciting happened on monday. i made my way down to philly, took ryan to an interview, went to king of prussia mall (um… BIG!) for an hour or so, wandered around urban outfitters w/o finding anything to spend money on (must be my new thrifty outlook on life), and then we were on our way back to lovely pittsburgh. on the ride back i talked to my dad, who wanted to know what i wanted for my impending birthday, so i basically just gave him my bike wishlist to pick and choose from.

oh, i know something exceptional about the weekend… saturday, sunday AND monday morning i had a porkroll and cheese sandwich for breakfast. dee-licious!

sunday i slept in pretty late, and then went to go visit my mom. i would have gotten to her place before she was back from church, so i went and blew an hour or so walking around at the mall. i thought i found a really cool thing for the slf at williams-sonoma, a french press for coffee. i thought i had heard her and brian talking about it when we were at dinner a few weeks ago, and her saying she didn’t have one. turns out she does, but just not one that also is a travel mug. oops.

got to my mom’s, we swapped belated xmas presents, and then my mom suggested we go play a game of raquetball. i’ve never played before, and i didn’t even really have the right clothes, and certainly not the right shoes, but i borrowed sneakers from my stepdad, and we were off! let me just tell you; if you’ve never played raquetball before, it is hard! my mom is in her 50s, and she ran my ass into the ground! granted, she has been playing for quite a few years, but i still wasn’t adequately prepared for the slaughter. she seems to think that i did great for a first time, and i’ll get much better if i keep playing, but that might have just been her being nice. i ran full-speed into walls, took dives on the floor, you name it. i’m actually writing this a couple of days later and pre-dating it in blogger, so i can tell you that things still hurt; i’m having trouble raising my raquet arm above shoulder-height, and my ass hurts from repeatedly falling on it. all that said, i really enjoyed it, and i definitely got a good cardio workout. i’m loathe to take up another sport, but perhaps next winter it’ll be a nice thing to keep me in enough shape to eat what i want when it’s not bike season.

woo!!! i’m a winner!

‘twas a good weekend. friday night i went and did a tiny bit of climbing at tcw, and then went to hang out with the slf, who has been fighting a bit of a cold.

saturday morning we went to go get my carb load on at the original pancake house, and then went over to the mall to look for climbing shoes for the slf at ems, which was one of my xmas presents to her. saturday night was the comp, and it was a lot of fun. i was climbing well, much better than i expected considering how fat and lazy i’ve been over the last few weeks. once again, my strategy was horrible… i did some really hard stuff, but then was working on some other hard stuff that i didn’t do, and didn’t bother to fill out my scorecard with more moderate climbs in between tries on harder stuff, so i was running around like a loon in the last 15 minutes trying to squeeze some stuff in, which of course didn’t work. so, my final score probably doesn’t reflect the fact that i climbed really well. jen took a nice picture of me climbing… thanks jen!

yesterday was a really mellow day. slf stayed at her parents’ house because she still was feeling like poo, so i bummed around and did some laundry, played bf1942, and watched the steelers pull out a squeaker against cleveland. it’s a horrible thing for me to say after living in the ‘burgh for 4 1/2 years, but i really dislike the steelers. perhaps it’s not that i dislike the team, as much as i dislike the fans. i understand civic pride and all of that, but the undeserved optimism and enthusiasm gets a little old after awhile. every year, the local rags talk about what a great team they are, and how they’re going to win the super bowl this year “for sure”. the problem, as i see it (being really out of football since the joe morris-era giants), is that they play in a fairly weak conference, and usually play poorly against the worst teams in that conference, so when they play other teams, they get socked because their game just isn’t at the level that it should be. they were lucky to win against cleveland yesterday (as much as cleveland was lucky to be so close to winning themselves), but, as pat put it, “unless jesus comes back to play cornerback, they’re going to get crushed next week.”

after the game, the slf finally made it back to her place, and i stopped at whole paycheck for some soup for her and some umi sushi for me, and went to go keep her company.

couple of notes about the weekend:—i live on a really dangerous corner. there were two auto accidents there, one saturday and one sunday. the problem is that people come flying down the main street, and other people trying to come from the t-intersection and make a left on to the aforementioned speedway get socked. i only heard the one sunday morning… heard something come down the street at a pretty good clip (probably a big dumb suv), and then i heard the horn honk, a quick slide (it was pretty slushy out, and 4-wheel drive doesn’t help you with that, jerk), and a crunch. i didn’t hear any sirens like there were at the accident saturday, so i went back to sleep.
-i’ve already made progress on a few of my resolutions

-i cut up 3 of my credit cards so i won’t be tempted to use them in a pinch.—at the comp one of the problems i did was V6/7.—also at the comp, i was working on a harder problem with two other guys, when one of the staff came over after i had just fallen off at the crux move and asked us (but directed at me) if i had done the climb. unable to stop myself, i opened my mouth and said “if we had, i don’t think we would be working on it still”. it was one of those moments where you’re sort of across the room, watching yourself do or say something. anyway, i immediately apologized profusely to the kid for being a big fat dick.

man, there is nothing like a 15 hour day at the office.
i cannot wait for this project to go out the door.
time to go home now.