Bking's Rambling Ruminations

Whee

2007-01-02T14:27:00.000-05:00

I feel so much better now that I have a name for this blog.....

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070101

...

2006-09-30T13:08:00.000-04:00

meep

Important Holiday!

2006-03-22T11:26:00.000-05:00

Very very important day today... today is International Goof Off Day! So go out there and goof off! Tell your boss it's okay to do so.

St. Patty's Day Rant

2006-03-17T17:47:00.000-05:00

SO i don't usually do rants on this blog, that's usually reserved for the blogs of all my friends. However, today i need to rant about my boss. He who at 4:30pm, on Friday, of St. Patrick's Day, tells me, oh, turn on the alarm when you leave, and proceeds to walk out the door. While I'm stuck here with a tech guy who is trying to fix our computers. And gee, I had plans this evening. At about 6-6:30. It's now ten of 6 and i'm still stuck here at work, 50 minutes away from where I want to be. And I know my boss is out drinking. Because he didn't take his car, but had a friend pick him up. He's drinking, I'm stuck here babysitting while the guy is on tech support. ARGH!!!!!!!!!! I just want to f*ng go home. But no, he leaves me out in the lurch with no notice. GRRR!!!!! And I'm getting hungry, but the food will either be cold or gone by the time i get there. And I won't be a happy camper. Rant done. For now.

Barf

2006-03-16T23:14:00.000-05:00

Hello blogger? Why are you saying 403 forbidden to me :P

MS IPod

2006-03-15T14:26:00.000-05:00

Coming soon to a store near you.. the new and improved Microsoft Ipod! Check out the packaging!

Microsoft Ipod

MMRch Madness

2006-03-08T10:41:00.000-05:00

So WMMR (local philly rock station for those of you out of towners) is doing one of those March Madness, 64 band elimination thingies. Mildly interesting. Here's the original field of 64.

You can keep track of the results here

Yah, there's some really wierd results in there, like Cheap Trick beating The Rolling Stones. *boggle*. So I decided to fill out the brackets the way I would vote. Noticed a couple of things:

* I really don't care for most of the 90's bands. :)
* The 00's region has the most upsets
* The 00's region was the toughest for me to fill out.

So, how would you fill out the bracket?
Who would be in your Final 4?
Who would be your Champion?
Who would be your Cinderella Band?
Who do you think was seeded too high?
Which of the first round matchups do you think were unfair/tough to call?

Alright, here's the link

2006-03-05T14:14:00.000-05:00

For the stupid game I've been playing and everyone's been bugging for the link....

http://www.funny-games.biz/splash-back.html

wibble

2006-03-02T13:33:00.000-05:00

Oh my gawd! Look! A New Post!

Not that it'll be any more meaningful than any other, or more widely read than any other post. I just might have some more time, maybe, now that i'm finally finishing up these two months of hell editing all these bowl games. I might even be able to work from home again once in a while! *gasp* And get that long, long overdue haircut. We'll see..... Now for a link, since the weather is kinda icky and gross, go play some virtual frisbee golf. Okay game, although can't get much power on the throws in my opinion.

Frisbee Golf

Coming Soon: Blog 2, 3, 4 and 5

2006-01-26T17:11:00.000-05:00

So here's a fun little link.... http://www.tripkore.fulsic.com/
It's a list of all movie sequels that have been recently released, are in production, or are even rumored to one day become reality. And well, looking through some of the list, you can tell Hollywood is really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Sequels to movies such as Mad Max, Blair Witch Project, Breakfast Club, Beverly Hills Cop, Police Academy, Conan the Barbarian... come on... aren't some of these franchise films supposed to be long dead and buried? What makes you think that Police Academy 8 will be any better or funnier than Police Academy 5, 6, or 7? What's next? Passion of the Christ 2. heh.. actually, i think someone photoshopped that exact movie for a contest....

1 year anniversary

2006-01-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

So this weekend was the one year anniversary of me starting blogging. And I'm happy to report that i almost kinda made it a year. And I still have the same number of readers now as I did then... almost none! No readers == no pressure to write witty and interesting stuff! Look forward to another year of nothingness :)

Will be MIA

2005-12-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

For the few that actually stop by this empty blog from now and now, I won't be posing until after the new year, not because i'm lazy, but because i'll be away for work, visiting both coasts to work at college bowl games. First is San Diego and the Holiday Bowl, and then hopping over to Jacksonville for the Gator Bowl. So i'll be back late on the 2nd. Have a happy holidays everyone (yes, i'm a terrorist) and a happy new year and see you on the flip side.

More Holiday Cheer.

2005-12-21T22:56:00.000-05:00

First, E got me another cool toy this time for Christmas. It's the Chaos Tower. Already have wasted many hour working on it, getting new configurations. Next step will try to incorporate the Rollerscape toy she got for my birthday into this.

And onto the link.... Sober Santa 2

Holiday Classic

2005-12-16T22:58:00.000-05:00

A classic holiday link for all to enjoy :)

And Cthulhu Carols!

Overnight

2005-12-14T15:35:00.000-05:00

It's amazing.... last night before I went to sleep, I was thinking, wow, tomorrow's already Wednesday, excellent... and then when I woke up this morning, my thoughts were: It's only wednesday? man, *whine*. Interesting how over the course of a night how the perception of the day changes. Heh.

Guess you want a link as well while I'm actually updating this useless blog... Too bad. Maybe tomorrow.

Fini

2005-12-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

4 weeks.
215 DVDs.
But they're done. Finally!

We've been sending out these high school marching band competition dvds... given a switched version (multicamera), a high angle only shot, and adding in some extra footage.... for about 190 bands and then another 25 group dvds. it's been a long, tedious process. but today, i finally finished the last dvds. no more of these! [barring any corrections/fixes]. Halleluhah!

Christmas Lights

2005-12-01T23:19:00.000-05:00

This guy must have been either an EE geek or a computer geek, or both. Or maybe a theater major.

Christmas Lights

Woo

2005-11-29T18:24:00.000-05:00

1000 hits! Little tiny woo! This is also post number 130! Not that that's a milestone in any way. Otherwise, I got nothing. As usual.

Thanksgiving wrap up

2005-11-25T19:01:00.000-05:00

So, as has been tradition the past, oh 5 years, I had to fly out to Chicago to film the State Street Tday parade. Normally I fly out on Wed, but this year, flew out on Tues, there by granting be an entire afternoon in the city with nothing to do. My aunt works nearby Chicago right now, but of course, she was on vacation that week, so I couldn't meet up with her for dinner. Instead, I walked around Lake Shore drive grabbing some new footage of the city, the museums, aquarium, soldier field, the skyline. Wasn't that bad of a day either, not too windy, sunny, not that cold.

The next day, my coworker flew out and met up with me and we went to Navy Pier to follow a band around and film them hanging out at the mall. Now, the kicker to this was that the band was from like 60 miles from Chicago.... not something new to these kids. If it was the band from California, or Mississippi, I could understand filming them at the pier, checking things out. But we did this segment in order to get a commitment of X orders from them. It actually didn't turn out horribly bad. And the weather partially cooperated. A front has passed through overnight, but the rain/snow stopped early in the morning, so we were just stuck with a cloudy day with a little bit of wind.

Thanksgiving morning, the cold front had completely passed through, and the temperature passed out. DAMN it was freaking cold. At wakeup (6am) the temperature was about 13 degrees farenheit, with a wind chill that had to be way in the negative. And it didn't warm up much either, maybe to like 20 by the time the parade was over. I had bundled up, and remain relatively warm, except for my fingertips. I had to wear thin gloves in order to be able to still operate the camera. Even with handwarmers stuffed within the glove, the fingertips froze off. Brrrr. I really pitied the kids from California and Mississippi. hehehe. now they were _really_ cold.

Had an afternoon flight back home, and raced home to have dinner with the family. nothing special, nothing extraodinary. Another typical thanksgiving for me.

Fill your wish list

2005-11-16T20:30:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'll start adding in some suggestions for people to add to their upcoming holiday gift wish list. We can start with a geeks wetdream, combining two great geek toys - Transformers and Star Wars!

RIP: 2005 Eagles Season

2005-11-15T13:17:00.000-05:00

Stick a fork in them, they're done. Thanks to McNabb's gift wrapped interception, the Eagles season is done for. Time to join this illustrious group of NFL teams:

2005 Philadelphia Eagles: record TBD
2004 Carolina Panthers: 7 -9 missed playoffs
2003 Oakland Raiders: 4-12 missed playoffs
2002 St. Louis Rams: 7-9 missed playoffs
2001 NY Giants: 7-9 missed playoffs
1999 Atlanta Falcons: 5-11 missed playoffs

What do all these teams have in common? They lost the Super Bowl the year before. With the exception of the 2000 Tennessee Titans, who lost in the divisional playoffs after making the Super Bowl, each of the past Super Bowl losers have followed up their Super Bowl season with a dismal season and failed to even make the playoffs. Talk about a new curse forming. The Eagles will continue the trend.

Long Weekend

2005-11-14T20:49:00.000-05:00

Well, that was a long weekend. Saturday left at 12:30 pm and spent the day at Giants Stadium. I walked through seemingly ever nook and cranny of that stadium, sometimes rather painfully when i found myself hiking up stairs in attempt to find my way up to the press box area. Probably walked about 10 miles that day and got home 2 am. Sunday, left at 4pm for Scranton PA to spend the evening with delaware marching band. ok trip, really didn't do anything. of course, the bus breaking down in the parking lot wasn't fun. ok, technically, it kept breaking down on the way there, but the bus company did jack schitt about it during the 3 hours they were sitting in the lot, so we had to cram a bus load of kids onto all the other busses. Not to mention the rude bus driver who took wrong turns even when the busses ahead of him went the right way, in plain sight. Got home at 3am. Fun. Luckily, I didn't have to get into work until about noon, unlike my roomie who went along on the trip as well, who had to be in at 7am.

Link for the Day:
Pretty cool video, just don't go blind or get a seizure. See how many you can catch...

Working Title

Link de Links

2005-11-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

Partly Stupid/Partly Disturbing:

Wax On/Wax Hoff

Get Medieval!

Black Knight

In other news, this should be my last non-weekend for a little while. Long days both Saturday and Sunday at Giants Stadium and Scranton Pa. But after that, my weekends become free again accept for the holiday shoots. Woo-ness. That should make E a little happier. Who feels unloved and neglected. Smooch. Luv ya dear.

T.O.

2005-11-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

T.O. is done as an Eagles. Amen! I really hope he's done as a football player. Either that, I hope no team signs him to the lucrative contract he has constantly bitched for. Although the Raiders would be stupid enough to do that. More so, I hope this is the end of the media blitz around T.O. But I know that's wishful thinking because TO craves the limelight and will attract as much attention to himself as possible. But as my parting shots to him, here are some of my favorite comments I've heard/seen about him:

You can't spell TOOL without TO
Too Overrated
Testicular Onicology

Oh, and BTW, Michael Irvin is still an @$$ as well. :)

I'm feeling lucky.

2005-11-05T22:16:00.000-05:00

So, sitting here watching VH1's I love the 80s in 3d, partially bored. So, decided to have a little fun. Maybe. Kinda. Put a word into Google search, hit the I'm feeling lucky, and see where it took. So, here's the results:

IDIOT

Half expected it to be some page about George Bush ;)

WOODY

Was a word I heard on the TV, so decided to try that out..... went to the Official Page for Woody Guthrie.

oh well, i've quickly grown tired of this game. Yah. a crappy post. so sue me.

Pocket Lint

2005-11-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

What does Bush keep in his pockets?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush may be burdened with the world's problems, but his pockets are pretty light.

It turns out the leader of the free world doesn't have to worry about carrying all the essentials of the common man.

Bush revealed the contents of his pockets Tuesday to an Argentine newspaper reporter who was interviewing him in advance of a presidential trip to Latin America later this week.

When the reporter from La Nacion asked Bush to show him what he carries, the president stood up, fished in his pockets, then dramatically pulled his hands out holding nothing but a white handkerchief that he waved playfully in the air.

"Es todo," Bush told the Spanish-speaking reporter, meaning the handkerchief was all. "No dinero, no mas. No wallet."

...... Hmmm... gets me kinda wondering. What actually is in his pockets that he's refusing to divulge. I think there's probably some pocket lint. Maybe some loose change. Some WMDs? What do you think are in his pockets?

-----------------------------------------------------
As promised, a few links:

Burn your retinas

Side Shooter

Look Ma! A New Post

2005-11-01T09:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so things seem to be turning into a once a week post thing.. anyway... on with the odds and ends

* Bought Civ4 Friday on my way home from work - let the addiction begin. Of course, I got home later than I wanted to on Friday, originally was only going to work half a day picking up equipment for a shoot on Sunday, but then my boss asked me to run into center city to pick something up for him. Ugh, well, needless to say, I ended up on Broad St in center city Philly at 2:30 trying to get to the Ben Franklin bridge. Anyone with experience with philly traffic can understand when i say it took be about 30 minutes to go two blocks.

* Sunday was a long day. Now when I say long, I mean LONG. I had a shoot to do in Union NJ, about two hours from where I live. I left at 6am, got up there about 8:30 am to set up everything to do instant dvds of a marching band competition. This includes two microphones, wires from the mikes up to the press box to an audio mixer, two dvd burners, two monitors, a camera on tripod... it was a 2 1/2 hr setup, which was good since the show started at 11am. At least the weather cooperated - simply gorgeous day, albeit a tad windy to begin with. So I spent the day with headphones on, two remotes in hand, running up and down a ladder to switch tapes in the camera, switch dvds, whatnot. Overall, it went pretty well, had some minor glitches with a couple of the dvds.

Had my roomie text me updates on the Philly/Denver football game in the evening, and well, as the updates came in, i was glad i wasn't watching the game. I now officially declare the Eagles season done. They're not going to make the playoffs, which I kinda suspected would happen from the beginning of the season. There's been a nasty trend of the previous year Super Bowl loser to not even make the playoffs the following season. I see the Giants winning the division, the cowboys a wild card, and eagles sitting in third in the division.

THat's all for now. tomorrow I'll try to post a link or two.

Bleh

2005-10-25T09:47:00.000-04:00

Random thoughts:

This weather sucks. Truly. Nothing is worse than bad weather in fall. Think about it.... Bad weather in the winter can often mean snow, which is fun! Bad weather in the spring means it's not snow, meaning summer is coming. Bad weather in the summer usually means a break in the 90+ sweltering heat. But bad weather in the fall.. when it's those first rainy, raw days... there's no redeeming quality about them.

Speaking of sucking, so is my fantasy football stuff... both the fantasy league and pick 'em pools. 2-5 with my fantasy league, 9th out of 10 teams. Pick 'em i'm near the bottom third, 13 games behind the leader. Ugh.

And also along the lines of sucking, albeit in a slightly different vein, my free time will soon be sucked up by some new games coming out that i've been looking forward to. Civilization 4 and Call of Duty 2. Of course, they both come out like the same day, so I'll have to decide which one to grab first. Probably Civ4. This will cut into my free time a bit, so i've been rushing to code some stuff on Dragon's Den a bit to compensate for the upcoming distractions. :)

Nothing

2005-10-20T16:14:00.000-04:00

BREAKING NEWS!!!! As reported on CNN.com in their headlines:

• Jennifer Aniston photographed kissing Vince Vaughn

Oh no! This is just so important. Who cares about Wilma. It's all about Vinnifer! *barf*

We now return you to the regularly scheduled post....

I've got nothing. Absolutely nothing. So. here's a random link. Don't go dizzy.

Rotational Illusions

The NHL is back!

2005-10-10T18:25:00.000-04:00

And now it is time to get into the action!

NHL Academy

Denthell Part 2

2005-10-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

So Thursday was extraction day. A simple extraction. And overall, it was really a simple extraction. The two worst parts: the near-anxiety attack and having my jaw ripped apart. The attack came after getting shot up with the novocaine, which they say can sometimes cause a rush of adrenadline, and combine that with my overall anxiety of having something forcefully ripped out my skull caused me to get lightheaded and faint. So while they let the novocaine get to work numbing the area, they tilted the chair back, turned the temp in the room down, fanned me, put wet towels on my head, and I tried to control my breathing to bring myself back under control. Then it was a lot of pushing and then pulling. The pushing was fine, the pulling itself at the end wasn't that bad either. The worse part about that was the doc inserting the tool back into the further recess of my mouth to reach the tooth, thereby entailing trying to rip my jaws apart. It felt like my cheeks were going to rip apart with the pressure being applied. That was by far the most painful part of the whole experience.

But now it's been a couple of days, and there never really was much pain. I took some advil, didn't need the vicodin prescription. Got a bit of a fever Fri night, but otherwise, everything went pretty well. Not that I plan on doing it again. Blech no thank you.

Denthell

2005-10-06T09:54:00.000-04:00

With the hectic schedule of the past week (or months), I neglected to relate my experience of going to the the dentist for the first time in about 8 years. Went to my childhood dentist actually, so they kinda sorta knew me, although my records were buried in the basement and they weren't going to bother pulling them out, so I got to fill out all new paperwork. And then came the dreaded examination with the scraping and the poking around for plaque and cavities. Now, I knew that one of my wisdom teeth had some serious decay going on.... that was the reason why I actually broke down and went to the dentist. But what I wasn't sure was how much else damage was going to be found. So the scraping and the poking commences... and well, I'll be... besides the wisdom tooth and a possible cavity in the tooth adjacent to it, my teeth were in very good shape. I mentioned I had been using a sonicare toothbrush (one of those oscillating ones) which the dentist assistant whose was doing the cleaning commended me on, basically i think saying thats why i my teeth were fine. She did chide me on not flossing enough, which, well, I don't.

But as for the wisdom tooth.... well, it's so badly decayed that it really wasn't worth trying to do a filling or a crown or cap or any such stuff, and since it is just a wisdom tooth, I have an appointment wiht an oral surgeon this afternoon to have it pulled out! Oh fun and joy. Now, it's a "simple" extraction, and I've always been putting the word "simple" in quote marks, even when I say it, I hold up my fingers to make quotation marks. We'll see how "simple" it actually turns out to be.

Oh. and this morning, the song du jour was that "I like it, I love it" psuedo-country crap they play with the highlights on MNF at halftime."

150K

2005-10-04T09:16:00.000-04:00

My car hit the 150,000 mile mark yesterday on the ride home from work. I would write about how wonderfully dependable the car (a 1997 subuaru outback) has been, but fear if I did that, it would die tonight on the commute home, and I really don't want to go through that. Yes, I would love to get a brand new car, as mine is getting old and a little beat up, but i also like not having car payments :)

This morning's song: The Devil Inside by INXS. No idea why, as usual.

Stuck in my head

2005-10-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

So, most mornings when i wake up for work, I end up getting a snippet of a song stuck in my head. Most times, I have no clue why I get a particular song stuck in my head, and worse off, I usually only know like one or two lines, and half the words, but while i'm showering, that small portion of the song will keep running through my head, over and over again. And the type of songs run the gamut too.

This morning, it was the Beatles Ob-la-di ob-la-da. No idea why either. What gets stuck in your head?

BOOM

2005-09-29T11:51:00.000-04:00

This is a picture of....

A) A nuclear explosion
B) My computer at work
C) My Brain
D) All of the above.

As you well could imagine, the obvious answer is D. It is indeed a mushroom cloud. It is also a good representation as to what my boot drive at work has been doing all morning. Been trying to scramble to copy files off of it whenever it does decide to boot up, and try to get stuff done on that computer to finish up a project in between catastrophic crashes.

It is also a good graphical representation of what my brain feels like right now. I've been basically running nose to the grindstone with filming and editing for the past two months now, most of it high-stressed filled with all kinds of other computer hardware issues that increase the stress of getting things done in a timely manner. This past month has been especially rough, where I really haven't had a day off at all. Every day has really been close to a 14-15hour day either at work or at home editing. I hit burn out stage Tues night. I am toast. Unfortunately, I have to push through it for another week or so until we get two projects out the door, and then I'm taking a mini vacation where I'm going to just sleep.

Posting Absence

2005-09-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

Yah, I haven't posted in a week. I haven't had time to in a week. Probably won't have much time for another week. Work has been crazy-hectic. I've been basically spending 16 hours a day editing, weekends included. Home and at work. When I'm not editing, I've been out filming. Or attending weddings. Or trying to catch a few Z's.

Tomorrow, well, tomorrow is going to be loads of fun. I get to go to the dentist for the first time, in , oh, it's got to be a good 7-8 years at least. Partially a result of not having dental insurance, partially a result of hating my teeth scraped and poked at. But well, one of my wisdom teeth came in and receded from the gums (or something), causing a situtation where I can use my tongue to feel underneath the tooth. It's been like that for a year or two, but now it's gotten to the point where I can feel an edge all the way up the tooth to the top. So, I bit the bullet and made an appointment to get my teeth checked out. The dentist is sure to ahve a field day with my teeth. And I'm sure it'll be visit 1 of 2 if not more, since I know I'll probably have to schedule a procedure to actually fix the problems as oppose to just getting the teeth cleaned and checked. Probably involve pulling the wisdom tooth. That'll be fun. Please, just knock me out.

Warning: Productivity Decline Ahead

2005-09-19T09:29:00.000-04:00

Don't say I didn't warn you:

Eyemaze Grow Cube

Make sure you try out Grow RPG as well.

Please forward hate mail to somewhere else when you spend a couple hours playing with these. ;)

Missing Rain Pies

2005-09-15T11:13:00.000-04:00

Missing:

So, on Tuesday, I was importing the last of the footage for my next porject, that being the 2005 Crossmen Tour Video. I get to the last tape, and i realize, you know...I haven't imported some footage that I know I should have. And it's really important footage. And I mean crucial footage. Like footage of the kids who can never march again in the activity because they've "aged-out", meaning they have turned 21 and are not allowed to march again. And this footage is mia. So I start trying to search through the cobwebs that have become my memory trying to remember what I did with this tape, had i labelled it, could it have been lost, written over. When the last time I remembered seeing it. I scour the office looking through all the tapes that are scattered about, I take a quick peek at all the unlabelled tapes to see if in fact one of them might be the tape in question. I go home, search high and low in my room, in my car. No sign of the tape. So next day, my boss is back, and I ask him... we're missing a tape... "Oh, yah. It was left in the camera. It's right here." As he reaches into a sorting tray and extracts a tape that's been wonderfully hidden from all view. Thanks a lot for the heartache and stress over this tape :P

Rain:

So it's finally raining. It's about time too. It hadn't rained in about, oh, at least a good three weeks. Grass was dying, a horrid brown. The band practice field at Delaware was becoming a dust bowl, a desert. Everytime the band would move around, great clouds of dirt and dust would rise into the air creating this lovely choking cloud. White socks come out looking brown. On the downside, with all this rain.. it may very well go from being a dirt field to a mud field. We've had that happen before. That's always so much fun.

Pies:

Eat the pie in 15 bites!

This and That

2005-09-13T11:03:00.000-04:00

Football's back! Yeah. Unfortunately, the Eagles lost last night. Fortunately, I had already predicted that the NFC representative in the Super Bowl this year will be the loser of the MNF game between the Eagles and Falcons....

Had another hard drive fail me at work, this one a part of a striped array. This failure wiped out a days worth of imported footage... i hadn't started editing yet though. It also wiped out my collection of stock footage and music. That's going to be quite inconvienent. I have most the music backed up on CD, but not the footage. Bleh.

Things otherwise continue to be hectic and busy. Currently importing footage on two different computers. Shot a video last night for a company i'm an investor in for the investor meeting in October. These videos are always oddballs, but fun to do. But with all that's been going on.. Delaware football, work, other video shoots, keeping E happy, staying up late to watch football... well, I can't stop yawning. *yawn* *YAWN*

Hmmm, a link for today, let's see what I can find..... here ya go

twiddling thumbs

2005-09-07T11:02:00.000-04:00

Hasn't been much on my mind to really talk about here the past few days. Been real busy with work the past few weeks, thankfully no more travelling for a while, just a lot of editing. Did get to spend Labor Day Weekend just lounging around, not doing much, which was a very nice change of pace. E brought the pooch over to my place to terrorize our cats. The cats handled it a little better than last time. They still spent the majority of the weekend upstairs in my roommates room, but they actually were out and about in the room at times, instead of cowering under the bed all the weekend. Spook even ventured downstairs and outside onto the deck while i was reading the paper, that is until she spied the dog through the window, and decided retreat was her best option.

Frivolous

2005-09-01T21:22:00.000-04:00

Okay, so, in attempt to beat Las Vegas for once... who wants to establish the over/under for the first lawsuit against the city of New Orleans/Army Corps of Engineers/FEMA/etc for loss of life/property resulting from the levee failures in that city, the resulting anarchy and inability to therefore evacuate people in a timely and safe manner? I put it at November 1st, 2005. Am I being too generous? I guess I should look for when the first lawsuits were filed post 9-11 as my precedent.

In other news... here's the link for the day. On a much lighter note mind you. And while on the subject, here's a related link.

Link for 8-31

2005-08-31T12:54:00.000-04:00

Quite simple: www.redcross.org
Donate what you can. I gave $20. Do the same.

Katrina

2005-08-30T22:10:00.000-04:00

Watching the TV coverage of the devastation caused by Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is a rather sobering experience. The utter destruction of towns, the massive flooding, the disorder and building lawlessness. It's all almost overwhelming. It's so hard to try to relate with the people who live down there as to what they are going through. As I was driving from my house earlier today, I tried to imagine the neighborhood being as devastated as the images on TV. I couldn't really do it. I couldn't fully comprehend what it would be like. My thoughts go out to everyone affected by this horrific natural disaster.

2 Years

2005-08-29T14:21:00.000-04:00

E has many times professed her inability to remember dates. I'm slightly better. You know some holidays there are the 'official' days and then 'observed' day for a holiday, like Memorial Day. Well, I have a date that kind of falls in that category. Today is technically E and I's 2 year anniversary of our first date. But to be honest, I didn't remember it as being this exact date. I had to look it up actually. Because I remember the 'observed' date of the anniversary, that being the Friday night of Labor Day weekend.

It's hard to believe that two years ago (today, or from Friday nightm depending on how you want to observe the occassion), E and I had our first date. It seems like it's been a much longer period of time, obviously, for all the right reasons. I'm not going to go into a 10 page essay on how wonderful E has been in my life, even if it all would be true. I'm just sure everyone else would get bored after the third paragraph.

What I guess is most amazing is the fact that we actually had that first date. I somehow managed to cram in a trip to visit her. That friday, i spent the day filming UD's band camp, and then that evening went up to her place. That saturday i then had to be back down for camp at 10am, and then travel off to scranton for the remainder of the holiday for another shoot. Somehow, i was able to squeeze in a few hours to go up and meet E one on one, and I couldn't have been happier since then that I made the time.

Love ya E!

I hate computers!!!

2005-08-22T13:53:00.000-04:00

So, sunday afternoon, i'm putting the finishing touches on an approx 2 hour video that i was to have done by tues afternoon. That evening, I was going to render the final project out so I could encode it for DVD. Sounds great! Of course, by now, you've noticed the use of the past conditional test. (or whatever tense it's actually. I hate grammar, but that's not the point here). Sunday afternoon, I go to load the project back up to do a final glance over. Now, 90% of this project is stored on an external firewire hard drive. I turn on the drive and I get this obnoxious flashing blue LED light when it should be solid. Hmm. The computer won't pick up on the drive. Okay, turn the drive off and back on. And again. and again. And once more. And still this LED light flashes at me, mocking me. giving me an electronic raspberry. Tbbbppppttttblink.

Here i sit... my footage lost. I'm faced with the wonderful prospect of starting this entire project over, a project that i had spent a week and a half toiling over. Life, is not good.

And here you now sit, reading this, waiting for the happy ending. Sorry. There isn't one. the external drive still is dead. There is a silver lining however. Not quite as good as a happy ending, but at least it lessens the horror. The project file that contains all the info on where the cuts and edits of the footage, was contained on the laptop hard drive, not the now dead external drive. So I'm fortunate that I can reimport the footage, and then point the missing files to the newly imported files. It'll require reimporting the multiple hours of footage however, and then I have to tweak the files so that they start at the same location as the old files, which i no longer have a reference to, in order to try to match up the footage to what it should be. So it could be worse, but it could definitely be worse.

And that's why I hate computers today.

Bonus Link!!

2005-08-19T22:31:00.000-04:00

http://www.transbuddha.com/alphamonkey/media/flash/trev2.swf

Enjoy!

Ahh, the weekend

2005-08-19T19:19:00.000-04:00

The weekend at last.... of course, it's not a free weekend as UD's band camp starts this weekend which I'll be dropping in to film now and then, and all of next week. I haven't had many free weekends this summer, as E will attest to and swear vehemently about. I think the last free weekend was 4 weeks ago. I'm in sore need of another vacation, or rather, just time off to be able to sleep in and do nothing but goof off and play games all day. But that's not coming for a while since a busy summer shooting equates into a busy early fall editing. C'est la vie.

Cool Link of the Day

2005-08-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

This stuff is just really cool. Almost mind-boggling cool.

http://users.skynet.be//J.Beever/pave.htm

Back home (for good)

2005-08-15T11:44:00.000-04:00

Okay, maybe not for good, but for a while. Don't have anymore shoots that require overnight stays for a couple of months. And that's just swell. After a week of sleeping on busses and air matresses, it's nice to be home for a change. Not that I minded being out on the road the past week, as it was a lot of fun. I enjoy shooting drum corps. I also got to add to my list of major stadiums that I've had the opportunity of walking on the field. Although this one was a little more of a hassle as the stadium event staff were a bit of grass nazis, not letting anyone other than the actual performers to walk upon the grass. This was Gilette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. That's the problem with some of these larger professional stadiums... they're so worked up about keeping the field in pristine conditions for football season that they smack us around a little. Anyway, nothing worth getting into a rant about.

Here's my now updated list of major stadiums that my job has taken me to and allowed me entrance onto the field (where I usually try to make it a point of walking on the 50 yrd line):

Gilette Stadium, Foxboro MA
Alltel Stadium, Jacksonsville FL
RCA Dome, Indianapolis IN
Alamodome, San Antonio TX
Giants Stadium, Rutherford NJ
Citrus Bowl, Orlando FL
Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo NY (home to Buffalo Bills)
Invesco Field, Denver CO (couldn't get to the 50 on this one :(

I've also been courtside with the UD pep band at whatever the hell corporate name it is now where the Chicago Bulls play. And I'm sure this list will continue to grow over the years.

Me doing one of those list things? gasp

2005-08-05T10:28:00.000-04:00

So, I actually stole this from Spurious Plum. One of the few times I might ever do these things....

10 years ago... August 1995, about to enter my senior year in college. Working as an intern at a Chrysler Assmembly plant. Not doing a whole lot, but getting paid a whole lot for it. It is nice to work in the automotive industry, union or not. Nice pay. Particularly the weekend i worked and got double time. I think I earned over that one weekend what some other students earned the entire summer.

5 years ago... August 2000. Have to try to remember. Had started the job I'm working at now earlier that year. Was living with Schporto at the time in a nice 3rd floor apartment.

1 year ago...Busy with work. Been dating E for 1 glorious year at the time.

Yesterday... Worked at West Chester University to film a drum corps show.

Today...Babysitting the office for a few hours to answer calls and get some editting done.

Tomorrow... Head back to West Chester University to film final performances of a week long band camp and drum major academy. Immediately afterwards, leave for Allentown PA to tour with the Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corps as they head to Foxboro and the DCI World Championships.

5 snacks I enjoy... Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies! The Best! Chips and Salsa, Peppermint Patties, Slim Jims, Doritos

5 bands that i know the lyrics of MOST of their songs.. This one is a little tougher.... Billy Joel definitely. To a much lesser extent... Weird Al Yankovic, Metallica, AC/DC, and uh, trying to think of what plays most on my mp3 player... *shrug*

5 things I would do with $100,000,000... Travel the world with E, donate a chunk to the UDMB (University of Delaware Marching Band), Buy a bunch of cool toys, shre with family and closest friends, invest a bunch to live off the interest comfortably.

5 locations I'd like to run away to... Australia, Hawaii, Carribean, Italy, Antartica in the warm season.

5 bad habits I have... Gaming instead of talking to E, procrastination, becoming an introvert in new situations, not keeping in touch with old friends, forgetting to recharge batteries

5 things I like doing...Computer games, crossword puzzles, sleeping, eating, spending time with E.

5 TV shows I like...Mythbusters, Family Guy, Teen Titans, any hold'em Poker (heh, yah, i know), philly sports

5 movies I like... Spaceballs, History of the World Part 1, Shrek (1&2), Aladdin, Bond movies

5 famous people I'd like to meet... Mel Brooks, Peter Jackson, Robin Williams, Queen Elizabeth II (it'd just be cool, for no other reason), Albert Einstein (who cares if he's dead)

5 biggest joys at the moment... E, E, E, E and E.

Well, i'm going to be gone for the next week, so this will have to tide you over until I get back. In the meanwhile, enjoy this.

Take my cat, fleas

2005-08-03T15:20:00.000-04:00

Well, kitties have been given drugs and such to kill the fleas. Think they are slowly getting happier. Spook in fact for the first time in about 3 weeks slept with me the entire night. Which has its downsides as well, since she likes to try to work her way into the center of the bed. Sightings of fleas elsewise are dropping, mostly just finding small, young fleas which we try to hit with the flea killer whenever possible. Hopefully things wont escalate again when I'm away all next week. Here's some shots of the kitties taken right after returning from Mexico:

Two-face

Spook

As the world turns...

2005-08-01T20:37:00.000-04:00

So, I'm actually home for a few days. Not days of relaxation as I have tons of work, but days of not being on the road like I will be all of next week. Not that it's travelling I hate. I'll be on the road with a Drum & Bugle Corps, the Crossmen. Drum corps are kinda like professional marching band, except the kids aren't paid.

In the meanwhile, I've been having to deal with an epidemic of fleas. Our cats got fleas about two weeks ago... we got flea collars, but they did squat. So when I got home from Massachussets on Sat night, found the house just jumping with fleas. So roommate went out today and got a stronger spray (had used a powder which didn't seem to do anything), and will take the cats to the vet tomorrow.. .so hopefully now we can crsuh these annoying pests. My legs could use the relief, as they are covered with dozens of itchy bites. Bring on the hydrocortisone please.

Balloon Pics

2005-07-25T12:51:00.000-04:00

Note: See E's blog for description of our ballooning adventure. Click on each picture to see full-size.

Setup & Inflating the Balloons:

Time for Liftoff:

In the air:

Cleaning up

Any my favorite shot....

My parents also took pictures from the ground. Once I get them, I will post them as well.

More Headlines

2005-07-22T09:03:00.000-04:00

Taken from CNN.com today:

Rice to make surprise visit to Lebanon

....Later Friday, she will make a surprise visit to Lebanon, according to Lebanese government sources.

Ummmm... is it still a surprise then?

From ESPN.com

Lakers pick Turiaf to have open-heart surgery

Talk about drawing the short straw. Oh, you mean the Laker's draft pick, Turiaf, is to have surgery.

Headline

2005-07-21T18:18:00.000-04:00

Taken from those blocks at the top of the front page* of the News-Journal (DE):

Ozone Alert: Try to Avoid Breathing Today.

Ok, I'm hoping, I'm assuming, that's a tongue-in-cheek headline. Of course, it has been hotter than a fat guy's balls here.

* Can't remember the stupid journalistic name for those thingies.

Hurricane Emily

2005-07-18T11:44:00.000-04:00

Well, it was a good thing that E and I weren't planning our trip for mid-july, for well, it wouldn't have happened. Thats because dear ole Emily hit square on where we were staying, the town of Playa del Carmen. Media is saying the eyewall hit Cozumel/Playa del Carmen directly. Which means that what things looked like when we were there, sure as heck don't anymore. Of course, no one has gotten any pictures out from that area yet. It'll be interesting to see if i recongize any of the locations that they end up showing.

Time Waster

2005-07-15T13:34:00.000-04:00

http://home.cwru.edu/~jnt5/Planarity/

Goal is to move the linked nodes around so that no two links cross one another. I'm currently working on level 10....

Happy Cow Appreciation Day

2005-07-14T12:59:00.000-04:00

It's an udderly mooving celebration.

Absence

2005-07-13T13:14:00.000-04:00

Yah, so i've been MIA for a while. Between travelling for work, a large workload at work, and just being tired, I haven't had much time for blogging. I've been meaning for weeks to post the last few photos from the Mexico trip, I'll do that now and get that over and done with...

On the final day of our trip, we took a short ferry ride over to Cozumel to do some snorkeling. I entrusted E with the camera for a few seconds.... big mistake.

Arriving into Cozumel, one of the many massive cruise ships docked there. Seeing the cruise ships made me yearn to go on another cruise again, not having done so since like 1980.

The snorkeling was okay. Nothing fantastic. Of course, I had forgotten to get a waterproof camera so I couldn't take any pictures. Not that there was a lot to take pictures of. The snorkelling in Hawaii was 100x better.

But we did end up getting caught by a heavy thunderstorm while out snorkelling. It's kinda interesting snorkelling in the shallow waters with rain drops hitting your back. It really poured.

Like you couldn't see very far, downpour.

Tulum

2005-06-30T09:44:00.000-04:00

One of the few trips we did take while we were in Mexico was down the coast a few miles to the ruins at Tulum. Now, these ruins aren't as impressive as the ones in Chickenpizza, er Chichenitza, but I also didn't want to drive 2 1/2 hours in the Jeep to get there. So instead we drove about 30 minutes (through a Thunderstorm no less.... it's really hard to zip up the jeep windows while driving at 80 kmh, just an FYI).

This is where we took our first pictures, and presto voila, here they are:

A wide shot of the ruins near the entrance.

Another shot, closer to the water. These ruins are neat in that they are directly on the ocean.

I snuck a picture of E. I'm such a bastard.

You wanna iguanna?

I actually posed for this picture.

The main structure of the ruins.

Since I posed for a picture, I made E pose for a picture.

So that was our day trip to Tulum. For more info about the ruins, you can try this site or you can just do your own google search. :P

Pictures!!!

2005-06-28T13:46:00.000-04:00

Here are some of the long awaited pictures... First up, the wonderful TouristMobile (tm)

Bask in it's touristness!

Here is the view from our room:

More...

2005-06-27T18:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've been a bad little blogger, didn't blog much at all last week. Okay, hardly at all. But, well, I've finally gotten the pictures (the few that we did take) back so this week I can continue talking about the trip to Mexico and include the photos. Everyone cheer now. Or yawn. ;)

E and B's Most? Excellent Mexico Adventure, Part 3

2005-06-20T22:34:00.000-04:00

Read Part 1 here
Read Part 2 here

Onto Part 3

"I can't wait to hear what happens next...we now have two tired, sweaty, people inserting the key into the timeshare and..."

- Marybishop

Hey now MB, let's not be rushing to conclusions here... yes, we do now have two tired, sweaty, in desparate need of nummy frozen alcholic beverages. I "parked" the car [if you call turning into a spot and leaving it at any odd angle and half in the spot because it stalled here, parking, then, yes, I parked the car.] We brought our luggage in and proceeded upstairs to the check in. It's now about 1:15pm. We informed them the name under which the reservation was under as we sat down and hastily gulped down a cool bottle of water. They search through their stack of papers, reaching the bottom. "Do you have a confirmation number?" Uh, no. We never got one. E's dad was taking care of the arrangements. "We don't seem to have your reservation here". You should. We made sure we had our reservation confirmed before booking our flights. In fact, we were complaining about how long it was taking to confirm the reservation because we were anxious to book the flight before rates started creeping up.

They go down to the manager so he can check the computers and such. And we wait. Nerviously. There's food and drinks to be had, but the two of us are both on edge and not hungry. They then ask us to come downstairs to the manager's office. This can't be good. The manager informs us that there is no reservation under our name at all. There was no record of any request of a room. "But don't worry. We don't have any rooms here tonight, but we know that some of our other hotels have rooms". Yah, hotels that are back up in Cancun. I DO NOT want to get back into that jeep and drive another 45 minutes back to where we came from. We try to reach E's dad, not sure whether we will have success or not, since he's flying back from Fla that day. No answer on the cell. Shit. The manager tries E's dad at his house. Yes! He answers. He says he'll fax down the confirmation stuff. And we wait some more. Remember when I joked about sleeping in the jeep... it was beginning to sound like it was going to come true. ARGH!

We wait some more. We find out that oh, they did find our request (after talking to E's dad some more). But we had never confirmed whether we wanted a studio or a suite. Funny, from what we remember, there weren't any studios available (what we wanted) and we would have to take a suite. So guessing from that miscommunication, they decided we weren't coming and cancelled our request. Thanks.... about a room, please? We head back upstairs to the checkin area and sit some more, watching everyone else checkin, grabbing drinks and food, and we just sit there sweating it out, smiling awkwardly at the staff as we wait. And wait. And sigh. And grumble our bad luck. Or maybe just E's bad luck. Rubbing off on me. Damn it. I don't want her bad luck :)

At 3:10, two hours after arriving, one of the staff member comes up with a pile of papers. Gee, they've found us a room. HERE! At this resort! A studio no less! This was after the manager having another conversation with E's dad while we had waited. Ya know, come to think of it, I don't think I saw that manager ever again. I think E's dad chewed him out so badly that he cowered the rest of the trip. "Do you want something to drink now".. No, not yet. I want to physically have a key to a room in hand before I drink, not trusting something else to get screwed up, with the way our luck has been running.

3:35 pm, we get our keys!! E and I hastily order strawberry daquiris and proceed to inhale them.

3:52 pm, we get to our room and open the door and collapse inside, relief finally overcoming us. We can finally start our vacation! WOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it's a mad dash to the pool for some swimming and relaxing and drinking.

Stay tuned to E's blog for part 4 of this special blogging miniseries event.

E and B's Most Excellent Mexico Adventure, Part 1

2005-06-19T20:54:00.000-04:00

Destination: Mexico

So E and myself got up before the buttasscrack of dawn to catch our 5:20 AM flight out of Philly on USScare, err, I mean USAirways. Now, they always tell you to get there at least 90-120 minutes before your flight. Well, this would be pointless since the ticket counters at philly don't open until 4:30am. So we pull into the terminal at 4:30am to check in. I proceed to the self checkin kiosk and start to check in. Hm, Okay. You have to scan in your passport as part of the check in process. No problem for me, but E's passport as expired so she had to use id and birth certificate... So we couldn't use the self check-in and had to wait in line. I tell the agent at the head of the line that we're on the 5:20 am flight and couldn't use the kiosk because of the id. She tells us okay, that they'll probably start pulling our flight out of the line shortly...

So at about 4:40 am, T-minus 40 minutes til departute, they start pulling passengers on our flight out of line... except well that just the week before, they changed the cutoff time for checking luggage from 30 minutes to 45 minutes before the flight to allow TSA time to browse through your underwear. That's okay for us, since we weren't checking luggage (thanks E for deciding on that!). But even though one of the agents had opened up the cordon lines for us and was ready to send us to the next available ticket counter agent, they had to hold while they got a supervisor to override the system and let the other passengers check their luggage. So the one agent with us closes the cordon back up and walks off, saying she'll be right back.

It's now 4:50am, T-minus 30 minutes, and they still haven't gotten back to us. I get the attention of another of the agents helping out and tell her that we're on the 5:20 flight. She quick hops over to the counters and checks the computer and comes back to us. "Sorry, but we can't issue your boarding passes anymore". WHAT? Excuse me? Um, we've been here since 4:30 am, trying to check-in, and now you tell us that we're too late? She grumbles and complains to some of the other agents about how they have to get out earlier and grab us out of line faster, if they insist on scheduling flights so damn early. blah blah blah. That's nice, but what about us now? She can get us on a later flight, a nonstop to Cancun... at 11am! Um. The reason I booked the 5:20 am flight was to get to MExico sooner so we could enjoy basically a full day down there, not to wait another fun-filled 6 hours at the Philly airport waiting for the next available flight. Not to mention that we were only had a rental car guaranteed for us up until 11 am! She apologizes, yakkity yak, bs and crap, and tells us to wait in line now and we'll get rebooked when our turn comes up. *grumble and fume*

So at about 5am, we finally get to the counter, I hand over the flight info and ids, and the agent starts printing out boarding passes. I see that the two she has printed out are not adjacent seats. Even better. Not only are we on a later flight, we won't even be sitting next to each other. Grrr. 5 hours sitting next to strangers. But then she prints out two more boarding passes. She hasn't said a word to us at all.. and I'm puzzled. She writes the gate number and circles it on the little packet... B5. Wait a sec. That was the gate number for the 5:20am flight. I ask... is that the 5:20 am flight? "Oh yeah". Wow. Okay. I'm guessing that since i had started the checkin process at the kiosk, that there was a little asterisk or what not in the system saying that we were in the process of checking in, and just needed id verification to finish. That's the only thing that makes sense. But now it's 5am, the flight leaves in 20 minutes, and we're still at the ticket counter. Ladies and Gentleman, start your engines! And they're off!!!!

Because well, normally, airlines like to close the boarding gate 10-15 minutes before the scheduled departure. So this gives us approx 5 minutes to get through security and race down to the gate. Luckily, with it being so damn early in the morning, security didn't take too long. Also it's fortunate this wasn't a business trip for me and my bags weren't filled with video cameras, lens, batteries belts, and other strange things that always makes the TSA agents at the screeners look confused and bewildered and request a thorough inspection. Poor E throughout this is struggling to keep up with my long legs and quick stride, trying to carry her bags and keep up with me. I finally tell her just to catch up at her own pace, I'm going to race ahead and make sure I get to the gate in time so they don't close it. And we make it in time. Barely. Out of breath and dripping with sweat already, we collapsed in our seats. And the flight is uneventful, thankfully.

We had a layover in Charlotte, no biggie, and nothing terribly bad happened here. More amusing, as our connecting flight to Cancun was delayed about an hour because they had to replace a brake on one of the wheels. Bah! Why do you need brakes? We board at about 8:45 and as we sit on the plane, we get an announcement that we'll just be a few more minutes as the brake has been replaced, they just need to put the tire back on. Gee. Thanks. :) Finally we lift off at 9:15 am en route for Mexico.

Last bit of amusement from this leg of the trip: From the "Migratory Form for Foreign Tourist Instructions" for entering Mexico:
"Don't forget to sing in the box especified for the foreigner"

Of course, I turned to E, hold up the sheet, and start singing a silly song. There were a bunch of other fun typos in the English translations, but that one stood out in my mind.

So we arrive in hot and humid Cancun mexico! Yeah! For the continuation of B and E's Most Excellent Mexico Adventure, head on over to E's blog here.

We're baaackkk!!!!

2005-06-18T19:45:00.000-04:00

E and I have returned this evening, although in very little condition for active blogging. But look forward this week to the exciting "Adventures of B and E in Mexico!- A mini-series of blogging".

Tra-la-la

2005-06-10T12:46:00.000-04:00

So E and I are prepared to head off for a week of sun and fun in Mexico, leaving butt ass early in the morning on Saturday, and gone for a week. Woo! Going through general internet withdrawal will be tough, but i think we will survive.

In my absence however, I will leave you with the sensation thats sweeping the nation (or at least, the Swedish nation (Hey Sven! Look at the fjord! Bork!) and other european nations....

GUNTHER!!!! [Link now fixed]

You touched my Tra-la-la. Mmmm.. my ding ding dong.

Excuse me?

2005-06-08T22:01:00.000-04:00

So, I was getting ready to film a graduation ceremony for a catholic prep school in New Jersey on this fine, sweltering day. Yippee! So, we're trying to get everything set up, when I notice that a lady nearby where my camera is set up (i'm not next to it as I'm trying to help get the wireless mic setup), is talking about saving a seat with a magazine. I look, and gee, it's my magazine. That she's taken out of my bag. Huh? Excuse me?

I so wanted to go down there and be extremely rude to her. Ask her if she always goes through other peoples belongings without asking or even knowing them, and taking stuff out of it for their own use. Of course, I can't really do this because I'm working and kinda have to be somewhat polite as she might be buying one of the videos, and probably is enough of a bitch to complain to the school. And besides, all I would have gotten out of being rude her is a blank stare, and humph, as she turns away and walks off with her nose in the air, having been insulted in that matter.

And it's no wonder that the youth of today are such brats. They get it from their parents.

New Animations

2005-06-05T12:37:00.000-04:00

For those of you who are aware of these sites... there's a new 30-second bunny theater presentation of Pulp Fiction at Angry Alien Productions.

There's also a new short at Happy Tree Friends.*

* Warning: Happy Tree Friends is NOT suitable for small children or those who are squeamish.

And the winner is....

2005-06-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

#8!!!! Okay, well, I'll start off with this one and rotate through these and other pictures over time.

In other news.....

Some friends and I were talking about this at dinner the other day... the cautions one must take when blogging. In this day of identify theft, invasion of privacy, and just in general widespread usage of the internet, it's become easier and easier for what you say to come back and bite you on the ass. When I started this blog, I really didn't consider the implications of what I post on these blogs in terms of the trouble it could cause. At this point, I still don't really consider it a major issue. I mean, it's not like what I post are scathing tirades at specified individuals, or hateful rants about friends/family/bosses/government. It's mostly nonsense. But it does make you think twice about what you do say. You hear in the news reports of people getting fired because of what they put in their blogs or other online journals. The Delta airline stewardness is one that comes to mind quickly. She was fired because she was posting pictures of herself in uniform that wasn't quite up to company standards. Of course, doing things like that in your company uniform isn't the smartest thing, but it tells you that the wrong people will eventually read what you write, whether you intended them to or not.

So am I going to change what I write? Hell no. As I said, there's not a whole lot of real substance contained within this blog. Can people other than my friends figure out who I really am? Maybe. I didn't select a crazy pseudonym.. it's my first initial and lastname. However, it's a rather common name, as evident when I do a google search on my name. (Hell, I don't even show up in the first bunch of pages... do you know I'm also a Doctor, a comedian in england, a realtor, an associate professor, and a poet?) So.... full steam ahead... although I will probably think twice about what I do say and post, just in case.... you know. when I become rich and famous.

Vote now! Vote often!

2005-05-31T21:25:00.000-04:00

And here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for. Or at least I know E has. Time to decide on what picture to use for my profile at this time. I have 8 options... choose your favorite!

1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

Coming Distractions

2005-05-31T13:22:00.000-04:00

So, when I went home for a quick get together with my folks over the Memorial weekend, I grabbed a few bins of stuff collected from my childhood days... so I might share some of these things as I sort through the materials. A blast from the past I guess....

Here's the Proof

2005-05-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

From the "I Could Have Told You That" Department:

Survey: Northeast has dumbest drivers

Test shows 1 in 10 licensed U.S. drivers don't know basic rules. In the East, 20 percent fail quiz.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When faced with a written test, similar to ones given to beginning drivers applying for licenses, one in ten drivers couldn't get a passing score, according to a study commissioned by GMAC Insurance.

The GMAC Insurance National Driver's Test found that nearly 20 million Americans, or about 1 in 10 drivers, would fail a state driver's test if they had to take one today. GMAC Insurance is part of General Motors' finance subsidiary, GMAC.

More than 5,000 licensed drivers between the ages of 16 and 65 were administered a 20-question written test designed to measure basic knowledge about traffic laws and safety. They were also surveyed about their general driving habits.

Drivers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states did worst. Twenty percent of test-takers failed there.

The state of Rhode Island leads the nation in driver cluelessness, according to the survey. The average test score there was 77, just eight points above a failing grade.

Those in neighboring Massachussets were second worst and New Jersey, third worst.

Northwestern states had the most knowledgable drivers. In those states, just one to three percent failed the test. Oregon and Washington drivers knew the rules of the road best. In Oregon, the average test score was 89.

According to the study, many drivers find basic practices, such as merging and interpreting road signs, difficult.

For instance, one out of five drivers doesn't know that a pedestrian in a crosswalk has the right of way, and one out of three drivers speeds up to make a yellow light, even when pedestrians are present, the study said.

Drivers not only lack basic road knowledge, but exhibit dangerous driving behavior as well.

"As a nation of drivers, we've made little progress in the past 10 years to curb some of the most dangerous driving behaviors, including drinking and driving and speeding," said Susan Ferguson, senior vice president of research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

One out of 10 drivers regularly exceeds the speed limit by 11 or more miles per hour, with drivers aged between 18 and 24 years showing the greatest propensity for speeding, the study said.

Speeding increases both the likelihood of an accident and the severity of the crash, the company added, citing research from IIHS.

Younger drivers are the most likely to fail a written driving test while those between the ages of 50 and 64 are the most likely to pass.

Top five states for driver knowledge:

Oregon
Washington
Iowa
Idaho
Wyoming

Bottom five states for driver knowledge:

Rhode Island
Massachusetts
New Jersey
New York
Washington D.C.

B

2005-05-26T09:02:00.000-04:00

Blue blog Bking built because boredom bites. Buyers beware: bouncing baby boy becomes biped balancing bicycles behind Billy Bob bringing back bumpy black bowling balls. But brick bananas beget beige birds beset by bronchitis. Brian burps best being blantantly bullied before breaking bossy Betty's balloons. Bah. Bye.

Deep Thoughts...

2005-05-24T19:17:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wondered why the word "dieting" has the word "die" in it? Coincidence? I think not.

Thank you high metabolism so I don't have to suffer the pains of dieting.

*awaits the mass of hate comments* :)

A beautiful day/weekend

2005-05-22T15:10:00.000-04:00

So, Friday was Hell. The weekend made up for it. First of all, the sun came out. Saturday morning was absolutely fabulous. Went to the post office to get the dreaded piece of mail. Low and behold, it's actually for the house two doors down, who happens to have the same last name as I do. (King isn't that uncommon of a name... but still). So no Audit or anything like that. So with a spring in my step, the sun shining down from the crystal clear blue skies, I head up to E's to help her move out of the roommate from hell. And the move goes just fine. Roomie from hell doesn't interfere (with the exception of a few stupid comments), none of her guests show up, and we get everything loaded up and out of there in two hours.

of course, i'm sore and all that stuff now. but life is good again.

Day from Hell

2005-05-20T14:20:00.000-04:00

There are days where it seems anything that can go wrong, will. Today seems to be one of those days. Begin pseudorant:

So, today I had the intention of working from home. Needed to import a load of footage so that I could just get straight to editting next week, as well as work on some web pages for work. Well, the video camera I have to use to import the footage refuses to rewind any of the tapes. It would rewind about 10 seconds and then stop and force me to eject the cassette. Now, I really need to get this footage imported or else next week will be totally miserable. Finally, I give up, I'm going to drive into work, in the pouring rain, to grab a different deck to import the footage off of. So I drive in, dodging every idiot out there on the road who can't drive. Get to work, grab the deck, drive home. And get the mail. To find there's a "Sorry We Missed you!" note from the post office. A certified letter. Sender's Name: "Revenue". err. yah. that can't be anything good. I don't know if it's IRS or Delaware Dept of Revenue. Either way, I read AUDIT all over this letter. Argh! And I have no idea whether I've screwed up my taxes or not. They haven't been exactly the neatest things to do the past few years. Joy. Here's where I wish I could fast foward this day. As the line goes in Spaceballs... Fast forward through this. In fact, never play this again.

R/C Squirrels

2005-05-17T20:25:00.000-04:00

Josh said...

can you find or what are your veiws on squirrels behind the wheels of R/C cars?

I am unsure whether this completely fulfills your question, as this squirrel is merely using the rc controls, and thus is technically behind the wheels, but not actually in the car. I don't think squirrels should actually be physically in r/c cars because r/c cars do not have seat belts or air bags, and thus are inherently unsafe for any passengers, except barbie dolls. And only if you intend on driving the car off a cliff should any doll be placed in an r/c car.

Next question please.....

[Photo stolen from here... http://www.b3ta.com/board/profile.php?id=3409]

Needing something

2005-05-17T17:33:00.000-04:00

Okay. so this blog is needing a trademark thing. E's got the market on ranting, MB's got the market on strange Google searches, Spurious has the fruit stand..... I need something. My gimmick. Heh. yah. Okay. maybe not. Maybe I just need to find more things to write about. So, I guess it's open request time again. Fire away your questions!

sigh

2005-05-13T13:50:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it really sucks being a guy. Insensitive, uncaring, unthoughtful, unresponsive. Bleh. And communicating over the internet is the worse way to communicate.

I must be getting old

2005-05-12T11:30:00.000-04:00

First, my back went on me. That's recovered thankfully.
Then, I had trouble sleeping last Friday night because of abdominal pains. That aslo, thankfully, passed.
Then last night, I couldn't sleep because of excessive pain in my shoulder shooting down my right arm. I went to bed about 11:30am and my arm had started to tingle and hurt a little, but was able to fall asleep. but at about 1:30am i woke up in such pain. I tried to sleep through it, i couldn't because the pain was unbearable. It was like someone was jabbing me from behind in the shoulder blade and the pain was just streaming down my arm. Took an aspiring, but that didn't kick in for an hour. So I spent 1:30-2:30am last night tossing around, getting up, trying to stretch my shoulder/arm out, rub it, etc, trying anything desparately to ease the pain so I could go back to sleep. Finally, after getting up, hopping online for a few minutes, the pain started to subside enough to go back to sleep.
I think it's a pinched nerve. Probably from too much editting, spending all day with a mouse in hand dragging and clicking and etc. Just as long as it doesn't progress into carpal tunnel. Ugh. But I'm definitely going to try to take more breaks at work, just to try to keep the pain from getting worse.

One of my addictions...

2005-05-09T18:50:00.000-04:00

Hello, my name is Bking, and I'm.. I'm .. addicted to roller coasters. Yes, 'fraid so. As evidenced my enjoyment of my bday gift from E, my infatuation with Roller Coaster Tycoon, and my love of amusement parks. And well, it seems that this year everyone in the area has a new coaster.

Six Flags Great Adventure is opening Kingda Ka, the "tallest, fastest roller coaster on Earth", with a height of 456 feet and a launch speed of 128 mph. It's a simple hydraulic launch coaster, out and back design with two hills, of course the first being the monster hill. *drool*

Dorney Park is unveiling Hydra "A floorless coaster so twisted, it brought down Hercules". A twister coaster with a number of inversions and fast curves. Looks quite nice. But I wonder.. did they tear down their wooden coaster Hercules to build this? That's be a shame.

And it's been a couple of years since I've been to a park in the area, that the other parks, Six Flags America and Hershey Park all have a bunch of rides that I have yet to ride. And of course, I still have yet to go to the rollercoaster mecca. That, of course, is Cedar Point in Sandusky Ohio, home of like 5 of the top 10 coasters in the world. *double droll*

So, maybe this year I will have to force myself and E and maybe some friends to get to one of these parks. I need my fix man.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys

2005-05-06T16:26:00.000-04:00

Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come looking for you. [To the theme of COPS, of course].

So I was participating in the Friday Commute 500 on the way home on 295 in So. Jersey. Actually, wasn't as bad as some Fridays. Was cruising along with the cruise control set at 73/74 in a 65 mph zone. I don't dare set it much higher, because the state police love to frequent this stretch of road. Anyway, cruising along, nearing exit 4. i know there's a particularly favorite spot up ahead. A set of three cars come cruising down the left lane, they weren't going extremely fast, probably in the 77-78 mph range. Past the first turn around, no cop. Get to the second spot.. hello there Mr. Officer. Now, I'm in the right lane being passed by these guys, so I have no concern, don't even touch the brakes. But those guys passing me... amazing how quickly the slow down. And so now, everyone's attention is glued to the rear view mirror.. does Mr. Fuzz pull out. Of course, I'm watching as well just out of curiousity. And yes, he does pull out. So these set of 3 people slow down even more. And the game is on. It's a game to me because I know i'm not getting pulled over, and I know these other drivers are sweating bullets. So I watch the rear view mirror. Who's is going to be? Contestant #1, the front man. Contestant #2, the drafter, or Contestant #3, the straggler?.... Finally cop catches up to the group and the winner is.... #3, the straggler. Must have been going a little faster at the point to catch up with the pack.

On come the lights, and the other drivers I know are finally exhaling. And of course, with the knowledge that they've dodged a bullet, the gas pedal is once again pressed to the floor. And I just got to sit there and enjoy it all. I love when I get to watch a cop pull someone else over. I just wish it would happen more often when you have one of those asses that tailgates you, flashes you, and zooms off at 85mph with unsafe lane changes. Oh well, can't ahve it all.

Birthday

2005-05-02T18:01:00.000-04:00

It was a quiet, enjoyable birthday. Nothing spectacular. No drunken orgies. No topless chicks hopping out of oversized birthday cakes. Had dinner with a bunch of friends, E made me some cake (of course, never as good as mom's..... just in case she ever reads this, not that I would ever expect her to :) and some gifts. This is the cool thing she got me:

You want one now, don't you. I just need to get another set or two so I can make some really worthy marble coaster. *grin* And it'd be cool to add a motorized elevator to have it continually run. Okay. Starting to get carried away. I'll just go back to playing Roller Coaster Tycoon to satiate that craving.

Happy Birthday to Me

2005-04-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

Yup, another year older, and definitely not another year wiser.

An Early Bday Gift

2005-04-28T13:09:00.000-04:00

As I turn older on Saturday, I felt it only fitting to give myself an early and a very appropriate birthday gift. yah. I threw my back out for good this morning. it had been hurting a little here and there for the past few days. but today. i finished it. and it wasn't even lifting. i bent over to grab something out of a cabinet on the floor and Snap! Crackle! Pop! Ouch! Yup, i'm getting older.

I'm back. Did you miss me?

2005-04-26T17:24:00.000-04:00

Did you even notice ;)

Spent the past 4 days up in Boston, working. Wasn't terribly bad, just a long drive up and back, and two really long ass days in between. Was filming a hs orchestra festival held at the boston symphony hall. actually, didn't do as much filming as editting. Had to edit 3 6-minute segments to show during the final concert to fill up the space while they rearranged the stage. Very little time to get the stuff done. So Monday (monday night was when the final concert happened) I spent the entire day in a hallway by the 2nd balcony with a laptop feverishly trying to put together these 3 segments. somehow managed to pull it off by 7pm (concert started at 8). needless to say, i'm really sore (wasn't a comfortably work environment) and really tired. at least i'm taking tomorrow off and friday off from work. of course i'm kinda annoyed now that i looked at the weather forecast which shows rain for the remainder of the month. ugh.

The Bastard PC(tm): Epilogue

2005-04-21T22:49:00.000-04:00

So, hopefully all is over and done with that PC, except for extracting old e-mails from that Honkin' Drive. But...

Yesterday, my boss asked me on the progress on the project I've been working on. Well, needless to say, I'm quite far behind on it. It's been taking entirely too long to finish. And of course, my boss isn't happy, wanting to figure out what we need to do differently to streamline these productions, make things go quicker, etc. The main answer is simple... STOP HAVING ME DO SO MANY THINGS AT ONCE! I swear, this place would fall apart without me. He wonders why I'm taking so long on things? Could it because while trying to work on this project, he has me doing mail merges for shipping out orders, doing an open for another video, trying to fix the dead computer, helping a co-worker set up some equipment, designing VHS/DVD case covers, designing DVD screens, authoring DVDs, converting old dvd designs to a new computer... you start to get the picture, right? And he wonders why things take so long.

The Continuing Adventures of Bastard PC (tm)

2005-04-20T12:00:00.000-04:00

Join us now for the ever-continuing adventures of the Bastard PC(tm). For those of you just tuning in, and are too lazy to read the previous post *prod* *prod*, I've been dealing with the slow demise of an old computer at work. Luckily, I don't really have anything on this computer of great important. Unfortunately, my boss does, hence his reliance on using this antiquated piece of crap. So yesterday I spent the majority of the day trying to ressurrect said piece of crap. Finally, I gave up, installed the old Honkin' Drive(tm) into another computer, after discovering I need to switch jumper settings, and copied all the files off the Honkin' Drive (tm) to a CD-ROM. Well. so today.. none of the files created with Publisher on this cd-rom will open. Publisher says, "Publisher cannot open files from a different version, Nya-Nyah :P" Of course, we're using the exact same version of Publisher, from the same exact install disk. Argh! So I made a quick attempt to resurrect the Bastard PC(tm) to see what we could ascertain, finally got it to boot up in Safe Mode only to have it zonk out again upon finishing booting. So RIP Bastard PC(tm). Please?

And now, for your continued enjoyment, I present you some pictorials of the Honkin' Drive(tm) and the Bastard PC(tm)

The Honkin' Drive(tm) hanging out the side of the newer PC:

And the Bastard PC (tm) fully bastardized, lobotomized, hypnotized, and hopefully soon euthanized:

gurgle

2005-04-19T18:46:00.000-04:00

Okay.

Hi.

Yeah.

Long day today of getting nothing accompplished. Spent all the morning working on this dying computer at work. It really needs to be shot. Hell, it still runs Win98. The hard drive is a 5.25 sized drive. It holds like 10 GB. The fan on the power supply stopped running a few weeks ago. It's slow and quite annoying. Yet my boss has stuff on it that he needs. So I spent most of the morning trying to get it to boot up. Not editting the video that needs to be done.

Lunchtime was spent watching the TV as I was lucky to switch on news right as the white smoke started spewing out of the chimney of the Vatican. So I spent the next hour or so watching TV instead of working. Okay, I was working, but I was doing a mail merge for mailing labels from a spreadsheet that wasn't well done. And then it was lunch. Still, no work on what I initially had set out to do.

After lunch, *gasp* I actually was able to finally work on this promotional/recruitment video for a vo-tech high school in NJ. Got a few hours work in it.. until the ancient computer died again right as my boss needed to use it. So I then proceeded to waste the rest of the day trying to get the computer to boot in vain... switching power supplies, etc. Finally said fuck it, yanked out the monster hard drive, installed the drive into a different computer. Of course, the drive doesn't actually fit in the computer, so it's dangling out the open side. And I also had to go online to find the jumper settings on this beast to tell it not to think it's the master drive but rather a slave drive. But at least now, I've declared the old computer dead, told my boss to move on. :)

Yah, not a overly exciting, witty, or funny blog entry. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow I'll do that suggestion of 5 things need more/less of. Maybe. :)

Address Change for LOTD

2005-04-18T19:35:00.000-04:00

Link of the Day has been moved! Link of the Day can now be accessed HERE!!!!

(Random colored goodness)

Papal Cam

2005-04-18T13:14:00.000-04:00

I just might start doing my link of the days here, since i don't have much else to write about....

Fox News as a cam dedicated to the chimney atop the vatican where white or black smoke will emerge after the conclave has voted. It's just the chimney. That's it. Yes sir! Fox News brings you 24-hour coverage of a chimney. Because we have nothing else better to show!

The Papal Cam!

Twiddling My Thumbs

2005-04-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

Yes, here for another exciting day of work, except I'm not doing anything now. The editing program I use most often as developed rather a bit of a temper and has become quite ornery. As in, it likes to crash oh, every hour or so. It's gotten to the point that I've lost all productivity with it as I'm constantly force to close the program when it stops responding, and then reloading my big ass project. This whole process takes upwards to 5 minutes. And when I've done it for the 4th time today and i've only been in work for 2 hours, well, it's time for drastic measures. So, I've uninstalled the program, currently defragging the hard drive, and who knows what else I'll do to see if I can smooth things out and have it stop crashing so much. *grumble* So, here I am, twiddling my thumbs. I need some entertainment.

Extra Special Link of the Day !

2005-04-12T20:23:00.000-04:00

Here's something my roommate passed along to me. Some wonderful a cappella work that everyone will be sure to enjoy.

(Warning, very large file ~48MB)

Food

2005-04-11T17:28:00.000-04:00

So E made us Nanaimo bars and tried LB's meatball recipe. MMm, mmm, mmm good. Even better is that there's leftover meatballs for tonight. Unfortuntely, she was a meanie and took most of the nanaimo bars back with her to take into work, leaving me with only a few *pout* *sniff*

P.S. I actually updated the link of the day! *gasp*

Ahhh. Spring

2005-04-08T11:15:00.000-04:00

This is why I enjoy seasons. I could never handle living somewhere like Florida or California, where the "winter" months mean it gets down to 60 degrees and they all begin to huddle and shiver putting on sweaters and complaining that none of their buildings were installed with heat. No. The winter months, while they have their own sense of beauty and serenity with a newly fallen snow, only makes Spring 10 times better. Those first sunny, warm days, where everyone and everything comes out of their thermal cocoons and basks in the glow of the sun. I was lucky enough to really enjoy that on Wednesday. Took the day off from work and spent some time on campus enjoying the uh, fauna. Yah. That's it. And the scenery. And enjoying the nice weather with a book of crossword puzzles. That's what I did.

And so now, the forsythia are in bloom, the daffodils are everywhere, and the dogwood trees are nearing full bloom. I even saw a dandelion starting to rear it's ugly head in the yard yesterday. The birds chirping can be heard through the open windows.... ahh.... of course today it's cloudy, but still... it still feels damn nice.

Me Profile

2005-04-06T18:04:00.000-04:00

So this came from LB, via here via here and
this blog who took it from here which came from this who borrowed it from this blog who also borrowed it from here and before that from here which was taken from here who stole it "shamelessly from cat who stole it from emma who stole it from who knows who". Yah, I'm a sick and twisted individual. Do you dare click all the links? Do yah? Hmm? HMM? CLICK 'EM! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!

Accent: Yo! Philly!

Bra size: umm. yah. anyway. moving on.

Chore I hate: Grocery Shopping.

Dad's name: Mark O. King

Essential makeup: 65% Oxygen, 18% Carbon, 10% Hydrogen, 3% Nitrogen and a whole bunch of other stuff

Favourite perfume: None, nor cologne

Gold or silver: Which ever has a higher return on investment

Hometown: Glenmoore, PA

Interesting Fact: Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Job Title: Video Editor.

Kids: Taste good with a little ketchup.

Living arrangements: In a basement. Bed against one wall.

Mom's birthplace: Florence Park, NJ

Number of apples eaten last week: None. Although there is an apple sitting in the fridge. Been there a couple weeks actually.

Overnight hospital stays: Once I think. I'm assuming I stayed overnight when I was born.

Phobias: Heights with no safety line/railings/etc

Question you ask yourself a lot: Is it the weekend yet?

Religious affiliation: None of the Above

Siblings: One older brother

Time I wake up: around 7:30-8am on weekdays

Unnatural hair color: N/A

Vegetable I refuse to eat: chickpeas

Worst habit: Easily distrac...oooo? Shiny!

X-rays: teeth

Yummy food I make: Buffalo Wings.

Zodiac sign: Taurus, dammit.

Meh-e-co

2005-04-05T09:10:00.000-04:00

Yup! It's official.. we're going, we're going, I'm beating E to the punch too, stealing her thunder (unless Blogger is being stupid again). The suite is reserved and the plane tickets booked. Come June, we're in Mexico, drinking and relaxing!

Philosophy 101

2005-04-03T16:48:00.000-04:00

The following post may be somewhat disturbing and at the same time thought-provoking. Major switching of gears here from my normal type of post. It's a thought that's entered my mind, even before all the Terri stuff, the passing of the pope, etc. I'm not exactly sure why or what triggered these thoughts...

Freshman year in college, I took a short philosophy course regarding what exactly defines life and consciousness, the boundary between the mind and the body and what entails death. We studied this through papers and watching TV shows and movies that dealt with the subject of how one defines when someone is dead, and what becomes of a person's consciousness. If you're cryogenically frozen, and then later brought back to life, are you the same person? Does your consciousness survive? If you are cloned, is your clone the same exact person, can you copy one's thoughts and beliefs and consciousness? I'm not going into all those details about the course, because I overall don't care about philosophy and don't care to bore everyone. But here's the question that's been in mind recently.

So What Happens When You Die?

Specifically, what happens to your conscious being. I know no one knows for sure, as this is one of the great mysteries of life. What happens when you close your eyes for the very last time, and you take your last breath? Popular opinions of seeing a bright light aside, what happens next. What are your next thoughts, if any? I propose the following possibilities:

1. The Afterlife
This is obviously the most popular belief of what happens to one after they pass on from the living world. That they ascend to heavan (or descend to hell for those who believe so) and live a life amongst all creatures old and new for the rest of eternity in the afterlife. How much belief do I place in this scenario? A small amount. I'm not an atheist, nor am I religious. Agnostic is the term, where I would life proof of the existence of a supreme being before I am going to believe. I don't discount the possibility of the afterlife, but neither do I place high hopes.

2. Reincarnation
The passing of consciousness from one body upon death to a new one upon birth. As you pass out of consciousness of your old body, you are transferred to the body of a new creature, except without any knowledge of the old. There are the people out there who claim they have had past lives, reincarnations of themselves. Perhaps they are not fruitcakes after all?

3. Free-floating consciousness.
This involves the belief that our consciousness is not physically tied to our body. That our consciousness isn't a physical aspect of our material being, and upon death, the consciousness is freed. This could explain physical manifestations of ghosts, the feeling that someone from the past, perhaps past relatives, are there supporting you in times of need. We could be surrounded by immaterial consciousness that are free to float and move about the world, observe and watch the world unfold.

4. Dream state.
Closing your eyes at night, your conscious enters a dream state, an alternate reality. Perhaps upon death, you enter an eternal dream state, separated from your physical body. This one seems a little more unlikely in my opinion.

5. Nothing.
This one is the most troubling in my mind, and provides me with the greatest angst towards death. You close your eyes for the final time, you slip away from this world, and then...... nothing. Everything ceases. I have the hardest time grasping the implications of this possibility. How can one go from being a living, conscious thing with thoughts and feelings, and become nothing. Where does the subconcious thought go? Do you not sense that you have died? I cannot grasp the idea that you close your eyes and then there's nothing. Absolute nothing.

I apologize for the serious nature of this post, something that I try not to do very often. But it's been on my mind lately. And I have no fear of death right now, because I know it's not time. And I haven't had to deal with death much in my life. My grandparents have all died, yes, but at a younger age where I didn't comprehend fully these things. But I know eventually it'll hit home sooner, as my parents advance in age, and as I grow older. Perhaps in time, some great discovery will be made, advances in science that provide answers to this type of question.

By Your Request: Midget Wrestling

2005-03-31T17:59:00.000-05:00

[Editor's Note: I actually think I might enjoy this, and I think I will often call out for requests like this. Gives me something fun to do]

For Josh, I present: MIDGET WRESTLING.

First of all. What is our fascination with midgets? What is it about them that makes them so entertaining to watch? Is it their badly proportioned figures? They do seem to have heads that are the same size as a full-sized adult, yet their bodies are the size of a ten-year old. Yet they also are completely filled out, in that they don't have the muscular structure of ten-year olds. I guess the combination of that makes them look like, well, I'm not quite sure how to describe it. But there definitely is no grace and beauty in their movements. You never see midget ballet dancers, do you? They kind of wobble when they walk.

Now, as for midget wrestling... I present to you, for your entertainment, this link. Enjoy!!!

I'll get to some of the other requests later on.

Slump

2005-03-31T12:59:00.000-05:00

So, I really haven't had an idea of what to write about here for a couple of days. Been in a Blog Slump. Blogger's Block. Whatever you want to call it. So what should I do? Should I take requests? Give me a topic and I'll write about it? ....