Absurd Singularity

Hope everyone had a relaxing Memorial Day holiday. I went home to help my parents rearrange the furniture and beds in all the bedrooms. Would've helped if my Dad didn't choose these gigantically thick mattresses. Sheesh. And decided to finally toss most of the remnants of my fansub anime collection. Such a waste. =\ Finally got them sign up for cable modem though so I'll probably be headed out there again next weekend to set that and wireless up. That also meant we got rid of their ancient Win98SE-running Pentium desktop that my Dad had picked up on one of his scrap runs and replace it with a brand new Sony VAIO A Series. It's a sad day when I have to choose the screen with the lower resolution cause my parents will no way in hell be able to use 1400x1050 screen. Ah well, at least it's a new toy for me to play with for a little while. ;-)

Does anyone out there actually use Dodgeball?

Not exactly sure why this was in the "Oddly Enough" section of Reuters. These ads are actually pretty nifty and work pretty well, just a larger and lighted version of a flip book. They have 2 areas in the PATH system that I know of that have them. Used to be 1 between I think the 14th and 23rd Street stops in Manhattan and they just put in a new one going from WTC to Exchange Place.

I was astonished to see that The Drew Carey Show was back on ABC with new episodes. I had thought they had killed it. Didn't help that ABC had placed it into possibly the worst time slot ever last fall (Fridays at 9). Now it's on Wednesdays at 9. So I guess it'll be my replacement for That '70s Show for the summer.

Seems like there is a pending draft legislation slowly working its way through Congress. Bad news is that it's a draft. Good news is that it's only for men (and women) between 18 & 26. Bad news is that you can no longer run away to Canada or any institute of higher learning to dodge the draft. Ehh, no other good news about it.

Funny.

Finally figured out how to fix this site's stylesheet so that the right-hand column shows up correctly when viewed with PC IE. 'sbout time. Thanks to a skin expert at the BlogSkins Forum who gave me a tip as to what to look for. What a relief. IE still sucks! =)

It's about time. =)

Recently bought an AlGlide kit from RadTech cause the hinge on my Powerbook was creaking something fierce whenever I closed it. Akin to fingernail on blackboard level of aural disturbance. Enclosed instructions were pretty easy to follow and the kit actually works quite well. I only lubed up one side though so will give it awhile to see if the other side is gonna get stiff as well. But a good product, works as advertised.

Seems like people are auctioning off GMail invites on eBay which isn't surprising I guess. Two weeks ago people were actually paying over $100 for one, can you believe that shit? Now the prices have dropped to the $5-20 level since they're everywhere it seems. I tried sending email to ronin and kenshin @ gmail.com to see if they were already taken, thinking that if they weren't their email system would tell me by sending back a "this username does not exist" type of warning message but got nothing. But then I sent another one to kenshin27 and didn't get a reply back either so I'm thinking that way of checking doesn't work. And then I read that their username's had to be 6 characters or more so I couldn't select ronin anyway.

It would be deliciously funny if Google decided to wipe out all existing accounts right before they went live with Gmail. Since they are currently only in beta after all.

The Sony A130 for my parents finally came in so I've been playing around with it and setting it up for them this weekend. As far as PC laptops go, I generally like Sony's style better than the other brands. Their machines are also priced relatively well for the most part. However, they do make some odd design choices at times...

We had been talking about getting fish for quite awhile now but never really got around to it till this weekend. Dropped by NJ Pets in East Hanover during our routine grocery run and picked up a quick and easy Eclipse System 3 which is an acrylic 3-gallon tank. Quite easy to set up although now that I think about it, is probably a bit too small for the number of fish that Erin wants. Ah well, we can always upgrade once we prove that we're not Death personified when it comes to raising fish.

This has got to be the oddest bit of news to come down the pipe in a looong time but apparently, last year, the USDA quietly agreed to classify french fries as a fresh vegetable! Somehow batter-coating, deep-frying and then freezing fries is akin to waxing a cucumber and sweetening a strawberry.

Well so far we've lost five of our original eight fish (all four cardinal tetras and one bronze cory) but have replaced them with four others (three albino pristella tetras and one regular pristella tetra). Possibly pick up another two cories tonight. Chalk it up to poor research when we first started cause cardinal tetras are definitely not the type of fish you'd want to cycle a tank with. And I'm somewhat surprised that we lost the bigger cory. Not too surprised since it had been acting a bit sedate for the past day or so especially when compared to the smaller one that spends a good amount of time zipping around all over the tank. But I think we've got a good batch now that should be able to handle the vigors of a new tank since the new tetras already have an appetite whereas the cardinals would not eat. Just gotta do daily water changes and hope the bacteria start kicking in soon.

I didn't fork over cash for a Gmail invite. Speaking of which, does anyone need one? I have an extra one to send out if needed.

Well, after 2 weeks I still don't see any trace of nitrites in the water so it seems like our ammonia-munching bacteria hasn't really taken hold yet. Getting rather impatient here. =p But at least the fish don't seem to care and we haven't lost another one since the last entry. One of the cories seems to have taken into hanging out inside the house. If he goes and croaks in there we won't know for quite awhile. At least all the fish seem to have their appetites as they go into a frenzy when we feed them. Especially the cories; watching them squirm around is hilarious.

Kingdom of Loathing. Gotta love it. And because you only get a certain number of actions every day, you can't waste too much of your daily time on it. ;-)

Caught Azumi last night with Erin, Fe, Maria & Sean. Really campy and cheesy Japanese sword flick. Way too long for its genre however (2 hours 22 minutes) but still pretty enjoyable. Ueto Aya is the quintessential video game/anime fighter chick though so that was a great casting decision. She just has the whole look going. The over-the-top psychotic swordsman in white reminded me of Tachibana Ukyo from the Samurai Shodown series. Ukyo wasn't a psycho however and was much cooler. =)

Steve Jobs' having another keynote at the WWDC 2004 in San Fran tomorrow. Will show a preview of the next MacOS X version (Tiger) and there might be some other fun stuff to be revealed. Should be interesting. Some interesting banners at the convention center shown at Erik Gilchrist's blog. Pretty darn bold considering Longhorn's got that spanking new database-based file system and requirements that as of earlier this year read: a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today. Ahhh..... progress.

FINALLY! After a little over two weeks our tank finally has traces of ammonia-eating bacteria. Our nitrite test finally went from light blue to purple. Now probably another two weeks before the nitrite-eating bacteria kick in. =p

While we're on the subject of normally icky things, Jason Giambi of the NY Yankees has an intestinal parasite. Yuck!