Big Weekend

So this weekend my sister got married with all the fanfare and multi day excitement one would expect from an indian wedding. During the toasts there wasn't a dry eye in the house, then my mom got up and gave a very short toast to the effect of "one of my son inlaw's friends came up to me today and said ' you're not losing a daughter, you're gaining tech support', " suffice to say it livened up the place. Afterall this was a wedding between a neuroscientist and an software engineer, so as you could imagine the place was rife with nerdy types (myself included).

My other big weekend event was when I got hit by a car, now this was not the first time it's happened, but it was the frist time it happened outside a crosswalk. I was loading some stuff into my trunk at ucla, when two girls in a vw cabriolet backed their car into me, pushing me into the trunk with a loud noise as I dropped the projector screen and started swearing. Did one of these crappy-pop music listening skanks bother to get out to see if I was okay? Of course not, one of them started screaming, and the driver took off laying down rubber. I wasn't injured from the impact, but I seriously bumped my head on the the inside of the trunk. As I exited the back of the car several people from the parking lot came over to me to check if I was okay. I was thrilled, I figured one out of these 5-6 people must have gotten the plates, but no, they were all too concerned with whether the impact had killed me, shattered my legs, or done something equally dramatic. So my assailants fled the scene unhindered to commit more acts of careless stupidity while listening to terrible music and comparing rainbow on white louis vuitton bags. With any luck the guilt over the incident will cause the girl years of nightmares, depression, and obeisity.

The Perfect Hipster Accessory

The Perfect Hipster Accessory This may be the funniest personal ad I've ever seen. Tom you should really look into becoming a drummer, this could work for you.

Fallen Protagonists (Movie Spoiler)

Tonight I saw better luck tomorrow, I've been on this asian film kick lately ( fulltime killer, the debut, tampopo, and an old zatoichi movie), but this is one I may have to add to my collection. Aside from the movie being good, the initials are BLT, how could I go wrong. The story kind of fits in well with Memento, Swimming with Sharks, and The Player. Like the others, its got this great descent of the protagonist that's almost shakespearean. I think the key to having a likable character do something awful is that moment of understanding where the act could be prevented or confessed to after the fact, but the protagonist just continues knowing full well that their actions are evil. The other clutch aspect of these movies is that for our fallen protagonists, their uppance doesn't come within the scope of the movie. Every once in a while it's good to remember that karma isn't enforced, regardles of who's hitler hairdo makes us feel ill.

Time to start a new blog

Okay so I have a serious crush on the cool events listings in LAist.com. While someone may be doing this for the bay area as well, I want someone to just tell me about the cool area events going on. So I have decided I am going to start a small group blog and try and recruit my friends to post when they know of interesting goings on. If anyone's down post a comment, or fire me an email.

The Meek

The meek shall inherit the earth, cause the rest of us'll be rockin out in space.

ContraCostaTimes.com | 08/17/2004 | Costco's newest bargain: caskets

Costco's newest bargain: caskets If I wasn't going to be blown to smitherines in an airburst over the ocean after my passing, I would totally have my family get my coffin at costco, hell if you buy 10 lbs of meat you get a discount.

Haiku for the week

Working really hard,

Toga party Saturday,

I can taste the wine

32 ways to open a brew

Flash movie showing 32 different beer opening methods from the commonplace to the obscure ( using the tab on your fly) Think you had a couple cool tricks in college, check out grandma at the end. This video shows just one of many interesting and productive skillsthat one could pick up in their freetime.

Dangers with a computer in the wild

What a Tangled Web I Wove (washingtonpost.com)   This is a pretty good article from the washington post about a user's experience trying to get a badly infected computer spyware and virus free. It brings up the good point that most people don't think about putting on firewalls. Given how useful a computer can be as a potential spam/virus relay, it really makes sense to lock things down. I like to use spybot-search and destroy, and zonealarm, both are frewware and extremely usefull. The ZoneAlarm people do okay on upgrades, but I highly recommend donating to spybot to keep them around. The other solution to protect your computer is to move to mac osx or linux for which there are many fewer malicious programs and spyware. Then you can get tons of software for free too (viva open source).

A day in some dude's life

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Woot!

Woot! So I don't know if you guys are familiar with woot, but every day they offer a good deal on one product. That's right, think of the site as consisting of just a buy.com deal of the day. Def worth a look.

Quite the month

This August, has started great and is only getting better . At work things have dramatically improved as my internal visibility has risen, and they tell me I'm gonna be traveling a lot more. As for my social life, I've gotten to celebrate a ton of friends birthdays, my sis turns 28 today ( HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!) , and next week i'm throwing a toga party in honor of the olympics. To top it off today is friday the 13th, I don't know why but I've always had good luck on friday the 13ths. The rest of this month reeks of potential, don't know why, I can just smell it.

Funky Friday playlist:



Stevie Wonder- Superstition

Kool and the gang- Jungle Boogie

Hot Chocolate- Sexy Thing

Red Hot Chilli Peppers- Higher Ground

George Clinton- Dr. Funkenstein

Average White Band- Pick Up the Pieces

Commodores- Brick House

Beastie Boys- Sabrosa

Sunrise, almost

Today, thanks to the overwhelming jet lag, I was up in time for the sunrise, but all I caught was marine layer. It's good to be back in socal for a day or two to sleep and enjoy the spectacular weather. I'm gonna milk this day for all that it's worth, I'va already got a lacma trip planned, and maybe I'll even swing by the getty. I've still got a brutal cough from my travels down under, but the heat and a fatburger should cure what ails me. Oh yeah, and check my moblog for a few random pics from my trip, including the Cafe deWheels chilli dog.

What a long strange trip it's been...

This trip to australia has definitely had its share of highlights of good days, but 24 days on a work trip can wear. Melbourne is a great city of little bars and cafes tucked in side streets and alleyways, it's got a very european feel and it's not unusual to see people having a drink at lunchtime. The reason why is simple, the weather here blows. Great city, but the weather is like Seattle. Sydney has more of a rushed big city feel and the people aren't as nice, but they are better looking and the weather's significantly better. Sydney vs. Melbourne seems to be athe LA vs. SF rivalry, except Melbourne has more of a european feel than SF. So, day after tomorrow I go back to the states to grab a little slice of summer which seems to have mostly passed in my time down under, but it's been a hell of a trip. It's amazing how much you can learn in the field , "heaps" of hard work but it's been worth it.

Trip Haiku

Melboune till Wednesday,

Hard working days and cold nights,

I dream of LA.