Oddball Update

Today’s entry has nothing to do with CCCP Soda, but I thought it would be an amusing entry title. Much like the subject lines of emails I write to my friends are usually just inside jokes and bear no resemblance to anything actually contained in the email. I’m weird like that. Are you done being stupefied by it yet?

Anyway, I hope you had a great Easter weekend and blah de blah blah. Today it’s quite rainy and dark here in southwest Florida, which is why my freshly-washed Trans Am is playing the role of garage queen today while I took Apple’s car to work. I also changed the T/A’s oil yesterday. I had put a K&N 1007 filter on it last time and dang, those things hold a lot of oil! But they’re some of the best filters money can buy, so I bought another one this time around. It was quite windy and hot yesterday, and while I was changing the car’s oil, the wind blew the damn screen clear off the garage window and onto the front yard. First time that’s ever happened. Had to shut the window after that.

Usually Apple and I can be found enjoying an anime series we’ve rented from Netflix. Last time it was the adorable and amusing Chobits, and this time it’s the equally adorable and heavily fan-servicey Ai Yori Aoshi. We’re on the final disc right now, and maddeningly enough, the last four episodes are like a continuous high-tension finale where there’s ONE BIG NAGGING QUESTION that they rake us over hot coals waiting to hear the answer to until, probably, the last episode. Gets a bit annoying when it’s 1 a.m. and you want to find out what happens, but you know you’d better hit the sack so you can get up in time for work. Anyway, when we’re done with this series I’ll post something in the TV category about it.

On one of the message boards I visit, somebody posted a topic asking, “What pisses you off?” I of course posted some examples of terrible driving I’ve seen about town. However, someone else reminded me of another one of my pet peeves by posting that he hated those walkie-talkie (push to talk) cell phones in restaurants.

I’d like to borrow that item from his list, with a slight adjustment. To wit:

> 4. Walkie talkie cell phones in restaurants anywhere.

Goddamn things.

BLEDELELEEP!

“Hey, what’s going on. I’m talking on mah real cooool phone. I don’t have to dial no numbers or anything and the best part is, everybody in a 500 YARD VICINITY CAN HEAR EVERY WORD BOTH YOU AND I ARE SAYING. That’s fo shizz, dawg.”

DOOOP!

BLEDELELEEP!

“That rocks, man. Hey, why don’t I tell you about the colonoscopy I just had, it was awesome.”

DOOOP!

BLEDELELEEP!

“Rock on, dude. How far did they shove that thing up your ass?”

RRRRRRGHHHHHH! Push-to-talk phones = pointless. It just satiates the average American’s growing, perceived need to be in constant, immediate contact with everyone else on Earth, which, when that ability is finally bestowed upon them, they will use 99% of the time to discuss what their cat puked up that morning or some topic of equal irrelevance. The worst bit is that everyone around them has to be subjected to the contant bleeping, twittering and chirping of the phone’s sound effects, and the fast food drive-thru like barking of the other party coming from the tinny speaker, sounding mostly like BWA RMMP GARRMM FRRMM ZAA MMMNT. Gah. I suppose there’s not really much difference between this and the people who slam their car stereos so loud you can hear ‘em six blocks away.

Speaking of which, given that car stereo technology has advanced to the point of “mega decibelage” really only in the last couple of decades, I’d imagine that in about 20 years or so there’s going to be a sudden surge of deafness and tinnitis in this country, as every kid who bumped mega tunes at insane levels for most of his youth will no longer be able to hear jack anymore. Then, much like the obesity awareness shizz of today, we’ll probably be inundated with commercials and media about chronic hearing loss. Maybe some old deaf bats will sue audio equipment manufacturers for causing them “irreparable hearing damage” by making products that could be pumped up to those volumes. Hey, it’s a logical deduction, if you look at the latest trends in lawsuit filing. (That makes filing suit sound like a spectator sport.)

Well, I sure fanwanked enough over the new Shelby GT-500 in the last week or so. I’ve cooled off a bit now (meaning, I’m no longer on the Mustang message boards every ten minutes checking for new posts), but I still think it’s the coolest new car I’ve seen in ten years. Being able to afford one is an iffy proposition at best, but it’s always nice to have a goal to shoot for. Reminds me of the late nineties when I would have done anything for one of those new Trans Ams. Few feelings in the world can match the elation you get with custom ordering the car of your dreams! Everyone should be so lucky to experience that at least once in their life. Our tastes in automobiles may be a little bit different, but I’m sure my friend Reaper felt the same way when he ordered his Subaru WRX STi. And the day that car comes in, and you walk across the dealer lot with the keys in your hand, toss the license plate on the dash and turn the ignition for the first time, you feel like KING OF THE FLIPPIN’ WORLD.

It’s almost lunch time! Not much is happening at work today, but I’m staring down the barrel of a huge project which will land at any time. We just bought a competitor, and engineering is in the process of deciding whether to integrate their web tools with our system, or just scrap them and train their clients to use our native tools. Once that’s decided, there will be some UI development for me to do.

All right, this entry has been suitably random and pointless. I’m outta here for today.

Categorized as Randomness