Friday, February 25, 2005

Obligatory "Things"

Okay, so apparently the unofficial rule of blogs is that you need to do a things you like/don't post... at least when you have nothing else to write. Well, I don't want to go into a deeper entry right now, so here ya be:

"Good" Things:
  • Movies: Contact, Office Space, Spirited Away, Empire Strikes Back, The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, The Matrix, A Night at the Opera (okay, anything Marx brothers,) The Pink Panther movies, Slap Shot, Grand Prix, Clerks, Office Space, Being John Malkovich
  • TV: Simpsons, Family Guy, Seinfeld, Aqua Teen Hungerforce, World Poker Tour, Daily Show, Nova, Nature, Poirot, Beavis & Butthead, Scientific American Frontiers, Futurama
  • Music: Joe Satriani, Paul Oakenfold, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Vai, Antonin Dvorak, The Clash, The Suburbs, Jamiroquai, Alice in Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Mozart
  • Books: Douglas Adams, Neal Stephenson, Tolkien, William Gibson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frank Herbert, basically anything sci-fi or fantasy... "modern" fiction that has a story. Excessive analyzation of literature bores me... I read primarily for fun.
  • Food: red-sauce Italian, Mexican, steak!, Indian, anything off the grill, my chili
  • Champ Car, Formula 1, MotoGP, Ferrari, Porsche, Road America
  • HDTV, DVD's, PS2
  • Subtlety and wit (except when trying to decipher women...) :)
  • Learning and objectivity
  • Paul Reed Smith guitars
  • The First Amendment
  • Lewis Black, Ron White, Al Franken, Larry the Cable Guy, Conan O'Brien
  • Monty Python
  • Hockey, Tennis, Cycling
  • those road signs that indicate curves ahead
  • hot summer evenings by a pool with no bugs
  • Lake Superior
  • Coronas with lime
Things I don't care for so much:
  • Movies: most "chick" flicks, anything with Sylvester Stallone, Triplets of Belleville, Driven
  • Music: rap, "new" country (Willie Nelson is good), pop, barber shop, bands that don't have a guitar
  • Closed-minded people, extremists of any kind (religous, political, etc.), pundits, Bill O'Reilly, Ralph Nader
  • IRL!, NASCAR (I have seen a couple good NASCAR races, but most put me to sleep...)
  • politicians who don't understand technology but yet try to control it for corporations
  • political correctness (i.e. some court in California tried to outlaw the terms 'master' and 'slave' for computer hard drives)
  • LLB's (left lane blockers), Suburbans, automatic transmissions, straight roads
  • mornings, Mondays, unfulfilling work, meetings
  • Budweiser
  • mosquitoes
Okay, that's about all I can think of right now...

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Los Angeles - part 1


Hot Wheels Car
Originally uploaded by MattG42C.
I arrived back from Los Angeles late Monday night (in more than one sense.) A quick summary of my trip: RAIN. The picture of the real-life Hot Wheels car is from the Petersen Auto Museum in LA, next to the La Brea tar pits, which we also went to.

I'll be writing more about Los Angeles, but I'd like to summarize a few key observations (admittedly, mostly negative):

0. I did have fun, Monday was the best weather and it was 70 degrees or so on the beach.
1. I found why Sun Country is $30 cheaper than Northwest Airlines... you are always late. This is not the only reason, but I'm not going to go into that here. (yet.)
2. Los Angeles drivers are better and worse than Twin Cities drivers. They drive fast on the freeway, but they seem to handle it appropriately... very little tailgating, etc. But throw a malfunctioning stoplight in the mix (4-way flashing red,) and they are helpless. It's just totally random.
3. LA has no, or very little, storm sewer system. That's why everything floods. Granted, they only get like 15 inches of precip. per year, but when there is always mudslides, one would think something would change.
4. Beach houses are cool. (and presumably, very expensive.)
5. For some reason, if you check luggage at LAX, you have to enter a second line to hand your bags to the security guy... who just asks you if your bags are locked. Why can't they just use the conveyer system that is already there?
6. We tried to go to an air museum in Chino called "Planes are Fame" but it was closed because there was standing water in the hangars. Next to this museum was a big field with cows. These cows stunk like the zoo. I'm from Minnesota, I know what cows and manure smell like. This was 50 times worse. I don't get it.
7. I managed one decent meal in LA at Hermosa Beach in a "Hawaiian-Mex" bar. The night before, we ordered delivery Thai food, and there was ZERO spice. Again, I'm from MN -- Ketchup is spicy to some people up here -- this was the blandest Thai food ever. How is this possible?

Okay, enough ranting... I really did have fun, but I suppose it's easier to write complaints than anything else. I'll try to do better.

* disclaimer - I wrote this in the posting window on flickr.com, which isn't as user friendly, so if my prose seems a bit closer to grade school level, I'm blaming that. :)

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

... going to LA ...

Nothing profound here today, but felt obligated to write something. I'm going to LA on Friday to visit my brother who moved out there about 8 months ago. Of course, as is my luck, rain is in the forecast... at least it should be 60 degrees.

Since I haven't yet caved to my evil self and bought the Canon EOS 20D, I'll have to settle with pictures from my 3 year old 2.1 MP digital point-and-shoot. I did invest $60 in some Sony noise-reducing headphones, so hopefully I will get a bit of writing/brainstorming done on the plane.

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Oh, and the NHL cancelled their season officially. BOO. Having lost my interest in basketball a few years ago, I'm stuck waiting until March for the start of the Formula 1 season.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Marketing

I am typing this entry on an Apple PowerBook G4 (the 12" aluminum model) which I bought just over a year ago. It was an impulse buy... not in the sense that I walked by it in the mall and bought it, but the final decision was along the lines of "okay, I give up, I'm buying it." I had been considering buying a Mac for about 6 months prior to that. Ultimately, the lure was two things: OS X (a nice GUI on top of a stable Unix OS,) and more importantly, Apple's marketing had convinced me that if I buy their computer, I would suddenly become this insanely creative individual. I would start making movies, composing music, writing novels, and so on. Unfortunately, time and motivation does not come in the box.

Now, I am starting to write more (this blog being the primary example at present,) I have played a bit with GarageBand, and I really like the PowerBook as a machine. But, 90% of the time, it's just a rather expensive web browser.

So I guess my whole point is; Apple has a good marketing department.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Quick One

Figured I'd better write something since it's been a few days. Today, I went with some friends to the International Motorcycle Show @ the Minneapolis Convention Center. The consensus was that it was definitely not worth the $12 they charged for admission. (Consensus meaning everyone felt more than a little ripped off.)

Here is the highlight (for me anyways):



Context: MotoGP, Valentino Rossi, and his Yamaha.

Oh, and the best Super Bowl commercial thus far is for the new Mustang Convertible. I want one of those too.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Tivo

File this post under the same category as my "DVD addiction" entry...

I've had a Tivo for approximately 4 years now... it's one of the original silver Sony models. A couple months ago, the hard drive started to make a disconcerting high-pitched noise, so I decided to try to upgrade it. Otherwise, I would have to spend even more money on a new model. After a surprisingly easy process and about 45 minutes, I now had an 80 GB instead of a 30 GB Tivo. End result, I can store 30 hours instead of 10 hours of stuff.

There is now a backlog of TV to watch... probably about 10 hours of shows that I thought looked good enough to record, but not good enough to watch as they happened. It has become another pile of stuff to "go through" while at home. Yet, I can't imagine watching TV without it. The ability to pause live TV and easily setup recordings is very liberating. But at the same time, it seems to bind me to television even more. I think this is a bad thing.

I suppose it is a bit different being a single person. I don't have any over-arching priorities besides the job, and maybe eating. :) If something more important comes up, the Tivo gives me the ability to watch the show later. But in a weird way, it becomes another thing to "deal" with, and another thing to do instead of something presumably more important.

Is Tivo good, bad, or a little of both?

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On a totally different note, 8am meetings are bad.