Links for Monday, 5 May 2008

This is dedication and awesomeness. Just think of the layers of geek that go into this project.

Also, if you are unhappy about anything or just caught up in your own little drama, I suggest you check out these very tiny shetland pony foals. Compare them to the height of the grass.

This may be why I don't understand Texans well. Am I being overly polite?
This one could be true of any state that isn't Texas here, or any state that isn't on the Eastern Seaport for someone from the Northeast. It just makes me sigh because I'm not from those states, and I went to all the trouble of learning where your state is. Would you mind learning some basic geography?

First Weekend in May 2008

I went and saw Iron Man Friday night with some friends. I gotta say, it was pretty good.
*Disclaimer* The writer thought The Hulk wasn't too bad when it came out. If there are explosions and bad guys getting beaten up, he generally doesn't think it's a terrible movie. /Disclaimer
The girlfriend and the significant others of the guys I saw the movie with weren't so interested in seeing Iron Man. Thus, they went to see Made of Honor, which I thought meant it would be some kind of awesome WWII movie, along the lines of the FPS's we all know and love. After hearing the premise for the film, I think it should have been called Made of Dishonor.
After the movies we went to a sushi place near our place and were promptly seated at a table for the eight of us on the patio. It surprised me that we were able to get the table right away, but one of the guys had called for an impromptu reservation right after we decided where we were going. We hung out there for more than an hour and had a great time. I can't hang out with these peeps for this long without some serious facial muscular conditioning. I was smiling and laughing so often and heartily that my jaw started to hurt. It was a good time.

After that, we went home and I called my parents to say "I am the walrus." This had to do with a bet with the girlfriend. She said that to me the night before and I was really confused. I guess it's a Beatles song, and that the next bit is "Coo coo cachoo." Awesome. She was amazed that I had no idea what she was talking about and said that she was sure my parents would know it. To prove it, she called her move and said the above phrase, and got the desired response. She then bet me brunch on Sunday that my parents would respond in some sort of positive way to this phrase, while I ensured her that my mother would say something like "That's nice." and my father would say "Are you on drugs?" I hadn't called them for about two weeks, so I was really behind in keeping up with the parental units. I got a hold of them Friday night and said the phrase. I got it half right. Mom was accepting and not even curious, while Dad just didn't care, he just wanted me to tell him how much he should expect to pay for a 15 ft HDMI cable for their new HDTV. Holy crap, it's a lot.

Saturday was chill. I played Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for a few hours after I couldn't sleep anymore. I bought this game used for $6.48 about 2 months ago and have played it for well over 100 hours. This is a great game. One of my roommates in college had played it on PC and loved it, but I didn't get into it then. Now that I've got my copy on XBox, I'm really enjoying it. There's so much to do, so many interweaving story lines, and the world was really well fleshed out.

Anyway, after that we went to a sports store so the girlfriend could look for a new water bottle, but alas, it was not to be. We took our recyclables to the drop off center after that. While we were there, this guy in a HUGE F350 pickup truck on a pretty high lift kit pulled up and started pulling cardboard out of the back of his covered bed. I started thinking, "ARG! I'm glad he's recycling, but like most people in the city here, I doubt he actually uses that piece of equipment for anything more than commuting, and why did he have to drive that beast here to do his recycling? It's not like cardboard is that heavy." Then I noticed the kayak on top, and thought that maybe he actually went somewhere with it. Then another guy who was there chatted him up and started off with something like "I'll bet you're real popular when it rains." (This is because H-ton and surrounding areas are prone to terrible flooding, being that they're only 4 feet above sea level and the rain here comes down heavier than I ever saw during a tornado warning back home.) He responds, "Yeah, I barely get any sleep at all, being out until 1 am towing people out of the water." And now I'm thinking, "I'm an asshole. I was about to chew this guy out for driving that behemoth, but he actually uses it like it should be used, and he's a hero." I guess I need to think more about possibilities before assuming something like that.
After all the fun of recycling, we went back to the girlfriend's place and watched some season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She loves it, I've never seen it, and it's not that bad.

Sunday, I played some more Elder Scrolls until the girlfriend was ready to go to brunch with our friends. These we some of the same people from Friday night, so I was doing some deep muscle tissue massage for my face on the ride up there. We ate at Mia Bella, and it was pretty good. The bottomless belinnis, champagne, mimosas and bloody marys didn't hurt the meal either. The girls went for a spa day, and we guys then went back to their place and messed around with my buddy's mixing tables until we decided to go to this free live show at a nearby record store, Cactus Records. The show had just finished when we got there, but they were still giving out free St. Arnold's Lawnmower beer, so we were down for hanging out for a while and perusing the wares. We headed out of there, checked out a guitar store across the street, played some ukuleles, and got milk shakes at the diner on another corner. We tried to go to this free museum, but they closed a minute and a half after we got there, so we just had to deal with it. We went back to my buddy's place and ended up crashing for a bit once the ladies returned. Had some Chinese takeout and then finally went home with the girlfriend for some more napping. And now I can't sleep. This was obviously well planned.

Now I need to go to sleep so I can get back to work on those models and analysis tomorrow.

Deleted

Somebody's blog has been bothering me every time I read it to the point that I needed to delete my bookmark.

If your blog posts are stupid, inane, inflammatory, or all about finger pointing, I'm not gonna read it.

Philosophy

It's $*%&'d up, isn't it? I'm still trying to figure out what I believe. This is tough with people thumping your skull with the Bible here in Texas. It's really hard to agree with people who don't act on what they believe, isn't it?

Either way, I'm not sure what I believe. This is partially because I have been surrounded by cynicism, zealotry, terrorism, peacemaking, and everything in between. I'm still young and people seem to expect me to KNOW what I believe. I don't even know what I want out of life yet, much less the afterlife. I don't really even think there's enough time in any one person's life to explore all the known religions. How is anyone supposed to figure out what's best for oneself?

My girlfriend and I have been having talks about religion for a fortnight, and we're going to try out some houses of worship. I don't really know where to start. Alphabetically? I think that favors the aardvarks...