Posts tagged as lists
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- Wednesday, June 16, 2010:
List Day: A Training Timeline Monday 7:30 AM: Arrive for the 7:45 class. 8:10 AM: Class has not yet started. 8:30 AM: I have learned that the instructor is Canadian and has four daughters who got an award for dancing or something. 8:40 AM: I have learned that the CEO of the training company is leaving to go to Costco now. 12:00 PM: 20 Powerpoint Slides complete at lunch time. We are still in the "Overview" secti... - Thursday, May 13, 2010:
List Day: Things I Threw Away Last Weekend The complete series of "Quest for Clues" hint books for PC games from the 1980s. They were never a cost-effective purchase, since you never owned more than two of the games in the book. A three-inch binder filled with horrible grad student presentations from Music Theory Pedagogy II at FSU Three clarinet reeds A set of 100 magic markers from 1992 Over 50 original jewel cases for CDs Three... - Thursday, May 06, 2010:
List Day: 10 Ways to Know that a LOST Episode Will Disappoint A large portion of episode is spent wandering through the jungle towards a clear goal, but the group deviates at the last minute to pursue a different goal instead. A battle occurs, and both sides have enough guns to found a militia. Someone else gets shot, and the Giacchino motive for "You'd better care about this" plays in the background. You pull out your laptop during a commercial break, and don't notice that the sh... - Wednesday, April 28, 2010:
List Day: Nintendo Games I'm pretty sure that my childhood system for choosing Nintendo games involved equal parts Voodoo and research, because otherwise it'd be nearly impossible for a gamer such as myself to have more crappy games than good ones. Though 19 total games might seem like a poor showing, it's offset by the fact that I owned EVERY computer game in existence. Hudson's Adventure Island II : A caveman riding a skateboard he found in an egg dies if you forget to feed him or... - Thursday, April 15, 2010:
List Day: 5 CDs that Grow on You Like a soul patch on a beatnik, these five CDs grow on you. I enjoy them more now than I did when I first listened to them, and have them in regular rotation in my static-marred car CD player. The links will take you to the Amazon MP3 pages for a sampling. The Trick to Life by The Hoosiers: I originally described The Hooisers with " They steal from every source available and end up like the lead singer of The Darkness mixed ... - Thursday, April 01, 2010:
ADD List Day One book I'm currently reading Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost Four technologies I have never owned (and don't really care about) A Blu-ray player A cell phone Any Playstation Anything with "firewire" Three things I'm going to do in April 4 birthday parties a hike up Old Rag writing a n... - Wednesday, March 10, 2010:
List Day: Eight Puerto Rico Experiences Wandering along Playa Lucia, and watching a dirty, old, pervert surreptitiously repositioning his car so he could watch the white chick in the swimsuit. Driving past signs for a Ferreteria and learning, with some dismay, that it is a hardware store, and not a place where you can have ferret for lunch. Driving back to our hotel near Yabucoa after dark on Highway 3, a G-string width road that wends around a mountain wherever there happe... - Wednesday, February 10, 2010:
List Day: 5 Current Pet Peeves 48 hours earlier... : Ever watched a show whose opening scene featured the hero/heroine on the brink of a deadly situation, only to fade to black with the caption "XX hours ago"? Wasn't this device cute when Alias treated it like the "grains and carbs" piece in the USDA Plot Pyramid? It's now fallen over the line of overuse and should never be used again. When they start to use this on 24 , TV will officially be dead. As a sub-peeve, if ... - Tuesday, February 02, 2010:
List Day: 2010 Plans February : This month, we get to learn how to do our taxes as a couple, while spending most of the month quarantined at home behind huge tracts of snow. March : Muse, the band with the brilliantly retarded music videos , performs live at the Patriot Center. We have general admission standing tickets ($55 each). Opening for the group is a band called Silversun Pickups -- I'm unfamiliar with the group and want to get into li... - Thursday, January 14, 2010:
List Day: 2010 Resolutions Start a young adult fiction series with the "next big overused thing" in it, because vampires are retarded. Compete professionally in one of the following sports: football, skeeball, bog snorkeling, or cheese rolling. Use jQuery to improve the URI! Zone's interface to the point where you can navigate by staring at a link and blinking with your left eye. (The right eye opens up the context menu). Successfully fly through... - Tuesday, January 05, 2010:
List Day: Five Website Improvements While I travel down the snowy Pennsylvania Turnpike on the way back from Columbus, here is a list of the website improvements I made over the Christmas break, which you may have already noticed. TABLE-free : In some circles, the use of TABLE HTML tags for layout purposes is a cardinal sin -- you may as well have stuck your baby in FRAMESET with BLINK tags. After almost six years of table layouts, the URI! Zone is now cresting the wave of yesterday's cuttin... - Wednesday, December 16, 2009:
2009 in Twelves Top 12 Posts from 2009 BU plays the Caption Game BU recaps the LOST Season 4 finale BU hates Indiana Jones BU on HOV Cheaters Everyone learns HTML in the Comments section BU lists rejected wedding ideas BU on global warming ... - Tuesday, December 08, 2009:
List Day: 2009 in Twelves Top 12 Songs First Heard in 2009 It was actually more difficult than expected to come up with a list of just twelve songs this year, and it took several days to pare down the 3 or 4 runner-ups. I usually combine this list with the list of favourite website posts, but thought it'd be more interesting if I talked a little about my choices. Plenty of Paper - Eisley As a band, I still think that Eisley suffers ... - Tuesday, November 17, 2009:
List Day: Currently... Currently listening to... Lost Songs by Ellie Lawson. Currently reading... Coders at Work by Peter Seibel, The Cases that Haunt Us by John Douglas, and D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths . Currently playing... Torchlight. Currently composing... something for wind band. Currently considering bu... - Tuesday, October 27, 2009:
List Day: 30 Things I Want to Do I want to... Learn to play the violin. Resume my self-studies of jazz piano. Add song info to 13 years worth of MP3s. Compose a new band piece. Learn how to use Photoshop CS4 in a structured, non-ad-hoc way. Take some random interest online classes through the free, yet poorly implemented, Skillsoft program at work. Learn to program with Google Web Toolkit. Learn to progr... - Thursday, August 20, 2009:
List Day: 10 Deep Thoughts I've kept a running list of deep thoughts on my Blog Ideas page since 2004, figuring that on a slow day they might make good fodder for discussion. However, I never seem to look up from the posts about boobies and chipmunk vomit for long enough to be seriously serious. For housekeeping purposes, I'm just posting the list as is, because it's easier than exploring any one of them in depth! To truly master a topic, you have to study one step beyond the level tha... - Thursday, August 13, 2009:
List Day: 20 Things I Have Never Done I have never driven a convertible or an SUV. I have never gambled in a casino. I have never eaten crawdads. I have never been in a fight. I have never gone hunting. I have never watched Schindler's List . I have never participated in any activities where I am wearing skis or falling through the air. I have never been to Australia. I have never owned any... - Thursday, July 23, 2009:
List Day: Nine People Who Will Be Rich The person who can invent delicious restaurant French fries that become re-crispy when you heat up the leftovers the next day. The person who convinces Amazon.com to sell new cars. The person who creates a mirror system that lets drivers know when their headlights are calibrated incorrectly by blinding them the way they blind me. The person who convinces the US Postal Service to license the UPS package tracking system. &... - Thursday, July 09, 2009:
List Day: My To-Do List July Add the Google Web Toolkit to my palette of web technologies that I can use inappropriately and overzealously. Fine-tune the look and feel of the URI! Zone to show off just how attractive a fourteen-year-old website can be (but not so much that it starts to attract creepy old men). What neat features would you like to see here? Fix the rear gear shift on my bike, which performs wonderfully in 1,... - Tuesday, June 09, 2009:
List Day: Ten More Rejected Wedding Ideas 1) The bride and groom will run a series of Save the Date magnet schools, where intelligent children expecting to learn more about science end up handcrafting our centerpieces in sweat shop conditions. Initial trial sites will include Cora Kelly Elementary School and Thomas Jefferson High School. 2) Flower girl, Ella, will proceed down the aisle to Umbrellavator , an original remix/mashup of Rhianna's Umbrella and Flo Rida... - Thursday, June 04, 2009:
List Day: Four Children's Books You've Never Read The heartwarming tale of a little puppy who dreams of someday becoming a member of the LAPD K9 Unit. A cautionary tale of daddy's sexuality set against the backdrop of the Renaissance, when daddy is accosted by a charming dandy at the local tavern. A clever retelling of the classic Ugly Duckling tale, in which the ugly duckling's siblings post cruel remarks on her... - Thursday, May 28, 2009:
List Day: Four Better or Four Worse Four Things Which Have Improved Over Time Driving on Route 28 : With a traffic light every hundred yards and bumper to bumper traffic, Route 28 was directly responsible for my 5:30 AM - 1:30 PM work schedule when I lived in Centreville. Now, almost every stoplight has been replaced with an overpass, and you can easily do a crossword puzzle or fall asleep while coasting towards your destination. Amber : Amber ... - Thursday, March 26, 2009:
List Day: Ten Rejected Wedding Ideas 1) Save-the-Date announcements will take the form of one hundred individually tattooed gerbils, boxed and delivered by First Class Mail. We take no responsibility for the (permanent) settling which may occur in boxes delivered to a destination more than two days away. 2) Invitations will be printed on 100% recycled post-consumer content, taken directly from the nearest Loudoun County septic tank. 3) We will be register... - Monday, March 16, 2009:
List Day: Ten Bathroom Habits When I travel, I always pack up my toothbrush early, then have to take it out for one last brush and forget it on the counter. This is why I now keep two toothbrushes in the toothbrush cup. I start flossing from the front of my mouth and work towards the sides. I also floss the top row before the bottoms. My toilet paper roll is always set up to roll off the top. Underolling is unacceptable. I brush the left side ... - Tuesday, March 03, 2009:
List Day: Five Notable First CDs Don't forget to submit your Name That Tune entries by TOMORROW at noon! Blink tags are for weenies. These may not have been the very first CDs I ever owned, and there were certainly plenty of cassette tapes and comedy records beforehand, but these were the earliest CDs I can remember listening to continuously in junior high school and high school. Whether it was in the CD player that plugged into the tape deck of the 1994 Dodge Spiri... - Tuesday, February 10, 2009:
List Day: Creating an Effective Stimulus Bill I was originally going to spend today examining the Senate stimulus compromise and using my common sense superpower to veto the ideas that were obviously a waste of my fifty dollars. However, the bill is several hundred pages long, and I definitely don't have the inclination to waste a portion of my life doing that when I could just as easily be online watching videos of cats riding Roombas. Instead, I will completely ignore the existing stimulus compromise and present... - Monday, January 26, 2009:
List Day: Four Children's Books You've Never Read An instructional text for young readers, reminding them that everyone occasionally gets constipated -- it's perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of. Light-hearted pictures illustrate the various ways to combat a backed up drainpipe, from bran muffins to enemas. Gently normalizes the lifestyle of a single mother and her daughter as they flee from state to state, avoiding unsympathetic judges, and the custody rights of a... - Monday, January 19, 2009:
List Day: Labelled Years As I get further and further from the protective womb of primary education, I'm finding that it's becoming harder and harder to keep track of what went on every year. If my life were a sitcom , I'd assign a Friends-like title to each year for easy reference and memory -- an overzealous attempt to compress all of my amazing adventures into a pithy, memorable statement. 1996 : The Year I Graduated from High School 1997... - Tuesday, January 06, 2009:
List Day: 2009 Resolutions Vacation in various exotic foreign cities, such that when the itinerary is overlayed on a world map, it creates a connect-the-dots image of an armadillo. Campaign for the creation of a Cabinet post related to an increased consumption of high quality bacon, bringing a more transparent (and literal) interpretation to "pork-barrel spending". Make new friends in a higher socioeconomic circle -- friends who enjoy wealth and are not afraid to... - Thursday, December 11, 2008:
2008 in Twelves Top 12 Posts from 2008 January: BU on the Silver Line February: BU on the Far Side of the Moon March: BU on Facebook Parents April: BU goes to Europe May: BU on the BU Line May: BU and LOLLost June: B... - Tuesday, December 09, 2008:
List Day: Top Five Pet Peeves of the Moment Unit Prices on Lunch Meat I always thought that the purpose of unit prices in supermarkets was to make comparative shopping a little easier. It's common knowledge that the ten gallon tub of low sodium chicken broth is more cost-effective than the two cup resealable travel-size chicken broth, but the unit price gives you immediate visual gratification that Home Ec was not a wasted semester. Why, then, do the deli meats always use different measurements? It seems like ... - Tuesday, November 04, 2008:
List Day: Top Six Reasons to Vote for John McClane In Die Hard with a Vengeance , the terrorists placed a bomb in a school. John McClane worked hard to ensure that NO CHILD WAS LEFT BEHIND. John McClane cares about the ECONOMY and INTERNET SECURITY. In the same movie, he thwarted the attempts of villains who had loaded up dump trucks with gold bullion and then tried to escape through a series of tubes . John McClane has a proven track record against all sorts of ... - Thursday, October 02, 2008:
List Day: Google Ten Years Ago To celebrate their tenth birthday, Google has released a search page that allows you to search the Internet as it was in 2001, seven long years ago. The Internet was much less cluttered back then, although most of the pages returned no longer exist anywhere. Here are a few things you can look up in this ancient snapshot: ♦ Urizone was just a drug that inhibited staphylococcal cell wall synthesis. ♦ Kathy Biddick wa... - Thursday, August 28, 2008:
Food Day Restaurants I've Patronized in the Past Week Los Tios: A Mexican restaurant in Del Ray. Had the best seafood burrito I've ever tasted (even in Spain), for only eleven dollars. Applebee's: A trio of mini bacon burgers with a side of crispy fries. Popeyes: The Tuesday Special. Golden King: Chinese delivery of chicken and broccoli, shrimp lo mein, and wonton soup. Longhorn Steakhouse: Sauteed mushrooms,... - Monday, August 11, 2008:
List Day: Five People You See On Bike Trips The next Lance Armstrong : He owns all the latest in biking gear, and looks like the missing link in the evolution of the Wheelers from Return to Oz . His constant quest is to fetalize himself to the point where his ass is actually higher in the air than his head (some actually bike with their heads between their knees). Has a bike bell because " shouting 'on your left' is tiresome when you PASS EVERYONE LIKE I DO and wastes precious oxygen ". &... - Thursday, July 17, 2008:
Amazon Day, Part II My online shopping increased in 2002, and especially in 2003 when I left the music world and had a disposable income. Rejected panda adopted by cat San Francisco officials locked out of their network Dallas police find cocaine in car used by officers - Wednesday, July 16, 2008:
Amazon Day It's no secret that I overshop at Amazon.com. The fact that they store all order histories since the year 2000 provides an interesting snapshot of my life at the time. While I work on fun web site improvements like a JSP-based forum, enjoy this unabridged glimpse at all the deviant purchases I made from 2000 to 2001. What's in your order history? Santas in civil war Why the Washington Metro needs more poles&... - Thursday, July 10, 2008:
Unfinished Day In the past seventy-two hours, I've accomplished more on my website TODO list than all the progress the US has made in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vancouver 1 in the past three years combined. All it took was consolidating my fanciful feature fragments into a concrete list with things to check off. Though I would like to claim credit for being super efficient, I am no longer the accomplishment machine I was four years ago , because old age slo... - Monday, June 16, 2008:
List Day: Five Satisfying Moments Figuring out the reasons for a intermittent software bug after hours of debugging are going nowhere, and discovering that it will be very easy to fix. Driving down Sanger Avenue, seeing some clown try to drive in reverse out of a parking lot onto a busy road and hearing Rebecca shout, "YOU'RE DOIN' IT WRONG!" Rewatching the second season of Alias for the payoff of the storyline where Sloane is haunted by the ghost of hi... - Friday, May 16, 2008:
Friday Freshened This coming July will mark three full years of the Friday Fragments column, and since many of my readers are spawning children that need to be roped in as soon as they learn to read, I though it might be worthwhile to come up with some alternatives to the Fragments column that will breathe new life into the site and increase readership. Here are a few possibilities: ♣ Friday Freestyling : In which I create freestyle raps about topics submitted by readers a... - Wednesday, May 07, 2008:
List Day: You're Old and I'm Not It has been 1 year since I invented the Museday Tuesday phenomenon. Since then, there have been twenty-three compositions (over eleven minutes of music). It has been 2 years since I earned the Level 59 Epic Mount in World of Warcraft. I still ride it daily, but now I wear far better armour. It has been 3 years since this website transitioned from two-line updates about grad school and work to a daily co... - Monday, May 05, 2008:
Plan Day Much like the third season of LOST (but without an obnoxious Kate character or any mention of tattoos), my 2008 is divided into two standalone sections. The first four months were a self-contained mini-series during which I ended up going to Europe. The last eight months are more open-ended, giving me room to pursue other projects that might come along. Here is a sneak peek of what you can expect: May: Attend a graduation and a wedding, or a wedding occurring at a graduati... - Friday, May 02, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part X of X List Day: Ten Travel Tips for European Adventures Pack lighter than you could possibly imagine. Slice up guidebooks so you only have to bring the information on the cities you're visiting. Leave extra clothes at home and wash your underwear a lot. The more mobile you are, the more fun you'll have. If you injure your leg on the second day of the trip, buy a cane so you don't look like a total retard hippety-hopping across the Continent. &nb... - Monday, March 17, 2008:
List Day: What Your HMO Can Do For You My health insurance at work is HMO-based, because the only time I ever go into a doctor's office is when I run out of lollipops. The driving principle behind HMO care is that if you make it difficult enough to get to the expensive doctor, no one will ever get that far, everyone will die, and the company makes millions of dollars. You have to get through the first line of defense, the hard-to-schedule general practitioner visit, and then get a referral to the specialist you need. ... - Thursday, January 24, 2008:
List Day: Works in Progress I just finished Chapter Twenty-Three of Harry Potter Book 6, after Harry has procured a memory. Following Book 5, which is the literary equivalent of driving your forehead against a very obvious totem pole repeatedly for nine million minutes, book six really moves! I've compiled the first 566 pages of Curse of the Mistwraith on the Paravia Wiki and have another 24 pages until one whole book is completely wikified! ... - Wednesday, January 09, 2008:
Tensday Wednesday a column that can only be described as "in tens!" 1) In Saturday's $10 poker game, Jaood became a first-time winner. He's played poker at my house since the very first game in April 2004 (when none of the windows had curtains yet), and it's taken him this long to break away from the pack. Congratulations! 2) Ten people who graduated from high school with me that I never kept in touch with, and then found again on Facebook: Chr... - Tuesday, December 11, 2007:
2007 in Twelves Top 12 News Updates from 2007 January: BU on the Safety Patrol February: BU composes a new State Song February: BU and nanotechnology warnings March: BU hates Myspace April: BU names merit badges April: BU on the VA Tech Shootings May: BU on Wedding Invi... - Monday, November 26, 2007:
List Day: Ten Snapshots of a Decade In November of 1997... I had big glasses, a half-inch crew cut from the Modern Barber Shop on Main Street, and a penchant for blue collared shirts. I was a seventeen year old college sophomore, living with Dan Shiplett / Beavis in East AJ, on the hall with TCers, Zulfan Bakri, Andrew Gajda, and Paul Liu (I think it was their last semester before they all failed out for playing Quake all day long). I was majorly crushing o... - Wednesday, October 17, 2007:
List Day: Eight Useless In-Major Classes Last night I was browsing my archive of worthless garbage and stumbled across the degree program for my Computer Science major. Virginia Tech was not fully accredited at the time of my enrollment, probably because the head of the department was a witchy harpy with the charm of a brown loafer with dog poo in the treads. CS 1104 - Intro to Computer Science : Between the endless historical discussions of Charles Babbage and the archaic lessons on binary math,... - Thursday, October 11, 2007:
List Day: Five Costco Coupons Every month around this time, I receive a big book of coupons in the mail, aimed at enticing big spending on bigger boxes. The deals range the gamut from "inspired economy" to "if I buy that I should really be donating more money to charity". Here are five sample coupons from this month's brochure: 1) For eighteen hundred dollars, you can purchase a security system consisting of 8 mountable cameras, a DVR to record your surveillance tapes, and a 19" LCD m... - Monday, September 24, 2007:
List Day: Ten Things You Can Learn About Sterling from this Mural The white kids will make sure that they're on the same pick-up basketball team. The girl and the minority go on another team. No one in Sterling will pass the ball to a black kid. Girls can't make a shot unless they hip check. In Sterling, creepy pedophiles are welcome to watch kids play. This one probably has an upskirt camera hidden in his nondescript leather bag. The Asian kid and the chubby girl are too sch... - Thursday, July 26, 2007:
List Day: Best and Worst Condiment Best : Mayonaisse Worst : Relish Mario Game Best : Super Mario World Worst : Super Mario 64 Actor Best : Guy Pearce Worst : Cuba Gooding Jr. Actress Best : Nic... - Wednesday, June 20, 2007:
List Day: Five Habits of the Past As a kid, I often read books on the stairs while standing on my head. I would generally start out at the top of the stairs with the book hanging over the edge, and then gravity would abuse me until my head was on the third step upside-down. The books were oriented normally with my head, so I didn't actually read them upside-down. When I was in seventh grade, I would run between all my classes, because it was fun to run. For all the bell-schedule-the... - Monday, June 11, 2007:
List Day: Ten Things I Still Don't Understand I still don't understand... ...why people need minivans and SUVs to transport a family of four. In my day, we squeezed into cramped leather Chevrolets for day trips, and getting the seat-belt-branding on a hot summer day was a rite of passage. ...how people can get indignant over a national politician funded by huge corporations, when no one can reach the national level without playing the funding game. ...how kids today can get through ev... - Thursday, May 24, 2007:
List Day: Top Five Pet Peeves of the Moment Lane Floaters : There's nothing wrong with rapidly changing lanes to get around the slow driver in the left lane (slow, both in the mental and automotive senses). I do it all the time. However, some people take this to the extreme -- bouncing back and forth between lanes without pause, and spending more time between lanes than within them. You see these clowns most often on two lane roads where both lanes are travelling at roughly the same speed. Generally, neither l... - Monday, April 30, 2007:
List Day: You're Old and I'm Not It has been 1 year since I did my first 12 of 12 . It has been 2 years since Anna and Ben got married and Kathy lived in my basement for the summer. It has been 3 years since I bought a house and moved to Sterling, Virginia. It has been 4 years since I left Florida and started working full-time at FGM. It has been 5 years since we took The Pedagog... - Wednesday, April 04, 2007:
List Day: Six Things Never Used Having lived my entire life as a comfortably middle-class individual, my home is filled with useless artifacts that have never actually been employed in real-world applications. Here is a small sample of the obscene wastefulness all middle-class Americans exhibit! 1) Super Metroid / Donkey Kong Country : These are Super Nintendo games that I got in 2004 and never actually played. The first I picked up for $5 online, because it's supposed to be a classic and ever... - Thursday, March 22, 2007:
List Day: Five Things to Hate in Video Games 1) Ice : I'm almost 100% certain that ice originated with a pothead Mario programmer who accidentally typed 0 instead of 1 and became hypnotized by the way Mario seemed to effortless glide across the ground like a greased-up piggy on a Slip N' Slide. Short on both time and brownies, he decided to change the colour of the ground from brown to white, call the level "ICE WORLD" and head home. Ice in video games serves no other purpose than to make the ... - Monday, January 29, 2007:
Plan Day The BU Fiscal Year got off to a late start, which I blame wholly on work -- a convenient scapegoat which I also blame for sore wrists and the resurgence of polio in third world countries. Because of this, I didn't get around to making my plan for the year until just this past week. I always have a plan, for a BU without a plan is like a crossword puzzle without a vowel. Ever since I got out of the perpetual adolescence of higher education, I've tried to create an overarching sto... - Wednesday, January 17, 2007:
List Day: Ten New Ways to Deal with the War in Iraq Film a complicated dramatization of victory, similar to the supposedly fraudulent moon landing videos from the 1960s, and then post them on YouTube (THE source for news in 2007). Once it has been widely disseminated, quietly withdraw the troops. Buyout Rand McNally and Google Earth, adjusting the latitude and longitude of Iraq by 15 degrees, making future troop deployments arrive somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Bank on American laziness and expect them to go hom... - Wednesday, January 03, 2007:
List Day: New Year's Resolutions Become a syndicated talk show host who only interviews the scrubs that get rejected from all the other talk shows. Save a small child from a runaway cement mixer with bad rear-left brakes. Participate in at least one foreign military coup and become the head of state in the subsequent puppet government, directly involved in the day to day suppression of human rights, and lefts. Write the Great Asian-American Novel and sell the TV-movie rights to... - Thursday, December 21, 2006:
2006 in Twelves Top 12 News Updates from 2006 January: BU talks about New Years Passed in the Past February: BU analyzes 24 March: BU makes you look like a celebrity April: BU the Composer May: BU and the Math Emporium June: BU discovers the United States of Amber ... - Wednesday, December 13, 2006:
List Day: Ten Tips In keeping with this week's peculiar education theme, the Washington Post published an article with Ten Tips on How To Get Ahead In College (not to be confused with the more often cited Top Ten List, "How To Get Head In College"). Sadly, not all of them apply in the real world. Go to class and take notes yourself. Useful, but if your notes tend to fade into illegibility and drool as you nod off during the lecture, you're better off just ... - Monday, November 27, 2006:
List Day: Ten Things I Learned Over the Break If you wait three years to buy the Indiana Jones boxed-set, the price drops from $90 to $30. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom did not age very well. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is still top-notch. Refactoring code is a fun pastime. Metroid Prime 2 is still more annoying than fun. You don't make a game involving copious exploration and then put time limit... - Monday, November 06, 2006:
Vote URI! As an Eagle Scout, he not only earned the Citizenship in the Community merit badge, but also the Citizenship in the Nation and Citizenship in the World merit badges. This makes him a prime candidate for public office. He has a three point platform, and triangles are the most stable structure in the natural world. Once while on a camping trip, a coyote threatened his family. He punched that coyote in the face and sent it packing. He would do the same ... - Wednesday, October 25, 2006:
List Day: Ten Most Listened-To XM Stations 10) 75 - Hear Music : I suppose I should be embarassed that I listen to a radio station that allows you to "Hear the Music You Would Hear in Line at Starbucks!", although I guess it's more embarassing for our country that such a channel even exists. You can occasionally find a good tune here amongst the dime-a-dozen folksy caterwaulers like Beth Orton. Notable names include KT Tunstall, Norah Jones, and James Blunt when I only knew his one good song. ... - Tuesday, October 03, 2006:
List Day: Ten Random Road Trip Thoughts There's a commercial bus line called LAMERS. At first glance, the website emblazoned on the side of the bus could have been a one-word last name of the company founder (www.golamers.com), but it turns out to be a positive, upbeat, Special-Olympics-style cheer for people who are lame. No word on whether or not you must be this lame to ride, but I bet the company is missing a huge target market: sports teams could charter the bus line to ferry visiting teams to and fr... - Tuesday, September 19, 2006:
List Day: Top Five Pirate-Related Paraphernalia In honour of National Talk Like a Pirate Day , here is a smattering of pirate-related merchandise and goods I've plundered in my days as a peripatetic peg-legged prowler of the seas. 1) Pirates of the Caribbean : Who would ever believe that a five minute theme park ride could turn into a movie that didn't really suck (even though it was about twenty minutes too long)? Of the few times that I went to Disney Land, this ride was my favourite, and I would... - Wednesday, September 13, 2006:
List Day: Games Most Played After five or six months of regular playtime, Plinky finally reached Rank 11 on the Lightning's Blade server, which puts my character in the Top 30 players on the server, makes it the only non-level-60 character in the Top 500, and the only non-level-60 with the special armored tiger pictured to the left against the scenic backdrop of Dun Morogh. I've now done everything worth doing in the game (and no one who doesn't play the game cares why I think raiding is a big waste of time). Y... - Wednesday, June 14, 2006:
List Day: Habit and Routine Make My Life Possible I always get gas at the same gas station, which is always the cheapest one within a reasonable radius of my house. I always buy gas with cash. When writing a book, sometimes the author will describe, in great detail, a hand gesture or motion of one of his characters. If I read a passage containing such described motions or facial expressions, I always try to recreate them myself. If anyone were to watch me, it'd probably look like I was flashing gang signs at m... - Wednesday, May 31, 2006:
List Day: Ten Things About the Custom Home I Will Build When I'm a Millionaire It will be built at the edge of a nature preserve in a suburban area, so the streets are still plowed when it snows but I have no neighbours except for deer and cougars. There will be a Costco, a Best Buy, and a grocery store chain within a twenty minute radius. It will have a secret passage opened with a wall sconce or a false bookshelf, and the passage will lead to a secret room whose windows you can see from the outside. This will be the study. &n... - Tuesday, May 23, 2006:
BU's Guide to Effective and Efficient Wisdom Teeth Removal 1996: Make a website. Give it a unique name like "The [last name] Website", where [last name] is your last name with some random punctuation appended. July 2005: Use said website to brag that you have not been to the dentist since the Hokies went to (and lost at) the Zirconium Diamond Bowl in 2000 . July 2005: In an effort to be a more productive and active senior citizen (rapidly approaching the ripe old age of 27, I might add), mak... - Thursday, April 20, 2006:
Higher Education Week: Fifteen Things I Learned in The Real World Your productivity will increase by 10% if you work from home rather than at the office. Always share an office with someone who spends most of their time on a customer site. That way you have a single office that's twice as big as a normal single, and no one can complain because you do, in fact, have an officemate. The average office employee will spend two or more hours out of their day not doing anything work-related. This amount increases if... - Wednesday, April 19, 2006:
Higher Education Week: Fifteen Things I Learned in Grad School Everyone who went straight to grad school from undergrad did so because they didn't want to enter the real world yet. It is much harder to skip class in grad school because every class only has ten people in it. People in grad school become obsessed with going to conferences and presenting papers. If you do not attend at least one conference every term, you're some sort of strange aboriginal leper. Going to grad school will mak... - Tuesday, April 18, 2006:
Higher Education Week: Fifteen Things I Learned in College Less than 2% of sheltered high school relationships will last beyond the first three months of college, simply because each partner is suddenly bombarded by hot people all around. It's like getting promoted to Best Buy after shopping in Radio Shack all your life. There is no greater concentration of loose women in the world than on a college campus. Going 73 on I-81 will get cops on your ass. Going 69 is acceptable. There will be a possibility ... - Monday, April 17, 2006:
Higher Education Week: Fifteen Things I Learned in Public Schools If random thugs have slashed open the back of the bus seat in front of you, you can use the hole to store your boogers and chewing gum. Updated for the 21st Century : If MS-13 members have slashed open the back of the bus seat in front of you with a machete, you can use the hole to store your drugs and handguns. Playing with yourself in the bathroom right next to the band room is a bad idea, because someone will catch you and you will not live it dow... - Thursday, February 23, 2006:
Marriage Day So don't hate on me because I didn't call anyone up immediately afterwards, but I got married yesterday -- a spur-of-the-moment decision that culminated in a trip to the Loudoun County Courthouse in Leesburg around 4 PM. Because it was so late in the day, traffic was horrible going up Route 7, but at least it's an event that will make 2/22/06 a memorable 222 day! We didn't get home until late, so I thought it'd be better to just announce it to everybody at once in today's update than... - Tuesday, February 21, 2006:
function link() { alert("ORLY?") } List Day: Five Annoying Things on the Internet 1) Pop-up Menus: The latest DHTML fad is to have little submenus pop up next to the mouse whenever you hover the cursor over a menu item. It's used in the main navigation bar at the Washington Post and the "view other collections" menu of 1-800-Flowers . All too often though, the popup menus cover up something... - Wednesday, February 08, 2006:
List Day: Five Random BU Facts 1) Some people find the sound of jingling dog tags comforting. It annoys the poop out of me, though. Sometimes I ask the dog in question why s/he can't just sit in one place and pretend to be a topiary, but I never get a reply beyond the jingling. I have been known to use Scotch tape to tape tags together when dogsitting. 2) When I am deep in thought at the computer, I will subconsciously suck on the front of my undershirt. I hypothesize that there must be some hidden thou... - Tuesday, January 24, 2006:
List Day: Five Random Stories from College 1) In my freshman year, I spent 100% of my time in class or in my room. I was one of those guys that always had the door shut. I roomed with a sax player named Andy who had dreams of being in Chip McNeill's jazz band and would spend hours practicing to Kenny G CDs on his soprano saxophone. Despite this, he was much cooler and more outgoing than I, and made it his life's purpose to turn me into a social animal. This mostly failed, but we were good friends. I lived in 5050 ... - Wednesday, December 21, 2005:
On the way home yesterday I made a quick stop at the Reston Best Buy for one last gift. Best Buy is nestled in one of those cozy yuppy strip-malls where the patrons outnumber the parking spaces like girls at a traditionally female liberal arts college trying to recruit guys for extra tuition. Now that the Christmas season is fully upon us, we're once again exposed to the yearly customs of how to behave in a parking lot. Here are a few pointers on proper Christmas shopping etiquette, ... - Monday, December 19, 2005:
List Day: Crap in My Drawers Because organization is the key to a happy life (and Western Music), I have a four-drawer legal-sized file cabinet crammed full of files, programs, scores, and other useless trivia of the past. I have a file labelled "Misc. Stuff" that has the honor of storing everything that doesn't really go into any other file (or stuff that I throw into the cabinet when I'm too lazy to make a new label). Here's a partial list of the contraband you might find if you were to peruse this file: ... - Tuesday, November 29, 2005:
I've been told by some people that I'm impossible to shop for, not because I have no interests, but because I buy everything I want for myself (although one person recently said that shopping for me was "easy peesy" so the sample size may be skewed). If there's something that would make a good gift, chances are that I preordered it eight months ago and got it on the release day. So I can be more of a "team player", here's a short list of stuff that I plan on buying after Christmas. If you ... - Thursday, November 17, 2005:
Extended List Day: 36 Memories from Primary Education, Part III of III Ninth Grade 25) I was in ninth grade one year before it seceded to form its own union (making schools become K-5, 6-8, 9, 10-12) so being a freshman meant being at the top of the school, not the bottom. Somehow I was in the popular crowd and actually had my own cadre of kids that would follow my lead. We would often make fun of kids, especially the fat girl in band, for no other reason than the fact that we were kids, and kids are inherently cruel. One day after maki... - Wednesday, November 16, 2005:
Extended List Day: 36 Memories from Primary Education, Part II of III Fifth Grade 13) I had Mr. Ferris in fifth grade, and once had to write a 250-word punishment for talking when I wasn't supposed to. That was the only one I ever got, even though he handed them out like candy. I had Language Arts and Science with Mrs. Nicholson. In science class, we had footprint-shaped plastic terrariums where we grew seeds and farmed aphids. My terrarium always ended up moldy and dead. Mrs. Nicholson's class was a split class of fith graders and six... - Tuesday, November 15, 2005:
Extended List Day: 36 Memories from Primary Education Kindergarten 1) I remember very little from Kindergarten. I had Mrs. Lovo and Mrs. Wheatley in the morning session at William Ramsey Elementary School, which was just a couple blocks from where my all-day babysitter lived. I thought the school was cool because it had an attached nature center with a beehive in it, and you could watch the bees fly in and out. 2) As you can see from the above transcript, I was always destined for grea... - Monday, November 07, 2005:
List Day: Ten Things about The Mikado Driving down M Street in Georgetown is a pain in the ass and reminds me of why I don't like driving in big cities. Traffic is bumper-to-bumper at all hours, and there's a burgeoning crush of humanity surrounding you at every angle, from the high-class yuppies on their evening stroll to the meat market girls from Georgetown University. Everyone is walking in every direction, darting through cars when it suits them, and making it pretty much impossible to turn onto another road i... - Wednesday, October 26, 2005:
List Day: 10 Cold Weather Tidbits I HATE waking up to a cold and dark double header. The frostbite-inducing chill of an early morning house and post-shower dryoff would be okay if some semblance of sunshine came softly through my window today, and I have no problems getting up when the night is still pitch black in the summertime. The tactile atrocity coupled with the lack of visual stimuli destroy my wake-up genes and force me to set two more alarms just to get me out of bed. The hungry cats help too, of course.&nbs... - Tuesday, October 18, 2005:
List Day: 5 Pet Peeves Bikers in the Road : Whether it's the mid-life-crisis Lance-wannabe guy squeezing two hundred pounds of mass into a one hundred pound spandex bag, or the ecologically-aware yuppy biking to work with the smarmy "I'm Saving Gas Money" sign (crayoned by a five-year-old) on the back of his seat, none of these clowns should be allowed on roads where the speed limit is higher than 25. You are not a car, you do not belong in the car lane, and you most certainly are not... - Wednesday, October 12, 2005:
It's rained pretty much nonstop for the past six days -- that cold, messy cloud spit that isn't strong enough to have thunder and lightning (which would make it worthwhile), but still gets you soaked when you walk outside. The only plus to this weather spell (Nasty Rain Rank 3) is that it gave me an excuse to turn on the heat a few weeks early. Now, for the half hour that encompasses my morning routine of waking up, the house is a toasty 75 degrees. Growing up in my parents' house, t... - Tuesday, August 09, 2005:
giantStepText = "Though you've played at love and lost\nAnd sorrow's turned your heart to frost\nI will melt your heart again.\nRemember the feeling as a child\nWhen you woke up and morning smiled\nIt's time you felt like you did then.\nThere's just no percentage in remembering the past\nIt's time you learned to live again at last.\n\nCome with me, leave yesterday behind\nAnd take a giant step outside your mind.\n\nYou stare at me in disbelief\nYou say for you there's no relief\nBut I sw... - Thursday, July 28, 2005:
There are five major types of online writing that you might come across in your netly sojourns: 1) The Documentary An itemized account of everything that happened in someone's day. Generally drops lots of names, irrelevant details about where they went and what they bought. Occasionally describes an honestly interesting event, but the general mundaneness of it all makes it more interesting for the people you already know rather than strangers. ... - Monday, July 11, 2005:
Improvements This weekend my dad and I moved twenty-five 80-lb bags of concrete mix for the next round of sidewalk improvements next to my house. I also tore the old carpet out of guest room #2 (it's time to pick new paint and carpet colors), rearranged the living room a bit, and started improving the appearance of the basement romper room. I ordered some tasteful posters online and moved the dining room table downstairs for barbeques and poker games, and I need to buy a dartboard for people who ... - Thursday, July 07, 2005:
Since everybody loves a good list, here is my list of ten well-built songs (I hesitate to call it a Top Ten list, since there are inevitably other songs that I've forgotten). A well-built song need not be the greatest song in the world, have the deepest message, or even be one of your favourites -- it's just a song that's solid from start to finish. It isn't too long or short, it doesn't get old, it's well-crafted, and it says what it needs to say, maximizing the potential of whateve... - Monday, June 27, 2005:
The world of blogging has a practice called "tagging", a chain letter pyramid scheme at its finest, designed to increase readership at your own blog and blogs people might never otherwise discover. Once you are tagged, you're supposed to answer the question and then tag a few more people so the insidious virus of linkbacks has new carriers in its world-dominating conquest of the web. Last week, I was tagged by mtymouse to list my top six songs of the moment. So her... - Thursday, March 17, 2005:
Happy Saint Patrick's Day. This particular iteration of St. Patrick's Day (the 25th Edition) was relatively uneventful for me. We took the new cats and their poop to Pender Vet for a check-up and de-worming treatment, and then I came home, did some work involving submission statuses, threw a corned beef in the crock pot, and cleaned up the kitchen. The only real interesting facet of this entry is that I actually had to count up from 1979, because I couldn't remember how old I was.&nb... - Friday, March 12, 2004:
Every city has its own breed of annoying driver, and the D.C. metropolitan area is no exception. Someday, when I can affordably mod my car with a fake license plate that drops down over the real one and a radar absorbing (Quiet Steel) frame, I'm also going to add a pneumatic nail gun to the undercarriage. With this, I can covertly shoot nails into the tires of annoying drivers, causing them to have a safe but irritating flat tire several hours later. Such a weapon of mass deflation could b... - Tuesday, April 22, 2003:
There was a great vocal jazz concert this evening in Opperman, featuring the twenty-voice "After Five" vocal group and Leon Anderson's small jazz combo (not together). Leon even sat in on a few tunes to show off his rockin' drum acrobatics. Soloists who aren't plagued with thirty-second note envy Solos with a tune and a direction A good bari sax player Trumpeters who can sound like they're playing flugelhorn &nbs... - Tuesday, February 18, 2003:
There was an article about Professor Rating sites on CNN which piqued my curiousity, so I looked up a few old professors that I had at Virginia Tech. The first I found was a CS professor I had for CS1704: Intro to Data Structures in 1997. His comments section is pretty much dead on -- it was his arrogance and personality (that continued to show up in other people in the field) that made me leery about having a career in CS in the first place. I remember thinking,... - Wednesday, January 22, 2003:
I lost my Chapstick somewhere yesterday. As crazy as it might sound, trumpet players develop a case of sympathetic chapped lips whenever Chapstick is unavailable. I always keep one in my front left pocket between my keyring and my illegal handgun. Our valiant basketball team lost to "The Churchill Gang" last night, 21 - 71. However, we achieved a striking ratio with time of ball possession versus time it takes to substitute players in and out, which was probably 1 to 5. &... - Tuesday, January 14, 2003:
Googlism.com is a site that I've been meaning to feature here for a few months now . If you enter a person's name or some entity, it will return a list of everything the Google search engine knows about that entity. It doesn't always know people, but every so often you get a perfect description, or an inherently funny one. Among its highlights: Evan Jones is the proud owner of a big hupmobile. Evan Jones is a superb source for older A...
