Canto LVI

Last week we had a party to celebrate our DoE review (funding for MIT), and they served lobster! It seems weird to have a party to rejoice being done with our funding review with an excessive and expensive party with lobsters for everyone and free booze. But it was fun. The ocean is delicious.

And I had my final medical exam of the summer, and everything is OK. I'll admit having your testicles felt up to make sure you don't have testicular cancer is a little awkward, especially when it's over he says "everything feels great."

Have you seen the commercials for the CBS show "Cane"? All I can think of is: "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women."

This was followed by an exciting weekend of... house cleaning! Everything got cleaned up, and Steph spent both days in the yard weeding and trimming all the various plants. She filled up 3 and 1/2 barrels of debris. Not bad! And I also made delicious cookies. Delicious, delicious chocolate chip cookies.

Did anyone see the ESPN article on over/under rated teams? Oregon came in as the #3 underrated team over the last 10 years, behind just WSU and Boise State. And the Pac-10 was far and away the most underrated conference. I think we should really appreciate how good we Duck fans have had it the last few years.

What does a corporation owe it's employees? As an employee, I think you owe work towards your employer. Your employer owes you a paycheck, and maybe some perks/benefits (like heath coverage). If you leave, give 2 weeks notice. If you get laid off (for non-performance related issues), a severance package of at least 2 weeks. What else? A green cookie on St. Patrick's Day?

Canto LV

Bad to the Bone by George Thorogood is a great song. It's just a great song. No ifs ands or buts. When Syd was talking about how at least Psych acknowledges that it goes over the top, which makes it enjoyable. That's the thing about going over the top. You really only have 2 options: just pretend like you didn't do/make something outrageous or just keep on going. This song loves the fact that it's over the top. What's with the sax solo? God only knows. But that's some great slide guitar. Just a great song.

I just switched my toothbrush, finally getting around to it after my dentist visit a few weeks ago. So for as long as I've been brushing, I've used the hard or medium bristle toothbrushes. But lately dentists have been saying to switch to the soft kind. They clean your teeth just as well, only they don't scrape away at your gums. So I finally switched to the soft kind. And you know what? They don't clean as well. At least, when I brush my teeth it doesn't feel like I'm getting a good cleaning. Later in the day, my teeth feel about the same, and they look about the same (although it's only been a week so far). But the brushing experience just isn't the same. And really, shouldn't we enjoy brushing? Or else I may just give up on the whole thing. Let the chips (or teeth) fall where they may.

I don't know if you've noticed, but are you ready for some football?!? Right now the Thursday Night preseason game between the 'Fins and the Chiefs is on in the background while I type this. And I'm excited. And did anyone see the game last week between the Jets and Falcons? With Joey Harrington taking on Kellen Clemens? Two former Oregon QBs leading their teams in the NFL. Joey will be starting for Atlanta, but Clemens was looking real good for the Jets. If Pennington gets injured (and I don't want to jinx it), Clemens could impress.

Oh, and how could I forget such a great day in my life? Today, my office mate and myself performed our first hack. We picked up a mini-fridge from a friend for our office using a Zipcar. He found a small bottle of perfume on the floor, which we presumed to be from some woman who dropped it earlier. So after we dropped off the fridge in our office and then drove the car back to it's spot, we sprayed it down the hall as we walked back to the office. And then when we got the elevator, and it all came out. I think we emptied half the bottle in there. HACK! Sweet. I suddenly feel like I belong to the MIT community.

Canto LIV

Well, nothing much to say. The Simpsons, Season 10 is out. Steph and I watched the MENSA episode (with Stephen Hawking, the world's smartest man!) and the one where Homer becomes the mayor's bodyguard (with Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker!). Classic. We also finished up our 7 week journey (we skipped the weekend Ben was here) through all 6 Star Wars films. Man, Yoda really is annoying. Everything does not have to spoken backwards! Why, why?!? I think I'm more favorable to them overall now. Maybe I'm just getting soft. Soon we'll be starting up Babylon 5, Season 5. I'm now more than half way through FFXII. But as many of you know, I'm one of those Emerald Weapon completionist motherfuckers, so I'm ridiculously over powered right now. I can one-hit kill bosses. One weird thing about this game is that the Espers have crazy names. Oh sure, Shiva and Ifrit are in the game, but they're the names of airships. The Espers have names like "Cuchulainn, the Impure" or "Chaos, the Walker of the Wheel". I miss the regular names. Anyway, once I'm done, which is looking like a mid-September finish date, Blogging the Simpsons will start up. Should I put those posts here, or start a different blog?

Canto LIII

Okay, another week and here are some quick hits from the recent past. Firstly, let me just say that today's XKCD is one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. For those who never played Final Fantasy VII, I just feel sorry for you. Still one of the greatest video games ever made. My current goal is to finish up FFXII by the end of this month (or over Labor Day weekend), but I don't know how that's going to work. It's a big game.

If you're looking for some short-term amusement, take a picture of yourself and go to simpsonizeme.com. Yes, it's a stupid Burger King shill, but fun none the less. Here's the results. I couldn't get the beard hair color different from the up-top hair color, so if you know how to get that, let me know.



Last night we grilled up some steak, corn, burgers, and veggie skewers. I must say, New England days aren't all that great; too hot and humid which makes me even more lazy than normal. But the evenings are great. Very comfortable temperature which promotes things like going out for ice cream and bar-b-queing. Lovely day yesterday.

But I think going inside and outside so many times last night may have let in a mosquito. Steph really wanted to finish up The Half-Blood Prince last night, and who can blame her with only a chapter to go. But it was midnight and I was tired and ready for sleep. Not a problem, I can fall asleep with her reading lamp on. But with the mosquito in our room, she was obsessed with finding it and killing it. I kept telling her it was just one stupid little mosquito and to ignore it, finish her book and go to sleep. But no. It was haunting her. She couldn't read with the mosquito in the same room. I had just fallen asleep when I get slapped in the back, only to learn that she 'just missed it'. Finally she went into the other room to finish the book, but getting abruptly woken like that tends to mess up trying to get back to sleep. Then she said she couldn't fall asleep because she was afraid the mosquito might be carrying West Nile Virus or some other disease and infect her in the middle of the night. This is ridiculous, and I had never heard her say this before. How does she sleep when we go camping? Anyway, neither of us got much sleep last night.

Also, for those who don't go over Wikipedia's This Day in History, Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima 62 years ago. And Tim Berners-Lee came up with the World Wide Web, which was first published at CERN on this day in 1991. We all owe so much pornography to him...