Sunday, July 30, 2006

Off to Wildwood...

I'm off to Wildwood for a week. I'll be back in town Wednesday to take a final at AVC, but then I'm in the vegetarian music world again until Sunday (it's not all that bad...except for the food). Then it's rise and shine on Monday for band camp...see you there.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Super Shammy!

Monday's sectional went good. No complaints here. Actually, we even sounded a little better than I thought we would, so all is good.

We went to Vegas this weekend to see Matt (always worth the drive) and buy some Super Shammys! Oh yeah, and buff the 119° heat. I passed my CPR/AED test on Monday, so it's safe to die in front of me now. I also discovered that scrubs are the most incredibly comfortable clothing item ever invented. My Mom told me if I got into med school that she would make me custom scrubs I could wear every day of my life...now that's some incentive (no joke).

In Vegas this weekend, Karl told me about this guy who traded one red paperclip for a house. From his site, "My name is Kyle MacDonald and I traded one red paperclip for a house. I started with one red paperclip on July 12 2005 and 14 trades later, on July 12, 2006 I traded with the Town of Kipling Saskatchewan for a house." All the details are on his site...it's a pretty cool/interesting story.

Ever hear of "blunt-force advertising"? It's a short ad that repeats the same catchphrase over and over to forefully "embed" it in your head. Like many, at first, I thought this Head On ad was a joke, but apparently it's real. As weird as it is, the ad is obviously pretty effective.

In this week's "weird stuff to do if you're really, really board" dept: the 10¢ ring. Yep...you can make a ring out of a dime.

From an IT department far far away comes...
Cubicle Wars! A pretty corny, yet entertaining short film.

Good news: Only 1 week left at AVC!
Bad news: There's only 2 weeks of summer left.
I'll stick with the good news for now.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Sectional

To my fellow QH clarinets:

There will be a clarinet sectional this coming Monday, the 24th, from 3:00 to 4:00 in the band room. Let me know if you can make it...hope to see you all there.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

150th Post

Already at post number 150...that's about three years. Wow. I need to get a life.

Sorry for the lack of an update this past week. You would think that a lazy summer would render me bored enough to have an urge to update, but apparently that's not the case. Part of it being that this summer is not really "lazy" between 3 classes at AVC, music, hospital, and all that other good stuff. And the other part being that the new computer arrived and I've been "busy" playing with all the new little gadgety bells and whistles (this thing is pretty awesome).

I started the volunteering thing at the hospital on Friday. I'm working in the pharmacy with some interesting folks who have really no idea what to do with me, but so far they've kept me busy. The extent of my job basically boils down to stalking drugs. Fun stuff (besides the little tiny ID numbers that are impossible to read, yet vital to stalking the heavy brown IV filled boxes in the correct spot). So yeah, it's all good I guess. For those of you still wondering why I'm even doing this in the first place, I'm still trying to figure that out myself, but I've come up with two decent reasons: (1) It's a good experience (lame, I know, but hey it works), and (2) It looks killer on a resume.

Other than that there's not too much new to report in my life. Just the same old Summer goodness. I got the QHHS registration packet thing in the mail last week...that's always depressing.

This is a pretty cool little video where a couple of skaters with green boards edited out the borads on the video, so it kind of looks like they're "floating." Pretty cool stuff.

From the Daily WTF, here's some "pop-up potpourri." It's a compilation of some pretty funny thisisbroken style messages.
^3 links in two sentences! I'm getting pretty good.

The RIAA has lost! The RIAA has lost!
Well, at least one lawsuit. It's about time.

Got a headache? Just ask Dr. Google. A few days ago a blogger wrote an article entitled "Dear Google, You’re Giving Me a Headache," so what did Google do? Send him some pain relief, of course! Hey Google, can you send me some cash?

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Monday, July 03, 2006

XPS 400

Out of the blue, my parents gave me the go ahead to order a new family computer (our old one was getting pretty decrepit), so I had to quickly scrounge up a decent system for a decent price, and decided on the Dell XPS 400 media box which I had been looking at for a while. Thanks to slickdeals I was able to finagle a pretty sweet gig though Dell EPP (employee purchase program). So basically I bought a temporary "employment" (or just the discount code) off ebay to get the 30% employee discount. If anybody else is interested, you can get a nice deal this way. Just buy the code on ebay, customize your system here, and you're good to go. I'll update when we get the box and I've had a chance to play with it a bit.

Just FYI to all those band people out there:
There is a full band rehearsal on Friday July 7th from 3:30 to 4:30 in the band room. Of course if you're reading this, you've probably already been contacted so that last sentence was pointless. Oh well....consider it a reminder. As of this time, I'm 2 for 14 on returned calls. I've left 14 messages yet only 2 people have gone to the trouble to call me back. [EDIT: Make that 3 call backs as of about 5 mintues ago] Not that I'm complaining...I really hate phones.

While I might be a phone phobic, at least I'm not afraid of pickles. I don't know how many of you have seen this clip, but I can't watch it without laughing, as bad as I feel laughing. Pickle Phobia...that's a new one.

After a surge of controversy, Microsoft finally dropped its "Windows Genuine Advantage" checks. "Genuine Advantage" meaning "we know that you pirated this copy of XP and we're trying to prove it so we can sue you." It got to the point where you couldn't download Windows Update or any other Microsoft downloads without an annoying "WGA" check. So a class action lawsuit later, there's no more WGA.

Here's a neat little hack to boost hard disk performance. Apparently it's supposed to boost performance up to 6x. I haven't noticed anything too significant yet, but I'll keep you posted. Just a warning, it takes a little tweaking so just don't go around trashing the registry.

That's it for now...have a happy 4th.