another week, samo samo. went on a bit of a credit card binge and ordered up some posters from AllPosters.com, dvd's/games from buy.com, and games from half.com. the posters are just for more wall-filler for my extra bedroom/study/den/computer room, i should be able to fill post of the space i've got left with the 6 i bought. i also finally ordered coupling series 3 and the entire series of the office. due to some pretty good price selection i also ordered tony hawk underground and prince of persia, a couple of games i'd wanted for a while but didn't wanna spring for 'em... but for like $20 each it's too good to pass up. i also tacked on used copies of sega soccer slam and eternal darkness for decent prices as well. for those games i was just happy to get them used, i've tried several times to auction on them on ebay but the bidding just starts to go behind what i wanted to pay for used games.
haven't even played GC much lately, only some soul calibur by myself recently. lately i seem to be watching more tv, although i'm watching maybe 5% of it live at this point. and because of my scenario right now where the tivo's in the bedroom, i'm actually watching more tv from torrents than live or from tivo. i guess at this point i no longer really care whether i watch something off the tivo or through a torrent, the quality loss with the compressed torrented video rarely bothers me much. i'm still trying to come up with a more automatic system where tv torrents that i want are automaticaly downloaded to my linux box and fed over the wi-fi to the HTPC at night or while i'm at work. i'm still researching how to do it tho.
lately i've spent my time mostly watching:
big brother 5 US -- you saw my rant last time, right?
big brother 4 australia -- i'm about 2 weeks behind, gotta catch up
amazing race 5 -- best show of the week
PTI -- yes, still tivo'd religiously
MTV2 rock -- currently tivo'd daily, about to stop cuz it's starting to just recycle
reno 911! -- just as good as last season, if not better
good girls don't -- uneven, but still worth watching
the 4400 -- a little hokey, but a drama with mild sci-fi mini-series is a good change of pace
the grid -- good series, authentic feel
samurai champloo -- hoang referred me to a new fresh anime, good so far
the assistant -- looks funny, haven't started yet
i love the 90's -- typical vh1 trendytrash, but lauren turned me onto it, oddly addicting
extreme dodgeball -- get it on tivo now and then, dodgeball just rocks
airline -- a little better than last season, decent reality show [no dating :)]
so yeah i guess i've pretty much been spending most of my free time tv'ing instead of gc'ing, pc gaming or dvd watching. i've been meaning to watch shrek 2, but haven't gotten to it yet. as far as actually getting out and seeing something in the theater, i prolly should have bothered more to check out i, robot, technically it does look like my kind of flick i guess. i'm interested in the bourne supremacy and the village for the next couple weeks, maybe i can see at least one of those.
well this weekend's all about moving alayna into her apartment in plano. and thus, a new era begins...
--justin
Friday, July 23, 2004
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
oh, 'ello. it's been about 10 days, figured i should post.
same-o, same-o lately, been trying to listen to some newer stuff lately. hoang and i both agree the new prodigy is surprisingly catchy, listened to that a lot lately. also burned franz ferdinand, jet, some other stuff. the secret machines are worth a listen. radio seems to be on a bit of a high lately, so take advantage while you can. also trying to catch up on a bunch of dnb vinyls, so been slowly pullin those in from #dnbmp3 on efnet. i got "samurai champloo" that hoang recommended and it's pretty good, something different. i'm currently torrenting the shrek 2 dvd since i didn't bother to see it in the theaters.
i'm on day 65 now of big brother 4 australia. i gotta say i think that's pretty impressive that i've stuck with a tv show that long that i don't even technically receive here. that's over 60 episodes i've watched of that show, and it's been pretty good, no regrets with getting into it. i'll be happy when it's done with though, just cuz the series starts to drone after a while. i'm usually about 10 days behind the live shit the aussies see over there, but i can't really completely download every single episode up to the second cuz i've gotta burn newsgroup quota just to pull 'em in. unfortunately, as i knew would happen, it's now overlapped with big brother 5 US.
so we've finally reached that 3-month period of the year in which big brother is on, and starting last year for me, amazing race as well. so we're now on the 5th series of the show, and i've actually never missed an episode of any season. i'm not really sure i can pinpoint which season exactly has been the best, but it was certainly one of the first two. in my opinion, generally the 2nd series improved on the 1st, and the 3rd in some ways improved on the 2nd, but the 4th started to go downhill and unfortunately so far i think series 5 has continued that fall.
i'm always a little lukewarm at the beginning of every BB season though, but this time around it's been a little tough keeping interest with it. i understand that CBS wants to do everything they can to keep viewers coming back every season, but it's just gotten ridiculous now. well, i mean it had kinda gotten ridiculous starting last year, but now... man they're just hitting some new lows really. a lot of times i give alayna a hard time about watching those god-awful lovey-dovey reality shows that i absolutely can't stand and now and then with BB i'm starting to feel the same way about it.
i've always been a big fan of the show because it's always been interesting to see the mindgames people play and to see how things pan out and who ultimately wins. sure, there's always been a bit of cheese to wade through, and it's prolly a combination of my tv tastes evolving a bit and the show really piling it on, but now and then i'm embarrassed to be watching.
some of my specific complaints so far:
--"Project DNA"... that is the lamest fucking thing i have ever heard of in my life. it stands for "Do Not Assume" and i'm only *assuming* the crack BB staff took 3 whole minutes coming up with that little gem.
--"the twists"... the DNA comes from the fact that a couple of the houseguests were unknowingly related and several of the houseguests have identical twins. see below:
--"two housemates related"... god, are you serious? this was so goddamn stupid, man. i feel bad for them that they had to find out that way, and it's a stupid idea for a twist, really. i think putting people together on a tv show like that is just starting to fuck with people's lives just for higher ratings, which comes across as utterly lame.
--"the identical twin theme"... either 3 or 4 of the hamsters have identical twins, and according to what CBS has aired so far, at least one set is going in and out of the house without telling the other housemates that they're 2 different people. as goofy as it is i've now known of a whole slew of big brother setups from 3 different countries, and this has to be the most unfair setup i've ever heard of. i dunno where they send the other twin when the other is in the house, but whatever they're doing they shouldn't be allowed to win the fuckin game that way. from what i've read online people are hating this idea a helluva lot more than liking it, that's for sure. zing on another whiff, CBS/endemol.
--"the lamest cast yet"... unless i just haven't warmed up to them or something, this has gotta be the worst damn cast yet selected for the show. they're really getting pretty stereotypical with their selections and it's hurting the entertainment value of the show. my brief opinion of each:
jase -- give me a goddamn break. he's listed as a "volunteer firefighter" which means he doesn't actually have a job, and you can kinda see why when he opens his mouth. i dunno if i can even say he's a good lookin guy or whatever, he's got semi-cool hair but is a complete dick in the house. the guy never puts a fuckin shirt on, and lauren was right on the money when she said his chest was as smooth as her ass. he's completely full of himself and he'll be long gone halfway through the show.
scott -- just as bad as jase really, only that he didn't win the first HoH and thus comes across as less of a dick. then he won PoV though, and he's almost just as bad. he's a little more rational than jase and not quite as surly, but i still hope the asshole's gone in a few weeks. and while i'm on it, soul patches suck. either grow something or don't, you pussy.
michael aka "cowboy" -- overall not really a bad guy but it's so damn hard to take him seriously. like i said i feel bad for him that he learned he had a half-sister in the house like that, but the guy's mostly a joke. why do they always have to have some idiot from oklahoma? i don't really have any friends from OK, and i'm sorry if i offend anybody from there, but why the fuck do you all come across as such goddamn morons? hell i'm from texas, i thought that was supposed to be our job to come across as half-wits. but somehow the accents are twice as thick up there then they are down here. for future reference BB, pick somebody from another state. any other one.
mike -- he'll be evicted the first week, for being "the don." yeah, which is crap. unfortunately he seems like he'd be somewhat entertaining due to his extreme political views and representing the older crowd in the house, but no point in waxing it, he'll be gone tomorrow i'm betting.
jennifer aka "nakomis" -- yeah, you're a fuckin joke. too bad for alayna she's from san antonio, yeesh. it'd be one thing if she had weird tattoos and freaky hair but was kinda cute and quirky, but yeah she's not. she's not interesting at all and i think she was only brought in just cuz of the twist i mentioned above. i'm sorry, but i wouldn't fuckin call her by that indian voodoo name she likes to be called or whatever.
holly -- yeah, one of the worst BB selections i've ever seen. i could justify it more if she had a bit more sex-on-a-stick appeal to her, but she just doesn't. she has an alright body but if they really wanted guys to fawn over her CBS should have covered some huge fake knockers or something to make up for the idiocy that comes from her mouth. i know she's playing up the ditzy blonde thing but for christ's sake, what a waste of a housemate.
drew -- thus far i really have no other options but to root for drew. he's a bit of a prettyboy and all, but he doesn't really do anything all that awful. he's 22 and just graduated so alayna and i relate to him pretty well... if he makes it more than halfway i think we'll root for him.
adria -- you have a cool name, you do not have a cool ass. i can't believe anyone associates you with fitness, cuz you may have muscle but i know for a fact i would have trouble carrying you over any threshold. your accent (alabama) is just awful and the less you are on my screen the more i love you.
diane -- kinda hot i guess, but she doesn't bring much. as far as i know i wouldn't mind her lasting till the later stages, just as long as she doesn't play up the girls vs guys crap too much.
lori -- she's kinda hot and all (she's basically just a lisa [bb3] or erika [bb4] stand-in. i half no idea why she took the $10k bribe but whatever. can't believe she wasn't nominated for that crap.
karen -- another i wouldn't mind going far in the game, i like how she's somewhat subtle and not all up in our faces.
will -- token gay dude, looks like he came straight off of the set of 'queer as folk' with that hairstyle. not an overly bad guy (especially for a tosser, bunky and marcellus were far more limpwristed) but still annoying enough to not really rally behind, mostly due to that god-awful gay fashion he loves.
marvin -- i still think he's kinda creepy. he's funny in a... black way, i guess? is it wrong that i think he might be a registered sex offender somewhere? and what kinda mortician wears a spiked necklace? you're in your mid fuckin 30's man, lose that shit.
--"our fair hostess"... oh, julie, what have you done? alayna calls her the lollipop, which is pretty accurate. i find it difficult to take the woman seriously. i dunno if she picks her own clothes for the show but she has worse style than will does. after watching BB4 australia i realize what a host should be, and she ain't it.
don't get me wrong, if i really think the show is all that awful, i wouldn't watch it, believe me. the biggest part i like about it is that alayna, lauren, my mother and myself all watch it religiously, which makes for something good to talk about for a while. at this point i think it's a complete guilty pleasure... nothing on it is genius, i watch shit like arrested development or the office for that kind of brilliance. we'll get through the season, don't worry. unless everybody else loses interest, that's when i say fuck it and give up on our old summer mainstay.
amazing race is awesome though, i look forward to that more actually. i won't go all into it like BB, but it's really easy to watch. the characters are interesting and aren't on screen long enough to really bug you, and the challenges are clever and well thought-out. tuesday nights this summer rock, yo.
so this is pretty much the downtime before alayna moves to her apartment up here next weekend. we'll prolly end up pretty busy getting her settled and all that, but it's well worth it to get her up here.
work's been a lot more slow than busy lately, which kinda sucks. the days have been going by semi-slow, so i know i'll be happy when the week's over. if things are slow enough in a week or so i'll blow a few days of PTO to help alayna out with her place instead i guess.
we actually made time last weekend to hit up kathryn's surprise birthday party. i can't really tell if she wanted one thrown for her or not, but she's pretty good at not showing that to anybody. thank god she just left for a trip to the bahamas so we don't have to keep hearing about her goddamn birthday, heheh.
guess that sums up enough for now, eh?
till next time,
justin
same-o, same-o lately, been trying to listen to some newer stuff lately. hoang and i both agree the new prodigy is surprisingly catchy, listened to that a lot lately. also burned franz ferdinand, jet, some other stuff. the secret machines are worth a listen. radio seems to be on a bit of a high lately, so take advantage while you can. also trying to catch up on a bunch of dnb vinyls, so been slowly pullin those in from #dnbmp3 on efnet. i got "samurai champloo" that hoang recommended and it's pretty good, something different. i'm currently torrenting the shrek 2 dvd since i didn't bother to see it in the theaters.
i'm on day 65 now of big brother 4 australia. i gotta say i think that's pretty impressive that i've stuck with a tv show that long that i don't even technically receive here. that's over 60 episodes i've watched of that show, and it's been pretty good, no regrets with getting into it. i'll be happy when it's done with though, just cuz the series starts to drone after a while. i'm usually about 10 days behind the live shit the aussies see over there, but i can't really completely download every single episode up to the second cuz i've gotta burn newsgroup quota just to pull 'em in. unfortunately, as i knew would happen, it's now overlapped with big brother 5 US.
so we've finally reached that 3-month period of the year in which big brother is on, and starting last year for me, amazing race as well. so we're now on the 5th series of the show, and i've actually never missed an episode of any season. i'm not really sure i can pinpoint which season exactly has been the best, but it was certainly one of the first two. in my opinion, generally the 2nd series improved on the 1st, and the 3rd in some ways improved on the 2nd, but the 4th started to go downhill and unfortunately so far i think series 5 has continued that fall.
i'm always a little lukewarm at the beginning of every BB season though, but this time around it's been a little tough keeping interest with it. i understand that CBS wants to do everything they can to keep viewers coming back every season, but it's just gotten ridiculous now. well, i mean it had kinda gotten ridiculous starting last year, but now... man they're just hitting some new lows really. a lot of times i give alayna a hard time about watching those god-awful lovey-dovey reality shows that i absolutely can't stand and now and then with BB i'm starting to feel the same way about it.
i've always been a big fan of the show because it's always been interesting to see the mindgames people play and to see how things pan out and who ultimately wins. sure, there's always been a bit of cheese to wade through, and it's prolly a combination of my tv tastes evolving a bit and the show really piling it on, but now and then i'm embarrassed to be watching.
some of my specific complaints so far:
--"Project DNA"... that is the lamest fucking thing i have ever heard of in my life. it stands for "Do Not Assume" and i'm only *assuming* the crack BB staff took 3 whole minutes coming up with that little gem.
--"the twists"... the DNA comes from the fact that a couple of the houseguests were unknowingly related and several of the houseguests have identical twins. see below:
--"two housemates related"... god, are you serious? this was so goddamn stupid, man. i feel bad for them that they had to find out that way, and it's a stupid idea for a twist, really. i think putting people together on a tv show like that is just starting to fuck with people's lives just for higher ratings, which comes across as utterly lame.
--"the identical twin theme"... either 3 or 4 of the hamsters have identical twins, and according to what CBS has aired so far, at least one set is going in and out of the house without telling the other housemates that they're 2 different people. as goofy as it is i've now known of a whole slew of big brother setups from 3 different countries, and this has to be the most unfair setup i've ever heard of. i dunno where they send the other twin when the other is in the house, but whatever they're doing they shouldn't be allowed to win the fuckin game that way. from what i've read online people are hating this idea a helluva lot more than liking it, that's for sure. zing on another whiff, CBS/endemol.
--"the lamest cast yet"... unless i just haven't warmed up to them or something, this has gotta be the worst damn cast yet selected for the show. they're really getting pretty stereotypical with their selections and it's hurting the entertainment value of the show. my brief opinion of each:
jase -- give me a goddamn break. he's listed as a "volunteer firefighter" which means he doesn't actually have a job, and you can kinda see why when he opens his mouth. i dunno if i can even say he's a good lookin guy or whatever, he's got semi-cool hair but is a complete dick in the house. the guy never puts a fuckin shirt on, and lauren was right on the money when she said his chest was as smooth as her ass. he's completely full of himself and he'll be long gone halfway through the show.
scott -- just as bad as jase really, only that he didn't win the first HoH and thus comes across as less of a dick. then he won PoV though, and he's almost just as bad. he's a little more rational than jase and not quite as surly, but i still hope the asshole's gone in a few weeks. and while i'm on it, soul patches suck. either grow something or don't, you pussy.
michael aka "cowboy" -- overall not really a bad guy but it's so damn hard to take him seriously. like i said i feel bad for him that he learned he had a half-sister in the house like that, but the guy's mostly a joke. why do they always have to have some idiot from oklahoma? i don't really have any friends from OK, and i'm sorry if i offend anybody from there, but why the fuck do you all come across as such goddamn morons? hell i'm from texas, i thought that was supposed to be our job to come across as half-wits. but somehow the accents are twice as thick up there then they are down here. for future reference BB, pick somebody from another state. any other one.
mike -- he'll be evicted the first week, for being "the don." yeah, which is crap. unfortunately he seems like he'd be somewhat entertaining due to his extreme political views and representing the older crowd in the house, but no point in waxing it, he'll be gone tomorrow i'm betting.
jennifer aka "nakomis" -- yeah, you're a fuckin joke. too bad for alayna she's from san antonio, yeesh. it'd be one thing if she had weird tattoos and freaky hair but was kinda cute and quirky, but yeah she's not. she's not interesting at all and i think she was only brought in just cuz of the twist i mentioned above. i'm sorry, but i wouldn't fuckin call her by that indian voodoo name she likes to be called or whatever.
holly -- yeah, one of the worst BB selections i've ever seen. i could justify it more if she had a bit more sex-on-a-stick appeal to her, but she just doesn't. she has an alright body but if they really wanted guys to fawn over her CBS should have covered some huge fake knockers or something to make up for the idiocy that comes from her mouth. i know she's playing up the ditzy blonde thing but for christ's sake, what a waste of a housemate.
drew -- thus far i really have no other options but to root for drew. he's a bit of a prettyboy and all, but he doesn't really do anything all that awful. he's 22 and just graduated so alayna and i relate to him pretty well... if he makes it more than halfway i think we'll root for him.
adria -- you have a cool name, you do not have a cool ass. i can't believe anyone associates you with fitness, cuz you may have muscle but i know for a fact i would have trouble carrying you over any threshold. your accent (alabama) is just awful and the less you are on my screen the more i love you.
diane -- kinda hot i guess, but she doesn't bring much. as far as i know i wouldn't mind her lasting till the later stages, just as long as she doesn't play up the girls vs guys crap too much.
lori -- she's kinda hot and all (she's basically just a lisa [bb3] or erika [bb4] stand-in. i half no idea why she took the $10k bribe but whatever. can't believe she wasn't nominated for that crap.
karen -- another i wouldn't mind going far in the game, i like how she's somewhat subtle and not all up in our faces.
will -- token gay dude, looks like he came straight off of the set of 'queer as folk' with that hairstyle. not an overly bad guy (especially for a tosser, bunky and marcellus were far more limpwristed) but still annoying enough to not really rally behind, mostly due to that god-awful gay fashion he loves.
marvin -- i still think he's kinda creepy. he's funny in a... black way, i guess? is it wrong that i think he might be a registered sex offender somewhere? and what kinda mortician wears a spiked necklace? you're in your mid fuckin 30's man, lose that shit.
--"our fair hostess"... oh, julie, what have you done? alayna calls her the lollipop, which is pretty accurate. i find it difficult to take the woman seriously. i dunno if she picks her own clothes for the show but she has worse style than will does. after watching BB4 australia i realize what a host should be, and she ain't it.
don't get me wrong, if i really think the show is all that awful, i wouldn't watch it, believe me. the biggest part i like about it is that alayna, lauren, my mother and myself all watch it religiously, which makes for something good to talk about for a while. at this point i think it's a complete guilty pleasure... nothing on it is genius, i watch shit like arrested development or the office for that kind of brilliance. we'll get through the season, don't worry. unless everybody else loses interest, that's when i say fuck it and give up on our old summer mainstay.
amazing race is awesome though, i look forward to that more actually. i won't go all into it like BB, but it's really easy to watch. the characters are interesting and aren't on screen long enough to really bug you, and the challenges are clever and well thought-out. tuesday nights this summer rock, yo.
so this is pretty much the downtime before alayna moves to her apartment up here next weekend. we'll prolly end up pretty busy getting her settled and all that, but it's well worth it to get her up here.
work's been a lot more slow than busy lately, which kinda sucks. the days have been going by semi-slow, so i know i'll be happy when the week's over. if things are slow enough in a week or so i'll blow a few days of PTO to help alayna out with her place instead i guess.
we actually made time last weekend to hit up kathryn's surprise birthday party. i can't really tell if she wanted one thrown for her or not, but she's pretty good at not showing that to anybody. thank god she just left for a trip to the bahamas so we don't have to keep hearing about her goddamn birthday, heheh.
guess that sums up enough for now, eh?
till next time,
justin
Monday, July 05, 2004
another 4th done with, this one was as good as most. first time i've ever actually stood between 2 firework shows simultaneously, so that was the cool part. still scratchin the damn mosquito bites, though.
friday night was kathryn's housewarming party, which in some ways was awesome, just that we stayed prolly longer than we should've. she has a ridiculously nice house for an almost-26 year old, and they had plenty of booze to pick from. a single guy certainly would've enjoyed the eye candy there. hell, i guess a single girl would have too. fuckin meat market in there. it was a lot different than we expected though (i took alayna) in that not that many people showed up from work (couldn't have been any more than a dozen) although a good 40+ were invited from work, so i was a little surprised by that. once it got past 11, midnight though things just totally changed, not completely for the worse or anything but it just completely changed into a rowdy college party. hell those are fun too, just that i didn't really see that coming. kat's friends from florida all came in town for it and they get pretty damn rowdy after enough booze, so we got to the point where we just sorta felt like we didn't really fit in anymore (after a while all we really knew was kat). but it was mostly cool, alayna and kat finally met after many failed attempts and luckily they liked each other. the highlight of the night was kat and laynie salsa dancing on the hardwood floor in the kitchen. i'd easily say that was sex-on-a-stick, heh. we'll hafta see if their desire to go salsa dancing sometime actually comes to fruition. it was a well executed party though, good drinks and food and pretty much everybody i talked to threw out good vibes. i'll be surprised if kat remembers most of it though, heh. and props to alayna for throwing back so many jello shots and not being a pussy with the brew.
at least the gamecube's gettin plenty of love lately. a few weekends now lauren, alayna, sometimes zach, and i break out the mario kart shine thief battle mode and consume the obligatory liquor simultaenously. if people weren't driving afterwards you could easily make a drinking game out of that one, heh. due to how long we can play it straight i'd say it wins as far as everybody's favorite party game, at least from my selection. luckily lauren picked it up today for her cube too, which can only encourage yet more 150cc mirror mode racing and shine thief madness. mario golf has proven pretty damn fun by myself, but thus far nobody really all too interested in playing tournaments with me that much, mostly just cuz mario kart is more engaging. alayna and i have played a lot of SSX3 lately, which is just as fun as tricky. it's pretty hard and a little frustrating (at least in my opinion) but pretty fun, and it's always good when she takes some interest in a game. at least for now i'm not really in the market for any more games, i've got enough to keep me busy for now and everybody seems to request cube playin when they're here.
i'm still at a crossroads on my portable music solution really. the Hi-MD units keep getting pushed further and further back, latest i've heard is late july for the top-end portables to street stateside. i'm still in the air on whether i even wanna go that route, i dunno yet. still semi depends on how much car support sony shows for their newest minidisc shit. sony also just announced their NW-HD1 which is a good idea and quite sexy, but executed all wrong. just doesn't have native mp3 support, only plays ATRAC encoded files and that's just wrong man. hell i've grown up on ATRAC with all my MD fetish, but asking someone to convert all their CDs/mp3s to ATRAC to use the unit is ridiculous. it's awesome how small it is for having 20gb, and it's got better battery life than the iPod (which is the biggest thing holding me back from getting one hands-down) but the mp3 incompatibility is insane for a digital music player.
for now me broadcasting my own shoutcast station to listen to at work (alayna does as well) has worked pretty well. it's a 5 minutes pain to queue it up in the mornings, but i'm working on trying to get it somewhat automated or remotely accessible (through the tricky proxies/firewalls at work). i feel like i still need a good portable unit tho, partly for travel and just general use here and there. might still go for the Hi-MD, but i don't know yet.
other than that, business as usual at home. roughly a week behind in big brother 4 australia, but it's still holding my interest pretty well. only problem is i'll prolly fall behind a bit since BB5US is starting tomorrow, along with amazing race 5. i've watched all those good girls don't episodes, which is hot and cold. have one episode left in coupling season 4, watched a few season 3 eps but then tivo'd dumped the rest when they expired and i forgot to keep 'em. so i need to get coupling season 3 and both seasons of the office on dvd soon anyway. just picked up reno 911! season 1 the other day, that was eagerly awaited.
but eh, should be a decent week with only 4 days of work. alayna will actually be back friday (3rd straight weekend, heh... free tickets, goddammit!) and we'll prolly go apartment hunting to see if we end up getting her her own place up here or not. she actually got her internship with richardson just today, so we haven't even fully digested the good news yet.
--the damaja
friday night was kathryn's housewarming party, which in some ways was awesome, just that we stayed prolly longer than we should've. she has a ridiculously nice house for an almost-26 year old, and they had plenty of booze to pick from. a single guy certainly would've enjoyed the eye candy there. hell, i guess a single girl would have too. fuckin meat market in there. it was a lot different than we expected though (i took alayna) in that not that many people showed up from work (couldn't have been any more than a dozen) although a good 40+ were invited from work, so i was a little surprised by that. once it got past 11, midnight though things just totally changed, not completely for the worse or anything but it just completely changed into a rowdy college party. hell those are fun too, just that i didn't really see that coming. kat's friends from florida all came in town for it and they get pretty damn rowdy after enough booze, so we got to the point where we just sorta felt like we didn't really fit in anymore (after a while all we really knew was kat). but it was mostly cool, alayna and kat finally met after many failed attempts and luckily they liked each other. the highlight of the night was kat and laynie salsa dancing on the hardwood floor in the kitchen. i'd easily say that was sex-on-a-stick, heh. we'll hafta see if their desire to go salsa dancing sometime actually comes to fruition. it was a well executed party though, good drinks and food and pretty much everybody i talked to threw out good vibes. i'll be surprised if kat remembers most of it though, heh. and props to alayna for throwing back so many jello shots and not being a pussy with the brew.
at least the gamecube's gettin plenty of love lately. a few weekends now lauren, alayna, sometimes zach, and i break out the mario kart shine thief battle mode and consume the obligatory liquor simultaenously. if people weren't driving afterwards you could easily make a drinking game out of that one, heh. due to how long we can play it straight i'd say it wins as far as everybody's favorite party game, at least from my selection. luckily lauren picked it up today for her cube too, which can only encourage yet more 150cc mirror mode racing and shine thief madness. mario golf has proven pretty damn fun by myself, but thus far nobody really all too interested in playing tournaments with me that much, mostly just cuz mario kart is more engaging. alayna and i have played a lot of SSX3 lately, which is just as fun as tricky. it's pretty hard and a little frustrating (at least in my opinion) but pretty fun, and it's always good when she takes some interest in a game. at least for now i'm not really in the market for any more games, i've got enough to keep me busy for now and everybody seems to request cube playin when they're here.
i'm still at a crossroads on my portable music solution really. the Hi-MD units keep getting pushed further and further back, latest i've heard is late july for the top-end portables to street stateside. i'm still in the air on whether i even wanna go that route, i dunno yet. still semi depends on how much car support sony shows for their newest minidisc shit. sony also just announced their NW-HD1 which is a good idea and quite sexy, but executed all wrong. just doesn't have native mp3 support, only plays ATRAC encoded files and that's just wrong man. hell i've grown up on ATRAC with all my MD fetish, but asking someone to convert all their CDs/mp3s to ATRAC to use the unit is ridiculous. it's awesome how small it is for having 20gb, and it's got better battery life than the iPod (which is the biggest thing holding me back from getting one hands-down) but the mp3 incompatibility is insane for a digital music player.
for now me broadcasting my own shoutcast station to listen to at work (alayna does as well) has worked pretty well. it's a 5 minutes pain to queue it up in the mornings, but i'm working on trying to get it somewhat automated or remotely accessible (through the tricky proxies/firewalls at work). i feel like i still need a good portable unit tho, partly for travel and just general use here and there. might still go for the Hi-MD, but i don't know yet.
other than that, business as usual at home. roughly a week behind in big brother 4 australia, but it's still holding my interest pretty well. only problem is i'll prolly fall behind a bit since BB5US is starting tomorrow, along with amazing race 5. i've watched all those good girls don't episodes, which is hot and cold. have one episode left in coupling season 4, watched a few season 3 eps but then tivo'd dumped the rest when they expired and i forgot to keep 'em. so i need to get coupling season 3 and both seasons of the office on dvd soon anyway. just picked up reno 911! season 1 the other day, that was eagerly awaited.
but eh, should be a decent week with only 4 days of work. alayna will actually be back friday (3rd straight weekend, heh... free tickets, goddammit!) and we'll prolly go apartment hunting to see if we end up getting her her own place up here or not. she actually got her internship with richardson just today, so we haven't even fully digested the good news yet.
--the damaja
Sunday, June 27, 2004
well... at least in the blog world here, everybody really seems to be in their own zone lately. alayna doesn't post too often anymore, lauren hasn't posted in a month, hoang posts every few weeks when he starts to feel guilty, and i don't seem to put any effort into my notoriously long posts anymore, not to mention countless other examples of tumbleweeds blowin by on other blogs i occasionally check.
i think that's prolly to be expected though. i'm not sure yet if everyone will suddenly come back and we'll see a surge of posts or if it's yet another trend that's slowly dying.
i can't speak for everyone else but for whatever reason since i graduated about 6 weeks ago even though i've had a lot going on i haven't particularly wanted to bitch and moan about much of it. luckily most of what has gone on has been pretty positive so i really don't have that much to even get on and just incessantly whine about. but like i said i think everybody's just really in their own zone and this just isn't the time of year to be posting everyday i'd imagine.
in those 6 weeks since graduation it really has been just a ridiculously busy time, and it's only now getting to the point where things are sorta settling in and there's not so many things i've gotta get done every minute of the day. moving to my new apartment here in dallas was obviously a way bigger deal than just moving between college and home like i had gotten so used to. i won't say it really took any more time than i thought it would, but it really was such an exhaustive process that took a lot of patience. i've still got minor chores still to do here and there to really get the place 100% lived-in, but for the most part it easily passes as my home.
living alone has been pretty good so far, haven't really missed my old house or being down at college station much. it's nice to not have a roommate, i'm sure you remember all my bitches about my last one, if not, check my archives. it's a completely different dynamic to just live on your own and do everything by your own rules. i haven't really been *too* lonely so far or anything, like i had told a lot of people in my senior year, i really have enough stuff queued up over the past few months/years to keep me entertained for quite some time, which i actually proved for a couple weeks in may without a tv, phone, internet, etc at times.
work is obviously mostly what my life entails these days. expectedly so i was pretty bored at first and everybody around me knew it, but now i'm settling more into the role they've given me which for the most part has kept me pretty busy, which i prefer over being bored and dreading coming to work everyday. i've worked a couple 9 and 10 hour days, so while those can kinda drain you they really do help as far as cutting down your hours the rest of the week. i've gotta hit 8am meetings monday through friday, so that's pretty much the motivating factor that helps me get there at 7:45 usually. so yeah it sucks i gotta wake up for those but it's not so bad once 4pm rolls around and you're free to go home if you want. 3 days a week i work out at the gym up there, which is obviously a puppy compared to the behemoth that is the texas a&m student recreation center, but eh it's got enough to allow you to make you good and sore.
it really is hard though when you leave for work at 7:30am and after working and then lifting weights, you find yourself getting home sometimes a good 12 hours later. i mean i expected it and everything and it's nothing to really bitch about, it's just unfortunate that yeah it doesn't exactly leave you that much time for other things you might wanna do. i've had to grow up obviously, i run my own ship here, nobody's gonna cook dinner for me or do my laundry. so i usually have to combine chores like those with a few things i like to do when i've got the time.
not sure whether i need an excuse or not, but that's pretty much my excuse for my relative disappearing acts on both this blog and on AIM. i had wondered in that last semester how much i'd use AIM after i graduated and joined the real world and now i kinda have a good feel for how much and when i like to use it. i leave it on a lot at work cuz alayna and i can make good use of it if we're not both swamped with work and i don't mind trading a few messages with anybody that needs a few minutes of my time online. at night though, at home, it's a bit harder to motivate myself to have AIM running even half as much as i did all throughout college. for one thing, my XP box has some sorta issue where it just cannot run AIM without disconnecting then reconnecting at least a couple times an hour. i have no idea what that is, i'm sorta the master at troubleshooting shit computer problems, but i don't have the motivation to really probe that one quite yet, so a lot of times i drop too many messages and get too many disconnects that i elect to just leave it off. combining with sorta this down season in everyone posting on their blogs, it's the same kinda vibe for instant messaging. i'm still pretty fresh outta school where it at times really was a way of life for a lot of us, but i have yet to find anybody up at work that gives me some silly AIM s/n to contact them away from work, heh. i won't bash it cuz it's really been the communication crutch i've leaned on for a good 4 years, but i'm not totally sure people out in the real world (post 22 years old) really rely on it all that much.
plus these days there really aren't that many people that i seem to chat with online anymore. everybody you know really starts to take on a certain vibe online after a while that's easily predictable. as far as a few of the people i talk to the most online, it's like alayna just gives me random tidbits at night that we both feel is a bit of a waste given that we'd rather just wait till 9pm and use free cell minutes instead, with lauren i've talked to her on & off throughout the day so we don't really even have that much left to say anyway, and mostly with hoang and rick it's either random links, tech-related geekspeak or troubleshooting questions. i don't really have a problem with any of those and i've grown pretty used to it, it's just after a while you start to feel like you're only getting online just so people see you're there, not really to purposely talk to anybody in particular.
hell, i see the value of instant messaging more than most people, but admittedly there are actually times where i'd really just rather trade a few emails. that would work fine in theory, but let's all just admit it -- it's easier to put off emailing somebody than to just respond right away to an IM that popped up on your desktop. i'm as bad as anybody else really, i get an email from a friend or something and often don't respond for days, if anything just to make sure i don't look too needy. but you've heard me bitch on here countless times at how flawed today's email system is and i haven't changed my opinion. just like ~6-9 months ago when i started to have problems emailing people and getting nothing in return, the same thing continues to happen, albeit less frequently mostly due to the fact that i'm too busy to spend all my time sending out random emails to people asking how they're doing. basically from now on though i'm taking everything like that with a grain of salt and just saying, hey if somebody doesn't get back to me within a reasonable amount of time, it's time to take them out of my list of contacts on the cell/pda/outlook, simple as that.
all in all, i'd prolly say (although not entirely hands down) life is better than it was senior year. i miss a lot of the ability to be a kid back then, but a lot of other things have improved in the meantime. alayna and i have coped really well with being separated 300 miles apart and things are as good as they've ever been, just had some minor bickerings on the phone that get cleared up pretty quickly. plus we've had some setbacks with getting her up here as smoothly as we wanted, but she'll most likely still get up here in the fall, although we don't know yet if she'll live with me or not. i came back into the same general group up at work, and the transition back to the working world couldn't have been much easier. i've got a huge unfair new college hire advantage in that i know about 10x more people than the average newbie would and i've really fit in much easier than they would since i've been working there since '01. it's nice to be seen as an equal (at least by fellow software engineers) instead of the collegeboy co-op that i had been before.
it'll take some time before i get a really good feeling about friends and stuff up here though. i've still got contacts from both high school and college that still work pretty well but for the most part i assume i'll meet the bulk of my friends through work. so far it's been pretty good as far as other young people i can connect with up there, mostly with guys i knew as co-ops. at least so far i'm not really all that interested with hanging out with a bunch of thirty and forty somethings from work. nothing against them, it's just that lack of common mindset and maturity that i'm not really interested in. but like i said i've been around the company for a while and i'm constantly running into a lot of cool twenty somethings. my buddy from last year, kathryn, she's still in the same group and we're still pretty tight friends. she's kinda on that outer threshold where we get along pretty well but if she were any more mature or settled we prolly wouldn't have anything in common to joke around about or anything. i can't really determine that on age, but she's almost 26 (3 and a half years older than me) and she's dating a guy that's 30, so for some reason at times i question how well we can actually hang out together successfully and stuff. it's funny though that occasionally she has to play the role of standard co-worker to me like when we're trying to solve some software-something-or-other together and we have to be all serious and shit. it's like i can barely take her seriously, heheh. she's just one of those people that i consider her much more my friend than my co-worker, which can at times make things a bit awkward in the office. i think that just shows you that you've reached a point where you're better at having a deep conversation over a coffee than actually working together.
as far as this weekend, alayna got a surprise hook-up standby ticket here which somehow we lucked out and her flights in and out worked perfectly. we had a great weekend though, used some coupons and certificates and shit to eat out and stuff on the cheap. we checked out the terminal saturday cuz we both thought that looked interested. we were... sorta right, it was... kinda interesting. i walked away from it thinking my parents would have liked it, heh. i dunno, it had funny parts and for the most part it didn't *entirely* drag on, but eh, nothing was really groundbreaking in it. i mostly thought it was a cool plot/scenario that wasn't really done the right way. kinda one of those films where if some trendy up and comer had directed it in some new-age risky way it would have been more interesting than the way spielberg did it. and like the whole thing with zeta jones... wtf for? she didn't really add anything to the movie and nothing in her role was really realistic at all, at least from what i know about pretty flight attendants. hanks did a fine job and all with the foreigner routine, but nothing in the movie was just really all that moving i guess. after walking out alayna gave it a 6/10 and i said 6.5/10. IMDb says 7.2, but i think that's a little bit of skew from people generally loving hanks' movies maybe. saturday night we ended up having lauren and zach over for a while to eat, play gamecube and make use of the foosball table some. it was pretty fun for the most part, the 4 player mario kart battles felt just like old. today was mostly just a mellow day for the two of us where we stayed in all day and even fell asleep on the couch together in the afternoon, a bit of a rarity.
we did watch the triplets of belleville today though. we both thought it was weird, but kinda fresh and new and at only 80 minutes not really a waste of time or anything. it was just cool old-style 2D animation, and the fact that it was 95% silent with only bits of french (no subtitles) in there was kinda cool. some of the animation was very well done, i was kinda more interested in the visual than the somewhow weird wandering slow plot. i'd recommend you check it out if only to just appreciate some oft-forgotten 2D goodness.
not really sure why but i've got some high hopes for this week. alayna will be back on friday (a planned flight this time, in for the 4th) and we know we've got kathryn's housewarming party to hit friday night. plus we'll do something for the 4th, just not sure what yet. this week i've gotta get caught up on the last ~10 days of big brother 4 australia, been missing out due to being maxed out on newsgroup quota and the aussie that was torrenting it decided not to bother anymore. i see that the harry potter and van helsing telecine DVD-R torrents are out there, so i might check those out.
so i guess until next time... ;)
--justin
i think that's prolly to be expected though. i'm not sure yet if everyone will suddenly come back and we'll see a surge of posts or if it's yet another trend that's slowly dying.
i can't speak for everyone else but for whatever reason since i graduated about 6 weeks ago even though i've had a lot going on i haven't particularly wanted to bitch and moan about much of it. luckily most of what has gone on has been pretty positive so i really don't have that much to even get on and just incessantly whine about. but like i said i think everybody's just really in their own zone and this just isn't the time of year to be posting everyday i'd imagine.
in those 6 weeks since graduation it really has been just a ridiculously busy time, and it's only now getting to the point where things are sorta settling in and there's not so many things i've gotta get done every minute of the day. moving to my new apartment here in dallas was obviously a way bigger deal than just moving between college and home like i had gotten so used to. i won't say it really took any more time than i thought it would, but it really was such an exhaustive process that took a lot of patience. i've still got minor chores still to do here and there to really get the place 100% lived-in, but for the most part it easily passes as my home.
living alone has been pretty good so far, haven't really missed my old house or being down at college station much. it's nice to not have a roommate, i'm sure you remember all my bitches about my last one, if not, check my archives. it's a completely different dynamic to just live on your own and do everything by your own rules. i haven't really been *too* lonely so far or anything, like i had told a lot of people in my senior year, i really have enough stuff queued up over the past few months/years to keep me entertained for quite some time, which i actually proved for a couple weeks in may without a tv, phone, internet, etc at times.
work is obviously mostly what my life entails these days. expectedly so i was pretty bored at first and everybody around me knew it, but now i'm settling more into the role they've given me which for the most part has kept me pretty busy, which i prefer over being bored and dreading coming to work everyday. i've worked a couple 9 and 10 hour days, so while those can kinda drain you they really do help as far as cutting down your hours the rest of the week. i've gotta hit 8am meetings monday through friday, so that's pretty much the motivating factor that helps me get there at 7:45 usually. so yeah it sucks i gotta wake up for those but it's not so bad once 4pm rolls around and you're free to go home if you want. 3 days a week i work out at the gym up there, which is obviously a puppy compared to the behemoth that is the texas a&m student recreation center, but eh it's got enough to allow you to make you good and sore.
it really is hard though when you leave for work at 7:30am and after working and then lifting weights, you find yourself getting home sometimes a good 12 hours later. i mean i expected it and everything and it's nothing to really bitch about, it's just unfortunate that yeah it doesn't exactly leave you that much time for other things you might wanna do. i've had to grow up obviously, i run my own ship here, nobody's gonna cook dinner for me or do my laundry. so i usually have to combine chores like those with a few things i like to do when i've got the time.
not sure whether i need an excuse or not, but that's pretty much my excuse for my relative disappearing acts on both this blog and on AIM. i had wondered in that last semester how much i'd use AIM after i graduated and joined the real world and now i kinda have a good feel for how much and when i like to use it. i leave it on a lot at work cuz alayna and i can make good use of it if we're not both swamped with work and i don't mind trading a few messages with anybody that needs a few minutes of my time online. at night though, at home, it's a bit harder to motivate myself to have AIM running even half as much as i did all throughout college. for one thing, my XP box has some sorta issue where it just cannot run AIM without disconnecting then reconnecting at least a couple times an hour. i have no idea what that is, i'm sorta the master at troubleshooting shit computer problems, but i don't have the motivation to really probe that one quite yet, so a lot of times i drop too many messages and get too many disconnects that i elect to just leave it off. combining with sorta this down season in everyone posting on their blogs, it's the same kinda vibe for instant messaging. i'm still pretty fresh outta school where it at times really was a way of life for a lot of us, but i have yet to find anybody up at work that gives me some silly AIM s/n to contact them away from work, heh. i won't bash it cuz it's really been the communication crutch i've leaned on for a good 4 years, but i'm not totally sure people out in the real world (post 22 years old) really rely on it all that much.
plus these days there really aren't that many people that i seem to chat with online anymore. everybody you know really starts to take on a certain vibe online after a while that's easily predictable. as far as a few of the people i talk to the most online, it's like alayna just gives me random tidbits at night that we both feel is a bit of a waste given that we'd rather just wait till 9pm and use free cell minutes instead, with lauren i've talked to her on & off throughout the day so we don't really even have that much left to say anyway, and mostly with hoang and rick it's either random links, tech-related geekspeak or troubleshooting questions. i don't really have a problem with any of those and i've grown pretty used to it, it's just after a while you start to feel like you're only getting online just so people see you're there, not really to purposely talk to anybody in particular.
hell, i see the value of instant messaging more than most people, but admittedly there are actually times where i'd really just rather trade a few emails. that would work fine in theory, but let's all just admit it -- it's easier to put off emailing somebody than to just respond right away to an IM that popped up on your desktop. i'm as bad as anybody else really, i get an email from a friend or something and often don't respond for days, if anything just to make sure i don't look too needy. but you've heard me bitch on here countless times at how flawed today's email system is and i haven't changed my opinion. just like ~6-9 months ago when i started to have problems emailing people and getting nothing in return, the same thing continues to happen, albeit less frequently mostly due to the fact that i'm too busy to spend all my time sending out random emails to people asking how they're doing. basically from now on though i'm taking everything like that with a grain of salt and just saying, hey if somebody doesn't get back to me within a reasonable amount of time, it's time to take them out of my list of contacts on the cell/pda/outlook, simple as that.
all in all, i'd prolly say (although not entirely hands down) life is better than it was senior year. i miss a lot of the ability to be a kid back then, but a lot of other things have improved in the meantime. alayna and i have coped really well with being separated 300 miles apart and things are as good as they've ever been, just had some minor bickerings on the phone that get cleared up pretty quickly. plus we've had some setbacks with getting her up here as smoothly as we wanted, but she'll most likely still get up here in the fall, although we don't know yet if she'll live with me or not. i came back into the same general group up at work, and the transition back to the working world couldn't have been much easier. i've got a huge unfair new college hire advantage in that i know about 10x more people than the average newbie would and i've really fit in much easier than they would since i've been working there since '01. it's nice to be seen as an equal (at least by fellow software engineers) instead of the collegeboy co-op that i had been before.
it'll take some time before i get a really good feeling about friends and stuff up here though. i've still got contacts from both high school and college that still work pretty well but for the most part i assume i'll meet the bulk of my friends through work. so far it's been pretty good as far as other young people i can connect with up there, mostly with guys i knew as co-ops. at least so far i'm not really all that interested with hanging out with a bunch of thirty and forty somethings from work. nothing against them, it's just that lack of common mindset and maturity that i'm not really interested in. but like i said i've been around the company for a while and i'm constantly running into a lot of cool twenty somethings. my buddy from last year, kathryn, she's still in the same group and we're still pretty tight friends. she's kinda on that outer threshold where we get along pretty well but if she were any more mature or settled we prolly wouldn't have anything in common to joke around about or anything. i can't really determine that on age, but she's almost 26 (3 and a half years older than me) and she's dating a guy that's 30, so for some reason at times i question how well we can actually hang out together successfully and stuff. it's funny though that occasionally she has to play the role of standard co-worker to me like when we're trying to solve some software-something-or-other together and we have to be all serious and shit. it's like i can barely take her seriously, heheh. she's just one of those people that i consider her much more my friend than my co-worker, which can at times make things a bit awkward in the office. i think that just shows you that you've reached a point where you're better at having a deep conversation over a coffee than actually working together.
as far as this weekend, alayna got a surprise hook-up standby ticket here which somehow we lucked out and her flights in and out worked perfectly. we had a great weekend though, used some coupons and certificates and shit to eat out and stuff on the cheap. we checked out the terminal saturday cuz we both thought that looked interested. we were... sorta right, it was... kinda interesting. i walked away from it thinking my parents would have liked it, heh. i dunno, it had funny parts and for the most part it didn't *entirely* drag on, but eh, nothing was really groundbreaking in it. i mostly thought it was a cool plot/scenario that wasn't really done the right way. kinda one of those films where if some trendy up and comer had directed it in some new-age risky way it would have been more interesting than the way spielberg did it. and like the whole thing with zeta jones... wtf for? she didn't really add anything to the movie and nothing in her role was really realistic at all, at least from what i know about pretty flight attendants. hanks did a fine job and all with the foreigner routine, but nothing in the movie was just really all that moving i guess. after walking out alayna gave it a 6/10 and i said 6.5/10. IMDb says 7.2, but i think that's a little bit of skew from people generally loving hanks' movies maybe. saturday night we ended up having lauren and zach over for a while to eat, play gamecube and make use of the foosball table some. it was pretty fun for the most part, the 4 player mario kart battles felt just like old. today was mostly just a mellow day for the two of us where we stayed in all day and even fell asleep on the couch together in the afternoon, a bit of a rarity.
we did watch the triplets of belleville today though. we both thought it was weird, but kinda fresh and new and at only 80 minutes not really a waste of time or anything. it was just cool old-style 2D animation, and the fact that it was 95% silent with only bits of french (no subtitles) in there was kinda cool. some of the animation was very well done, i was kinda more interested in the visual than the somewhow weird wandering slow plot. i'd recommend you check it out if only to just appreciate some oft-forgotten 2D goodness.
not really sure why but i've got some high hopes for this week. alayna will be back on friday (a planned flight this time, in for the 4th) and we know we've got kathryn's housewarming party to hit friday night. plus we'll do something for the 4th, just not sure what yet. this week i've gotta get caught up on the last ~10 days of big brother 4 australia, been missing out due to being maxed out on newsgroup quota and the aussie that was torrenting it decided not to bother anymore. i see that the harry potter and van helsing telecine DVD-R torrents are out there, so i might check those out.
so i guess until next time... ;)
--justin
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