A mid-twenties white collar dude’s take on everything
Here’s something pretty cool: www.droogle.ca - it’s Google for drinks! Despite the fact that it comes from Canada, I think it may have some value. Check out the “liquor cabinet”, where you put in what kind of liquor you have and it tells you what to drink. Nice.
On to today’s news:
- Serb Goes Nuts in Tax Office: look, as a tax accountant I don’t claim that my job is the most dangerous in the world, however my collegues in Serbia may disagree.
- Guys like this are why women have to fake it.
- The Sports Guy has a good review of “Wedding Crashers”. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it sounds like I need to…especially with all my friends (and myself) getting married next summer.
- At next summer’s World Cup 2006 in Germany, you will now be able to pursue alternative forms of entertainment.
- Yet another reason to get into podcasting: Family Guy recaps!! Unfortunately they don’t actually have clips from the show. It’s just some dude giving a summary. Let’s hope Fox improves on this.
- In case you haven’t heard about it, some hidden code in the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was recently revealed to include explicit sexual acts between the game’s main character and a woman (thankfully). There has been a huge uproar in general, and even uber-bitch Hillary Clinton has involved herself. The game’s rating has been changed to “Adults Only” and has been pulled from shelves of major retailers across the country whose internal policies prohibit sales of adult titles (e.g., Best Buy, Wal-Mart, et al). That means you can only pick it up in porn shops, pretty much. Well, now the game has been banned throughout the entire country of Austrailia. The argument, of course, is that children shouldn’t be playing games that include depictions of graphic sexual behavior. Do people realize what this game is without the hidden code? You go around and shoot cops, prostitutes, and basically anyone else whom you feel inclined to “cap”. I love this game, but the revelation of the sex stuff shouldn’t change the fact that KIDS SHOULDN’T BE PLAYING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! People are idiots.
- My buddy McDonald turned me on to this site: www.gizoogle.com. Just check it out.
- Does anyone know how far Vienna is from Bulgaria? I’m thinking Austria could soon experience the Irish curse firsthand.
- In Real Madrid news, “el club blanco” has signed Julio Baptista for 5 years. The Brazilian Futbol Federation has blocked the transfer of Robinho from Santos. Perhaps Owen will remain…
- 91% of Americans are oblivious to RSS, yet somehow 13% of them have a vague understanding of what a podcast is. Wake up to the revolution, kids.
- Calling all Muslim Ninjas! Job opportunities abound in Riyadh.
Ok, here’s what’s going on today:
- Apparently there’s new legislation being introduced in New Jersey that would make it illegal to smoke in your car. While I’m opposed to the state of New Jersey in general, this may be the best thing to come out of the state since the Boss.
- This just in: it’s freaking hot here on the east coast. How hot you ask? Well, apparently even skunks are seeking shelter from the heat. A couple months ago a kid who sits behind me at work got sprayed by one of these putrid rodents. It wasn’t good for business. This heat wave has affected me in an unexpected way: apparently when it reaches a certain temperature the cheesesteak cart guys won’t come to work because it gets to be ridiculous in those little tin toasters on wheels. I’ve been forced to consume subpar steaks from the joints in the train station.
- This story about a Brazilian woman shot while attnending her own funeral (think about it) made me think of the classic Seinfeld interchange from the very first episode: “Once you’re dead, you’re dead. If you die and I shoot you, you don’t die again! You can’t over die; you can’t over dry!”
- For our Trinidadian readers, please note: don’t get sick when visiting home.
- MSNBC is now jumping on the podcasting bandwagon. Wave of the future, baby.
- As noted in the previous post, Dave Winer has released his OPML editor. I started playing around with it and have a (completely uninteresting) blog here. This lady has taken it upon herself to dedicate her blog to OPML issues for beginners. Good for people like me.
- In world soccer (futbol) news, Real Madrid has sold Argentine defender Walter Samuel to Inter Milan. Additionally, they are close to closing the deal on Brazilian phenom striker Robinho of Santos. This has caused wide speculation that Michael Owen may be on his way out the door.
- Can you hear me now? This google maps mashup shows where the best cell phone coverage can be found. So please use this and quit whining at me.
Dave Winer just publicly released his OPML editor. I’ve been playing around with it today and it seems pretty cool. I am by no means an expert in this field, but it seems like the OPML file format will have some good uses in the future. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about it to speculate on what those uses will be. One thing is for sure, it makes blogging a whole lot easier. If this editor could somehow be used with Blogger, Moveable Type, or any of the other popular blogging tools, it would make a lot of people’s lives much easier. You can read a short post about it over on the RSS Weblog as well.
British police commited a minor error last Friday when they shot an innocent man 8 times in the head at point blank range. The victim, a Brazilian who’d been in the English capital for the past three years, was an electrician on his way to a work site. It turns out he emerged from a building under surveillance by Scotland Yard, and when followed by police failed to comply with orders to halt. He fled from Police, jumping over subway turnstiles, before he eventually tripped and was killed by gunshots to the head. It’s a shame that this apparently innocent guy was needlessly killed, but when you’re running from (plain-clothed and uniformed) police the day after a second bombing attack in a week, you have to know there’s going to be some repurcussions. I say the cops were doing their job and shouldn’t be held at fault.
For those of you out there that are Family Guy fans (see Rule #1 of this blog), there apparently has been a leak of video and images from the upcoming Family Guy movie. Although it’s not set to release for about two more months, it’s already running rampant out there on the torrent sites. I can’t wait to pick up my copy!
In a feeble attempt to compete with Google, Microsoft recently released “MSN Virtual Earth”. There are a couple of quirks in this mapping site, including the depiction of Apple’s headquarters as nothing but a barren field. On a more sombre note, it appears that Microsoft has seen it fit to include the Twin Towers in their mapping software. I’m sure that Mr. Sensitive, Bill Gates will be apologizing for this snafu before too long.
According to this article, full length advertisements are beginning to appear in videogames. For now they appear on just PC games (not consoles), but you have to think that that day is soon coming. As an avid gamer and hater of mass comercialization, it erks me. I can live with playing FIFA without Hollywood peddling their latest crap at me in a 15 second movie ad.
For those of you Cub fans out there, Kerry Wood is back on the 15 day DL. Not exactly the prototype of a durable starter. Maybe the Cubbies can lure Tom Candiotti out of retirement. He was always good for about 160 pitches a night (although that usually only took him through 4.2 innings).
Michigan fans are classy, but seem to forget we’ve beaten them two out of the last three years.
Today I spent my day off looking at wedding reception sites with my fiance. No comment. Other than that, here’s what’s going on in the world today:
The Notre Dame Rogues Gallery. This is a great post from Blue-Grey Sky. Check it out.
If you’re in to taking your clothes off, check out the Top 10 Nude Beaches in the World. Unfortunately for an unnamed former college roommate, none of these are found in Bulgaria.
Well, even in the middle of July the big news in Philadelphia centers around Eagles football. This week the big scuttlebut revolves around TO’s agent who apparently saved a kid from drowning in a pool in Florida, and then had the audacity to suggest that now the Eagles may see that he’s a “good guy” and be more willing to negotiate a new deal for Mr. Owens. Obviously this has Philadelphians outraged, claiming that the agent probably set up the entire incident as some sort of deranged PR move. Needless to say, if this guy is caught walking down Market Street, he will have the crap beat out of him by everyone from construction workers to lawyers in three-piece suits. I’m not even joking. People here are crazy. No word on how fellow KPMG employee and Eagles cheerleader Caroline feels about the situation.
In a disturbingly tertiary story, at least for residents of the City of Brotherly love, there was another set of explosions in the London Tube yesterday. Apparently this round was far less dangerous and there was only one reported casualty. However, today police chased down a man wearing a large overcoat and shot him to death 5 times in the head as a dazed public looked on in the tube. Wild stuff, but good for the cops if this guy was indeed wired with a bomb as one witness claims.
In technology news, Microsoft today removed the codename “Longhorn” from their next Windows release and applied the title “WindowsVista” to its next operating system. I have no idea how this affects anyone.
Have you ever been to a wedding, had a few too many at the reception, and questioned how you were going to make it home? Apply for a job at Volvo, the “safest” automotive company in the world.
What do the Spanish countryside and New York City bars have in common besides beautiful women? They are both smoke free! This is of course in direct contrast to Indiana bars and countryside that are filled with both smoke and heinous women.
Word on the street is that Bartley Webb, a highly touted offensive line prospect from Arkansas, will commit to Notre Dame when he visits early next month. This is good news since Ty Willingham had recruited roughly 3 offensive lineman during his tenure.
Just when you thought you’d wasted enough time on Google Earth at work, these fine folks go and release Google Moon. Now I can spend half of my afternoon searching for the sea of tranquility. Nice.
If that doesn’t do it for you, check out this Google Maps hack that allows you to map any airport code in the world! PHL and MAD are about 3691 miles apart, in case you were wondering.
Since at this point most of the people reading this blog are people I know, I thought I’d send out a query for a project I want to work on. As some of you may already know, Google Earth is one of the coolest programs ever invented. I’d like to try to make a .kmz file of everyone’s addresses and post it here on the blog. You can see something similar that I did with places in Spain over on my other blog at toledohaluego.blogspot.com. So shoot me an email let me know your address and I’ll get things posted for everyone to check out. So far I only have McDonald/Looe and Colin.
Hope all is well, everyone!
At the moment I am just too stinking tired to write anything about this weekend. Sometimes a picture says a thousand words.
Well, tomorrow I’m off to Chicago to celebrate the wedding of Benjamin Ricke and Amy Gnaster. Ben is best known for the dubious distinction of being Tony “I have a hard time distinguising between video games and reality” Baloney’s freshman year roommate. Amy’s claim to fame is falling out of her loft and breaking her pelvis sophomore year and refusing to just “take two Advil and go back to bed” as her pre-med husband to be advised her.
That’s all fine and dandy, but the big question of the weekend remains: What’s the over/under on the combined number of times that this kid vomits and takes his pants off in a non-sexual encounter this weekend?
I’m thinking +/- 7.
Is it just me, or does Michelle Wie look suspicously like a young, more awkward (if that’s possible) Yao Ming. The girl is like 15 and about 6′1″. 
If Yao weren’t already dating a fellow Chinese giant, they’d be a match made in heaven. Am I allowed to say this? Do you think she’s just going through that early high school awkward phase and will come out the other side looking like a slightly taller Lucy Liu? For the good of the LPGA, let’s should hope so. There are only so many Natalie Gulbis’s out there to keep us entertained. On a side note, is Wie really that relevant that she deserves to be the top headline on ESPN today? Does anyone care? She shot an 84 yesterday, for crying out loud.
Here’s some links for today:
- Advice for St. Mary’s students: move to Berlin, where being a dirty slut ages like fine wine. Do you think Lauren Smith and her feminist pals are reading this? I hope so.
- Working with a bunch of rabid Penn State fans makes this story worthwhile. Otherwise, I don’t really care other than the fact that QB #7 was pretty good for a frosh in NCAA Gamebreakers ‘99 freshman year.
- For those of you living in Chicago, you may want to take a look at this Google Maps hack. No word on how many of these people were wrongly accused by the University of Notre Dame.
- If you don’t believe me that this RSS/Podcast business is going to be huge, take a look at what CBS is planning. And we all know that CBS is the innovative leader of the industry, what with high quality programs like “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” and “How I Met Your Mother”. Although it would be nice if I could get my Letterman fix via podcasts!
- The Irish got a new commit yesterday in Rob Parris, a 6′4″ wide receiver from St. Ignatius in Cleveland. People say he’s sort of a Jeff Samardalkjgakh;o clone. This is big for us not only because he’s a good player, but because Michigan wanted him badly and we got him. That makes 9 commits so far for the Irish.
- The BCS is instituting a new poll. Ho hum. Until they get a playoff system, they can lick my cajones.
- The average person slacks at work at least 2 hours per day. Please don’t inform KPMG of this information. Excuse me, but I’m off to put in my St. Louis transfer request.
- Next time you blow off a cop by telling him you’re God, make sure you have Lyme’s disease first.
- NCAA 2006 is out today! Man, I wish I were still in college. GO ZIPS!
If you don’t find this image reprehensible in some way, you are neither human nor allowed on my blog:
If you don’t think that Seinfeld is the greatest television program in the history of the medium, you are hereby banned from this site. You are NOT welcome to enjoy the cool, evening breezes of this blog.
If you don’t like the Family Guy, you’re either A) A woman, B) Probably going to burn in hell, or C) From Trinidad and Tobago and not named Jean Paul Jean Paul.
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