Personal

If you want the quick answer, skip to the last sentence. Otherwise, read the dramatic tale of my first taste of Coke Zero below.

Tonight, after my quiz in CHEM124, while waiting for the other students to turn in their quiz, I hurried downstairs to grab what I believed to be a delicious Diet Coke.

Diet Coke and Coke Zero bottles look almost identical. They had them both beside each other, and by the time I had selected B7 instead of B5, it was too late. The stupid conveyor belt was rising to collect my coke (as pictured in the evil machine to the right). I tried everything. I pressed “CLR”. I pressed the return change button. I hit the machine. I cursed at the machine. Nothing could undo what I had done.

Stuck with the Coke Zero and crying a small bit inside, I returned dejected to my third floor class. It took a while to muster the courage to try my first sip of Coke Zero. I must say, I was not optimistic about it, because they say it “tastes more like regular Coke”. I HATE regular Coke; it’s the worst drink ever. I took my first sip. Still having Bubble Tape in my mouth, which I’ve previously mentioned is the best gum ever, I couldn’t get an accurate taste test. I took out my gum and tried again. At first I thought, “Not bad. Not as good as Diet Coke, but not as bad as regular Coke”. I was wrong. After my next few sips, I couldn’t help hating myself a little for creating a cost rationale for my continued ingestion of this new substance. I ended up not being able to finish it. Coca-Cola, I want you to know, I now hate you. I’m still addicted to Diet Coke, so you win this round, but seriously, stop making new products. Just stop it.

I hate regular Coke. Coke Zero tastes more like regular Coke.

I turned twenty-three years old on Friday (1/27/2006). I also own at ping pong.

In other news, I now have my own MySpace. You might have noticed it linked on the right hand side over there. You didn’t? Have a look now.

Yes, my MySpace has a song playing in the background. You know why? There are three possible reasons:

1. You aren’t logged in and you should so so. If you don’t have an account, create one.
2. You are logged in and you haven’t turned off automatic music playing. You suck.
3. You like music playing in the background of your pages. What’s wrong with you?

I decided to do so after being pressured by a few friends. I said I’d never do it. I said I’d never do it over and over and over. I hated seeing the epileptic shock-inducing horror of some people’s pages.

But I have several rational friends who are on MySpace. And, Mayor Keith Hightower is on MySpace. None of those profiles suck. I figured if they can make non-sucky profiles and connect with friends, so can I.

… Plus I can’t look at people’s pictures unless I’m logged in.

I still like Facebook way better, but MySpace does allow customization, which is both good for people like me, and bad for people like me who have to look at the previously mentioned horrible profiles. MySpace also has the whole band thing going on that I’m getting into, and there are way more people on it.

Now I’ve just got to make my roommate Courtney make a profile. He claims he’ll die first.

I never thought I’d have a MySpace, but now I do. Take a gander at my MySpace profile. Happy birthday to me.

PS – Mike Wiggins now has a blog. Congratulations are now in order.

I died a little inside.For the rest of this post, “Today” and “Tonight” refer to yesterday, since it’s about 1AM, but I consider it part of the same day since I haven’t gone to sleep yet. Since that’s out of the way…

I just got back from seeing Underworld: Evolution. Today was Matt Smith‘s birthday, and he wanted to see Kate Beckinsale jump around in a tight leather suit as a vampire. I can’t blame him for that; in fact, that was the movie’s only saving grace. I can, however, blame him for liking the movie for its substance, also.

This movie was absolutely horrible. The entire movie reminded me of Doom 3. You could hardly see anything because it’s all at night. Oh no! If vampires get in the sun, their knuckles get temporarily uncomfortably warm. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, don’t.

The theater was the largest I’ve ever been in, and must be the largest they have at the Boardwalk Regal Cinema here. It was totally full, and it also reminded me why I watch DVDs instead of going to the theater. During one point some guy (I don’t know who. The movie sucked.) was like “What keys? I know nothing about any keys”. The guy asking him had wings that had some spike thing on each side. I’ll call him “Spike”. I’ll call the guy who said he didn’t know anything about keys “Loser”. Spike grabbed Loser by his shoulders using his spikes and drug Loser toward him across the table. Spike glared at Loser as though he had just sat through a boring movie. Replying to this body language Loser said, “Oh, those keys”. About 90% of the theater cracked up as though that was the most hilarious thing they’d heard. I sighed audibly.

At the end of the “fight” sequence, which consisted mostly of vampire machine guns with “UV rounds”, the bad guy (I guess) gets vanquished predictably, and again about 90% of the theater cheers. I think one can apply John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory to this situation. Get a big enough room, jam a bunch of people into it, make them watch a crappy movie together, and see how they react. They acted like it was a Roman gladiator battle in which they were personally involved. Enough about the audience, back to the movie.

The movie was so boring the first few minutes through that I decided to fish out my bubble gum and start chewing it. “Surely that will pass the time”, I said to myself. As I began to chew it, I remarked to myself, “Wow, this is really good bubble gum”. Bubble Tape is the superior bubble gum, after all. While chewing it and staring at the screen, I began to blow bubbles. I kept thinking about the gum, because there was no discernable plot, except the following: vampires hate werewolfs. They like to fight each other. You are seeing the viewpoint of one of the vampires.

I kept thinking to myself random bubble gum related thoughts such as “Wow, I wonder how long this flavor will last” and “I hope the elasticity holds until the end of this movie” and “I wonder if I popped this bubble really loudly if the rest of the theater would notice during this ‘fight scene’ and of course “Should I get another piece or will this hopefully be over soon? I don’t want to waste another piece on this movie”.

In conclusion, if you want a dark place to ponder the merits of chewing bubble gum, go see Underworld: Evolution. If you’re all out of bubble gum, keep your $7.50.

Meefaw Inc. Volume 3The future is now; it’s 2006. I had lots of fun last night and didn’t wake up today until about 2:30pm. I didn’t get to go to sleep until about 6:30am. More on that later. Josh finished editing on Meefaw Volume 3 while ago, but it’s finally all online in its full glory. I did a lot of last minute work to get it online so Josh and I could “announce” it at the New Year’s party at Joey’s house. It turned out that I didn’t know most of the people at Joey’s house, so it was more of a personal announcement to each of the people who would care. 🙂 I did meet a guy who looks just like the Numa Numa guy.

Fun With FireworksThen we got to pop a bunch of fireworks, hang out, play ping pong, and play poker. I didn’t play poker, because I don’t like losing money and because I didn’t really understand how to play what they were playing (Texas Hold ’em ?). I did meet a bunch of cool, new people. Having fun guy one? The most fun in the world.

We then went to IHOP to eat, around 3 or so, I don’t really remember when we go there or left. We had an old waitress who was incredibly mean, and who is apparently a stripper. You might think that sounds cool, but I assure you it is not. She was really old; I’m talking Medicare old. Nasty! After we got done eating and talking and getting insulted by the elderly stripper waitress, we paid our bills and left. I was to take Cody, Joey’s half brother, home since he lived near me, but I had to stop for gas first at the RaceTrac by the 3132 entrance on Bert Kouns.

Map of What Happened (Thanks Google)While I was starting to pump gas, Cody witnessed an Escalade go around the corner quickly to get on 3132 and the back end slid out from behind it. He saw it flip into the construction area and come to a stop. He told me to call 911 (because his cell was broken) and he took off running across Bert Kouns toward the wreck area to see if the person was injured and to tell them help was on the way. I described the situation to the 911 dispatch operator and a few minutes later, fire/rescue and cops arrived. I was still pumping the gas, and there wasn’t anything I could really personally do, so when I got done, I drove over there so Cody wouldn’t have to walk/run back. When I got there, I found out that the driver crawed out of the passenger side, which was then flipped up into the air, and ran off away from Cody. My guess is the driver was drunk and didn’t want to get caught DWI. He’ll probably claim it was stolen.

Flipped EscaladeWe had to wait forever to the cops to take Cody’s statement, but that has to be the most interesting New Year’s eve I’ve ever had. I’m glad I didn’t sit home like a loser and watch a ball drop on NBC.

Greg (Facebook) was in town for Christmas and brough Alan (Facebook) to my house. We played Xbox 360 for a while and then watched part of Trading Spouses from episodes that my roommate had downloaded. It was the one with the crazy christian lady who’s screaming “SHE’S NOT A CHRIS-CHUN!!!” and “GARGOYLES!!!” and “DARK SIDED STUFF!!!”. Man, I just can’t get enough of that episode. It was really good to see Greg and Alan (only Greg) and not have parmesean cheese involved. Thanks for coming by guys!

Greg is leaving tonight to go back to Houston, but I plan on going there for Easter to watch his play he’s written about an android hobo living among us, collecting our change to finance his creator’s hostile world takeover. No, that’s not a joke; it’s just how creative Greg is. Do NOT question him, EVER.

Well, I had fun this Christmas. I got that neat Galileo thermometer that is over there on the left. My mom said something like, “I wasn’t sure how it worked, but it looked pretty nerdy, so I figured you’d like it”. I didn’t get much else in the way of presents except cash, gift certificates, and food from relatives, but my parents did forgive quite a bit of debt that I owe them ($100 of the $450 I owe for 4 new tires I had to buy for my Expedition).

I bought my mom a hanging hammock chair, by Hammaka. Here’s a picture of her sitting in it. She likes it a lot, and has already spent a great deal of time in it. Today was a pretty nice day for sitting outside and we did. I bought my dad The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman. He’s an awesome author and I read The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. That was and awesome book, and I’m sure the one I bought my dad will be just as good.

Did the “Drag Pictures” get your attention? Good. 😉 Those pictures are at the end of this post. Read the rest of it before you get to those.

Dave Anderson has written a good writeup of a typical Best Buy customer service experience. He and I both worked in the computer area at Best Buy for quite a while. I worked in “Services” for the duration of my employment, now Geek Squad. Dave worked in Computer Sales, and then Services. Dave and I always gave good service, and I’m not trying to say the people in the store are not helpful, because a lot of them are (Katie, Ian, etc).

The problem lies in the fact that Best Buy, the corporation, seems to not have good communication within the corporate levels. The people in the stores may be willing to help you, but they are having to fight the infrastructure to attempt it. Dave and I both personally know about this.

Anyway, go read his posts on his blog (first, second). He will update it as the story unfolds, but long story short, they sent off his laptop to get it fixed, and it came back to another cutomer’s house and then made it next to impossible to get it back. He still hasn’t been able to get it back. They also screwed up the PSP information which expired while they were working on it.

Also, if you really want to see something funny, check out these pictures of managers and other people at our store dressed in drag. I’d tell the story behind that, but it’s more humorous if I don’t.

I just got back from Jennifer’s (Facebook, Myspace) apartment. She has game night on Wednesday for friends and other people. I got a Christmas present!!! Jennifer gave me these pictures in a frame. Christmas came early this year!

We played Apples to Apples. If you’ve not played this game, I think it is probably one of, if not the, best party games around. It’s really hard to explain and make it sound fun, but I assure you it is. I’ll write a detailed post about it later, but basically you match green cards, which are adjectives, to red cards, which are nouns. You try to pick the best noun so the person will pick your word. Object is to get the most green cards. It’s totally awesome and here’s a picture of us playing Apples to Apples last week.