7.24.2007
7:04pm

Hangin' out at MCO waiting for my flight to DFW. This is the 2nd time I've blogged from this airport, how nice of them to provide free WiFi. My plane is supposed to start boarding at 7:25, so I don't have much longer to wait. The American Airlines terminal isn't appropriately big enough to hold all of the people waiting for flights, so it's noisy and crowded. The jet is a true classic... McDonnell-Douglas MD-80. It better not fall apart in the air. If everything goes to plan, I should be at DFW by 10pm and in a rental car heading for the hotel shortly after. It's about a 40 minute drive to the Southfork Hotel, and I've got two people meeting me at DFW who are going to ride along.

For this trip I decided to use off-site parking at a place called Park to Fly, which is a few dollars cheaper per day than the MCO satellite parking. And there's no way I was going to park in the airport garage, at $20something per day.

I had dinner at the Chick-fil-a inside the airport, which oddly enough doesn't jack up their prices nearly as high as every other fast food place here. They have a beautiful cylindrical aquarium in the middle of the food court with saltwater fish and coral, on the scale of 1500 gallons or so.

7.20.2007
10:04pm

These may very well be the most godly tube amplifiers ever created. Bravo Gary. Alas, they are not Energy Star rated, drawing a substantial 1100 watts at idle.

Warning: these photos may cause you to go "awww..."

7.19.2007
8:17pm

Via boingboing: the simpsons theme song, dual-guitar style.

Video for sound geeks: Rubens tube.

7.18.2007
8:04pm

With Hands Held High
into a sky so blue
the ocean opens up
to swallow you.

7.17.2007
9:18pm

Talk about temptation, a PDF copy of the last Harry Potter book made its way onto The Pirate Bay. I fully expected that to happen, but not until after Saturday. Still, I'll be reading the 6th book through Friday so I don't plan to try my luck with the online version this time. This also means my Internet blackout has to start earlier than I planned. I think the uproar from the publishing industry would be amusing if everybody downloaded a copy and canceled their preorders though :)

I found a new webcomic to read, via Brian. So much funny... must... read... some... more. Carebearstare.

7:53pm

Today I got one step closer to being a genuine Florida resident. The Virginia license plates and title are gone, replaced with the Florida version now. Well, technically the title isn't here yet but at least I can have the Florida Tech plate on my rear bumper. Four digits are easier to remember than seven. The whole thing set me back ~$200 which seems a little high, but at least the people at the tax collector's office were friendly and patient. If I had gone with a regular plate it would have saved me $27, but most of the money goes to the school so I don't mind. I had to call Geico twice before they finally understood that I needed them to change the registered state to Florida instead of Virginia. At least they had issued the coverage for the right state.

7.16.2007
7:24pm

I laughed for about 20 seconds straight when I saw this linked from the Dilbert Blog. Also a horrifying view into the possible future from the ACLU was shared in a reader comment.

I saw Harry Potter 5 at the Oaks, and sure enough the Owls were back. I think it's really cool that they did that. As for the movie itself, I thought it was inferior to the rest but also had the least to work with given the book material. It may just be that I've seen so many movies lately that I'm getting tired of them. I'm almost done re-reading book 5 now and need to get book 6 done before Saturday. Amazon guaranteed delivery for the 21st so my plan (like many others) is to sit at home all weekend avoiding the Internet until I have finished reading. That's right, no digg, no CNN, no slashdot, no Red vs Blue, no Ctrl+Alt+Del, no instant messenger. No possibility of spoilers from any source. Wal-Mart is taking the spoiler situation so seriously that they have encouraged everyone to take a pledge not to reveal the book ending. Last year a number of people decided to ruin the ending of the 6th book for people waiting in line at bookstores and that would really suck for the last one.

Sometimes you don't have to visit a zoo or venture very far to get a closeup view of interesting animals. Today at work I noticed a large hawk/raptor of some sort sitting on a tree very close to the Harris building where NetBoss is located. I watched it for a few minutes as it eagerly consumed a snake that it had caught, still gripped firmly in one talon. We also have a resident soft shell turtle ("big leathery pancakes") that lives in the retention pond. I'm not sure if the gator is still living there or not.

7.14.2007
11:13am

If there is any movie I've seen so far this year that deserves the big screen, Transformers is it. In fact, I would probably try to see it in IMAX if Harry Potter hadn't already kicked it out. I went last night after work with some people but unfortunately it was reel and not DLP. DLP probably would have had an even sharper appearance. As others have said, the special effects and action is just overwhelming. Fortunately, Michael Bay chose to insert a lot of humorous and light-hearted parts to ease off some of the intensity of the battle scenes. The 2009 Chevy Camaro makes its debut movie appearance and it looks 10x better than the old Camaros. Logan was on his second time watching the movie, and he caught some things missed the first time, like the box truck filled with Furbies that explodes.

At $187M and counting, this film will be very profitable and I look forward to the next installment. I spent some time looking at the website too and it's pretty nicely done. The 1986 animated movie is backordered at Amazon and Best Buy. And for a bit of humor, Optimus Prime saves money with Geico.

7.13.2007
12:14am

Not getting a car as a graduation present? Why not make your own? It gets excellent gas mileage.

7.11.2007
10:26pm

Die Hard kicked some major ass. Not only did it have the big gunfights, car chases, huge explosions, and witty John McClane humor, but the plot combined cyberterrorism and a bank heist of sorts. LARGE scale cyberterrorism. Aside from one laughably unbelievable scene I thought the movie was well executed and they managed to do it with a PG-13 rating which is even more impressive. Expect to see some Apple products since Justin Long (Hi, I'm a Mac) is a main character.

I think I'm going to re-read Order of the Phoenix before going to see the movie. When I was at the theater tonight with Nate, Ryan, Logan, and Adam we saw a big line for HP outside. So I'll give it a few days and maybe go Monday of next week. Also inside the theater was a table set up by the Florida Wildlife Hospital and they had a live owl with them.

7.09.2007
9:00pm

These guys do some funny video clips...

12:38pm

Check out Dell's news video on Linux, featuring "Fawn Fiestyliciousopensourceroni." No penguins were harmed in the making of this video.

7.07.2007
9:43pm

Sometimes people run web sites on interesting platforms.

Tonight as I left the theater there was a nice lightning storm. I went to see Ratatouille, which was enjoyable, clever, and funny, just not quite to the usual Pixar extent. I would rank it below Monsters Inc but above A Bug's Life. The short film shown before the main feature, called Lifted, was quite humorous.

7.06.2007
6:02pm

johnnyOnline does a nice acoustic rendition of Wonderwall. Some handy cheap item tips that were posted on digg earlier.

You got chocolate in my peanut butter.

Mac vs PC, unofficial South Park style. Red vs Blue gets in the HP spirit of things.

7.05.2007
11:04pm

The things you find on youtube.

Ahh, Transformers. Must go see ASAP. It's at $65mil and it opened on Monday.

This has not been a good year for Microsoft.

8:53pm

There was something that I thought of earlier today that I wanted to blog about. An actual topic, not just random crap. Now I can't remember what it was.

12:39am

Sometimes you just have to ignore the weather forecast...

Tonight I finally got to see the Melbourne fireworks show, the first one I've been to since living down here. Not only did I get to see them, but from only a short distance away on the Indian River Lagoon by the Melbourne causeway. Nate and Ryan invited me to go out on the boat this afternoon and we decided to go ahead even though there was 70% chance of thunderstorms and the sky was looking pretty nasty. We didn't get the boat into the water until about 5:30, just as some people were packing up to leave due to the clouds coming in. Nate, Ryan, and Ashley had a chance to go wakeboarding and by 7pm it still hadn't started raining yet. They stopped by the Pi Kappa Alpha house, which is right on the channel, so I got to see what that place looks like. We went back out to join the collection of boats that was gathering by the causeway and it still hadn't rained yet and most of the clouds had gone to leave a pretty clear sky. It was quite amazing just sitting there in the middle of the (slightly choppy) water with the orange sunset in the distance. At 9:05 the show started and it was over by 9:30. In the distance we could see the fireworks from Cocoa and Palm Bay. Melbourne decided this year to try to combine a laser show with the fireworks, but it was not very impressive and consisted of just a single green laser. The pyrotechnics themselves were quite impressive though. We carefully made our way back in the dark to Turkey Creek inlet armed with just a flashlight. Back at the dock, Nate discovered that he had locked his car keys inside the Jeep so we waited a little while for AAA to get a locksmith out to the park. About 10 other boats left from the same dock and we were finally ready to go around 11:30. When I left Ryan's house around midnight, it started raining. I laughed.

Off to bed soon so that I can get through the remaining 2 days of work this week.

7.03.2007
6:59pm

No work tomorrow! Sweet 4th of July, Independence Day, whatever you want to call it. Normally I wouldn't be too excited about an freebie Wednesday but since I was busy on the weekend I need a day to relax. I've actually got a list of things that I'm supposed to do to "catch up" so I'll try to knock those out tonight. I've still got to finish reading the latest N.G. Plus this week there are a lot of good movies that came out, Ratatouille, Transformers, and Die Hard 4. Ratatouille didn't have a real great weekend (for Pixar anyway), but I'm sure some people were busy traveling or seeing Die Hard instead. I'm sure some are apprehensive about the plot and personally I think the trailer wasn't that convincing. I said the same thing about Cars though, and ended up liking it. And very soon, the fifth Harry Potter movie will come out. Maybe I ought to say "unleashed" instead because all the rest of July is going to be HP-mania with the arrival of the last book. The local Oaks10 cinema is running a Harry Potter marathon on the eve of the movie's release, only $30 and 826 minutes long. That's right, 13.8 hours, take that Lord of the Rings.

I got my "Degree Program Request" approved with Harris Stratex to study Computer Information Systems at Florida Tech. Now I just need to finish the application process with FIT and pick the class I want to take for the fall semester.

I recently had a Smirnoff Ice Triple Black... very nice drink especially if you don't like beer.