Will you be my friend? Seriously…I have money…

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http://www.friendster.com

What’s up with this – are people really this desperate nowadays?! Online personals and dating were bad enough, but now we’ve got online “let’s just be friends”? I guess I just don’t understand the logic behind this one – instead of actually enjoying my love for water and SCUBA diving by frequenting dive stores and exploring the deep blue seas, thereby meeting new people through physical interaction, with the help of Friendster I can simply tell everyone that I like diving and all that it entails from the comfort of my personal computer, thus completely eliminating the hassles of going to the beach and swimming underwater and actually seeing chicks in their bikinis right from the get go. Does society really need another reason to not have to leave the house and go outside once in a while???

Actual quotes from Friendster fanatics:
“I like your profile…maybe we can play tennis sometime.”

“We all know that meeting people out in the wild is a risky proposition.”

“Friendster is a great interactive site with innovative interactive capabilities allowing users to ‘break the ice’ and communicate with other possible friends.”

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen – Friendster, because going out in public and carrying on an actual conversation is something that nobody should ever have to do…ever.

…didn’t get b-b-b-b-back ’til the 4th of July…

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It was another one of those heat wave days, only a little better than yesterday – it just barely struck the triple digits, where as yesterday we saw them for several hours. It was still something like seventy-five when Brandi and I went for our walk, but there was at least a bit of a breeze, so it wasn’t nearly as bad. People tell me that I’d never make it in Florida, but I would assume that you’d get used to it eventually, just as we’re used to wearing shorts in fifty degree weather up here. Plus, they’ve got A/C like everywhere, right?

I did notice something less than flattering about one of the apartment complexes that we normally pass – no matter what time of night it may be, there always just happens to be somebody throwing up outside. Last night at midnight – somebody’s throwing up. A few nights earlier at, say, 9:00 PM – somebody’s throwing up. I’d be willing to bet that somebody’s throwing up there right now, so if you’re planning on moving to the area anytime soon, I can certainly give you the address of someplace you might want to avoid…

And I have a nice red line down the left side of my laptop’s display suddenly and I have no idea where it came from. Today I did spray it down and clean it, but I can’t see how that would make a difference. Should an LCD that’s only a year and a half old be going bad already, or is this just a scam by Dell to slip out from underneath the warranty and get me to drop another two grand for a new computer???

That’s a lot of compruder!

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$5m boost to trilogy’s finale

Peter Jackson’s special-effects company Weta Digital is reaching deep into its chest of high-tech sword and sorcery to complete the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King.

It has just taken delivery of 588 IBM blade servers, each with two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors, in a deal which on list prices would be approaching $5 million.<<FULL STORY>>

OR…

Weta thinks big for finale

Supplier IBM has begun delivering 1174 blade servers, each with dual 2.8 gigahertz Xeon Intel processors and 6 gigabytes of memory.

Weta technical head Scott Houston says about 3200 processors will be running flat out next month on The Return of the King, making Weta Digital the largest Intel-based high-performance computing centre in the world by Intel’s estimation.<<FULL STORY>>

I love the Internet, where a different slant is born every minute! I was fairly impressed with the computing power behind the first story, but then I found this second one and I just want to know – which is it?! Either way, this is still one of the very few movies I’m actually looking forward to this year – hopefully it’ll make up for The Hulk and The Matrix: Reloaded and all of the other crap we’ve been subjected to so far…

Have wizards, will travel…

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Mom surprised me the other day with a copy of the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was extremely cool because I hardly said a word about the book, except that there was a big release party planned downtown Friday night for all of the kiddies. (No, I didn’t go – there’s just something about a 22-year-old guy running around in a cape that’s just got creepy written all over it…) Unfortunately, I can’t even start reading it yet because I’m still a book behind, but I did start on #4 last night and as fast as I blew through the others, it shouldn’t be long before I’m stuck on all of the hype like everybody else…

In other news, it seems that just as I got caught up on my latest deadlines, two or three new ones jumped on board, which don’t get me wrong is a very good thing, to still be in work and all, but it’s still a bit stressful. This week, however, I do get to write about festivities for the 4th of July, which are pretty much limited to fireworks and sparklers up around here, so hopefully that’ll be a little easier than, oh say, writing about golf. And of course, the week following that will be featuring our illustrious Alpenfest, which I’ll be covering a little more “tastefully” than I have in the past.

A few of our readers though it was funny, but hey – what do a million or so complete strangers know, anyways?

A View from the Top…

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Today was a very cool day.

As part of a media relations deal, myself and two exceptionally attractive reporters from one of the local television stations were given the opportunity to take a tour of the Mackinac Bridge, which for you out of towners is the largest suspension bridge in the Northern Hemisphere. Ok, technically they were there to spread some light on a recent toll increase (because the bridge is currently being repainted), while I was there mainly to say, “Wow…” intermittently while they were trying to film, and come up with an entertaining, yet educationally-slanted column for next week’s paper, but either way it was probably the most interesting thing I’ve done for this paper so far and if the column comes out half as good as the pictures did, then everybody should end up more than happy…

 


My only regret was that I didn’t bring my laptop with me because after the tour, it was just way too nice of a day to go back home and sit in front of a computer for the rest of the day. 80-some-odd degrees with a cool breeze coming off the Straits would’ve been the perfect environment for writing that column…but of course, I probably would’ve ended up falling asleep anyways! Ahhh, the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer…

More like St. Crap…

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I heard parts of the “new” Metallica album, St. Anger, on the radio the other day and I’ve come to only one conclusion:

After years of legal battles, Metallica has finally found a way to beat the file-sharing thieves at their own game…by putting out an album so absolutely horrible that no one would ever even consider pirating it.

R.I.P. Metallica – it was fun while it lasted…

Dieting sucks, but so does breaking the two hundred mark on the scale…

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I took the dog for another walk this evening, although she was a hell of a lot more rambunctious than she was last night. Nonetheless, I’ve got a feeling that it’s actually going to become a regular thing this summer, as we both need the exercise and it’s a nice break from staring at a computer screen all night. I figured that the route we’ve taken so far was about two miles long and even though I’ve never really considered walking to be exercise before, I’m sure it’s gotta be better than just walking back and forth between the refrigerator and the computer…

I guess I’ve also kinda started my “diet” this weekend, to go along with the whole exercise thing…you know, with bikini season in full tilt now and all! We’ve been down this road before, and I’ve never really been able to keep it up for more than a week or two, citing time constraints or some other nonsense, but now it’s not even a matter of cutting down so that I don’t need to carry as much lead while I’m diving (although that’s still a bonus!) – I just don’t want to have to buy a whole new wardrobe here shortly! Ok, so maybe it’s not that bad, but if I could manage to lose ten or twenty pounds this summer, it certainly couldn’t hurt much!

So this new diet that I’m trying now is one that I’ve somewhat created myself, or more so adapted from somebody else’s plan. Basically, my goal is to prove that this diet pill that they’re always advertising on the radio – calor-ad or cal-a-trim or whatever – is a bunch of hooey. You’ll note in the instructions that they also say that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day and stop eating three hours before bedtime, so I’m going to just do that and leave out the stupid pills altogether. Mind you, eight glasses of water is technically sixty-four ounces, or damn near two liters, which I’ve yet to be able to ingest in a single day…but that’s probably just because I keep leaving it until the last minute. I guess it basically comes down to not drinking much else other than water, so you hammer away at it all day, which could be tough because I’m also horrendously addicted to Dr. Pepper (the beverage, you sickos…), but we’ll see what happens.

The plan is lots of water, no more snacking late at night, a few sit-ups here and there, and a couple of miles wandering around town with the dog…twenty pounds in three months? Wish me luck!