9/30/2003top

2:54 PM
I'm voting against the recall, sure. But I still can't decide who to vote for if the recall does happen.

Arnold is a dismissive asshole who bullies people and doesn't have any sort of plan for California. Watch the debate again if you don't believe me.

Bustamante is too afraid to cut social services and programs to have any sizable impact on the budget.

I know almost nothing about McClintock, just that he's super conservative, and that doesn't thrill me a whole lot. The problem with voting for him is that he would share the republican vote with Arnold, and Bustamante would win as a result.

I'm registered as an Independent and I usually vote for democratic representatives and republican initiatives, so I really don't care too much who wins this thing. But it'd be nice to be able to vote for someone and have confidence that they'll run things the way I want them run.

What to do, what to do...

There's always Gary Coleman!

-Brett #

10:52 AM
Starting about a week ago, I'd say that approximately 75% of the spam that I've received is trying to sell me Vicodin. I'm not sure why this is. It just started out of the blue.

Maybe a Vicodin truck got hijacked somewhere?


-Brett #

9/25/2003top

10:24 AM
It's coming.
The Borg Megacube will reach Earth (heh, I'm a dork) on November 3rd. Inside it will be 48 DVDs containing every episode from all seven seasons of Star Trek: TNG.

It's going to cost �449.99 ($747.41,) and for some reason they're only going to make 1000 of them. They could sell a lot more than 1000, I'm sure.

-Brett #

9/24/2003top

11:44 AM
"A federal court in Oklahoma has blocked the national "do not call" list that would allow consumers to stop most unwanted telephone sales calls, one week before it was due to take effect."

UNBELIEVABLE!

-Brett #

9/23/2003top

1:56 PM
Woah. Sirius Satellite Radio has a $399 lifetime subscription plan. Hmmmmmmmm!

-Brett #

9/22/2003top

2:27 PM
Okay, I've decided that the folks over at SaveFarscape.com are officially weirdos. They're now holding a fan fiction ('fanfic') contest. That, my friends, is when the effort to save the show officially jumped the shark in my book.

Hey, I want new episodes too, but saying that you write fan fiction is like telling everybody how much you enjoy taking baths in applesauce. Hey, that's great, but now everybody's going to know you're a nutjob - and your only friends will be other applesauce bathers.

I would rather gouge myself in the eye with a hot poker than read fan fiction. There are plenty of examples of horrible fan fiction out there...so many in fact that I really think the association would hinder, rather than help, any sort of campaign to get any show back on the air.

-Brett #

9/21/2003top

1:22 PM
Does anyone know of a decent Windows mail client? You'd think that by now there would be a good one, but there really isn't.

I've been using Eudora for ages, and 6.0 just came out, but it still feels like I'm using software that hasn't changed or been majorly upgraded in a decade.

The Bat! is pretty popular in some circles, but like Eudora, its interface is straight outta 1992.

By most accounts, Microsoft Outlook is a great email program if you don't mind having viruses take control of it to send out copies of themselves while you're out to lunch.

Mozilla Mail is decent, but I'd prefer to have a separate web browser and email client.

Thunderbird has some promise, but it's in beta now and I don't really want to have to update it every week.

So I guess I'll stick with Eudora until something better comes along, but I'm not too hopeful at this point.

-Brett #

9/19/2003top

4:04 PM
In my opinion, The Outer Limits is a highly underrated show. The original Outer Limits series was on TV way back in 1963 and only lasted two seasons (I think) and if you can manage to catch any of the reruns, they really seem hokey and poorly written.

But this modern-day Outer Limits is great. Each episode is one hour of original sci-fi short-storyism. It reminds me a lot of the old Twilight Zones. Check it out if you're bored.


-Brett #

10:26 AM
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

-Brett #

9/17/2003top

9:53 AM
Hurricane Isabel should be hitting the east coast pretty soon.

You can follow the action online by listening in on radio transmissions from local police and fire agencies. The injuries are coming fast and furious over at Virginia Beach Fire, and it looks like the thing has barely touched down yet according to the latest satellite maps.

-Brett #

9/16/2003top

1:09 PM
I'm glad I live in a place that never has to worry about hurricanes.

Here's an amazing high-res satellite photo of Hurricane Isabel. Makes a good desktop image.

-Brett #

9/15/2003top

10:42 AM
KPCC changed their programming lineup!

There's good news and there's bad news.

First, the good news: A new show called Day to Day starts at 9AM, pushing Airtalk and it's host - the whiny and unbearably irritating Larry Mantle - back to 10AM. That's good news because I just can't stand that guy and now I won't have to listen to him during my morning drive.

The bad news: John Rabe who hosts All Things Considered during my drive home has chosen to leave so that he can become a reporter covering "health care and affordable housing issues." LAME. The new girl seems like she can do just as good a job as John used to, but I don't think she'll be able to come up with such classic one-liners as "A motorcycle and a bus from a school for the blind collided on the 91 today. Bet they didn't see that one coming." John Rabe was funny and not at all like those stuffy news-readers over at KCRW, the "other" NPR station in LA.

Oh well.

It's only radio.

-Brett #

9/12/2003top

3:35 PM
Do you remember The Bard's Tale series of PC games from way back in the day? They made three of them, and they were all pretty good. I remember playing The Bard's Tale II like a madman late into the night on my Apple IIGS. I consider the series to be the template by which most modern-day computer-based RPGs were made. In short, they just don't make them like that anymore.

Devil Whiskey is the product of some very talented Bards Tale lovers. It's a built-from-scratch game meant to replicate those classic RPGs, and it's the closest thing to The Bards Tale IV that we may ever see. There's a downloadable 120MB demo available now, and 25 bucks will get you the full version when it's released on Halloween.

Before you pass it off as some lame-o piece of fan-created crapola, check out the screenshots and listen to the mp3s of the s soundtrack. It's a commercial-quality endeavor, and I'm excited to take the demo for a spin this weekend.

-Brett #

11:24 AM
Yesterday I became a paying subscriber to Dish Network. I've never had satellite TV before, and great googly moogly, it beats the living crap out of the rabbit ears we've been using since we bought our house last November.

We're signed up for America's Top 100 with local channels. Also, we get HBO and Cinemax free for three months thanks to some promotion they're running now.

I do like to read about how to hack the signal for free on "teh INtarweb", because I find all that stuff really interesting. And yeah, I guess I could have gone that route, but it just seems like such a hassle with all the time and equipment involved. I decided that I'd rather just be a legit, paying subscriber from day one so that I don't have the headaches of dealing with all the problems that the pirates have to deal with.

The pricing is about the same as cable, but we get a few more channels and the picture is way clearer, so I don't mind paying for it. I also think it's very cool that if you want a bare-bones package with just 50 channels and one television, you can still get satellite TV for just $24.99 per month. Everybody can afford that - and that IS cheaper than cable.

If you're considering signing up up for Dish, let me know, because I can get a credit on my bill for referring you! And you can get a special deal too!

-Brett #

9/11/2003top

8:21 AM
The final version of Trillian Pro 2.0 was released today. Along with it comes a nice corporate-looking redesign of the Trillian website. I guess now that they support Jabber they figure they can start marketing themselves to the business crowd. And they are smart for doing that!

trillian.net.ru will probably be back up soon so that you can download it if you're not a paid member.

Trillian really is the greatest chat program for Windows. It connects to ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and Jabber servers. There is also a slightly less-cool (no Jabber) free version available too, if you'd rather not take the pirates' route.

Check it out, suckas!

-Brett #

9/10/2003top

9:45 AM
Check out the coolest text-to-speech engine I've ever heard. It clearly sounds like a computer simulation, but the word pronunciation is spot-on. They even have voices in different accents!

-Brett #

9/08/2003top

5:06 PM
If you've ever received one of those forwarded optical illusion emails, the chances are good that the images contained in the email were created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka. Check out his site. It will leave your head spinning. Literally.

-Brett #

2:33 PM
My crazy life:

08-24 Got married at Ocean Trails. The wedding was awesome, and we only had a few no-shows. The weather was beautiful, the band was just outstanding, the food was great, and people seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves. I hate it when I go to weddings and I'm bored. At least at ours if people got bored they had a kick-ass band to listen to.

My brother also pointed out when we returned from our honeymoon that Ocean Trails was used to shoot parts of an episode of "The OC." That was pretty crazy.

I really don't remember too much of the wedding at this point, so I'm really looking forward to whatever the videographer puts together for us. We should also be receiving our photos pretty soon! When we do, we'll be sure to put a few up over at http://www.tammyandbrett.com/

08-25 Left for the honeymoon. We checked in to the Marriott Orlando World Center late that night and crashed early.

08-26 Disney-MGM Studios. This park was disappointing. It was weird, but it felt very much like Disneyland's red-headed stepchild, California Adventure. So much of it felt cheap, thrown together, and unfinished. The Tower of Terror was great though, and I can only hope that the scaled-down version we're getting at DCA next year is as cool as the original. Very fun!

We spent that night watching Cirque Du Soleil's La Nouba which was pretty good. And I gotta say, the east coast's Downtown Disney is really enormous compared to ours.

08-27 Magic Kingdom. I don't remember ever going to this park as a child, but my parents say I did. Tammy and I decided to call it Bizarro Disneyland. It FEELS so much like Disneyland that you would swear that you're back in Anaheim...except some stores aren't where they should be, and some rides are hiding around corners that shouldn't be there! It was a crazy experience for sure, but we had a lot of fun checking out everything. Of all the things to do at this park, the one I was most looking foward to was the Carousel of Progress. Unfortunately it has been downgraded to a 'seasonal' attraction, and was therefore not operating in the off-season. That kind of sucked. Everything else was a real hoot though.

A lot of the attractions seemed like abridged versions of their California counterparts. Pirates was shorter (though the queue was much more elaborately themed) and being in Small World's loading area was like being in a switchbacked auditorium. Some changes were really nice though...Tom Sawyer's island was very big with lots to do, the train that circled the park actually drove through honest-to-god swampland, and the Peoplemover was still in full effect (disguised as the Tomorrowland Transit Authority). Space Mountain was a fun ride, just different than what we've got here.

Interestingly enough, the Magic Kingdom's fireworks show was embarrassingly bad. If you've seen Believe! at Disneyland in Anaheim, you'll see how good fireworks can really be. If you've seen Fantasy in the Sky at the Magic Kingdom, you've seen the other end of the spectrum.

Food at the Orlando parks seems to be a lot cheaper than it is here. When it comes to soft drinks, WDW offers a 'regular' and a 'large' for $1.99 and $2.19, respectively. At Disneyland there is no 'large' option. Everything is the size of a regular at WDW - yet it costs $2.19 over here. Food is a lot cheaper over there too! Usually when we go to Disneyland I hate to spend money on food, but at WDW I was buying everything in sight and not feeling bad about it. A $1.99 root beer float at a Disney park? Put me down for three! I'll never see prices like that in LA.

08-28 Islands of Adventure is Universal's second theme park in Orlando, and it gives Disney a real run for its money. Spiderman alone is worth the cost of admission. It was one of the coolest theme park attractions I've ever experienced. Truly mind blowing.

08-29 EPCOT Day One was fantastic. We did 99% of Future World and got to ride Mission Space, which doesn't open officially until October. We also took a backstage tour of the hydroponics facility behind The Land pavillion. Dinner in Morocco.

08-30 EPCOT Day Two was great. We finished up Future World and did all of World Showcase. Dinner in Norway. Epcot will probably always be our favorite Disney park out there.

08-31 Animal Kingdom is one of the most elaborately themed parks I've ever been to. It was a little light on repeatable attractions, but since this was our first time there it was really fun. Tammy loves animals too, so she was going nuts all day.

That night we went to the Grand Floridian for dinner at Victoria and Albert's, the most expensive restaurant I've ever been to. Luckily the service was excellent and the six-course dinner was phenomenal. I don't think I've ever been to a nicer more intimate restaurant in my life.

09-01 Kickback day. We did some outlet center shopping in the morning, then came back for Tammy's 1pm massage and mud wrap at the hotel's spa. That night we hit Arabian Nights, a not-as-good knockoff of Medieval Times, but still it was fun. The food was horrific. Afterwards we stopped for ice cream and miniature golf.

09-02 Our last full day in Orlando we spent at Sea World's Discovery Cove, which was just amazing. We did the whole dolphin swim thing and all that. That was really something! We got a video and plenty of photos of the whole day. If you ever plan to vacation in Orlando, consider Discovery Cove as a non-optional part of that trip!

09-03 through 09-07 was spent opening wedding presents, unpacking them, cleaning up the mess, reorganizing the house, and making a mess of everything in the process. We're still not quite done with everything, but we've made some progress. Don't expect to see the inside of our house on the cover of any magazines for a few weeks though.

So that's what I've been doing. How have you been?

-Brett #

9/07/2003top

7:46 AM
We got back from the honeymoon on Wednesday. We've been opening presents and rearranging stuff around the house since then. I've made a point of not checking my email (two weeks worth!) until I get in to work tomorrow.

The wedding was perfect, the honeymoon was awesome, and I'll tell you all about them later!

-Brett #


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