happy holidays. and new year.

intermittent posting is reduced to near zero while I'm on vacation. If you're bored you can check the archives. I'll be back with regular irrelevancies starting 7 January 2008.

see you then.

how many 5 year olds could you take in a fight?

22
supposedly, I'm good for 22. I think that number is a little high. i would get tired and succumb to 12 or 13.

report suspicious behavior

The city of Chicago has a warning posted on their official website.

Be sure to call 911 (in Chicago) if you see any "note taking, binocular use, cameras, videos, maps" around the holidays. You never can trust someone that's out taking notes and pictures in public spaces, especially this time of year. If you're clever you could take notes on the suspicious behavior, maybe take their picture, or get a better look at the suspicious person with binoculars, or shoot video of them, then mark down their location on a map. But then you might get arrested for, well, behaving suspiciously.

The full URL is:
http://webapps.cityofchicago.org/ChicagoAlertWeb/resources/pdf/WinterHolidayPublicAwareness.pdf

But you can also get to it from here.

I am an international financier, Part the Third

A while ago I wrote a post about loaning some money through Kiva.org (see button in the sidebar for a link - i'm too lazy to put it here). I got another small reimbursement from the woman that Kiva helped me (and others) loan money to. No text updates, but she's paying on time so I'm hoping that it's going well.

here's the text of a previous email from the group that organized the loan:

Karomadjon is very happy, because due the loan from KIva she increased the volume of her goods and she could paid education for her children and also she could buy new clothes for daughter.Her business is gradually takes rate of groth.In thew end of this month she plans to purchase vegetables and other food product for winter season.She is very thankful for KIva.

If that doesn't warm your heart then you're a miracle, because you don't have one.

nice office

Wired magazine published their 'winners' of the saddest cubicle contest.

The winning submission (submittal?) was this rigged-up office w/ no light (the overhead is broken) and a poorly ventilated bathroom and microwave nearby.

"[the person that works there] recalls a day when one co-worker reheated catfish in the microwave, while another used the bathroom and covered the smell with a stinky air freshener."

Nice.

See the rest here.

can we get this trade done today?

was talking to a Detroit Lions fan earlier today. The Lions were 6-2 at the midway point of the NFL season and looking like a lock for the playoffs. Since then they have lost 5 in a row and may lose out the rest of the season, end the year on an 8 game losing streak. They are not very good.

The Niners aren't very good either, so I asked him if we could put a trade together, package up Nate Clements and Alex Smith, two of the biggest busts in the draft and free agency of the past couple years.

He said, "you send over Alex Smith, because he's bad, and also Clements and his huge contract, we can maybe move him to wideout [inside joke there, because the Lions draft WRs in the first round every year], and we'll give you Matt Millen, and maybe some draft picks."

I laughed.

flood averted, also: ricky hatton got pummeled

I wrote about finding water (where no water should be) in my house last week. Turns out it was probably a spill. I say 'probably' because the roommates won't cop to it. Whatever. I had the plumber over to take a look and we couldn't find anything. No pipes, no water from above, nothing. so it was a $40 false alarm. and I have to patch some drywall in the garage. I'm not pumped to patch the drywall, but I'm glad I don't have a leaky pipe in the floor.

in other news, Ricky Hatton got beat up by Floyd Mayweather. I bought the fight, and it was worth my $55 to watch instead of waiting. Overall it was a good fight. Hatton got rocked w/ wicked accurate punches while he pushed Mayweather around the ring, and eventually Mayweather got tired of getting pushed around and knocked him out. Mayweather is an accurate and fast puncher; Hatton is a good fighter, but not in Mayweather's class, and it showed on Saturday.

dog pictured is available for adoption at the Irvine Animal Care Center. He looks like a weird mismatch of parts, frankensteined together. Why are his front legs so short? Why does he have such a huge cranium? I'll let you now how he behaves when I visit with him on wednesday.
great job today.

big plans

dork 1: Dude, what are you going to do tonight?

dork 2: I don't know. Probably play some Halo3, maybe go outside if it's not too cold. call that girl, maybe.

d1: holy shit! when did you meet a girl?

d2: dude, kidding.

d1: oh. right. outside? why not stay inside and play halo3 all day?

d2: enh, I get bored sitting around and punching the clown and playing halo3 all day.

d1: I hear you.


d2: yeah.

d1: what if we made a halo3 Master Chief snowman OUTSIDE?

d2: dude, awwwwwwwsome! get over here.

d1: lemme finish this game first...

it's not a bad angle, it's that you have a huge ass

I hate to be the one to pile on, but Jennifer Love Hewitt is responding to recent photos that were posted on the intarnets. I appreciated the cogent analysis over on wwtdd, but the story has gotten so much press that you can also see a video summary over on CNN.

What the CNN story/video doesn't show is any of the pictures that prompted the reaction from Ms. Hewitt. That's ridiculous, since it's the whole point of the story.

Here's the deal: Hollywood stars often don't look all that good unless they're backlit and made-up and so forth. Most people don't; it's a known thing. Also, they sometimes take unflattering pictures just like everyone else. This is not news. There are some exceptions, but Hewitt is not one of them.

You can walk down the street (well, maybe not where you live, but I can) and see women just as hot as women in movies/magazines. It's easy for guys idealize the airbrushed FHM and Maxim sluts and forget that there are beautiful women all around you.

What is news is that Jennifer Love Hewitt has a huge fat ass and she used to be hot. She's still pretty cute, but with a huge fat ass. Some people probably like her more now. But let's not pretend this is a "body-image issue" or "invasive picture from a bad angle" issue.

aside: Hewitt didn't have a "body-image" problem back when she was making bad horror films in a bra, pre-fatty. It's only happening now. Weird. And hypocritical.

those are MAGIC stairs

In the movie Enchanted, the main character from Andalasia (the princess-to-be Giselle, not the other one) takes a shower and says, "this room is magic!" because she doesn't know how the water gets in there.

When the stairs in my house turned into some kind of weird wellspring last night, I felt like shouting "these stairs are magic!" because I had no idea where the water was coming from. Also it's generally not very super when there's water coming out of the floor. A ha. I'm still not sure where the water was coming from. A pipe, presumably. I'm hoping the plumber will tell me today when he comes by.

After I shut off the water main to the house and got off the phone with the insurance company I went back to playing halo3. Couldn't do much else.

The roommates love not having water in the house. It's like camping: no toilets, no showers, bottled water only. Good times.

photo courtesy a website called "FEMA for Kids". it's just as awesome as it sounds; your tax dollars hard at work.

ps. Enchanted is a good date movie. It's not going to replace The Princess Bride as the greatest date movie ever, but it's still pretty good.