stuff is cool

Apparently in certain areas of the world, people are requesting to be buried with their cell phones.

What next, laptops?

edit: okay the last sentence of the article is just too awesome not to quote:

And one service in South Africa will put a number of batteries in the coffin just in case the dead person wakes up much later and finds their own battery has run out.

I virtually never get sick, so that means when I somehow do get sick it generally kicks my ass. As you may have read in the post by Drunky McMeggerson down below, I was out of commission as of about midday Saturday. I even took a sick day off work yesterday, another thing I never do. Even today at work I was doped up off of cough medicine and such (which was kinda gratifying actually). But when I was work I noticed a lot of other people out and/or coughing/sick as well. I guess something’s going around. The weird part is, I don’t really know what it was I had …. well, kinda still do have. Or maybe working in a Halls-colored haze all day was so attractive to me that I’m psychosomatically making myself stay sick enough to medicate myself. But I digress…

So, when I was lucid this weekend I was playing a good amount of poker. In fact, right before I started getting sick on Saturday I finally broke the +$100 mark on my PokerRoom account. That is to say, I reached $300 after putting $200 in. So, as I promised myself, I cashed out $100, resetting me back at $200 only this time $100 of it was money I “earned” (or if you want to think of it this way, $100 of other people’s money). Currently I’m sitting at $179, so I’m a little “down” since the cashout, but I was down this low on my original $200 before. I found I have a pretty good knack for heads-up sng’s, I think I’ve posted a 6-1 record in the past week or so. Not too shabby.

Also on the poker front, my kickass poker league tracking app is shaping up. I’ve just added multi-league support to my development version and will be uploading it to the main site sometime soon. If anyone out there is a web designer (ie, can come up with a layout/look for a site that doesn’t suck) and wants to come up with a decent poker-themed look for the site, please let me know (comment!).

Here’s the site - yes it’s fairly spartan for now, but I’m focusing on getting all the functional pieces working

And lastly, I got 3 days of (well-deserved) probation for being an obnoxious twit on the SomethingAwful Forums, so maybe I’ll be more likely to blog again in that three day span since I obviously won’t be posting there. Though in all likelihood I’ll be working on the aforementioned poker tracker. Oh, and fantasy sports.

1) My new computer. It is incredible. It’s light and thin and truly snazzy. It is the nicest gift anyone has ever given me. He must really, really love me.

2) He takes care of me when I am falling down drunk. Last night I went out with my Baker friends and must have had about 5 shots and two mixed drinks. I was suddenly very VERY drunk. My sweet friend Johnny (aka Uncle Walter) offered to give me a ride home and I had to open the passenger door and throw up . He actually had water and paper towels in his car, fully prepared for any situation. I guess having been relocated here from New Orleans made him ready for anything. Anyhow, I don’t remember actually getting to Danny’s, my memories are mostly of being on the floor.

I am not proud to share this story, but it shows how much Danny must truly love me. He, though sick himself (that’s why he stayed home), took very good care of me. He had to pick me up off the floor, drag me to the bathroom, get me undressed (from puke covered clothes) and put me in the shower. I am amazed I didn’t fall down while in the shower. Then he got me dried off and in my jammies and gave me more water and put me to bed. This morning on our way to go get my car he looked at me with a warm smile and said “You look like hell.” And I did. But he loves me anyways.

And to follow up the big geek post with an only peripherally geeky post. Meg’s swanky new Thinkpad T43 has arrived!

I’m jealous.

edit: and hopefully there will be pictures forthcoming

edit #2: yes, we live exciting Friday night lives

I know that not a lot of the stuffiscool blog readers are as computer geeky as me, but I also know that a handful of them are and this post (and future posts to come) is for them.

So, over on the SomethingAwful forums (good for geek and non-geek alike!), in the computer hardware/software forum there was a discussion about teaching one’s self how to code. Well, of course it quickly devolved into the “pimp your favorite programming language” contest that all of those threads inevitably end up as, and of course even the incredibly crappy and stupid languages have people standing up to defend them. So of course there were the pro-Visual Studio folks and one of them made the claim that:

In my opinion the most important things for a beginner is to see results quickly and I know of no better RAD language than C#. If you know what you’re doing you can create a Notepad clone in less than 10 minutes.

I won’t dispute that last sentence. In my not-very-extensive experience with Visual Studio I can confirm that that is indeed a true statement. However, the rebuttal to that statement is perhaps my favorite indictment of the Visual * languages to date (all emphasis mine):

The problem is that you can create a Notepad clone in less than 10 minutes even if you don’t know what you’re doing.

And that, in a nutshell, I think highlights one of the biggest reasons why so much software these days sucks so badly. Yes, people can “get the job done” faster with these RAD tools, but at what price? I think lowering the barrier-to-entry for programming is a bad thing if you’re going to do it in such a way that you can forsake/forego learning the underlying formalities. It’s one thing to provide something that will give a new person quick results, and it’s quite another to provide folks with a “black box” that just does a bunch of hand waving and forces you to rely on it.

I found my Irish Claddagh ring ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY! Interesting and exciting. I had lamented to my boss earlier yesterday that I didn’t get to wear my Irish ring on the Irish holiday. Well, later on when Jeff came over I was digging through my overnight bag looking for my green necklace when suddenly, there it was: my precious ring. Just sitting there gleaming at me from the bottom of my bag. I went nuts, though Jeff was in the bathroom and missed my dance of joy. I haven’t taken the ring off since. Danny is in Austin playing frisbee in the rain and I am spinning my ring waiting for him to come home tomorrow.

I’ve added a link to our photo gallery on the right hand side of the page in the “Other Links” box. Check it out.

Well, after Planes on a Snake.

Crocs in a Car.

We’ll be throwing a Snakes on a Plane party when the movie comes out. Come as your favorite character- snakes, or a plane!

I have lost the very very special silver Claddagh ring Danny gave me for Christmas. The one I swore I would never take off. It’s gone. I can’t find it anywhere. I don’t know what to do.

A few years back (maybe less), some of the “links du jour” on the internet were links to some Amazon reviews by a guy named Chad Kultgen. They were mostly reviews on stuff like Top Gun or other very typical masculine things and they used a lot of funny phrases and a good time was had by all. Well, apparently Amazon didn’t like all that traffic for some reason, so they removed his reviews. In response, he started up his own site with Amazon product reviews at Chad’s Reviews and even posted about why he’s still doing it.

And holy crank his review for today is pretty disturbing yet hilarious. If he’s making all this stuff up, he does a pretty damn good job of writing.

edit:
Okay, he’s got to be making this stuff up as one of the “reviews” is for a vibrator that he supposedly found in an office-mate’s drawer. But I do love that that review fits in the “Crap The Douches In My Office Use” category. Frickin’ badass.