Synergistic Pulchritude

I'm Leeann Tweeden

Monday : April 04, 2011

A few of you may know the dear place that Leeann Tweeden holds in the heart of the Webster household.

We first came to know her after we got tired of SNL constantly being cut off, either before or after the show. So, in my DVR recording setup, I added 10 minutes before, and 15 minutes after SNL is supposed to end.

Some episodes of SNL are better than others, and many lose steam near the end. This leads to us getting distracted, and not paying much attention as the episode is wrapping up. Enter Leeann Tweeden.

She is the hostess of a late night Poker program, that seems to air all week long, and on Saturday, oh boy, they take the BEST of all week long, and compile it into "The Director's cut of Poker after Dark".

We only watch the introduction, as we really like the dramatic entrance and introduction that Leeann gives. Sometimes however, she decides to change up the introduction, and it leaves us feeling cheated.

She decided to change it up a bit differently this week, so I sent Leeann an email letting her know we are paying attention.

Hi, my wife and I are big fans of the intro you do for poker after dark. Our favorite version of the intro is when you say "I'm Leeann Tweeden, and welcome to the director's cut of poker after dark". We get disappointed when you leave out "poker after dark", and just say "welcome to the directors cut". This past weekend, you said "welcome to poker after dark, I'm Leeann Tweeden". This felt weird, please introduce yourself first in the future.

Thanks,
The Websters.

We're hoping she actually gets the message, and thinks of us every time she does that intro. I know I'll be watching close next week to see what she says.

Happy Rothfuss Day!

Tuesday : March 01, 2011

I love the culmination of anticipation. After the last harry potter book was released, I wondered how often, if ever again, I would experience this. Patrick Rothfuss has kept me waiting for the sequel to what is currently my favorite book, "The name of the wind." I have to thank him, since without the drawn out wait, the tense joy of starting the new adventure wouldn't have been as crisp.

So, if you haven't read his first book, and you like Fantasy, do yourself a favor and read it. Then wait 3 years, and read "The Wise Man's Fear".

Big Bites

Monday : March 08, 2010

Life! I can't imagine how people with kids do this. I'm taking two classes, trying to stay caught up with the Picture of the Day, and working on two different projects (which now includes more travel out to Virginia). Factor in that when I got home from my latest sea test on January 30th, I had spent more nights away from my house in the previous 6 months than in it.

There is a faint light at the end of the tunnel. After the current semester, I will only have 4 classes remaining in my Masters program. After next summer, I'll have another degree in a tube I'll never look at.

Lots of other personal interests have suffered casualties as well.

Out:
Video Games
Guitar
Drawing
Mixadot for Facebook
Gym
Blogging

In:
Homework
Workwork

At least with the weather getting nice running will be an option. Going to the gym sucks. Getting into a car, driving to the gym, finding parking, working out, showering, going to Whole Foods to get parking validated. Ugh. It's a whole todo that eats up nearly 2 hours. I just don't have that kind of time.

This blog is on hiatus. Hopefully it gets picked up next season.

Foremost is awesome

Wednesday : December 23, 2009

I just did a dumb thing earlier today. I spent the whole night last night toiling away at work. Then around noon, I was finally done. I started to cleanup the directory I was working in. There were a lot of files that started hs_pidxxxxx.

So, to get rid of them, I did the following:
rm -rf hs_pid *

For anyone in the know, that erased all my files in my project directory. No recycle bin, just gone to bit heaven.

Or so I thought. Some brisk searching on the internet had me stumble on debugfs, and other tools that did nothing well. Then I found foremost. Holy crap. A little tweaking of the configuration, and I was able to retrieve all my files with little problem in about 20 minutes.

http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Foremost
http://sourceforge.net/projects/foremost/

There is apparently a newer project based on foremost called scalpel that works even faster.

Thank you foremost, you saved me a LOT of time.

Ice Cream Devil

Wednesday : July 29, 2009

The ice cream truck has taken to parking itself 50 feet from our house. There are no children there getting ice cream, he just sits in his seat, smug, waiting for our door to open.

How do I know he is stalking me? After 5 minutes of him sitting out there, I broke down, and got an ice cream cone. He then immediately drove away.

I imagine him handing me my ice cream, dusting his hands off ::klack::klack::klack::, and stating that his work here is done.

It was as always, delicious. Please come back tomorrow.

MixADot 2.0

Tuesday : July 28, 2009

So things have been slow around here mostly due to all my free time being devoted to MixADot for the last month. Well, it is done and submitted. I've already had to re-submit it twice now due to Apple being a bit picky with my submission.

I've been continuing to post updates to project365, and that had been backing up until this past weekend as well. I'm almost all the way caught up now, and hopefully can stay that way for some time.

We bought a new car, and the Santa Fe is history. If only we could have held onto it until the 24th, we could have gotten some decent cash for it from this Cash for Clunkers program. That car had become quite the clunker.

New hotness is a 2009 Nissan Versa, which gets much better gas mileage, has air conditioning, and doesn't smell bad.

He's just not not that into you.

Sunday : June 14, 2009

We just watched "He's just not that into you." Someone recently said they saw it, and that it was okay. Eh, no.

If you are interested in seeing it, jump away now, cause i'm gonna spoil it.

Gigi is the standard neurotic crazy girl. She takes anything any guy says and twists it such that he is into her. She meets this bartender that opens her eyes to how guys really are. Aren't calling? Not that into you. Going out of town, and can't stay in touch? Where's he going, the moon? It's 2009, he can probably stay in touch if he was into you. So this friendship blossoms, and they seem to truly just be friends. True to her character, she starts misinterpreting things he's saying/doing and then he has to let her know that she is crazy, and that he isn't into her, but just as friends.

This is all fine. Then they ruin the premise of the movie by him realizing the error of his ways, and it turns out HE IS THAT INTO HER. Jesus, shoot me in the face.

Okay, but there's other couples, so maybe they just wanted one fairly tale couple to hollywood up the movie.

Okay, another couple basically breaks up after Gigi's revelations about how guys really are. The other girl was with her man for 7 years, but he doesn't want to get married. He doesn't believe in it, yadda yadda. So throughout the movie, you find out, he really just doesn't believe in marriage, but is truly in love with her, and only her. He comes to her rescue after her dad's heart attack, and she comes to grips with him not wanting marriage, but loves him, and they get back together with the understanding that there will be no marriage, but they are committed to one another only. Great. End it here, no more scenes with this couple.....but no. He's moving his stuff back in, and she finds his pants that he swore he wouldn't bring back (as a condition of her accepting no marriage from him). He mentions something being in the pocket for her to remove before she throws them away, and Awwww, it's an engagement ring. Will you marry me? Throw up time in my mouth.

I'm not against him backing down on the marriage thing, but I think the better argument is if he doesn't care about marriage, and she does, he should just marry her. If their relationship was that already, it doesn't change things.

The other couples that were followed weren't much better, and were all highly hollywoodized. Guy cheats on his wife, she doesn't care. He's smoking behind her back, boom, he's out on the street. WTF? That is a crazy person, and he is lucky she didn't kill him.

The other side of the cheating pair is a woman who thinks the guy is going to leave his wife for her. This is the only pair that I actually wouldn't have minded getting together, based on the wife being crazy, and the impression that the husband/wife had a sexless marriage (that seemed to be on the order of months at a time w/out sex).

Plot: D
Casting: A-
Summary: Boo

Hair Hates Evil: Or how my sea test was cancelled.

Monday : June 08, 2009

So anyone who knew I was going on another sea test as of next Monday, no need to fret. It's cancelled.

I saw recently that Dr. horrible's Sing-A-long blog is getting a sequel. Well, I already knew that, but the new bit of news is that it may be a feature length movie! NPH as the newly minted super villain singing forlorn songs of his ascension to evil, and his new dastardly plots against captain hammer.

I commented to Amanda that I was surprised that she had not yet watched NPH in the awesome 3 part web series, due to her appreciation of evil. Her surprised look led to my realization that her indisposition towards evil may be why she isn't enamored of my new hairdo. As we all know from movies, no hair means you are an evil scientist.

Andy: How do you feel about my shaved head, now that you've gotten used to it.
Amanda: It's alright, but your face/head is bland. I'd like your hair to grow out some.
Andy: I'd like it if my hair grew out too, but it doesn't.

that's paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

Just say no to facebook.

Sunday : June 07, 2009

Facebook is pushing it. There are too many groups, fans of, actions, pokes, etc. There needs to be some way for me to indicate I don't want anything to do with them.

Me ignoring them is not strong enough. I want the person who tried to apply said action to me to get the equivalent of "I'm sorry, this person doesn't accept calls from people with blocked numbers."

I know they won't implement that feature, so if twitter begins to allow easier posting of pictures, I may switch to that completely.

What i want is something that can post pictures, and a sentence or two. Is that so much to ask? That's all I want.

So, no, I don't want to join your cause, don't poke me, I don't really care what super hero I am (except when I'm bored), but I certainly don't care what super hero you are.

Sorry. Oh, and the next time those mormons come to the door, I may suggest that we are strict pagans, and can't take their heretical literature.

Baby Laptop

Tuesday : May 26, 2009

I just got a new laptop on Friday. It's a MSI Wind U100-641. 10.2" netbook. This thing is sweet. Much more enjoyable to sit on the couch and websurf with (quieter, lighter, and does not scald my legs). It has a built in webcam, and plenty of storage to offload photos when we're on vacation.

Basically it's everything I need, though I doubt it's much of a gaming laptop. However, I don't really play pc games at all.

I also upgraded the ram from 1gb -> 2gb for $12. Since when has laptop memory been this cheap?

Summary: Baby laptop is awesome, and can be picked up in Rockville Md at microcenter for $299.

Blue Cup

Wednesday : May 20, 2009

Yesterdays picture of the day was of my beloved blue cup. It holds tasty water for me every night, but last night I was holding calypso, and getting some ice cubes. Either the cold or the sound from the ice plunking into the cup freaked her out, and she rabbit kicked the cup out of my hand. It basically shattered on one side. So yesterdays picture is in memoriam.

Wednesday : May 13, 2009

I was poking around imdb this morning over breakfast and I saw a quote from Alicia Silverstone about vegetarianism. I know what you're thinking, why does anyone care about what she says, she's not famous anymore and her new face looks weird. That all may be true, but her words have made me think about my meat eating. Here's her quote as to what finally turned her off meat for good, after struggling with on again, off again bouts with vegetarianism.

"...Why am I saving one animal and still eating steak? How can I love these creatures so much... and keep eating meat? Ultimately I thought that if I wasn't ready to eat a dog, I shouldn't be eating meat at all." - Alicia Silverstone

Man that's a really good point. If there is ever an ultimatum where I can either choose to continue never eat meat again, or eat a dog...you can just assume I'll be continuing to have burgers with my fries.

I tried writing a few different summaries to this post, but they all came off making me sound like a psychopathic animal killer, oh well. Once and for all, I love animals, preferably medium-rare, with some tasty sauce.

Project365: The Invasion

Tuesday : April 21, 2009

So I've updated the header on the website to pull in the picasa stream for Project365.

Huzzah new camera.

Other updates:
Still alive.
Still going to school.
Still working on mixadot update.

Sunday : March 29, 2009

Facebook in reality

That video explains all the problems I have with facebook, as described in my earlier post

Easton!

Monday : March 23, 2009

Recently while out with some friends, the SATs came up. I like to think I have an interesting SAT story, and was pretty sure I had recounted it here in the past, but a quick search says otherwise.

I took the SATs exactly one time. June 7th, 1997. That was three days after my mom died. There were lots of reasons not to take it, but I did not think my mom would have wanted to be the reason for any delay in my college plans. Me going to college was quite important to her, and rescheduling the SATs would have been a hassle.

If you are from the Ocean City / Salisbury area, you knew where your testing site was going to be. It was always at Bennet Middle School (about 40 minutes away). Nowadays my old high school is itself a testing site, but such was not the case when I was in high school. So on the day of the test, I grabbed my paper work, and headed off with a modest amount of time to get to Bennet, park, register, and get to my classroom.

I was nearing Bennet when my friend Adam called to let me know that his test site was the high school in Easton (easily another 40 minutes past salisbury), and that perhaps I should check mine, since we registered on the same day. Sure enough, Easton. So, I floored it, started doing calculations in my head of how fast I would have to drive to get to Easton in time. After a few minutes, and noticing the mile marker I was at, the answer was about 150MPH. I slowed down, and turned around, and called Adam back to see if he wanted to catch a movie in Salisbury, and commiserate our stupidity (on the day we were supposed to take the SATs no less.) He answered his phone, letting me know he was AT Bennet middle, and was in line to get his test center changed on the fly.

Speed re-increased. I'm sure I flew into that parking lot, making the corner on two wheels. The lot was insanely full. I parked literally in the last row, slammed the door, and started sprinting towards the school. Once inside, and out of breathe, I found the line to change test sites. They were grumpy about it, and initially seemed like they weren't going to do it. I hurriedly explained about my friend, and that I knew he had just had his changed, and they relented. They then asked for my paper work. HOLY CRAP, I left it in the car. I sprinted back out of the building, and across the parking lot. About half way across the parking lot, I realized my keys weren't in any of my pockets.

Furthermore, I clearly remembered locking the door to my truck. Okay, no problem, I had figured out a few weeks prior how to solve that problem. The Dodge Ram 50 door panels were "flexible" in that you could push the center in, and the top part would pop out. This would leave enough room for you to reach under the window, find the rod for the locking mechanism, and pull it up.

About 5 feet away from the car, I jumped with a flying knee and struck the correct spot on the door. Two seconds later I was inside, grabbed my keys, the paper work, and was turning around to leave when I spotted a woman in the large SUV parked next to me. Her face was the classic dropped jaw, gaping mouth, "Oh my god, what is wrong with that boy" face. I sputtered out a litany of "imlateitsmycarlockedthekeysinside, Igottago", and sprinted off back towards the school.

I can only imagine what this woman had seen. I'm sure she saw me fly into the parking lot, park crookedly, and sprint into the building. Then only a few minutes later, here I come sprinting back out, frantically searching my pockets, and then probably swearing as loudly as I've ever sworn in my life. Then, as I neared the car, a Bruce Lee inspired flying dragon knee into my car. Then spinning and facing her with Crazy Eyes, rambling off some unintelligible string of syllables before running away once again. At least I spiced up her day.

Getting back into the school, the lobby was now empty. Previously, there was quite a few students milling about, but they were presumably in their seats preparing for the test. At least there wasn't a line this time, and I presented my papers, and the woman escorted me quickly to the exam room. I walked in, and there sat Adam. Fist raised, he said "Easton!". I sat down, and the tests were immediately handed out.

To this day, I don't remember a single other thing about the SATs. I think I got a 1330, and that (I correctly thought) was good enough to get me into Maryland. I certainly wasn't eager to repeat them.

Umbrella Insurance

Monday : March 16, 2009

I just got an email that I immediately knew was spam.

Subject:Umbrella Insurance
Hi Mr. & Mrs. Webster,

I recently sent you information regarding our umbrella insurance. When you have a moment please contact our office to discuss this information.

Thank you,

Lauren Wagner (Formerly Pecora-Please note the name change.)
Sales Producer at Craig Insurance Agency, Inc.
2829 O'Donnell Street
Baltimore, MD 21224
410-522-6100 / Tel
410-522-6109 / Fax
http://agent.allstate.com/JimCraig1/Welcome/

Insure your most important asset-YOURSELF!

Okay, I'm not sure what happened to this post the first time around but it got lost.

There was a long rant about umbrellas flipping inside out in high winds, and if they are expensive enough to warrant insurance specifically for them.

After a few seconds I had realized that the insurance must be some form of comprehensive insurance, and then anger at the prospect of my home owner's insurance not already covering whatever this provides.

It was funny, I'd appreciate if you just took my word for and laughed. Stupid blog erasing my post...

Sais Matters

Thursday : March 12, 2009

Just a little update about how my wall of death is coming. Lets just say, two TMNTs down, two to go. Michelangelo you're next!

Confucius

Friday : March 06, 2009

I've had this one image sitting on my desktop for quite some time now.

This guy was on the sidelines at a redskins game this past season, and cracked me up. I don't know who he is, or what his team role is, but as long as he has that mustache, he's on the payroll as far as I'm concerned.

Mixadot Reviewed!

Thursday : February 26, 2009

Uh, I just noticed that someone reviewed our game! Awesome town.

The Portable Gamer

In other mixadot news, I am working on another 25 levels (20 for Mode 2, and 5 bonus levels). One form of Multiplayer may also be included, as I'm making some good progress on that as well.

Update: Someone else reviewed it here. Some decent praise for mix 3 genre innovation.