whazzmaster.com

I haven’t posted in a while due to the quality of the comment threads in the last entry. I wanted to see where Scientist was taking us with that Physics Lecture, but inactivity and Albert Einstein conspired to kidnap me, tie me up, and threaten to start removing digits unless I overcame my creative inertia and wrote any-goddamn-thing. So here we are.

I need to send out a Hearty Congratulations and Thanks to Cal for finding that website with pictures and descriptions of all the Star Wars toys. Identfying all the toys I did and did not have ate up an hour of my time at work on Thursday. Thanks a lot, Cal.

It was also interesting to hear other peoples’ reactions to the Star Wars movie. I saw it last Sunday but didn’t really post anything because I figured no one would want to talk about it. You’re all bigger nerds than I gave you credit for. Congratulations.

Best Buy lured me in the door yesterday with visions of Chappelle’s Show Season Two DVDs dancing in my head. The sugarplum fairy came up empty-handed though, as all that was left was a gigantic empty rack. I looked left: plenty of copies of the aforementioned “Buddies” DVD. I looked right: plenty of Chappelle’s Show Season One DVDs. I was confused. Then an asshole Best Buy employee came up and informed me that they had just sold the last one. He suggested that I could drive across town in rush hour traffic to another Best Buy that might have one. I wanted to suggest that he lick my balls, but I had briefs on and it would take a undue amount of time to free them so I walked out of the store. On the way out however (and this is how all money-wasting actions begin) some of the PC software caught my eye. I had heard some good things about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game. I was a fan of Neverwinter Nights, by Bioware, and Star Wars KOTOR was by the same people, using the same gameplay engine. It was also on sale for $19.99. I guess KOTOR 2 came out recently and so they were firesaling the first one. I brought it home and started playing last night and its pretty great. Haven’t gotten any lightsabers yet, but I have a wookie, and I blew up a rancor monster with a thermal detonator. Good enough for me.

RAJ OUT.

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Got a mail out of the blue from my stepbrother-in-law today. CURSES~! that this is the one day I’m unable to listen to the early game due to meetings all morning.

Hell of a first inning for the Crew this afternoon: Brady with a leadoff double; a sac fly and fielder’s choice to push him across; a two-out jack by El Caballo; a two-out double by Overbay; a two-out double by Billy Hall to score Overbay; a two-out double by the rook Hardy to score Hall; even Moeller gets a hit and RBI; finally Glover, in the nine spot, ends the inning. 5-0 Crew

Uke is on fire today. He may have dusted a sixer on his way to the stadium this morning.

A nice ol’ fashioned 11-1 nut-stomping by the Crew. A sweep at home over the Rockies. All we need now is a sweep of the gawdawful Astros, then off to the Kings of the West, The Fathers. Then up to LA for a few against the Dodgers. Those will be some tough games, but if we can come out .500 it would be nice.

RAJ OUT.

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Via PvP Online, I present to you the funniest goddamned thing I’ve ever seen. Note: you gotta wait until about 1 minute in, then all hell breaks loose.

RAJ OUT.

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Finally back up and running on the computer at home; it broke a week and a half ago and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong until last night. Either my RAM is b0ned or the RAM slot on my motherboard is. I’m not sure which yet, but I switched slots and it is tenuously running. The wireless internet falls apart about every 10 minutes and it powers down randomly, but I was able to back up my Quicken file and my photos. Looks like the Moneypenny house might be in for a new computer soon if this piece of shit keeps it up. I also just noticed that the throughput on my net connection (for the few minutes it’s up) is complete shit.

I’m also uploading two sets of photos from two of our recent hikes, including the Death March at Muir Woods when Wirksu was out visiting. It’s highly reccomended as you can virtually see the anger and frustration grow on our faces throughout the slideshow as Cal drags us through more and more of Northern California’s beautiful wilderness. I jest however, as my newfound love of walking around in Nature is due to Cal forcing us to walk The Ben Johnson trail that fateful day.

The other gallery I put up was from our Big Basin Hike several weeks ago. We attempted the 12.1 mile out and back trail from the Pacific Ocean up into the mountains. The big woop-dee-doo is supposed to be Berry Falls at the turnaround point. It’s a 60 foot waterfall up in the hills. I would have liked to see it but we only got about 3 or so miles in when we realized that if we didn’t turn around and start heading back we would maybe not make it before dark. One place I never want to be in the dark is in the middle of a forest. I did that once in Louisiana and it didn’t work out so well.

Today’s hike was over at Montalvo Park. First things first: we forgot the camera, and after I’d taken two pictures with my phone’s camera it crashed with memory problems. So the only pics we have from today are in the moblog. Montalvo is a great hike. From the bahiker.com description:

Villa Montalvo is a massive estate formerly owned by James Phelan,Lookout Trail tucked into mouth of a canyon a few miles from Saratoga. After his death the property was bequested to a non-profit organization dedicated to artistic endeavors. An amphitheater and villa, among other small buildings, host arts programs and musical events year round. A landscaped arboretum garden in front of the villa is a popular site for weddings.

The posh villa and the carefully groomed gardens, with many exotic plants, are contrasted by the natural beauty seen along the hiking trails. Managed by Santa Clara County Parks, a handful of narrow dirt paths arch around the sides and back of the villa, climbing out of a redwood canyon to Lookout Point. At this, the park’s highest (reachable) point of around 1200 feet, a bench provides a nice place to sit and look across the valley to Mission Peak.

Villa Montalvo is so small that junctions seem to pop up around ever corner. You can easily walk a big crescent-shaped loop through the park in Lookout Pointan hour or so, and the elevation changes are minor. This is a good destination for families with small kids and older folks, although visitors are not permitted to picnic on the grounds near the villa.

Click through to the hike description to get some great pictures as well. The hike was only two miles looped, so we were in and out around an hour and a half. It has some good elevations changes and the Lookout Point is a great place to see all of Santa Clara County. Sadly, no Giant Banana Slugs or Salamanders were to be found on the trails of Villa Montalvo, but there were lots of annoying bugs.

Erin and Amanda are doing a Gal’s Night Out tonight with a bunch of Amanda’s friends. Should Erin bring home interesting and funny stories, I will ask her to post them here.

Cal: I’ll footrace you to Vegas… GO.

RAJ OUT

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Shouts to Cal: I forgot Bay to Breakers was last weekend. I’m sure you ran in it; how’d go? Did you beat The Kenyans? Did you trip on some dude’s wig? Did Greg push you in the Mudd at the halfway point? Give us your trip report.

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After a week or so of happiness, the Brewers still-unsnapped 3 game losing streak is settling me down amongst the smelly doldrums. The only good thing is that with training during the day and the gym and schtuff at night (plus my computer is broken) I don’t have much time to feel depressed. Just snap the skid tonight and take the rest of this four-gamer against The Nationals.

In other news, Wirksu apparently told Ewaz that I couldn’t find the keys to the whazz machine. I received a drunken late-night voice mail from The Man hisself telling me that I was a very bad person. I found the keys, though. Everyone come out to Cali for a whazz tourney.

RAJ OUT.

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All this week I’m in a Wintellect training class here at work, 9a to 5p daily. You may remember that I took one last November that was awesome. That one was on the .Net Framework with Jason Clark. This week it’s the Mastering Windows Debugging class and its being taught by John Robbins. I don’t mean to name-drop but that name means a lot in developer circles and it’s fantastic to be in a class of ten with him teaching in a very freeform style. Great back and forth. We’re two hours into a weeklong class and I’ve already absorbed a lot of good info on dev practices and tips. It’s really exciting.

I also now want to get a tablet PC. They have a lot of cool uses beyond what is obvious. And if you’re not down with computer programming, fuck you too!

RAJ OUT.

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I was going to write a long post about Erin and I went hiking in Big Basin last Saturday and the great time we had playing with Giant Salamanders and such, but time is a void and all that nonsense so I decided to instead post about something we’ve been doing the past few nights before bed.

The gist of the entertainment is this: I read Erin excerpts from Wrestlecrap, written by the people who run the inestimable website of the same name.

We guffaw loudly to such classic editorializing as (paraphrased) “Bischoff kept asking Hogan who he saw in the mirror? What was happening? Idiot.” There is also much to laugh about when reading about Hogan’s movie career (such as it was,) consisting of movies such as No Holds Barred, Suburban Commando, Mr. Nanny, and Santa with Muscles. Don’t ask about Thunder in Paradise.

More fun was had when I acted out the hilarious skits done in WCW to promote PPVs. Example Number One: Spin the Wheel, Make The Deal, which climatically ends with laser beams coming out of Sting’s and Jake “The Snake” Robert’s eyes and the entire room exploding. Also: Cheatum the evil one-eyed midget.

Here’s a tip for couples everywhere: the healing power of laughter goes far to establishing a basis for a relationship; therefore it’s in your best interest to read commentary critical of badly-produced Pay-Per-View-hocking minimovies of the mid- to late-80s to each other before retiring to bed each night.

Good night, whazzmaster.com.

RAJ OUT.

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