surrealization.com

I Sold a Dream Last Night

Tuesday, February 13 2007

Everyone wants to play an instrument when they're young. In elementary school I tried to play the tumpet and failed. They moved me onto the trombone because it would be easier for me to play. I swtiched, but I wasn't too thrilled about playing it (I wanted the cool saxophone but they wouldn't let me) and after a year I realized it wasn't for me. In high school I had some guitarist friends and decided to learn to play. I got a $200 used guitar and an amp and started to play. I learned all the standard beginner songs and eventually realized I was neither good nor did I really want to keep learning...

Elevensies: this morning was a good morning

Monday, September 11 2006

My wife made a Lord of the Rings joke this morning.

(sort of quote)
"I packed a ton of food because I didn't eat breakfast. I'll have second breakfast and elevensies."

I think I may have won her over.

Tom, James, and Adam vs. the UPS truck

Wednesday, July 19 2006

I wrote this years ago when I had my weblog hosted through Blogger. Some recent conversations reminded me of it so I decided to bring it back. I call these stories "Tom Stories". Tom is that crazy-ass person you were friends with in high school that always seemed to prompt you into doing some incredibly stupid things. Following is the first ever Tom Story I wrote, unedited from my first posting of it. We were in ninth grade (James was in tenth), it was an afternoon nearing summer, immediately after school was over. Tom, James and I always met outside a certain door and walked home. Typically we...

Shadowrun PC XBOX360 Game Announced To Fan Outrage

Tuesday, May 09 2006

It was announced recently and they now have an official website . They have some forums and so far they're not getting very many supporters of the idea of making a team-based FPS game from a tabletop RPG. If you're a nerdly like myself, you may know Shadowrun, and you're probably also at least disappointed in the decision to make the game in its current format. It's an odd decision to use an RPG genre for what is essentially a cookie-cutter game nowadays. They could have created their own and not paid the royalties. The guy who's making the game has a blog post explaining the decision, however...

Banana Blender Surprise

Friday, December 30 2005

Natasha and I went to a show the day after Christmas at the Continental Club in Houston. The headliner was a local band whose members have all moved away but come back around for reunion shows occasionally. Anyway, they're called Banana Blender Surprise; the show was pretty good and everyone in the Club had a good time. One of their songs (one of their few cover songs) was song by the drummer while wearing a banana suit (like you would see on the side of the road trying to get you to buy something from a store nearby). The song he sung? Coming to America. My phone doesn't take the best pictures...

Mr T Says You Gonna Get There In One Piece

Thursday, November 17 2005

This story about putting celebrity voices on car DVD navigation systems says Mr T is one of the voices they'll use. And not only will he give you directions, but he'll give you some appropriate Mr T phrases as well.

Mr. T not only guides, he also threatens: Pay attention to what Im saying, he bawls. Mr. T gonna get you there in one piece ... you gonna be there safely, or else!

Pure genius. If I ever get a navigation system in a car, it'll definitely need to have Mr T's voice.

Hero

Wednesday, January 19 2005

So I saw Hero last night. While I understand (I think) the point of the movie, I can't believe anyone ever dared to compare it to Crouching Tigeer, Hidden Dragon. First off, the first 15 minutes of Hero is plagued by classic slapstic kung fu (some of the side characters act a little too crazy for an art fu movie). Second, Jet Li just isn't very good. He doesn't have a good on-screen presence, nor is he overly believable in any role I've ever seen him in (The One? Cradle 2 the Grave?). Third, they really focused too much on those god damned water drops. In, the fight with the first assassin they...

Snowman.

Sunday, January 09 2005

This is the funniest snowman I've ever seen.

Harold and Kumar Go To Whitecastle

Saturday, January 08 2005

Anyone who knows me knows that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is my favorite movie of all time, and Dude Where's My Car is my number two. Well, last night Natasha and I watched Harold & Kumar, and we laughed through the entire movie. I can't believe it, but Harold & Kumar easily edges out Dude Where's My Car and takes the #2 spot. Both were directed by the same guy, but written by different people and a Harold & Kumar didn't get dumbed down to a PG-13 rating like Dude Where's My Car did. If you like that type of movie (think Half Baked also), you'll like Harold & Kumar.

A vulture landed on my patio.

Monday, December 13 2004

Weirdest thing happened today. A vulture actually landed on our 12th floor balcony. No wait, TWO vultures landed on our 12th floor balcony. They scared the crap out of the cats and just mosied their way across the balcony and eventually flew to the top of the building across the way. Here is a picture of one of them ( here is a closeup). Natsha was told that by someone that birds usually don't fly above the 12th floor of buildings, and we haven't hardly seen any birds up here. I really figured we'd see more pigeons than vultures, but I guess not....

Great costume

Monday, November 08 2004

This was sent to me by a coworker the other day. Great costume.

TRON Guy

Tuesday, August 10 2004

Jay Manard, aka the TRON Guy, was featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. Jay has made his own TRON costume and posted pictures on the internet a while back and was featured on Slashdot. Well, Jimmy Kimmel has found him also and has had him on a couple of times. Here's a few lines from last night: Jimmy: "Now, personal question if I may. Are you attached?" TRON Guy: "No sir I'm not." Jimmy: "Have you ever made love to a woman?" TRON Guy: (uncomfortable) "Hahaha, um, I think I'll pass on that one and let people wonder." Jimmy: "I think, I don't think there's going to be any wondering." Jimmy has...

Batman Begins

Friday, July 30 2004

There's a trailer up for the new Batman movie at the WB website. Apparently it's the "how Batman became Batman" movie and stars the guy from American Psycho as Batman. Maybe we'll be lucky and it won't suck like all but the first one.

Roger Ebert, Catwoman

Sunday, July 25 2004

Sometimes I love Roger Ebert. When I first saw the Catwoman trailer, I figured I would go and see it, however now that I've realized how bad it is I'll either not watch it or rent it via Netflix. Anyway, I was reading Ebert's review of Catwoman , and here are three amazingly insulting lines from it: "Catwoman" is a movie about Halle Berry's beauty, sex appeal, figure, eyes, lips and costume design. It gets those right. Everything else is secondary, except for the plot, which is tertiary. ... but what is a catwoman? She can leap like a cat, strut around on top of her furniture, survive great falls...

We like the moon

Friday, July 16 2004

Any fans of the semi-old Quizno's commercials featuring the work of rathergood.com (the singing monkey things), might just like the moon song.

ADD

Wednesday, June 30 2004

So I took this test online a while back about ADD. It was a bunch of questions with Strongly Agree through Strongly Disagree type of answers. There were 100 questions, then a second 100 question test to detail more about the results. I took the test with Natasha and conferred with her on some things I didn't know (certain behaviors I wasn't aware I did until it was pointed out to me). The first test said I was very likely ADD. The second test broke down types of ADD and I got the very basic style of ADD where I basically just don't pay attention (or can't pay attention). It said that this type...

Turtle Power

Friday, June 25 2004

Natasha made it onto Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday again. This week's theme was "A Celebration of Turtle Power" . Natasha put each of the ninja turtles in a work of art from their namesake . Michelangelo Raphael Leonardo Donatello...

Wasps

Tuesday, June 08 2004

Man, I got stung by a fucking wasp today. I've never been stung by one before, and it seemed way worse than a bee sting. I got stung once in the arm (I didn't see it coming) and when I pulled my other hand to the stung arm, it stung my pinky finger too. The really funny thing is I was in a coworker's truck and his passenger side door only opens from the outside. So he jumped out of the truck and stared at me getting stung and I had to tell him to open my door ("man, open my fucking door!" I think I said). At least I know now that I'm not allergic to wasp stings (I didn't die after a few minutes...

Natasha makes it into Photoshop Phriday

Sunday, May 23 2004

Natasha got a membership to the Somethingawful forums and has been submitting things for their weekly Photoshop Phriday for the past couple weeks and she made it in this past Friday. She's the first one; the topic is about magazines you'd never want to read. She did "Soap Cliche Weekly", check it out.

Some people have too much time on their hands

Friday, May 07 2004

Bananaphone.
Cookiethievery.

Typing speed

Saturday, April 24 2004

I just saw a very odd thing (at least I think it's very odd). There's some show about Stephen King on A&E right now, and they showed him typing on his computer (apparently typing a book, whatever). And you know what? He's a hunt-and-peck typist. He used two fingers (both index fingers) and lifted his hands fully off the keyboard to find the next key. What really surprises me about this, is that I type at around 90 words per minute when I'm taking my time. If I really get into it I can get to 120 with only a small number of errors (this is with my ultra-ergonomic you-barely-have-to-move-your...

Matrix: Reloaded "easter egg"

Sunday, April 11 2004

While watching Matrix: Reloaded last night, I thought I saw something a little strange when they showed the Merovingian's wife, Persephone. I rewound and immediately Natasha asked what I was doing. I paused the movie at pointed to let her know what I was doing.

Take a look for yourself (Natasha blew up the important part of the image).

Now the question is, do you think they realized that you could fully see her "area" while they were shooting the movie?

This is really hard to fathom

Tuesday, March 23 2004

According to this article, Bush's administration ruled that people could be fired from a workplace based on being homosexual. Which also means that a gay manager can fire as many heterosexuals as he or she wants because they're not gay.

I've decided that if I ever manage people, I will fire them if they're republicans.

Same sex marriages, No more social security

Thursday, February 26 2004

I was reading someone's technical weblog today and he had a post on allowing gay marriage . I wholeheartedly agree. I was listening to a debate on NPR on the way to work this morning (the Diane Rehm show) and they were talking about gay marriage and whether it should be allowed or not. The liberal arguments were "the constitution clearly states equal protection and benefit under the law", "there is no good reason why it shouldn't be allowed", and some others. My favorite was someone said "no president has dared impart social doctrines on the country through the use of a constitutional amendment...

A long time

Friday, February 06 2004

Wow, it's been almost an entire year since I quit smoking. The official 1 year mark will be February 26th. I had been smoking for about 6 years at the time, and I was up to about 35-45 cigarettes per day (a little less than two packs to a little more than two packs). I was worst when I was in front of a computer, since smoking lends itself so easily to sitting. I was especially bad in the year that I worked from home (2.5 years ago to 1.5 years ago), since it was all sitting in front of a computer and I was in my own apartment where you're allowed to smoke and work at the same time. During that...

Always dispose of your Christmas trees in a timely manner (aka, We'll miss you Slanty)

Wednesday, January 14 2004

My Christmas tree (from now on will be referred to as "Slanty") pretty much never drank from its little pool of water. Its first night it fell over and the bottom dried all up and it was never able to really get anything from its now defunct water sucking base. Christmas came, Christmas went. New Years came, New Years went. Natasha left to spend a week with her mother, Natasha came back. It is now January 13th, roughly 4 weeks after Slanty came into my apartment and died and I am just now cleaning up its remnants (well Natasha is doing the finishing touches). We decided today would be the day to...

Watch those burritos in the airport

Saturday, January 03 2004

So I saw Natasha off today at Dallas Love airport for her week-long trip to go visit her mother. We got there about thirty minutes early and I watched her go through security, where she promptly got stopped and searched. She got searched and all of her belongings got searched as well. When the guy doing the searching went through her bag and found a Taco Beuno bag with two burritos in it (her carry-on meal), he picked both up and squished them to make sure they didn't contain any sort of burrito-sized harmful device. I wonder if anyone has carried on a knife inside of a bean burrito before.

Jedi Hunter

Monday, December 22 2003

A friend of mine passed this along to me today. It's an amateur spoof of the Crocodile Hunter, but instead it's about Boba Fett and titled Jedi Hunter. It's surprisingly high quality and funny.

Stupid is as, well stupid is

Thursday, December 11 2003

Hey, who wants to buy the new Alien Quadrilogy ? Wait a minute, WHAT THE HELL IS A QUADRILOGY ???? Obviously the people making the Alien products said to themselves: "Hey the Lord of the Rings trilogy is doing great. But we have four parts, not three. Quadrilogy!" Now, I feel the need to say that anyone with half a brain can break down the word trilogy into its two respective parts: tri, meaning 3; and logy which comes from the logos, meaning paper -- obviously not everyone will know that, but they should know the first part. So if you can break down trilogy into tri and logy, and you want to make...

Family Guy

Thursday, November 20 2003

Family Guy may just get a triumphant return to network television! Due to the amazing DVD sales which put Family Guy at #4 selling television title ever and #1 this year, Fox is reported to be considering putting up to 35 new episodes of Family Guy on television by January 2004. Like many other people, I wasn't very excited about Family Guy when it first came out and eventually (due to Cartoon Network reruns) became a very faithful fan. Unfortunatley I've seen every episode four times in the six or so months since I've been watching, so 35 new episodes would be incredibly welcome by me....

Lately

Monday, November 10 2003

Natasha and I saw Matrix Revolutions on Wednesday (opening day). I definitely think the third movie makes up for the horrible "ending" of the second, however it was kind of cheesy and left you with somewhat of a "but that's not a good enough explanation..." kind of feeling. Reviewers gave it a C-, Yahoo users gave it an A+. I'd give it a B just because it was a part of the trilogy, not necessarily because I liked it (in other words, the first movie's amazingness boosts this one's ratings a bit). Last night Natasha and I went to the "Tony Hawk Boom Boom Huck Jam" (I hate that name). It was fun and...

Jack o' lanterns

Thursday, October 30 2003

Natasha and I carved some pumpkins tonight. I got my idea from the inside sleeve of Marilyn Manson's first CD, his face is all lit up and he's screaming. Natasha was jealous that I wasn't doing "Mr Bones" (one of the stencils we had) so she decided to do up her own too. She chose a dustmite from the Steve Burns "Music for Dustmites" and the word "mighty" (one of the songs is called "Mighty Little Man"). You can see mine here and Natasha's here ....

Lately

Wednesday, October 08 2003

I don't know which is worse: having Jesse "the Body" Ventura as your governor or having the Terminator/Conan/Kindergarden Cop as your governor. I can't believe so many people would vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger; I'm totally baffled. He had pretty much nothing to say during his debates and frankly he just seems especially dumb now that I've heard him talk more and more lately. Maybe if Arnold had some sort of good plan for taking the 8 (and soon to be 12) billion dollar deficit down I would accept him getting elected, but he had nothing! Saturday Night Live this past Saturday did a really funny...

Ahhhh

Wednesday, July 23 2003

It's good to have a job. I had only been without for about seven weeks, but it was about 5 weeks too long. Not only that, but my new job is actually really, really good. I work at Globeranger on the Platform team. We build a platform for mobile and RFID (radio frequency ID - sorta like radio emitter barcodes) application development. That is, we build the application frameworks that other developers (who buy our product) will use to build their applications better. A guy I work with explained our position as something like this: "Eventually people building RFID-enabled applications are going to...

New pets

Wednesday, June 04 2003

Got some cats yesterday. One boy, one girl. The current thought for the names are Steve-O (the boy) and Bam (the girl), however it's still up in the air. They have some Ragdoll blood in them, so they're puffy and floppy and colored with points. Here are some pictures and a movie I took with my new digital camera I got a few days ago.

Car woes

Friday, May 30 2003

I so desperately want a new car. I actually hate my current car. I bought it a bit prematurely and took what I could get. So now I owe a lot of money on it still (more than it's actually worth). I could pay it off, but I just know the moment I pay it off is the moment I'll get into a horrible accident and it'll get totalled (boom! my money is gone and so is my car and I get a tiny amount for what the car is worth totalled). On another note, I am so torn up as to what kind of car I should get. I have no clue. I don't want another 3 year, 36000 mile warantee crap (so pretty much no american cars...

Tablet PC

Tuesday, May 27 2003

I used my tablet PC as an actual writing pad for the first time on Saturday. I fired up Windows Journal, loaded the paper template and spent a couple hours jotting notes, etc. Windows Journal is neat in that I can write, then turn the pen around and " erase " things I just wrote. I found this feature to be really useful, but noticed myself doing something strange: I was actually wiping off the eraser dust that normally covers a piece of real paper after using a real eraser. Erase, erase. Wipe wipe. It is such a habit to do wipe off the dust after erasing that it carried over to writing on my Tablet...

Odd associations

Tuesday, May 20 2003

The other day I was talking to Natasha and found myself making a very strange association between something that was said and something totally different, but in course of half a second my brain went from one to the other. I actually stopped and thought about why I made the association and retraced my brain's steps. I did another today so I decided to start documenting these for fun. Association #1: Joe Pantoliano (bad guy in matrix) is mentioned, I think "I'm angry that in the Italian Job Edward Norton is a bumbling bad guy". 1. Joe Pantoliano 2. Sort of lesser known actors I like 3. Edward Norton...

Interviewing

Wednesday, May 07 2003

So today started my actual interviewing process with real companies (not just headhunters). My first interview ended about 40 minutes ago. I don't think it went too bad, but I always get nervous in situations I have to prove myself to someone else (or a panel of people). It's kind of like my dislike of public speaking (which I can do after I get into it, but starting is hell), but it's worse because you have to prove to person/people that you really do know what you're talking about and you're studdering and trying to explain things and keep losing your train of thought (more like your train of...

Kemper Insurance closing?

Thursday, April 24 2003

Well, after a couple months of Kemper Insurance (my employer), and some "last-chance" negotiations to have Kemper bought up by some investment firms, everything has broken down and the negotiations with the investment companies is over. A few thoughts: * Listening to people here bitch on the phone is actually kind of funny. * I'm glad I'm not "over the hill" in my career, or this would seem mcuh worse. * I have no idea yet whether I'll be losing my job, but I will get about three months of notice/severance, which is a good thing. * I relocated here, from a slightly bad situation with my ex in NC...

Wyoming, Security stickers

Wednesday, April 23 2003

This here is just for Paul, so we never forget the URL of the "Wyoming does not exist" webpage. Just look at this picture once again proving that Wyoming doesn't actually exist. On another note, does any else other than me feel incredibly strongly about the security stickers placed on DVDs? Particularly when there is a sticker on the top, side and bottom of the DVD, requiring you to spend minutes trying to peel them off without ruining the plastic covering. I would seriously pay a couple dollars more for a DVD without those damned stickers. Just give me some shrink-wrap and make me pay more....

Red VS Blue - Halo movies

Tuesday, April 22 2003

Funny page, Red v Blue for all you Halo fans. It's a bunch of video from the game with voice-overs providing the "acting".

Life needs a find function

Tuesday, April 22 2003

Anyone who knows me well has heard me talk about this at least once, and I repeat: life needs a find function. Have you ever found yourself in a grocery store, in the aisle you're supposed to be in but completely fucking unable to find what it is you need to find? You stare at the shelves for what seems like an eternity. You know what you are looking for is right there, but you just can't seem to find it. Maybe it's just me this happens to, but just think if you could put on your magic image recognition glasses and let it do your searching for you. Just say "I want fabric softener" and move your...