jason thurber's blog

globally-scoped ramblings

Archive for June, 2003

The Poetry of Rumsfeld

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I heard about this on NPR yesterday. Apparently there’s also a book of Rumsfel poetry being published. Enjoy.

Written by jthurber

June 30th, 2003 at 1:55 pm

Posted in humor

Apropos PA…

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Some timely humor over at Penny Arcade. I can only excuse my behavior by saying “I didn’t actually buy the book” (which is hardly mitigating).

Written by jthurber

June 25th, 2003 at 10:31 am

Posted in found-on-web

New face

with 21 comments

Everyone else was doing it, so in the spirit of unity I have put a main page on my website. It’s a bit plain, but it does have my trademark about:blank link.

Written by jthurber

June 25th, 2003 at 8:18 am

Posted in pointless

HP (Not Hewlett-Packard)

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I read the new Harry Potter book (Order of the Phoenix) this weekend. These certainly aren’t the best books I’ve read (by a fairly significant margin), but there is something frusturating while also engaging about the story, and Harry’s character, that keeps me coming back. I’m a sucker for series with a bunch of long books in them and will tend to read the newest book in the series, even if the last one wasn’t particularly good (case in point: Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series which I read 9 books of, at about 1000 pages per book, before the repetitive nature of the narration and the HORRIBLE story-line got the better of me and I gave up). Anyway, this is probably the best of the Potter books yet. There are a few moments of reasonably good writing from Rowlings (such as “the newly minted look of the sunlight” that let’s Harry know it’s early morning), but she’s not straying far from the formula. Can’t say I blame her. She’s probably the Tolkein of our generation… we’re doomed.

Written by jthurber

June 23rd, 2003 at 12:10 pm

Posted in review-lite

Da’ House

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We put a hold deposit on a townhouse in Willow Glen yesterday. We’re both first time buyers and it’s both the upper limit of what we were looking to spend and about 4 months before we were planning on moving on something, but it’s a very cool place. Hope it works out. (NOTE: The railings will be black, and they said that they’ll take the stickers off the windows for no charge 😉 )

The Kitchen Pic

The House Pic

Written by jthurber

June 22nd, 2003 at 8:04 am

Posted in General

When life gives you lemons…

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waffles rabid dog shit-ade shit hand

Written by jthurber

June 15th, 2003 at 2:28 pm

Posted in humor

Good writing

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More good stuff from around the blogging world:

I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.

When 50 million years worth of evolutionary survival instinct hits you all at once flat in the gut at 200 mph it is not a pleasant sensation.

Without volition I screamed my battle cry (which is indistinguishable to the sound a little girl makes when you drop a spider down her dress (not that I’d know what that sounds like,) and lept out of bed in my underwear.

Written by jthurber

June 12th, 2003 at 9:19 am

Posted in found-on-web

Pictopia Review

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I ordered my first photos from Pictopia on Friday of last week. Easy to use site, reasonable prices, photoshop profiles provided and a two day turnaround. This morning the pictures were in my hand. I was a bit worried about color balance but they turned out great. I’m pretty impressed with the shipping packaging; simple, but strong enough to protect the package during reasonable (even by FedEx standards) handling (reminds me of NetFlix packaging). Here are some (crappy) pics of the packaging, etc. (looks like Ansel took these, eh?):
package 1
package 1
package 1

Written by jthurber

June 10th, 2003 at 8:10 am

Posted in review-lite

Smarty Dogs

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Cool article about behaviors that dogs have developed from living in close proximity to humans for thousands of years.

Dr Miklosi said: “Looking at the gaze or engaging in eye contact is a typical human signal, so dogs could be said to be using a behaviour that is analogous to ours.”

They should have compared the ability of dogs, wolves and academic programmers to react to facial queues. I think the dogs still would have won!

Which reminds me of the joke:
“How can you identify an extroverted engineer?”
“He looks at your shoes when he’s talking to you…”

BTW – Found this article over on bitweever.

Written by jthurber

June 9th, 2003 at 12:58 pm

Posted in found-on-web

Dennis Miller ’88 vs. ’03

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Good stuff

DENNIS MILLER (1988): We were all scared when those planes swan-dived into the towers, OK? But what separates real Americans from the faux variety is that real Americans don’t turn in their spines to the hatcheck lady in times of stress. People in this country today hear the word terrorist and immediately snap into action — which means locking themselves in the loo, defecating on the Constitution and using the Bill of Rights to wipe their ass. We’re made of better stuff than that, and all the shrieking Rush Limbaughs in the world are not worth one brave man who will stand up and say, “hey, the emperor is starkers, and besides that, he wants all of Yemen’s oil.” I wasn’t around, but I’m pretty sure the guys at Valley Forge weren’t eating sautéed rat three times a day so that a future president could attempt a three-point landing on an aircraft carrier moored three miles off the coast of Catalina Island. We have to respond to terrorism, but the problem is that we’re running around like the lynch mob in The Ox-Bow Incident, and when Hank Fonda stands up and says we got the wrong guy, Jane Darwell whacks him on the head with a gun butt and the next thing you know you wake up behind barbed wire at Guantanamo. All I’m saying is that it’s time to scrap the Merle Haggard diplomacy, OK? Oh, and the reason we haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction is that they’re all in a warehouse in Topeka waiting for the next right-wing militia asshat to work his hatred of the federal government to a sufficient boiling point due to the fact that the local TV station has once again cancelled Dukes of Hazzard. While we’re running around the world like Barney Fife at a jaywalkers convention, it’s good to know that our schools are shit, our economy is floundering, and they’ll have universal health care in Kabul before we have it here…

Written by jthurber

June 8th, 2003 at 11:05 am

Posted in humor

Howard Dean

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This is a great interview with Howard Dean (Democrat candidate for Prez.). He’s also got an official weblog here. Hopefully this guy bears watching.

Written by jthurber

June 6th, 2003 at 3:12 pm

Posted in General

Moved domain!

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Well, that was about 15min of work. Sweet web app’y goodness…

Written by jthurber

June 6th, 2003 at 12:36 pm

Posted in General

Apropos to nothing

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I thought this was cool. Real Mini’s!
Mini-Car

Written by jthurber

June 5th, 2003 at 6:13 pm

Posted in found-on-web

Discernment

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Alex is calling my aesthetic judgement into question over on his blog. This sort of unfounded personal attack is the reason that children shouldn’t be allowed to roam the web unsupervised (’cause they might side with Alex, while adults, with their more developed comparitive faculties, would side with me). Actually, I think he’s just mad about the whole Accord vs. Civic argument… 😉

In any case, you should consider yourself morally obliged to comment on Alex’s blog (unless you’re siding with him, in which case, piss off).

Written by jthurber

June 5th, 2003 at 6:10 pm

Posted in General