Author: Kyle

Elise’s Crash

Elise crashed her car today on her way to my house. What…the….hell is with me cursing her when I’m in her proximity. The only three times that she’s ever been involved in an accident were during the few times that we see each other (that aren’t summer) during the year between school.

Basically, some jackass pulled out in front of her as she was driving down the street and she couldn’t stop in time, consequently hitting the guy. I hope the police report rules in her favor because she needs a car badly for her work and the guy had barely any damage (while hers was totaled).

Luckily I’ve never crashed my car (and hopefully won’t any time in the near future) so I’ll be able to cart her around as soon as I’m out of school.

Car problems suck.

April 13, 2007
Joost Invites Pt II

Ok, I finally have some invites to pass out (4 to be exact). If you’re interested in getting into the now totally closed beta, leave a comment with your email and I’ll toss you an invite!

Check out the rest of the blog as well of course. That would make me quite happy.

April 2, 2007
Chinese Trademark Laws = My Hero!

It’s hilarious what they can get away with. Seriously. I ordered a $2 toy for my iPod (nothing special, just a little speaker that plugs into the top of the player.) from a Chinese electronics shop and look what I got:

One of my roommates actually thought I got a nano. It’s seriously that convincing. They have the Apple logo, the iPod font, the arrows, the color, the box art, everything.

I also happen to love “Engrish” which is displayed in the image above. It says – word for word: “This product listens the cheerful charge may simultaneously carry on!”

March 26, 2007
Five reasons why I absolutely hate Ticketmaster

1) They will arbitrarily charge extra “convenience fees” no matter the convenience. I’ve seen charges range from $6-$10 on shows at the exact same venue on the exact same time just due to the popularity of who is playing. How does the popularity of a band change how convenient it is to pay extra to receive my tickets?

2) They charge for ticket printing. After charging you a ridiculous convenience fee, they have the audacity to make the cheapest option for getting your tickets (printing them out) cost $2 – that is, they charge you $2 to freaking use your own ink and your own printer to create the tickets that you’ve already paid a ridiculous amount extra for.

3) Convenience charges are not exclusive to online or offsite purchases. I had a friend who lives in Chicago (Cristin, I wub you) pick up tickets for me because I figured the charge would be waived since Ticketmaster didn’t have to do anything – I was wrong. She got there and had to pay something like $7 extra per ticket still. So….apparently she’s paying for the convenience of driving to the box office, shelling out her money, and picking them up.

4) Their tactics are incredibly monopolistic. They lure venues into exclusivity contracts with juicy kickbacks and sue the hell out of them if they ever even think of selling outside of TM. Something around 60% of all venues in the US have contracts with Ticketmaster, and performers have no control over what fees are tacked on to their original ticket price.

5) They spam you. That’s right. After charging you a crapload of service fees for various things, they sign you up for their own mailing list (and give all of your information to the venue and others involved in the transaction) and there is no easy way to get out. You can’t click on a link in the email or unsubscribe with a reply, you actually have to log in to your ticketmaster account and screw around with privacy settings. Some members have even complained about getting email from their sister company entertainment.com after buying tickets.

March 19, 2007
Spring Break – Universal Studios

Ok, I was lazy when it came to posting over spring break and had pretty much no internet connection at all in Florida, so I’m going to post the happenings in chunks over the next few days if I can get around to it – if not, it might take a bit longer.

Universal Studios was perfect. It was literally like 75 degrees in the morning and 80 and sunny for the rest of the day. Since Spring Break wasn’t really in full swing for the whole nation (and apparently not many people go to Universal Studios on Monday), the longest wait we had was somewhere around 30 minutes for some haunted house thingy.

We hit all the usual spots. I went to Curious George’s crazy city in commemoration of the absent Kevin Rey and attempted to pour gigantic buckets of water on unsuspecting dry people. If you haven’t visited that place, it’s seriously the best place in Universal Studios. Don’t worry about the fact that you’ll look like a total idiot traversing the jungle of metal pipes spurting out water with a bunch of little kids. Seriously. The weird looks are worth it.

Toward the end of the day we visited the giant Dr. Seuss area which is absolutely incredible to just about anyone who grew up on the books…which I assume is everyone. We acted like little kids again, crawled through the little theme mazes, played in the houses, posed with the characters. There was this maze that you could crawl through and mess with all of the animals within. Really interactive, really hilarious.It was amazing.

Finally we hit the Mummy one last time. Thanks to the fact that the park was closing in something like 20 minutes the guys in charge let us run through the line four times to get on the ride immediately. It was amazing and that ride is seriously awesome.

Overall, it was a great day.

I couldn’t fit this picture in but I thought it deserved to be posted.

March 18, 2007
Road Trip – Leg One!

Ok, nothing eventful really yet of course, although we’ve just reached Tennessee. We’ve been driving since 6:00 A.M. and it’s absolutely freaking beautiful on the road. Stuff to see everywhere. I’m not going to write long since we’re just hanging out eating, but here are some photo updates on what’s been going on. No time to pick my best, so I’m just throwing a few up to document.

Sam, the crying clown:

Alcoholic Elephant!

Leave me some love.

March 10, 2007
Chi-caaaaaah-goooooo

As always, Chicago was amazingtastic. It was great hanging out with a few of my friends again – Andrew and Cristin are always amusing and I hadn’t seen Nate forever – and of course Elise, but that’s a given.

Nothing incredibly exciting happened, but I documented it with a lot of pics and as always had so so so much fun.

First, we went to some bar and grill where I ordered some cheap appetizers with Elise. I liked the lighting in the place, typical bar lighting, and Nate taught us a word game in which you try to think of the common word with the most syllables. Andrew and the rest of the guys obviously ordered a few beers because they’re ugly, stinky, drunks.

After that, we went to Andrew’s play (which was really good as expected. Some stupid little kids at the front of the theater kept on throwing popcorn at the actors even when you weren’t supposed to be throwing it. Also, a fat kid and his stupid dad kept on saying stupid things and telling the actors to kill themselves. Stupid fat kid.

We got home, got a little Wii time in, and finally went up to the roof , got a little Wii time in, and finally ended up getting onto the roof with Nate and Elise, which was beautiful as always. I can’t wait until we get up there when it’s actually warm. To finish off the night, we ordered a delicious spinach stuffed pizza and went to bed. I woke up at sunrise and noticed how cool it looked so I ran upstairs as fast as I could and snapped a few shots.

All in all a great night.

Rather than uploading all of my pics to this thing, I’ll just throw a little web album thingy up because I’m lazy.

Chicago Trip ’07

March 5, 2007
Joost Preliminary Review/Invites

Ok, just got accepted into the beta test of this program and so far I love it.

Basically, it’s like free OnDemand for your computer. So far, they only have deals with National Geographic, MTV, and a few others, but I’m sure they’ll be cutting deals with more companies as time goes on.

The picture quality is great for what you get, which is instant gratification. I’m used to torrenting when I want to check out a show, but I could realistically see myself checking out Joost instead in the future if they ever get into a deal with big name productions.

The interface is really clean and the social networking aspect of the program is really interesting – you can actually chat to other people that are watching the same thing as you while you’re in full screen thanks to the little HUD-type display they’ve implemented. They’ve also included the early version of an Instant Messaging tool (which for now only supports gmail and jabber), so you can continue talking to your friends even when you’re in full screen.

The only negative aspect that I can really see is the bandwidth – you’re going to need a pretty decent connection to make full use of this program, and if you let it run in the background, it’ll suck up your bandwidth pretty quickly.

Post here for invites and I’ll try to get them to you as I receive them.

March 5, 2007
PS3 Home

As few of my friends are interested in this, I’ve decided to blog about it anyway.

– It’s called home (As noted before)
– You’ll have your own house in a “neighborhood” of your friends that is part of the total population of the world of PS3.
– Friends will be able to “visit” your house on their consoles and view your game trophies.
– It is also rumored, from the same source that revealed this system, that your friends will also be able to view the videos stored on your PS3 and listen to the music stored on your PS3 while inside of your house – of course there is an option to make videos and music private.
– You will also be able to play a host of minigames with friends – including cards and other games. I don’t fully understand the virtual TV system yet, but I’m sure this will be clarified if it turns out to be true.
– It is also rumored that you will be able to walk around your “town” and go to the theater to view clips or the arcade to play games.

According to the original article, member of the NEOgaf forums has found the patent and the future logo for the home system, so it’s looking to be true

Link: http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/895.html

March 3, 2007
My tire exploded.

Ok, so there I was, speeding down I-65, suddenly, *boom!*. Auuuugh! My tire literally blew up! So yeah, I handled that – stopped, pulled over as quickly as possible, and just sat there stunned for a second – and lucky me – there was literally no shoulder on this stretch of highway for what looked to be miles. I took my chances, rolled my car as far into the median as I could without sinking in to what was shaping up to be a pretty decent mud puddle.

So…as any logical person would probably guess, mud + car jack = not fun. I sat there on my knees in this mud crap for like 30 minutes trying to jack up my car…finally success! I removed the tire, turned around to get the spare, lined it up..but wait. Crap. Spare won’t fit. The jack is SINKING! So there I am. Sitting next to my car in between two lanes of highway. I felt like a bit of a spectacle just sitting outside.

Two cops stopped by to try to help me in this period, one giving up a little earlier than I think he should have (He had a jack

that I’m pretty positive would have raised my car out of the muck well enough, but after I tried to crank it up and it slipped once, he concluded that it would definitely not work.)

Finally, tow truck arrives. He pulls out pretty much the exact same type of jack that the cop had, lifted up my car, placed the spare, $45 down the drain for that. Oh well, I was happy to be out of there even though I was cold, my hands were dry and sore from the salty residue that is apparently in every nook and cranny of my car, and my legs covered in the mud I was kneeling in.

Finally, after searching a bit, I found a Sears Automotive (which oddly enough is the exact same one me and Kevin had to visit to fix HIS flat on that same stretch of cursed highway). They diagnosed it as an alignment problem and I had my tires replaced and all that crap. took a few hours but I’m sure it’s good that I got it done before my long drive to Florida.

So, in short. A 3 hour trip took me 9 hours today.

Close up of the missing wheel for your viewing pleasure:

March 3, 2007