These are the kinds of things you think about when you're bored in class, day two of SQL Server training.
]]>It's always good to see a few familiar faces. I was a member of the Big Apple Chorus for a hot sec, but I could never shake that certain parts didn't mesh well with what I was looking for. Regardless, it was a night full of passion and talent, and I was really happy to see that New York City has such an active vocal scene.
I briefly considered joining, but I'd want to train up to it first instead of walking into it cold.
]]>There were two red flags, even before we ordered. One, there weren't any Asian customers. I've learned from my parents that a good test of any ethnic cuisine is the presence of people of that ethnicity, aka "the ethnic test". Two, our waiter didn't speak much English. His accent was very fobby and abrasive, which soured our good mood. The only saving grace was the cool looking albeit fake jellyfish in tanks of water overhead.
The sushi was not worth the $80 we spent between us. I'm not a connoisseur of sushi, but I do know what I like. My latest fixation is with duality. Soft and crunchy, or hot and cold if you're lucky. The parts I liked a lot: the spider roll, smoked eel, and spicy salmon. The parts I didn't like: the Boston roll and sea urchin. Sea urchin is a favorite of my coworker's, but he agreed this particular one wasn't as good as he's had. That's probably the most uncool thing he's ever done, recommend me sea urchin. It was mostly bland and had a slight aftertaste. Bleh.
To top it off, the staff was really aggressive in turning tables, which made it difficult to unwind and spend some quality time with awesome coworker.
My review of Haru? Not worth the price, and a severe lack of Asian folk.
]]>The one criticism I have of Yeah Shanghai is the serving size of the soup dumplings; although delicious, they were significantly smaller than the soup dumplings I've come across prior. For a decent meal with soup dumplings, I also recommend Grand Sichuan, a spot favored by two of my previous employers.
]]>On OS X, it used an installer, instead of a traditional drag-and-droppable application folder. So strike one. Strike two, the branding has changed. In previous versions, even though the application was branded as Vuze, I could still keep the name Azureus. Here, the installer removed the old copy of Azureus and put in a new copy of Vuze named Vuze. And, the funky blue frog design has changed to a similarly blue square with a white silhouette of the frog. The brand change really hurts, since I associated Azureus so heavily with the blue frog.
Thirdly, the user interface has changed. The initial Vuze changes weren't as jarring because you could always go back to classic mode. Here, I think they've realized that the majority of users use classic mode, and they've decided to make that more prominent in their design. However, the interface is cluttered with things I don't need. I can tell they're really trying to push their content delivery network, with the user accounts and friends features, but I don't care for any of that stuff. And the biggest offender, it looks ugly. It doesn't use OS neutral colors or the same traditional shades of blue.
It's pretty jarring, and I guess I'll be shopping around for better torrent clients, or I guess I'll just try to not look at it (since Azureus does seem to remain champion in torrent clients, in terms of features. But I haven't really shopped around).
Edit: Okay, wow, I have no idea how this works, but their built-in video player is absolutely spanking VLC in terms of skipping ahead. Some video formats VLC has a hard time skipping ahead in. You jump to a place ahead of your current place in the video and it takes a noticeable amount of time for the system to catch up. Vuze, however, seems to have this built-in player and it jumps around various parts of the video instantaneously. That's a huge win.
]]>For Rock Band 2, the only ones that I could think of that involve musical and geeky puns are:
Touring Complete I was partial to because in Rock Band I prefer to play and sing at the same time, so I myself am a complete tour. Get it? Alan Turing? Father of computer science?
My roommates and I, however, unilaterally agreed that Infinite Rockursion (see infinite recursion) just flowed better.
So there you go. Infinite Rockursion.
]]>if-she's-with me
i'll blink the lights
to-let-you know
tonight's the night
for me and you.
my part. time. lover...
After watching a healthy portion of Bumfights footage, Dr. Phil says that he doesn't want to talk to the guy anymore. Uhh, hello, stupid? If you didn't want to talk to the guy, why did you invite him on your show? Notice that right before Dr. Phil says "stop the tape", the video playing actually has the premade video static filter cut right into it. This was definitely planned from the get-go. Dr. Phil didn't cut off anybody. He just said those words to make it look like he did.
Then, the guy says to Dr. Phil, "If you think I exploit people, every time you bring a guest on this show, you exploit them and spread whatever problems they have to the whole world." Hah, way to call him out on it. The best part is that Dr. Phil doesn't even respond to the guy. Good job avoiding the question, jackass. Dr. Phil just doesn't want to admit he's made a career out of exploiting weaker individuals, even if he does "help" them.
Dr. Phil responds with, "keep telling yourself that," and the audience has no choice but to clap. What a bunch of sheep. Why don't you applaud the Bumfights guy for such a slick setup?
The guy says, "I'm not finished talking to you." Then there's this completely juvenile exchange of "yeah you are" and "no I'm not" and "yeah you are" and "no I'm not" and "yeah you are". Dr. Phil! You sound like a fucking two-year old! You're a grown ass man! Why stoop to this sort of tactic. For ratings I bet. Why don't you go fuck yourself and then talk on your show about how much of a pansy you are.
Dr. Phil contiues with, "I just watched that footage and that is absolutely despicable, and I refuse to publicize that." Guess what, fuck-knot, you just did. You just aired and publicized Bumfights footage on national broadcast television. The ironing is delicious!
Maybe this is some sort of mega-conspiracy set up by the morality police... To firmly assign sides about who is morally correct, and who is not. Either way, we now know the truth.
Dr. Phil, fuck you!
]]>For the curious, I paid $1200 after a free analysis of two drives (I'm dumb, I didn't know which one was broken). I don't remember if I got the busted hard drive back, but I did get the functioning one back plus a set of CDs or DVDs with the recovered data on it. One caveat is that the recovered data needs to be retrieved with a Windows program because the data spans multiple discs.
Other than that, I was very happy with the service. The girl at the desk is Filipino and the guy who answers the phone talks with a funny accent (English? Aussie?).
]]>The problem with AOL is that it isn't the Internet. And it tries to be. Releasing this software is a step in the right direction (away from their dial-up software), but it's still wrong. Who wants a crappy, bloated media-center everything-whatsamajig? I know I don't.
It's called OpenRide, and you can take a tour! Complete with talking Flash movie.
One of the worst "features" they're pitching has to be the "Dynasizer". They've even trademarked the name. I mean, really? Dynasizer? Something that dynamically resizes four window panes? Whoa cowboy, step back! Make some room! This is the Dynasizer, know what I'm sayin'?
The frame rate in the movie for demonstrating the Dynasizer was really shitty. I bet you it was filmed on a PC. Frame rates for video will always be shitty on the PC. Like this Flash site for the new Blackberry Pearl. Shitty frame rate! Maybe it's the computer I'm using. But this isn't a sucky computer. What kind of multimedia specs are they requiring of their viewers for a not so sucky experience? I'm at a loss. I wanted to learn more about this new Blackberry, but the site is too slow.
[via towleroad]
]]>Didn't follow up on it. Feel terrible.
Next time, I'll be sure to jump.
]]>