Lee.org

A great movie. Psychos in Love is like a Keystone Cops version of The Great Train Robbery.

Ok, I saw a 45 meg Quicktime of the Matrix trailer. I’ll give it that it’s a pretty movie… “sumptuous visuals”. But if you threw 25 million dollars at A Nightmare on Elm Street, they could make it “sumptuous”… Oh wait, they did. (Freddy Vs. Jason)

It’s the plot, man! It’s the plot!

Noni, Bamfa and Julia making meatballs!

Recently there has been tihs thnig giong arnoud aobut how the odrer of ltetres in a wrod hradly mrattes at all. This tinhg, sopupsedly from Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, syas that only the fsirt and lsat leteter has to be in plcae for anonye to be albe to raed the dcomuent. It’s an ientrstieng “aacdemic” ieda but I cna’t fnid any siold lgeitaimcy to it. Waht do you thnik?

Last night I went out with Dave B again on a Gluttonous adventure. I showed up at Pub 199 at 6, he was there a few minutes later. Right up at the top of the menu (I don’t know how we missed it last time) was the trypic of steamed clams special, steak special, and lobster special. I opened with 2 dozen steamed clams and a beer. We moved on to lobster and a potato…. and more beer. Then we had dinner: more beer (of course) grilled cheese, grilled cheese with tomato and another potato. My tummy hurts. Gluttony is good. :-)

I stole the color scheme from http://inipi.org/ today. What do you think? It’s the one with the dark brown background and yellow text. If you haven’t seen it yet, reload this page a couple times. It’s on a randomizer with 2 other color schemes.

PS. Mu ha ha!

I wrote to a friend today the following:

We were talking before about what the heck we should each do for a living… I wanted to give you hopeful news and say that I’ve been being “The Computer Guy” with moderate success for the last couple months. I go to people’s homes and help them with their computer problems. Little things and large things alike. And gosh darn it, I think I’m good at it! There’s a big teaching component to it, showing people how to do things and helping them help themselves. I think this could really be something.

I lifted this Shockwave movie from Slapdash.com. Click on the image for the movie

Thanks Melissa for pointing it out to me!

This weekend I went up to Boston… and then on to New Hampshire with Trav to go see the New Hampshire Gathering of Scottish Clans. It was great. All the clans had booths set up, there was some fantastic traditional and modern Scottish music and the food was good (we had haggis!). But the most important part of the day was seeing people throw things that shouldn’t be thrown.

The amateur contest was infinitely more fun to watch than the pros. First, because we got to stand much closer than on the grand parade grounds. Second, because it’s more fun to root for a local guy who is throwing stuff because it’s fun instead of a hired professional stuff-thrower. Third, and most importantly, when they were throwing the 28 lb weight, we were told to watch out; an errant throw could come our way and kill us. How cool is THAT?

Mike Z (from the Boston area) making one of his field-record-breaking throws.

The Crazy Lawsuit Contest! The contestants throw a 28 lb weight straight up into the air as high as possible over a bar. Of course, what goes up…
I figured that a tosser only loses his step 1 in 10 times after throwing… and the weight would only actually hit an unawares contestant 1 time in 10… So that’s only a 1 in a hundred chance of sqwish-age! I’m pretty sure Mike Z won this one too, throwing 17′! Imagine throwing a 5 gallon water bottle up onto your home’s 2nd story roof!!

Mike Z (again… the other contestants’ photos didn’t come out as well, sorry) throwing a 28 lb weight at us. He won this event too.

Trav and I just before getting our haggis puffs. Good times! The taste reminded me of cappaletti, actually; I think it was the allspice.

A month and a half ago, I called MCI and switched to a new phone plan, cutting our phone bill by about 1/3 and gaining Caller ID and 3-way calling. Only… it didn’t happen. We waited and waited and nothing happened. So I called them up and they said that there was a problem with verifying the service change. What the frig? I had spoken to the “independent third party verification” lady. I did my part but MCI neverbothered to tell me by mail or phone that there was a problem. I had to start all over. Hurumph. So I hurrumphed right over to Verizon on the 15th. After 25 minutes on the phone with them, I had them for local, regional and long distance, caller ID, 3-way, and speed dial. At Verizon’s recommendation, I called MCI back to tell them that I was switching my service away from them. The MCI lady didn’t know what to do with such information so we just left it at that. A day goes by and I see that our phone is now showing Caller ID info and we have voicemail :-). Of course, I don’t know how to access the voicemail… but we’re going to get a letter from Verizon real soon saying how to use this new fangled telephonic appliance, right? Well, this morning I got tired of all our calls falling into the black hole of voicemail so I called Verizon to ask what to do. (before I called, I scoured the Verizon web site for instructions, but they didn’t work). The nice lady at Verizon tells me that we don’t have voicemail. [furrow brow here]. “Huh? I left a message to myself just yesterday.” She looks further and finds out that we don’t have ANY Verizon services. All our services were switched to MCI yesterday. MCI slammed me! The most bothersome part about it being that our Verizon voicemail got shut off because of it, losing all those voicemails. Jerks.

So I switched to the Verizon Freedom plan and put a PIC freeze and local freeze on our provider. Unlimited calling anywhere in the US for $55/month (+$8 taxes). And I’m gonna use it. I’m gonna talk your ears off!

And in a related story, I was talking to my dad about low phone rates. He says that he’s seen the P&L sheets of all these phone companies and they can’t keep lowering phone rates or they’re going to (keep) going out of business. I argued that, as a consumer, that wasn’t my problem; It’s my duty to find the lowest rate with service I like. We’re both right.