Six Degrees of Wikipedia

Everything is related to everything.

Just as with the works of Kevin Bacon, there seem to be a few extensive catch-all links in the chain that act as major hubs for connections. Anyway, it's fun to play with.

Just Remember They're Out There

Ah, lax Internet privacy. How scary you can be sometimes.

My office break room has a little corkboard for pinning up coupons, places for rent, cars for sale, babysitters, and other miscellany for coworkers to share. While filling my mug with water I saw a business card tacked to the board for some guy's "Computer Consulting" business I hadn't heard of before.

On the card there was printed stuff like "Spy & Adware Removal," "Virus Removal," Upgrades, Repairs," and so forth—general computer-nerd stuff anyone doing A+ exam prep would know how to do. There was also "Pre-Purchase Consulting" which to me sounded suspiciously a lot like "You pay me just to tell you what computer to buy." The card had the guy's name and address, as well as telephone numbers and e-mail with a unique registered domain name, but no website. That piqued my curiosity.

My roommate's grandfather used to patronize another "computer consultation" business that habitually ripped him off pretty hardcore, taking advantage of his lack of computer savvy to overcharge him for work that really wasn't all that intensive (and they still managed to mess up his computer pretty badly). Interested as to how this guy compared, I took the business card back to my cubicle and plugged the address into Google Maps.

The business was obviously being run out of the guy's house—the address was a residential drive tucked away in a neighborhood. Thinking I would plug in the name of the business next, I clicked on "Web" to go over to the main search engine.

Google had the address's search results waiting for me, and by pure chance I noticed an interesting return a couple of rows down:

"Maryland Sex Offender Registry Search"

I had put in the guy's address, not his name, so I thought perhaps it was just an old listing that hadn't been updated. Nope. The list had been updated on March 24th of this year, and when I got to the address, there was his name.

So apparently this guy was at some point found guilty of felony sexual offense in the third degree. The list also had a three-letter code for the nature of the offense. In his case, it was CSO, or Child Sexual Offender. If I had to hazard a guess, he found it tough to find work after this charge stuck to him, so he was forced to go into business for himself, plying the only legitimate skills he had.

If the majority of computer consultants are either fleecing opportunists with the Ichthys as their logo* or guys like this, then I think I should look into entering that line of work myself, since I already have a reputational leg up on these folks.

*the aforementioned business my roommate's grandfather gave his money to

L'Chaim!

Found at the local gourmet/specialty beer shop. I don't care for alcohol at all, but I find myself wondering how this tastes.



Notice that it is kosher.

Edit: Super bonus! The blurb on the side of the He'Brew bottle! All grammar and formatting errors (such as beginning sentences with numerals) have been kept intact.

Ahem... *adjusts his monocle*

"In Jewish tradition, the number 10 demands Monumental gestures. As a publicity stunt for his 1956 film, Cecil B. DeMille got a Midwestern Judge to help erect hundreds of granite monuments of the Ten Commandments nationwide. 10 plagues finally let Moses' people go. Deut. 26:12 obligates Jews to give 1/10th of their earnings to charity. 10 generations span Adam to Noah and Noah to Abraham. 10 Sefirot in Kabbalah symbolize the core elements of Creation. Father of the Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer was blacklisted in 1953 for 10 years for his family's alleged un-American activities. 10% of Nobel Peace Prize winners are Jewish. On Rush's 10th album, Grace Under Pressure (#10 on Billboard), Geddy Lee sings of his parents surviving the Holocaust. After Sammy Davis Jr.'s 1990 death, the lights on the Vegas strip went dark for 10 minutes—the first time since JFK's assassination. A minion of 10 is necessary for communal prayer. Jack Black's parents joined a polyamorous group before divorcing when he was 10. In his Belief episode, Ali G confessed losing his virginity at 10 to an Italian supermodel. Mae West got 10 days in jail for obscenity for her 1927 play 'Sex'. She served eight, with two off for good behavior. 10 High Holy Days of repentance begin on Rosh Hashanah. 10 years after his Major League debut, Sandy Koufax refused to pitch Game 1 of the World Series on Yom Kippur. To mark 10 years of Schmaltz brewing, behold Monumental Jewbilation, HE'BREW's epic celebration of the most memorable moments in life. L'Chaim!"

Samurai Swordfight Not Included

It snowed a little last night. Most of it had already melted by the time I took the pictures below, but that's what I get for sleeping in (and being ignorant of the fact that it was going to snow overnight). It had been warm enough over the past couple of weeks to fool the cherry blossom trees into, well... blossoming, and with the ka-razy April snow we just got, I thought it'd be a rare opportunity to get some interesting photos. I'm pretty sure you don't see this very often.











Cool, huh? Now then, can we please be done with the cold weather for awhile?

I Would Call Mine "The Mischief Tank"

There's something about golf carts that make you want to do crazy shit in them. Think about it. Sit down in a golf cart, and what's one of the first thoughts to cross your mind?

"I wanna see what this sumbitch can do!"

Same goes with potato cannons. Upon picking up a potato cannon, nobody reviews a mental checklist of fun, safe ways in which the cannon can be enjoyed while wearing OSHA-approved safety goggles and under the supervision of a responsible third party.

"Man, think of all the stuff I could break, destroy, or otherwise damage with this baby. Awesome."

A scenario with golf carts and potato cannons? Too awesome for words.

Wwwwwuummmmnn, kshhhhhttt

Man, see, it's stuff like this that makes me want to make movies.

I found the first RvD back in 2003, soon after getting back from Kuwait and catching the moviemaking bug. I didn't know there'd been a sequel, however, and it looks like I didn't miss it by too much; it pretty much just came out.

I still have my Apple Production Suite installed on my G5... hmm.

So, Food Poisoning

Matt brought back leftover fried chicken from his grandfather's wake, along with instructions that we had to work on it. Always welcoming of free food, I did my part over the next couple of days to give the chicken a good home.

Then the chicken got an eviction notice.

It hit Matt Thursday night, and it hit me yesterday morning while at work. I went home and spent the rest of the day sipping Gatorade and worshipping the procelain god. Matt says his mother also fell victim to the chicken, and spent her Friday in a fashion similar to ours.

I went to bed at about 8PM yesterday, waking up at two-hour intervals whenever my body wanted me to turn over. This was in between vivid but altogether incoherent dreams about sorting ammunition (your guess is as good as mine). I usually got up when I awoke and walked around the house to get the aches out of my system, but fortunately by the time I'd first gone to bed my vomiting had stopped.

Today, after getting up and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (and waiting to see if it would stay eaten), my hunger-headache subsided and I felt good enough to go do my laundry. Matt was feeling better too so we decided to try some food food from the local gourmet. As I type this, my ham and swiss sandwich is still down, but after a day and a half of toast and Gatorade, Matt ate his food way too fast ("This soup is delicious" GNARGNARGNARGNAR) and up it came.

The worst is definitely behind us, though. I look forward to actually being up to do some sort of fun thing tomorrow.

Death, Taxes, and Chernobyl

Matt's maternal grandfather, our landlord, died yesterday evening. Requiescat in pace. The rental arrangements will, for the time being, be handled by the power of attorney, one of Matt's aunts. In grim irony as to the certainty of things, I was doing my taxes last night as well. The Hope Grant gave me back my entire tuition expense for 2006, which is amazing. I had to eat the cost of books, of course, but still, getting 100% of my tuition back is something I would never have even hoped for. Almost halfway towards a degree and I haven't even touched my GI bill yet; things are looking good for me financially.

My most recent gaming acquisition (on top of the pile of other games I have to finish) is STALKER for the PC, a game in development since 2001, long thought to be vaporware. Think Oblivion with guns and no leveling system.

It takes place in 2012, in the area immediately surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It's mostly a first-person shooter with some RPG elements such as inventory management, the need to eat, trading with NPCs, and so on. All in all, the game nails the dreary post-apocalyptic feel of games like Fallout but with a Russian ribbon of flavor running through it. The only thing you really need to know about STALKER, however, is that you can get blitzed on vodka and then immediately go shoot at zombies that have guns of their own. There's much more depth than that, but I thought such a scenario bore mention.

The game has its quirks and bugs, but I've been spared from the latter. It had me in its grip for the better part of this past weekend and I'm looking forward to playing some more tonight.

Schadenfreude Free With All Purchases

You know, time was I could rely on my being poor to keep me from buying stuff I don't need. Now I have to rely on my willpower, and that's not working out too well.

Speaking of going to electronics stores for things you could live without, while I was at Best Buy trying to leave with only one movie (successfully, as it turned out), I watched a doughy nerd with a stud in his nose strike out in the computer games section.

Him: You look familiar; did you go to Leonardt—
Her, very flatly: No.
Him, murmuring: Oh. Well, you kinda looked familiar.

He furtively looked around to check if anyone had seen, similar to what people do when they stumble while walking. We made eye contact through the racks, and he received that which he dreaded most.

Acknowledgement of the moment.

Toad and Seafood

Last weekend Matt, the other Matt, and I went to see Glen Phillips at the Rams Head Tavern (no apostrophe, thank you very much) in Annapolis. I only know a couple of his songs, as I was more of an STP man duting Toad's heyday, but I have to admit that the guy can sing very well. He knows his way around an acoustic too, which is always a plus for a singer.

He had an interesting story about how a vasectomy smells that has apparently been making the rounds at his tour spots. He went ahead and shared this story with us, as well as how the guy who prepped him for the procedure was apparently a Toad fan. I'm not sure how awkward it would be to talk about 90's alternative with a fellow who's shaving your freshly-anesthetized junk, but I'm guessing it's somewhere in the realm of very.

Speaking of fascinating stuff that shouldn't be, I watched two lobsters fight in the tank at the supermarket this afternoon for like ten minutes. It was amazing. All the other lobsters had given them a berth, content to pile up in the corners as it is a lobster's wont to do. They fought in the center, as the Gladiatores Violenti of old did in the Colloseum of Fair Rome. Actually, it was more sumo than swordplay, since both lobsters had their claws banded shut. They sort of pushed each other back and forth, but it was the fact that they were evenly matched that made it so enthralling. One would gain ground, then lose it, then gain it back, back and forth, until I realized I was holding a gallon of cold milk and my fingers were going numb. They were still at it as I walked away.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, it apparently smells like barbeque. Something to do with cauterizing shut your vas deferens.