Just more than 24 hours delayed, and I’m about ready to head to the airport to go home to Omaha. You might say that this is a bit of a Winter Break, making my post last year a bit untrue. However, I still strive to eat at those four places every time I go home.
Archive for December 2006
I’m writing this while trying to get through United phone lines. My flight home was cancelled because of the blizzard conditions in Denver. It’s a bit frustrating, because apparently United’s phone systems can’t handle the amount of calls that they’re receiving, because most of the time I get through, I get a busy signal (instead of the hold muzak).
The sad news is that getting through is the worst part of the entire experience. First, I sit through a 45 second message about the Denver snow storm. Interesting information the first time I hear it, but I’m currently listening to it for the 30th time. It’d sure be nice if I could skip through it!
I heard through the grapevine about the announcement of the Adobe CS3 icons, and it’s getting quite a bit of criticism.
Now, I’m not really an icon designer, but I can definitely understand the criticism offered up from those who are. Especially the skepticism at choosing the Periodic Table of Elements to emulate. Seriously, of all the visualizations and symbols in our world to copy, they come up with the Periodic Table of Elements? Quick - what’s Fe? How about K? And Na? They are three commonly-known elements (Iron, Potassium and Sodium) with random abbreviations. Turning to Adobe, can you tell me what Di, Jr, and Sb might be? Personally, I have no idea.
Due to high demand, Amazon came up with a new way to sell their limited supplies of gaming systems - randomly select people to purchase them among a group that has signed up. Check it out.
Now, these types of lottery are all so random, I try not to put much stock in them. But it’s good to know, according to Amazon, that we have better odds of winning the game system of our choice (20 to 1 for a Wii) than contracting botulism (2,300 to 1), contracting the plague (299,999 to 1), or getting bitten by a shark (6,000,000 to 1). Personally, I’m holding out for the wii. But if I wake up tomorrow with botulism and no wii, I’m gonna be one pissed off gamer.
The Monday after Thanksgiving, November 27, Seattle had one of the worst ice storms in recent memory. Of course, as a midwesterner, I’m obliged to turn my nose up and say “It was little more than a dusting of snow,” but even then I couldn’t escape a 3.5 hour commute home that night. I stayed home from work the next day.
Fast forward to Thursday evening, December 14, when Seattle was hit by one of the worst wind storm’s in Seattle’s history. My lights were flickering all Thursday night, so I expected to wake up without power. (I did.) As I contemplated whether to go into work, I thought, “Let’s be rational. The only time all of Omaha lost power was during a huge blizzard came through. That was declared as a national disaster, and even then, I was only without power for half a day. Surely Microsoft has power.”
I was on Facebook tonight (per usual… while I typically ignore MySpace and Friendster, I find myself getting sucked in more and more with Facebook. I hate to say it, but it might just have to do with the News Feed that I trashed; although, what I say in that post still holds true).
Anyway, I found something relatively new (at least I’ve only noticed it in the past couple weeks) under the Friends link: an option called “Friend Finder.”
With the movie Eragon coming out soon, I started wondering how the movie might have come about…
Starving Script Writer: Let me tell you about this GREAT idea I have for a movie. It’s a medieval-fantasy type movie.
Producer: No, audiences have had their fill with those kinds of movies. Lord of the Rings, you see.
Starving Script Writer: But the movie is called Eragon! It sounds like Aragorn, maybe people will be confused and see the movie anyway!
Producer: Brilliant! Where did you think of that name?
Starving Script Writer: I took the word “dragon” and shifted a letter.
Producer: Well, I’m sold. Do you have ideas for the cast?
Starving Script Writer: I was thinking Jeremy Irons, since the last movie of this sort that he did was all the rage.
Needless to say, I’m sick of seeing advertisements for this movie everywhere I look. I’m not going to see it! Quit asking!
If you stopped by early this morning, you might have caught a glimpse of a post that is no longer visible. I decided to hide it because the subject of the postwas Microsoft’s daily news emails; and while the news stories in those emails are available for public consumption, the news email is somehow Microsoft confidential. Better safe than sorry.
However, I feel bad for those who might have missed the post. So I’ve craftily hidden the story in a comment. While perhaps not really all that crafty, it at least doesn’t have a screen shot of the email, so maybe I’m less culpable. Anyway, check out the comments of a recent post to learn more.
Some of you know that the past week was packed with two customer events at work. Between them, a Usability Team offsite event, and a sick day (that cut way too much into my weekend), I wasn’t at my desk for an entire week.
“NOT a kids show.” That’s how an Amazon.com review of Veronica Mars started off. This isn’t another plug for Veronica Mars (those haven’t gone so well for me in the past), so do read on.
