No, that dongle doesn’t make you look fat

I tend to get along with technology, but I must have said something wrong in the past couple days. First, I rented a copy of G.R.A.W. 2, and during a cutscene my helicopter pilot decided to fly into a mountain:

GRAW 2 has some issues

Just now, I sat down with my (admittedly craptastic) Motorola DVR from Comcast to enjoy an episode of The Riches, and the audio came out like this:

I know you’re selling something, go away

snore at work

On bad days, on top of everything else I get to do at work, I get to answer the phones. Six or so times a day I get sales people cold calling to sell photocopiers, toner, document storage, office supplies, 401(k) management, and all the other awesome things a small business uses. Here are some common signs that the person who called needs none of my time.

  1. I can hear your five hundred chattering coworkers in the background. Seriously, noise-canceling headsets can’t cost that much.
  2. English is not your first language. I know, but it’s true. It’s bad enough when I place the call and end up talking to a “Randy” who sounds like Samir from Office Space, but when you call to ask what brand of copier we are running so you can send us toner and you have to say “photocopier” three times before it makes sense, it’s hang-up time.
  3. You sound about 20-25 years old, but you try to affect this “holy crap I’m busy and I bet you are so just transfer me” tone in order to get to one of my bosses, whom you invariably refer to in an overly familiar way. The only people that young who sound like that as often as you do are on a trading floor or in active combat, and they don’t have much occasion to call aging real estate attorneys.
  4. You want to “come in and introduce my company” or “see where you’re at with your document flow/management systems.” No you don’t, you want to sell me a photocopier. I don’t even know what document flow/management systems are, but talking about them sounds damned boring.

The 5th Annual TNMC Awards

Every year, a bunch of friends and I run our own version of the Academy Awards because we’re movie dorks and the Academy always screws something up. TNMC stands for Tuesday Night Movie Club. Years ago we would go see a movie every Tuesday night at a cheap theater. That tradition is gone, but the name lives on.

Here’s the organizer’s (my friend Brian) summary and then the list of winners after the break.

Nice work guys. Really. The Departed barely squeaked out a win, taking home picture and director and tied for the most awards with SIX. Children of Men also took home six categories and Pan’s Labyrinth landed five big awards. The other big winners on the day were Brick and Little Miss Sunshine with three awards a piece. The big shut out was Iwo Jima, which had ten nominations but no wins. Thanks for playing and I hope you had fun…once again, I think we did a better job than the Academy will on Sunday and that’s pretty cool…

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Mostly buildings and bridges

Rockefeller Center

Visited New York this weekend, took some pictures.

If anyone can recommend a good, small, cheap camera, please leave a comment. Mine is about to give up the ghost, I’m afraid.


Blake and the balut

Meet my friend Blake. Blake likes to eat weird things. Blake is in the Philippines for work. Blake ate a balut, and someone videotaped it. Images in the gallery.