In The Big Inning...

Hey! I'm on vacation! Leave me alone! I shall return on Tuesday (although I may not post then) to satisfy your every desire, or at least the ones relating to my blog, and then, in fact, only the ones that happen to coincide with what I wanna do.

Movie number #18 is up. Scroll down if you're interested. Baby steps, my friends...

So, I took a trip down to Raleigh, NC this weekend for a friend's wedding. One thing that struck me is the difference in restaurants in the rest stops as you go south. Leaving Maryland (which is NOT the South), into Northern Virginia, you already start to notice a change. MD has the standards - Burger King, Taco Bell, Cinnabon, Pizza Hut, Roy Rogers. None good, but pretty generic. Subway's and Arby's are pretty much everywhere. (If you want Dunkin' Donuts, you have to go north.) As you get into VA, the Cracker Barrels start coming. They're quite prolific. Not a terrible place, but a bit strange, if you ask me. Around Richmond you start to see a few Friendly's, which aren't bad. Progress down more and you see many Denny's, which are rather repulsive. There's also Bojangles, which I'm not familiar with. On the plus side, you do see more Dairy Queens, which may be the one thing that is better about the south than the north. But that's it. And then there are the really local places, like "Simmons Down Home Cookin'", which you couldn't drag me into, at least not while I was conscious. But, the least appetizing restaurant name I encountered was "Slip In". Slip into what? Slip into line because of all the vomit on the floor? Slip their food into your body?

#19 on my movie list is now up. I'm getting there slowly...hope you're making yours as well!

I think I'm actually starting to get old. It's not because I'm losing my hair, and it's not because I hate every single stinkin' song that's played on the radio. No, it's because I'm actually starting to feel pain after physical exertion. I used to be able to drive to a softball game, and, without stretching, sprint down to first base, with no ill effects. But, for the first time recently, I believe I pulled my hamstring a month ago. It wasn't that painful, but I couldn't run all out, and I'm slow enough as it is. But it doesn't stop there. I mentioned my shoulder pain, which I actually decided to see a doctor about, and as I type this, I've just come home from playing 4 softball games in one night, and my legs are really sore. I don't do this to whine about the pain itself - it's really not that bad. But the existence of pain, the fact that my body just can't do whatever the hell it wants (and it's not like I do crazy things - I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't skydive, I don't take naps in the middle of interstates, so I don't feel like I'm asking that much of my body) with impunity really disturbs me. It didn't used to be this way. And I don't like it. Pretty soon I'm going to start driving slowly, and not hearing things properly. I'm not a patient fellow. If I ever start driving as slow as some of these people, I may just have to kill myself. I'm going to go buy some cyanide capsules just in case. I hope I'll have the mental faculties to know when life isn't worth living any more...around the time that just getting up from a chair causes me to bitch and moan.

I don't know about you, but I'm noticing a proliferation of ugly cars on the road. I'm all for people "expressing their individuality" (although buying a car really isn't the best way to do that), but are these people even looking at what they're buying? I'm really not that much of a car guy - to me, they're a way to get from here to there, and that's about it. BUT, other people do have to look at your cars, and I assume other people who are car-oriented do care what the general public thinks. Different can be good, but ugly is not.

As far as I know, the trend started with the RAV4 - this is the first car that I recall actually thinking, "Man, that's an ugly car." Here's a decent example of one:



Now, I don't think it's hideous, just ugly. Boxy and weird. But the following two cars blow the RAV4 out of the water. And I see them EVERYWHERE.

First, the Honda Element:



I think the thing that annoys me the most about this car is the 90 degree angle at the back. I can't imagine that it allows the driver to store any more crap, unless they're storing perfectly shaped boxes.

Second, the Pontiac Aztec:



I mean, really, what is that thing? Is it a bus? Is it a bug? Why so many windows and angles? It almost looks like an Element that melted.

I have to look at your car when you drive it. You don't. Please be more considerate, people.

Well, a while ago I wrote about how I was excited for the new season of Survivor, because it was going to be the "All-Star" edition, and people who had played the game before were going to be playing it again, ushering in a whole new level of strategy and plotting.

Boy, was I wrong. I mean, overall, I still like the show. Say what you will about reality shows, but I think it's still one of the best, and classier reality shows out there. (I also like the Apprentice and The Amazing Race, and that's about it. Never watched the Bachelor or Average Joe or whatever...although, I did watch the Joe Schmoe Show and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, but those were more reality show takeoffs) I was hoping that because all of these people had played the game before, we wouldn't get the standard moralizing, or stupidity that you normally get. Well, so much for having high expectations.

People were just as stupid as usual. I know that the camera shows us stuff that the players might not actually see, but some people were just naive. I don't want to get into the details, but after seeing people play for 7 seasons, you should know who to trust and who not to trust. And you should know that if you have the chance to vote off someone who is strong, or has a good alliance, you should do it. Morons.

I'm also very tired of the trite, "I'm going to play the game without being deceitful" attitude, as if that somehow puts you above the others. Well, if you do that, you're a complete fool. That's like saying "I'm going to play baseball without trying to steal bases, because it's deceptive." Or, "I'm going to play basketball without making any fakes." Or, "I'm going to play golf." All are stupid and irrational. If you play the game that way, then you have no right to complain when other people fool you. Now, if you win that way, good for you - it's like winning a wrestling match with one hand tied behind your back. Besides, I think the game has nice check and balances built into it - if you are too much of an asshole, you may betray and fool everyone, and get them voted off, but you're not going to win, cuz they're not going to vote for you in the finals. By the way, that exact thing happened this time - but only because the final two voted everyone else off systematically because they were all playing like naive idiots.

I watch the show because I like the strategy and psychology of it. At its best, it's a high stakes chess game. At its worst, it's a low rent soap opera....which, admittedly, can still be somewhat entertaining. But you can only watch people whine for so long. This time, I was let down. Damn you, CBS!

Scroll down and you'll see that I'm up to #20 in my top 25 movies of all time. I hope that you'll post yours....some of you promised!

In a bit of odd news, the laptops that I use at work were stolen earlier this week. Basically, I'm working on a project that uses a distributed computing system, and so we've been running our tests on 3 high-end laptops that were purchased specifically for this purpose. They were pretty fast, with 2 GB of RAM, so I imagine it's about $10K worth of computers that were stolen.

Now, there are a couple of weird things about this heist. For one, we keep the laptops locked up. It's true, they're pretty crappy little laptop locks, but when we found the laptops missing, there were no signs of damage. This means that whomever took the laptops likely knew the combination. I'm reassured in this belief by the fact that the combinations on the locks were also changed. This strikes me as something very unusual for a thief to take the time to do. Now, it wouldn't have been that tough to figure out the combos to the locks. In a bit of stupidity, we had set all of the combinations to be the same - this was really just a convenience for us - who can be bothered to remember THREE three-digit numbers? Furthermore, we never really thought they would be stolen. (Ah, youthful innocence, or, rather, naivete.) So, when we would unlock the laptops, we usually would leave the combinations on the lock. Anyone clever enough could have looked at the combinations at one time and then remembered them for later.

It's also kind of unusual when they were taken. When I'm working, I frequently need to connect to these machines, although they are not visible from my office. Both myself and one of my co-workers were connecting to the machine right before they were taken. I was connecting up until around 6-6:30pm. I stopped to write some code, and then tried to test it out and connect again at 7:30. My connection failed, but I assumed it was just a network problem. I decided to call it a night and just try and connect tomorrow, but just in case there was something awry (like a cable unplugged), I went to the lab where the laptops were...or, rather, should have been...to see what was up. That's when I discovered them gone. That means the person who took them did so at a time when myself or my co-worker could very well have walked right in on them. That's chutzpah!

Now, there are some security cameras in my office, but they're only near the exits. Laptops aren't that big, and while they can scan the tapes for anyone exiting with a decent amount of luggage, I doubt they'll find much. We know the time window when the laptops were taken, but I figure that if the thief was clever enough, he (we'll assume it's a he, and you can be sure no one will mind that assumption - people only mind if you assume good people are male, not bad people) just took the laptops, and maybe hid them in his office. Then, later, he can take them out one by one, at a time when we're not scanning the tapes. People take stuff in and out of my office building all the time. If he had the balls to take the laptops when people were at the office, he certainly has the guts to try to sneak them out later, instead of just hauling ass out the building immediately.

It's nice that these weren't my personal laptops, but it's still a gigantic pain in the butt. They didn't even have any data on them that we can't replace, but we had them configured all nice and perfect, and now we have to waste two days setting them back up. To be honest, I guess that's the price of being too trusting. I really hope it turns out not to be one of my co-workers. I really have no idea at this point. I wonder if we'll ever know. But if you do see three cheap D600 Dell laptops turn up on eBay, please give me a holler.