JesusH

Not too much to say about this, I guess, but I did have a thought after reading the most recent CNN article on the subject. Now, when I go to any crappy mall clothing store, they have those giant, plastic, goo-squirting anti-theft tags on everything in the entire store that’s over $6. But apparently, Saks Fifth Avenue didn’t feel the need to secure their $5,560.40 items using a comparable method, instead choosing the time tested security-tag-attached-with-fishing-line method, as Ryder was nearly able to get away with theft using a big pair of kitchen scissors.

That’s not to say that Winona Ryder is definitely not an insane kleptomaniac, but that was just a detail of this case that bothered me.

Now, I don’t think the defense does itself any favors by alleging some sort of intricate “frame up” by the department store, but I’ve got to say that I still find myself rooting for Ryder in this one, especially if she keeps wearing see-thru dresses to court. If she keeps up that strategy, I’ll believe that the only thing she stole was my heart. Rrrewwrrr….

CNN Article. Darrell Lambert is an 18 year old Eagle Scout who has peformed more than 1,000 hours of community service and has 37 merit badges, but will be drummed out of the Scouts if he doesn’t learn to believe in God in the next week.

The Boy Scouts are really kind of a creepy organization. I can understand that they consider belief in a higher power to be a swell, character-ful, thing, but to use intimidation to try and get someone to believe in God seems like a really bad idea.

So there was a memorial service for that Senator Wellstone guy who died in the plane crash last week, and it somehow got turned into an impromptu Democratic campaign rally. This, of course was a move that was ridiculed by most Republicans as being insensitive and and opportunistic, and then later defended by Democrats as being perfectly appropriate given Wellstone’s lifelong support for partisan politics.

On a related note, Rush Limbaugh stinks like beef fart.
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My dad gave me an awesome (and moderately hilarious) Halloween catalog from Smarthome, the company that tries to convince consumers that automated blind openers are a really good idea.

I was pleased to find that they are having a 40% of sale on Halloween merchandise, so I thought I’d send along some of the best deals.
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I work in the check out room of UCSD’s Media Center (students come by and I give them cameras or projectors or whatnot). On Monday at work I became stricken with a deadly combination of Halloween spirit and general boredom, so I decided to throw together a spooky Halloween display worthy of a room with 7 kabillion dollars with of AV equipment.

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Check it out at GameSpot.com before it becomes subscribers only content…

My favorite line: “You can also get a chainsaw, which is great in theory, but surprisingly unsatisfying in action.”

This link comes courtesy of Phet. I usually hesitate to put these things up, since I’m reasonably sure that this will shortly be replaced by gay porn. Of course, the alternative is for me to actually break down and write something interesting, which is hard.

This plays music and stuff so set your levels accordingly…

Enjoy Wretched Viking Cats

I just wanted to take a moment and give something of a public service announcement to those of you out there who may be in college without any particular idea of what you want to major in: I humbly recommend Visual Arts.

For instance, one of my classes is called “Loving the Alien” (syllabus here), consists entirely of discussing how science fiction movies mirror cultural attitudes, specifically those regarding actual, illegal aliens. As in, Mexican guys. We spent 3 hours yesterday discussing (and here I am shitting you not), the various ways in which the Star Trek movies marginalize Spock because of his mixed human-vulcan parents. Riveting stuff, and well worth the extra four years you’ll have to spend in school to get a degree in this stuff.

Think about it, at least…

10-29-02 8:35 AM
Well, friends, it appears that my plumbing has finally been fixed. Some more plumbers (8 and 9?) came by yesterday and jackhammered into the floor of Marv’s garage. They then proceeded to finish replacing all the sewer pipe between my apartment and my neighbor’s apartment below us. Of course, I’m conflicted about this whole thing. My head says that all of the pipe that was causing us problems before has been eliminated so the threat is gone. My heart, on the other hand, says “Don’t flush the toilets, Jeff, unless you want to shovel your burly neighbors’ sewage some more.”

In the end, there was only one decision I could make: to trust these good men who have labored so diligently on fixing the problem, and return to using my bathroom facilities. This morning at 7:30 I gave the bathroom its second top-to-bottom cleaning in a week and took a really long shower. And then flushed the toilet a whole lot for good measure. I think… that everything is okay now.

In closing, I hereby proclaim October 29 “Official JesusH Hug a Pipe Day” (It’s a Good Thing ^TM). I urge all of you out there who have well-behaved plumbing to go home today and give your pipes a big hug, in the hopes that the unexpected show of goodwill will keep them running clear for years to come. Go on: do it…
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I just wanted to put up a brief note about some stuff I’ve been working on at PeaseJ.com. I have started another blog there that kind of documents my struggles/successes with my various projects and stuff. The reason that I separated it from JesusH is because I can’t imagine that 99% of normal people (my therapist included) would care in the slightest about my ineptitude at 3D graphics, or other such trivialities. I still don’t guarantee that PeaseJ.com will be at all useful or entertaining , or that it will be updated on a timely basis, etc.

If I ever finish anything cool (which is, let’s be honest, doubtful) or have a comment on something techie that I think might interest the general populace, I’ll post a note on JesusH about it..

(Excerpt) LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — In a classic tale of what goes around comes around, a group of barbers in Los Angeles has asked the Reverend Jesse Jackson to apologize for demanding an apology from the makers of hit movie “Barbershop.” (/Excerpt)

What an awesome article.

I’m glad I’ve never bought a copy of Trivial Pursuit–not because I don’t like the game, but apparently a player entry from the 2001 edition of Baseball Prospectus is in the new 20th Anniversary Edition. I’ll have to go pick up a copy, and I won’t feel dumb about having multiple versions of the same game (like we do with Monopoly for some reason).

(The entry is a sports question which apparently goes something like this: Which player did Baseball Prospectus refer to as “Fat Boy”?)

Jeff, quit screwing around with non-paying gigs with the women’s volleyball team and get to work on the barely-paying site rebuild. When it’s completed, you’ll be famous by association.

Courtesy of Uncle Jack, here’s your online good deed for the day. Follow the link, click on a team’s helmet, and Campbell’s donates a can of grub to feed the poor/homeless/etc. You can do it once per day per person.

Tackling Hunger

[warning: sales pitch ahead]

As Uncle Jack noted, you can do this even if you don’t like football. If you do like football, I encourage you to get a copy of Pro Football Prospectus 2002, which has lots of neat insights even if they did predict that the Chargers wouldn’t be all that successful this year.

As some of you may know, I used to be somewhat involved with UCSD’s internet radio station, KSDT. My newest gig has been trying to help the UCSD athletics department set up live streams of their sports games. We’re going to broadcasting the UCSD Women’s Volleyball match against CSULA tonight at 7:00 PM, PST.

I’m just the tech guy, so I don’t actually talk on the air. If you’re at all interested in, um, UCSD Women’s Volleyball (or just want to stress test the connection to try and break the server and make me look bad), a link to the stream can be found here (click on the listen live link at the bottom of the page).

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Montgomery County police today issued a statement urging an unidentified caller to contact “us back” and to “please clearly state your name along with a spelling of said name” and “your current whereabouts” along with “cross streets, if possible”. Police Chief Charles Moose then urged that the sniper “sit down” with police to discuss “matters”, “face to face”.

Oh yeah, here’s a link to an actual sniper story for those who don’t know how to type ‘CNN‘.

Via Jeff’s favorite web site, here’s a Washington Post article on the region’s reaction to the sniper. (Note: if you want to read the article, the Washington Post might want you to “tell us about yourself” first. I recommend you use the following data: born 1900, sex female, country Trinidad and Tobago.)
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Here is a pretty interesting article on how IKEA stores work, if anybody has ever wondered. I know I have…

We’ve had two plumbers out to fix our plumbing. The two plumbers did a really good job according to themselves. Four hours after each of them left, our toilets started making groaning noises and going through what Phet and I now call the “Goddammit, it’s doing it again” phenomenon. I have been spending the majority of my morning bailing water from my toilet into a really big bucket, and then dumping it outside in the alley, as kind of an example to any potentially borderline plumbing in the surrounding apartments.

Gary, my landlord, has pulled out the big guns and called “God of Plumbers”, who we expect in a couple of hours. Meanwhile I have to hang out and hold down the fort. I’m a fairly easy going guy generally, but I have just declared a jihad against my own plumbing. I am not going to be made a victim in my own apartment anymore…
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Phet and I walked through the Disney Store at UTC during lunch today, and they were selling a whole bunch of DVDs and VHS tapes (everything except for Monsters Inc and Beauty and the Beast) for $10.00 each. They had both Toy Story movies, A Bugs Life, the Aristocats, Alice and Wonderland, Oliver and Company, The Fox and The Hound, Mary Poppins, plus lots of other frightening knockoffs (The Rescuers Down Under, some girly singalong stuff, etc.)

We got the Fox and the Hound, the Artistocats, Mary Poppins, and Alice in Wonderland (I like watching the older, trippy Disney movies for some reason). It sounds rather egregious, but then afterwards we went to Sam Goody and discovered we had saved over $80 on the movies.

This evening we have watched the Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood, and are curently in the process of watching Alice in Wonderland. Not much to really say about all this except for Robin Hood is one of the coolest animated movies ever. All of the voices and character animation are insanely well done, and when the Rooster sings about everything sucking in Nottingham, it gets me right here.

Slashdot has a link to a Popular Science article discussing a newly unveiled US fighter concept, called the Bird of Prey. The plane is not the next superfighter or anything, but appears to have been built to test new stealth capabilities. The coolest bit about it is that it’s thought to have been testing techniques to make it “invisible” (ie, “hard to see”) during the day, to the naked eye, as well as to radar. This is something that hasn’t been done before (our other stealth stuff is all black, which makes it hard to see at night but a dead giveaway during the day) and was done by concealing a bunch of recognizable airplane parts and surfaces using body panels and, possibly, illumination designed to eliminate shadows. Pretty sexy stuff.

Last night was pretty eventful for the Pease/Ounnarath household, and the action was basically centered around our toilet.

No, no, don’t worry. This’ll be fun…
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The former CEO of NextCard was informed that the company will not be forgiving a loan he took out, CNet reports.

I don’t understand what makes companies loan their executives money. What the hell are they thinking? Are these CEO jackasses too good to be seen walking into a bank and taking out a loan like everyone else?

I’ve seen many cases of this in the financial pages lately; CEO X takes out $Y million loan while running company Z. Upon his retiring, Z forgives loan to X. It’s obnoxious. These jackasses already make more in a year than most people will make in their entire careers; the very least they could do is put their own credit rating on the line to play with some money they don’t already have, like everyone else. I mean, for christ’s sake, the guy runs a credit card company! If he needs some cash, I guess it’s too much to ask that he fill out an application.

Grinning smarmy dicks like this are ruining the economy for all of us stockholders.

Barbra Streisand and Matt Drudge are involved in a humorous little spat on the net. Basically, what’s happening is Streisand is doing something–sending a fax to Rep. Gephardt, or giving an anti-war-with-Iraq speech–and Drudge is gleefully pointing out Streisand’s many errors.
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Check it…

Saddam Hussein won an overwhelming victory in the latest Iraqi election, with every single vote of the eligible 11,445,638 votes going to him. This is apparently a big deal despite the fact the Hussein was running unopposed and despite the fact that Iraq hasn’t even bothered to count the votes (most of which are loose paper ballots being carried by jitney from the outskirts of Iraq).
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There’s a pretty rad correction in the most recent edition of the Weekly Reader. Kids writing reports on the enigmatic (and strangely beautiful) sport of buzkashi should take note.

CORRECTION
Due to an editing error, the review of Khyber Pass (October 3) incorrectly stated that the game of buzkashi is played with the head of a goat. It is, in fact, played with the body of a decapitated goat.

I had never really been exposed to the wonders of AM talk radio until I started listening to lots of Padres games this year on KOGO 600, which is the home of such luminaries as conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh and mass psychosis enabler Art Bell. I already knew about those two at least by reputation, so hearing them on the radio generally live up to their advance billing wasn’t all that surprising.
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[disclaimer: I was reading this interview strictly for the content, and not because the subject is an Asian chick with a large chest who has nekkid pictures scattered across the Internet. I am including a picture of her so that you don't feel the need to do a search for her name, or follow the link provided.]

A couple of days ago, I was reading this interview with Japanese adult film star Anna Ohura (warning: link leads to mild naughtiness) and I come across this:

Interviewer: Do you belive in ghosts?

Anna: Not really.

…

Interviewer: What are you afraid of?

Anna: Ghosts.

I dunno, I thought it was funny.