You are in monthly Archives.
March 31, 2007
30 Days
30 Days with Morgan Spurlock (the Super Size Me guy) is a great show..
Watch An Atheist among Christians on Google video before it's gone...
March 30, 2007
I've been busy. Not really.
I'm trying out Twitter - a sort of public instant messenger service that people have been talking about.
I hoped to update Galactic Times every other Friday - today would be the day - but I haven't been too inspired for it today. It's a lot easier when people submit stories and all I have to do is cut and paste (or in Woodsie's case take out all the funny parts just so it fits with the style of the paper). But I hope to get a new issue out soon.
What else...
well, there's Desktop Tower Defense if you like addictive strategy games.
Also, anyone ever play Star Control II? It's a classic adventure game that also had a simple but great two player battle mode. And now you can play the "melee" over the Internet with Ur-Quan Masters.
I also stumbled on this guy's Criterion Collection blog, where he is out to review every Criterion Collection DVD (reminds me of Aaron and I's quest for watching the IMDB top 250.. what are you up to, Siskow?). Some reviews are better than others but overall, really good. Check out his Rushmore review and Armageddon review.
I posted a couple photos of the house on Flickr, too.
March 13, 2007
HITFTD
Home improvement trivia for the day:
E26 bulbs = medium base
E17 bulbs = intermediate base
All bulbs = way too confusingly labeled
(anyone want to draw a Venn diagram of this?)
March 09, 2007
Holy Cow
My friend Aaron and his wife Dawn got back from a trip to Hawaii a couple weeks ago. He told me about their skydiving their and it sounded pretty exciting. I asked him if he did anything else "big" over there and he nonchalantly mentioned a helicopter tour. Even though skydiving is pretty safe, I thought to myself that the helicopter tour must be a little safer, overall. I bet 9/10 of the people asking about his trip ask about the skydiving first.
Well, it turns out he'll probably be talking more about his helicopter trip. Compare their photo
With one of a tour helicopter that crashed today, killing four
Yeah.
Here's Aaron's short take on it.
----
In other, non-near-miss-accident stories, I got called a bad salesperson at work yesterday!*
Yep, it's true.
I don't consider myself the best salesperson ever, but I think I am honest -- I've saved people $150 by telling them they can use their digital video camera as a webcam, instead of having to buy one (of course the irony is they are now going for $300 on ebay) and I've talked people down from expensive computer models to something that better fits their needs. I also almost never say "I don't know," but instead hop on Google and see if their program will actually work on the computer they are interested in.
So, this guy walks in, and pretty early on you can tell how serious people are about getting something. One thing that suggests a lack of commitment is they will ask a question, you will start to answer, and they will interrupt you halfway through your first sentence. In everyday conversation this would be considered very rude, but it happens all the time. In fact, Aimee had a little boy *during* one of her programs yesterday that did very same thing. Maybe he and my customer are related.
He goes on to ask if we have any discounts. I ask if he is a student. He says yes. I say we have a student discount. He asks if he needs any kind of proof. I say yes. Says he doesn't have anything with him ("it's spring break") -- he's probably 24 years old, not what I would call the college type -- he could be a student, but more likely he's trying to get the discount without being one.
We move on and he asks what other kind of discounts we have. I mention we will occasionally have demo computers marked down. He asks if we have any "first time buyer" deals, which honestly I have never heard of, but he says Sony has some really good ones.
I say no, we don't have any first time buyer sales.
At this point we've barely even talked about the computer. But he goes on to say that if I can make him a deal right now he'll buy a computer otherwise he's walking out the door.
"Sorry, we don't really do any kind of deals."
Immediately, he starts to walk out: "You just lost a sale. Terrible salesperson. I'm out of here. Bad job." He trails off some other really rude comments that I don't really want to repeat because it would further the case for the world being full of really mean spirited, ignorant people.
"See ya!" I say as he leaves. Don't know if he heard me. I'm pretty sure he was just in there to waste someone's time and I got the bad luck of the draw. Sometimes you ask someone if they need help and out of the blue you meet someone who needs some unique help and is really friendly about it. Other times, you *really* regret asking the person.
I hope he enjoys his Sony.
*Remember, you don't know where I work and I can't say
----
How the world really shapes up - exaggerating the world map based on consumption.
Minority Kart - best animated gif ever?
The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids - or: How I became a terrible salesperson?
Matt Haughey interviews MeFi's own Adam Savage.
Penn Radio is done. I used to download this Podcast pretty often for my commutes, it was good stuff. Check out the Matt Stone and Trey Parker interview towards the end of the shows.
March 02, 2007
GT 7
New Galactic Times. Thanks to those who helped. We made it on Matt Haughey's blog (the creator of MetaFilter). See here. ("Total nerdvana") !
Any good blizzard stories? We've been cooped up here the past couple days... not much work or school going on. We watched Babel last night. I thought the cinematography was good. The story was pretty interesting until about halfway through then you just wanted them to hurry up. I think I felt the same way about 21 Grams which the director also did. I think it tried to be Crash. I also think a lot of the characters weren't very realistic in their actions, which took me out of it.
Also have Curb Your Enthusiasm from Netflix right now. Great show, as Cody my Netflix buddy can attest to.