Month: December 2004

Compliments to Good Parkers

This is a great anti-prank:

I was telling Jenna about this “prank” (via BoingBoing) some guy pulled in L.A. where he purposefully parked poorly to see what kind of notes people would leave him when Jenna said “That would be cool if you left notes for people who were good at parking their car.”

I fell in love with the idea when she mentioned it and couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. So we followed through with it today after we finished with our Christmas shopping in the Woodlands Mall area.

We decided that we would pre-write our notes, then walk through the parking lot looking for exceptional parking jobs to reward with the notes. Twenty notes seemed a worthwhile number, but we couldn’t come up with more than five semi-unique things to write, so we copied each four times. Here were the notes we left (links to images).

Sometimes, people need a little surprise affirmation in their day. Thanks Waxy for the link.

December 28, 2004

Holy Crap

50,000 dead and counting. Or 56,000 according to Wikipedia (who’s taking their info from several news sources).

December 28, 2004

I Knew It!

Remember the guy that got a crapload of attention and media coverage for giving the ability to control his huge display of Christmas lights that folks could control via the Web? The whole thing was a hoax. Here’s the official word from the guy who runs the site.

December 28, 2004

9-11 Plane Was Shot Down?

So says Rumsfield.

Here’s what Rumsfeld said Friday: “I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples’ heads on television to intimidate, to frighten ? indeed the word ‘terrorized’ is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be.”

Several eyewitnesses to the crash claim they saw a “military-type” plane flying around United Airlines Flight 93 when the hijacked passenger jet crashed ? prompting the once-unthinkable question of whether the U.S. military shot down the plane.

This is going to make the folks who thought their friends and family fought back on that plane really doubt anything the government tells them.

December 28, 2004

Grand Theft Auto 2 for Free!

This is why I love Rockstar games. After a game of theirs has reached its “classic” status, they release it for download for free on their site. So far they have Grant Theft Auto, Wild Metal, and now they’re allowing downloads on Grand Theft Auto 2. Now if I can just get them to run on my wussy laptop here at the office, life would be good.

December 27, 2004

Tsunami Resources

In case you’ve been in a hole the last 24 hours, a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami has taken the lives of 22,000 in Asia. While the major international outlets are covering this fairly well (the domestic coverage, at least on TV, was pretty crappy), there are a pile of bloggers and independent sources for a pile of great photos and news about this. So here are a few links I’ve spotted in the past 24 hours:

My hearts and prayers go out to everybody over there. I certainly hope this gets covered like it should here in the U.S., even if it isn’t on our soil, as international incidents have a tendency to disappear from our newspapers here far too fast.

December 27, 2004

That’s My Kind Of Diet

A recipe for a healthy heart? Chocolate and booze on a daily basis. Link via Barn.

December 27, 2004

Wal-Mart Promoting Its Own Destruction

By selling a book entitled “How Walmart is Destroying America And The World: And What You Can Do About It.” Ironic? Indeed. Here’s the book on Amazon in case it disappears from WalMart’s site.

Update on 12/29: Appears that WalMart took it down, so I’ve mirrored it here.

December 27, 2004

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Apparently Missouri’s Jefferson City Correctional Center had quite the video game collection.

December 27, 2004

Merry “Return All Your Presents” Day

It’s the day after Christmas, and all through the office, everybody’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Today is one of the busiest days of the year in Sunriver. Today, 90% of the 150 homes we rent are arrivals today, and about 75% of them are departures. It’s a frickin’ madhouse in the office. Most of our Front Desk employees are out helping housekeeping, as is some of our accounting department. There’s two of us at the front desk, things are going crazy, and I haven’t had any caffeine yet. This day is going to suck.

The weather in Sunriver (and most of Central Oregon) looks like this right now:

It’s snowing right now (and it’s real snow, unlike that frost in Houston that TheDren calls snow), and has been snowing most of the morning.

As for Christmas, it was an enjoyable time. The kids got spoiled rotten, as usual. My wife and I got several really nice gifts, and some really odd ones. My grandparents, for example, are really nice folks, but send some different items. One set of grandparents sent me some pictures — of themselves. A nice wallet-sized for me to keep in my wallet along with my kids, I guess. My other grandparents sent everybody in the family $50 Gift Certificates for Applebees — except Lydia and I, who received some plastic glasses with some odd-ball sports designs on them. I remember one year, this same grandparent said she didn’t send us certificates one year because there wasn’t an Applebees where we lived, but then went on to send them to other folks in my family — who all live within three miles of me.

Oh well. Otherwise, it was a good holiday. Lydia and I got some home improvement stuff — new vanity and sink for our bathroom, and movable island/countertop thingy for the kitchen. We also got some DVDs: Shawshank Redemption 10th Anniversary Edition, Star Wars Trilogy (we need to take it back so we can get the Widescreen version), Reno 911 First Season DVD, Aladdin, and a couple others for the kids. I also got a Leatherman Super Tool 200, some much-need clothes, a portable cribbage set (just need to find somebody to play with now), and a few other odds and ends. Hannah got a Leapster that she isn’t going to be letting go of anytime soon, I know that. I’m at the office, so I can’t think of the other stuff that we all got off the top of my head.

So, did anybody else get anything stupidly cool?

Anyway, more regular blogging later, once I clear out my back log in my RSS reader and in my e-mail inbox.

December 26, 2004