Jimmy Buffet is on Leno right now, and he’s singing some very festive song. The chorus sounds like “Condoleezza my heart” but I’m pretty sure that’s not right. But you never know, maybe he’s a big fan of the National Security Advisor.
“Condoleezza my heart” could be the next breakaway hit. You just wait.
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Two New Mexico-related articles from Ananova:
A US airline stopped a New Mexico family from boarding a plane because of their size.
The family was left in Indianapolis when Southwest Airlines’ staff told them some members had to buy two seats each.
Marty McLaughlin and his sister Andrea Kysar spent 30 hours travelling back to Albuquerque by bus instead.
The airline has refunded them for their return tickets and apologised to them on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
The airline’s new ‘customer of size’ policy means overweight passengers are charged for two tickets if they’d spill into their neighbour’s seat.
Mrs Kysar says they weren’t charged for two tickets when they travelled to Indianapolis for their mother’s memorial last week.
Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Beth Harbin said: “We should have required the purchase of the extra seats on the original flight as well. I think the agent was trying to work from her heart and work with them noting the circumstances but really it’s the consistency of the policy that’s the key here.”
and
A New Mexico man on a traffic summons ended up in jail for two days after dropping a marijuana joint in court.
Robin Loftin, 18, was charged with contempt of court and sentenced to jail for taking the illegal substance into Judge Walter Parr’s courtroom in Carlsbad.
According to court records, Loftin was in court on charges of driving with a suspended driver’s licence and failure to renew his vehicle registration.
After the judge entered the courtroom, Loftin removed the hat he was wearing and the marijuana joint fell from the hat onto the floor.
Parr immediately cited Loftin for contempt of court. The judge deferred the sentences on the traffic summons on the condition Loftin obeys all laws, clears his licence and renews his vehicle registration.
Excellent.
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There’s been quite a bit of hype surrounding the latest Matrix trailer. Let me preface this by saying that The Matrix is one of my favorite movies, and that the visual effects in it blew me away. However, (and I may get lynched for saying this,) the trailer for The Matrix: Reloaded disappointed me. Here’s why: there’s a big difference between using computer graphics in a movie just for the sake of using them, and using them well. Part of the reason that I liked the original Matrix movie so much was that they seemed to understand that difference. But in the latest trailers, they seem to suffer the same problems that Spiderman and Episode II did, with unrealistic, cartoonish animation, which really takes a lot out of the movie for me. I’m not claiming to be any sort of computer animation expert, but I think all you need to do is just to be a human being to realize that something is wrong with the motion. This is not to say that I won’t be lining up to see The Matrix along with the rest of the country, but I hope that in the final version, they will have cleaned up some of the effects.
There is also a new Hulk trailer out, and unfortunately, the Hulk still looks like Shrek on steroids. In related news, poor Jennifer Connelly, who stars as Betty Ross in The Hulk, seems forever doomed to play the supportive woman to the slightly psychotic man — a role she perfected in Dark City and A Beautiful Mind.
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I imagine that in these kinds of online journals (I hate the word “blog”), a lot of people have written about the people who have inspired them throughout their lives. Well, for me, it’s not my 4th grade teacher, or my soccer coach, but Old People on Bicycles. Think about it — how cool are you to be zooming around on two wheels when you’re 70 years old? I see many OPBs around campus, and it fills me with joy to see them creeping unsteadily across a busy intersection or straining to make it up that slight incline. I only hope that when I’m old, I’ll still be able to ride a bike, too. So here’s to you, Old Person on Bicycle. Keep on truckin’.
Edit: In a completely unrelated note, I’d like to applaud Eric for his response to Senator Santorum’s bewildering comments on homosexuality.
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Kentucky.com is having a contest to find a person to be treated like a VIP at the Kentucky Derby this year. The two finalists are an 85-year-old grandmother, and a 24-year-old student, who appears to have lied about her age, or else has aged terribly.
Reasons to vote for Grandma Bertha:
1) Her name is Bertha
2) She’s 85
3) Her answer to the question, “If you could meet any celebrity on Millionaire’s Row at the Derby, who would it be and why?” was: “Bill Clinton. I’ve wanted to meet him for some time, and I think he’s the cutest little thing. I’d love to meet him. I’d like to get one of those hugs he’s always passing out.”
4) Bertha!!!
Go here for instructions on voting for Grandma Bertha. The last day of voting is today so get them votes in.
Go Bertha!
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I realize that I’ve been posting very sporadically lately. I wish that I could say that I’ve been off doing something wonderfully interesting, but the truth is, I just haven’t had much to say. Besides all the problems I’ve been having with my web host, my largest recent time suck has been Trillian. I had tried installing it once before, but I was so comfortable with ICQ that I couldn’t get used to Trillian’s UI, so I gave it up. Also, at the time, there was no message history implemented. But recently I had enough people pester me about never being on AIM that I decided to give it another shot. The most recent version is much less annoying to use, and implements message history (although clumsily,) so I’ve quit ICQ cold turkey. It also helps that I found a Trillian skin that basically makes Trillian look like ICQ. It also comes with some interesting plugins like e-mail checking, weather reports, and stock reports. It’s going well, so if you’re on AIM, hey maybe I’ll actually talk to you some time!
Oh, and here’s a Macy’s mannequin that looks exactly like Lisa Marie Presley. Wacky.
P.S. The first person who figures out the slightly geeky and lame reasoning behind the title of this post wins the satisfaction that you’re as big a geek as I am.
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Last week, I was walking back to my apartment from the parking lot. When I entered the courtyard, there was a huge crane/heron-type bird walking around the grass. I ran inside to grab my camera, hoping that it would still be there when I came out. It was, so I started to take some pictures of it. It walked around for a few minutes, when it quickly ducked down low and started walking very slowly, like it was hunting something. Suddenly, it lunged down at something in the grass, and came up with a big fat gopher in its mouth. After exclaiming, “Holy crap!” I took more pictures of it as it swallowed the gopher whole. I watched the bulge travel slowly down its thin neck until it disappeared. Then it just started walking around again. I waited around to see if I could get any pictures of it in flight, but it was apparently pretty happy just hanging around the courtyard, so I left it alone and went inside. But it was a very neat and surreal experience, and again I’m glad for digital cameras. Check out the pictures.
Edit: Thanks to Buddy, I now know that this was a Great Blue Heron, which is a species common all over North America. According to the above page, it uses the west coast as a breeding ground, as well as a place to hang out during the Winter. It also says:
I guess my sighting was even rarer that I thought, since most webpages I read didn’t even say that they ate rodents!
Edit 2: For those interested, here is a guide to all the animal species on the Stanford campus. If what the heron ate was indeed a gopher, then according to the guide, it was a Botta’s pocket gopher. It seems to look pretty similar, especially the length of the tail, which you can compare to my photo here.
Edit 3: The pics are now up on Flickr
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As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been having some troubles with the site over the past few days. My webserver has been going down every so often, and Host Rocket is being uncharacteristically unresponsive, so the situation has been a bit frustrating. Things are still partially broken, but at least they’re not completely broken like they were before.
Other than the web server situation, things are going well. Brendan, Matt and I went to 104.9‘s “cheap-ass show” with Ama (Afua’s sister!) and Ben Kweller at The Edge. It was a fun concert, and not just because of the $1.49 ticket price. I don’t know Ben Kweller’s songs that well, (unlike some of the screaming teenage girls) but he did sing “Sha Sha”, so I was happy. It was a solo acoustic show, but he has great stage presence and was also really funny. I think he’s going to do really well in the next few years. Even more exciting was that during “Sha Sha” I remembered my new camera can record video with sound, so I recorded a little clip. Check it out.
I also realized something during the show. 16-year-old Pro Snowboarder Shaun White (left) and 20-year-old Rock Phenom Ben Kweller: Separated At Birth? You be the judge.
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Following a
I’m really excited to start working there, and even better, I have some friends that will be there too. Rahul has been working on the LoTR team since the summer, Buddy will be back on Bond come June, and Cort just started his dream job working on a Sims title at Maxis.
It’s kind of scary and exciting all at once to realize that I’ll be starting a full-time job soon. When I called my mom to tell her, she gave me these words of wisdom:
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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