Adam’s Mom: Tech Edition

adam: My mom’s gonna be upset
Matt: Yeah, we know how seriously your mom takes releases.
Mike: thats a different kind of release
adam: Matt++
Matt: I really want to make an “overload” joke here, but… I got nothin’.
Mike: the kinds of releases adams mom gets, are full of buffer overflows
Matt: Mike++
Matt: Buffer overflows, or FLUFFER overflows?
Mike: i would push and pop her stack any day
Matt: I hear she’s got a thing for bidirectional linked lists
adam: My mom: Making the channel go down every time.
Mike: lets just say her conditional statements always return 0
Matt: She’s my main void
jchin: i hear she’s good with objects
Mike: if ($mom=”adam’s”) then $whore=1
jchin: try{adamsMom.getServiced()}catch{this.getSTD()}
Matt: Her regular expression always evaluates to “O’ face”.
jchin: haha
Matt: And, for the record, you don’t need a “try” block, since Adam’s mom accepts EVERY piece of input.

The Bounce House Brawl

So as some of you are no doubt aware, for the last 12 years I’ve taken part in an online collaborative writing game centered around sports entertainment. In reality, that’s just a fancy name for “fantasy wrestling” or “e-wrestling”. I figure it’s probably better to get this out of the way now, that way if this sort of thing doesn’t interest you than you can just skip over the cut that’s going to show up right… about… NOW!

The Vatican Swim Team

So I started thinking about it, seriously thinking about it (which is terrifying in its own special way), and have come to the conclusion that the pope is the captain of the Vatican Swim Team.

Look at his hat. It is obviously designed to assist in breaking the surface tension on a body of water, in this case an Olympic sized swimming pool. The pope dives in, aquadynamically assisted by his tapered cap, and then hauls ass across the lanes like the righteous dolphin that he is.

This also explains the church’s fascination with holy water. The water you find in a church hasn’t been blessed as much as run through His Holy Brita Filtration System. Using a super-concetrated cholorine blend they’re able to not only kill any microbial infestations but also cleanse the water of sin. Popes through history have been known to squint. This is not from glare, or fading eyesight, but instead is a result of the chlorine mix they use in the pools. That shit stings.

Have you ever seen the pope outside of his robes? Of course not. The pope reps his team colors like a champion.

Think of it this way. We have a college of cardinals, which is really the varsity squad of the Vatican Swim Team, and every now and again they congregate to elect a new captain. They have only one letter player, but instead of a patch for his jacket the dude gets his own custom ride: throne, bullet-resistant glass, private driver, the works. That’s one hell of a team bus.

Darth Vader Fixes Everything

http://revver.com/video/508293/ventrilo-harassment-darth-vader/

Click the link. Don’t make me destroy you. It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here.

Venting

I’m deliberately taking a minute out of a really f’ed-up day to vent about it. I have come back from vacation and walked into Hell. On Tuesday I took a few calls as part of my shift, including one about ID block problems (I’m not going into detail about what that is) at a replica site. Shortly after I get dragged into an issue that was raised through the Duty Manager for one of my colleagues. I spent Tuesday afternoon and half of Wednesday working on it. Late on Wednesday the Duty Manager gets a call about the ID block issue. Great, now I have my own crisis to attend to, flagging it as a downed system situation. As I’m working on that issue (right now I’m waiting for the dude involved to respond to my requests for new information), the Duty Manager gets called again, this time about a low priority issue that I have open. Is this real?

Every day is just another swell on the cascading wave of fuck.

Serious Business

http://www.myextralife.com/?p=8510

That link right there is serious business. It’s the Imperial March played on a floppy disk. Also, if you’re not following “Italian Spiderman” each week on Youtube then there is something seriously wrong with you.

In completely unrelated news, I’m heading to Wakefield again tomorrow night to smash elves into the red zone. Hopefully this week will be a little bit better than last. One of the matches I played in was misreported, and of course it happened to be the only one I won. I am therefore officially trying to redeem an “0-3″ week tomorrow even though it should have been a “1-2″ week.

I also made some changes to the deck. Terrors are out and Nameless Inversions are in. I also cut both Garruk and a Wayfinder for three Slaughter Pact. I did this in part because I wanted to boost Tarmogoyf while still having answers to guys like Magus. I also gave the board a huge overhaul, based on what I saw last week. Squall Lines are up to four, Cloudthreshers are down to one, and moved both Garruks to the board.

I’m considering building Project 420.5n for next week. The only things I’m really missing are the Gargadons, the Firespouts, three Glittering Wish, some land (Grove, Thicket, etc.), and the Guttural Responses. All of which I’m sure I can pick up on the easy.

FreeCreditReport.com

You’ve no doubt seen those stupid commercials on television with the guy dressed as a pirate who’s apparently forced to work at a theme restaurant because someone stole his identity, yet for whatever reason he’s singing about it. The brain trust behind these ads is FreeCreditReport.com, a child company of Experian (yes, THAT Experian). First, let me say that I find the whole thing laughable because while Johnny Pirate is an advertised victim of identity theft, Experian is the organization who had some of their records stolen 3 or so years ago which actually led to identity theft in some instances (like when fraudulent charges suddenly started appearing on my debit card).

FreeCreditReport.com is ass. I know this because I made the mistake of checking my scores there. What they don’t tell you, or rather what they aren’t up front about telling you, is that it’s really only free for 7 days, and then they start charging you. If you find a recurring charge on your credit or debit card for $14.99 from Triple Advantage that’s them, being sneaky.

Here, have a look at this…
>> The original link was far too long so I had to condense the text <<

I just went through the ordeal on the phone with one of their underlings, and it wasn’t exactly what I call pleasant. The call was actually trending in the direction of the now-infamous AOL cancellation recording, because as insistent as I was (and believe me, I was insistent) the woman I spoke to would not relent on the hard sell, telling me that I “needed” this account and that I “must keep it” to monitor my credit. This is where I flipped the switch and the big boy voice came out to play.

“My intent, and the purpose of this call, is to cancel this account, so that is exactly what we’re going to do.”

And then you follow it up with something like:

“I intend to have a written confirmation of this cancellation sent to me either at the email address or physical address that you have on file for me. Can you please read that address back to me so I can confirm it’s accurate?”

I was also leery of giving them any information that could put me at risk, so when they asked for my social to confirm who I was I instead opted to give them the 8-digit reference number I was assigned when I “enrolled”.

Stay away from these pirates. Far, far away.

Flashbacks

I miss Ted DiBiase. I really didn’t appreciate “the Million Dollar Man” while he was active in the WWF, but now, some 20 years later, I realize just how incredible the guy was. And let’s not forget what might be the best theme music in the history of life itself.

That much closer

Last night, I left the office at about 5:30 and headed to Peabody. We always catch American Idol at my mom’s as kind of a family thing, but I needed to make a stop on my way there to drop off some paperwork at Century 21 to get the ball rolling (again) on the mortgage process. See, the first time around someone (me) didn’t have their credit score in order, and it was a touch shy of what lenders look at in order to do the approval dance.

1 month, $8000 and almost 60 (that’s right, 60) points later and things are markedly different.

ASIDE: I could have used “noticeably” in place of “markedly” up there, but that word gets so little love that I felt like extending a friendly gesture. Markedly, you are always welcome here.

So yeah, I dropped off the paperwork, and then came the news: we passed the pre-approval criteria, and so now we can work on getting a letter to bring with us when we visit places in case we want to start making offers. This is a huge step, and as the kids say, serious business.

Maybe now I can justify that machine gun screwdriver purchase.

Computing Conventions

For the last few days I’ve had the voice from the Unreal Tournament 3 website stuck in my head, repeating “Prepare for battle” ad nauseam. The voice speaks in that soft, digitized female voice that’s become synonymous with talking computers in recent pop culture (the only notable exception that I can think of at the moment being the legendary HAL).

In thinking about it, were I to program a sentient computer and give it a voice, I would buck the trend and give it something a little more unique. For example, the infamous “What are you doing, Dave?” could be translated into gangsta as “Yo, bitch, back the fuck up of my keyboard!” In fact, I think all sentient supercomputers should henceforth be programmed to speak like 50 Cent.

Who amongst you would like to invest in this project?