Monthly Archives: February 2006

Permit Required

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I brought my camera with me to work so I could snap a few pictures of the new Charlie Ticket vending machines on the way in. I wanted to make a write up about the new payment system being put in place. As I was taking my first picture, a large man approached, wearing a heavy MBTA jacket. He said, “You need a permit to take pictures in the station.” Fearing the instant confiscation of my expensive digital camera, I put the lens cap on immediately, apologized and claimed ignorance, not acknowledging that I had already snapped a shot with no flash. I was just waiting for some guy to come out of nowhere, tackle me to the ground and arrest me on suspicion of being a terrorist. Greg [rommate] happened to get there at that time. He must have left the house just after me. He saw what had happened and asked what I was doing. I told him I was just wanted to take a couple pictures of the new machines for the Charlie Ticket for my blog. Greg said he was just waiting for the guy to smile and say he was just kidding, but he never did.

Sometimes I think I felt safer when there was no MBTA police presence at the stations at all.

I’ll make the Charlie Ticket post at a later date using stock pictures from the MBTA website. I really have no desire to be fined or in any type of legal turmoil. Whatever happened to freedom of the press…

Snowed In

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It was forecasted that we were to get well over a foot of snow this past Saturday evening. In true BH tradition my roommates put together a last minute 4-bar pubcrawl ending at our house where everyone would sleep over and be snowed in with us (and have their cars fill our driveway so we have less to shovel). I had a little to drink and just went to bed when we got to the house. I was sick. The others stayed up and drank. Next thing I know, Natalie (roommate) is knocking on my door and Mike’s door, yelling, “Breakfast!” It was somehow noon.

I groggily got out of bed and followed them upstairs to the top floor. On the way up, I could see we really did get over a foot of snow. Despite my headache and sickness, that brightened me a bit. Greg was making breakfast for everyone. I’m not sure how many movies we then watched but it seemed like 3 or 4 including Eurotrip and Wedding Crashers. It was decided after that, that we needed to go shovel before it got dark. We all suited up and got ready for the fun to ensue. Mike decided it would add value to the experience by taking out his Halloween costume and shoveling in the penguin suit. He wasn’t wrong.


Penguin

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Flash Game of the Week: Marvin Spectrum

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This one was confusing to me at first because I never read the instructions how to play any of these games. Here’s how it works, for each obstacle you either jump (up), duck (down) or roll (right) through the obstacles. Depending on the color of the area you move through, you have to change your character to that color based on the keys it shows at the beginning of the level. The first level you start at blue, the second level adds green, third adds red and the last adds purple. I had some difficulty telling the blue and purple apart, but I did pretty well on the other levels.

113 was my high. Once the fourth color was added, it was nearly impossible for me to keep track of the colors and the obstacles at the same time.

Link.

Valentine Foreboding

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Whenever I see my mom, she usually gives me some sort of candy or food. I think its just so she feels better knowing that I’m at least eating something, even if its not so healthy. I used to forget to eat a lot when I was younger. I picked up the ability to ignore hunger pain while I was in college.

Anyhow, the last time I saw my mom, she gave me a bag of Dove Milk Chocolate hearts for Valentines Day. I ate one today and decided that they were sinfully delicious and then proceeded to eat about 14 more in quick succession. On the inside of the foil wrappers are little messages bearing some sort of Valentine’s Day cheer. I have never been one to be a fervent supporter of such a masochistic holiday, but as I read some of the messages in the wrappings of these little bits of chocolate delight, I was puzzled.

Among the holiday cheer, I came across these joyous bits of text:

  • Remember your first crush.
  • Be your own Valentine.
  • Chocolate always loves you back.

I’m sensing a bit of malcontent among the elves that Dove has writing these foil messages of warmth. Depending on how you read them, they only get more desperate:

  • Discover how much your heart can hold [out]
  • Sleep under the stars tonight [since you have nowhere else to sleep]
  • Share a secret [and ruin a friendship]
  • Go where your heart takes you. [Straight to the bottle]
  • Be a little mysterious. [Put the bottle in a brown paper bag.]

Seriously, Dove. You might want to get your Human Resources department to look into that.

Warm Valentine's Salutations

The Penalty of Stability Part 4

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5 installs of Windows XP and service pack 2 later, I have returned the victor!

To make a long story short, it was the graphics card driver. I uninstalled it in safe mode restarted and it went right into Windows without so much as a pause. I’ve loaded up some of my applications including those necessary to get the Zen Vision up and working. I only meant to watch the first few seconds of the episode of Battlestar Galactica I loaded, but ended up watching all 45 minutes of it. I’ll post a review of the Zen player at another time, but needless to say I am pleased with it.

Now I can get some sleep and get back to work.

yay.

The Penalty of Stability Part 3

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All media files have been moved.
All logs have been backed up.
All bookmarks have been saved.
All application settings have been noted.
All drivers are in hand.

Let the reformating of Abominus commence!

Taking suggestions for the name of my desktop after reformat.

For reference, my server is named Tar Valon. I am considering Tear, Illian, Rhuidean, Cairhien, Far Madding, Caemlyn, Falme, Malkier, Tanchico or Ebou Dar to stay with the same theme. Bonus points if you know the significance of the names. I’m open to all other suggestions.

[UPDATE]
I named it Rhuidean. It prompted me a lot sooner than I thought it would. Let the great driver and application install begin…

[UPDATE]
Service Pack corrupted installation. Reinstalling…

Corpse Bride

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Corpse Bride Corpse Bride came out on DVD on Tuesday this past week. I saw it in the theaters shortly after it came out. Being a fan of Tim Burton‘s The Nightmare Before Christmas, I was quite excited knowing Corpse Bride was a return to his stop-motion animation style.

The story is based on a Romanian fairly tale, I believe, where the main character, Victor, is to marry a girl he has never met before, but before any of that could happen he ends up marrying a corpse bride. I liked it very much and would recommend anyone to pick up the DVD. Its loaded with extras that go into some of the process that went on in making the movie have its unique style. I was able to pick the DVD up Thursday night after work.

If your interested in getting any merchandise for Corpse Bride, McFarlane toys has put out some action figures. I bought the movie poster at the last major convention we went to and it is now proudly hanging on my wall.

Click here for more information about the movie and the origins of the story.

Covert Ops at Work: Loungin'

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Pictures have been taken and smuggled out. Brace yourselves men, there is a lounge in the womens’ bathroom! After weeks of hearing rumors and being a naysayer, I have come into possession of conclusive evidence that, there is in fact a lounge area in the womens’ bathroom here at work. I refused to believe, even after camera phone pictures were taken to ease my doubt. Displayed below is the conclusive proof of this area’s existence. Its purpose, one can only suspect. It may have something to do with the herd-like behavior women manifest when on the way to the lavatory. They enter in groups and leave in groups. One can only deduce that they also go to the bathroom and, in this case, wait in line in groups. Such peculiar rituals have not been seen since the creation of the Discovery Channel.


Womens Lounge
Womens Lounge

For the female readers’ benefit I have included a picture of the mens’ room lounge.
Men's Lounge