Here's a picture of a public toilet in Switzerland that's made entirely out of one-way glass. No one can see you in there, but when you are inside, it looks like you're sitting in a clear glass box.

- Would you use it?

Thanks to Chuck on this one.

Y'all might enjoy brushing up on your blackjack skills. But would I endorse any ordinary run-of-the-mill blackjack program? Oh hellz no, that's why I'd like to introduce OpenBlackjack -- an open source blackjack strategy and card-counting trainer developed by my good personal friend Phillip Posts Jr. Nice try Shaun, you're not fooling anybody with that penname. Anyway, Shaun has redone the website and it looks great; go check it out. Learn something. Gamble smarter.

Have you ever run a 5k in downtown Austin: The Keep Austin Weird 5k? If not, I can tell you that it is just plain weird. Deanna, Allison, and I ran the race Saturday night at 5pm and enjoyed hanging out in the festival-like concert-like atmosphere with the crazies. What makes it so weird? How about the fact that while you are running there are:

• People running in costume
• People running half-naked
• Free chocolate donuts on the race course
• After the donuts, free bacon strips
• After the bacon, free jalepeños
• After the peppers, free french fries
• After the fries, free ice cream.

I actually couldn't stomach the fries, and barely finished the race due to my heavy weezing and upset stomach. The final standings: Deanna 1st (29:00), Darin 2nd (32:00), Allison 3rd (32:30).

Finally, the true marriage of intelligence and gambling. If you think about it, it was only really a matter of time anyway...

British bookmaker Ladbrokes is now accepting wagers on the future of physics. They've opened a book on:

* Understanding the origin of cosmic rays by 2010 (4/1 odds)
* The ATLAS experiment at CERN finding the Higgs Boson by 2010 (6/1 odds)
* The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) detecting gravitational waves by 2010 (10/1 odds)
* Building a fusion power station by 2010 (100/1 odds)

Anyone can place bets on these breakthroughs during the next two weeks. Apparently, New Scientist magazine is also involved in the gamble, dedicating ten pages to it in the print edition.

“I’d be tempted to take a bet on the Higgs at 6-1,” says Brian Foster who heads the particle physics group at the University of Oxford in the UK. “I’ve been quite instrumental in betting the taxpayers’ money on us finding it, so I’d better put my money where my mouth is.”

Source boingboing.net, Link to article, Link to Ladbrokes

How long has it been, weeks since leaving Austin? It's not that I don't like this place; but good travel options keep popping up. The latest: a weekend fly away date to Chicago over Labor Day weekend! Deanna and I found cheap tickets and a decent rate at a 4-star hotel and said "Why not?" Two days and two nights in the Windy City, I'm sure we can stay entertained w/ the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Miracle Mile, the Millenium Park and the Rush Street nightlife.

If anyone I know in Illinois has nothing to do and a few bucks for beer and deep dish pizza; you should come up Saturday or Sunday night and live it up Chicago style!

Awww geez, I guess everybody's shit stinks... I'm sorry, but this is hilarious.

The state of Illinois has filed a lawsuit against the Dave Matthews Band for allegedly dumping up to 800 pounds of liquid human waste from its tour bus into the Chicago River earlier this month.

And that was bad news for Chicago's First Lady, a passing tour boat filled with 100 people on an architecture sightseeing cruise that was doused by the falling excrement.

Thanks to Ryan on this one, Source: Yahoo News

Oh yaa! Finally, mankind can be spared the tiresome task of counting his/her savings. Wait a second, I think I need a piggy bank...

This $15 jar-topper senses and counts the coins you deposit into your coin-bank and displays the outcome on a little LCD.

Source boingboing.net, Link to Item Description

Check out this recent article on cnn.com:

SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.

Thanks to Chuck Stauffer on this one: Link to Article

I had to put something up here; so here's a quick note. I just finished up all the work we had to do for NIWeek 2004. Whew, that was a pain. Good thing I took that sick day Monday. I did see Tom, Dustin, Kee and Kathleen this weekend; which was fantastic by the way. Viva Colorado!

You can't tell me this is not hilarious. This is a link to an angry, angry Winnebago salesman that went of the handle during a commerical shoot. Warning, EARMUFFS!

Click Here for Winnebago Man Movie

You are a South African bush pilot. You fly in some critical medical supplies, enjoy a quick lunch at the hospital.

It's a stifling 100 degrees in the shade and you're eager to get back up to the cool, high blue yonder.

On the way back to your plane, you discover that the only bit of shade, within 1 mile, has become very popular . . . You start calculating the distance to the plane door . . and wonder . . .

"Do I feel lucky today?"


Source: Jack Followay, http://www.b17sam.com/WildBlueYonder.html

Here's something I ran across in my virtual 'attic' a few days ago.

• Artists: David Yates and Darin Gillis
• Listen to DaveProj.mp3

Record companies feel free to contact me via email.

I lost 20 pounds over the past 3 months. I am not wearing Pro-Anorexia Merchandise, by the way. Wow! I wasn't really trying to, I suppose this is an expected consequence of dating a nutritionist... Now, I just gotta start taking advantage of the Gold's Gym downtown and world look out! I could pick up that 'Placed 2nd in Beauty Contest, Recieve $10' Community Chest card in real life..

The future is now! Check out the Jumphook Photo Gallery. From now on, this is how I plan on posting pictures. The best part is, you can post pictures too! If you want to post pictures in an online album, let me know who you are and I will make an account for you. Send an email to 'd at jumphook dot com'. The engine I chose to use is 'Gallery 1.4.1'; among the features are:

• Slideshow for albums
• Easy navigation
• Captions on photos
• Leaving per-picture comments
• Logged-in users can upload their own ablums
• Hi-resolution originals of photos are available

The first album I've posted is the 'Summertime 2004' medley. Including moments from various parties and random events over the course of the summer. Enjoy! Click Here to View Summertime 2004

Ok, here are some pictures of the new downtown Austin loft! The first pictures are of the setup in a tour-fashion-show style. After that, I've thrown on a few pics from our Housewarming Party (thanks to everyone that made it down for that). That party was a complete (drunken) success. Everyone hurt the next day. Bodies all over the wood floor (Justin do NOT crawl into my bed ever again haha). I also tacked on a couple pictures of my work cubicle so people can understand where I spend 30 to 40 to 50 hours a week...

My grandfather TC has passed away early this morning. He was a tough ole coot, that's for sure. Ten years ago he went into the hospital where he was informed he needed a quadruple bipass. But my grandpa, oh hell no, he was not going to let no doctor operate on him. They gave him 6 months to live without receiving the operation. So what was his solution? Well just go home and let life take care of itself. Well, 6 months passed, a year passed... He went back to the doctor, who was amazed that he was still among the living. How did this happen? My grandfather's heart had created a natural bypass over the surface of his heart. Which meant he had the worst circulation in the world, but he kicked around long enough to see a few great-grandchildren come along. Rest in peace grandpa, I'll be taking off to Illinois for the funeral after work today.

Quoting an email from the long lost Erik Behrens:

As usual Darin is doing more than his fair share in the partying department. I am glad we have someone like Darin to show us how it's done. Cheers, Erik

Ah there's a good question. Here's my secret. solbeam.com, my favorite all-purpose inspirational blog. Almost a year ago I came across the site, and it incited within me a desire to travel more (i.e. all the trips I've talked about in this blog), live freely, escape the buerocratic cage of my office job. Over the past year when I have longed to escape my entrenched, responsible existence; I have found encouragment and inspiration from those posted thoughts and stories. You should check it out, and though many of you that know me will write this off to me being a 'liberal hippi' as Thompson likes to say; it might just teach you a thing or two about 'undefended love' and what it means to chase your dreams. And of course it makes you want to travel like all get out! On a side note, I found Sol's site originally by searching the web for other people that liked 'The Alchemist' as much as I did...

Ah nothing like sharing some water-cooler humor from the NI Think Tank that I swim in... Courtesy of Jack Followay:

TWO Russian anglers quietly sharing a vodka as they waited for fish to bite in a Siberian river fled for their lives when two hippos broke the surface and shattered the peace of a summer day, Itar-Tass news agency has reported.

Malvina, the female hippo, and her companion Kenigs had escaped from a zoo at Bolshaya Rechka, about 200km north of Omsk, it said.

The terrified anglers sped to the village, one on foot, the other by bicycle, and alerted zoo keepers, who found the animals quietly grazing in a field.

Source news.com, Link to Article

The dates are set, and the next wild adventure is ready to rock out of the box. I just purchased a plane ticket for myself to visit Rio De Janiero over Carnival in 2005. I'll warn you, it was not cheap; roundtrip cost me $780. Good news is, I'm looking for travel partners. So if you're free from February 4th-February 13th--I'm the guy to talk to. The general plan is to arrive in Rio on the 5th, enjoy 3 or 4 days of Carnival [meeting up with Tom and his buddy from Boulder], and then spend the rest of the trip 'flying solo' in the towns surrounding Rio [or even check out São Paulo and fly out from there]. The options are limitless, the bank account is not quite so limitless (See future post on Kick Ass Downtown Loft in coming days). All that really matters is that I have another vacation in my sights which helps me count down the many many days of office work until this trip takes place.

They captured it alive! This weird animal (nicknamed a 'hyote') has been running around Maryland causing the locals to suspect there is some kind of new species of dog running wild. Strange pictures of the animal have been bouncing around the web for weeks, and I even saw one on Talk Soup the other day. In fact, the animal has turned out to be... a fox. With some nasty skin. And in definite need of rogaine. And that monoxodil additive couldn't hurt either.

The mystery may be over as one of the creatures roaming through central Maryland was finally captured on Saturday. According to the veterinarians at Falls Road Animal Hospital, the animal was a male red fox.

"It is a skin parasite that looks -- under the microscope -- like spiders," said Dr. Herko. "One of the signs of the disease is hair loss and you've seen he's lost a good portion of its hair -- a good 70 percent."

Link to the update: Hyote Captured | Link to the Original Story