A sad day, my favorite pair of sandals over the past 4,5 years has finally met its maker. They finally came apart, right on the eve of my trip to Japan. A sad day indeed - though I will most likely perform the only action that makes sense right now. That would be to go out and buy another pair exactly like them and pretend nothing happened. Sorta like when a pet dies and you get one that looks just like him/her; sometimes it is the most comforting thing a person can do. A moment of silence please...

You are either being crazy, or eating sandwiches. - Justin

Scott you blew it not buying the 500 thread count sheets. - Me

Damn, if you guys think Gilly is shy, what do you think I am? - Ryan

damn can't remember any more right now

So Tuesday this week I learned how to change the front brakes on my Isuzu rodeo. Thanks to my buddy Ramiro for the extra tools and pointers (and the manual complete w/ pictures instructing me how to do it). Also to Brett for watching me and reminding me to loosen the lugnuts before you jack the car up. And to my neighbors for leaving a note impersonating the apt complex management telling me I couldn't work on my car in front of my garage. Very funny. But hey, the brakes work great and my pulsating break problem seemed to go away when I replaced the brake pads.

3 cheers for grease that won't come out from underneath your fingernails by the way. Beats a day of office work thats for the hell sure!

Image (not of my car) from here

Play this sweet flash game to practice one of my favorite pasttimes -- Hiding the Hotties

Game is fun and surprisingly challenging at first haha. Which girl went where? Where is a valid hiding place? Great questions...

Source: Liz

I feel compelled to tell a story of one of the stranger and more vivid dreams I ever had. I entitled it: "Bob Barker's Greatest Day". I dreamed that I was in the audience of the very first Price Is Right Show taking place while Bob was going to college at UCLA. Of course, the modern day technological innovations of the show were not present, but the UCLA auditorium was a packed house and people were happy to write down their bids on poster board with marker. Anyway, the show was going great, when the power went out and the auditorium got dark. Bob told everyone to stay calm and got some candles. Having no light, he tried to think of an idea to keep everyone in the auditorium. He suggested, why don't we have a political forum and discuss the world's issues? Well they did, and one after another people stood up from the audience and made amazingly clear arguments for all sorts of political ideals. One of those to stand up was Bob Dole. Another, Bill Clinton. In actuality, every political fiend of the 21st century happened to be present at that first Price Is Right show. And thanks to Bob Barker, they all discovered their passions in politics which would have otherwise gone undetected. That was the dream... Happened 4 years ago or so, but this picture caused me to think that maybe people don't realize what a great person Bob Barker is (at least in my dream).

Source: Me, picture: dribbleglass.com

Click here to see the video clip of the Daily Show talking about the Dukes of Hazard. ...and prepare to laugh your ass off. Or if you disagree, "that is where you and I differ in opinion".

Source: Ramiro

These pictures were taken deep in the Amazon Rainforests of Brazil. This guy apparently fell asleep at his job in this truck. This giant freaking snake apparently bit him in the head and swallowed him whole... Believe it? or not? Someone wanna look this up on snopes.com or something?

Source: Liz

Click here to watch the cool 6 minute short film directed by Danny Brown. Described by one reviewer: "A short film that is played entirely in reverse and involves the "reverse destruction" of balanced rock sculptures. There is one character in the movie that appears to magically create these sculptures.

Source: boingboing.net, rock-on-rock-on.com

Today I spent my day designing this contraption. It looks cool I think. However, it is strikingly unimpressive in function -- all it does is calculate digits of π and flash the latest calculated digit out to the 7-segment numeric display (The digital display used in alarm clocks and microwaves). The cool part: Thanks to using NI hardware and software this took me 2 days to make. And most of that was trying to relearn what a resistor was and surveying the bunches of different ways to calculate digits of π.

Hardware: cRIO-9002 Real-Time Controller. This is the processor tirelessly crunching away on π. It can crank the whole first 1000 digits or so out really quickly, so I make it go sloooower. Then there's the cRIO-9102 FPGA backplane, which is doing the calculations of turning a '5' into digital outputs that are displayed on the 7-segment display. And then the user interface, which runs on any ordinary windows box capable of running LabVIEW.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh I'm a pirate!

New Photo Album Posted

Wow last weekend was amazing. Of course I had to look at the pictures to remember much of anything about it; but you're all in luck! The pictures from last Friday's 2nd Annual Obnoxious T-Shirt party (and after party) along w/ The Ark boat party are now online and ready for your consumption. Be warned, drinking keystone light's from a distance greater than 12 inches above your mouth is a sign that you may not be ok to drive. or walk. but you can probably dance. and you can definitely pass out.

Source: Dustin T