Saint Me Day

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 | Helpful, Life, Site Updates | No Comments

What… You think I’m joking? You think I would just declare today a holiday to honor myself because I have a big ego? Hmm, good point… I might… Well damn it, I didn’t!

Today is Saint James Day.

A day to honor me. Yet where are the people honoring me? Do you realize that I had to go to work today?!?!? Granted I skipped the first 3 hours to honor myself, but I still had to go!

Look, I have figured out the problem. You are having a hard time remembering what days are important and what days aren’t. So I have decided to add another section to my ‘Random Thoughts’. This weekend I will make a daily holiday database. Not only will it help you to remember when to honor me, but it will also help you to have an excuse to celebrate.

Everyday there will be a new holiday all of them will be legit, unless I don’t like the legit holidays in which case I will invent a new holiday. A holiday that should have been invented already but hasn’t due to lack of creativity at the Hallmark Company.

Tales From Earthsea

Saturday, July 21st, 2007 | Helpful | No Comments

Reading a book makes you a bit jaded when a movie comes out. It especially does this when they try to change it or combine more than one book to create the movie.

Well today I watched “Tales From Earthsea”. It was made by Studio Ghibli, which has made many fantastic anime movies such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. This one was a bit different because it was the first movie made by Miyazaki’s son.

Given that I still had to see it. I love Ghibli movies and was a fanatic about the Earthsea books.

What disappointed me is that it was not an attempt at the first book. Instead it was kind of a mix of the third book with with some of the fourth changed to work together. I think I am actually ok with this, but people watching this would be sadly lost if they did not have some background on it.

The first book was the best of them all and as such, should have been the one they created into a movie. If that one worked you could then make another book. The first and second books make very good stand alone stories, but 3,4,5 they do not.

Still the visual quality was stunning and though it will not win any prizes in my mind, the movie was about a million times better than the complete bastardization that the Sci-Fi channel tried to make into a mini series once.

Good Stuff - AKA My Store Launches

Friday, July 20th, 2007 | Helpful, Site Updates | 2 Comments

So today I spent a LONG time creating items for my new store. At the moment there is only the site merchandise. I will add the other cool items soon. I tried to make a couple different t-shirts, but at the moment since I have the “free store” I can only make one of each type of item.

One item of note. The Wall Clock. That took me FOREVER to make, all because I had an idea in my head of how to convert one of my Ask-a-Smartass questions into a clock. It turned out pretty well and I have priced it very low as well. If you figure I am only making like 10% on these things. I could jack it up more, but right now I’d rather just see how much demand there is and if there is more consider creating a real store.

I had tons of ideas for the mousepad, but again… I could only create one. I still several items I can create yet but I am going out to see my friends band.

Lemme know what you think of my first attempt to make site merchandise!

My Shiny New iPhone / Chick Magnet

Saturday, June 30th, 2007 | Helpful, Life | No Comments

Ok so I get it home.   The box… it’s damn sexy.   This is the sexiest box I have ever seen.  I don’t even know what the box is made of but I believe it is some kind of composite plastic.  It’s built like a rock… a sexy rock….

The phone can’t be used until it is activated.  So I turn on iTunes and it crashes… Go Figure.  So I go and download the new version which is what I figured it wanted me to despite not saying so.  Now it worked and I was able to go through the activation.  I had to laugh because before I was even done with the setup and giving Apple my billing information I got a phone call on it which kind of creeped me out since I did not want to disconnect it from the cradel to answer it but the cord was to far away not to.  I caved and did so.

At the end it said it could sync bookmarks and contacts from my programs.  However it would not let me pull bookmarks from Firefox (only Internet Explorer and Safari).  That seemed dumb since safari was able to pull bookmarks from Firefox and they use basically the same system to save bookmarks… oh well, I will pull the safari bookmarks. 

Then I wanted it to pull my contact data from Thunderbird or the address book associated with it.  But alas, no dice.  I could use the windows address book or Microsoft Outlook.  Since there was no way to just copy my phone book from my old phone at this time I decided that I would not be beaten and I opened up the Outlook 2007 I just happened to have laying around unused that had my address book and calendar in it though it had not been updated in the last year. 

It took me forEVER to update my contacts.  I mean I had to delete about 100 people that were in my address book that I would not ever contact again and add phone numbers for people that I only had email addresses for.  Also I had to add everybody that I knew in Arizona since they were not in my address book yet.  I don’t know how long I spent at this but it was probably nearly 2 hours.  I finally got the phone to sync all that data and I was damn happy to leave and go to Olive Garden for some nice food. 

The A/C was like a snow machine inside of Olive Garden which I was not to fond of, but whatever… bring on the food… At this time my friend Rob was playing with my phone and as the waitress came over she was like “wow is that one of those new phones???” and then right after her another lady who was brining us water was like “whoa, isn’t that one of those new phones….”.  Yep, I said.  Then the one lady was like “didn’t I see you on TV?”.  To which I was honest and said that it was doubtful, though I thought about it again and decided that if asked that question again I would say yes, since people would prefer to be right and I would prefer to be on TV.  : )

I needed to stop at the grocery store on the way home and pick up a couple things.  While waiting in line for the girl to scan my items I decided to play with my iPhone to which she said “whoa… isn’t that one of those new phones?”… Yes, yes it is… In the commotion she somehow managed to take my $1.79 roast beef and instead charge me -$1.79.  Yes if you didn’t notice that it was a negative symbol.  I wasn’t buying much but at the end she told me I had saved $1.79 ; )

Yes, this phone seemed at this point at least to have magical powers.  So I decided the best thing to do would be to go out to a club.  My friend was playing a gig at midnight and I had missed his last show because of being raped (money wise…. sigh…) by the girls at the Tilted Kilt. 

I sent him a message and was playing with my phone.  It took him 30 minutes to respond and by that time I was dead exhausted from sitting around in the heat all day.  I was still going to go until he gave me an out and said there was no need and he had another gig coming up soon.

I am sure I will hear about how many sexy women there were there and how they would have all wanted me for my iPhone when I talk to him next };->~

Good / Bad / Ugly

Ok so in tooling around the web I have noticed a lot of things that don’t work.  My site for example loads and looks beautiful but it seems to have some kind of layering issue because I cannot click ANYTHING on EITHER of my designs.  Which really sucks since with my vertical artwork the site looks badass in the vertical view and I don’t have to rotate the phone to use it in theory. 

Ok so beyond the fact that the best site on the net doesn’t work ;)  Neither does Flash or Java Applets…. Um…. Flash if #$^&%!* HUGE these days.  That will NEED to change for the good of all mankind (the elite people of mankind who own iPhones). 

The next thing that upset me is that despite me loading it up with mp3’s from iTunes (which is a pain in the ass when you have to actually use iTunes since I cannot let it automatically sync my music since I have 450 gigs of it Vs. the 8gigs on the entire iPhone.  You have to do some real bullshit just to move songs over.  I mean COME ON APPLE have you ever heard of drag / drop?????  Now as I was saying I got the mp3’s on and then…. I couldn’t use ANY of them as a ringtone!?!?!?  This means that apple is going to do some kind of bullshit where we have to buy ringtones.  I know, somebody will figure out a way to bypass this once they make a system for it, however they have yet to make a system for adding ringtones so at this point I am SOL and am stuck with their lame choices.  Grr…

The keyboard is a pain in the ass but that’s just because I have fat fingers.  If I would have traded my hands in for some little Japanese fingers it would of been fantastical.  It is however nice that if you go to far to one side that you can just slide your finger over to get the correct letter.

The Youtube integration is kind of cool, however again.  It’s NOT flash so that means you can only watch the videos that they have specifically re-encoded to be mp4s, which is NOT a huge amount at this point. 

I love the alarm clock, but again I NEED MORE RINGTONES since theirs suck.  The alarm lets me tell it which days to reoccur so I will no long have to disable and re-enable my alarm for days off.

The Google Maps is cool and useful and also the transition from using AT&T’s EDGE Network to WiFi works pretty well as well.  As soon as it sees that you can get a better strength connection on an open network it tells you and gives you the option to switch. 

The call clarity is beautiful and I like the earbuds with the little button to click to switch tracks etc..

The camera is really nice… I would take a picture of itself but you would only see the ass-end in the mirror and that would suck.  Perhaps I will use somebody’s digital camera to take a picture of the phone and the sexy box…

I am a little annoyed that at launch they don’t have any games in the iTunes store or even any ringtones.  If they had simply taken the games they had and made them work on the iPhone I would of spent another $4.99 to buy Bejeweled or something since the screen is gorgeous and I can’t play flash/java games online ;(

All in all the iPhone is amazing, but they could really stand to make some firmware updates to make it less crippled.  Flash would take this thing a HUGE distance and uncripping it so that you can use music you already own on it would make hordes of people happy. 

Nocked Up

Monday, June 11th, 2007 | Helpful | No Comments

Hahaha, what a great way to title a post… It’s got that “made ya look” feel to it.

Ok, so it was a movie. A fairly funny movie. It was made by the people who made “The 40 year old virgin”. It was however not THAT funny. The movie was like 2½ hours long, though not droning it seemed not to need to be that long either.

I was fortunate enough to have had a couple beers and despite not getting a bar seat in the little theater, was pleased to see that after 2½ of sitting in one position, my ass was not in crippling pain.

My verdict: Worth watching, but wait until a DVD Rip comes out… It’s not like it takes long these days.

You can see the trailer for it in and many other movies in my new section: Rip-Off Theater

UPDATE: Ok, so I spelled it wrong, it’s Knocked Up… However I CANNOT change it now, because I am the number one search result for Nocked Up. This means that you can go to google.com, type “nocked up” and click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and then you get me!!!! Yes, that’s right, The Smartass will get you Nocked Up ; ) Thanks Google!

Happy Easter, Watch Southpark Here.

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Helpful, Smartass | No Comments

Ok, so I decided this was funny, and being that it’s easter I figured that I would just stick the whole bloody episode on the site to entertain everybody who doesn’t get watch it on cable (or download it).

South Park s11e05 - Fantastic Easter Special

Need better quality? Just download the torrent

300 and Beer

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 | Helpful, Life | No Comments

I would of wrote this the other day, but I have been up too late every day as it is.  Last couple nights I have only had 4 hours sleep, though it’s my own damn fault, but It sucks in the morning when you end up taking a caffeine pill to stay awake.

Anyways the other night I decided that I had to watch 300.  I knew that this movie would either be fantastic or utter shit.  It did not look to have any middle ground.  Having decided that my asshole friend Rob went and watched it without me, grr… He didn’t really like it, but his opinion of movies doesn’t matter at all… Of course then my friend Chris text’d me and said it was in his TOP 5 movies now, and that did matter.

Ok, I’m sold.  So I called up Ken and he said he wouldn’t mind seeing it and that he should be home on Monday between 3 and 4.  This was perfect since I got out of work at 3:30, and I work half way between his place and mine, so I either go to his place or to mine and then waste a bunch of extra gas to go to his place later. 

Well, stupid corporate policy… My phone was set to silent and I had not changed it.  (Yes, I know I need to download that application that auto-switches cell profiles based on what cell tower you are using). So as I was just driving up to his place when I decided to check my phone only to see a text msg and 3 missed calls…. Ken wouldn’t be able to get to his place until 6.  It was just after 4 now. 

Well damn if I am going to go back home now.  So I went to the bar.  It was a local biker bar that I had been to before.  Never busy, but the bartenders are always hot and showing off what they got.  It actually used to be a strip club, but that’s another story…  So I decided to have a beer, one of the large ones (of course). I sat there for awhile and talked to the people in the bar.  All of which were regulars except me.  I think I disappointed some old guy when I didn’t know where something in Wisconsin was.  Didn’t want to disappoint him too much since he had a hacksaw laying on the bar next to him (seems the bar manager had asked to use it to cut something earlier…. still seemed odd to me).  Ended up talking to this other lady.  She wasn’t at all attractive or anything, but she was an individual and made for interesting conversation, and I was still talking to her when Ken showed up. 

Ok, now it was time for a movie… Well, almost.  We were hungry.  Went to Fridays.  Their menu selection looked good but our service and food sucked.  The only thing that it had going for it that night was that there was a ton of attractive girls there right by us.  Of course, if I had to guess they would probably have all been under 18, so I didn’t spend too much time speculating.

That done and over wit we finally got to see the movie, however I was planning to watch this as a matinee and now it was a late night showing.  I was tired when the movie started and a little worried when I saw all the guys just walking around in nothing but underwear and superman capes, but I got over that soon enough.

Why?  Because the movie was everything a red blooded guy needs in a movie at least since I watched it after 3 large beers.  The movie had:

1. Naked Chicks
2. Violence

That was it, and that’s also my entire review for it. 

If red blooded guy > then watch 300
Else > don’t watch 300 or even considering watching 300

The Number 23, and some other not really connected things

Sunday, February 25th, 2007 | Helpful, Life | 1 Comment

(note, due to a database loss, this post is being recopied from a straight text backup, and has no formatting, no bold, italics etc.. just be glad it’s here, mmmmm k ?)

I watched this movie tonight. Went with my friend Rob, who always reads/listens to what other people say about a movie before he sees it so that he can have an opinion on it. This time the advance opinion was that critics didn’t like it. Well, fuck that. I have learned over my life that the only opinion that means anything is my own. That’s why it’s an opinion. You will no doubt read this and have an opinion on what I said. For you, it is the only correct way to see things. Given enough logic (or false logic as happens often with me), I can change somebody’s opinion. However I will not let somebody help form an opinion FOR me in advance of me forming my own. You should not either.

That being said, I myself am writing an opinion on a movie that you have probably not yet seen, and if you are smart, not influencing it in any way shape or form. My opinion of the movie is that it was very good. I believe that it was very well thought out and that obsession and paranoia make a great book / movie plot. This being said, I am considering writing my own book. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. I figure it’s rather like designing a website or writing a blog. Sometimes you get a shit-ton accomplished and other times you ignore it for long periods of time. So long as in the end you finish what you start.

Ah, there’s the rub eh? I would have to finish it. It’s not exactly my families strong suit. Awe dang it, there I went involving more than just myself in my blog again. I need to stop that, it always gets me in trouble, especially since I believe that what we write we shouldn’t re-read or edit for anything except spelling or grammatical errors. So my own policy says leave what I write so I will leave it and simply offer another perspective (of course,also my own). I myself have a problem with follow through. Because I have this problem and am aware of it, I also see it in other people.

It’s like The Number 23. Once you start to notice something, you start to see it everywhere. It was always there to begin with, but we all go through life with filters on. I have so many bloody filters all the time, that I often miss a lot. I for example tend to filter out news, politics, and other people’s problems. No, don’t misunderstand me. I still care, I simply filter out your emotion’s from effecting mine. Which is kind of funny to me when I look at it because I have spent a good deal of my life learning how to empathize with other people. To help people you need to see things from their perspective, after having done that you will have incite into how they are thinking and can only then offer them a new perspective because you know how to communicate with them now. The same is true for sales, relationships etc.. It’s all a game of understanding the emotions that people associate with certain things, and trying to find a way to change it or add new ones.

Hahaha, Ya know, I can turn anything into a discussion about the mind and how to screw with it. I mean I started this post to give a movie review. Well, it’s too late for that now. So instead I will mention that I met with a guy today who said he can paint the hood and bumper of my car for $400 this next weekend. I don’t have the 400 to spend, but it’s better than the 1100 one place quoted me. So I will probably go out this week and sell and make a website so that I can pay for it. Which means I once again won’t be working on this site too much. What this site needs is for me to convert all the old pages into something different so they can stop wasting space. After that I will need a way to archive all my articles. I am thinking now that I will have the word ..more.. at the bottom of the articles and when you click it it puts a scroll bar next to the articles and can go on forever. It’s not a perfect solution as it’s not really searchable or categorized but it shouldn’t take me much time to do.

As you probably noticed some of the articles are reprints of things that were either on this blog or in my old forums. It’s because it was good content that has pretty much been lost due to so many format changes, so I am resurrecting some of it, though there is still a lot of new content as well (like the parking meter trick).

Hmm, I started this post about the movie The Number 23 so I should probably end it that way. So below is a trailer in case you haven’t seen one.

Black Liquorish Flavored Kleenex

Monday, December 25th, 2006 | Helpful, Smartass | No Comments

Ok so you know those little travel packs of Kleenex they sell at gas stations? Well I bought some of those. I also bought some Black Liquorish flavored Altoids. Mmm.. Yum…. Well anywho, despite the tissue being inside a plastic wrapper and the Altoids being in a metal container, apparently they felt it necessary to merge.

Every one of my tissues has a strong liquorish smell to it. It’s a good thing I like liquorish. In fact I rather enjoy the Kleenex smelling like them as well. Though I’m sure passengers who used one would probably not feel the same.

Well this got me thinking. If I could give the smell and therefor the subconscious associations that go along with liquorish with just a tissue…. Then surely I could put other smells into my snot rags.

Think about it. Apple Pie Tissues, or Absinthe Tissues…. or dare I say it… Sex tissues! (I think they already exist…. just people don’t blow their noses on them.. hmm perhaps this flavor is not a good idea).

See I believe the best course of action now that I have left my job would be to start selling Smartass Tissues…. For when you just gotta blow. I mean jelly belly has some nasty ass flavors, but they sell a ton.

FYI: Xmas on Oink etc..

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 | Helpful | No Comments

Oink: downloading not counted against ratio until jan 2nd: Take the opportunity to download the Depeche Mode vs. Album I think the guy called it “Big Fights”, interesting mashup… Or do what I did and download a ton of random artists that I have never heard of… Since isn’t that really the purpose of it all anyways?

Other site that wishes to remain mention less: downloading counted as half during holidays AND they have power user advent calendar that gives you random amounts of megabytes added to upload every day.