(This might interest) Maybe Just Me…

Undisclosed Location: Analog 20050428

this is universal. i could’ve written it in any class i’ve had the past few years. in my entire life i’ve had like 4 dynamic professors. the rest, oh man.

Savetoby.com | Only YOU have the power to Save Toby!

okay, caught this on my friend’s blog (i’ll add links soon). and it is sick. what’s even more ridiculous is that the guy has a balance of nearly $30k! this is f-in’ nuts!

so my academic career, well for the most part is on its last legs. just sat through my last academic class. 3 finals to go, but no more classes. for a long time.

DVD: Blu-ray and HD-DVD Join Forces

though i don’t know how much i like this. though good for them for doing it, good for sony for realizing it has to (what a track record for superior products that failed). i think blu-ray was the way to go, and felt it would win out, but this takes that option away and makes it so everyone plays nice, which is good. but at the end of the day, i was probably wrong anywas. hell i forget the number of a great majority of tvs bought are still analog. people still buy vhs players and tapes! whatever, as per the article, it’s big what happens to ps3. and depending on the new format might take away from sony’s big up on xbox 360 (which has been announced to use regular old dvds). haha, and apple announced loyalty to blu-ray. hahah, maybe they will stick with it and do their own thing as always and be the only kids on the block with blu-ray. i doubt it, but you know how they do….

eBay item 5575556187 (Ends May-02-05 08:01:52 PDT) - BUY THE RIGHT TO DATE MY SISTER, MEET HER AND MAYBE LUV

good lord, this is sad. and funny. and sad. and don’t ask what the hell this line out of the auction means:

ALSO IMPORTANT: She speaks french(this is her first language) & english, nothing else! So if you are GERMAN, JAPANESE, CHINESE or AUSTRALIAN, please do not bid!(

hahah. and the pic with parts of the poor girl’s face covered that will be “revealed” at certain dollar amounts… classic!

The New York Times > Combating Gadget Theft

three things about this article. and no not a list, at least not in the sense i use lists on this site.

1. it’s sad to lose gadgets. whether theft, lost, etc.
2. poor poor gideon yago. hahaha, not laughing because he was a victim of a robbery, but let’s be honest, gideon yago gets his ipod stolen, not a big deal to him (though in all honesty, $10g worth of stuff must really suck, in addition to all the info on his computer, external hard drive etc).
3. it’s amusing, to me at least, that the guy in the picture is inserting or ejecting an old oasis disc “definitely maybe.”

(btw, i know the categories don’t appear by the post title in this theme, but take my word for it, a lot of my posts are in the ??? category as well as others. like this is in ???, electronics, and news. does it strike anyone else as odd that i would put things in “??? - random, even i dont know” and other defined categories at the same time? doesn’t or shouldn’t “??? - random, even i dont know” mean that i don’t know which category to put the post? i’m going to have to give some thought to my blog organization now.

CNN.com - Publicist: Cruise dating actress Katie Holmes -

typically i don’t post celebrity gossip stuff. but i’ve gotten the request to do so or my blog wouldn’t be read. haha, besides i have a friend who loves him some katie holmes. and i have a friend who enjoys the grossness of the may-december romances.

ESPN.com: playoffs and the pop culture

this is funny. more funny if you know about basketball than if you don’t. but can’t you imagine a bunch of idiot late 20s to mid 30s guys around some generic office now using these terms incessantly after reading this article? (btw, i’m ALMOST in that demographic and yes, i think i actually might use one or two of these sayings in conversations in the future, but again only with people who have some understanding of basketball).

the last post… okay, i’ll start using breaks and links and pages. so it won’t be one huge long front page post. and i’ll come up with some other categories.

so i missed the “doc leaves medical instrument in cavity of patient, ruining his career, sending his malpractice carrier through the roof, and subjecting the hospital to ridiculous liability” show last night as i was watching “hotel rwanda.”

okay, now i didn’t watch “ray.” i am fully convinced however that jamie foxx was brilliant in it (i thought he was great in “collateral” too. if he would’ve won both best actor and best supporting actor how insane would that have been?). in fact, as much as i LOVE movies, i didn’t see a single picture represented in best picture or best actor. and unlike many years where you have one guy that you think is just there and doesn’t really deserve it, this year i have to say each man nominated for best actor could’ve won (based on past work, because, again, i didn’t see any of the movies). and i know foxx was on an unstoppable wave. golden globes, etc. (who else really got tired of the back and forth call with the audience to start his speeches? though i did not get tired of actual body of his heartfelt speeches.). and really it didn’t hurt him at all that ray charles passed away in that year. (btw, i watched “ali” on tnt the other night, i think will smith’s performance in that movie was really overlooked. i mean i know it was recognized, but it was really good. and i can’t help but wonder if ali had passed away that year if will smith would’ve had the same kind of traction that foxx did with “ray”). okay, back to the point. cheadle was amazing in “hotel rwanda.” i am a huge cheadle fan. but this movie was great.

okay, now second random thought (as i consider making this into a page and break, but then just keep typing). how am i where i am in life and i don’t have friends with nicknames? well let me qualify. i do have friends with nicknames, in fact my friends have a nickname for me. and now that i think about it, i think everyone in this particular circle of friends has a nickname (even though most are just a variation on his or her name, and besides is it really a nickname to add ‘y’ to someone’s name?). but therein lies the point. i watched the draft and you had people with nicknames like “cadillac” and “pacman.” i read columns with people who have friends with nicknames like “dooze” and “brick” (bill simmons). what in life did i miss that i don’t have friends with nicknames like this? do you have to be star athletes? is this a college frat thing? i have no idea. it’s not like there haven’t been crazy things or whatever happen, but just no nicknames on that level. i have no idea why. and i have no idea why i thought about it. it just hit me over the weekend that i don’t have any friends nicknamed like “jumbo” or some other seemingly-random-to-the-outside-world-but-really-is-an-inside-joke nickname. of all my friends, only two have nicknames that are not some variation of their name. my nickname is a variation on my name, though a somewhat unorthodoxed one. and for what it’s worth, i used to have a friend nicknamed “looney” and my nickname at one point (for like a week and a half) “plain old X” (X being my real name) because i was asked what i want my nickname to be (btw, you can’t give yourself a nickname, it doesn’t work like that) and i said, “i don’t know, i’m okay with plain old X.”

just read this little blurb on tvsquad.com:

“Could anyone resist a show called When Surgical Tools Get Left Behind? This one sounds nasty: surgeons leave their whittlin’ knives inside patients, and the patients suffer and bleed until the doctors figure out what the problem is. Oh, oh, oops! Guess it was just that C-clamp. So sorry. TLC, 11pm EST”

how great/scary/interesting/ridiculous does this show sound? it’s on right this moment, but is re-airing at 11pm CST as well.

bono and bill
that should be the next album title by U2. haha, i love the ipod bit… i know it’s all out war with all things computer, but come on, bill gates wouldn’t buy an ipod? i bet he has like 10 of them.

No sooner do I write my post, than in my mailbox is this month’s GQ complete with an article on the Wonderlic Personnel Test. Including a grand total of 6 sample questions. Oh, and there is a time limit, 12 minutes to answer 50 questions. 14.4 seconds per question. No calculators allowed. They also had the following list of “desirable scores” for various positions:

26 - offensive tackle
24 - quarterback
16 - running back (the lowest desirable score for any position)

- via GQ

Harvard quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick took his Wonderlic exam, and got every single question right. That ties him with Pat McInally as the only two people who achieved a perfect score of 50 on the test. However, Fitzpatrick finished his exam in nine minutes! That has got to be a record.

that is insane. last year eli manning scored pretty well on the wonderlic. alex smith, who everyone touted as extremely smart for graduating in two years by bringing high school/AP credits, got a 40, but it doesnt say how long it took him to take the test (i’m guessing there’s a time limit though).

for contrast, frank gore, the miami RB, scored a 6, of course he has, and has overcome, a learning disability. but there’s a reason (scientific or not) that the only times you really hear people talk wonderlic scores is when someone is off the charts or the person who took it is a QB.

i doubt they need the money, but don’t you think wonderlic could make some money around nfl draft time by offering a scaled down, mini, web version of their test? i mean, i think i’d pay up to $5 to see how i stack up theoretically (because i wouldnt be taking the actual wonderlic test) with nfl prospects.

The New York Times > Magazine > Watching TV Makes You Smarter

okay, it’s a bit of a long read for internet reading (at least for me) at 5 pages, but it’s definitely interesting. though i have a few issues. the author cites “intelligent” shows that are intelligent for the dialog, etc, like “murphy brown,” “frasier,” etc where the intelligence is derived from spoon fed smarts.

intelligence arrives fully formed in the words and actions of the characters on-screen. They say witty things to one another and avoid lapsing into tired sitcom cliches, and we smile along in our living rooms, enjoying the company of these smart people. But assuming we’re bright enough to understand the sentences they’re saying, there’s no intellectual labor involved in enjoying the show as a viewer.

then he goes on to say that in a lot of not so deep shows/movies, there is a convention put into the action to help explicitly explain the action. then he moves onto shows like “West Wing” and “ER” and how they don’t tell you all the information. He even puts an example of medical dialog from ER in. and he says how there is almost no effort to explain all the medical jargon.

okay, that was all setup for my point. i completely agree that a lot of scripted dramas have multiple story arcs, multiple character arcs, and they are intertwining them artfully. and yes, i agree that this makes television viewing a little more of a mental task than it’s usually stamped as being. but my issues with this essay are two-fold. (1) how many people are going to care exactly what all the medical jargon means on ER? doesn’t ER intelligence arrive “fully formed in the words and actions of the characters on-screen?” don’t ER producers assume “we’re bright enough to understand the sentences they’re [doing, and the consequence of the scene]?” i’ve watched frasier. not my favorite sitcom ever, but it had multiple story/character arcs. why is ER so much better (not acting, story, etc, but in the context of this article), so much “smarter?”

my second point would be to say that these complex storylines with multiple arcs are exactly what a lot of people complain/worry about. that they will leave new viewers lost and confused about what’s going on (for arcs that span episodes or the entire season). i hope it’s not the beginning of a trend, but “desparate housewives” aired what was billed as a primer show. to get new viewers all caught up with all the storylines, so they wouldn’t be confused, etc.

oh, and a minor, tiny, third point. he says “joe millionaire” is better “bad tv” than “battle of the network stars.” now i’ve only seen a few of those, and it was when i was a mere child. but i watch ESPN’s “battle of the gridiron stars” and love it. who wouldn’t want to see like nbc’s “law and order” team versus cbs’s “csi” squad? or “ER” versus “grey’s anatomy”? this would be so great! they could do theme teams (as i’ve just demonstrated), or time slot competitions. oh course this wouldn’t happen because what network would allow their stars on another network’s “sports” special? (oh, and yes, i also loved hanna barbara’s laff-alympics, when i was young.)