CRossett

nerdology: This is slightly off our usual topic but I couldn’t...

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:28:12 -0600

This is slightly off our usual topic but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reblog this movie trailer featuring Nazi zombies. Nazi. Zombies!

[rebolg via aplaceforfacts]

Win.

We win! Everybody wins!

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:13:43 -0600

We win! Everybody wins!

I'm...I'm competitive?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:06:00 -0500

I haven’t liked watching basketball in years. It’s probably been about 10 years since I’ve seen more than, say, 5 games in any one season.

But apparently, despite the fact that I don’t like basketball that much, I’m a competitive enough person to get psyched out of my mind for a Fantasy Basketball league with a couple co-workers. I’ve already spent hours rabidly researching players in the dim hope I might “win” the league.

“STFU AND LET ME WORK” vs. “Hand Banana” on Oct. 28th. Be there!

(While busy at work, they took my response to “What’s your team’s name?” a little too literal)

My Bank's Dead.

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:35:18 -0500

WaMu seized by Feds

I feel like I’m supposed to be sweating. Or crying. Or swearing..
And yet, meh…

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but thanks Federal Government!

Freddy Krueger's Origin

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:43:41 -0500

I was pretty sure I’d watched most/all of the Freddy Krueger movies, but apparently not. I’d always thought of Freddy as some kind of weird Dream Monster Spirit thing that was created when his mortal body was unjustly killed.

Not quite. He was killed, and that did free some sort of Spirit Dream Monster thing. But I missed the details of his birth somehow.

Here’s the quote from Wikipedia:
During a Christmas holiday, a young nun named Sister Mary Helena (a.k.a. Amanda Krueger) was accidentally trapped inside a ward of the Westin Hills psychiatric hospital. Known as “the tower”, this ward was used to house the very worst of the criminally insane. Amanda was raped and tortured by the 100 patients confined there. She was found days later, close to death and now pregnant. Frederick Charles Krueger was born months later after a breech birth and was given up for adoption.

I thought these were more or less silly 80’s horror movies. I did not expect an origin story involving the mass raping of a nun by dozens of deranged criminals. That’s Frank Miller territory, not Wes Craven…

Create your own Political Satire!

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:49:58 -0500

Palin getting votes from super Conservative Christians because her unwed teenager is pregnant is like:

X doing Y.

(where X = someone or someones)
(where Y = something X should never do)

Disaster Movie is a Disaster

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:36:39 -0500

Disaster Movie is a Disaster:

At time of posting, Disaster Movie has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Every once in a while I get really upset when I discover some...

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:38:49 -0500

Every once in a while I get really upset when I discover some show that’s been on for years and years.

In this instance, QI (or Quite Interesting), 5 witty Brits get together and talk about…stuff. I presume this wouldn’t work here because there’s not enough fireworks and dramatic music in QI’s forumula.

http://www.DiscReplay.com/

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:12:00 -0500

This website is set up for a local resale shop for video games and DVDs and CDs. It’s horrendous.

Yet, this (totally accidental) works perfectly for this site. There’s something genius about pairing the nostalgia for some old CDs/SNES games from 1995 with a website that looks like it’s straight from that same year.

It’s almost refreshing to see something so unprofessional and ugly.

Apparently, The Mint Chicks blew up over a year and a half ago...

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:58:34 -0500

Apparently, The Mint Chicks blew up over a year and a half ago in New Zealand. I’m not sure why their popularity was restricted to only New Zealand. This is the most I’ve written about New Zealand in my entire life combined.

Moore's Law

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:27:09 -0500

The first game for the PC that I remember playing with any regularity was called 7^th Guest. It came out in 1993, though I doubt I played it when I was 9. It was a really creepy point and click puzzler. Here are the minimum requirements:

CPU Speed: 20 Mhz
RAM Required: 2 MB
Hard Disk Space: 10 MB
OS Version: 5.0 (I’m not entirely sure what Windows 5.0 is)
No video card needed.

As a comparison, here’s the specs of what originally came in my 6 year old Dell (9 years after 7th Guest came out).

CPU: 2.26 Ghz
RAM: 1 GB
Hard Disk Space: 40 GB
Video Card: 64 MB

jeffrubinjeffrubin: Crazy Sprinkler Lady is my favorite...

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:50:00 -0500

jeffrubinjeffrubin:

Crazy Sprinkler Lady is my favorite Internet video in a long time. There’s no one solid LOL moment, but it’s the kind of funny where I’ll chuckle every time I think of it for the rest of the day. The credits are just the icing on the cake.

What makes it for me is the sirens in the background. It adds an element of legitimacy to the most irrationally alarmist theory I’ve ever heard.

She says that there maybe the oxided metal salts (?) in the water supply causing the rainbows, but she never even guess what could be “oozing out of the ground.” I’d like her to do a follow up with just a theory about what invisible, unreported chemical could possibly cause rainbows.

I Heart The Interwebs

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:21:00 -0500

Thanks to a math forum, I was able to get this answer:

“To use the simplest math, we’ll split up the 4380 hours into 2 hour intervals and assume (again, for the purpose of simplicity) that these 2 hour intervals are the only times you can enter and leave the bar. Each time you go, there is a 2189/2190 chance that he is not there.

After 5 times, you have a (2189/2190)^5, or a ~99.7718979% chance of never meeting him. This makes for a 0.2281021% chance of meeting him. This method is only fairly accurate, since I assumed your time in the bar is always exactly 2 hours, and I restricted your enter and exit times.”

Odd.

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:50:15 -0500

Tom Morello (guitarist for Rage Against the Machine) is from one town over from my hometown. I don’t think he lives here anymore. He’s not in town often, but he is this week presumably because of Lollapalooza which is an hour from here. It still seems really rare.

Time spent in this bar per year by Morello = 2 hours.
Time spent in this bar per year by me = 10 hours.

There are 8760 total hours in a year. The bar isn’t open for half of those (let’s say): 4380 hours.

Morello is in the bar .00045% of the total possible time.
I was in the bar .0023% of the total possible time.

The chances of our times intersecting are…out of my calculatory abilities unfortunately.

Either way, Tom Morello and I were at the same bar last night. That’s probably cool enough.

Rollerblades

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:48:05 -0500

Whatever happened to them? The only place they’re commonly used are in the X-Games and Central Park. When I see them, they look decidely 90’s. I wonder why; I always thought they were pretty handy as long as you get the shoe situation taken care of.

Katy Perry

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:09:00 -0500

I mean, I wasn’t surprised to find out she released a Christian album some years ago. And I knew all the “UR So Gay”/”I Kissed a Girl” stuff was just publicity to get the record talked about.

But there was something I really enjoyed about her coming out (pun only) and kicking a few red states below the Bible Belt. And now it seems like she was batting for the other team (pun only) just a few years ago.

Seems like if her marketing team thought it would be popular, she’d be all over it. She is the textbook defintion of “selling out”.

I’m finding it hard to be angry at Perry though.

If she doesn’t make any of these albums with any convictions behind them, then she’s just out to take money from stupid bandwagoners. And I haven’t seen her claiming to be a serious artist anywhere.

One more item: the writing credits for “I Kissed a Girl” are split between four people. Perry is the last listed, but one of the other ones is Cathy Dennis who helped write songs for several other manufactered pop stars like the Spice Girls, Clay Aiken, S Club 7, and Kelly Clarkson. Another co-writer is Max Martin who helped write songs for yet other manufactured pop stars like Robyn, Britney, Backstreet Boys, and N’SYNC.

With these two Pop Gods involved, I wonder how much Perry was actually in the room for the creation of “her” big hit…

Juilliard Senior Solos. The night my sister performed this, the...

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:15:00 -0500

Juilliard Senior Solos. The night my sister performed this, the dance was literally surrounded by somber, lilting, esoteric dances.

I think the audience was pleased.

That “microphone” was welded together by the prop guys out of heavy metal. I helped her carry it; there’s a reason they use three guys to move it around.

A+: Check!

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:03:35 -0500

Watch out nerds, I’m coming for your jobs!

Diehard Tech

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:42:09 -0500

I was watching the first Diehard, which came out in 1988. It was strange to see how many technologies were being touted as advanced a mere 20 years ago. Cell phones (briefcase-sized), touch screen monitors (monochrome), TV in cars, and hacking computers seemed very impressive.

I wonder which technologies are commonplace in 2028. Terabyte harddrives certainly, but what about new things? Super HDTV? XBox 4200? Cell phone implants?

A? on the A+

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:36:00 -0500

Guess who passed the first half of A+ exam!

The scoring was weird. There’s 100 questions. Some of them are not graded. I don’t know how many because they didn’t say. Scores range from 100 to 900. You need 675 to pass. I got 750. I have no idea what percentage that is.

Score of 900 = 100% of (100 questions - X)
where X is the unknown number of ungraded ones.

Score of 100 = 0% of (100 questions - X)

Score of 750 = screw this, I already passed the exam.