aim: love it or leave it

What do you hate most about AIM or your AIM client? What do you like about it? Now accepting: rants about AIM.

A real post is coming soon, trust me. I had one last time but my web browser managed to lose it somehow...

if PowerPoint inspires mediocrity...

Following up on my previously reported Gettysburg Project comes this screen shot from my Comm 169 class.

why haven't i tried this before?

Think your computer's possessed by demons? Afraid it might become so? Have it purified at a shrine...

A match made in heaven

I was sitting idly by in the airport waiting for my flight yesterday, when who should appear on the jumbo screen on the wall but a Ms. Britney Spears. She had displaced all other news by getting married. CNN was already planning to milk this for all it was worth, stacking columnists all day long, to help viewers figure out "just what this means", as if it had profound meaning and changed our world. But it turns out that by the time I had landed, the marriage had already been annuled...

it's a great time in Detroit

Apparently being dubbed the most dangerous and most pedestrian-deadly city, Detroit now can claim another #1: it is now the nation's "fattest" city. Councilwoman Carol Alvarado of former three-time Fat City champion Houston, was pleased. "Congratulations, Detroit," she said.

On a probably unrelated note, I set off the anti-theft alarm at Kroger three times today. (Yes, this town is yuppie enough that grocery stores have anti-theft systems.) But no one really seemed to notice or care. It's just like Wal-Mart. Working at Best Buy for so long has conditioned me to ignore the obnoxious beeping; it seems to be quickly going the way of the car alarm as a well-intentioned but useless security device. Indeed, no one came charging out of the store to make sure I'd paid for the $10 of groceries I was carrying. Next time that happens I resolve to get a panicked look on my face and start running.

patience

Having been asked several times already, I suppose I could clarify. I myself didn't know what roadmapping was last year. It's the practice of drawing on a passed-out victim with a magic marker. While it may sound cruel, we justified it as punishment for passing out on the couch with his shoes on. My only regret is that I didn't see him wake up and find his new I LOVE RED MEAT and BUSH IN 2004 tattoos...

To echo someone's private sentiments, the presence of a new baby in my (extended) family did net a chorus of relatives inquiring about when they could expect a baby from me, with almost an eerie hunger in their eyes. How exactly I come into this when a pair of newlyweds just had their first baby a month ago I'll never know. Similarly, my New Year's Eve started with my parents lamenting my lack of progress in securing a mate. This is what I get for staying at home and having dinner with them while my brother, now surgically tethered to his girlfriend, was at her house.

That's all for now... I'm going to go take Grandpa out to lunch. Visions of bi bim bab now being replaced by a chicken sandwich, but he'll be excited. And that's all that really matters.

2004 it is

New Year's Eve was another blast from the past, running into old characters from high school, and even this guy I tutored when he was in middle school. Freaky. But yes, it is now 2004. Naturally, we started the new year by roadmapping a guy who passed out drunk on the couch.

Around this time the media is filled with trite recaps of the past year's biggest news, most scandalous stars, most riduculous reality shows, what have you. But only Dave Barry can truly put it into perspective:

It was the Year of the Troubling Question. The most troubling one was: What the heck happened to all those weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be in Iraq? Apparently there was an intelligence mix-up. As CIA director George Tenet noted recently, ''Our thinking now is that the weapons of mass destruction might actually be in that other one, whaddycallit, Iran. Or Michigan. We're pretty sure the letter ''i'' is involved.''