Worst Superbowl™ Commercials Ever?

I think so. In my opinion, Budweiser had the two best:

1. The Clydesdale foal, trying to pull the cart
2. The crowd at a stadium, simulating beer pouring into a glass by holding colored cards over their heads

There were obviously a whole bunch of commercials that I can't remember, which means that they just didn't work. And then there was the worst: The Burger King song and dance (wtf!?)

Since I can actually remember the BK commercial, I suppose it could be considered a success. It was so bad though, that it really makes me want avoid Burger King, rather than eat there.

You can see all the commercials at ifilm.com.

Please don't do this...

I flew recently. I noticed something that really, really, really annoyed me when flying.

Why do some people find it absolutely necessary to turn on their cell phone and call somebody the second the plane hits the ground!? Argh... it drives me nuts! Can they not wait 5 more minutes until they're in the terminal? Are they so important that they must call somebody, just to say, "Look at me! I have my cell phone! We just landed and I'll call you again in a few minutes when I get off the plane!"

Worst fortune cookie fortune ever...

I received this fortune from the Fire Bowl Cafe in Round Rock yesterday:

You will receive a fortune. (cookie)

How lame is that!? At least it came true.

Awesome PC Specs

My parents sent us some Christmas gifts this week, and they packaged them in an old box from storage in their house. It so happens that the box in which they sent the gifts was originally used to package an 80286 PC that we used to own when I was a kid. The specs are still written on the box, and I couldn't help but laugh when I read them.

Here are some specs:

Brand: GoldStar

Model: GT212 Slim Size 286-12MHz AT Compatible

Features:

• IBM PC/AT compatible
• 1MB of RAM standard, expandable to 4MB high speed memory on motherboard
• High Performance 16-bit VGA built-in with 640x480 VGA mode
• 3 expansion slots for optional Modem or game port adapters
• Serial, parallel and mouse ports
• 30MB Hard disk
  
• MS DOS 4.01 (User friendly DOS Shell is included) / GW BASIC

Some promotional text:
GT212 is a slim size 16-bit 80286 based AT that runs either at 12MHz or 6.25MHz clock speed. This AT-compatible system features 1MB RAM (expands to 4MB), a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive, and a built-in hard disk interface (IDE).

GT212 is pretested at an elevated temperature to assure greater reliability.

Canadian Election

Canadian voters will be heading to the polls, likely sometime in January, after the opposition brought down the minority government in a no-confidence vote Monday evening.

The election has been set for January 23rd. You can learn all about it here.

INXS

I downloaded their latest album with their new singer - the guy who won the TV contest. It sucks.

Normally, I wouldn't have downloaded it since I'm a moderate INXS fan at best. But since the new singer was from Nova Scotia, I figured it was worth a shot. Too bad. I really wanted to like it.

I'm quite surprised that the album has been released already. I can only guess that INXS had all the songs in the bag and just needed someone to sing the lyrics. I think it's obvious that Michael Hutchence was the musical force behind the old INXS. Unfortunately, he used a leather belt for more than holding up his pants, and that was the end of that.

Covariance

Covariance is a concept in object oriented programming. That's all you need to know for the context of this post.

Here is a quote from an article where the author attempts to explain a type of covariance. If you weren't already confused...

Covariant return types on method overrides make this explicit, allowing the use of a type that is derived from the return type of the method being overridden as the return type of the method doing the overriding.

What a mouthful!

Ride for the Roses

The Lance Armstrong Foundation's Ride for the Roses was today. 100.55 miles (162.2 km). 5 hours, 20 minutes. Blustering wind. And now, legs as wobbly as a newborn giraffe.

I have a certain sense of satisfaction having setting myself a goal of riding 100 miles, and finishing in a faster time than I expected. My friends Scott and Peter also rode with me today, so congratulations to them.

You can get all the stats for our ride, collected by my GPS unit, here.

Fun Project

Now that I have a Bluetooth-enabled device that can store over 1GB of music (see previous post), an idea occurred to me. Wouldn't it be cool if I could sit down in my car and have the music from my phone start playing through my car stereo?

The problem doesn't seem that difficult to solve, if you don't mind dropping about $100 on some new hardware. There are a few manufacturers out there that now make Bluetooth headphones. Conceivably, you could buy these and splice the analog lines between the Bluetooth transceiver (or internal amplifier, if the headphones have one) and redirect the analog signal to an auxiliary input of a stereo. Then, simply by pairing the phone and the "headphones", and allowing the devices to connect automatically, I should be able to get in the car, hit "Play" on the phone, and enjoy. I'm not quite to ready to drop the $100 just yet, but I'll document and blog the project if I ever decide to give it a shot.

No iPod Required

My Motorola cell phone really sucks. I came to this conclusion after being frustrated time and time again with its poor reception quality and its absolutely horrible software. I even took it to a Cingular store in hopes that the firmware could be flashed to a newer version (a coworker had his phone updated - but it was a slightly newer version of the same phone). According to the Cingular guy, Motorola says the firmware is fine - no flashing required.

I decided to search for a new phone - specifically a used AT&T GSM phone (since my SIM card was from AT&T, I could just stick it in the phone and voila!), or an unlocked GSM phone that could accept my AT&T SIM card. I did some research, and decided that the phone I wanted was the Audiovox SMT5600. After a few days of looking, an unlocked phone appeared on eBay and I grabbed it.

It finally arrived a couple of days ago, and I must admit - it rocks. I'm not going to list off all the features - you can read about them for yourself. The one feature that I will talk about a little is the Windows Media Player 10 Mobile.

As I discussed in a previous post, I subscribe to Yahoo's Music Unlimited service. Each track downloaded from this service contains DRM, so I can't just copy them to any device and listen. I first copied a track to the phone using Windows Explorer, and when I attempted to listen, the phone told me that it needed to acquire a license for the track, and that it needed to connect to the Internet to get it. I let it try, but it didn't quite work. That pissed me off a bit, but the fact that the phone tried to play it and knew what it needed to do to play it was encouraging. I then tried to synchronize some tracks using Windows Media Player on my PC, hoping that the license might be acquired by Windows Media Player and transferred. Success! I can now listen to all my subscription tracks on my cell phone. So, I promptly bought a 1GB miniSD card to give me quite a few hours of audio. I have most of the album art for my library on my HD and Windows Media Player copied those to my phone too, so when tracks are playing, the phone displays the album cover on the screen. Very cool.

New Domain Name

Not sure what I'll do with this yet, but I registered the following domain:

Technoblogic.com

At the moment, I'm hosting it on my server at home. I think I might set up some kind of technology blog. Crazy I am. Any other suggestions?

John Madden

Is he senile, or what!? I truly believe he is losing his mind. He is so nonsensical, it's hard to listen to him.

Blog Spam

I f'ing hate it! I'm sure that within minutes of clicking "Pulblish Post", a comment will be left on this post, hawking some useless product. Blogger (Google) needs to do something to prevent this.

Bodyrockers

I discovered another new band that I like quite a bit. The Bodyrockers have a unique sound - "rock 'n roll with electronic soul" is how they describe it. Listen to their album here.

Ride for the Roses

The Ride for the Roses is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's annual charity bike ride here in Austin. This year, I've decided to ride the longest distance - 100 miles (161 km). Riding 100 miles in one day is referred to as a "century" in the cycling community. I've never ridden a century before, so this will require some training. I've put together a training schedule and I'll share that here in a future post.

To help with my training, I've purchased perhaps the coolest cycling toy ever. It's a small GPS receiver (Garmin Forerunner 301) with a built-in heart rate monitor. Using this, you can record all your training data, and refer to it to track your progress as you train. I then found the web site, MotionBased.com. This site allows users to post their training data, and plots the GPS data from your ride onto maps and satellite images. It's pretty darn cool. You can even share your ride information with others. For an example, click here to see my data from last night's training ride. Be sure to click on the "Map Player" tab on the top-right of the page. This will replay my ride on top of any map of your choosing (you might need to install some Adobe software to actually see it).

Success!

The surgery was a great success. It wasn't nearly as painful or uncomfortable as I thought it would be, and my breathing has improved immensely. Well worth it.

Septoplasty

I had a septoplasty performed yesterday. It'll be a few days before I know how successful the procedure was. I'm feeling a little discomfort today, but nothing some Tylenol 3 can't fix. The must uncomfortable part is the blockage in my nose, making it difficult to breath. I get the splints removed tomorrow, so hopefully that will help.

Slump

I'm officially in a slump. I play hockey regularly (about once a week). I can't seem to score this season. In the spring and winter leagues, I was one of the top scorers on my team. In this summer league though, I really suck. I think I have only 1 assist in 6 or 7 games. For the most part, my team is made up of the same guys as the previous couple of leagues, and our opponents consist of the same players as well. However, I just can't put the puck in the net or make a pass to save my life. Oh well, maybe the upcoming fall/winter league will bring me better fortune.

On the bright side, the NHL is coming back this fall. I can't wait. The Penguins won the Sidney Crosby lottery, and look like they're going to get a few other strong players as well. If they can sign last year's number one pick, Evgeni Malkin (what a cry baby), they'll be pretty stacked. Mario says he's going to play another season as well, so they should be exciting to watch.

Of course, my eyes are still on the Edmonton Oilers. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of exciting news to report regarding the Oilers. They are pretty far down in the draft order, and don't have a lot of money to sign any of the many free agents that are now available in the league. They're playing in Dallas in October, so I hope to make a trip up to big-D to cheer on my team.

Sam - World's Ugliest Dog

Sam - World's Ugliest Dog

Danko Jones

I discovered this band (Danko Jones) last week while listening to one of Yahoo's streaming stations (the Hard Rock station I think). They're really good. If you like the rock and roll music, I think you'll like them. Here are a couple of their MP3s:

   Dance
   Lovercall