Archives for December 2006

Tis the season for work holiday parties. Nicole and I went to both our offices work parties this week and had some good times.

Nicole’s office’s party was at a place called Basic Pizza in Downtown San Diego. It’s a bar with one half being an actually sit down restaurant. The place was great with some really cool decor. We actually had the entire bar section to ourselves. The pizza was great as well as these very tasty chicken skewers. The building itself dates back to 1910 and was originally used to build carriages. I had even made the comment that the place looked like an old garage because of the huge garage like sliding doors. I wish I took more pictures than I did.

My work party was at a bar in Del Mar, California called En Fuego. It was a nice place though not as cool as Basic Pizza. The party was on the patio with the bar. The bar had setup a bunch of heaters to keep us warm, but when everyone showed up the place go so packed we didn’t need the heaters anymore to stay warm. There was a pre-party across the street at a Wine & Beer bar with an open tab so when people actually came to the party itself some of them were already pretty intoxicated. Simply add another open bar for another 4 hours and you get some really drunk people. There was a white elephant gift exchange with some really nice gifts like a PS2, hang-gliding lessons, and cash.

Photo Galleries:
Nicole’s work party
Digitaria work party (my office)

The German Minister of the Interior needs to take step back, take a deep breath, and count to 10. Maybe then he’ll calm down and realize that his proposed law to criminalize violent video games is absurd. The German politician wants to give makers, distributors, and players up to one year of jail time. This law is in reaction to a school shooting where “an 18-year-old Counter-strike player assaulted his former middle school in November, wounding a reported 37 people before taking his own life”. If Counter-strike is the reasoning and where the kid got the training for his rampage, then I guess he wasn’t a very good player since he only wounded everyone. Also German authorities report that this kid in the school shooting had a trouble background and was already scheduled to appear in court on a weapons charge. A video game shouldn’t be used as an excuse for a mental problem.

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This guy might not know how to play the drums or the piano, but he definitely understands music. This brings up a good question. Do you have to be able to play an instrument to be a skilled musician or can you be a skilled musician if you know how to simply put samples together to form a song?

Quote #703138

I was once trying to explain to an exec why his account would never be absolutely secure.
Me: "If somebody wants your account information badly enough, he's going to get it. He doesn't have to hack the system, he can just get it from you."
Exec: "That's crazy, I'd never give anyone my password."
Me: "Imagine you come home and find someone's broken in. He's got a gun to your daughter's head, and he tells you he's going to shoot in ten seconds if you don't give him your password. What would you do?"
Exec: [long pause] ... Which daughter?
To this day I still don't know if he was joking. But I no longer use that example.

quote via bash.org

Adobe has released a new tool for community created color themes called kuler.

New to kuler? kuler helps you explore, create and share color themes for your creative projects. Use it as a on-line application or download themes to use with Adobe Creative Suite 2 applications.

Having the option of having more colors than 5 in a theme would be great.

Other tools I’ve used in the past are ColorMixer and ColorMatch Redux. I like the community feel of kuler better though. kuler’s interface is slicker and easier to use in my opinion. How the comments are displayed is dumb. Only one comment is dispalyed at a time and you have to scoll through each comment by clicking on a box at the bottom. I guess adobe isn’t expecting there to be a lot of comments for themes. I guess I’ll have to learn how to use Adobe’s Swatch Exchange files in Photoshop.

When the end of the world arrives, how will the media report it?

USA Today: WE’RE DEAD

The Wall Street Journal: DOW JONES PLUMMETS AS WORLD ENDS

National Enquirer: O.J. AND NICOLE, TOGETHER AGAIN

Playboy: GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE

Microsoft Systems Journal: APPLE LOSES MARKET SHARE

Victoria’s Secret Catalog: OUR FINAL SALE

Sports Illustrated: GAME OVER

Wired: THE LAST NEW THING

Rolling Stone: THE GRATEFUL DEAD REUNION TOUR

Readers Digest: ‘BYE

Discover Magazine: HOW WILL THE EXTINCTION OF ALL LIFE AS WE KNOW IT AFFECT THE WAY WE VIEW THE COSMOS?

TV Guide: DEATH AND DAMNATION: NIELSON RATINGS SOAR!

Lady’s Home Journal: LOSE 10 LBS BY JUDGMENT DAY WITH OUR NEW “ARMAGEDDON” DIET!

America Online: SYSTEM TEMPORARILY DOWN. TRY CALLING BACK IN 15 MINUTES.

Inc. magazine: TEN WAYS YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THE APOCALYPSE

Microsoft’s Web Site: If you didn’t experience the rapture, download software patch RAPT777.EXE.

Sun: ARMAGEDDON-TOLERANT SOFTWARE NOW AVAILABLE !

The Vatican Press: “Told you So”

I wanted to say happy birthday to my beautiful Nicole. This year has been so great. You know the saying, “time flies when you are having fun”, well this year flew by at lightspeed. Seems like yesterday we were ringing in the new year and here we are at Christmas time already. I’m ecstatic that you are in my life Nicole and I plan on having you in my life for the rest of it. I love you Nicole and you are my future. Happy Birthday!

50⁺

When I came into work this morning I found out that my nice new ergonomic chair was missing. A bunch of us are in the process of moving to different desks. So I walked over to the desk that I was going to move into. The chair at the desk was one of the old chairs that are used around the office. At this point I’ve realized that someone took my chair. At this point I’m somewhat annoyed that someone stole my chair.

I walked over to the guy who’s desk I was moving into. He said that he didn’t bring his chair with him since he was moving into a desk that had a new chair already there. He left his chair at the desk since it was also one of the new ergonomic chairs. At this point I’m walking around the office trying see who has a new chair that didn’t have a new one before. I had a few suspects but wasn’t completely 100% sure who it was. I talked to a couple more co-workers, who all agreed with me that it sucks that someone would take the chair. The receiptionist suggested I send out an email.

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