I'm so going to have to type up that story about the unlisted phone number, but today I actually have a story that's probably only funny to me, but it was just how totally EXCITED the guy I called to talk to about my ticket was.
So, I got a ticket for having my registration out of date on my car (for those of you who don't live in Texas, you have to register your car every year, just so the state can get 50$ a year for every car driving around, which they ostensibly should be using to fix potholes, but apparently they're spending it on coffee, because the conversation I had with the police department phone operator seems to indicate that that is the case.) This was the conversation I had. Note that every time I type in ALL CAPS it's because the guy I was talking to sounded very happy and excited and enthusiastic.
The Guy: Thanks for calling, what can I do for you?
Me: Well, I got a ticket for my registration being out of date...
The Guy: Did you get the car registered?
Me: Yeah, I did that on Monday.
The Guy: OH THAT IS FANTASTIC! That is just GREAT!
Me: Yeah, uh...so what should I do now?
The Guy: Do you live in Austin?
Me: No, Round Rock.
The Guy: OH THAT IS JUST A BEAUTIFUL NEIGHBORHOOD! SO NICE!
Me: Yeah, uh...so...
The Guy: Just take the ticket and the receipt to the station on Lamplight, you know where that is?
Me: Yeah.
The Guy: It'll be a 20 dollar fee. Anything else?
Me: Um. No.
The Guy: HAVE A GREAT DAY!
It was just so bizarre. The dude was way too happy. I'm very glad though that he was polite an informative, and told me everything I needed to know. So, Dude, if you ever read this and realize it was you, thank you. You were awesome. Every government agency should hire this guy to answer their phones. And he should get a raise.
When I tell the story of the unlisted phone number you'll know why I wish this guy had been working for the phone company at the time.
Incidentally, the ticket getting incident in the first place occurred on a dark street at night, and curious as to how the guy even saw that my registration was out I asked. Turns out cops have computers in their car and they just type in the license numbers of every driver that goes past them. It tells them if the driver of said car has any warrants for their arrest, or outstanding tickets, but apparently also tells them whether your registration is out. So if you're trying to be clever and cover up your registration sticker somehow or just have no sticker in your car so they don't see the wrong color or an out of date one, then well, that's not going to work for you. The computer knows.
Why the computer didn't just send me a reminder that I hadn't done mine is beyond me, but during my trip to the courthouse to get my updated tag I did discover that the courthouse has my old address in Pflugerville listed, so that would probably explain that one. The poor lady who bought my old house is probably sick to death of getting reminders to get my registration renewed.
Ok, I can't just leave it at that, I have to give you some links of some kind.
Andrew the Droid is a bit of a jerk, but he needs your help. Go help him.
The Original Star Wars Trilogy Explained...by someone who hasn't seen it.
This may be my favorite new blog. Superuseless Superpowers. I like 13th Bullet Bulletproof guy.
Well, I still like this blog too. Because I like to write, so a whole blog dedicated to which ink pens write the best is intriguing to me.
Fascinating. Everything you ever wanted to know about DNA in an effective, pretty understandable video with nice images.
So, yeah. That's what's going on around here.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Who's Birthday was today?
Oh yeah. Mine!
Sweet. We have very little today. Let's see what we have...
We have, an awesome giant picture (zoomable) taken during Obama's inauguration.
We have, a remake of the classic ragdoll game.
See, the problem is, if I update too much, i don't have that much stuff to link. I'm going to have to start telling stories or something.
Anybody wanna hear some stories?
Sweet. We have very little today. Let's see what we have...
We have, an awesome giant picture (zoomable) taken during Obama's inauguration.
We have, a remake of the classic ragdoll game.
See, the problem is, if I update too much, i don't have that much stuff to link. I'm going to have to start telling stories or something.
Anybody wanna hear some stories?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Games? I don't have any stinking games.
I know it's supposed to be game day, but I think it's going to be random movie day instead because I just haven't found that many web games out there this week. At least not any that I care enough about to share.
Though I was playing Fusion Fall. That's the free Cartoon Network MMO. Runs through the browser sort of like Toon Town (there's a download or something, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention). But I kind of already got bored with it and went back to Wow.
Well, on to some Videos.
Totally fascinated by the Little Drummer Girl playing Rush's YYZ. Neil Peart would be proud.
There's a webpage of US Government Terror Warnings. Pinning the arrow to the wall was my favorite.
Extreme Tabletop gaming. These guys have way too much free time.
This is a good Skittles commercial called Reflect the Rainbow.
I love things like this. It's a screen play written about How to Format a Screenplay. How meta.
Let's finish with Sliding Box Cat. Cause he's cute.
Though I was playing Fusion Fall. That's the free Cartoon Network MMO. Runs through the browser sort of like Toon Town (there's a download or something, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention). But I kind of already got bored with it and went back to Wow.
Well, on to some Videos.
Totally fascinated by the Little Drummer Girl playing Rush's YYZ. Neil Peart would be proud.
There's a webpage of US Government Terror Warnings. Pinning the arrow to the wall was my favorite.
Extreme Tabletop gaming. These guys have way too much free time.
This is a good Skittles commercial called Reflect the Rainbow.
I love things like this. It's a screen play written about How to Format a Screenplay. How meta.
Let's finish with Sliding Box Cat. Cause he's cute.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Linkety-pop!
Some of you know this and some of you don't, but I had a hard drive malfunction last week, a pretty serious one, and I had to take the computer in to the Apple store for a few days to have it "resolved". Those little ""s there should tell you all you need to know, but in the interest of full disclosure, "resolved" means my hard drive died a horrible death and nothing could be saved from it. So all my old writing, all my pictures and music, all my videos that I'd ripped (legally, off DVD's I own, mind you) are all gone, gone, gone.
I was a sad clown for a little while, but now I'm back in business, I've decided to write the whole thing off as a learning experience and I'm back to writing full bore with a blank slate and none of those pesky "Stories that I started and didn't finish, and now I don't know what to do with them"'s hanging over my head.
But it's Monday, and as promised Monday is link day. I'm going to go behind the curtain and show you where a lot of the links you see here magically appear from. This is kind of like Houdini explaining to the audience exactly where he hides the key before they drop him in the tank of water covered in chains, so you now have the power to stop reading my blog by just checking all the sites I check on the regular and reading all those for yourself.
Some of you won't do that, because sometimes I tell funny stories about snakes, and others are too busy to read all the things that happen on all those blogs, and sometimes, you just don't care that much anyway. So, keep coming back to see what I thought was cool, but here's where about 80% of the links on my blog come from.
Actually, I'm not going to give you ALL my secret sites. Just the ones I think are cool, and don't have naked people in them (usually).
Topless Robot - I'm not sure what a topless robot is, but rest assured, there aren't naked pictures of circuit boards or anything on here. This is just a geek compilation blog, lots of stuff about nerdy movies, video games, tv shows, and toys.
I09 - You may have heard of Gawker, which owns a lot of blogs that have to do with celebrities and whatnot. They also run Deadspin (another great site) that's all about sports. (You'll note that almost all their sites have the same layout.) I09 is their sci-fi/fantasy blog. Lots of stuff here about science, science fiction, sci-fi movies, and sci-fi entertainment in general (books, tv, comics, etc.). They update a lot more than Topless Robot, but they also tend to be broader about categories.
Robot Viking - Lots of robots, huh? Robot Viking is mostly about tabletop games, collectible card games, board games, etc. There's lots of D&D stuff there, which is usually about all I care about.
Chris's Invincible Super Blog - This one's just about comic books. Most of you probably don't care, but I find the guy to be very funny. Though sometimes not safe for work.
In4mador - This is just random stuff, but a lot of games, sometimes some cool videos, sometimes just cool websites. It doesn't update nearly as often as it should, but it's almost always high quality.
Metafilter - This is a high traffic site, probably 20 or so posts a day, but a lot of very interesting stuff shows up here. Unlike the sites above that are mostly run by a single person or group of people, anybody who signs up can post to Metafilter (it's kind of like Fark, but a little more grown up).
Icanhascheezburger - Funny cats. Nuff said.
Stay tuned for Wednesday, and if the computer doesn't die between now and then (fingers crossed) I'll see if I can find you some games.
Ciao.
I was a sad clown for a little while, but now I'm back in business, I've decided to write the whole thing off as a learning experience and I'm back to writing full bore with a blank slate and none of those pesky "Stories that I started and didn't finish, and now I don't know what to do with them"'s hanging over my head.
But it's Monday, and as promised Monday is link day. I'm going to go behind the curtain and show you where a lot of the links you see here magically appear from. This is kind of like Houdini explaining to the audience exactly where he hides the key before they drop him in the tank of water covered in chains, so you now have the power to stop reading my blog by just checking all the sites I check on the regular and reading all those for yourself.
Some of you won't do that, because sometimes I tell funny stories about snakes, and others are too busy to read all the things that happen on all those blogs, and sometimes, you just don't care that much anyway. So, keep coming back to see what I thought was cool, but here's where about 80% of the links on my blog come from.
Actually, I'm not going to give you ALL my secret sites. Just the ones I think are cool, and don't have naked people in them (usually).
Topless Robot - I'm not sure what a topless robot is, but rest assured, there aren't naked pictures of circuit boards or anything on here. This is just a geek compilation blog, lots of stuff about nerdy movies, video games, tv shows, and toys.
I09 - You may have heard of Gawker, which owns a lot of blogs that have to do with celebrities and whatnot. They also run Deadspin (another great site) that's all about sports. (You'll note that almost all their sites have the same layout.) I09 is their sci-fi/fantasy blog. Lots of stuff here about science, science fiction, sci-fi movies, and sci-fi entertainment in general (books, tv, comics, etc.). They update a lot more than Topless Robot, but they also tend to be broader about categories.
Robot Viking - Lots of robots, huh? Robot Viking is mostly about tabletop games, collectible card games, board games, etc. There's lots of D&D stuff there, which is usually about all I care about.
Chris's Invincible Super Blog - This one's just about comic books. Most of you probably don't care, but I find the guy to be very funny. Though sometimes not safe for work.
In4mador - This is just random stuff, but a lot of games, sometimes some cool videos, sometimes just cool websites. It doesn't update nearly as often as it should, but it's almost always high quality.
Metafilter - This is a high traffic site, probably 20 or so posts a day, but a lot of very interesting stuff shows up here. Unlike the sites above that are mostly run by a single person or group of people, anybody who signs up can post to Metafilter (it's kind of like Fark, but a little more grown up).
Icanhascheezburger - Funny cats. Nuff said.
Stay tuned for Wednesday, and if the computer doesn't die between now and then (fingers crossed) I'll see if I can find you some games.
Ciao.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Wednesday is Game day.
It's another day another three links. I'm going to have to start saving more links for things at some point I guess, but I'm trying to stick to my M-W-F schedule right now, and since Monday was cool Links day, Wednesday will be Game Day. So, here's three games I found. Well, two games and just a toy I guess. Turntables is the kind of thing I might have done on Monday, but for now it's gamey enough to play with.
Want to be like a real viking, and do what real vikings did? Ice Breaker. Cause what real vikings did was chop their friends out of frozen ice blocks. It's true. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.
Is it a game? Turntables. Pretend to be a DJ. Pretend it's a game too.
Now you all know how much I love zombies. Left 4(k) Dead. Serious zombie action there. I'm still not sure how long this game goes on if you just keep playing it. Probably forever.
Want to be like a real viking, and do what real vikings did? Ice Breaker. Cause what real vikings did was chop their friends out of frozen ice blocks. It's true. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.
Is it a game? Turntables. Pretend to be a DJ. Pretend it's a game too.
Now you all know how much I love zombies. Left 4(k) Dead. Serious zombie action there. I'm still not sure how long this game goes on if you just keep playing it. Probably forever.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Bloggerific.
It's a new year. Whoop-de-doo. It's been like 2 weeks since I updated this thing, and I had these grandiose plans for doing like an update monday, wednesday, and friday, and I was going to make it my new year's resolution, but seriously, who am I kidding?
The only resolution I've made (and kept so far) is to write everyday. Got to keep that up. Got to keep that up. I can't cheat and pretend that on random days when I update my blog that that counts as writing.
Wait, what's today? It's Monday! Hold on, it's the first monday of the new year, right? Ok. New resolution: Updating on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays!
See how I lulled you into that false sense of doom and then right there in that last paragraph I pulled it out and was like, "Bam! Doing stuff."
Monday is now officially a blog day. We're going to call monday "Link Day" and that's the day I'm going to link to cool and exciting things.
First of all, for those of you who don't know, Anthony has moved his blog. He is no longer at Sunsword dot com, he's found an even better way to stroke his own ego and got a blog with his own name on it. I updated it over there on the right. Or if you're too lazy to move the mouse like six inches you can click here: www.anthonycastoro.com
Second of all, for those of you who don't know, Anthony's mom (Laura Castoro) writes romance novels under the name Laura Parker. She has a blog too, and so I put a link to that over there under Anthony. Maybe I should put hers over Anthony? That would seem apropos, but I think I'll leave it like it is for now. You can find her blog at www.lauracastoro.com
Stop by and say hi so she gets all excited and updates her page all the time. You know, the opposite of how you people normally treat me. :p
Thirdly, Allison started her own blog at toadsallie.blogspot.com Hm...I should put a link over there for that too...Ok, there. Done. She gets to sit at the top.
Is that enough blogging for you?
Blog blog blog.
The only resolution I've made (and kept so far) is to write everyday. Got to keep that up. Got to keep that up. I can't cheat and pretend that on random days when I update my blog that that counts as writing.
Wait, what's today? It's Monday! Hold on, it's the first monday of the new year, right? Ok. New resolution: Updating on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays!
See how I lulled you into that false sense of doom and then right there in that last paragraph I pulled it out and was like, "Bam! Doing stuff."
Monday is now officially a blog day. We're going to call monday "Link Day" and that's the day I'm going to link to cool and exciting things.
First of all, for those of you who don't know, Anthony has moved his blog. He is no longer at Sunsword dot com, he's found an even better way to stroke his own ego and got a blog with his own name on it. I updated it over there on the right. Or if you're too lazy to move the mouse like six inches you can click here: www.anthonycastoro.com
Second of all, for those of you who don't know, Anthony's mom (Laura Castoro) writes romance novels under the name Laura Parker. She has a blog too, and so I put a link to that over there under Anthony. Maybe I should put hers over Anthony? That would seem apropos, but I think I'll leave it like it is for now. You can find her blog at www.lauracastoro.com
Stop by and say hi so she gets all excited and updates her page all the time. You know, the opposite of how you people normally treat me. :p
Thirdly, Allison started her own blog at toadsallie.blogspot.com Hm...I should put a link over there for that too...Ok, there. Done. She gets to sit at the top.
Is that enough blogging for you?
Blog blog blog.
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