Loaner Car

Today totally kicked ass. I took a vacation day for no real reason. The lady and I had lunch in Little Italy, I got a haircut and we did some shopping. Best of all, after visiting the dealer and the body shop, I found that for $65 I'm getting: two days loaner bimmers, two car washes, engine inspection, a new aux fan, new fan clutch, two new lift pads, four rust spots removed, and bonding work done on a runner panel. Rockin.

While I was getting the big daddy mobile looked at, I was given a free 2006 325i loaner (see pic on right). The car was pretty sweet, if not a bit small for my tastes. Imagine something the size of a Cavalier with taste, quality construction, and an awsome ride. The neatest thing was the key and ignition/start system. You just insert the little remote into a port and hit the start button. As far as the car itself, the interior was nice, but a bit cramped for my style. I like the roominess in my car ;) I also missed little things about my car, like the onboard nav system and memory buttons for seat/mirror/steering wheel positions. Other than that, I'd love to tear up rush hour with a 3 series, though I think I'd ideally compromise for a fiver. Driving the loaner made me realize I desperately need to adjust the EQs and soundstage settings of the audio system in my car. It sounds like ass compared to the car I drove today.

Sittin on the dock of the bay

I was just trolling around the net and stumbled upon this video. It's an awesome remix of White Zombie's More Human Than Human with Powerpuff Girls mixed into it. Stupid? Probably. It's still amusing to me though considering certain friends of mine (who will rename nameless) dragged me to that god aweful Powerpuff Girls movie years ago. Finding and liking this video entitles me to have my revoked man card returned.

I just got my favorite person in the world this home gym for her birthday. It was a pain in the ass to put together, but hey... maybe I'll even use it once in awhile! I now have a home gym and a treadmill in the basement... now if the rest of the basement didn't look like crap I'd be golden!

Nothing else has really been going on. I just saw Clerks 2 yesterday. It had it's hilarious moments, but I think that the first is still the best (has a sequel EVER been better than the original for any movie?). I'll be buying it when it comes out on DVD for sure.

Hacked

If you tried to visit this site most of today, you probably found it inaccessible. Well, some ahole decided to hack my box. As soon as I realized what was going on I collected backups, recorded some forensic information, and wiped the system clean and started over. I had sneaking suspicions something was amiss the last week or so because of strange things that have been happening on my system (which I chalked up to XP and some shell extensions I installed recently). I suspected wrong. This is the price I pay for opening inbound ports on an XP machine and not being more security conscious.

To the guy if you're reading this: F*CK YOU. Oh, and you're either incredibly brazen or incredibly retarded. I have a webcam staring directly into my face when I'm at the console. You remotely take over the mouse and run a program while I'm sitting at it? The network and two firewalls are now hardened. Thanks for the heads up, douchebag. Your upstream ISP will be getting emails and logs about this event, and that little program you ran has been copied and will be analyzed in short order.

Real men of genius!

So some people I know decided to pack two hundred sparklers into a copper pipe and call it a firework. I'd like to think anyone with half a brain would call it a PIPE BOMB. In any case, I think the following text would make a great "Real Men of Genius" Bud Light commercial:

<Background Singer>

Bud Light Presents: Real Men of Genius

Real men of genius

Today we salute you, Mr. Improvised Munitions Creator.

Mr. Improvised Munitions Creator

You take Independance Day so seriously that you create explosives from harmless sparklers.

Hope I don't lose a finger!

Sparklers? Snakes? Poppers? These devices are for nancy boys. Anything less than a quarter stick of dynamite just doesn't impress you.

I'm a real man with nine fingers!

So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, master of munitions, because nobody is going to tell you 200 sparklers in a pipe makes a pipe bomb.

Mr. Improvised Munitions Creator!

Proof of their stupidity: Video 1 Video 2

EON8

What is it?! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Someone posted a link to this cryptic site on a forum I regularly read. Here is a screen capture. The website has all kinds of weird codes, logs, and counters tracking all kinds of things. It's apparently been up for over six months, but hasn't really gotten much attention until the final 24-48 hours. Nobody knows what it is, but most suspect it's going to be some stupid virual marketing for:

• A movie
• A new game
• Some schmuck hyping a domain to sell it because now its "famous"

The site is getting absolutely slammed with millions of hits as the counter for whatever is going to happen (or not) ends at midnight (an hour and a half from now). Whatever this thing is, it has alot of people's attention.

UPDATE 7/1/2006 12:30am - None of the above. It was some stupid "social experiment" by some guy in Florida. What a waste of time, money, and energy.

Fishing

I went fishing today and didn't catch a thing as usual (unless seaweed counts). It was close to sunset at Edgewater, so I decided to snap some pictures with my LG VX8100. Some of them came out pretty decent, but others look like typical grainy camera phone crap. Have a look.

I got my replacement Axim x50v a few days ago, and so far it's kicking ass. One thing I did notice was that it doesn't really like "Today" screen (what would be the desktop on a PC) programs being installed. That kind of sucks because that is supposed to be one of the useful features of a Pocket PC.

In other news, my 90 day contract try-and-buy period ended this past Tuesday, and I'm now a full time employee at my company. Woohoo! Guess I didn't screw anything up ;)

Busy weekend

I went to a graduation party out in Norwalk on Saturday. The party was out on what I guess is one of their reservoirs(?). It's pretty nifty getting "out to the country" once in awhile. Free food ain't so bad either ;) I also went to my brother's for Father's day. I hate having "planned" weekends, but at least I made time to install a doorknob plate and paint the back hallway of my house.

In other news, I decided to contact Dell about my piece of crap crashing all the time Axim x50v. Instead of calling them I decided to try their chat support line. It's pretty frickin bad when you can tell *IN CHAT* that the person is in India. Look at a couple of these excerpt lines:

7:22:06 PMVeronica_01102991 Please let me know since how long you have been facing this issue?

7:23:08 PMVeronica_01102991 Please don't worry I will take care of the issue .

7:31:13 PMVeronica_01102991 I am sorry please ignore the above message.

7:31:20 PMVeronica_01102991 Please ignore it

7:34:57 PMVeronica_01102991 Please do not worry, I will definitely take care of the issue and make sure to fix it for you in no time.

Who talks like that?!?! After wasting my time telling me to do a soft and hard reset (boy, never woulda thought of that!), then telling me to downgrade my "x30" ROM (I have an x50v and they knew that!), they finally agreed to ship me a replacment unit. We'll see how it goes this week.

p.s. Idiots are already blowing off fireworks as a write this. Get a life! July 4th is over two weeks away!