Las Veganite

My vacation's over - whooohaaa. No wait, I love vacation, and i detest work. Surprise. Well, another 6 months and its minor raise percentage time, so I'm just holding out for the good stuff.

Vacation was wonderful, though somehow a little empty. Las Vegas is an empty city, no doubt, but those lights weren't shining that bright this time. Now that I'm not a stranger to Las Vegas, I've learned to look past the glitz of the strip and into the real Las Vegas. It's not pretty either - the streets of urban Las Vegas leave little to the imagination, showing their filth and poverty from the car window. Basic fact of life here is that Las Vegas supports two major groups of people: underpaid service workers (cleaning staff, doormen, card dealers) and struggling performers. The rich don't live here, they merely visit. Not many would commit themselves to this desert outpost willingly. I still love it though, and I think the dynamic of a town built to serve the tourist is interesting and never sour. Every new year, more casinos are built, giving those familiar with the place another reason to come back. I prefer the shabby casinos, the ones who still look like mob outposts and gambling-anonymous meeting halls.

Will I be back next year? Sure bet.

Beating Weather.com!

Came across this site the other day: http://www.ebrueggeman.com/weather - One man is attempting to do the impossible, to dethrone Weather.com from its lofty seat of weather prediction prestige. What does this mean exactly? He is going to attempt to predict the weather better than Weather.com for his home area of New York City. He has no meteorology experience, and is instead going to rely on a pseudo-statistical prediction based on past weather! Who ordered something complicated with a side of ridiculous? I have to say that weather.com is ALWAYS WRONG, and though this sounds complicated, I think he has Indra all hot and bothered.

Mmmm Cactus Candy

I couldn't go another day without writing about this. I first found this stuff back in high school on a backpacking trip to the southwest. It's freaking good, and I have resorted to buying it on eBay. For about $18 including shipping you can get 2 boxes.

If you're wondering what cactus candy takes like, it probably tastes different than you think. It is a sweet berry / limey taste that is damn good and surprisingly wide in its appeal. The product also gets points for its scarcity and nifty packaging.

Remember camp? I do. I found this website, www.logcabinrustics.com , don't ask me how. But I have to say that these bunk bed frames remind me of wonderful memories at camp and at my friends beach cabin during the lovely summers in Washington state. If I am ever lucky enough to have a beach cabin, I would have to get my kids something like this. see the site: log bunk beds.

Craigslist Personals

Later, the most amusing thing, but now some back story: If you haven't been on craigslist through some miracle of sheltering, it is a basically one big community classifieds section. One popular and scandalous section is the personals casual encounters where people meet up for nookie. Most of the ads are obscene or appear to be jokes, but they are amusing nonetheless.

So the other day on my friend's birthday, he decided he would test them out, so to speak, and post an ad of his own. He mandated he wanted a young girl who attended the same college he did. He got a few spam responses, some dude, and finally one response that appeared quasi-normal. Moving along a little, they exchanged pictures and decided to meet. The two possibilities most likely were that he was either going to be jumped or arrested.... or both. To his surprise it was a real girl, and she looked like her picture. Fast forward 12 hours, 1 box of prophylactics, and a couple steaks, and my friend had the best birthday of his life. Amazing. I can not believe this stuff actually happens.

I hate greeting cards.

I hate dumb greeting cards. SURPRISE.

Best new (probably already done) idea: Fine Art Photo Greeting Cards. Their motto: Give art when you give a gift. This online store at http://www.finephotogreetingcards.com has many cool greeting cards, with actual great photographs slipped into them. Thus, when a recipient tires of their card, they can actually remove the photo and matte or frame it. Very cool. Love the photography too!

Link: Fine Photo Greeting Cards

6 Months to Cycle

It is 50+ degrees. The countdown to the next snow has begun. Taking advantage of this upcoming summer is not only my goal, it will be my obscession. My goal is to ride 1000+ miles on my bike this summer, and at least a third of that in competition or during events. Easy, no, but certainly rewarding. The stack of event t-shirts alone is well worth the time and effort. If we were in belgium, i would also probably have cycling groupies on my arm, but sadly this is not the case.

To go faster, I have decided to make the following unecessary purchases.

-New Sleeker Helmet
-New Faster and Slightly Skinnier Tires
-Carbon Fiber Seat Post
-New Wheels (maaaaybe)

Wish me luck.

Bringin' college back

New wave on the Internet. Well actually - thought it was the old wave at home depot near your average state university. To the point: ever bong a beer? As in, using a beer bong/ beer funnel to drink the beer in a few seconds as opposed to lumbering with the whole can to lip drinking process. How college is that? If you've never done it, you might as well get it over with as you'll probably just grow more awkward with drinking feats and eventually be unable to perform this one for your stunned grand children. Anyone can do it of course, its just simple physics and a little pure will. You can buy these beer bongs online, of course, and the best place to get it is BuildAFunnel.com Beer Bongs. The point of this site being a make it your way funnel purchase. There are configuration tips for people lacking common sense or already having ingested too much alcohol. What can I say, I'm bringing college back.

Web Development & Girls (oh my)

This past weekend a very strange thing happened to me. Well, not that strange, but unprecedented. On Friday, I went to a party - the usual kind with beer, women, and improperly portioned mixed drinks. There was even a little beer pong involved. I made the rounds, and chatted with the girls one by one as I always do. Topics of conversation varied from "where are you from" to "apartment location" and "have you seen the ____ on youtube." The last girl I talked to was the one I was most intimidated to chat with. She was not only tall and pretty, but slightly distant from the happenings of the party, which made her even harder to talk to. It wasn't her fault - the other girls were all longtime friends who were recently reunited, and she wasn't quite in at the same level.

I bounced off chairs and post, and ended up talking to her about the same BS as all the other girls. Topic of conversation changed to careers, where I get the shaft because mine brings many connotations and stereotypes to the surface immediately. Being a web developer does have a cool sound to it and I like the connotation that I am intelligent and creative (though some are unaware of the creative aspect), but I usually get tagged as a geek/nerd/social awkward almost instantaneously after I drop my career on the girl. Moments before they could have been utterly interested if I had said I was in finance, a lawyer, or some other supposedly glamorous position. This is all strange in a culture where every girl has AIM, email, MySpace and lives off of Google, but I think those who create for the Internet are still the last hold outs for the nerdy categorization. I responded to her question with a somewhat hushed web developer, but unlike usually, I received a smile and a widening of her eyes. "That's so cool," she said. She went on to tell me about how she was taking an HTML and reading a book on websites for fun, because she was actually interested in it. She has some kind of minor HTML hard-coded shopping site. The next twenty minutes was an intriguing conversation that got me riled up. Twice I had to catch my excitement and slow my words down and remember not to scare her with technical jargon or preachy enthusiasm. After that we all went out to a bar, and she and I did not converse again.

In my mind, which I assumed was totally inaccurate, we had hit it off about the Internet. Of course I was scared that the alcohol had made a the whole thing seem mutual even though it was probably a one sided conversation with me talking and her listening. Abstractly, talking about dynamic web sites, programming, and web startup ideas is terrible "game" and something I only reserve for girlfriends who make their commitment to me and then have to suffer through my ramblings. The next day, to my disbelief, I heard through a friend of a friend that she was all excited about our geek talk. Amazing. Though it won't go anywhere, because I am indisposed, the whole thing has changed my ideas about what to look for in a girl. Maybe there are beautiful girls out there who enjoy everything I do, including the "geeky" things. Only time will tell.

Futon peed on, fourth straight hangover.

My maniac friend up from DC peed on my futon for the third time in the last two months. It was on the morning of the fourth day he was here - I actually thought he might make it the whole trip before getting obliterated and pissing his weight on my nice little ikea futon. Nope.

Too many women, so little time. Story of my life.

http://www.buildafunnel.com - Buy a sweet beer bong online for cheap.