Love and Money

This is an interesting article from WSJ that caught my attention during my morning news reading. It advices couples to discuss their personal financial situations (in terms of assets/liabilities/goals/expectations). The article also stresses the importance of having such discussions before tying the knot, the prevent surprises and discovering irreconcilable differences after the fact. I think it's worth a read.

Link to WSJ article

Irony

So I was at the gas station (76 on Imperial Ave in La Habra, between Euclid and Idaho) just now. I saw an ad on the pump for 39-cent cigarette lighters. At a gas station pump?!?! Dude... I get flashbacks of the gas station scene from Zoolander with the Wham! song, "Wake Me Up When You Go-Go". =P

And guess what's underneath the ad? A little warning sign reminding customers to discharge themselves of static electricity before pumping gas.

Bad Publicity

Word on the street was that Tom "I'm in love!!" Cruise was invited to Yahoo's campus this week for their Influential Speakers event. (How they decided on him is beyond the scope of this post, but Yahoo's image just went down a few notches in my book)

It seems like he resorted to his infamous deranged chair-jumping tactics again, and ended his little number with rubbing Katie Holmes' belly (for good luck?) and giving her a big, wet kiss. All this to show his undying love for his much younger bride and the soon-to-come TomKat Jr. Yes, it's nasty; but it does get him a lot of attention, doesn't it? If this is his idea of "promotion" for the upcoming Mission Impossible 3 movie, I can't believe we have to put up with another month or two of this crap (movie out in May). =T

Link to news article

South Park

As South Park kicks off its 10th season of foul-mouthed kids poking fun at anything and everything, here's an interesting article from Rolling Stone (Warning: contains some language).

Link to article

Technical Illustration of Cruise Ship

(Taken from Boing Boing)

Here's a How-To guide to creating cutaway technical illustrations of a cruise ship. When I saw this, I was immediately blown away. I thought I was anal, but this guy... See for yourself. At least he's getting paid to be anal.

Link to the How-To
Link to page with some close-ups of the illustrations

Break Time!

There's this game called "Don't Shoot the Puppy". The point is to not do anything with your mouse/keyboard, or the puppy gets it. Yeah, sadistic... I know. =) This should be a mandatory game for all those people suffering from RSI (or whatever it's called now). Just load up this game every few minutes.

Link to Flash-based game.

Gourmet Dining

What tastes like fish, but slightly chewier, like squid?

I bet you even Google's cafeteria won't attempt something like this.

The picture was taken from: http://flickr.com/photos/edyson/114407749/in/photostream/

Loss of Words

I haven't felt like writing in the blog much lately. It's not that my brain is on vacation, but sometimes I just don't feel like writing about something if I didn't write it down right when I was thinking about it. I guess this comic says it best:

Free Starbucks Coffee

Starbucks is giving out free tall (12oz) cups of coffee between 10am and 12pm on Wednesday 3/15/2006.

Link to news

YouTube is Interesting

Of all the newfangled websites popping up (and getting bought for gazillions) these days, yourtube.com has got to be one of the biggest time wasters, if not THE time waster. On it, you'll find tons of videos uploaded by people about things that are interesting or funny; oftentimes it's videos of shameless people doing stupid things to themselves. You do find gems from time to time. Here are some of my favorites:

Parody of Final Fantasy Advent Children movie. This thing is just brilliant. The stuff near the end will make more sense if you've seen the movie. I wonder if Square Enix knows about this...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=D8ATpkCv74E

Live Action version of the opening from the Simpsons.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw

While we're on the subject of Simpsons, here's some dude playing the theme song on his guitar. It's freaking awesome.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CTdBsguiVTs

Crazy table tennis game.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EdNnEwk6bz8

Random Talents

People with extreme talents (a la YouTube):

Yo-Yo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XvG3IK-hzRs

The Human Frog
http://youtube.com/watch?v=z34JYwNGFtw

Popping
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HSoVKUVOnfQ

Urban Ninja (Don't ask)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=D2kJZOfq7zk

Mini Vacation (*Work In Progress*)

With all the crap going on at work over the past few months, I was really glad when we finally shipped the 3 products we had on our plates earlier. After all the chaos, I really really needed a break. So, I took a self-imposed vacation, which also coincided with 2 friends from high school visiting. With the help of K and T, and some anti-rain dance (more like jiggle) from K, I was able to do a bunch of touristy stuff around the Bay Area in generally good daytime weather.

On the first day, we visited the Monterey Bay area (Monterey, 17-Mile Drive).


At Bubba Gump, everything is Gump-related. The last time I went to Monterey, Bubba Gump was packed, so I never got to go. This time, we didn't have any problems with crowding since it was a weekday. Why Gump? Well, if we're going to be ripped off by over-priced seafood places designed to empty tourist wallets, we might as well have it done at a somewhat interesting place.


The coastline along 17-Mile Drive.


The weather cooperated. It was only partly cloudy during the day, though still chilly.


The requisite shot of the Lone Cypress in Monterey.

*** More to come as I get more pictures ***

Kids, Don't Do This At Home

I had some visitors the past few days, during my self-imposed vacation to recharge my batteries. During this time, I saw something that was simply unreal, and almost disturbing. This involved a spoon and Nutella.


The photo is out of focus, but I swear that mound of poop-looking craziness is probably about 1/3 of the volume of my fist.


And someone DID eat it all in one sitting.