The Robot's Thoughts

"Love is when you will let your woman make you a sandwich that you will eat while watching the Superbowl."
--My friend Chuck

Labels: love, me trying to be funny, quotables, ramblings, thoughts

Big Ben Hill's Used Cars.

I was un-winding from work, and going over some old personal email before I deleted it, and stumbled upon a link to this YouTube video that someone made after they were pissed off at a used car dealer and literally (for one) laughed out loud.

Labels: cars, me trying to be funny, video

This is my 400th post. And I had some pretty intelligent shit in the post, but the DELL machine I was on choked for some reason and completely shut down. I couldn't re-login. The post is stranded on that machine in a cookie somewhere.

*sigh*

Another reason not to use windows, I guess.

This guy has been playing Wii sports for 6 weeks (lucky bastard) and has actually lost weight from all the active movements. He's gone from 181 lbs. to 172 lbs.

And that's from video games.

Its just another reason why I want one. Its too bad they're impossible to find (right now).

Labels: Gaming, Nintendo Wii, ramblings

Superimposing Nothing Nowhere: Your Free MacWorld Expo Platinum Pass (valued at $1,695)

This is why you as a web developer need to follow up on OWASP's security recommendations. And this is why even though the web application I develop for has nifty AJAX powered client-side form validation, every single validation check is also performed on the server, just in case someone is using an installed proxy to send bad data, is messing with URLs for malicious purposes, or is just plain running with javascript off.

I think its really cool that the web team for MacWorld ate their sour grapes with a smile. If I had found that I made a product that resulted in people being able to walk up to my face and say, "Hey, you know, due to your shoddy work and lack of design, it only took about 10 minutes of work with a scripting language before I defrauded you $2000!" I'd be pissed. Well, I wouldn't be so pissed that someone told me, but I think my blood pressure would go through the roof when I checked the logs and found out he wasn't the only one.

But then again, OWASP has tools out there for you test your web application as well a easy to read guide that can help you learn how to minimize security exploits. I read it about a year ago, and would say its pretty much required reading for anyone who be developing for the web.

Anyway, next year I'm going to see if its still possible for me to get a free $2,000 pass to MacWorld SF.

I added a new blog onto my blogroll. Its another old friend that I keep in touch with from my bucknell days.

Singledom: What does love mean?

Sometimes children have a mastery over language that even our greatest poets can only rival.

Here's some of the best:

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."
Chrissy - age 6

"Love is what makes you smile when you're tired."
Terri - age 4

"If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,"
Nikka - age 6

All the responses on the link came from children ages 4 to 8, and a lot of them are moving. Here's my personal favorite:

"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday."
Noelle - age 7

I'm pretty sure I did something like that in middle school. I wore this one rugby shirt all the time, simply because everyone said I looked cute in it.

Labels: kids, love

In this article a fraternity in Texas basically killed a pledge by hazing him by making him drink. What sucks more? Drinking till you get sick and shaking off a hangover? Or not having to drink a drop of alcohol for the 7-10 weeks you're pledging? And from a liability standpoint, insisting that minors joining your social organization can't imbibe alcohol as a 'test of their responsibility' can't be considered hazing.

So now Lambda Phi Epsilon is kicked off campus of Austin University until 2011. Good job guys! Hats off. Why not volunteer to make some sexist, racist remarks to Borat in front of his documentary crew?

Labels: Frat's Suck, Reddit

Here's a blog article found via Reddit for you to read:
15 foods you can't live without.

Labels: nutrition, Reddit

I got an early call today. My SO was driving to work and went off the road. She's okay. On the way to pick her up, I spun out onto the grass going down the hill my development is on.

My tires were bald -- Patrick Stewart bald, if I can afford to coin the term. If not, just let it go -- I ended up getting four new high performance tires for my car. There's something about cars that makes me feel pimp. Besides that the fact that my friend Danni called me for car buying advice, and called my car "pimp" -- that's a quote.

One thing I've found about taking a week off from work is that returning to an in-progress development cycle makes you feel like you never left. While not a negative thing, it just makes me wish I hadn't returned to unfinished business.

I just got vonage. I got a portable WiFi phone. Think of it as a cell phone that only uses WiFi hotspots. Its mostly a back up phone, but I'm still pretty psyched. It seems pretty cool. I would recommend vonage to people who feel the need for a landline phone.

I've also tested out Skype's webcam chat between Mac Book Pro to Mac Book Pro. Its not as high quality as iChat. Skype picks up on background noise more, and the sound is a little bit more tinny, but, still, its pretty impressive.

So I now have way too many ways to communicate. I'm glad I can make that official.

Soapbox has been growing lately. Another psych major joined it. Casper has created an informal and totally unofficial (but with my blessing) summary of the members of soapbox. Its an inside joke, but I welcome all to check it out: click here.

Someone I know looks really good as a strawberry blonde. I thought I'd announce that publicly.

JS left for New York to pursue her career as a model and as an independent artist representative. Mario left for philly, because the music scene is obviously better in Philly for goth industrial music than it is here in Fairmont. He's giving himself a year to make it before he just packs it in, goes to college, and gets a real job. I'm pulling for him. Both are going to be greatly missed. They both were great friends -- the best of friends, that made Fairmont cool. Both of you need to keep in touch.

Wedding Crasher is quite possibly my favorite movie ever. If just because of Will Farrell's smart part as the end, as the pioneer of both crashing weddings and funerals. I love his lines, "Grief is nature's most powerful aphrodisiac. Its not even fair, its like fishing with dynamite."

I've been listening to the second (and final) album of the indie-rock group, "The Anniversary" in my car non-stop. Worse, I've been singing along with wild abandon to the songs and chorus. Thankfully, the noise isn't escaping the car, but I'm really enjoying my butchering of the indie rock classics.

I got Kyle to join facebook. haha.

This is a bad week for innovators. The inventor of "Ramen Noodles", a staple of my diet in college, passed away this weekend. Shortly after him, the creator of Scooby Doo (where ARE you?) passed away at the ripe old age of 81.

I puked this new year's from too many Gin and Tonics. My cousin pretty much drank me under the table. I guess you could say that's karma, seeing as a recent christmas party, i was handing someone shots and tossing back water shots until he puked. I mention it here because I'm likely not going to hear the end of it until someone else gets nicknamed hank the tank by getting wasted at the company christmas party.

New Year's Resolutions:
To be more loving.
To be healthier. (This includes stopping the occasional bummed cigarette simply because you're bored at a bar and what not.)
Resume my gym schedule from last year.
Oracle Certs.
Keep reading more books by the Dali Lama.
And the half-serious ones:
Keep the apartment cleaner.
Become more of an early bird.


And now I sleep.

Labels: cars, late night, life is short, personal, Web Development

For the first time in 20 years, my family has a family reunion.

It was partly to mourn the passing of my uncle Alan, who succummed to kidney cancer on the 6th of December, but it was also just because it has been 20 years since everyone's gotten together.

The other side of the family, the Wilson family, also made contact. My father, estranged from his brothers for 38 years, took the time to call them. Its wierd to suddenly have 2 new uncles and an aunt.

What's weirder is seeing parts of your personality and your mannerisms in family you've never met. It makes you feel smaller to know that some of your personality came from off-the-shelf parts. Humbling, but in a good way.

Ironically, we thought meeting my father's brothers would make us understand him more -- that one of them would be wierder. Not the case; my father is definitely the wierdest of his siblings.

Another amazing thing is that the book-collecting/love to read instinct in the family has to be genetic. My uncle John runs a side business of selling used books, and has a collection of about 10,000 paperbacks. This is nothing compared to my father's 50,000 or so, and the other family members have sizeable collections as well. All of them are extremely well read, even though only my father and one other actually went on to college and higher education.

I also saw my cousin Matthew. I haven't seen him in about 20 years. At new year's, we found out we both possess a twisted sense of humor, and that our wild streaks were both hectic and chaotic, but his was moreso -- but that's to be expected from an ex-marine. I met his daughter, my second cousin, Alyssa, and taught her to rollerblade. I also taught her how to play the mario brother's mini-games on my Gameboy DS. I never thought about it before, but the touch screen allows games to be a lot more accessible -- for all ages -- from six year olds to sixty year olds.

So thanks to Alyssa and her younger sister Danica, I'm no longer the youngest in the family. And I'm at an age where I wouldn't want kids of my own, but I'd spoil the kids in my family. I got plenty of pictures of my sister holding the new baby.

All in all, it was a good trip, and one worth making more than once every 20 years.

Labels: family