Christmas music?

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I was hoping for a funny family story to share, but it turns out that nothing really blogable happened. However, I do have a Christmas story anyway. On Christmas Eve we went to the mall for some last minute shopping. I know what you are thinking, but it was in fact my sister that needed to shop, I was just along for the ride. Well, we were sanding in front of a store and these two old guys come walking in. One of them had an accordion and the other had a bass (not a guitar either, the full 6 foot bass). Anyway, they quickly found a spot to perch and started playing. I think they were trying to play some kind of a Christmas song, but I couldn't really make it out. They we very, very bad. In fact, I think that they we playing different songs. It only took about 3 minutes before mall security showed up. I couldn't hear what they were saying but, I was sure they we getting kicked out. The two security guards started to turn the "musicians" toward the door. Then the bass player guy, grabbed then end of his bass and lifted it over his head, like he was going to hit one of the guards. It was funny enough to see him try and lift that thing, but then he fell over backwards because it was too heavy. Even his buddy was laughing. A few minutes later, the bass player was in cuffs, his friend was gone, and the bass was still a shattered mess on the floor. Now that is what I call a Christmas show.

New Name

When I started this blog I didn't know how long I was going to keep it up. Well, it is pretty fun so I think it is here to stay. That means I think it is time for a more clever title than Aabyl's Blog. Here are a few I have come up with. What do the viewers think?

Blurred Architecture of the Brain

A log of nonsense

Why this isn’t a movie

Blurred Vision

Blurred Renaissance man

The Elevator doesn’t quite go to the top floor

Unfounded information

Other?

Deja-Vu

Be warned, you should stop reading if you want to continue to believe that there is something mystical about it. Yep, its true. When you experience Deja-vu, it is not because you experienced it in a former life or that you have some kind of physic power, it is just from stress. When you see something, (or hear, smell, or taste for that matter), a lot of information is passed from the eye to the brain. For example the size, color, shape, movement, etc of the object. Each piece of this information must travel to different parts of the brain. Sometimes, when your brain is mentally stressed, meaning you think about too many different things during the day, one piece of information may arrive later than the others. This difference in time, even though it is nano-seconds, triggers a familiarity response from the brain. This make it seem like "You've been here before", because, in fact, you have been; a nano-second ago. The mystical feel of it come from the fact the the first pieces of the information that arrived on time was missing one or more pieces. So when your brain tries to recall the previous nano-second, it can't exactly make out what you saw. This gives you the feeling that it must have happened a long time ago because the same effect happens to real memories over time. You start to forget pieces of information. Kind of takes the fun out of it, don't you think?

Obscure facts

Here is a list of some interesting facts. Five of them are true and two of them are fake. Can you guess which ones are made up?

1. The "Daddy-longlegs" spider has the most potent venom of any spider. Their fangs however are so short, they cannot pierce human skin. This makes them a harmless spider to us.

2. The largest, most powerful cat in the world is called a Liger. It is an un-natural cross breed between a male Lion and a female Tiger. Normally, the tiger has a gene that tells the body to stop growing. This gene is passed from the male. When these two animals were bred, the offspring did not have this gene and the Liger continued to grow larger and larger. It currently is the size of a horse.

3. The Earth absorbs sunlight causing it to maintain a global temperature. Currently the Earth reflects 29% of the sunlight. If we painted the roof of every house and building white, we could increase the Earths reflectivity by 1%. This would cause the global temperature to decrease by 1 degree C.

4. Ginger has been clinically demonstrated to work twice as well as Dramamine for fighting motion sickness, with no side effects.

5. Our moon is slowly moving away from our planet due to centrifugal force, and will eventually be gone.

6. Swimming under 24 inches of water provides more protection from a gun than a bullet proof vest. In fact, the more powerful the gun, the safer you are. When a gun is fired the bullet is traveling super fast, however, once it hits the water the change in velocity is so great, it causes the bullet to disintegrate. The more powerful the gun the bigger change in velocity the faster the bullet is destroyed.

7. A world record was set by the first man to climb to tallest mountain in the world. This record continues to be broken because Mt. Everest grows by about 1 inch every year.

Game Face

I saw a commercial once that went something like this...."We've built a computer chip powerful enough to solve the world hunger problem. It is fast enough to find a way to cure all diseases. But, we decided to use it for gaming." This image is completely generated by a computer for use in a video game. The technology used to create this picture (and others on the picture archive) is about 3 years from being available to everyone in an actual game, but we should start seeing this level of computer graphics next year. I am amazed at how far we've come so fast from the 8-bit Nintendo games to realistic images in only about 15 years. I wonder what the next 15 years will bring. Where do we even go from here if the images are just as real as real life? Holodeck here we come....

Crazy Companions

My good friend Bill here is the biggest anti-cable person I know. But he loves watching tv; all ...day...long. I'm not really sure how he does it, but I guess when you have 5000 channels on one TV, there is probably something on. If not, it would take about an hours to click though all of them to check and by then, there are all new shows. You should see how pissed he gets when there is a storm and only one or two channels work; he, he, he.

You guys ate the chicken?

This had to be the funniest Survivor finally ever! Between the show and the reunion show, there were so many memorable quotes. I'll start with the whole chicken incident. Every part of this was funny. It all starts with Steph wanting Lydia to ask the Mayans if they can eat the chicken. Of course they say no, because it is a sacrifice. They wouldn't be sacrificing anything if they ate it. So they just wait until later when the Mayans are gone, and then the eat it. Rafe, however, was totally against it. He held a little piece of chicken in his hand and just stared at it for a while. I think he was worried that as soon as he took a bite a bolt of lightning would strike him down. So he tells the others to go ahead and just eat it. Steph then says "OK" and grabs the piece of meat out of his hand and wolfs it down. The best part though, was listening to them try and explain it to Jeff.

Here are some other funny quotes from the show.

1. Judd -- "Have you ever ice skated? Cause you just skated through this game.".
2. Jim -- "I'm going to Disneyland". --ok, that's nice, what are you taking about?
3. Bobby Jon -- "If you mash the gas, the car will go". --I can just see him having this written on his hand as something clever to say during the show. But then when Jeff asked him what he said again, it was all smeared and he couldn't read it again. Ha, ha.
4. Jamie -- "I was loosing it a little out there. It could go either way. I was loosing it a little out there." --I think you left it back there.
5. Steph -- "We were all done sleeping in the shelter, so we decided to sacrifice it and burned it". -- Hello chicken lady, you can't sacrifice something you are already done with. What are you giving up? Where's the sacrifice?
6. Morgan -- "Yes, 6 days was not enough time, but getting voted out made it all worth while." -- How can I even comment on this?

Anyway, great show and I am really excited to see how this whole Exile island thing works. Sounds pretty interesting.

Curse of the Coche

Foolish, foolish girl. You never take the car, especially if you are offered 4 more cars to give away! I really think Cindy would have gotten to stay in if she had given the cars away. Since she didn't it caused and alliance with Rafe and Danni. They wouldn't have had anything to talk about if Cindy had given them each a car. Humm, here is a question. There was five cars that were present at the challenge. Who thinks that Cindy would have gotten a car anyway, if she gave the other four away? At the immunity challenge, Steph was so happy to finally win something. Even Jeff was surprised that she actually won. Two survivor seasons and she hadn't won a single personal challenge. So now it is down to the final four; Danni, Lydia (how is that possible?), Rafe and Steph. My money is on Rafe to win, that is of course depending on how the immunity challenges go. But if all goes as planned for Danni and Rafe, if they are the final two, I think Rafe will win it. Check out my picture archive to see the final four.

Dragon Warrior

The two best role-playing games I have ever played were Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. These two games for Nintendo started me down the path of loving role-playing games. While the Final Fantasy series continued to be released in the US, Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest) seem to be just for Japan. Well, after years and years of waiting, Dragon Quest VIII has been released in the US for PS2. I have had a chance now to put in about 15 hours of game time, and I am impressed. First of all, I have been waiting a very long time for a good turned based RPG game. Even the final fantasies didn't do true turned based anymore. So far, this game seem to be a dream come true; I love it! The 3D environment is great! Graphics are stunning, the music is full symphonic, the world has very little load times and hardly any loading is needed anyway. The world is huge. I can wander around for hours exploring the world. So many places to go, treasures hidden everywhere, and the monsters are pretty neat. They are all very happy monsters, but that turned out good, because then my daughter enjoys watching it, and doesn't complain when I play. The characters are customizable, meaning they can follow different specialties depending how you distribute their skill points. Lots of items and you can make your own by combining certain items. And the voice over is done very well. The English is not broken and the story is pretty sound. Also the characters have accents depending on where they are from. Plus, the game is just fun, fun, fun! You can see more screen shots of actual gameplay on the picture archive.

Scumbags!

Judd thought he was king of the Jungle. He should have known that whenever a player thinks they are on top, they are really on their way out. I think what he said at tribal council convinced everyone they were doing the right thing. "Everyone wants someone to go, man. That's the game, man. All these people talk about being a family, but they really just want someone else to go, man." Well, Judd, bye bye. If I were Cindy, I would be worried. She probably doesn't have to be worried, but the same thing just happened to Judd (He was left out of the vote change and now she was too). What is she suppose to think?

How did everyone like the life-size game of Tron? I think that Danni's little prize was too much of an advantage. But, then again, no one else really bid against her. Probably because they all felt safe. By the way, don't forget that next week is the season finally!

Crazy Companions

I'll admit I come up with some pretty strange ideas but usually, once I get them together, they turn out pretty good. For example my PVC Christmas maze, the custom 12 shot fireworks shell launcher, and the wall of motherboards are a few of my brilliant inventions. I have been searching to see if there are others who take ideas too far and there just so happens to be some. These lucky few are to be known as my crazy companions. Today I would like to pay tribute to the man who built this bbq pool heater. Using siphon technology, water is pulled from the 8000 gallon pool and rushed through the copper tubing. The water is heated from the propane grill as it loops back and forth about 80 times and then is pushed back into the pool. The grill-o-heater can raise the temperature of the pool by 2 degrees an hour. Once the pool has reached its optimum temperature, the coils can be lifted off and the burgers can get tossed right on.