I must say, an evening cup of tea is quite nice. (decaf of course) I might have to make this a habit.

I was checking the itunes podcast directory and saw a FOX Family Guy podcast! Awesome!

Well, no. Listening to it, it’s one of the worst podcasts I have ever heard. It’s basically this guy recapping the episode. It sucks. It’s nothing original and it’s not new content! Television without pity does recaps, but they’re good because they’re written in a cool, personal, original style.

This podcast blows. Bad job FOX. You had me with Arrested Development and the cool “imoscar.com” site, but you pissed me off with these lame podcasts. (I’m assuming that the Arrested Development production team had everything to do with imoscar.com and nothing to do with this crap podcast, so they still rock!)

Here’s the link if you feel like listening to something that may cause you to bash your head on the table: iTunes Store Link

Check out television without pity for great tv recaps!

Arrested Development is back on! Hooray for the new season! I love this show. I laugh out loud (like a buffah laugh) several times each episode and I intend to buy them all on DVD (sometime).

Another awesome thing, the fake website they mention in the episode, is actually a real, fake website! Great use of web marketing. I wonder what kind of traffic this page will get? 10% of the viewers?

Check it out! Arrested Development!

http://imoscar.com/

Just wondering, cause today is sp33k liek a p|r@t3 d4y

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

Check out the “ergonomic pirate keyboard”

Corsair has to be my favorite pirate synonym.

My lame pirate joke – Where do pirates go to school? Harrrrrrrrvarrrrrrrrrd

harvard sucks.

but Pirates Rul3z!

So . . . I’m reading “Getting Things Done” and I’m all about organizing my life and having everything synchronized. I feel that the pieces are coming together on the table, but it may take some time to get them to fit together. Ok, so here are the current pieces on the table:

• Web Hosting (dreamhost) – centralized storage of whatever I want (and also my websites)
• TaDa Lists/Backpack/Basecamp – I don’t know if these will work for me, but they’re cool
• Upcoming.org – it’s the opensource/geek evite! that’s right, evite is now lame, I’m calling it. upcoming.org has community features (yay web 2.0), a simple interface, and iCal and RSS feeds – it’s cool, check it out.
• Mozilla Sunbird/Calendar – I think sunbird can replace Outlook at home for me – it syncs with upcoming.org (via iCal) and can host a calendar file remotely (ah, so nice to have web hosting now). And, I grow ever tired of microsoft programs, so if I can avoid one, even better. Also, I’m not using my PDA anymore (no pocket room for it, plus it’s getting older and slower) and I want to replace the features it provided (i.e. syncing home and office)
• Cell Phone and SMS – all I need to carry with me is my phone (and maybe a pen and some paper) and I can either jot notes or SMS myself a note – then the next time I’m at a computer (which is all the time) I can put the notes into my GTD lists (next actions/todos) (no more PDA?!?)
• GTD inspired lists – todo lists that have all my next tasks and projects and thoughts and they’re hosted on my dreamhost and wherever I am I can access the latest and view/edit them

there they are, now I just need to organize them (and I’m sure there are other pieces on the table too (i didn’t mention RSS and Sage/Firefox)). All these places to put my data, and webservices to make that data sharable with tools that make the data readable and editable.

so, this is totally a geeky post (but, hey, what did you expect) and maybe it should have gone on my tech blog, but oh well, so be it. I just felt like getting these thoughts out on a blog (ha, hence the sloppy writting style (once i get my todo lists in order, I’ll add to reread The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition and also to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (and I love parens within parens (is that because I’m a programmer? — yes, yes it is (and probably worse because of Scheme))))(oh, oh, count the parens . . . bam, two more — )) (done)(ha!). (i’m almost too lazy to add the links, thinking of adding a disclaimer to just google this stuff if you’re interested, but no, I’ll add the links — enjoy them )

The two instruments I want to learn to play most (right now) are the Tablas and the Harmonica. Tablas are awesome, I just love them. Harmonica is also great, I’m a sucker for any guitar w/ harmonica music (a la Bob Dylan). Harmonica may happen first, just because they’re cheaper. (Tablas aren’t really cheap) Anyway, I was thinking about this — And then it hit me — I could play them both at once!! Would it be a folk implosion or pure musical genius? Hmm, perhaps we’ll never know. I could probably write songs about lychees . . . Anyway, if ya’ll ever come across music like the music I’m dreaming of making, let me know, I’d love to hear it. Ok, this post must end, it’s a run-on, meandering disaster.

So, my latest addiction (don’t worry flickr, there’s room for multiple addictions in my online life) is Kingdom of Loathing.

It’s a very simple html implementation of an adventure game (An Adventurer is You!).  All the images are stick figures and the basic gameplay is: click here, then click here, then click here — proving that the most important thing about a game is the Content and Story.  Also, it’s free!   It ‘s also  a great example of Creating Passionate Users (take me as an example: I’m giving free advertising and I’ve donated to the game (and I’ll probably donate again).

So, if you have some time to spare, I highly recommend playing.  Careful though, it is addictive (you’ve been warned).

Sign the petition to get Dr. Katz released on DVD! This show is so awesome and hilarious, and especially in today’s world of everything is on DVD (insert link to lame show that is on dvd here) it is a crying shame that we can only buy this show on vhs and only then at swap meets.

Petition Link
Show Home Page (soup2nuts)
Wikipedia Dr. Katz Homepage

Nebraska
Originally uploaded by benchristen.

So, we were all just screwing around, making up lame gang signs for ourselves, like, a B for Ben, etc. This one was for Nebraska (I’m from there) (obviously you can see how we derived the sign). Anyway, we were out partying that night, and we met some guy from Kansas. So, I being from a rival state (Nebraska is rivals with all its neighbors), threw my sign and said, “yo, I’m from Na-brass-ka.” The guy from Kansas put his head down in shame, “ah, Kansas doesn’t have a sign.”