line of site

Sunset on Mnevniki str.

2009-05-12T13:01:00.001-05:00

Sunset on Mnevniki str., originally uploaded by rentgen.

Cool sunset in Moscow

Storm coming in

2009-05-06T16:01:00.001-05:00

Storm coming in, originally uploaded by steveobd.

An old picture of a nasty storm.

Pool

2009-04-27T20:18:00.001-05:00

Pool, originally uploaded by steveobd.

Swimming Pool. This is a swimming pool. It is cool.

Real Japan!

2009-04-27T20:17:00.001-05:00

Real Japan!, originally uploaded by setsutomurai.

Yokoso

Rack o' wine

2009-04-27T20:14:00.001-05:00

IMG_0333.JPG, originally uploaded by steveobd.

In our villa in Tuscany. Oh, to get back.

Blackburn Rovers at Fulham

2009-03-11T20:14:00.001-05:00

Blackburn Rovers at Fulham, originally uploaded by steveobd.

Great game tonight - Blackburn came from a 1-0 deficit to win 2-1

Vinyard, Lucca

2009-03-11T05:05:00.001-05:00

IMG_0378.JPG, originally uploaded by steveobd.

Dini Estate in Lucca, Italia. Good wine to be had here.

Big Slug

2009-01-04T22:51:00.001-06:00

Big Slug, originally uploaded by steveobd.

A big slug at our villa in Lucca. Good eatin'!

Gotham Gal and I are John and Yoko tonight

2008-10-31T21:30:00.001-05:00

Gotham Gal and I are John and Yoko tonight, originally uploaded by fredwilson.

now that's NY

why i haven't been buying blue-ray versions

2008-10-17T08:15:00.000-05:00

HD-DVD is dead - but they did one thing really well: they released titles with HD-DVD on one side, and normal DVD format on the other side.   This was great because with one purchase, you could play the disc wherever you may roam.

Blue-Ray hasn't taken this approach.   You buy a Blue-Ray disc that only plays in Blue-Ray players. I hope this has something to do with double sidedness and not marketing. They are packaging an iTunes version with some releases and this is great, but it leaves me out in the cold in a few particular situations.

The biggest one is the car. People don't buy cars every year. And as more and more family trucksters have DVD players in them, they are only putting in normal old DVD players.   This means none of your Blue-Ray discs will play in your car.

Stag beetle love

2008-09-18T21:20:00.001-05:00

Stag beetle love, originally uploaded by steveobd.

My driveway is full of critters.

Chimp zoo breakout foiled by banana

2008-07-27T21:09:00.001-05:00

I think my favorite part of the accompanying news story is

Eventually the chimp was lured with a banana and then sedated.

If you watch the video, this chimp is pretty smart and goes and grabs the tranquilizer gun, yet he can't resist the lure of a banana. How stereotypical!

One of a hundred flacid penii

2008-07-27T13:20:00.001-05:00

One of a hundred flacid penii, originally uploaded by steveobd.

Scuptures in Italy abound.

I miss the red lights

2008-07-25T23:34:00.001-05:00

tokyo 017, originally uploaded by steveobd.

I must get back to Tokyo soon. There's something about the red flashing lights in the distance that's like nowhere else on earth.

The $75 limit at the pump

2008-07-25T23:27:00.001-05:00

Gah!!!, originally uploaded by parrillo.

This happened to me the other day too. I could not fill my tank with gas, because the $75 limit took over before my tank was full. Friggin' amazing.

I also noticed that Hertz no longer charges you $2+ more than the price of a gallon when you return the car empty, becuse you'd be paying $7 for a gallon of gas. They now charge a flat $6.99 service fee + the pump price.

I really hope this oil crisis makes us figure out how to make things cleaner and more efficient like we did in the Carter era.

I can't stand driving anywhere anymore.

Jul 20, 2008

2008-07-25T23:23:00.001-05:00

Jul 20, 2008, originally uploaded by steveobd.

For no particular reason, this reminds me of my favorite quake haiku:

It is five o'clock
time for a little quake
oh look, now it's ten

when the devil tells you that you have too much in your inbox

2008-07-10T17:12:00.001-05:00

Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath, for he knows that his time is short. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number. It's number is six-hundred and sixty six (Revelation 12:12 )

Yah, I got way too much to do. First things first, sacrifice a goat.

Bonsai Sheepskin Sandals - Sandals for All Seasons

2008-06-30T13:59:00.000-05:00

Bonsai Sheepskin Sandals - Sandals for All Seasons

I already own about 10 pairs of flip flops, but these look wicked, and you can never have enough flip-flops IMO. You need about 3 for every entrance/exit in the house. I'll y'all know how they pan out.

BlackBerry mascots

2008-06-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

I wonder what the heck BlackBerry mascots are. Some dude dressed up in a BlackBerry suit?

BlackBerry - Life on BlackBerry

validation

2008-06-27T17:37:00.000-05:00

You're not going to believe this... this Prince from Sierre Leone contacted me via email today. He needs help receiving his inheritance with the help of my bank account. Me?! can you believe it?!

I'm always amazed at this type of spam. There must be some small percentage of people that fall for this, otherwise these emails wouldn't be persisting to be sent for so long.

I tried to use Open Office, I swear

2008-06-27T07:42:00.001-05:00

Recently I got a Mac Book Air because my Mac Book was just way too big. I decided this time around I was going to try to not install MS Office on this laptop. The 80GB hard drive is already too small, and just didn't want to start mucking it up with bloated apps I didn't really need.

At work, I use Google Docs for about 95% of the usual document communication. For collaborative documents and spreadsheets, there really is no better tool IMO for a work environment. However there's that 5% of the time I just really need to use a client side presentation tool. The Presentations in Google Docs are again great for collaborative efforts, but sometimes you just need to use Powerpoint to drag and drop images, or deal with standard PPT templates or whatever.

I tried, I really tried to use Open Office. I installed it on my Mac, with no MS Office, and I tried to use it exclusively to create my presentations for the last month. But it didn't work out. With all the latest versions and patches, it just couldn't render the standard template we use correctly, and our standard template is really, really, simple.

So here I am installing Office 2008. Sigh. Maybe next laptop.

Wild Alaskan Salmon Company

2008-06-22T08:55:00.000-05:00

Wild Alaskan Salmon Company

This might be my favorite URL ever: Seabeef.com for a salmon company. Awesome.

What's up with cars at SFO?

2008-06-22T08:08:00.003-05:00

Renting a car at SFO this week has been a tough gig. Not sure what's going on.

When renting cars in general, I modify Hertz's slogan a bit to: There's Hertz, there's the "Avis" of car renting, Avis, and then there's everyone else. Actually, Budget's FastBreak program isn't too bad.

This week I had to drop down to Enterprise, no other agency had *any* cars at SFO - should be interesting to see how this pans out. I'm more worried about having to wait in the line after getting off the plane for an hour since there's no walk-directly-to-the-car and drive away option for Enterprise (for me).

At least it's not Thrifty.

Puma Humor

2008-06-20T10:27:00.002-05:00

Puma Humor, originally uploaded by steveobd.

As some of you know, I collect soccer, football, futbol, and calcio jerseys from my travels abroad, and when you buy a real one (as opposed to the fakes the thousands of vendors in their kiosks sell) they are usually from a name brand such as Adidas (it's always easy to remember how to spell that!) , Nike, Lotto, etc. Well this year, the Italian national jersey is made by Puma ( did you know the founders of Adidas and Puma were brothers?) and reading the tags attached to the jersey I came across something funny.

You gotta love companies that like to have fun with their customers, and don't take themselves too seriously.

At any rate I love this "Research" tab. It's too bad Puma shoes are too narrow for my already narrow feet.

#100 Bumper Stickers « Stuff White People Like

2008-06-19T22:18:00.000-05:00

For my comedy blog dollar, it doesn't get much better than Stuff White People Like. It's funny enough for me to bear that awful feed flare knockoff they use in their feed in that funky font.

Take #100 Bumper stickers for example:

The safest and most accepted choice for a sticker is always one that supports a Democratic Presidential candidate (Ralph Nader is an acceptable substitute). As of February 2008, white law requires an Obama 08 bumper sticker to be placed on the back of every Prius. Though these stickers reach peak effectiveness during an election year, it is acceptable to leave this sticker on the car until the next election regardless of whether or not the candidate actually won. If it’s a disputed election like in 2000, the sticker can be left on for the life of the car.

As Homer Simpson once said, "it's funny 'cause it's true." I still see Gore stickers on cars in my county.