Did you know that Tom Hanks was my 2nd cousin by marriage?

Pangea Day

On Saturday May 10th, the first Pangea will take place. Basically this is a world wide live broadcast of films, speakers, and music. This was a TED wish of Jehane Noujaim to bring millions together from around the world through film, to move toward a better understanding of eachother and the future we will live in.

I have contacted the organizer at the Stanford University Screening to see if it is possible to have a group attend. If you guys are interested let me know. You can learn more at the following link. Click on "about pangea day", then "Jehanes Ted Wish" to see the Ted Conf Video.

http://www.pangeaday.org/

So pitted!

We Are Engaged

I asked Kristen to marry me last night and she said yes. We are planning on a summer wedding but do not have any more information than that. Here is a picture for those of you who might not have had the good fortune to meet her:

I got a fever -- and the only perscription is more cowbell!

Hmm

Shameless Ron Paul Plug

I'm sure you all know by now that I support Ron Paul for President. Several of you responded with "who's he" when I've mentioned it so here's a little clip highlight some of his debate coverage along with a lot of quotes regarding his platform. You'll notice the quotes go back several years and aren't just things he's been saying over the last couple months to gather votes, they're simply what he always advocates and his voting record in congress back them up.

I'm totally open to other people's opinion and endorsement of other candidates so feel free to oppose this and put up some counter arguments. To find out more about Ron Paul visit Ron Paul's Official Campaign Site. Also you can find tons of grass roots endorsement videos on Youtube such as this awesome rap video:

How creativity is being strangled by the law

This is a TED Talk by Larry Lessig. Joe and I just saw him lecture here at UW with the topic "Is Google (2008) Microsoft (1998)?" Amazing lecturer. I love his way of presenting -- his fast, focused, yet not distracting from what he is saying. Everyone should add his blog to their rss feed.

If I controlled the internet

Don't Juggle Bowling Balls

Treats are better than tricks...

But it's funnier to watch the tricks that go wrong though :)

Rockin the house

Well guys, its official, my first moderate sized earthquake in the bay area. Centered in San Jose, 5.6 with minor aftershocks. Very weird to see the entire street suddenly full of people.

Shaking it up

How many do you count?

Perhaps this isn't the best forum

However, I think it needs to be brought to everyone's attention that one Mr. Fisher is not devoting the attention and care needed to successfully run a fantasy football team. Maybe he has obligations at home or at work, but he must realize that it is the (fantasy) players on his team who suffer through his inaction.

Because everyone wants to go home with a nerd ;)

Washington State University is hosting (today) "Nerdy and the Greek." Where some special lady (or guy, *cough Jason cough*) can go home with their very own nerd. All teasing aside, they do have a great cause - all the proceeds are going towards scholarships for women majoring in computer science :) The site includes interview with the nerds, etc... I thought it was a cute idea.

1st and Ten

Well not all of the Nerd Herd may have the appreciate for pro-football that I do but you guys will definitely find this interesting. It's a graphics system called 1st & Ten.
I remember when they first started using the yellow line on the tv to designate a firstdown (yeah yeah I've been watching football for awhile). I didn't think it would be that hard until a friend of mine told me there's actually quite a bit of computer sciencey fun stuff going on behind the scenes. Here's a quote from the article telling how it works:

Painting a virtual first-down line on a football field is an excellent example of this process. The idea to paint a first-down line across the field on people's TV screens sounds so simple. As it turns out, implementing this is incredibly complex. It takes a tractor-trailer rig of equipment, including eight computers and at least four people, to accomplish this task!

Here are some of the problems that have to be solved in order for this system to work:

* The system has to know the orientation of the field with respect to the camera so that it can paint the first-down line with the correct perspective from that camera's point of view.

* The system has to know, in that same perspective framework, exactly where every yard line is.

* Given that the cameraperson can move the camera, the system has to be able to sense the camera's movement (tilt, pan, zoom, focus) and understand the perspective change that results from the movement.

* Given that the camera can pan while viewing the field, the system has to be able to recalculate the perspective at a rate of 30 frames per second as the camera moves.

* A football field is not flat -- it crests very gently in the middle to help rainwater run off. So the line calculated by the system has to appropriately follow the curve of the field.

* A football game is filmed by multiple cameras at different places in the stadium, so the system has to do all of this work for several cameras.

* The system has to be able to sense when players, referees or the ball cross over the first-down line so it does not paint the line right on top of them.

* The system also has to be aware of superimposed graphics that the network might overlay on the scene.

Pretty awesome stuff and definitely a good read.

Beer Fest by the Bay

http://www.oktoberfestbythebay.com/

You guys might want to check it next year, people we playing all the drinking games, tons of music, beer, and food. According to Moody it was even cheaper then the real thing :)

Is that Johnny in the Corner???!?!?!?

One of the sexiest things I have ever heard

Ok so maybe sexy isn't the best term for it but anyway here it is:

The ZFS file system uses 128-bit pointers. The minimum mass of a device capable of storing 2^128 bytes using atomic level storage would be about 272 trillion kilograms.


Also if you use Firefox and don't have a good download manager this one has been maxing out my cable modem (1.4Gigs in 30 min): DownThemAll!

Pumpkins are fun

We had to get some practice in. Expect bigger and better things near Halloween.

Kristen's:




Joseph's:



I guess some people are having trouble recognizing 'the cheat':

Forums are up

Not sure if anyone will ever use them and since this site is sort of a hodgepodge of stuff that isn't tied together I'm sure no one will look at them, but regardless, the Nerd Herd Forums are alive and kicking at
http://forum.nerdherdblog.com
I've added a link in the right sidebar.

Moving some stuff around

Just thought I'd let you all know that I moved the domain control of www.nerdherdblog.com to my dreamhost account. Before it was just set to redirect to this blogger page but now I've got dreamhost redirecting the www.nerdherdblog.com to blog.nerdherdblog.com which is where the blog portion of the site will be located. I'll also be adding a forums.nerdherdblog.com and possibly a gallery.nerdherdblog.com for forums & photos. It could take up to 3 days for all the dns settings to propagate through the series of tubes that is the internets. If you're still having trouble after that let me know.

Don't tase me!

Quite possibly the funniest thing I've seen all week (besides my brother's dormroom with 3 other freshman boys at UW). Here's a link in case you don't know the backstory.

Working on my 5 yr plan, just need to choose a font

CHUCK

Meet the Tenori-On, Yamaha's digital instrument of the future

Um. Well Made Banana?

First impressions on my new iPhone

Having just had a rather lengthy discussion with Kristen about my new iPhone I realized I have a lot more to complain about it already than I had thought. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of good things to say about it also. Here goes...

First the good...
The phone is just plain sweet. I am a big believer in convergence devices, but ONLY when they still work at the most basic level as a phone. I can't tell you how many shitty camera/mp3/smart phones I have had that did the camera/mp3/smart part fine, but couldn't make a phone call to save your life. Constantly dropping calls, bad signal quality, bad voice quality. It's like they tacked the "phone" on at the last minute and failed miserably. That said, the iPhone is not that device. It does the phone part right to begin with, even adding new features such as Visual Voicemail to make the phone experience all the more perfect.

Now I've only had it 24hrs now, so there is still plenty of time for it to start dropping calls on me, etc. If this happens expect to see a picture of a broken iPhone in the next post. Assuming that is not the case, convergence devices like the iPhone are great, especially for men. We don't have the luxury of being able to carry around a purse (at least not without some rather strange looks). Please don't respond with some comment about how masculine your oversized, man-purse that you sling over your shoulder is. It's not masculine, it's gay. Perhaps in a later post where I rant aimlessly about nothing I'll put together an assortment of Murse (man-purse) pics so you can see what you really look like to those around you.

What was I talking about again... oh yeah, convergence. So the iPhone has the phone, camera (more on that later) and of course the digital media player, aka the iPod. The media player, as can be expected works flawlessly. Just sync up your music and vids and enjoy. It also has good old safari web browser, google maps, yahoo stocks, yahoo weather & Youtube. All of these work pretty much as expected.

What about the camera? Well 2MP is a little weak, and there is no zoom at all. But the convenience of not having to bring a camera around with you outweighs this in my opinion. There are so many times I want to take a picture but don't have my camera because who the fuck just caries their camera with them? I will also say the image quality is still better than most any other "2MP" camera phone I've seen or used.

So what about the bad...

Where to start. Lets start with the things we can't change. That is the hardware limitations that no act of software engineering will fix. There is the lack of 3G network support. This means when you aren't at your house surfing via Wifi (or anywhere else you have Wifi access) you'll be trudging along at EDGE network speeds. This is fine for checking/sending email and google maps info if you don't mind a minor delay, but forget about browsing Youtube or just plain web surfing in general. Apple of course rightfully claims this is due to the power consumption of the current crowd of 3G chipsets which would likely half the battery life between charges.

Which of course brings us to point #2, the battery life. If you are just sending and recieving phone calls you'll probably get about the same battery life you get from your current phone, but if you were just sending and recieving phone calls, why did you buy and iPhone? If you start listening to music all day and/or watching videos you'll be charging daily, and worse case scenario charging mid-day in the car or at the office. What is the worst case scenario...

Bluetooth. Oh bluetooth, such a wonderful way to connect to your device without those pesky wires. But what a power hog. Yep, if you turn the bluetooth on you'll be suckin down batter faster than you can imagine. My recommendation is to use it sparingly only when driving. Don't be that guy walking around the office with the fuckin headset in his ear, or even worse, the guy who appears to be talking to a cantaloupe at the supermarket. But remember to disable bluetooth on the phone when you take it off because it's not saving you any battery if you just turn the headset off. This of course is sort of a pain in having to constantly go into the settings and turn bluetooth on and off, I'd personally like to see a phone with a physical switch on the side the way my laptop does for quick on/off access.

But that's not the only issue with bluetooth. No no no. I HATE wires. Hate them. I would like nothing more than to slap on a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones and listen to my music, assuming I didn't care about my battery to begin with. But no, iPhone doesn't support A2DP stereo bluetooth. Not only that, my attempt to listen to my music in mono with my little Jabra bluetooth headset failed to work. The only way to listen to music is either through the internal speaker or WIRED headphones. WTF??

Still reading...

Okay enough about the stuff that just can't be fixed. What about the oversights and/or intentional cripplings of the software.

First there's the internet browser. Remember how I pointed out that Youtube and Google Maps were "applications", not something you just view from the web browser. That's because the web browser doesn't support Flash. So aside from Youtube & Google Maps which are running custom solutions, you can't view and flash websites.

Next up Photos. My biggest complaint with photos is the lack of on-the-go connectivity options. Basically, if you take a photo on your iPhone, the only thing you can do with it from the phone is assign it as someone's pic for when they call and email it. You CAN'T text message a pic! Also, you can't email more than 1 pic at a time, so if you want to send 3 or 4 pics to someone (or to your blogger account's email for remote posting), you have to send seperate emails (which in blogger's case make seperate blog posts). Also, Steve Jobs showed off how when assigning a picture to a contact you can first zoom, rotate & crop the image as desired. This works. He also said that you could do this to the picture you are emailing. Wrong! When you email a pic it always send the original uncropped, unzoomed, unrotated version DOWNRESSED to 640x480. You can't even send the original 2mp version.

So basically, when it comes to photos, aside from quick, 1-photo emails, you have to wait til you get home, sync up to your pc and then do all your photo stuff from your pc. So much for removing the pc from the equation.

Lastly I'm a little peeved at the whole lack of highlighting text. This means you can quickly delete large sections of emails your composing and you also can't do any form of copy & paste. Of course I knew about this beforehand and it's not a dealbreaker. As with the photo & internet stuff, that's all just software and hopefully if we just bitch enough about it, they'll add/fix this stuff in upcoming patches.

Well if you read this whole thing then you're really lame cuz it was long. Sorry bout that :)

Whats your thoughts on the Apple Itouch

Itouch

I think the biggest feature is the Built in Wifi, which will let you go to streaming audio websites like pandora while you are on the go. Probably better just to wait for the second generation Iphone and go from there, just thought I would see what the collective nerd was thinking.

Check out my blog lolz

So I have a 'PHP/SQL' blog (no SQL yet). Might be fun for some light reading. If you want to contribute let me know and I'll add you to the list.

~Mama

Leave Britney Alone!!

This guy has issues.

Burning Saltwater for fuel??

Pretty crazy stuff and even crazier that no one has found this out before now. Assuming his frequency generator doesn't consume tons of energy or can't be made much more efficient, this could be an amazing source of energy. It doesn't mention what the byproducts of the reaction are, but I'm assuming given NaCl & H20 there's not much of an environmental concern here.

Happy Birthday Fish =P

Because I'm up at an unreasonable hour I will be the first. Happy Birthday~!

My God!!!

"Asses are the human races favorite thing. When God gave us our asses he had to stick them round the back just so we wouldn't sit and stare at them all day. Cause when God made the ass he didn't say "Hey it's just your basic hinge, let's knock off early." He said "Behold ye angels, I have created the ass. Throughout the ages to come, men and women shall grab hold of these and shout my name"!

heres what you do; Tell her you play WoW and watch the panties fly off

The mage forums are never this interesting...

How the Future will be - www.ted.com

Get Perpendicular!

Kind of an older video you might've already seen. For some reason the song was stuck in my head today so I thought I'd post it. I can't remember but I think Joe might've been the one who showed it to me a long time ago. Either way, here's a ridiculous video explaining a fancy new technology used to increase hard drive capacity :)

Thought you guys might dig this

Labor Day Weekend

What the heck is there to do this weekend! I'm so freaking bored. I really want to do something but it can't cost a fortune. I'll probably just end up sitting around the house playing WoW like every other weekend. BORING! If anyone can come up with something for us to do that isn't outrageously expensive I'm open to ideas.

Awesome image resizing tech

Watch this vid for a look at some of the coolest image manipulation.

Breaking the bond between AT&T and iPhone

As of last night, iPhoneSIMfree.com proved to the popular tech news site, engadget, that they had a way to remove the AT&T SIM in the iPhone and replace it with T-Mobile. They do this via software -- no hardware tinkering at all. Read more here.

If this is true (which I see no reason why its not) and if it is marketable without incessant lawsuits then I think an iphone might be on my next purchase list :)

Fox News - Iraq vs Iran

This shit is just fucking horrible. Sadly, it shapes the perception of tons of ignorant fuckwads living in the middle of the god damn country where education is a sin .

Free Vick!

Hey, just wanted to remind those of you who are playing that the fantasy football draft is this Friday night at 8pm PDT. I thought I had made the draft for Sat at 3pm, but I think my laptop was still on NZ time, and now I can't change it b/c yahoo only has so many slots. Anyway, Friday night at 8pm.

We have 6 teams now. I think 8 is a good number, then everyone should play each other twice... and two persons three times maybe? How does that work? 16 weeks, heads up each week rotating opponents. Anyway, Hawkins said he was going to sign up and Clint said he might too, but the more the merrier, even if you don't know anything about football.

Gross thought for the day

If you're currently enjoying a nice cool glass of water you should definitely read this article. Ewww.

Black Knight: 'Tis but a scratch.

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese biker failed to notice his leg had been severed below the knee when he hit a safety barrier, and rode on for more than a mile, leaving a friend to pick up the missing limb.

The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, on Monday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into the central barrier, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.

The man and his leg were taken to a hospital, but the limb had been crushed in the collision, the paper said. When he asked to comment on the situation, the Black Knight said, "I'm invincible!"

Heck Yes - Voltron!

According to this story they're making a Voltron movie. This could be the greatest movie ever. Now we just need to petition for Thundercats and I can die happy :)

NerdBowl '07

Start Your Engines!

NerdBowl '07 Yahoo Fantasy Football

c'mon everybody, smile on your brother, and play some fantasy football. I sent most you an inviting email (for those whose emails I have) but here's the info as well.

u: NerdBowl '07
id#: 357117
p: nerdherd

If you have problems, tough it out, there's no fantasy crying in fantasy football.

Help me pick good components!

I'm upgrading my machine. Here is a list of what I am looking at. If anything looks off or I could upgrade for just a little bit more please help me out and let me know.

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz
• ASUS Commando LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard
• G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB)DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel
• EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card
• ViewSonic Graphic Series VG2230wm Black 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD

If you read this and approve please reply so I get some feedback to that as well :)

Chocolate Milk

Old but still funny as hell.

Firefox Plugins

So I have been using Firefox for quite some time now and never heard of the addons for it. As I work with webpages a lot

Web Developer

Has got to be one of my favorite addons. There is also a Adblocker which actually stops the adds from being loaded from the site and Greasemonkey which allows custom scripts to be ran on the pages you view.

All in all you really need to poke around the site and see what they have to offer.

Oh BTW thanks to Kristen for enlightening me.

Michael Vick pleads allegiance to Al-Qaeda

I always knew Michael Vick was in with the Iranian government ~! This proves it!

Read...

Special thanks to Kristen <3

Photosynth Prototype

This would be a cool combo with the digitial paper coming out

Fisher's Blog Relocation

I moved my personal blog from www.jasonryanfisher.com to blog.jasonryanfisher.com. I'm going to start using the www account for other stuff soon so I needed to free it up. Please update your bookmarks accordingly, the RSS on this site has been updated too.

Glastonbury Adventure

As mentioned at our recent outing (congrats again fisher) there are some of us with the travel bug. I have experienced some failed attempts with my college buddies at international travel, but I think I will have better luck with the good ol' nerdth herdth.

So, just to start the dialog, I post Glastonbury 2008. No lineup has been announced but if it is anything like what just ended in 2007, it should be a treat for all

Glastonbury 2008

From what I have found online, it is a cross between a weekend burning man (without the sand), an oversized coachella (on 900 acres), Charity event (Over 1.5 million raised to good causes), and a historical event going back to 1970.

Yes, this is the UK we are talking about. This could only be one weekend of an amazing trip. What do you guys think. If we are really looking at a trip in 2008, we should pick something to plan around, and start saving money now

Rock Band FTW

Okay, say what you will about EA, but this game is going to fuckin RULE! I'm currently heavily addicted to Guitar Hero and am really looking forward to this game. Not sure when it comes out, but it's supports online so we can all form up a band! I know you're all excited. You all need to get Xbox 360's so that you can be ready.

Shady Online Camera Sales

So I'm in the market for a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3. I make my way to Broadwayphoto.com which appears to have the best price on the internet - even with a $15 shipping cost.

This morning I get an email saying I have to 'confirm' my order. After waiting on hold for a good 20+ min I finally get a salesman. His job is to sell me more shit than what I want.

The camera I order comes with a 25 min battery. I ask if I bought this camera in the store if it would come with the same batter - his reply: yes it would...

So then he goes on to try and sell me a better battery which is on sale for $60+... Then when I say no thanks he tries to sell me a leather case...

Then here is where it gets really shady. Sir is there any reason you ordered the Japanese model? WTF?!? Then he goes on to tell me I can upgrade to the American one with a 2hour battery for only $24... Yup he was going to sell me a $60 battery when a $24 upgrade was available. But that would put me at the cost of Newegg.com or some other reputable dealer.

At this point I realize I'm about to get taken to the cleaners and tell the scam artist to cancel my order.

Normally I don't mind ordering stuff from shady dealers but when I find out I have ordered something that the Model number did not imply on the site I'm quick to call it quits.

Anyway watch out for Broadwayphoto.com and the like.

A prequel to the Daft Punk Concert in Berkeley next month. Going to be insane

Party Bus!!

So all you bitches missed out, but the fuckin Party Bus was awesome. We started out a little weak with less people than last year, but we managed to pick up a bachelorette party of about 6 or 7 girls. It helped to restore the male/female balance and make for a more entertaining party. You guys should all make sure and plan on doing this next year. Rachel and I drove 1500 miles round trip and spent waaay more money than we wanted to, but it was totally worth it :)

Rocky Mountain Doubles

Just the sound along is like 2500 packages screaming "Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!"



Damn thats sick.. Watch it again!!

Why god invented the death penalty

Some crazy bitch got pissed off that her ex-boyfriend didn't want to bang her at a party and ripped his left ball off with her bare hands. Then she put it in her mouth and tried to swallow it before spitting it back out. WTF! You can read the whole story HERE.

skool suks

Had a big ass final today in Resource Management Law, like I care about the environment. School is such a bitch... for 3hrs per class a semester, the rest of the time it's quite nice, much better than work.

Photoshop Hawkins

Not very good at photoshop but here's what I could whip up quickly. This is Jonny, still working at Sony although now he's gone a little mental and wears a costume to work with a big "H" on his forehead for Hawkins (clever). Still trying to kindle some office romance, but since he hasn't had a promotion in 20yrs all the girls still ignore him. Notice how he calls picking up fat chicks "action!", still the same old jonny.


This second photo I just had to throw in as a real-life jonny. I don't think much will change from this photo and 20 yrs. Perhaps someone can use this to add a little extra padding and relocate some hair for him. I imagine in twenty years from now he'll probably be an amputee at the rate he's going, so lets lose a limb too.

CENSORED*

FUCK YOU JIB!!!

Photoshop Contest: Hawkins in 20 Years

CLICK ME

Continuing the celebration of Hawkins's Birthday, I challenge you all to portray Hawkins in 20 years at the ripe age of 46.

REDACTED

Donk

Happy Birthday Hawkins

On this auspicious day, 26 years ago, a demon child crawled forth from the womb and the world has never been the same. Yes, today we acknowledge the birth of Jonathan Hawkins. 26 years old, and somehow still sporting some hair on his head, forcing some (myself included) to lose bets set years ago in high school.

Today is a day of reflection for Jon, at 26 he must realize that he is now much closer to 30 than 20 and that soon, the stable he keeps will be empty except for one lame pack mule that just won't leave. His days of fertility are dwindling. Viagra is the only thing that keeps his sad cock alive. Slowly the remaining hair on his head travels down his back toward his ass crack where it will find its final resting place. The bottle is his only solace, keeping his warm day and night. All he can do is look on with envy at his friends who have settled down and gotten married.

Yes this year doesn't look too good for Jon Hawkins. Happy birthday you jack ass, this is what you get for that speech you gave at my wedding :)

Captain Wafer on the High Seas

Good to see that you made it back to the states. I didn't think that boat was going to hold up, but I guess it was more seaworthy than it looked.

Any trouble with the Jump? And how did you feel for the following few hours, sleep at all on the plane? I do want you to know that the 'chili' dog we had on K rd was the last thing I ate for another 48 hrs. I went on a little hunger strike after you left, not sure why.

I did end up whoring myself out again the night you left. It was some girl's bday party so Alan and I decided to give ourselves out as party favours, you left one day too early.

I'll see you back in the states.

Anyone care to guess what Jib has in his mouth? :)

Stupidest thing I have seen in awhile

Kristen and I were looking for some place to eat dinner. We are going down Sunrise Blvd and are at the front of the line at a stoplight. On our left pulls up this huge SUV pumping out obnoxious amounts of bass. Kristen looked over and made some comment about 'stereotypical cali'. The SUV driver either took offense to this or just wanted to drag.

Here is where the stuff gets a little goofy. The dumb ass put HIS car (custom sound not a rental) into neutral and floors it. It was the most horrible sound I have ever heard coming from an engine. Loud squealing and grinding that comes from over revving a car. Thanks to my lack of socialization as to what revving your car means I did not even realize it was a challenge.

Good fucking thing too. SUV takes off like a bat out of hell squealing his tires. I have hardly crossed the white line when a siren goes off and a cop not 2 cars back comes into my lane and pulls the SUV over.

I would be willing to bet there was more going on than just speeding so they probably are not out on the streets today. And who said not being properly socialized never paid off. I so could have beat them off the line too :P

Moody and Mama's Fantastic Voyage...

Moody has some video of this I hope he posts but here is the text version of our trip home from Fish's wedding.

Get to San Antonio airport around 3:15. I remember the time because my flight was supposed to leave / board at 3:50. I was a little worried about not having enough time to get to the gate...

Both Moody and I had a short hop from San Antonio to Dallas then a connection home. Moody's flight to Dallas was an hour or so later than mine and I would have a longer layover and then we would both get on the same flight home to Sac.

Enter massive storm hitting Dallas creating vortexes on the runway making it impossible to take off or land. My flight gets delayed to all hell while Moody's gets canceled all together. Fist he books a flight the next morning because all flights were already canceled or would have left by the time he gets to Dallas.

I call up to find out how my connection looks and decide to take Moody 'under my wing' and put him on my flight. (Turns out I would end up needing his luck just as much as he needed my flight out of San Antone.)

As we get to the counter to get his new tickets printed out we find that our connection should be taking off 10 min before we land...but we shouldn't worry about that as there is a good chance the connection will get delayed as well. We decide to go for it.

But then Moody finds out that canceled flights don't get their baggage put onto new ones. They just threw the bags back out onto the baggage claim area and you have to re-check them. Jason runs back for his bag and calls me with news of a massive line of people having to do the same thing. We don't have much time and I'm not sure if he is going to make it. Next thing I now he is walking over to me with his bag sans all liquid items and a fingernail clipping case he liked (a gift idea for anybody trying to woo Moody perhaps?) His bag is big but should be able to pass for carry on.

Finally we are boarding our first plane of the day sometime after 6pm. (The plane had not taken off from Dallas to come pick us up until after we were supposed to have left.)

The plane backs up - I'm thinking to myself sweet we are about to take off at least. No such luck. Delayed 45 min. Time comes and goes and we get delayed another 45 min. Finally after over an hour and a half we get the go ahead to take off and fly the 3 hour drive by car to Dallas.

Upon landing we call only to find out our connecting flight has been canceled. Here is where Jason's luck came to save the day. He somehow gets told of a magical flight number 2037. I say magical because over 4-5 calls it has not once been mentioned. We called later asking if we could get put on standby and the operator didn't know it was still in the airport.

We rush to the gate and start to stand in line. We get told by other people there are 30 passengers on standby. We are not even on the list yet. More good news of all hotels in a 30 min radius are booked solid because of the storm. It wasn't looking good.

We watch name after name get called and put onto the plane. Jason and I have not moved in the line at all. Finally they run out of people already on standby and we slowly make our way to the front of the line thinking any second they are going to fill up. We were one of the last 5-8 that got on the plane. Taxi out and take off to sweet Sacramento.

And to finish the night a 20 dollar bill was just lying on the ground not ten feet from the car... oh and the next morning my power supply on my work computer fried right after the computer displayed the login screen.

Best part of the trip was getting to hang out with Moody and seeing how long we could stay 'drunkenly optimistic' even though no booze was involved it would have been nice.

Feed the Need

Fishman, any chance we could put up a little feed on the side that'll show the latest posts on our other blogs? That way we can just come here and see if you or hawkins or whomever have a new posting rather than going to each blog?

Also, having a kickass time in Auckland. Laith is getting jea'd like there's no tomorrow. But I think he is having post-partem depression from being away from UPS for so long. I try to tell him it'll be alright, but really the only cure is to pour whiskey down his throat and point out girls he needs to dance with.

Too cool for school?

Hey, now that I'm finally ending my scholastic career, for the moment, I was wondering who all is currently in school taking classes, who has what left to finish, and what everyone has.

I know jonny got a BS from USC, and he hasn't gone back. Laith has a BS, I believe from DeVry?? Moody got his BS from Chico in Pysch. I don't know about the rest of you.

(although I do notice a lot of BS coming out of this group...)

New Zealand Countdown, 69 Hrs!!!

This is weekend is going to go very fast, I have a ton of stuff to do with school before I get to fly to NZ on Monday. But I wanted to share some of the things Jibber and I have put together for the trip, if anyone ever wants to go.

Bars and Pool in Auckland
All you can eat Sushi
SkyTower Visit
Kayak at Rangitoto
Bungy Jumping??
Poker Tournament
Northshort visit, City of Devonport
Fullsize cutout at UPS store
All Blacks Rugby Match
Zorbing, look it up :)
Black Water Rafting
Caving
Pool Competition, Ive lost my touch :(
Fly by Wire
Thermal Wonderland


There is alot there, sandwiched by a half day flight on each side. Let me know what you guys want me to bring back for ya

Stoned people not as stupid as they look

According to this study, stoned people were not any less accurate at performing tasks than sober people... they just took longer at doing it. Hence the reason you don't drive stoned, you might know which way to swerve to avoid that kid, you'll just do it when he's under that back wheels.

Of course the validity of the study leaves me wondering since the subjects were performing the "Gambling Task". Yep, they played poker just as well as they did before. Somehow I think a more reproducible test is in order, poker introduces enough randomness into the study to make it invalid in my opinion. Since everyone has different strategies, how can you judge if they are still making the "correct" moves.

Sucka for CollegeHumor.com

***First post on a blog ever***

Im not sure if this is worth sharing, but I send random weird shit I find on the web to Fisher every now and then, and I think this qualifies.



I will be sure to post a ton of pics while in New Zealand with Jibber. I fly out Monday and plan to be drunk the entire flight :) If you need me to take a picture of Jib so you guys can take it to a "UPS Store" to blow it up lifesize, let me know :)



2nd is the ultimate nature show, watch all the way through

How God Damn Expensive Will Gas Get?

I'm bitching about gas prices and I know you guys have bitches out in California have got it way worse than me. It's about $3.15 for regular out here right now which is crazy cuz last year when it was around $3 is California it was only like $2.40 out here. So I can only imagine what gas is like out there. It costs me almost $50 to fill up the Escape now and with Rachel's commute, if I fill up on Monday, I have to fill up again on Friday. I'm going broke here on fuckin gas.

I think it's time to invest in a big as electrolyzer to make Hydrogen out of water and store that shit in like a 100lb tank buried in my backyard. Then I'll buy some fancy Hydrogen electric car and never have to buy gas again. Of course if you want to go all out you can make your house run off the shit like this guy. His whole house and car all run off a solar/hydrogen combo. Of course it cost him about $500k to install but at a savings of maybe $350-$400/month (and rising) you'd pay that back in only 105 years or so.

Why I hate IE

Last few days I have ran into this a few times. I'm writing some html or javascript and it appears to be working just fine in IE but its somehow broken in Mozilla. Every time it has been because IE was just ignoring the errors in my syntax and making it work. Instead of giving me errors it just said, "Good enough, I can work with this," leading me to believe it was Mozilla that was at fault.

On a side note we should get a RSS feed :P

You know so all our subscribers can tell when we update...

Topics for Speach At Wedding

Alright, as you all know the honorable Mr. Fisher will be getting married in just a few days. He wanted me to post something on the blog so here you go...

I'm gonna have to make a speech at the wedding. So the question I pose to you is the following:

Do you guys have any embarrassing stories that I could tell about Jason, Rachel, Jason/Rachel?

I have a few up my sleeve, but I could always use some more ammo.

Post a comment and let me know of the tale and I'll see if I can somehow work it into my speech.

Heroes

So if you guys don't watch Heroes, you really should start. Of course since the season finale was yesterday you won't be catching any new episodes anytime soon. Gives you plenty of time to catch up on last season though before Season 2 starts. I've got the last 5 or 6 episodes recorded on my tivo-esque computer if you want them (High-Def). While I won't advocate thievery there are other places to find the rest of the season. And of course come August you'll be able to buy the whole season.

My only worry is that Season 2 will turn into a total fuckin waste the way Lost did. I though Lost was the greatest tv show ever after Season 1, then Season 2 comes around and all we do is punch numbers into a fuckin Apple IIe down in the hatch for 14 fuckin episodes while watching lame flashbacks every other second about what pussies they all were before they were on the island. WTF! There should be a 1 death / 3 episode rule on that island just so we have to keep guessing who will survive. Luckily that shit is getting canned in 3 more seasons, so with an end-date in sight they claim they can stop wasting episodes on nothing and start paying out the real reveals about what the fuck is going on.

So that brings me to why Heroes is actually sweet. Unlike cock-tease Lost, Heroes actually pays out real answers shortly after posing awesome questions. At most you're looking at 2 to 3 episodes of suspense. Not like Lost where I still don't know where that fuckin polar bear came from in episode 1 or 2. Amazingly, the season finale posed no real cliffhanger. They just neatly wrapped up all the lose ends from season 1 and gave a couple small hints at where season 2 is going, but no real "OMG i feel like i only watch half an episode" ending that blue-balls you for the next 5 months. So that's it, watch Heroes, enjoy.

Bachelor Party Recap

Thanks to everyone who made it out to my Bachelor Party, and also to everyone who tried to make it but couldn't, you guys missed out on an awesome time. As we all took a vow of silence I can't reminisce much, and I can't recall it all anyways. I do have a small gallery of some preparty & aftermath pics in the gallery above. Hope everyone who came had a good time and I'll see you guys at the wedding and/or at the reception. If anyone needs more details on what to wear, where to go, etc call me cuz it's coming up quick. And Jib, I still need that fullsize image of you in a green shirt & khaki shorts! ;)

Nerd blood flows through this one

Hey, this won't interest red 'cause he hates technology, but I thought I'd share this around. This is HTC Hermes, known as the Cingular 8525. I was looking at getting the 8125 for a long time and this much needed improved version came out. It's a cool phone that has office built in (can create and edit spreadsheets and word docs on the phone, then sync to pc), wifi, uses the new fast phone connectivity service coming out, and all kinds of good shite.

Anyway, it usually costs several hundred dollars but I noticed recently that Amazon had it listed for just $150 with new service or upgrade to your current cingular/att phone if you are eligible for an upgrade. I'm gonna probably get it when I return to the states (these primitive foreigners would beat me with clubs if I had this phone, claiming I was a witchy-man voodoo-daddy).

So, if you're looking for a new phone, I suggest this bad boy.
Amazon.com Cingular 8525

cheers,
jib

p.s. - since Fisher wants to limit tags, I've decided to create the ungodly 'gizmology' tag for stuff like this rather than the easier and more sensible 'tech' tag one would like to see. I hope you all suffer because of it.

Welcome Brethren

On Jib's suggestions, we now have a common blog that we are all authorized publishers on. That means you can post Nerd Herd relevant bullshit here so that we can all enjoy it. Right now it's just going to be a plain old Blogger setup, but if I find the time and motivation I'll try and get a secondary beta site going that would be a more fully-functional community page, kinda like the old Nerd-Herd.org page, only much cooler.

In the meantime, hopefully everyone does their part to make this a success. I encourage everyone to sign up for a Picasa Web Album. They're pretty sweet and since both Picasa & Blogger are owned by Google it has some pretty easy integration shit where you can just post a pic to Picasa and then "Blog It" and make a quick post about your pic. Not sure how well that functionality works with multiple people authoring a single blog, we'll find out :)