It sucks to die

So I am dieing. At least that is what it felt like this morning. I got up at 5, a little bit of heartburn. This escalated into a full blown shitty feeling fest. I felt like my insides were mush.

Then i vomited and found out my feelings were correct. As a side note, I am also worried about how little had digested. There was a whole shell in there, as in velvetta shells and cheese. A WHOLE SHELL in my stomach for 12 HOURS!! Just chillin'.

Anyways, that didn't alleviate the problem so my body tried to excise the demon in the other direction. 3-4 times. My digestive tract is one long scorching tube of pain. I threw a zantac and milanta (sp?) at it before and after the vomit. It took 4-5 hours to fully subside.

Now, I am trying to find a doctor. Because this is something that needs to be dealt with when you have insurance. I need to adjust my lifestyle too. I eat harsh food, because it tastes so good, but this is the worst bout I have ever had. twice before I have woke up in the night like this. And this is the second involving vomit. I do not like to vomit.

Poll, do you like to vomit?

Slickdeals.net Rocks

If you are reading this blog, then you likely saw the earlier post about slickdeals.net. Well I have successfully plundered!

I got a 6.1 yamaha home theater set for 75$ from fryes.com. apparently, this store has insane deals every 4-5 days. i missed out on a great mobo/processor combo, I wasn't going to let this one get by me.

This was just the speakers tho. What ever shall i do with speakers and not amp/receiver???

I TELL YOU WHAT! You scrounge the junk in you dad's businesses junk room, find a neglect Harmon/Kardon AVR25-II receiver, vaccum it out, and wiggle a suspect connection and VOILAI! You (you meaning I) have a brand new 5.1 home theater. The 6th speaker is waiting for the money fairy to produce funds for a modern receiver. This is an audio video receiver without so much as s-video connections and input labels such as vcr1, vcr2, vcd, tape 1, tape 2, and phonograph. There may be a "compact disc" input too. And it doesn't decode DTS or Dolby digital, just pro logic. BUT - free is as free can be. And it sounds great! I watched "The Fifth Element" sunday night to test the surround (slow to assemble, due to laziness). Wow. I never knew what i had been denying myself until then.

Needless to say, I got a new stereo and it sounds great.

Review: Tropic Thunder

Ok, call me sick. Call me deranged. I don't mind seeing a movie that is offending people over the use of the word "retard" or that Robert Downey Jr is in black-face. If it offends you, don't see it, but I am of the opinion that people take themselves to seriously, or others if you have nothing to be offended by yourself. Sit back and laugh at the ol' PC smother we are in the middle of now-a-days.

That said, on to the review.

I wouldn't say the movie sucked. I mean it did, but not the way some may have thought. It is a movie that isn't set out to change the world, or become an underground sensation spawning and entire series of group/buddy films. This is famous actors (Stiller, Black, and Jr) making an absurd movie about stereotypical superstar actors. Stiller pokes fun at the action stars, Black spoofs the comedians (himself and stiller?) and Jr takes a swipe at committed method actors (himself?):

I don't come out of character until finished with the DVD commentary! - Kirk Lazarus

Oh, and Danny R. McBride (Red from Pineapple Express) is the war hero worshipping pyrotechnics expert. Speaking of war hero, it is Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), whom Stiller is depicting in the film within the film. The final name I will note is Tom Cruise has a few appearances, took me a bit to identify him. OK, my girlfriend did, but I DIDN'T know he was in it. She had the jump so to speak.

The movie has its funny parts, and is in many ways a series of quotable lines. It isn't overly long for what you are looking for. Some cheap laughs (matinee, HINT HINT) are sure to be found in Tropic Thunder, just don't expect to be the must have movie of the holiday season. I am surprised it was atop the charts for another week, although I am partly to blame.

If you want to see what the fuss is about, go see it. if you are disappointed, you were expecting too much (sorry, you were wrong). I believe I could have waited for the rental in a few months.

Word.

Olympics are KILLING ME

Staying up until midnight watching the Olympics and only have 4-5 hours to eat and take care of my self each day of the weekend is taking its toll. I am smelling, my arrival time at work is later and later, and worst of all, it has become harder and harder to stay awake until midnight watching the olympics.

I have been crashing out bad the past few days. I have missed the women's individual all around and floor competitions ( i love gymnastics! ), i missed M. Phelps' 7th medal (the one he won by .01seconds) and I do not have a clue about track and field.

It is a cyclical beast. a two week cycle of self destruction I am destined to relive every 4 years (not much for winter sports).

Slickdeals.net

Although I do not need anymore competition for those super cheap computer components, here is a site for y'all to set as a homepage ( or one of them if you do the multi-thing).

http://www.slickdeals.net

This site is great. Community driven bargain hunting. I missed out on this, but there was a dual core AMD athalon (2.6ghz (i think))(est. 120$) and a compatible Motherboard with on board HDMI, DVI, and VGA video and 7.1 sound output (est. 100$). The deal, $70.

AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MINE! Had I only gone with my gut rather than double checking if this is really what I wanted. I was worried about the small form factor you see. i shouldn't have worried. I could have done well. I mean, my current vid and sound card would be obsolete with that motherboard, so i would have plenty of room for other stuff.

But, in the 10 minutes i was checking it went from plenty to none in stock.

But that is the way it goes. Slickdeals isn't just computer gear though, they do clothes, shoes, movies, tickets, vaccuums, groceries, everything, including general store coupons. dude i work with got like 20 boxes of kashi ceral for 50$ off amazon. $2.50 a box of cereal is a pretty good discount (ugh-nfortunately so!). He also got enough kashi granola bars to feed a small island nation.

A final note, is that the site is clean. See a deal, click it to see details (do NOT try to open in tab, you get the same page with all deals opened), click on store name in details to go right to deal in most cases.

so, check it out.

Michael Phelps

Is there anything that will stop this guy? I know 2 medals are in relays, but 5 golds in as many days of the olympics and matching new world records. After he hit got his tenth gold, VISA ran an ad congratulating him on him surpassing all other olympians. Keep in mind that Morgan Freeman is voicing these VISA ads, and if I am not mistaken, he is still hospitalized.

So they had the voice done before hand. They probably had most of the ad ready, but they did sneak in the shot of him flexing every muscle in his body after the 4x100m Freestyle relay win.

My question is, will Mr. Freeman soon be sending Phelps kudos on winning 8 golds in one olympics, again surpassing any prior olympian?

If VISA has half a brain, they have it ready, but can Phelps deliver?

Only time will tell, but I do not think that there is anything that can stop Phelps. Other than spontaneous human combustion.

And that might not be enough...

Oh, Olympic Top 5

My Top 5 Favorite General Sports at the Summer Olympics.

1. Gymnastics
2. Swimming
3. Track and Field (I know, a big category)
4. Wrestling
5. Diving

GO USA

Olympics

I must say, I love the freakin olympics. And what makes it better are moments like say, when the US medley relay team comes from behind and takes gold in the last 25m of the race by 8 hundredths of a second and besting the world record by 3.99seconds. Gets my heart pumping.

Pineapple Express Trailers

Oh, trailers rocked as well. The run down...

College - High Schoolers go on a weekend college visit, pretend to be freshmen to get chicks, and stay in a frathouse. Hilarity ensues

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Michael Cera and the daughter in 40 Year Old Virgin (Kat Dennings (minus a her super pale look and goth red lipstick) meet up after Cera gets dumped buy Dennings apparent friend. It looks like one wild night between bandmates losing drunk girls, being mistaken for a cabbie, and finding who really is the girl of your dreams. Also recognized a few people from the PaE, K'dUp, 40YOV, and SB crowd in this trailer.


**** NOTE: LISTED AS ANNOUNCED UNDER CERA'S FILMOGRAPHY - ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: THE MOVIE ****

UPDATE: *NOTE: THIS HAS BEEN THIS WAY FOR A TIME AND MERYL DID NOT TELL ME BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT CARE*

The Rocker - A movie with the Office's (a.k.a. Dwight) playing washed up 80s hair band drummer who gets a second chance playing with his nephews band. The laughs really start when he gets posted on the internet naked ( he thought the camera was a microphone HO HO HOoooo) and the band gets signed! Wow a dream come true.

*This is a waiter unless a better trailer comes out. Least appealing of all the trailers shown. Although a few flashes from the superbad crowd.

And finally, I saw a trailer before I went to the theater for "burn after reading". It has a great cast, including Brad Pitt, George Clooney, JK Simmons, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich. Looks great. Sort of in the Big Lebowski / Raising Arizona vein. What I can gather Pitt is a dim witted gym instructor who finds a cd with some sort of classified document and gets caught up with gov't spooks while trying to blackmail someone (Malkovich) for its return. Clooney is a player sleeping with all kinds of ladies. How these two stories intertwine, I have yet to be informed. But it is the Coen bros and they always deliver.

Pineapple Express

Okay. So if you read a little into the trailer, even if it is on TV, you know Pineapple Express is pot. If you didn't I just ruined the movie for you, sorry.

Seriously, do people really have names for all the varieties and flavors and strengths of pot? I mean, it sounds worse than going to a florist trying to find "the right" flowers. You go orchid or roses and you are suddenly *bad word for having sex*ed with a million types of the same damn flower. But I digress.

What I am here to talk about is the movie Pineapple Express, mostly so I can have a review up before Meryl, although I could freeze myself, take a long nap with Walt Disney, and be revived before Meryl got around to her review.

So if you are familiar with this group of guys (40 year old virgin, knocked up, superbad, forgetting sarah marshall) you will recognize a good portion of the supporting cast. It is like watching a Kevin Smith or Adam Sandler or Frat Pack or Wes Anderson (sp?) flick. You will know faces after a few goes. Oh, Coen Brothers too!

The movie follows a bumbling Seth Rogan and a pot dealing James Franco as the ellude the guy and gals out to off them. Friendships, conflicts, and resolution follows as such. The guy that I liked a lot in this movie was Danny McBride a.k.a Red. His character was a little bit weasel, a dash of pathetic, and just a whiff of aerodynamics. He had the largest percentage of funny lines compared to his part as a whole.

The movie did drag in a few spots and took itself either too seriously or not seriously enough at times. These are not seperate times mind you, I am just unsure of the which it is.

my Pineapple Express top 5 is as follows (no particular order):

1. Trunk Clothes
2. BFFF
3. Animal Birthdays
4. Windshields
5. Anal Beads

I hope you have no clue what that means. Unless of course you have seen the film. I would recommend matinee viewing or DVD rental. I may buy this, but not ahead of knocked up (yet to get).

See y'all later

NIN!!

New NIN album is online and free from their website. You can download it in a vbr mp3 (about 200-250 kbps it seems), .wav, .flac (a lossless format), apple lossless, HIGH DEF .flac, and HIGH DEF .wav. I got it in multiple version (mp3, flac, and HD flac).

High def new music for free. And its NIN. Get before this sweetness goes uh-bye-bye!

Thrashings and What Not

Ok, this past saturday, played a mini-tourney with my gaming club: the death jesters. We played with a twist to the missions in that at the bottom of every game turn, a jet of flame shot from an random location on the table (determined with percentile dice and measure from an agreed upon corner). That made things interesting as my Eldar were slaughtered by chaos marines in the first game and sisters of battle in the second.

Game 1 - Chaos got turn 1 and wiped out both squads of pathfinders and and my 1 vibrocannon, leaving me with my autarch and farseer, banshees, fire dragons, reapers, 2 waveserpents, and my fire prism. That was devastating, but by the end of turn 4, I only had the fire prism and I had killed maybe 2 of his troops. Also, I didn't pass my first 4 morale checks, so every squad that had a remaining member, fled like a scared rabbit! The remnants of the pathfinders (1 & 2), the reaper exarch, and the banshee exarch all high tailed it off of the board.

Game 2 - called at the bottom of turn 3 because it was late, but I faired much better here. Last turn is where I got stomped, but my reapers and banshees were raw taking out 2 squads all together. If not for faith points buying invulnerable saves, I think I could have had this thing won. Half of my weapons were autokill. Reaper launchers (including the autarchs), shuriken cannons of a waveserpent and the f.prism, the fire prism cannon, and the pathfinders with the 5+ to hits counting as AP1. Alas my opponent rolled her saves magnificently.

In other news, I painted one of the new ranger sculpts in a blood red cloak w/ mythril silver armor scheme. Not very cameoflage, but I really like it.

Ticked Off

Some links for you to follow

http://www.surfacestations.org/

And a related article from the Pittsburgh tribune-review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/steigerwald/s_513013.html

What does this mean? An increase in temperature across the US will be artificially inflated or even created when a monitoring station is inopportunely located. There are specific guidelines on how these stations are to be positioned and located. The article covers a guy looking to evaluated stations according to the guidelines. The website is the community effort of evaluation.

I will be reading more on this, but as a scientist, I want to say that if this is the case, I am greatly disappointed in those overseeing these stations. At best, a ton of mistakes or just bad work. At work, i will throw out the "agenda" word. That map should be mostly blue dots. Not orange and yellow. Thats like If your cars instruments all read high or low, except your oil temp. You really don't know how fast you are going, what rpm your engine is going at, what your engine temp is, etc. But thank God your oil temp is sitting easy.

Grrr. I am not saying that I do not look out for global warming information, but I have not been convinced by anything offered thus far. And this sort of thing really cooks my goose as a scientist. I believe that science is a pursuit of physical truth and an effort to explain how things work with the knowledge available. To act otherwise is to betray a scientist's fundamentals IMO.

Gotta get some clothes on now. Work time.

See y'all later.

Productive Day

And by productive, I mean I painted my pants off. I am sure y'all are tired of the mini-talk, but I must say, I finished my banshee squad of 10, including the exarch. Those are some sexy bitches right there. I have one banshee left, but it isn't necessary. All it gives me is an 11th if i want 2 banshee squads or a swap if I do not want to pay for the exarch (being as the squad cap is 10).

I also primed and painted 1 of the 5 shining spears. I cranked it out, but it didn't truly excite me. Ultramarine blue and mythril silver theme. I am going to put silver on future jetbike canopies. This one is too blue.



And finally, I did a conversion I had been waiting to do: a jetbike mounted farseer. I used a high elf lord of some sort for Warhammer to make a farseer. More went into this of course. The Elf bit was a torso with head and two arms: one holding a spear and the other a sword. I cut the sword hand off at the wrist the cut that arm off at the should, right along a fancy armor shoulder pad thingy. I then took the handless arm and pinned it in place so that a hand could be attached and would be at the right angle to grip the steering handle. Jetbike was the other old school harlequin bike i had. I also used the Harlequin Rider's legs and pinned them to the torso. I cut the hand from a plastic jetbike pilot's arm so that i had a gripping hand. I also fashion a cape for the farseer out of blue/white putty. Not as stiff as I would like, but I had no brown stuff or other putties. Suggestions for the future?

I will get pictures up soon, but my multimedia reader is on the fritz at the moment.

[edit] Pictures Added on 4-21-08. I like the last one of the Farseer leading the Fire prism into battle.
Speak at y'all soon

Painting Update

So, I am painting again. It feels goooood. I got my fire prism finished on Tuesday and a vibrocannon finished yesterday. Today, I painted one howling banshee. I am proud of this banshee squad. I have 5 painted now in addition to the exarch. I have five more to go. I got the spare, that way i can have a squad of 6 and 5 instead of 10 and none if I want (also, i had no choice in acquiring the spare ;) ).


What do I plan to paint after I finish my banshees? I am thinking all my rangers 12-15 in some range of finish and my classic dire avenger squad are both high on the list. Also, the shining spears (all 5!). I think that would be the order too ( rangers, avengers, shining spear). I do have to pick up some sort of stripping agent for several of the models however. Some of the classic avengers have 2-5 layers of paint on them! Goodbye detail. But I am going to reclaim them, as well as strip the black primer from the majority of my rangers. I am a skull white primer guy myself.

Talk to you kids later

So long time no speaky

Getting another entry in, being as i have been throwing up everything but my shoes and therefor have nothing BETTER to do.

Ex-girlfriend so mention in previous entry, has returned to current girlfriend status. Woot! She is great to say the least.

Also when sick and throwing up, I seemed to have been inspired to paint. I painted a new autarch for my eldar miniature army. Please hold your snickering until the end.

Below is unadulterated, ooey gooey, not fit for some households, war gaming geek talk. If you have no knowledge of Warhammer 40k, you might do best to stop here. I will not explain myself.

So below are some pics of a two day work. Painted the jetbike Sunday night and the rider today while I wasn't puking. I used the new autarch on a jetbike rider and additional bits for the rider, but the jetbike is the old school version with a rare harlequin jetbike hood/canopy. I had to convert the eldar rocket launcher, representing a reaper launcher, in order to fit it onto the bike. a few spots filed down so that it fit flush (importantly where the top of the launcher meets the canopy). I also drilled out a spot to mount the launcher with a pin made from a paperclip. In order to do that i had to saw off one of the shuriken catapults on the under carriage. I plan to use this bit as either a shuriken pistol on a dire avenger exarch or a harlequins kiss for the harlequin jetbike rider i plan to convert into a troop. Still thinking on that one.




















So those are the pics, hope you like them!
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