Friday, April 28, 2006

I've heard similar stats,

Thanks 4 the encouragement. it's like 99.9% of new businesses fail. Unlike a traditional retail business, where you can see your customers, being in the channel am haveing a tough time just getting the business moving and finding all the right companies to work with & negotiating terms. But yeah, its not even just starting a business. Even the manufacturing biz is tough right now. There's a deal i'm working on, for the next 3-4 years, but just getting pounded on the negotiations, but if successful, it adds about 200-300 workers in our factory workforce.

JDP corporation, so i guess i have 1 failure so far. 2 more to go! =D

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Oi, Dat's me leg.

Those of you who visit Slashdot may know that Slashdot is putting on a site CSS redesign contest. Well a few of the ideas were posted and one joke site just struck me as just stupid funny.

D>M>
Boo-urns

Startin' a bid-niz is relatively easy, making it work beyond the first couple years is tough nuts. If making it big was as easy was a matter of just doing it, everyone would be rich, but that is ludicrous. If everyone made it, well, inflation would keep that in check.

And so I train again tomorrow. Boooo. My boss gave the last temp the axe after she called in the second and a half day absent in two weeks. D'oh.

D>M>
Business

Very few people get rich easily Johnny. Most people struggle and fail in business, there are only a VERY select few that get rich quick. And most of those people have a history of failing before making it. I remember reading/hearing that most breakout successful entrepreneurs have 3 failed ventures under their belts before making it.

Medical Records and 10d6 Web Development wish you the best of luck!

(my first two failed attempts at business ventures.)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Prepare to be creeped out:

www.rentmydaughter.com

www.rentmyson.com


edit: guess they got taken down. Interesting. I wonder if that means they actually WERE joke sites, or if the law enforcement types caught up with them. I guess we'll never know! Here's a cached copy of the daughter one: LINKY

Until then, there's always the brilliantly satirical www.blackpeopleloveus.com and www.zombo.com to satisfy your internet-itch.

edit edit: THE TARGET EQUALS THE DISPLAY, MOTHERFUCKERS!
Business is Hard. Fuck.

It is NOT like a game where you draw a card and you get $500 or deliver some goods to a certain city for a major payoff. Business Sucks. I wish it was simple like a game. I wonder how people become successful so easily. /wonder

Philosophy on Kids
Just don't want em. It's fun when it's like a library, where you can check out a kid for a few hours and then return them to the store. Or like you can rent them from your friends and then just give them back. That's ideal. Other than that, yeah only the gene pool mixing is much fun, like a Mr. potato head computer game. But then even then you only get one shot at it and it's permaglued.

(however, am excited for both Art and Eric)!

How much do you guys charge to rent a kid per hour?
Johnny

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Yeah, we just did a measurement (as best we could with a squirmy kid) with a tape measure and came up with about 33-34 inches tall at just 18 months old... She's a bean-pole like her dad and mom were as kids, that's for sure. She'll probably grow another 3-ish inches between now and her 2nd birthday (which is when you're supposedly able to double their height for an approximate adult-height).. which would put her just a hair over six foot tall.
ahhhh what a cutey! And yeah, she's WAY bigger than the last time I saw pics of her!
And, they grow SO fast. We had Michelle's sister over a week or so ago with her new baby (3 mos) and I couldn't believe how giant Haylee looked in comparison. It's very very strange to not see the incremental size increases until you see a comparison. Heh. BTW, here's one of the latest, taken on Easter. Yay for candied eggs.

Saying that C3PO card can't be proven to be faked is like saying that we couldn't prove Barry Bonds was on steroids.

I'll second what E had to say about parenting. There is some downtime involved, especially when they start exploring their own imagination and personal playtime/space. I get most of my school reading done in these bits of time during the day. That being so, there are some significant schedule demands like waking up when the kid wakes up, making sure you're feeding them 4-5 meals a day.. getting excercise, reading books, so on and so forth. Plus, the whole "going out on a whim" thing kind of doesn't exist anymore without also planning on dragging along all of the related baby gear.

Seriously though, I think the parental instinct kicks in and you just don't mind the shift in responsibility and focus. It's fun being a kid again (even though she wears me out.. LOL.. I dunno where they get all that energy. I swear she could run full speed for 3 days straight)

On that note.. Gotta go make some grilled cheese and chocolate shakes. Weeee!

=)

Monday, April 24, 2006

C3pENiS

I donno. That photo just seems so ludicrious. I mean how did they ever pass muster? Was it a bunch of blind nuns that did the production run? Jeebuz. Someone pulled the wool over the eyes of the Topps editors. Crazy nuts.

I just got back from watching the Mets get their asses handed to them by the Giants. Really good seats. Yaaa for Graft and Corruption. Although, I think when the new company buy us, that gravy train will be over. Booo to strict banker's ethics. Sorry Ry, I still like Hockey much more in the flesh than any other sport, including blurnsball.

ElZar. Honestly I am too impatient with the lit'le ones. I have always been that way with kids. I am enterained for about 2 minutes and then uggg. Hence the reason I was such a Jack ass to my brother and sister sometimes.

In other slightly related notes: Elrock... Peter Ennis. Just ludichrist. Come on, that is a sick joke, his parents HAD to know. Either that or his parents were from a hole in the ground.

D>M>
yeah after watching the dvd I "got" all their albums again. Ew. Can't really listen to Gray Race or another one (New America or something) but everything else is pretty awesome. That was a great concert dvd huh. I'm with Enron on the kid thing. I think my answer to everything would also be "because" lol. Fuck, I can just imagine that.
Fuck Face

I own the fuckface baseball card. Funny that. I own the baseball card, but not the Star Wars card.

As far as you being a dad Enron, you are already a dad to more people in your life than you really should be (or realize I think), so I think you would have no problem taking the reins for real. Leslie and I both agree, you would be Dy-No-Mite! Sure, I feel the sting of missing personal time already, but I think that hinges on the fact that right now Wylie is a one way street, he gives nothing back to the cause, he just sits there, eats, craps, cries, coos, and sleeps. When that changes in the next few months, my personal time will be spent with him by choice. Am I giving up gaming? Hells no!

Not to mention that I think we can all agree, I can give anyone a run for their lazy money. When it comes to child rearing there is plenty of time to be lazy. Also, plenty of time to be frantic as frack, but again, the laziness subsides and is replaced by desire and responsibility.

I dunno. I think you will rock. And don't worry, you are NOT doomed to repeat the failures of your parents. As long as you have someone to check you, that won't happen.

DISCLAIMER: I have been a dad for all of 18 days.

The BR playlist r00lz. Ryan picked up a BR live at the Palladium 2005 DVD, and it was awesome! Interviews and like 30 songs! Good stuff, made me wanna buy the albums I missed over the years, if nothing else than to be a completeist and to support the BR cause! Fuck the kids!

C3Pr0n. Hilarious!
C3Pr0n

I dunno man, I got that image from snopes.com and they are pretty hard to fool. But decide for yourself!
I wanna sleep

I think someone on TheActionTeam yelled, "Fuckin' rockstars" at NoFX one too many times, and they decided they would have us all by not singing such a delicious song. Maybe not.

Based on e|Z4r and 0 Rugs comments, I have decided children are not in my future. I am too selfish to have a child I think. That and I am lazy. Kids give you no choice in the lazy department. Either you clean their crap, or it will end up somewhere unwanted. Booo... Besides I would make a lame Dad. My answer to evrything will be needless untrue, albiet funny to me, or "Because". That is the worst thing to say, but I would still say it.

I have to say it took me a while to really master the Farm thing. I still suck at Carcassone, but I am less so than before.

Snake bitey defected!

You know j0rn, the Golden rod thing I was refering to was a true transposition misprint. That one you posted, I call bullshit on that. One too many kids with Photoshop. The original published "Goldenrod" mistake was a transposition of card titles. It occured on a card in which R2D2 had his 'hip' phallic computer interface device extended. The C3PO title from another card, AKA goldenrod, was swapped with the R2D2 title. Only a few of these were printed before they caught the mistake. It was a little more subtle than the oops it fell at the percise moment to look like a big golden penis.

j0rn, I think you didnt get into PBI because it was WWII. I had always though you would dig PBI in the old days since it was more or less a board game represented by minis. In other words PBI did not have the fuzziness of miniture games (i.e. line of sight and tape measuring) that you used to dislike so much back then.

Gas = teh suX0r. Good thing I dont have wheels. Check this gas price map out. $3.13/Gal in my zip code. Ass!

3|Z4r : How is the BR heavy rotation plan going?

D>M>

Sunday, April 23, 2006

NOFX Lullaby's

Death of John Smith. What a fucking great song. What a pisser that in all the times we saw them, they NEVAR played it live! The worst was the time they were taking requests, then Fat Mike STARTED to play it, then said it was too hard and stopped.

Makes a good lullaby, though.
Drinking

Yeah, it's very far and few between anymore. My day is filled mostly with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.. which is alright. I can watch Shrek, The Incredibles, Mulan (the current marathon watch-it-over-and-over pick'o the daughter) a dozen times on end, read the same books over and over and go look at all the animals in Petco however many times she wants to and it's all a lot of fun to see the world fresh through her eyes. I find the only "me" time I get is when she's asleep or after the entire household is asleep.. and I can make some decisions about what I want to do. The bummer is usually that those decisions revolve around deciding to sleep, eat, bathe or do school work and not which booze or game I'm going to binge on. I find myself existing on about 6-7 hours of sleep a night these days, with the occaisonal 1-2 hour daytime nap with Haylee, sometimes. That is, if I don't want to eat, bathe or get some school work done instead. Sigh.

But.. adult malted beverages are not often had these days. Not just because of baby, but because we're living under the in-laws' roof, and while I don't think they'd protest, I'd feel a bit weird shelving a sixer or a fifth of booze in the house when I know it so directly conflicts with their religious objections (however misplaced they may be). Tangent: I've always found it funny that a glass of wine is a severe no-no (or heaven forbid a Dr. Pepper), but it's plenty okay to stuff unlimited Twinkies or fried chicken gizzards down your gullet.. because those are healthy and take care of your bodily temple and all that.

/rant

Anyhow.. where was I. Adult beverage. Not too often anymore. About the only time I indulge beyond a single beer or glass of wine is if Michelle and I go out for an evening and I'm not the designated driver for the evening.. and that's like once every other month at most I think. LOL.

Left-turn:

Right now, I'm busting ass hard on two animation projects for school. One is a 20-40 second 3d animated sequence with 5-10 cameras used and over 100 hours of labor. It's rediculous how much time it takes to create these things. Of course, a lot of my pain and suffering has to do with learning a completely new interface this semester and having a professor that thinks its more important to make his students feel inferior than it is to teach them how to do anything. My other animation project is in Flash (which I've never worked with before).. which is incredibly easier to do.. but the results are much less spectacular in terms of cinematic greatness. The assignment was to create an animation including stars and fish.. so of course I'm going to have the fish mangle and eat the stars. YARRRR!!! =)

Ok, back to working on my animation project. It's due wednesday and it takes me over an hour to render each single 10 second sequence, which I then need to take into video-post for editing and compilation. Brutal. Anyway. That way probably way more information that anyone wanted to read through. Sorry.

~O.

P.S. - Jael, I haven't forgotten about your Vitamins.. just haven't been able to come up for air in the last few weeks. I have been thinking about it though. Even if it's lame, I promise to get you something by next weekend. =)
Carcassonne

As far as my experience with Cockassonne goes, which is numerous two player games, and the occasional 3 player, with various expansions added and removed, here is how we have played:

1) Little shit roads and cities are scored often, with the occasional longer road thrown in for good measure. This changes with the Road Bandit expansion, as well as the Inns & Cathedrals.

2) Big cities are fun, and lucrative. Often cities never really score more than 10 points, BUT if someone starts to build a larger city, then someone else tends to try and steal the thunder by building another city close by and attaching them. That's how the 30+ point cities happen. This of course changes with the King expansion, as well as the Princess and Dragon.

3) Farms are the name of the game, which is why I hated the first game, because Jr0n knew about that, and how to play and score farmers, and I didn't. So I went though the game thinking I was doing well, and then was crushed by the farmers. Anyway, usually the games are about cities and roads, with someone occasionally laying down a farmer early on with the hopes the board develops in their favor. Then as the game nears the end, it is all about farming, and connecting farms, and stealing other peoples farms. But really, the points are so high, farms rule the day. I have not played with the Pig expansion yet, nor the new 'Officail" German scoring which drops the value to 3pts a city rather than 4. Then the Pig boosts the cities to 4.

All in all, good times. Have not played the Builders and Traders expansion yet, but looking forward to it!

And as far as Envirochrist goes, I think it is a backlash against a Republican/Me-First government and policies that are destroying the earth faster than it can heal itself. Bad things are coming if we continue to consume at this pace, but whatever. Wylie and Haylee can deal with it, right? Give me Social Security!
Goldenrod

I don't think I hated PBI. I think I always just showed up too late to play.

So, I grew out a goatee. What do you know, there's about a 1-inch square patch of gray whiskers in it. WTF is up with that!?? I have a couple of gray hairs (like 3) on my head as well. Disturbing! I'm gonna shave the beard today so I never, ever have to think about or worry about getting older, ever again.

Enron and I had some good time gamin' yesterday. We met out at Endgame and picked up the newly released Hordes rulebook. I'm not particularly planning on collecting a Hordes faction, but it's nice to have the rulebook since it has the fully errata'd ruleset in it.

(The only difference between the factions is the difference between Focus and Fury. In a nutshell, Fury is a reversal of the Warcaster-->Warjack focus relationship. The monsters generate Fury points by doing the kinds of things that Warjacks need to spend focus on (boosting rolls, extra attack, power attacks, etc.). The warlock in turn transfers that generated Fury to himself and spends it to power his spells and attacks. However, the warlock's ability to transfer the Fury off the beasts is limited, and if you push them too far you run the risk of getting them super-fuckin'-pissed at which point they frenzy and become uncontrollable. I haven't played with my box set yet but it seems like a fun variation. Perhaps Enron and I will have a Magnus vs. Skorne smackdown soon!)

Anyway, the most important news of all is that I am once again the rightful owner of Whitey Snakebitey!

PBI&J&B

Ah yes, drinking. I remember that was fun. Remember that Art? I am lucky to have a beer with dinner. And by dinner I mean a meal that I eat at some point during the day or night that may be my first of the day, or third, I can't really tell anymore.

And yes, we were WAY misinterpreting the rules. Without having the rulebook infront of me, I think it was that the German HMG add's +3 dice to the TOTAL firing dice, and the way we were 'playing' was that they added +3 to every AP spent on shooting, and at the same time I think the BAR got a -1. So, when we put the two together, it was like a 4 dice swing per AP, and left the Ami's shooting like 3 dice (which was the same as a normal rifle squad), unless at a clustered square, and the Krauts shooting like a 15 for the same AP's spent. It was brutal, but man, I was going to find a way to beat that broken game, which as it ended up was not infact broken at all! I don't believe I ever came close, there was no way to ever put enough firepower consistently to pin squares, let alone, kill anyone...

I remember playing a pretty good game with Jael at the Highland house. I don't remember the details, but I think Jr0n was there and hated every minute of it.

Now I just need to figure out what was stolen and what remains and find some mini't to plug the holes.
Envirochrist

Is environmentalism a 21st century religion? Can we just pay for salvation? In which case, if we are so guilty of living, we really should um... stop exploiting the 3rd world countries resources, dumping all our shit overseas and um oh yeah... cheap labor. terrapass.com. Yeah... this is old news but whatever.

I hear gas prices in the states is over 3 bucks a gallon. I feel bad for you guys. Gas here is pretty pricy here too. ugh.

On Carcasonne:
Found some Euro-French people that played Carcasonne! They sure play different and strangely adept. I found that the cutthroat strategies that we employ are no match for their European Collectiveness. Dam peacemongers frenchborgians. So I have found the best way to make points in that game is, 1) roads in the beginning gives you good points 2) Farmers determines the wieenners and 3) cities are actually not so good for points UNLESS you find a few people to build with you. If you are not in a team city build, you are SOL. You can easily get 60-80 points by building with 2-3 players. So cities are just means to stay in the game.

On PBI:
I'll play. see u in June.
PB&J

PBI was a good game; although, there were some seriously flawed game play issues that I remember. I think maybe it was a misunderstanding/misinterpretation our part and lack of clarity of the rules. I think there was something about the Germans being ridiculously powerful. I remember that you refused to play anything other than the Americans in the hopes that you could defeat the evil Nazis even with the odds stacked against you. I will have to look at the new rules. Although, it has been so long, I probably would not notice the differences. Elzar, are they online? Or are they only available through such quality game store distribution centers as BrookBlurst? Typing while you are buzzed is hard. Stupid martinis.

D>M>