whoa is right...new tron legacy trailer, via aicn.

it's probably moot to point out the decline (in my eyes) of modern blogs, given the difference in the number of posts between when i started this blog (2004...2003??), and now (seven years later).  no, this isn't an entry saying "fuck it...i'm shutting it down", but i do find it interesting that the conversations been brought up more often lately with some of my friends who do still have their own journals.  tho many of them have evolved into either photo journals or topic specific sites...the personal online journal doesn't seem to be as prevalent amongst my friends as they once were.  between facebook, twitter, etc...the actual online journal itself seems to be an inefficient relic, given the (intentional) immediacy of facebook and twitter and all the other on-the-second sites out there, not to mention the network aspects of a journal.  networking is the intention of those sites, whereas a journal (to begin with anyway) is an island in a vast sea that has to be discovered.  but then again, who knows the permanence of those other sites...whereas i get to determine the permanence of this one.  so that in and of itself will always give it an advantage, even if i'm too lazy to post regularly.  anyway...

i went out and did stuff...yea.  seven years down and the day-to-days get reeeal boring when written out.  a better writer could make my daily rhetoric fascinating.  but i've found in my years writing this journal that i in fact suck pretty bad as a writer.  i thought i was a super writer in high school...but then again, i probably thought my emo poetry also had depth and convoluted meanings too.  lulz. 

amongst the fun had in the past weeks tho included a big crew dinner at excellent pork chop house, binge drinking at john and amy's, scratcher's for sean's big 3-0, morning coffee with steph, and candela candela for di's berfday...and subsequent e.vil roaming with the left over crew.  as an aside too...since it's always fun to point out how small this city is.  alyson had brought her friend lily to di's berfday dinner, and it was pointed out how she was from cornell too (this is not uncommon, given the size of cornell).  what was funny however tho was after the usual name exchange, lily goes "i remember you...", and i'm thinking..."from....?".  "freshman year.  you were on my floor."  yea...what the shit.  full disclosure however...alyson's husband also happened to be my freshman year roommate...and the connection there between him and lily is probably easily made.  still fascinating, this network we live in however.  we then proceeded to try and recollect other names and faces from our freshman dorm...with limited success  after all these years, i've only ever kept in touch with greg.  everybody else eventually fell away, and by my second year, 99% of my friends were cornell architects.  damn that dungeon.

fun things on the horizon...one of the animator's i became friends with during my time in amsterdam (he's actually hungarian) has made the jump across the ocean, and is now a giddy new yorker.  so i get to play tour guide again.  woot.  it's always good to start fresh new yorkers off on the right foot.  we don't want them going down the path of shitty and retarded.  like hanging out in meat packing...or thinking murray hill is a viable area to have fun in.

perusing today's penny arcade and then reading the subsequent story (i'm not a console gamer, so it's all news to me) reminded again that there is a vast sea of dickery out there in the gaming world.  for the most part it's easy to avoid, or in my particular case of warcraft gaming, the instances of dickery are usually so infantile that it's easy to channel out. 

i found it coincidental then that i had to deal with my own dickery as recently as yesterday.  as any wow gamer knows, the daily pug (pick-up group for the uninitiated) is a ritual many go thru to get their shiny emblems.  i usually get mine out of the way early in the evening before a raid or just logging off and heading out the door.  i've been lucky, in that the groups i'm usually tossed into have been amiable.  yesterday pretty much shit all over that semi-flawless track record.  the run itself started off pretty bad.  upon zoning in (cos), the healer states he needs to break for 5 minutes to go shit.  i go "wtf", while the tank decides to just leave.  awesome.  a new tank arrives shortly, but starts bitching about the length of the "role-play" until he notices that we're already well into the dialogue.  red flags go up however as he liberally tosses out "fag" and "shit" in his typical communiqué.  fine, whatever.  we get thru the first half, and then the healer decides to bail too all of a sudden.  maybe he was clairvoyant. 

a replacement arrives and we continue on.  the tank wants to do an achievement, and dishes out vague and retarded directions to the rogue to do so and so.  the rogue does as he's told, and we don't get the achievement.  more "fags" are tossed about in party chat.  i tell him to shut the fuck up.  he immediately retorts with "no you" (oh shit), and proceeds to go on a diatribe about how i'm fat (hardly) and a nerd (possibly) and have never seen a vagina (i have...they're nice).  i'm unaccustomed to being bombared with 3rd grade insults, so i just tell him to stop breathing and point out that he's a fucking idiot for calling others nerds while within an online game.  he continues on about people not having seen vaginas and butchering the use of "your" vs "you're".  its intolerable.  i'm mashing the 'vote to kick' option but we're in combat.  by the time i can however, we're at the last boss, and i think "fuck it".  we jump on the last boss, i notice the little dick's not tanking...so i proceed to tank and kill the boss with little to worry about.  i type out a last message suggesting he's a failure at many things, including this game and life, and leave immediately.  in hindsight (of course), i...and we as a party, could've probably 1. gotten him killed on the last boss, 2. had him kicked properly, or 3. track down his personal info and hire professional hitmen to torment him and anyone he's associated with.  the first and second didn't happen for various reasons, and the third option can be costly and possibly illegal.  so i just put in a ticket to a gm to have him suspended.  hopefully we'll hear good news today!

USELESS HEADER
it's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks, january and february.  my first attempt to see my new niece josie was thwarted by a massive snow poop.  then my niece may's bday celebrations were snowed out too by passing snowstorms (whups), which in turn pushed our backlogged plans into my dad's 60th birthday vicinity.  eventually we just met up this past weekend to consolidate my seeing my new niece for the first time, may's birthday (well...really just giving her her gift), and a lunch for my dad.  silly weather...stop fucking up my plans.

I WENT OUT
prior to that tho was the usual smattering of dinners and drinkage, amongst them ippudo with sara (wow...finally.  fuck you ippudo), le singe vert with margie, and harefield road drinkage for fonz and erin's post-wedding celebrations (even tho they married over a month ago).

THIRD PLACE
as a random aside too, while we were hanging out at my parents house this past weekend, i went digging thru my room for some things i'd left behind when i moved to my new apartment.  and by chance i came across a bronze track medal i won my freshman year (the only medal i won during my short but illustrious career).  so of course i snatched it up to bring home.  my brother-in-law dave mentioned how they don't really give out medals anymore.  instead they give trophies to the school.  i'm thinking to myself, wow...that sucks. so much for individual achievements.  not to mention the medals pretty boss.  anyhoo, it's going on display somehow in my apartment.  maybe i'll frame it.  woot.

work's killer right now, and i spend my free time playing online or drinking alcohol, both of which let me "get away".  like calgon, except alcoholic.

in the meantime, here's my desktop wallpaper at work.  that is all.  (and yes, i'm sporting dual monitors)

crap, the journal has yet again fallen to the wayside.  i'm going to blame....*spins the wheel-o-blame"...my job this time.  for inundating me with short deadlines and then making me tired once i get home.  ya.  for real.

i had on the agenda a massive post ala anna's year-end photo recollection, but that's turning out to be taking muuuuuch longer than anticipated.  so fuck it.  i'll post it when i post it.  in the meantime tho, a recollection of the year thus far.  it's already halfway thru january...time just continues to fly right by.



JOSIE ELLA
first and foremost...welcome josie ella to the world!  my new niece. ella was my suggestion too.  she rocks.  niece's rock, because i get to be a proud uncle without having to deal with the actual parenting.  it's a win-win situation.  a concern we're having at the moment however is, given her older sister's astonishingly advanced developmental state (i know parents/uncles/whatever always say this...but seriously, this is not hyperbole), we've postulated that she may in fact turn out to be functionally retarded.  or something.  too many awesome genes were invested in may.  we don't know what was left for josie.  i know...feel the love emanating from her uncle.  just kidding, we <3 josie.

REWIND
two weekends ago was hot pot at my place with jen di, sarah, and crew.  i'm very much liking a semi-regular hot pot to be honest.  it's a social activity that involves everything i love...eating, drinking liquor, and watching movies.  we followed this up with thursday noodling at the excellent pork chop house with di and em.  they'd never been, so i felt like it was my obligation to wise them to the goodness that is taiwanese cuisine.  we headed next door after dinner to apotheke, which was hilarious considering two drinks cost more than the entirety of our dinner a few feet away.  they however did send us free rounds of their mulled wine, called gluwein.  very soothing.  after apotheke, we migrated to the whiskey tavern to meet up with more people and continue our drinking (with the addition of tater tots).  i felt like shit the next morning...it was super.

and hmm...yea, i didn't do shit this past weekend.  doh!

2010 sounds so futuristic...oooh.  spacepacks and robotic servants.  well, i still haven't gotten my spacepack in the mail, but i did get a roomba.  that thing is all kinds of awesome.

i meant to post a bit earlier, but it was a relatively dull and uninteresting holiday.  avatar in 3d imax on christmas eve with max and patsy, then minca ramen with fonz the following tuesday, and then up in the air with sally and nicky on saturday.  all days in-between were spent either 1. staring at my ceiling, 2. watching anime, 3. playing wow online, or 4. staring at my roomba trying to get out of my living room.  awesomeness.

and as a secondary excuse, i meant to post earlier, but i was also waiting to get pictures of my new niece, who was born yesterday.  bro-in-law is seriously slacking on the facebook front. post, damnit!  god knows my sis is in no shape to post.  i know...she told me herself that they don't have wifi in the hospital (the horror!).  anyhoo, so this is a post to tide myself over until i can post real pics of my new niece...who's name isn't even 100% set in stone yet.  hmph...

these spam comments i've been getting lately have been making me wonder just what is a real comment and what isn't.  they're usually vague comments that have somewhat of a connection to the topic, but they're otherwise nonsensical and may reference things that don't even relate to the entry.  at this point i'm also pretty glad i upgraded mt...otherwise i would've had alot of spam scrubbing to do.

i'm wondering at this point whether that cowboy bebop commenter is even real.  if you're reading this btw, feel free to comment again.  otherwise i'm deep-sixing that comment and link at the end of the week.