Because it’s March…

March 24, 2009 – 10:34 pm

This is what I expect to see from Jonny Flynn on Friday this week:

Except replace the guy getting clobbered with Blake Griffin.

No Comments / Posted in: Cool, Sports

Oh yeah, I went to Austin and it was awesome

March 21, 2009 – 7:08 pm

I went to Austin a few weeks ago. A good friend of mine from high school works for Samsung there and he’s been telling me for three years how fun Austin is. I decided it was about time to see if he was telling the truth.

And the verdict is in! Austin is awesome! So much good food! I’m feeling lazy right now, so I’ll just let some pictures do the explaining:

Texas Capitol

 

Ate at this Mexican place my first night there. Tasty stuff.

 

Played some BYOB mini golf at Peter Pan Mini-Golf. I don’t think the place had been updated since the 1970′s. I think there was lead paint peeling off the statues. Didn’t matter, it was BYOB!

 

Proof.

 

Ate at the Salt Lick BBQ. All you can eat BBQ. Bring some more beer as well as an appetite.

 

Proof.

 

Picture of 6th street.

Oh, and I can’t forget about the Alamo Draft House. Go to a movie and have food and drink brought to your seat while you watch!

1 Comment / Posted in: Beer, Cool

Dealing with phone spammers

March 12, 2009 – 12:45 pm

There’s been an epidemic, here in California at least, of phone spammers calling random numbers and playing a recording message claiming that “your car’s warranty has expired.” The recording then asks you to press 1 if you’d like to be connected to a representative, who will then try to sell you an outrageously priced extended car warranty.

A few months back I was receiving a spammy call every day on my cell phone. The calls finally stopped, but yesterday I received a call on my work phone line for the first time. This was the last straw for me. I decided to actually press 1 this time to speak with someone and have a little fun. Here’s how the conversation went.

Rep: Hello. This is [some fake name]. Would you … [some lame sales pitch].

Me: Uhh…I didn’t even realize that my warranty had expired.

Rep: Well if you could tell me your car model, year, and VIN number I can check for you.

Me: Umm…I’d have to go outside and check. My car is across the street. Can you wait a few minutes?

Rep: Sure, I can hold.

Me: Thanks, I’ll be right back.

At this point I set the phone down on my desk and did a quick search for some crappy hip hop music on YouTube. As expected, YouTube provided me with an endless supply of crappy hip hop results. I chose one and put one of my headphone speakers up to the phone and turned the volume up full blast. I let this go on for at least five minutes, assuming that the guy probably hung up after the first 30 seconds. At this point I was done amusing myself, so I picked the phone up off my desk to see if he was still there.

Me: Hello? Are you still there?

Rep: Yes, Sir. I’m still here.

Me: Okay good. I realized when I got outside that I actually don’t own a car. I have a bicycle though.

Rep: [click]

I really hope they call again today. I have a few other things I want to try.

4 Comments / Posted in: wtf

100,000 miles!!!!!!!!!

February 18, 2009 – 12:55 am

I already tweeted about this, but I think this accomplishment deserves an entire blog post dedicated to it.

Today, February 17, 2009 my stylin’ 2000 Pontiac Grand Am reached 100,000 miles as I drove past a Yahoo! building in Santa Clara. Here’s the proof:

I think it’s pretty safe to say that this is the greatest accomplishment of my life. Well, this and when my last car reached 100,000 miles.

Now where do I go from here? 200,000 miles?? 300,000 miles??? 88mph back in time???? Do you think the “Service Engine Soon” light would interfere with a flux capacitor?

1 Comment / Posted in: Cool, travel

Lala.com + Last.fm scrobbling = pure bliss

February 11, 2009 – 9:38 pm

I’ve been using lala.com for a few weeks now. It’s a great service. It lets you sync your music library with their servers so you can play your music library from anywhere with an internet connection. No reason to bring my iPod to and from work anymore. But the one caveat I had with the service was that I couldn’t keep track of my music listening trends on Last.fm like I can with iTunes or my iPod.

Until now!

Lala.com is now beta testing scrobbling your listens onto your Last.fm account! All I had to do was click on the “Tell us” link on the top left of the site and ask for the feature to be activated in my account. Within an hour, I got a reply and it was activated in my account. I’ve been scrobbling all day from lala.com. It works great so far!

Oh, and I got the tip from a lala.com reply to me on Twitter. They’ve since deleted the tweet, probably to keep the beta testing limited, or because they don’t want to be associated with me. Either way, it’s fine by me.

Update (7/12/09): It looks like the “Tell us” link no longer exists. Try asking in this form: http://www.lala.com/#contactsupport

Update (10/27/09): As Andrew pointed out in the comments below, the location to enable the feature has moved. “My Lala” > “Settings” > “Beta” link/tab at the top right.

10 Comments / Posted in: music, Tech