the WU reborn

Chess

Chyi's beau Jonas recently turned me on to online chess which is great because I never get to play anymore. I've never been too good at it, but I have played from a young age.

If any of you want to play, click the above link and sign up or you can just e-mail me and I'll send you and invite from the site. It's free and lets you play in a turn-based fashion; we make about one move a day or so, sometimes more.

03.04.04 UPDATE: I have been playing quite a bit with several people and (to my horror) hit the daily turn limit of 25. If you intend on playing more than 25 moves a day, you can sign up for their membership, which is like $50 for 2 years, and less for less time.

Let's Get One Thing Straight

Baker Street, by Gerry Rafferty kicks ass. Baker Street by the Foo Fighters blows for beer money. This is not to say that I dislike The Foo Fighters; on the contrary, I think they're quite clever. I just hate the cover.

Word.

Sound Card Surgery

My computer's sound has been on the fritz for a week or so, just in time for spring break. Being lazy, I'd neglected to try to troubleshoot it until Snoop's continued taunts about phatt-ass trance tracks on ets-global finally got to me.

My mission was to troubleshoot it without taking the PC apart as I didn't want to deal with dusting the inside (see aforementioned laziness).

After the obvious checking connections and rebooting, I tried all of the usual techniques (refreshing in device manager, etc) and finally put it to a few of my other tech support friends. They all said to take it apart and move the sound card, which I was trying to avoid. In the end, I conceded to it, and of course that worked.

Nothing like cleaning out a PC when it's too cold to go outside to do it. It's not like the old days when we'd just set PC's up on the desks of employees who were a little too wise-ass for their own good and open the valve on the freon-o-matic. Some of those computers had more dust in them than a tomb.

Anyway, I feel like I've just smoked a pack of Lucky Strikes but at least I have sound again. It's this very respiratory issue that reminds me why I'm taking English classes instead of working on computers. Now I can hack up dust from old bookstores instead of computer labs.

Things I Learned Today

1. Never sleep with your contact lenses in.

2. Chewing Advil does not make them work faster or taste better.

3. Several things related to goats and sheep:

a. Mutton, or sheep meat also means "prostitute."
b. Goat also means "a lecherous man."
c. Goat meat is called chevron.
d. Chevron, an American marketer of gas and oil opts for stupid looking smiling cartoon cars and plain red white and blue logos when clearly big bloody piles of goat meat are the superior choice.

4. While it seems that so little in life depends on what we say or do, and so much in life depends on how we make another person feel, sometimes that doesn't mean shit either.

5. Fraternal twins can share a placenta.

Ferry Corsten Show

Snoop and I climbed in ye olde rental crate and headed down to Chicago last night for the Ferry Corsten show. He spun with a higher ratio of CD's than I'd seen people do before, something Armin is doing as well. I thought the show was not as good as the Armin one: the tracks were great, but somehow it lacked a bit of the energy, although Armin is hard to keep up with. I've posted a photo in the March album.

Beforehand, we met up with Karl, Bryan and his brother Jeff for a late dinner at the 24 hour Korean barbecue at San Soo Gab San. Bryan introduced me to this place initially, and it's quickly become one of my favorite eateries in Chicago.

Snoop drove us home as I was catatonic from being up at 6 a.m. so props to him for that. I slept like a rock dreaming of tropical fish tanks.

Contacts

After a twenty-some year hiatus, I've decided to give contact lenses a second chance. I'm happy to report that this time around, it's been going much better, in part due to the new lenses being soft ones while their predecessors were mom-recommended hard ones. There's nothing quite like jamming hard plastic in your eye at 7 in the morning, and sadly my trial lenses didn't make it past day three last time.

The movement toward a specatacle-free me is driven from a deisre to not have foggy glasses while snowboarding and an unlikelihood that I'm ever going to get less clumsy. A few weeks ago, (two days after replacing the lenses of my glasses to be exact), I placed my glasses beside me on my bed while taking a catnap. I woke up to them pushing against my leg and The Pickwick Papers under my side. When I retrieved my glasses from beneath me, they were bent slightly: enough to distort vision and require a trip to Lenscrafters to get them bent back in shape. That was the last straw.

The solution that I was given doesn't require me to rub the lenses at all, something that I was a bit concerned about given the aforementioned clumsiness. It's a bit weird seeing myself clearly in the mirror without glasses on, since any other time I've looked at myself in the mirror without the aid of glasses, I've been a bit blurry.

All in all, I think it's a good thing, but time will tell. Now I can finally go shopping for all those cool sunglasses I've always wanted!

Total Write Off

Well, that's the news on the car, which is good. Otherwise, I'd have to wait weeks to get it all fixed up, which is a lot of waiting for parts to be shipped in, etc. It rots. I have to drive down to Cudahy to get my snowboard rack back, and supposedly my assessor will be giving me details about arranging for the payment. I'll have to tell her that I want small, unmarked bills.

Dave Blog

For your viewing entertainment, Dave has finally caved in and started a blog. The link is on the right with the other friend's weblog links. Or, you can get up in it here.

Bad Album Art

Today, courtesy of Mark, I present you with:

The 10 Worst Album Covers of All Time

While they are all genius, I think #2 is my favorite. #5 is also the ownage.

Car Theft Photos Posted

I got a call from Angela, my assessor today around 9 a.m. She said that I'd need to go down to the towlot to release my car. I did, and on the way saw an accident. There's a photo included in the photo album. I waited for 20 minutes or so, and was finally admitted to see my car, which was violated pretty thoroughly. Here are the photos. My snowboard rack is intact. I'll get that off the car later.

Afterwards, I swung by El Rey grocery store, hoping to get some huevos rancheros or divorciados or something. To my surprise, they were serving lunch too so I got my combinacion plate on. Yum.

Went to class, then headed out to bank to get notary public on my affadavit. Then I went to meet Angela to give her the paperwork.

That's it. I have to wait until the American Family guy calls me with an offer.