sad news
2004.02.26 19.12
One of my favorite uncles passed away while I was on vacation. He'll be missed. I have fond childhood memories of visiting their family when I was growing up. At Uncle Harry's I had my first videogame experience with Pong. Their dog boots inspired me to get Chewy. He was always kind and in a positive mood. I'll never forget him.HARRY BISHOP SHIELDS, age 66, of Houston, passed away Saturday, February 21, 2004. The son of Thomas and Florence Shields, he was born December 13, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Carol R. Shields; sons, Bruce Shields and his wife Deena, Paul Shields and his wife Vanessa, and Peter Shields and his wife Lea Ann; daughter, Linda Graham and her husband Russell; and grandchildren, Andrew, Sarah, Traci, Jesse, Riley, Kayla, P. J., and Jacob Shields, and James Graham. Visitation: Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Earthman Funeral Directors Southwest, 12555 South Kirkwood, Stafford. Funeral Service: Wednesday, February 25, 2004, 2:00 PM, Sugar Grove Church of Christ, 11600 West Airport Blvd., Stafford. For those desiring, memorials may be made to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Southeast Texas Chapter, 2211 Norfolk, Suite 825, Houston, TX 77098.
happy mardi gras
2004.02.24 13.51
I'm sitting at the Riverwalk Internet Cafe in New Orleans, LA. There's another internet place off Toulouse but they're closed today. Mardi Gras is an official holiday here, so shops are either closed or will close at 6 P.M. Bizarro. I figured I'd catch you up on what the Super Genius has been up to for the last few days.
Took Continental Airlines here through Cleveland, Ohio. It's boring there. I had some stuffed grape leaves and a Coke. I think that's the highlight of my visit there. The towel dispenser in the airport was cool. You wave your hand in front of it and it gives you some towel. They've just about figured out how to avoid using your hands altogether in bathrooms these days. I shudder to think when they come up with something to automatically undo your shorts. I came in on one of those small jets with two seats, an aisle and a single seat. Claustraphobia city. You can actually get away with towing three full suitcases when you're on one of these. Two in baggage and the third, while you do get to lob it around, also gets stored in the cargo because there's no room for baggage in the cabin. Nice! Did I mention that I was carrying 70 pounds of freakin' beads with me?
I made the mistake of sharing a cab with three other people who ended up getting to their destinations before I got to mine. The cab driver wasn't happy that we'd all stowed away claiming that we'd need to go to the same place. I ended up having to tow my three suitcases a few blocks. I had a few collisons with people who didn't realize that when I said ''Excuse me'' that I meant it. Seriously. The Alexa Hotel is connected to the Astor Crowne Plaza so I had some minor confusion at first about how the hell to get inside of the place. My two friends from Houston had already arrived and were chowing down at the TGI Fridays while I was trying to get in. I eventually discovered that both hotels were one in the same. I had to deal with some moron managing the Alexa Lobby who tried to tell me that I'd have to pay $25 extra per person who was staying in the room. Knucklehead was confused and wasn't about to be corrected, either. He eventually decided to escort us all walk to the Astor Lobby where everyone was properly checked in and tagged like wild animals. You can't return without your wrist tag. I feel slightly cheapened. Slightly.
The next few days are a bit of a blur. There was time spent at the Harrah's Casino where I learned how to lose playing Blackjack at the $15 table. Good times! I discovered the drinks were free, however. That's good for me. If you divide how much money I lost with how many drinks I had, I'd say each drink cost me around $30 each. I need to get back in there and drink more drinks. The parades -- I pretty much ignored them. I was done with parades back in 2001. Bourbon Street was well lit, fairly clean compared to previous Mardi Gras experiences, and relatively safe. And yes... I have video.
I got into a bit of a philosophical debate with one of those shady bible beaters that pretend to start off a conversation as if they're there having a good time. They motion to the balcony across the street and say, ''You know, a girl fell off the balcony last night and fell on her head and died. It could happen to any one of us. Unless you're saved...'' bla bla bla. Jesus! Exactly. I made a few attempts at getting this guy to recognize that his witnessing was akin to marketing and that his religion was akin to a brand. He didn't get it. It's not that I don't believe in any of it all, but the method often used to increase your market share of followers isn't any different that what some companies are doing with undercover advertising. It's hilarious, really. I tried to get the guy to watch the Matrix films and perhaps broaden his mind to what will ultimately happen to him at the time of reckoning. He wasn't interested. He saw Matrix as an action flick with guns and girls in tight spandex. I asked him about other religions and he had taken the ''those are false followers and they're goin' to hell'' position. Riiiight. So, yeah, good times. Nothing better than arguing with a rotten toothed redneck on Bourbon Street about whether or not I'm going to heaven when I die. Bleah. I want to go wherever Tara Reid is going, okay?
My success with the girlies went astronomic last night. I'm slightly modest and probably won't share my escapes here on my site. Nothing too bad and certainly nothing that wouldn't have been PG rated if I'd done it in a major motion picture. Still, I'm no longer concerned about if I'll ever hook up again. Oh, there is one tiny story I'll share. I made out with this girl who'd made out with Elijah Wood the day before. See? I can get the same girls as Elijah Wood. Tell your friends.
delay
2004.02.18 6.49
I posted some photos I took in 2001 of Eastern State Penitentiary. I'm a little backed up as far as posting new content, you might say. Coming soon: My trip to Prague in the summer of 2003.----------------------------------------------------------------- YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dear thesupergenius, You are no longer the high bidder on the following eBay item: Item name: Sharon Osbourne -- Leather Autograph Book Item number: 2597029574 Current price: US $1,025.00 Your maximum bid: $1,000.00 End date: Feb-24-04 05:00:00 PST Don't let this get away! Bid again at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2597029574
rollback vs slidebed
2004.02.16 18.13
I'm supposed to transport my DeLorean to Pigeon Forge, TN this June. I want to do it with a flatbed car carrier. In the UK these are known as slidebeds. In the states we call them rollbacks. I'd like to rent one but it's impossible to find any decent information on the web. Tow truck drivers apparently aren't especially web saavy. Nevertheless, I've added ''rollback'' to my favorite search terms notification on ebay. I figure I could buy one of these suckers, use it, sell it, and still come out ahead. Shipping via car transport companies is wayyy too expensive ($500 each way usually). More to come on this dilemma.I'm going to New Orleans on Friday night with some friends of mine and I'm glad to say I called ahead. Originally the hotel only reserved a single bed. After my phone call I'm now happy to say we'll be getting two beds and a cot. If I play my cards right I'll never have to sleep on the cot. What do they call it a cot, anyway? Cot?
I hope everyone had a nice Valentine's day. I didn't mention it in my last entry, but I dressed in all black on Saturday. Black sunglasses, trenchcoat, socks... you name it. Screw stupid Valentine's Day! Bah. That evening I was thisclose to playing Quake 3 online and drinking a lot of Merlot. Instead, I read my PHP book and listened to NPR. One of those god awful cheeseball commercials for naming a star came on. Name a star? It's such a scam. The girlfriend in the commercial was all, ''Oh my! You named a star after me? You're so wonderful!'' My arse. They say the naming is official because ''the new name is published in book form at the library of congress.'' Folks, any book published professionally is in the library of congress. That doesn't mean the star is going to be called My-Sweet-Sweety-Laurie instead of GU1984E1. How do you think the people who live on the planets that surround that sun would feel? First, they'd get fliers sent down to their planets informing them of the name change. Then they'd have to reprint all their books. Songs would have to be rewrittten. If it happened to us, people like Elton John would be super pissed. ''Don't Let My Sweet Sweety Laurie Shine Down On Me?'' Travesty. The star naming folks would of course send thugs down in case anyone was still calling the star by its old name. Bullets would fly. See what I mean when I say Valentine's day is stupid? It's so stupid that PEOPLE DIE BECAUSE THEIR STAR'S NAME CHANGED JUST BECAUSE LAURIE WAS SUCH A SWEET SWEETY!!!!!1
realize
2004.02.15 18.29
Sitting in my Philly condo on Sunday. Sun is setting. Got a ton of goodies from Best Buy and Circuit City to install. Was in Talleyville, Delaware again. In previously blog entries I mistakenly said I was in Wilmington, Delaware. My bad. Circuit City let me down while I was there. Sorta. I was buying two Western Digital WDXC1200JBRNN 120GB superfly external harddrives that were priced at $179 (after a $50 rebate). Did I get that? Hell, no. They rang up for $249 (with no rebate). Shenanigans! I call Shenanigans! Circuit City dude offered me $50 off the top for just one. Fine. I then hit CompUSA. Crap. At Best Buy I found these neat Acomdata RPH160U2E-72 160GB external Rocket Pod drives. You can stack 'em like pancakes. Yeah, they don't have neon tubes inside, but I'll live. I was then back at Circuit City and made my return. Bah.Comcast sucks. My cable connection goes in an out of consciousness every 10 freakin' minutes. Damnation! Hellfire! I can't stand it. I am tempted to dump them and move to DSL. Tempted. Ugh! This is worse than dating a manic depressive. Jesus! Just kill me now.
Ugh! Where was I? Oh. I went to the car show around 10 days ago. Pennsylvania Convention Center is HUGE. Just down the road. Got a free ticket from one of my fantastic clients. Fantastic! It took me two hours to get through every car. I hate them all except The Honda Element. That's right. I said I HATE THEM ALL. Every 2004 car in there sucked. Okay, the Corvettes didn't suck, but I've already got one at the moment. The Element is funky. I like that. It's inevitable that I'll be driving one at some point after I've made up my mind like this. My dad says to watch out for the Honda's timing belt which is supposedly notorious for causing uber-damage if it should fail. Will do, Dad.
My dog walker lives on one side of my condo with his girlfriend. They make almost no noise whatsoever. Great people. The neighbors on the other side, however, are masters of annoyance. They have some Brazilian sounding song they looooove to play every weekend. Over and over. Sometimes they sing to it. I'd like to get that electromagnetic pulse thing from ''Ocean's 11'' and point it at the wall the next time that damn song starts up. These people are also addicted to American Idol. I can't stand that show. It's just tha Simon guy degrading everyone. I had enough of that back when I was in Jr. High.
Saw ''Monster'' starring Charlize Theron this weekend. It was amazing! No wonder she didn't show up for the ''Italian Job'' premiere last year. She'd gained a ton of weight and done whatever possible to look weathered. Amazing. The movie was great. Christina Ricci was so convincing as her sidekick that all carnal desire I ever held for her was abruptly silenced like a wet towel. I'm betting Theron gets the Academy Award next weekend. People always get an award if they play and an unattractive or mentally challenged character. What's up with that? I'll take some of that action. Bring it!
sue, she is made of raw fish
2004.02.10 19.50
Had a great weekend in Houston. Went to Texas Cattle Company with the roommate. Forgot the name last time I mentioned it. May I recommend the jalapeno pork chops. Went to Number's with The Bease-Off™ and roommate. Saw some old friends including Cool Gui, his wife Corrie, CECE™ and ROXIE™. I hadn't seen CECE and ROXIE for at least five years. CECE slimmed up. ROXIE didn't. CECE was still tall. ROXIE still wasn't. CECE was prettier than before. ROXIE... had a new cellphone. Ahem. I think you get what I'm sayin'. We also met an Angelina Jolie lookalike named Olivia. We also met her boyfriend. Pfft. We chatted it up. We exchanged cards with The Boyfriend™. They insisted we go out to dinner with them sometime. I'm like, ''Sure, I'll go out and stare at your girlfriend and plot your overthrow for dinner. Where do I sign up?''Saturday came and I had a flurry of errands including driving the DeLorean out to Hockley Texas for the monthly Kickapoo Run™. I also made sure the Corvette conversion was still in the next storage stall. There's a lot of room in there. I wonder if they make a shelf thingy I could put over the car so I could use the extra storage space. I suppose I could build one. I felt my Home Depot Adrenal Glands suddenly kicking in. I went to Best Buy and bought some hardware to appease the aforementioned glands. My new 1 GB compact flash card will now insure I can take 6 megapixel photos until the cows come home. When questioned regarding the new Super Genius compact flash card purchase, the cows had no comment.
I drove to Galveston on Sunday to buy up some Mardi Gras beads. I got pulled over in Freakin' Friendswood for doing 86 in a 65. That's not a felony, believe it or not. I've already applied to take defensive driving and anty up $91 for the honor. The courthouse secretary was nice, however. I hope she buys a nice household accessory with her share of the 91 bucks. I now have a mountain of beads that I will somehow transport to New Orleans in a few weeks. Why am I going? I'm... uhhh... inspecting churches. Yeah. Oh, and for the food. And the... uhhh... Oh, forget it! You know.
Returned to Philly after waiting an extra long time on the runway in Houston. They made up for it by showing ''Master and Commander'' on the flight. I really enjoyed the action and adventure. The special effects in the battle sequences really did raise the tension level. I recommend the movie if you don't mind the fact that this is an all male ensemble piece. There is a woman for a brief moment, but she just looks up from a smaller ship and winks at Russell Crowe. He smiles, assured that he's not ugly, and walks off. The same thing happened to me at Number's on Friday. She smiled, winked, blew a kiss, then walked away. I would have followed her but she had a long piece of dirty toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe and it totally grossed me out. Next!
pins
2004.02.05 6.57
Miss my pinball machines. Had three of them: Gottlieb's Charlie's Angels, Sinbad, and Cleopatra. Two I sold back to the guy I bought them from. Another I sold to a coworker's neighbor. This was back last year when I thought I was rolling off the project. The Charlie's Angels machine I got for a shweet deal. Its ebay auction page had some bad HTML that wouldn't let anyone bid on the machine. I saved a copy of the code on my desktop, fixed the HTML problem, and submitted my bid. Easiest auction I ever won. Normally I wait 'til the last 30 seconds of an auction and launch a surprise attack. I bet people hate me. I once got a concession email from some dude I was dueling it out with during the last 30 seconds. Ah... Technology.greeting
2004.02.04 7.00
Bedside alarm goes off. It's 6 in the morning. Hit snooze. Cell phone alarm goes off. It's 6:05 AM. Opening and closing silences it. Bedside alarm goes off again. It's 6:09 A.M. Process repeats until I can't stand it anymore. I get up. I greet my dog. I hop in the shower. I hop out of the shower. I briefly wonder why I'm always hopping. I put on my bathroom goods. I weigh myself. I do a little dance. I dress. I take the dog for a walk. I drive to work. There are usually two variations to this pattern of events. The boring variation is that my car is sometimes blocked in the parking garage. I get The Garge Dudes to unblock me. Occasionally I'll move the blocker myself as the keys are left in the offending car. BMW's are pretty. The cool variation happens when I walk my dog. I usually take a walk around my building to let him do his business. As people walk past me, I've noticed nearly all of them are programmed to respond to the query, ''Hey, how you doin?'' I never ask them that. I say ''Good morning,'' smile and make direct eye contact. Most people are looking down at first and avoiding me, but when they hear ''Good morning!'' they're pleasantly surprised. Well, sometimes they wonder what the hell just happened and walk away in confision. Those that aren't frightened struggle to respond quickly. Here's the funny part of this story: They usually expect ''How you doin?'' so they say, ''I'm just fine.'' I can't count the number of times I've said, ''Good morning'' only to have someone reply, ''I'm just fine'' or ''Doin' Good!'' They walk away thinking whatever they're thinking and I never see them again. Ah... Philly.temporal displacement
2004.02.03 19.24
I saw ''The Butterfly Effect'' on Satuday while Chew had his monthly Top Dog stink cleansing at Petsmart. I loved it! The movie -- not the stink cleansing. The reviews for ''Butterfly'' have been mixed at best but I blame The Ashton Kutcher Factor given that he's so well known for playing a doofus. Any turn at a serious role elicits lots of eyeball rolling and disbelief. He'll have to work harder to distance himself from his ''That 70's Show'' character, not to mention his ''Dude, Where's My Car'' character. Hosting ''Punk'd'' doesn't help, either, because all of these shows focus on his ability to make you laugh. You don't go to see ''Butterfly'' to laugh. The premise they come up with to explain his time traveling abilities is ingenius. It's genetic, in fact. You could say that this movie owes a lot to ''X-Men'' in that the audience must accept that the natural process of evolution will result in what Kutcher's charcter can do. So, go see it. My quicky review (which was written as I was inching my way out of the theater, down the stairs, around the corner, and back into the grubby waiting arms of Cherry Hill, New Jersey): Kick ass.It's tangent time boys and girls. I'll start. There's a pretty girl that works the Petsmart Grooming counter named Priscilla. I think she's pretty. My first piano teacher was also named Priscilla. I hated her. A lot. She used to smack my hand whenever I made a mistake. I hated piano lessons as a result of this unchecked piano abuse. Dreaded them. I can't recall what precipitated the sale of the old upright piano that I practiced on. Moving, perhaps? It ended the lessons, however. I later took piano lessons from Mrs. Baron and Mrs. WhatsHerName. I can't remember Mrs. WhatsHerName's name. Maybe my sister can as we both attended piano lessons there for a few years. Boring. I still didn't like the lessons. I blame post-traumatic piano disorder. Those lessons ended when Mrs. WhatsHerName moved away for Personal Reasons™. Two friends of mine later inspired me to want to practice and learn complete songs: Trey D'Amico and Carl Manning. Trey mostly was a guitar super genius, whereas Carl was into the piano. Trey would play something on the guitar and I would do the same thing on the piano. Calr had a nice upright that he'd play around with and was kind enough to share some of his sheet music. Trey got me into Van Halen and Led Zeppelin. Carl got me into Chicago and Phil Collins. So, now I can play a lot of songs by those guys. I don't have a piano here in Philly, but I always try to work in a little practice time whenever I'm in Houston. I thought that I could use my piano playing to woo girls, but it's hard to find a public place where you can pimp your piano skillz. Joining a band would make this a lot easier. I don't know where Priscilla The Petsmart Grooming Counter girl hangs out or if there are any pianos there. Maybe I should follow her. No, no... that would be stalking. That's wrong. Maybe if I tip her and put my name and phone number on the money... and then change the voicemail on my phone so it says ''Hey, I can't talk right now -- I'm playing my piano...'' Yeah! That'll work. Okay, tangent time is over. Your turn.
