Paris Hilton engaged to Paris? .... Latsis
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ubiquitous socialite Paris Hilton is engaged to marry her boyfriend of five months, Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis, People magazine reported on its Web site on Monday.
"They are happy and excited," Hilton's spokesman, Rob Shuter, was quoted as telling the magazine. It said that Latsis proposed last Wednesday and that no date has been set for the wedding.....
Damn while they may not have a date for the wedding as soon as they announce one Im sure everyone can harbor a guess at when the dissolution could be. Paris is the last person I could imagine getting married but hey can you say next f'ed up married couple reality show. Maybe they could call it Paris Squared or something like that. He's an heir shes a heiress and they are both named Paris, though I would expect him to be screwed up growing up named Paris. And I thought the famour boy nmed Sue song was farfetched. So if she takes his last name they will both be Paris Latsis. I am so terrified of this union Im not even sure where to start attacking.
Discovery Channel
I have always enjoyed the Discovery Channel but I have become addicted to two of its shows American Chopper and now today The Deadliest Catch. The Deadliest Catch details thew harsh realities surrounding the risk high win world of Alaskan crabbing. The job now considered the second most dangerous behind logging now but still very dangerous is fascinating to me. In fact I would probably love to do it but since I am a fat out of shape guy I'll pass on fulfilling that dream. The show focuses on the challenges these guys must deal with basically unending exhaustion with many of these guys not getting any real sleep for the entire season which on the two that I have been watching dont last longer than a week. When I talk about high risk high gain the gain is in A crewman's wages are often based on a share or percentage of harvest earnings. A greenhorn may earn anywhere from 1.5 to 5 percent of the net value of the harvest, after operating expenses and the owner's and skipper's shares (often totalling 50 percent or more) have been subtracted. On one of the better boats deckhands made 16,000 after king crab season which lasted three days!
posted @ 09:10 PM PST [link] [Karma: 11 (+/-)]
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Polyphasic Sleep
I was reading Outside Magazine which had an awesome article on sleep deprivation and the way it effects one's ability to function. Basically Dr Claudio Stampi believes that humans were once polphasic sleepers meaning they sleep in short naps throughout the day. In fact 85% of all mammals are polyphasic sleepers. His theory is that we were up until 10,000 years ago and in fact baby's still are an example of polyphasic sleepers. Leonardo Davinci was perhaps the most famous polyphasic sleeper supposedly sleeping 15 minutes every four hours for a total of 90 minutes every 24 hours though Scampi suspects he only did that when he was crunching to get stuff done. Sounds like basically we could get by on 4-6 hours at night and then with a good nap in the afternoon. Stampi has identified that there are two kinds of people Larks; Morning people and Owls; Evening people. Larks are efiicient at taking short naps but are not efficient at night meaning they prefer or more regular sleep routing. Owls on the other hand can deal with irregular sleep patterns but need longer naps. Many people it sounds like are not one or the other but usually a combination of the two with a tendency to lean one way or the other. I think Im gonna try the six hours a night with a nap in the afternoon and see how it goes.
posted @ 01:26 PM PST [link] [Karma: -10 (+/-)]
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Yahoo 360
Well looks like yahoo has finally taken notice of the boom in myspace and is soon to offer a similar solution that will compete. Now Im not a beta tester so I havent seena good example of one but basically it looks as though Yahoo 360 will leverage yahoo's services into a myspace type service. I like the sounds of the project and wonder what the final product will be like.
posted @ 03:37 PM PST [link] [Karma: 8 (+/-)]
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Paris Hilton's Carl's Jr. Commercial
I got into a fairly philosophical discussion with a friend of mine today about the new Carl's Jr. commercial with Paris Hilton and whether it crosses the line. Now anyone who knows me knows I love to play devil's advocate and my friend is very christian and conservative so I got to defend Paris and her commercial. After thinking about it I dont think it's crossing the line while it definitely steps up to it and kicks dirt over on your side. I dont care if Paris wants to do a clothed strip tease on a wet car with a hose between her legs eating a burger. Sure its provocative but that was the point. Carl's wants to be the Maxim Magazine or Spike TVof burger joints. It is hooting for the 18 - 35 male attention and guess what it probably worked. My friend argued that it was porn. Certainly there is as bad stuff on TV and hey she may have strongly hinted at but didn't perform any sexual acts in the commercial. Im guessing with the http://www.spicyparis.com/ website Carls was excited about the impact the commercial had.
posted @ 11:13 PM PST [link] [Karma: 3 (+/-)]
I have been reading up on the PS3 vrs Xbox 360 battle and I'll be damned if I dont really want either one. By appearance alone I would lean for the 360 but with the posibillity of it not being backward compatible I may have to pass it up. Im not sure how Microsoft would consider making a console that couldn't play its predecessor's games. Just doesn't make sense to me and I hope the people in Microsoft's ear get that message across. I have a lot of money spent on xbox games in my collection and dont want to start from scratch on a new rig with new games. As I see it that gives a huge competitive advantage to PS3 which is backwards compatible as it would let PS3 keep owners of its older consoles while trying to woo xbox owners who would have to make a fresh start anyway Heck lets look at the specs and compare what the average buyer would given xbox360 wouldn't be backward compatible. Click more to read the rest of this post
Damn I have been slacking
Well I figured I better get caught up on my posting. Hell it took me two days to put the weenie roast review up and usually I get things like that up quickly. Anyways Weenie Roast was a blast and the bands were awesome. I have mega busy at work as we are working on a huge project which should actually be a lot of fun in the end. Went and saw Star Wars Episode 3 the other night at the midnight show just to do something nerdy. There werent actually any real nerds but it was the Pedro theater which probably doesnt have the nerd draw effect that Hollywood would. I liked the movie but didnt think it was earth shattering. I liked the fact that it drew everything into the begining of Star Wars which I guess they are call New Hope now? i understand the need for the sequencing but why rename the original Star Wars to something else? Anyways not worth dwelling on. Wonder if Lucas is going to do the once threataned 7,8,9 that he once talked about mind you we are going deep into my foggy memory now and Im pretty sure hes done with the series but hey with the success of this venture he might try it. Sherdof posted the results of Pride Bushido 7. Im glad I didnt post predictions on this fight as I guessed wrong in tons of thes matches but hey thats what makes MMA great. Sound like it was a great show I might even pick it up this week.
posted @ 06:47 PM PST [link] [Karma: -4 (+/-)]
Monday, May 23, 2005
KROQ Weanie Roast
Well the Weanie Roast turned out to be awesome on Saturday. The bands were all great. Started off the day with Open Air Studio which was the band which won the right to open the show by winning the KROQ Big A$$ Auction. They were surprisingly good considering they paid to play and wouldn't be surprised to see them do well in the future. They were followed on the side stage by the Dead 60's who were also great. Next up was the Bravery who were another awesome band from New York which seems to be becoming the mecca for Indoe music. Next up was the Alkaline Trio which is apparently a band that has been around for some time but is new to me. They were really talented and all three members of the band impressed me by being able to sing lead on different songs. Next up was The Transplants, one of my favorite bands, who were off the hook. I missed the last two side stage bands Bloc Party and Mars Volta even though I really wanted to see Mars play.
Then it was off to the main stage where MXPX opened things up. They were great but soon to be diminished by what followed. Hot Hot Heat played a great set which I really enjoyed. Then My Chemical Romance was up followed by Jimmy Eat World who was awesome. Interpol followed them in what I thought was going to be the best set of the night, only to be topped by Queens of the Stone Age. Then the band I most looked forward to seeing The Killers came up and hit the ball out of the park. Thinking again it couldn't be better but only to be pleasantly surprised Audioslave topped that set with an awesome variety of their own songs, Soundgarden, and even a couple of Rage Against the Machine songs. Following them was the Foo Fighters in a set that might have even been better if it was possible. I actually felt sorry for Motley Crue when they came up to close out the show because they didn't have a chance of topping their predecessors of the night though they gave it a good old Crue try. They started off slow but quickly gained speed and put on a good show just not what the Foos or Audioslave had done. The show was awesome in fact I dont think they could have put on a better set of bands, even though Motley Crue should have been on earlier.
posted @ 11:47 PM PST [link] [Karma: 0 (+/-)]
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Pride Lightweight Grand Prix
Okay so really its Bushido 7 but with the caliber of lil men they got fighting it should be and really is the prelim to a grand prix. The card as it stands today is:
Takanori Gomi (Japan) vs. Luiz Azeredo (Brazil)
Phil Baroni (USA) vs. Ikuhisa “The Punk” Minowa (Japan)
Ryo Chonan (Japan) vs. Nino "Elvis" Schembri (Brazil)
Tatsuya Kawajiri (Japan) vs. Kim In Seok (Korea)
Akihiro Gono (Japan) vs. Crosley Gracie (Brazil)
Hayato “Mach” Sakurai (Japan) vs. Milton Vieira (Brazil)
Omigawa Michihiro (Japan) vs. Aaron Riley (USA)
Dokonjyonosuke Mishima (Japan) vs. Yves Edwards (USA)
Taisho (Japan) vs. Jens Pulver (USA)
Yoshiro Maeda (Japan) vs. Charles "Krazy Horse" Bennett (USA)
Now I see that pride snagged a couple of characters for their entertainment value namely Baroni and Bennett but they have some of the best lightweights as well. Cant wait to see how the tournament shapes up. Now Im not sure how Pride is going to shape up the tournament. Considering that the Heavyweights are everyone over 205 or thereabouts Middleweights are the equivalent of the lightheavy and middleweight divisions of UFC I'm guessing the lightweight division will be the equivalent of the welterweight and lightweight division in the UFC. Glad to see that the Bushido cards didn't disappear like was widely rumored. Sure would like to see BJ Penn thrown in to that mix to make it just overwelming.
posted @ 06:52 PM PST [link] [Karma: 6 (+/-)]
Pride FC - Middleweight Grand Prix
Pride sure does have a lot going on now adays. I was checking out there site and not only do they have the middleweight Garnd Prix in full swing they also are in the prelim stages of a lightweight tournament that has some of the best 155 pounders in the world involved. Now for the middleweight tourny pride is having the second round of the tournament in June, though we wont see it in the states til the beginning of July, with Critical Countdown. Basically the remaining fighters are being matched up as:
Wanderlei Silva (Brazil) vs. Kazuhiro Nakamura (Japan) - Well I would guess that the axe murderer is looking strong as always and really wonder who could possibly stop him. DSE has finally figured out to keep Sakuraba far away from him. Nakamura is tough with his only losses coming to Dan Henderson and Lil Nog but I dont think hes going to withstand Silva.
Kazushi Sakuraba (Japan) vs. Ricardo Arona (Brazil) - I hate to say it but I think Arona is going to take this one. Sure Sak is a demigod in Japan but Aronas only losses are to Jackson in a somewhat flukey finish and Fedor who noone has beat legitinmately yet. I think Arona is the number two dog in Pride until he gets knocked down.
Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (Brazil) vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (Brazil) - The battle of the lil brothers, Top Team versus Chute Boxe what more could you ask for besides their brothers involved in a tag match. Both these guys are unbeaten in Pride and Im not sure I could call this one.
Igor Vovchanchyn (Ukraine) vs. Alistair Overeem (Holland) - Another match Im not sure how to call though Im definitely leaning towards Iggy. The man is a legend in Pride and has 53 fights with a record of 45-7-1 with five straight wins. Overeem is a dangerous man with lighting hands and feet though and he could surprise anyone.
UFC gets a great deal
Just wanted to let UFC fans know that UFC and Spike have signed a deal that should be great for the UFC. Heres an excerpt:
NEW YORK, NY, May 3, 2005 - Spike TV and The Ultimate Fighting Championship® organization have agreed to a two-year strategic partnership, it was announced jointly today by Doug Herzog, President, Spike TV and Dana White, President, Zuffa, LLC d/b/a Ultimate Fighting Championship®. The main components of the deal are new seasons of the highly-rated reality series, The Ultimate Fighter™, which will premiere Monday, August 22 at 11:00pm ET/PT. In addition the deal includes six LIVE fight cards - two this year and four in '06. The announcement comes on the heels of the finale of The Ultimate Fighter which drew 2.6 million viewers and more Men 18-34 than CBS's Masters golf tournament coverage on Saturday, April 9.
posted @ 08:08 AM PST [link] [Karma: 5 (+/-)]
Treo 650 for Verizon
Well it hasnt been that long since I got my Treo 600 for Verizon and looky here the Treo 650 is coming out on Verizon. The advantages of the Treo 650 are:
Bluetooth wireless technology -- Now connecting to other Bluetooth wireless devices is a snap.
Sharper display -- The vibrant 320x320 touchscreen, with more than 65,000 colors, is easy to read -- even in sunlight.
Built-in MP3 player -- Add an expansion card (sold separately) to take thousands of favorite tunes anywhere simply by transferring MP3 files from the desktop.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- View, edit, and create Word- and Excel-compatible documents and view PowerPoint-compatible attachments.
Removable battery -- Carry an extra battery and swap it out for additional power on the fly.
Nonvolatile memory -- Data and applications are safe while you change batteries or if you lose power.
Better camera now captures video, too -- The improved, built-in camera takes better pictures in low light -- and it includes 2x zoom and a mirror for self-portraits.
Combined text and picture messaging1 -- Send and receive text messages, photos, or video clips from one application with a single Inbox.
Improved keyboard and button layout -- Typing is even more finger-friendly with the improved keyboard. Navigation buttons are all centrally located for faster access.
Easier email setup -- A new desktop wizard detects most email services and prompts you through VersaMail setup.
XBox 360 and other goodies!
Damn I want a Xbox360. The machine just seems straight up awesome as described in this 1up.com article.
Some Interesting items on the new hardware
Unlike the Xbox, which comprised primarily of off-the-shelf PC components (including a 733MHz Intel Pentium III processor), the Xbox 360 has been spec'ed to perform from the ground up. The heart of the system itself is made up of a custom-designed IBM PowerPC-based CPU with 3 symmetrical cores crunching data at 3.2GHz each (for a total of 6 hardware threads) at any one time. What this means, in its most basic form, is that rather than rely on one central processing core to juggle all of a game's various calculations, the Xbox 360 can divide the many tasks needed to run a game onto three separate "mini-processors" within the main CPU.
In terms of pure graphical horsepower, the Xbox 360 features a jointly-developed graphics chip by Microsoft and ATI that's more than twice as powerful as the Xbox's Nvidia graphics chip, featuring 48 parallel processing units (at 24 times total power), compared to Nvidia's 4 parallel processing units the last time around.
Xbox 360 DVD drive supports just about every format under the sun, including DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, and JPEG Photo CD. To borrow from an important idea from the Xbox-mod homebrew scene, the 360 also streams media from portable music devices and digital cameras (a la one of the three USB 2.0 ports — that's right, plug your MP3 player right into your 360), and Windows XP PCs (over LAN).
I cant help imagining my soon to be Niro 400 Sound System and the trusty old Directv Tivo box and my setup should be complete. Did I mention I got a 52 inch Mitsubishi TV. Its old but its awesome!
posted @ 09:17 AM PST [link] [Karma: 2 (+/-)]
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Why is everybody picking on me?
Damn it has been one of those weeks. Gotta get out of my apartment by friday or I have to pay for that ones rent and the one I live in now. Actually I deserve that hadn't been able to amke time to clean our crap out of the old one and the ultimatum definitely got me focused. Then KROQ starts giving away tickets for their annual weanie roast concert which has an awesome lineup and is going to be in a much better venue this year, Irvine versus the boonies. But f'ing stryker the 4-7 DJ has decided that it would be funy to play the damn intro to the song your supposed to be listening for on each break causing me into fits hanging up on people and other minor inconveniences, mind you I see the humor it just works to well on me. Then the last straw, Justin has apparently given up the reigns to Dontlinkthis.com to some girl named Trisha who doesn't write or spell well. Hell she doent know HTML or HTLM as she called it. She claims to have paid 50,000 for the site but despite her writing skills I cant believe even she is that stupid. I know Justin was in Asia and maybe didnt have time for the site but damn I cant deal with another retirement from blogging. Im guessing hes just pulling our leg or atleast hoping he is. We'll hope things go better.
posted @ 10:59 PM PST [link] [Karma: 13 (+/-)]
Ip phone service
Well I had signed up for Vonage's ip phone service since it had the best reputation of all the ip phone services around. Then I cam across Lingo. Lingo offers unlimited calling to US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Luxembourg, Vatican City, Norway, Portugal, and Spain for 19.95 a month. On top of that I can get a local number for Guatemala for 10.00 a month which means we can tlk to my wifes family all we want and they can call us locally. Now all I need is to be able to incorporate Korea when my brother goes back and I'll have everything covered. Not to mention of I did ever make an international call the rates are awesome!
posted @ 01:02 PM PST [link] [Karma: -3 (+/-)]
Thursday, May 5, 2005
Ocean Kayak Yak Board
I have been considering how to get my rather large self to work out. Going to the gym is not going to work for me. I just dont like languishing on machines for an hour a day. So since I like sports but dont think I can commit to an organised one I decide to check out something I could do solo and yet still have fun with. Thats when I came across the Ocean Kayak Yak Board. Basically its a surfing kayak. At $320 its not cheap but also not really expensive so I might just check it out!
posted @ 06:43 PM PST [link] [Karma: 6 (+/-)]
Bigha Bicycle
Damn talk about buying a new car just check out this damn bike. Its a recumbent seating position with a suspension to protect your keester from absorbing to much road. The seat is adjustable as are the handlebars, has a full electronics package including trip computer, headlights, taillights, and pretty much everything you should have on a bike. With 27 speeds you can definately find the gear yuo need to get where you need to go. This looks like it would be the perfect commuter bike except that all this luxury comes at a price. Forgo the electronics and kickstand and it will cost you $3400 but if you want everythoing it will set you back $4100. The website says they offer one year interest free financing but wow thats a lot even for a used car. Check out all the luxuries at Bigha.com.
posted @ 06:25 PM PST [link] [Karma: 1 (+/-)]
Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Vida Guerra
This is my desktop on my work computer. Talk about being so wrong and so right at the same time! Hey in an interesting twist supposedly Vida's sidekick was hacked, as was Paris Hilton's and they found some interesting photos. Now Im not sure how legit these are and havent researched into whether these are fakes or not. I'll let you be the judge! Some of these look legit and others dont so I wont call it.
posted @ 03:29 PM PST [link] [Karma: -6 (+/-)]
New Music
Well I bought Beck's Guero and Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth yesterday and I am impressed with both. While I was faniliar with both bands I had never bought either of their albums prior to these. Guero is like a happy go lucky album while With Teeth is a little bit darker. Both are awesome though. I was surprised at how Nine Inch Nails album despite having tons of instruments and sounds still manages to have the feel of acoustic music, mind you feel may not be right maybe intimacy would be a better description. They are both great and I reccomend you check em out!
posted @ 03:14 PM PST [link] [Karma: 12 (+/-)]
Altec Lansing inMotion
Well I lucked out again as my boss kicked me down his Altec Lansing inMotion which is basically a speaker dock for the iPod or as is my case the iPod Mini. The sound quality is pretty good, I ve never been able to discern good sound and awesome sound anyways. Together the two make a compact package with really good sound.
posted @ 02:35 PM PST [link] [Karma: 4 (+/-)]
Vonage
Well I finally broke down and since we are moving decided to try out Vonage's i/p phone service. It really is quite a value for the price. Basically had tp pay around 70 dollars to get the phone adapter which is basically a router with a couple of phone ports in the back. All I had to was plug it into my cable modem, acquire an address, plug my wireless router into the first router and renew its address and I was up and running. Also found out someone was borrowing my bandwidth last night so I finally got around to securing my network. Not that I mind sharing but with my phone stuff running on my connection now bandwidth might become an issue.
posted @ 06:24 AM PST [link] [Karma: 14 (+/-)]
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Minuteman Project and Immigration as a whole
You know its not often I climb up on the old bandstand and bitch about one of my stances but this is one of those times I fell like I need to vent. Now first off before I do anything let me make it clear that I am a patriot. I love my country and truly believe it to be the greates country on Earth. That said though I need to express what I believe made this country great and what now seems to be screwing it up. Many Americans now believe that immigration to the United States needs to be maintained as illegal to protect the interest of those who are here now. Its ours and by God we want to protect it. I think the reason the United States is going to hell in so many ways is this attitude in itself. Up until midway through this century there was nothing that limited immigration to the United States. You wanted to come you came. If you could make a living more power to you. Your culture was assimilated into the United States and we became a bigger mixing pot. Now we say NO you cant move here we put a big wall up and we dont want any new people moving here. Well guess what. It was the influx of new hungry people wanting to make a better life that pushed the envelope, made things harder so we had to be more industrious or get left behind. Now we say we dont want illegals taking our jobs, 50 years ago it was that very competition that made the US flourish. Now that we have closed our borders for the most part and believe me I understand the need for safety and most of the border crap is not about safety rather it is oppression of peaople trying to make a better life while us fat lazy gringos feel threatened. I think the US will continue to suck much like it does today because the people who are here now came from somewhere else and how would we have liked it if we had had the borders had been closed to us. I dont forget that my great great grandfather was allowed to come over and make a fortune in the telephone business. He probably wouldn't have had he stayed in Scotland and quite possibly the telephone would have been invented elsewhere if Graham Bell had been forced to stay in Scotland. Sure the minutemen say there protecting the interests of the United States but really they are protecting their own interest be it lazy or racist. I dont know where this attitude of keep other folks out came from but I think its a move in the wrong direction and hope the US doesn't regret it down the line.
posted @ 12:00 PM PST [link] [Karma: -1 (+/-)]
