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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

And the winner is...

'Metrosexual' Is 2003's Top Word according to the SF Chronicle's "Word of the Year" poll.
|| Andrew, 12:14 PM || || link

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

<Insert joke here>

The CBC news are reporting that William Shatner is set to release a new album of music, with guest musicians including Henry Rollins. Come to think of it, a duet between Shatner and Rollins could be quite entertaining.
|| Andrew, 12:56 PM || || link

It's RED

The Mercury News has updated and sharpened their site look, and www.mercurynews.com is now the official base URL for the site. The first thing I thought when I got there was that I had mistyped or that my bookmark had changed somehow—the new look is so RED!
|| Andrew, 12:37 PM || || link

Saturday, December 27, 2003

 

I regularly post images from and links to the SF Chronicle's Day in Pictures. Now, the good SFGate editors have put together a compilation of the best of 2003: A Year in Pictures. Some of my favorites are this one and this one from January, and this one from February, and of course this one from March. And more through the rest of the year...
|| Andrew, 1:54 AM || || link

Sunday, December 21, 2003

White Christmas

Workers use ropes and ladders to Workers use ropes and ladders to complete the Space Mountain paint job. Photo by Adrienne Vincent-Phoenix.complete the Space Mountain paint job.

Photo by Adrienne Vincent-Phoenix.
|| Andrew, 11:30 PM || || link

Friday, December 19, 2003

Curve Ball

Check out this Flash game. Nice graphics, huh?
|| Andrew, 4:36 PM || || link

Quiz - Are You Grammatically Incorrect?

Test your grammar skills
I scored 9/10.
|| Andrew, 4:35 PM || || link

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Holiday gift advice

Music CDs are crappy presents, and here's why. You can even use the mail form on this site to send an anonymous message to a friend who might be considering buying CDs as gifts this year.
|| Andrew, 9:04 PM || || link

Vote for the Word of the Year

The SF Chronicle is doing their annual Word of the Year poll. You can vote for the "word of the year" on that page, and see some of the also-ran entries. The finalists:
I was hoping to see zhushing (or "tjuzsing") make the list as well, but maybe next year.
|| Andrew, 3:19 PM || || link

Monday, December 15, 2003

Wolverines!

C|Net News.com is running a New York Times story detailing the capture of Saddam Hussein. This is the most clear and complete rundown of the operation I've read yet.
10 nerd points to anyone who catches the post title reference...
|| Andrew, 5:21 PM || || link

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Unexplained absence explained

I've picked up a seasonal retail job evenings and weekends at Barnes & Noble. Among other effects (like drinking more coffee and hardly being home) I haven't been able to update the site much.
It's not bad, I'm having a pretty good time. I was able to drop right in as if I'd been there forever, in fact.
|| Andrew, 11:23 PM || || link

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

 

This article in today's San Francisco Chronicle (via SFGate.com) lays out the plans for Bay Area transit improvements over the next decade or so, to be funded by a proposed $1 toll hike on the region's seven state-run bridges.
In return, commuters in the coming years will be able to ride more ferries, drive their cars through a fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, take BART farther out in the East Bay and travel by diesel trains in East Bay suburbs and Silicon Valley, proponents of the toll increase say.
One interesting component of the program is the proposal to use the old Dumbarton bridge trestle as a rail link between Caltrain and Amtrak's Capitol Corridor line.
|| Andrew, 12:27 PM || || link

Monday, December 08, 2003

December baseball news

Chronicle sportswriter Henry Schulman runs down the latest signings and arbitration offers from San Francisco and Oakland.
It turns out J.T. Snow's fateful, futile dash for home plate in Florida that ended the Giants' 2003 season will not be his last act in a San Francisco uniform.

With hours to spare before the deadline to offer their free agents salary arbitration, the Giants on Sunday re-signed Snow to a one-year contract worth $1.5 million with a $2 million option for 2005 that will be guaranteed if Snow makes 450 plate appearances in 2004. If he fails, the club still can exercise the option or pay Snow a $250,000 buyout.
Pretty good news, right? I liked Snow and will be glad to see him back with the Giants. But there's more:
At the same time, the Giants officially cut ties with longtime shortstop Rich Aurilia and last year's closer, Tim Worrell, by declining to offer them arbitration. Also gone for the same reason are Sidney Ponson, Benito Santiago, Eric Young, Andres Galarraga, Jose Cruz Jr. and Marvin Benard.
To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. It's hard to work up much baseball-related emotion in December, but this is disheartening.
|| Andrew, 12:48 PM || || link

Friday, December 05, 2003

This should raise those spirits

Give this happy Holiday Snowglobe a shake to see what happens.
|| Andrew, 12:14 PM || || link

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

"Artists"?

AP tech writer Ted Bridis reports:
Among the RIAA's recent targets is retiree Ernest Brenot, 79, of Ridgefield, Wash., who wrote in a handwritten note to a federal judge that he does not own a computer nor can he operate one.

Brenot was accused of illegally offering for download 774 songs by artists including Vanilla Ice, U2, Creed, Linkin Park and Guns N' Roses.
Getting past the obvious problem of suing someone without a computer for illegally sharing files, who in the world would give Vanilla Ice and Linkin Park the title of "artists"?
Actually I'm fully in favor of the RIAA in this case. The more bad publicity they get for these idiotic bot-search lawsuits, the sooner they'll be forced to drop the whole thing—either as a public relations move, or (hopefully) as a court order.
|| Andrew, 7:14 PM || || link

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

A CBS Special... on ABC

A Charlie Brown Christmas airs tonight at 8:00 PM on ABC, not CBS.
|| Andrew, 10:11 AM || || link

Monday, December 01, 2003

A special holiday visit with the jolly fat guy

Toymaker/propmaker/artist/voice actor Shawn Crosby has created this photostory about a visit with a jolly fat guy at a mall. It's not the one you're thinking of, though.
|| Andrew, 1:05 PM || || link

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