Taco Police

 News  No Responses »
Jul 162008
 

So Graeme and I were on our way home from work today when I suddenly got the urge to eat an entire carniceria, partly due to the fact that I skipped lunch. This being physically impossible, we settled on Taco Bell.

As we came to the intersection, a police car blared its sirens as it drove by, and kept going right past a fenderbender parked in the median. It was a little odd that he left them there, but we pressed onward.

My visions of crunchwraps and grilled stuft burritos quickly vanished, however, when we pulled up to the Taco Bell and found what can only be described as a situation. Police cars surrounded the Taco Bell, and a line of drive-through cars wrapped around the building. With access to the parking lot cut off by another cop car, we drove around in a curious daze trying to get our bearings. Police were standing a distance away, just eyeballing the place. We decided not to drive around the barrier as it seemed these folks weren’t driving through anytime soon.

Graeme had spotted a Willy’s earlier, so we headed there to pick up much tastier food.

We still wonder just what could go on at a Taco Bell to get that kind of response but still have a drive-through queue that long.

Gordita Banditos?

It’s over, Sony.

 News  No Responses »
Jul 142008
 

Game over, man. Game over.

Or, as I said in IM when I heard the news:

(5:57:31 PM) Kenny Knapke: http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/07/14/final-fantasy-xiii-coming-to-xbox-360-in-simultaneous-launch
(5:57:49 PM) Graeme Hefner: HAHAHAHAHAHHA
(5:57:51 PM) Graeme Hefner: HAHAHAHAH
(5:57:54 PM) Graeme Hefner: HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHHAH
(5:58:00 PM) Graeme Hefner: WE SHALL NOT WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED

With Final Fantasy XIII’s exclusivity dies your last hope at getting me to buy your Great Mistake, Sony. Please make the PS4 not suck.

A perilous precipice

 News  No Responses »
Jul 132008
 

My drug of choice is information. I consume it. When I was a kid I read the encyclopedia. As an adult I read Wikipedia. I can’t sleep if I’m thinking about something and don’t know the answer. I have a problem with essentially jacking in to the internet and slamming my hooks into it like a monstrous Lovecraftian parasite, draining it for all I can before dragging my gorged body off to the next locus of trivia.

Fun mental image, isn’t it?

As you might guess this drive not only served me well as a historian, it probably made me one in the first place. It’s also one of the reasons I’ve always joked bitterly that if they can ever place a modem directly in a person’s brain I’ll be one of the first in line, just so that I never have to spend a bare instant not knowing who was in that movie that one time. I will drive myself mad with power.

Reality is getting closer and closer to making that happen. I now have a broadband internet connection on my person at all times. I’m resisting it so far, but it’s there. Taunting me.

It’s amazing how things become commonplace. A decade ago 56k was still awesome. Then broadband at all was good. Then Wi-Fi was amazing. Now, I don’t even think about having a 6 megabit connection shared throughout my entire domicile accessible via my laptop wherever I am. But once…once it was magic. And in my pocket is more bandwidth equal to what my family’s DSL line was for the first year or so we were in Jasper. It’s still ‘cool’ for right now, but in a few years, at most, it’ll fade. Hopefully by then my sunglasses will have Firefox.

Kenniversary!

 News  No Responses »
Jul 112008
 

As of today I have been living in this apartment for 2 years, and alone in it for 1 year. July 11th is my Kenniversary.

Since that looks scarily like the name ‘Kenny’ and this post is mostly devoid of content, I shall post some highlights of today’s conversation with the man himself:

(2:00:15 PM) Kenny Knapke: Demos PS3: Siren Blood Curse PS3: Monster Madness Grave Danger PS3: Wall-E PS3: The Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian
(2:00:22 PM) Kenny Knapke: wooot… demos galore!
(2:00:40 PM) Graeme Hefner: I thought that said ‘Grave Digger’ at first.
(2:00:45 PM) Graeme Hefner: and that seemed like a way more interesting game.
(2:00:59 PM) Kenny Knapke: that would be a sweet game
(2:01:13 PM) Graeme Hefner: In fact
(2:01:20 PM) Graeme Hefner: Let’s combine all of those to make the best game possible.
(2:01:47 PM) Graeme Hefner: Siren Blood Curse: Grave Digger – The Chronicles of Prince Wall-E
(2:02:18 PM) Kenny Knapke: Wall-e would make a decent grave digger

(4:19:37 PM) Graeme Hefner: Before I die I want to sleep with one of the Donnas.
(4:25:44 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’d take the drummer or the lead singer.
(4:26:23 PM) Kenny Knapke: i’d take the one with the blue light on her head in that picture
(4:26:36 PM) Kenny Knapke: or the far left
(4:26:43 PM) Kenny Knapke: but preferably the bluelight
(4:26:52 PM) Graeme Hefner: That’s the guitarist with the blue light. She would not be kicked out of bed.
Far left is the lead singer.
(4:27:11 PM) Kenny Knapke: and the blond is drummer?
(4:27:18 PM) Graeme Hefner: Yeah
(4:27:21 PM) Kenny Knapke: she looks too much like one of my sisters
(4:27:49 PM) Graeme Hefner: Luckily I don’t have that problem.
(4:28:14 PM) Kenny Knapke: yeah.. it’d be kinda awkward if you looked like one of my sisters
(4:28:45 PM) Graeme Hefner: Not nearly as awkward as if I dated one.
(4:29:10 PM) Kenny Knapke: thank god that’s never going to happen
(4:29:20 PM) Kenny Knapke: kim was saying she wants to move down here though
(4:29:30 PM) Graeme Hefner: Hey, they could do a lot worse.
(4:29:48 PM) Kenny Knapke: yeah, and i wouldn’t feel a bit bad about “correcting” that situation ;)
(4:30:11 PM) Graeme Hefner: Pfft. I’d totally ask you first. And you’d say no. And that’d be that.
(4:30:24 PM) Graeme Hefner: I wouldn’t feel ‘em up in a tent while drunk or anything. *cough*
(4:30:48 PM) Kenny Knapke: big sister is a whole different ballgame
(4:32:18 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’d hook you up with my sister.
(4:32:43 PM) Kenny Knapke: no thanks
(4:33:11 PM) Kenny Knapke: besides, that goes strictly against your new policy of not setting up your friends anymore :-p
(4:33:25 PM) Graeme Hefner: I didn’t say I wouldn’t set up my family.
(4:33:48 PM) Kenny Knapke: that situation would involve both which would still violate the policy
(4:34:26 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’d probably cancel that policy if someone worthwhile came along again.
(4:34:34 PM) Graeme Hefner: At the moment I’m more worried with setting up myself.
(4:34:47 PM) Graeme Hefner: So any hot girls you know but aren’t using, send ‘em my way. Unless they’re stupid.
(4:35:35 PM) Kenny Knapke: ok
(4:36:07 PM) Kenny Knapke: should i chance upon one, i’ll box it up and mail it to you
(4:36:23 PM) Graeme Hefner: Nah, I’ll come get her.
(4:36:27 PM) Graeme Hefner: You like to use cheap shipping.
(4:36:36 PM) Graeme Hefner: She might get fat or dead in transit
(4:37:21 PM) Kenny Knapke: i just don’t see a point in paying $50 to ship something “zomg 2morrow”

Bandwagon, jump on!

 News  No Responses »
Jul 102008
 

Smart phones for everyone! I didn’t want to be left out of the fun, so I ordered me self a FreeRunner. Now I just have to wait on UPS and plan an escape route in case they attempt assassination again.

Sure I could’ve gone with the BB curve, but it really doesn’t fit my tastes. I think the FreeRunner meshes with my personality well and it will fit in with my tech device family. Anyways, with our always on smartphone tethers, this may be a revolutionary step for the future of Jux!

Jump on!

Back in Black(berry)

 News  No Responses »
Jul 102008
 

There was a point where I was anxiously awaiting the iPhone 3G, so much so that I was actually considering imprisoning myself in AT&T for two years.

After Graeme got his BlackBerry Curve 8330, I realized that not only did my old prejudices against BlackBerry devices no longer apply, it was in fact the closest thing to what I was looking for in a mobile data device.

I can do pretty much whatever I want with it: install random apps, change the themes, write apps for it, SSH with it, browse web at 3G speeds in a real browser, download _and_ upload files from it, etc.

I ended up getting a 2 year Verizon contract instead, and so far I do not regret it one bit.

Bad and Not So Bad

 News  No Responses »
Jul 082008
 

As a prefix, I should say I spend most of my time pretty damn happy. The following rant applies to about 2% of my time, usually late at night on random weekdays.

Lately, however, I’ve felt my life sort of listless. The major cause of it is most likely a certain type loneliness, for sure, but there are other reasons that I’ve already rehashed endlessly with some of my friends. Namely, that my entire life is in a place now that would have been incomprehensible six months ago. Nearly everything I planned for or thought would happen, did not. Opportunities disintegrated, people left, and general badness fell from the skies and bubbled up from the ground.

Of course, new stuff immediately replaced (almost) all of it. My life is actually in a really good place now. My job is fun, is hopefully about to pay well, and gives me a good bit of freedom. As I walked into the office for the apartment complex of my nice, large, quiet apartment today I realized something as well.

My dad has always bitched about being ‘poor’ and what my family can’t afford despite the fact that we are…well, we’re most decidedly not poor. Sure, we don’t have a vacation home and he doesn’t drive a Porsche, but we own three houses and at one point had almost two cars per person in the household.

But for the past year or so I’d been feeling like I was ‘poor’ and often making jokes about it myself. Coupled with the rest of life’s problems lately it was starting to bug me more and more as well. So today, as I got out of my nice car, checked my nice watch, walked around puddles so as to not get water into the leather bottoms of my expensive sandals, walked into the office of my upscale suburban apartment complex and sat on a couch in their lounge and checked the Ars Technica forums on my BlackBerry, I realized two things:

1a) I am a complete fucking sell out. Holy shit.
1b) I don’t care.
2) I should shut the hell up.

Seriously. My big money problems are being upset that I can’t afford as many videogames to play on my 360 or my Wii as Kenny and not being able to strap an HDTV to my damn TiVo.

So, yes, for the first time in my entire life, I briefly became my father. Shoot me.

New sexy phone!

 News  No Responses »
Jul 062008
 

This post typed to you on my new Blackberry Curve 8330. I’m going to have to get used to chiclet typing. I’m impressed that our AJAX’d to hell backend works on Opera Mini. I’ll have to try it on the default browser too.

Later gents!

 Older Entries  Newer Entries