A bbs I used to call on occasion, when I was younger, at some point in put up a message board, where people began to get in touch again. I recently found it; as an added bonus, the old Sysop had a lot of the stuff saved on CD, and found the old ANSI art that I created for their logoff screen, although it won’t make as much sense, outta context.

I musta made that around 1996 or so. Probably even earlier. Today, no one even knows what ANSI is.

OH YEAH
On a completely different subject, if I know you, and you live in the area, you’re welcome to come to a kickball party. $10 at the door gets you all the booze you can drink, all the food you can eat, and live music. If you are interested, drop me a line, and I’ll get you the 411.

(to the tune of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna”)

Lady Caldera, stock price at your feet.
Wonder how you’ll manage to make ends meet.
Who has the money? How you pay the rent?
Did you think that UNIX trademark was heaven sent?

Wednesday morning news just like a bombshell.
We all watch their stock drop like a rock.
Caldera has learned kiss its arsecheeks goodbye.
See how they run.

Lady Caldera, IP fakes confess!
Wonder how you’ll manage to keep up this jest.

See how they run.
Lady Caldera, lying in the press,
Blackmailing the righteous ones, in your duress.

Wednesday afternoon is never ending.
Thursday morning news will be as bad.
Thursday night your stocks, they will need mending.
See how they run.

Lady Caldera, stock price at your feet.
Wonder how you’ll manage to make ends meet.

This rainy weather is teh sux0rz :(.

Last weekend was a lot of fun, went down to the Raleigh area to help celebrate my Uncle’s 50th birthday. Much booze was consumed, many hot dogs and hamburgers consumed. One nice moment was when my (probably pretty toasted) uncle said to my aunt (his sister, not his wife), “You know, maybe I can be to Corey what Uncle Jack was, to me”. This won’t mean anything to anyone else reading this, but it was cool.

The drive back was amazingly smooth. I drove through Raleigh itself, and really think I’d like it. It reminded me of Johnson City, only a lot larger.

Beer was so cheap down there. The local bar (that actually loses money anytime my uncle throws one of his parties) was selling Killians for $2.25/bottle, and something else a slight step up, for $2.50. Compare that to the $5.00 Guinness and $3.50 Miller light I had last night at Carpool.

I do believe I actually see a bit of sunlight outside. However, the fields are probably too soaked for kickball today, the second week straight. Bleh.

I may add to these as I remember them.

* Mamma Mia! is a really, really fun musical. You should go see it if you get the chance. I don’t particularly like much disco, but the way this was done was both unique and great.

* Dining at the CN Tower is okay; The food is decent, but not worth the price — good thing the seats came as part of a tourism package.

* The Queens Quay Il Fornello makes pretty good stone-oven pizzas, but their service leaves a fair bit to be desired.

* The new Korean bbq buffet place near Queen and University (or McCaul?) is fantastic.

* And finally… seeing a Chinese restaurant with a funny name (“HO KING“), made me giggle a bit. Seeing a quite (obviously) manly transvestite in a sorta slutty get-up, with hot pants and ‘revealing’ tank top made me chortle a bit. But seeing said transvestite leaving said Chinese restaurant was tremendously amusing.

Well, it seems that the Animatrix shorts were so popular, that the same thing is now being done for the upcoming Charlie’s Angels sequel.

I watched about 45 seconds of episode 1 for the latter. It seemed pretty dumb, maybe the others will be better.

Personally, I think it would only be appropriate to to use some kinda animation that takes up the famous style and textures of the late Patrick Nagel (maybe not SFW). You see his stuff everywhere, so there’s immediate recognition; it’s completely reminiscent of the 70s and 80s, like Charlie’s Angels, and if anyone has ever been known for drawing beautiful women, it’s been Nagel.

Granted, he’s been R.I.P. for almost 20 years now and it’s true that no one has quite matched his style. Regardless, a tribute to Nagel, in one of these videos, would be quite fitting.

I know you shouldn’t buy and sell stock on sentiment. Regardless, I did today, but only slightly.

I got rid of BMY, after making a meager 6.7% profit, because I simply don’t like how things look down the road, regarding generics. Plus, BMY doesn’t feel very financially robust these days.

I then bought some King Pharmaceuticals (KG), which tangentially shares a name with, and is based on the original grounds of my alma mater. This said, King has been beaten down pretty hard in the market and, by all accounts, seems pretty darn undervalued, especially considering its financials. It will weather the various issues on its plate, I think.

**Disclaimer: All references to stock and outlook on future performance are for entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed financial advisor. If you buy a stock, while considering anything I say “advice”, you’re a blooming idiot.**

THE COOLEST THING EVER.

(pretty high up there, too)

Well, one thing is for certain, I never thought I’d hear Morcheeba, followed by Paul Oakenfold, while waiting in queue to talk with the help desk.

I keep seeing this newsbite about Apple selling over a million songs in the first week. I can’t help but wonder how many of those were of Living Colour’s lone hit, “Cult of Personality”.

Oh yeah. I have also been coming real close to finally breaking even on my E*Trade portfolio, which, as of late, has been running -2.2% since inception. However, I bought more stock today, which, when you take into account trade fees, automatically drops you underwater with regards to gains… so I have now dropped to about -2.59% since inception.

This said, when the stock has good financials, and monthly dividends that yield about 22% on the year, one really can’t complain.

Thanks to Kiplinger for the tip.

The US says Canada cares too much about civil liberties:

Some US law-enforcement officers have expressed concern that Canadian privacy laws, as well as funding levels for law enforcement, inhibit a fuller and more timely exchange of information and response to requests for assistance. Also, Canadian laws and regulations intended to protect Canadian citizens and landed immigrants from Government intrusion sometimes limit the depth of investigations.

Rumsfeld. Ridge. Ashcroft. All three of you can suck it. It’d be a bloody shame for Canada to implement draconian measures such as The Patriot Act, or Operation TIPS, or indefinite detention of illegal immigrants.

The analogy isn’t quite right, but everytime I hear that Kid Rock / Sheryl Crow duet, I think of the Ozzy Osbourne/Lita Ford thing from years ago.

Things tend to snowball.

I now own three copies of Pink Floyd’s classic album, Dark Side of the Moon.

* For my 22nd (?) birthday in college, M gave me his old copy;
* My cousin gave me the 1994 digitally remastered version for Christmas;
* The other day, I just bought the 30th Anniversary re-issue, in all its wonderous goodness, that will play in stereo on standard CD player, or in Dolby 5.1 stereo surround-sound on an SACD compatible player.

However, I realised that my DVD player is just basically lined into my CD player, using component plugins. “Well, that’s all fine and good”, I thought, “it was time that I bought a receiver anyway.” So I’ve been looking at receivers, checking out ones that are Dolby 5.1 or better, and support SACD.

The more I research, however, the more I realise that SACD is a relatively new feature on players, and that not all DVD players are SACD compatible. Indeed, it seems that the Philips player I recently purchased (after a lot of research and feature comparison), although it is DVD/DVD-A/VCD/CD/MP3-capable, most likely isn’t suitable for SACD.

Ugh. Oh well. At least I know my Blue Man Group DVD Audio disc will work :P.