We're Falling Apart to Half Time

Tonight we said farewell to the amazing comedy series Arrested Development. Once again, the asshats at Fox have canned a truly great show before its time - AD joins the ranks of Firefly, Futurama, Family Guy, John Doe, and a couple others. At least the people at NBC are still being good to me. Scrubs, My Name is Earl, and The Office are probably the three funniest shows on TV now.

Speaking of funny, a guy named Eric Fensler redubbed the PSAs that aired at the end of GI Joe episodes, and the results are absolutely hilarious. Contemporary Insanity has all the files up for download (WMV and MOV, about 1Mb each) and I highly recommend watching them, especially "Pork Chop Sandwiches", "Nosebleed", "Belch", and "GI Gay". Great stuff.

After finishing off watching all the episodes of John Doe (which were great, by the way - download them or watch them on SciFi soon), I've gotten into Gundam Wing. I'm 40 or so episodes in now, and it's better than I remembered. Probably because I can watch many episodes in a row, and not have to deal with Cartoon Network's ridiculous airing schedule and pointless commercials.

Two quick observations about FSU for people who haven't been here:
1. I go to school with at least 10,000 girls who are trying their hardest to be Barbie. Who says women don't have positive role models?
2. Just about everybody (when not on their cell phone) walks with their head down. What's so interesting about the pavement? Do these people have no confidence? I walk with my head up, and admit I'm amused to see people occasionally glance up at me, see my eyes, have that awkward second of eye contact, and immediately resume staring at the ground. Since when did I become intimidating?

MCAT is April 22nd. Lots to learn. Stupid physiology!

I've been thinking about the best (and worst) electronics purchases I've made in the past few years, and here's what I've come up with.

The Best:
1. TI-89 Graphing Calculator ($150, 1998) - this thing helped me immensely through my math, science, and engineering courses. While I really have yet to need it in a class at FSU (who needs calculators in Chemistry anyway) it still gets used almost daily as I tutor lots of kids in calculus.

2. Microsoft Xbox ($120, 2004) - I admit, for a gamer, I rarely play games on this thing. Modded almost immediately after purchase, this thing is my media center. XBMC is the greatest software application ever.

3. Apple PowerMac G3 ($10, 2005) - for $10, this thing has been the best bargain on the list. Now my everyday computer (after a $40 RAM investment) this thing has been wonderful to me, and I really detest having to use Windows anymore.

4. Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 40GB ($230, 2003) - for the size and price of this MP3 player at the time, this was one hell of a steal. Sure it doesn't have a color screen or the best control system, but it worked and held a good portion of my massive music library. For anybody keeping score at home, I'm up to 75GB of space on my portable MP3 players. But nobody's keeping score. Regardless, this was a great buy.

5. AIWA Car MP3-CD Player ($300, 2000) - I've been huge on MP3s for a long time, and this made me love my car. I still use it daily. The ability to fill a CD full of mp3s (5-10 albums) and just rock one disc on a car ride is great. Plus, I rarely ever have real CDs in my car, so I don't worry about break-ins or damage or anything. Scratched disc? Burn another! While this machine is a bit outdated today, it does have one thing most CD players don't - an Auxiliary Input jack on the front, so I can hook up my other MP3 players and kick it through the stereo. Great buy. My sister got one too after seeing how cool mine was.


Worst Buys:
1. Compaq Aero 2100 Pocket PC ($400, 1999) - This is EASILY #1 on the worst buy list. Not that the device was bad, it was just a poor buy. Far too expensive, too heavy, too large, and too infrequently used. In fact, I probably used this like 10 times. I just don't like Pocket PCs or PDAs in general for that matter. Which makes #2 easy...

2. Handspring Visor Edge ($75, 2003) - I tried again with PDAs, but this time a very small model to keep my phone numbers in at work. Again, didn't use it much, waste of money, blah blah blah. About 2 months ago this thing somehow got cracked in my backpack. So I tossed it. Good riddance.

3. Sony PSP ($250, 2005) - it's official, this thing is a piece of junk. It can play music, video, and games worse than three other devices that I already own (iPod Nano/Video/Nintendo DS in that order). It looks pretty, and there are a few good games, but there's no way in hell this thing's worth 2x the price of a DS. Especially when you consider the new DS Lite that's coming out soon. I want a black one.

4. DeLorme Earthmate GPS ($89, 2003) - again, a dumb thing I bought for my old job. I thought that having a GPS device might be nice and useful when driving around the rural parts of Michigan, but soon discovered that Mapquest (this was pre-Google Maps) was good enough to meet my needs. I've still got the device. Maybe I'll use it some day for something. What? Hell if I know.

5. Dell Dimension 450 ($3000, 1999) - how in the hell I spent $3k for a PC for college still baffles me. First off, the fact that you can buy middle-of-the-line PCs (which my system was) for under a grand now kills me. I still just can't imagine how a 450MHz PIII with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hdd was that damned expensive. Oh, I should've added my "Smart and Friendly Rocket 8x CD-Burner" to that best buy list. Even if it was $300 and SCSI and the terrible, crappy, cheap media was $1/each. Those were the days.

I still haven't seen Underworld 2. I need to get off my ass about that.

Georgia Tech basketball is killing me. 8 straight Ls? In ACC play? I'll give them a free pass, starting so many Sophomores and Freshmen, but pick it up for next year boys!

Work and school are going well. Nothing else to report there.

I finally got off my ass and bought a forum membership over at SomethingAwful, though I've only made a post or two. No biggie.

"Dance, Dance" by Fall Out Boy is a great song, but I've pretty much disliked everything else I've heard by them. Sorta like "The Art of Losing" and the All-American Rejects. Maybe I'm only allowed to like one song per pop-punk outfit. Who knows?

Oh, and kids: fraud is bad. Just a note from me to you. As a completely related aside, I'm going to be terrified of the shit that my kids will one day pull. Picture me, but younger, smarter, and more devious. I don't know if that last part is possible, but I just hope I've got a wife who won't disown the kids after they do something like flood the downstairs because they were interested in how a dishwasher operates.

Please God, give me nerd children. I will be the best nerd dad ever.

Out-of-town people: try to make your way to Tallahassee. Why? Because I'm practically chained here (til August) and I want to see you people. You're especially missed if you live in collegiate areas of Connecticut, southwest Virginia, or west-central North Carolina. Tallahassee's treating me well, but there's no doubt that I need out again. I can tolerate living here as long as need be, but my heart's somewhere else.

Speaking of hearts, February 14th is just around the bend. As a single male in my twenties, I think that I'm supposed to use this time to gripe about why it's such a miserable holiday and that it's so commercialized and other bitches and moans about why I have no reason to celebrate (quick answer: presently/persistently girlfriendless), but I won't. Instead, I'll wish all of you who do have a good reason to celebrate a Happy V day, and ladies, don't forget your men on March 14th. Seriously. They'll love you even more.

Do people actually like the taste of conversation hearts? My mom offered me some the other day - and (I swear to god) all I could think of was Calcium Carbonate. Which reminds me that I need to spend less time with my head deep in books about hydrocarbons and hormone structure. I'm spending 13+ hours at FSU at least 3 days a week, and probably 15-20 hours a week in the library. Being an A student sure is a hell of a lot less fun that being a C student was. I do however realize that this is just good preparation for the med school, where I again will have no social life. So barring any major miracle, I'll regain my normal social life in 2014, at the tender age of 33. So much for the good years.

Age. I turned a quarter-of-a-century last Wednesday, and celebrated with an early-morning Organic Chemistry test. Festivities were light compared to last year (check the photo blog's February 2005 archives for details), but I didn't expect much. Another year came and went so fast. My life better not be 33% done yet, dammit. [That figure is extremely optimistic, mind you.]

I built a digital picture frame out of my old Powerbook 540c. I'll post some pictures soon.

Also, check out the word verification/challenge that Google presented me when I went to submit this site under its new address [www.retarsia.com]:

Those are supposed to just be random letters. Juvenile humor at its best.

Leave comments, people! I love reading what you people have to say. Lord knows I don't get off my butt often and type here, but when I do, I love the feedback.