Git-R-Done

02.24.2004

I hate to admit this, but redneck humor appeals to me (more than it should). Comedy Central was showing the Blue Collar Comedy Tour not to long ago, and I laughed. Hard. I felt a little guilty, but I enjoyed it. Between Jeff Foxworthy telling me I might be a redneck if..., plus Bill Engvall giving out signs for stupid questions, it was fodder for hearty laughs. The other two guys with them only helped to make it more funny. Funnier? More funny.

One of those said other guys, Larry the Cable Guy, is coming to the Von Braun Concert Hall on my birthday. The timing is a little too ironic, because both Gina and I said that if any of those guys ever came to town we would have to see them. What better time to go laugh than on my birthday?

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Battleball

02.23.2004

Friday marked the return of something Jer and I haven't done in a while - battled on the field of random dice rolling. In this case, Battleball, the futuristic football/rugby game I got him for Christmas. Battleball is nice in that it is simple (suggested for 8-12 year olds) and quick to play. A game may last 45 minutes or so. Even better is that you're not forced to spend time constantly looking up rules every time you want to move or tackle.

Jer showed me some good reviews of the game, so it's nice to know we're not the only ones that like it. The review points out that there are a few fan sites that have come up with alternate rules, including using HeroClix figures. We were thinking up some alternate rules, but quickly got to the point where we would be bogging down the game too quick. The ease and speed of play is what makes the game so appealing. Screwing that up would just ruin the game.

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Billions

02.20.2004

Once back in school some teacher (somewhere) tried to get across the concept of how much a million was. A million of anything. I think the example I got was that 1 million seconds is about eleven and a half days. Any way you look at it, a million is a lot.

While surfing Yahoo, I came across a page I had forgotten about. This one shows the major stockholders for Microsoft, along with how much stock they have. Bill Gates has just over a billion shares of stock (a billion seconds is just shy of 32 years - I had to find out). Todays stock price of Microsoft is $26.64, so that of course makes Bill worth more than $26 billion dollars. Everytime the stock price fluctuates by a penny, Bill's net worth changes by at least $10 million.

That's a lot of money. I want to know how you get a billion shares of stock. Did he say "My name is Bill, therefore I get a Billion shares?"

Part of my looking around stems from my lost Invitrogen stock options. I had an option price of $76 (I think for 5000 shares). 2 years after getting laid off the price finally went from the low $30s of 2 years ago (meaning I didn't care about the options) to a high this month of $82. So if I had played my cards right (including keeping a job that I got laid off from), I could have made $30,000.

But I think I'm a lot better off now than I was 2 years ago. More than $30,000 worth better.

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Hacking Amazon

02.19.2004

I signed up for an Amazon Associates account to try and get a little bit of a discount with all the movies that I usually end up buying from them. So far, so good - I'm on the cusp of a $10 Gift Certificate! I was looking at the code that's generated to link to a product at Amazon. Along the way, I found that it boils down to changing 2 parts to a link and that's what defines a product.

Since it's so easy, I thought it would be cool to add a link to my DVD listings to go to an Amazon shopping cart. Not that anyone would actually buy anything, it's just more of a programming excercise for me. It's one of those things that makes me smirk as I see how the website's evolved over the past 6 years.

But if you happen to want a DVD....

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PPV Predictions Back To Normal

02.17.2004

My confidence in at least predicting the type of matches at Wrestlemania is back on track. At the end of Raw last night, they stated that their Wrestlemania main event would be HHH vs Shawn Michaels vs Chris Benoit for the world title. I can at least say I saw this coming.

If I had to make an early pick for a winner for this one, I'd have to go with HHH for now, thinking that Shawn or Benoit would end up screwing the other one up during the match, possibly leading to a more in depth feud with each other later. But that's just me. No telling hopw far off I am on this one.

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