Tim’s Ramblings

So here I am at the office. It’s 8:50pm and no one is in development (which is kind of amazing really). It’s totally quiet. So…nice… I’m actually at my desk with Iron Maiden’s Live After Death blasting through my speakers with Visual Studio open and compiling. It’s compiling CODE!! CODE THAT I WROTE!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhh….. I..*sniff*…I missed this….

Took our Japanese visitors out to dinner tonight at The Cheesecake Factory (what the hell is up with those insane portions?? I mean really…..) and after a nice dinner, I dropped them off at the hotel and headed back here to finish up some stuff.

I’ll be picking them back up again at 8:50am for meetings all day long and dinner so this is the only time really that I have to do this.

And man…this is nice. I really missed this.

(^_^)

A rare hillarous SNL skit with Paris Hilton.

Sadly I think if this actually were available in real life it’ll be profitable….

(^_^)

This made me laugh when it first aired on the Cartoon Network a few years ago.

Made me laugh :)

First off…no…this is not a cry for help or attention.

I just thought the post would be more meaningful with pictures…and since I have a digital camera…I thought “why not?”

Anyway, today I stopped by Heinens for dinner and I saw that they had the ever elusive new Coca Cola Blak in a cooler. Ooooh. I’ve been looking for it and thankfully I remembered H telling me where it was. It’s obviously new and cool because they spell it like a 5 year old…… Anyway….

For any of you that don’t know, Coca Cola Blak is the new drink (a “carbonated fusion beverage” according to the bottle) that Coke recently released to the world. It’s basically coke with coffee. Yes….a combination of coke…with coffee. Sounds kinds disgusting eh?

But what the hell…I like coffee…I like iced coffee…and though I like diet coke better than regular coke classic, I don’t HATE coke and I sure like it better than pepsi. So it can’t be that bad…right?

I let it chill down in the fridge for a while. Yes yes, I know a very cold beverage is hard to taste but…just in case it tasted like ass (not that I’m an expert at ass flavors…*ahem*) I kept it in the bottom of my fridge for a few hours.

I was actually impressed that it was in a glass bottle actually. You don’t see that much anymore. And once opening it I took a whiff…and it smelled…different. It had a coffee smell but it wasn’t overpowering. It was kinda like sweet coffee. Almost like those chocolate covered espresso beans. But no chocolate..just a slight coffee smell with some sweet overtones along with a familiar Coke Classic scent. (…yes…I feel silly describing the smell of C.C. Blak like I’m describing wine….)

I decided to drink it out of a Killians glass so…once again…if it tasted like ass I might fool myself into thinking it’s something better. In hindsight, I should have used a Guiness glass…dammit.

The taste was actually not too bad though. Slightly carbonated. It was sweet and you can definitely taste the Coke Classic. But there was this coffee flavor over it. Not bitter. Just like the oils. According to the label they used “coffee essense”. I have no idea what that is. But it didn’t taste fake like, say, Nescafe. But it wasn’t really coffee either. And it had a slightly bitter after taste but not unpleasant.

Because it’s a small bottle I was able to finish it off pretty quick.

Would I drink it again? Hmmmmmm…maybe. I did buy 2 bottles so I probably will. Did it taste bad? Nope. But did it taste good? Hmmm….not really. It was just like a “huh….I guess it is coke with coffee…” feeling. Utterly unremarkable really. Now I have no idea how much caffeine is in it though. But if there’s a lot, then sure, I’ll slug one down on the false hopes that it’ll help me around 3pm on a workday (caffeine doesn’t do much to me unless I drink SOOO much that I start to get jittery and my stomach goes “ooooh…no thankyou…”).

In all honesty though, I’d rather be drinking this…

Which is just what I’m going to do after I post this :)

So anyway, if you see a bottle of Coca Cola Blak, give it a shot (if you like coffee that is). I’ve heard from other people until now that they HATED it and it tasted horrible. But I’m realizing that some people are more influenced by what they THINK it’ll taste like than how it actually tastes. Then again, I enjoyed drinking Pocari Sweat in Japan and didn’t think the odd blue Final Fantasy Potion energy drink was that bad…so…maybe my taste buds are a bit off. I bet this will sell decently in Japan though with their already established love for bottled tea and cold can coffee. Mmmmmmm.

(^_^)

So…the past few years, it’s hard not to notice that the whole “geek” thing is in.

Well…at least more accepted.

Back in my day (yes…I feel old dammit) we never openly advertised that we were geeks. Hell…the concept of “geek” was different then. Nowadays, being a geek is a source of pride. But…it seems ANYONE who uses a computer and plays Grand Theft Auto is a geek…. But really…a true geek doesn’t fail science class or math class. Sure a geek played alot of video games but he also programmed and memorized countless tables for D&D and did other things man. We were keeping it real!

*ahem*

But now, just look at the t-shirts. Geek this and video game that. Why is it that I see more original Nintedo shirts NOW than I ever did before? Well…simply because if I ever wore a Metroid shirt or a Zelda shirt to HS, I would have been a laughing stock… Ahh…youth.

But anyway, I’m just rambling here.

I just couldn’t bring myself to wear any of those shirts. Sure I enjoyed Metroid and Zelda and Ninja Gaiden and Mario 1, 2, & 3 along with Castlevania and such. But really….does that make me cool? No. And as you may have noticed by now…for some reason, I just can’t bring myself to embrace this geek culture thing.

However, when I saw a particular shirt, it drew me in. “This,” I said to myself, “is a geek shirt that I can wear!!! Screw these kids thinking Nintendo is ‘old school’. THIS is fucking OLD SCHOOL!!!”.

Behold, the “Nethack shirt”.

http://www.nonzerochance.com/index.php?p=buypage&design=nethackroom&style=kshirt

Now, at this point, some of you may be going, “What the hell is a Nethack??”

And that is my point.

I think I went TOO old school…

Alas, I wore it to work and sure enough, I saw a Metroid shirt and a Pacman shirt, and even one that said something like “Leave me alone or I will replace you with a very small shell script”…though I’m not sure if the wearer really knew what a “shell script” was…..but NONE of them knew what the hell I was wearing.

I work at a computer company.

I work with geeks.

But only TWO guys really knew what my shirt was about. Only TWO. *sigh*… The rest of the kiddies just went “huh…yeah….but….isn’t it like Diablo??”

NO DAMMIT. Diablo was like THIS!!

I went too far back I think.

If I wore a Karateka or an original Escape from Castle Wolfenstein shirt I might have gotten some respect. But instead they just looked at it like “huh…an @ sign huh?”

*sigh*

PLEASE tell me some of you readers have heard of Nethack??? Please??? (other than the few that I know already know…)

God I love these. I hate those Mac ads. About as much as I hated the ones they did a few years ago with all these kids saying how the Mac helped them do sooooooooo much.

Yeah…but you know…a PC works just fine too. Really. Aaaand I don’t have to go talk to some pretentious kid at a Mac store to get anything working…. Of course it doesn’t help that the closet one is a 40 minute drive from me.

But anyway, here you go. I love John Hodgman by the way (he’s the PC in the original commercials). His book is hillarous. 700 hobo names! Come on. Nothing better than 700 hobo names!

So, I’m back home for now but will be leaving in another 3 hours or so for dinner…which seems insane since I think I’m still full from brunch.

But first, my question for you all.

At work we now have a small group of Japanese speakers. It’s actually pretty neat for me. When I started here, I never ever would have thought that there would come a time where there will be days when I will almost be speaking Japanese 50% of the time at the office. This is also good for my sister too as it will help her keep up with her Japanese.

So, on a whim this past week we decided that Saturday will be an Asian food day. Basically we will go have dim sum at 11am and then go home and digest and then meet up at Pacific East for good Japanese food for dinner. Crazy? Yes. Tasy? Yes.

But here is the question. We purposely did this only with Japanese speakers. So, me, my sister, J, K, and C. However, my sister brought her boyfriend who can’t speak Japanese and J brought her husband who can only pick up a few words here and there in Japanese.

Now, most everyone seemed fine with it and we spoke in Japanese with each other but for me, as I have heard grumblings in the past from other people who can only speak English about being surrounded by non-English speakers…there was a twinge of guilt. That combined with my translating that I do a lot and I kept thinking that I should be translating everything for them… But J wasn’t really doing it and only talked to her husband in English when she wanted his opinion and my sister was doing the same.

In the end, I figured, they both knew what the situation was going to be like and we won’t talk about them in Japanese without telling them so…I guess it’s ok. But…since most of you reading this are English only speakers…what do you think? I will obviously not invite you to something like this unless I think you can handle it or you ask to come.

But at the same time, do you think we have the obligation to speak in English only so the 2 people at the table can participate 100% too? Even if J can’t speak English that well yet? Should we have chosen the language that everyone can understand even if it’s not the most comfortable?

I only ask this because I have heard both opinions. I, too, have been in situations where I was the only English speaker and everyone around me was speaking in Spanish. And as weird as I kinda felt, after a while I got used to it and also I knew that this was their common language and many of them were not as comfortable in English. They will talk to me if they need to in English but otherwise, I got by just fine. And in today’s case, they knew what they were getting themselves into…right?

Please feel free to answer bluntly. I really want to know what your opinions are.

Oh, and I will write more about the day after today’s dinner :) Man…I hope they have shishamo - river smelt with eggs inside grilled over an open flame. Mmmmm…it’s….so….so….so….good.

(^_^)

This is really really impressive.

Someone took the trailer to the Cowboy Bebop Movie along with some editing of the movie itself and then removed the sound and used sounds, music, and voice acting from the game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

The lip synching is perfect as is the editing. Someone is very very talented AND has a lot of time on their hands.

I guess this is only relevant to someone similar to me…someone who have played the game AND have watched the anime.

Ah well.

It’s good though if you ARE like me. (^_^)

From Google Video.

Original is here.

First sent to me by nein09.

This is funnier if you understand Japanese…but it’s still frickin’ hillarious!

(^_^)

Cover your ears!! But really…it’s worth watching once. Maybe.

(^_^)

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