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What Lies Beneath

Ever wonder what those little mushroom guys in Mario look like under their hats? I have too, but technically what I'm going to show you isn't a mushroom guy or man or what have you, but a mushroom that would be ingested by Mario to gain an associated ability. So I went into a nearby Newbury Comics to get...comics and while checking out I saw these. Small mushrooms from the "New" Super Mario Bros. game which was released on the Nintendo DS last year. They came in three colors red (original big-up mushroom, buk buk), green (1-up), and blue (new micro mario mushroom). I got the green one.

So apparently the brains of these mushroom 'guys' are just little mushroom babies. Hmm...interesting. By this point you're probably wondering, "Ok what the hell am I looking at!?" These are just candy sours in a Mushroom tin. The thing cost a bit more than I would normally pay, however in this case I was paying for the tin more than the candy inside. I'm sure Nintendo obviously knew this when licencing the product.

Update

I removed the youtube element from my page. You guys are going to have to go to the site to get your fix. Also removed the Warcraft and WoWWiki links from the gaming section since I don't play any more.

Maybe I should update with an actual entry one of these days. NAAAH!

Winter Dragon

Up until a few days ago it seemed as if winter has been dragging on here in the good ol' Bay State. While the numbers range from the mid fifties to sixties the chill off the ocean and the wind tend to keep things on the cool side.

Yesterday the chill dissipated cause the temp hit the mid seventies. During last years' warm season I came close to perfecting my iced coffee. I required a cream that you can find in most supermarkets and had a French vanilla flavor. When the warm air hit me yesterday I recalled how close I was to achieving my goal perfecting my iced coffee, but soon realized that I also made the choice this year to cut back on coffee, and when I did have a cup of joe I would skip on cream and sugar and just use milk. I have yet brought my self down to black. I gotta have my taste standards.

To switch things up, this time around I did iced tea. For my first experiment I used Twinings Four Fruits Black Tea. The tea has a natural fruit taste that's refreshing and not overwhelming. On the down side the tea has a bit of a creamy texture similar to a chai which I'm not a fan off in my cold drinks.

While I wouldn't call this a total success, and for the next test I'll be using Earl Grey.

the Plauge

It's amazing how the flu has just run rampant this winter season. It basically seems that everyone is sick and it doesn't seem that you can become resistant either. Getting sick the first time doesn't give you a free pass for any infections following. I was able to fight it off twice before the flu gang up on me and hit me with Bronchitis.

I'm not on the road to recovery with some prescribed cough medicine and anti-viral pills. The past couple weeks have been nothing but staying indoors watching tv, dvds, reading, and video games. I'm kinda going nuts, but can't do much since I can't control my cough to the point where I can be comfortable in a social environment.

"le sigh"

Another thing is that I've been drinking nothing but tea and water for the past two weeks. I've never drank this much tea in my life, but in the end it's all for the best and its not like the tea is bad. Twinings English Afternoon, China Oolong, and Irish Breakfast are all good, and I plan on adding Lady Grey and Earl Grey to the mix.

It doesn't seem that you can do anything from being sick since everyone is sick. You could stop going outside and breathing but then you'll just have a whole other set of problems to deal with.

BEWARE!!!

What Americans have been Waiting for

So John McCain has released his first general election ad and there's some interesting hidden messages in this commercial. The ad hints that nationality the the next president should be or it implies the new commander-and-chief should display a certain level of patriotism.

That's not all! The ad's narrator is the actor from 24 who plays the evil vice president who tries to steal Presidency from the President (a black guy). Very sneaky Mr. McCain, very sneaky indeed.

Gang Leader for a Day

The book Freakonomics is by far my favorite book of all time and for those of you who have read it you would know that the Stephen's (as I like to call them) have a friend by the name of Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor at Columbia University. A trained sociologist, Sudhir lived in the Robert Taylor projects in Chicago to document how poor people lived.

This is an area where many researchers have failed since these areas are usually too dangerous to outsiders, and many studies are performed from the outside looking in using theories to fill in the gaps.

Sudhir, on the other hand, actually lived with people and temporarily became part of a gang for 6 years. While the chapter in Freakonomics gives excellent detail of his findings from an Economics point of view, Sudhir's book "Gang Leader for a Day" gives a lot more detail into his every day life in the projects. Since I have yet to read this book I can't honestly say go out and get it, based on the fact that I have only seen the cover. However, you have read the chapter in Freakonomics like I have then you already know this is a must read.

Below is a clip from his visit to the Colbert Report. ~Enjoy

Some Changes

Hot on the heels of my boi Moesef, I've decided to take control of my digital life by deleting online accounts that I no longer use or want. In a few days my MySpace will be gone, but with one down another was bound to take it's place. I currently have Facebook account and I keep it mainly cause most if not all my college friends are on it.

After cleaning up my online life I revisited Pownce. It's a social networking site that is a mix between blogger and facebook. I originally joined at a friend's request but quickly grew tired. It was disappointing since I wanted it to work for me, and it was created by the same guys who brought us Digg and Revision3. It had that same quality but there was nowhere in my digital life for it. :sigh:

Maybe someday.

One new and maybe temporary addition to the blog is the youtube element on the bottom right. It shows the most recently featured videos on youtube. We'll see how long it lasts. I'm still experimenting with this thing.

History Repeating

It's very true that history repeats itself, especially if we never learn the lessons of the past.

Recently it seems that history is literally repeating with the Democratic race to the White House. This race mimics the Governor's race for Massachusetts state governor a few years back. In this race there was a female (Kerry Healey), who happened to be white and an African-American male (Deval Patrick). Again this would have been Massachusett's first female Governor voted into office. [There was one female before her, Jane Swift, who became acting Governor when Paul Celluci left to be the US Ambassador to Canada].

In this race Deval Patrick, like Obama, had a slight lead over Kerry Healey and in the final days Healey's campaign became increasingly negative while Patrick (again like Obama) focused on what he plans to do while in office. Healey's negativity was pretty much the only thing I remember about her from that race. At the time I didn't like Patrick's policies and while I wanted to vote Healey, she just turned me off. I couldn't stand the constant complaining.

The same goes with our current Democratic Presidential race. Obama having a slight lead is being fired upon left and right by Clinton. Now Mass. isn't the best sampling of the Nation but if the same formula holds true then we could be saying goodbye to Mrs. Clinton.

Tonight's debate is do or die. LET'S GET IT ON!

iBand

So recently I've been itching to get myself an IPhone. Yes it's expensive and no I don't need it, but I Want It! My girlfriend recommended that I could put the money (taxes) towards a trip. Since she is both beautiful and wise, I highly considered her recommendation. :P

However I just finished my taxes and it seems that I might be able to do both! OH HO! This all depends on where I decide to go. If I choose to go to say California then the Iphone is out of the question, but If i choose a road trip then it might be a bit more plausible. We'll see how that goes, but mark my words, by the end of the summer I will have an IPhone.

I came across this new vid sweeping the internets the other day and it doesn't help me at all at wanting to conserve money for a trip. hee hee

enjoy

Updates

Some updates to the links on the side of the page. For personal reasons Gamespot has been removed, and added to the section are Zero Punctuation and Charlie Oscar Delta.

The Escapist magazine has a gaming section called Zero Punctuation which are quick witted game reviews by Yahtzee Croshaw. Just imagine a funnier Simon Cowel giving game reviews and you have Yahtzee.

Charlie Oscar Delta is the website for Call of Duty 4. Originally I had the site wrong cause I didn't realized that Charlie Oscar and Delta stood for COD. :)

Round 2

The flu aka "the Plauge" (P.P.) has been running rampant lately and I amazingly have been untouched buy it. Kinda like Will Smith in "I am Legend." However last week it seems as if I've jinxed myself and found myself in an epic battle to fend off an oncoming cold.

I was able to fight it off and was feeling fine on Valentines but it made a comeback on Friday and it was all out war on Saturday. The fight continues today and I expect it to be gone by Tuedsay. While I don't mind staying in and chilling this long weekend, I would much prefer to do it by my own choice rather than being held hostage buy a cold.

3rd Strike

So in short I wil classify myself as a gamer. I've been enjoying games since I was little and will continue to enjoy the hobby for a long time to come. As I've gotten older I will admit that my responsibilities have taken over much of the time that I would normally dedicate to playing a game. As they should. So in recent years as I've moved out of the college scene in to the "real world" I've become more of a collector.

Given my studies in Economics/Business I've become just as interested in the industry as I am with the game play. One industry leader that regularly makes headlines is Gamestop. After acquiring EBGames they've pretty much cornered the gaming retail market in the United States. And like a traditional monopolistic company they pretty much feel they have free reign to do what they like. They've received criticism from their "bend-over" bundles to their telemarketing-Esq style of marketing their buyback program (which sucks).

Up until a few years ago I haven't had a problem with Gamestop until I realized there 's a serious problem of how they handle used games. Gamestop is known to have very good deals when purchasing used games, a lot of stores have buy 2 get one free deals which can be hard to pass up if you're looking for a few titles at a low cost.

One situation that happend to me was back when God of War first came out. I purchased it used and realized that it was a defective copy. I was a bit surprised cause I thought they tested the games before they resold them for a price several times inflated from what they paid out. When I went to return it they store didn't have any more copies to replace it with. So I went to another store. This one had copies, but the crazy thing was this copy was also defective.

Frustrated I returned to the store and requested the credit option. This is where I got screwed. When I originally purchased the game it was 30 bucks, but in the time that I messing around with a busted copy, God of War became a "greatest hit" and the price dropped to 20 dollars. So I ended up losing money. I ended up using the store credit and purchased a new game, which thankfully worked just fine. Not only did I lose money but I ended up spending more.

The most recent incident happened last month when I purchased Street Fighter: Anniversary Collection. I wanted this game cause it was one of the only complications that had Street Fighter II: 3rd Strike, which is one of the best 2d fighting games out there. I ordered it online because it was difficult to acquire in a retail store, since it's an out of print game. Again used. Got the game only to realize that this one too was also defective. I called and was amazed at how smooth their return process was. The operator said that he would put in the request to have a replacement shipped once the original was returned. Time passed and I realized they didn't send out a replacement but refunded the full cost of the game. Slightly annoyed I just went to amazon and purchased a higher price for a new copy.

After this last situation I'm ever so conscious of purchasing used games from Gamestop and I will say that this is probably the 3rd Strike when dealing with this company.

Chocolate Skittles

I came into work today and as I sat down to start the day the coworker next to me hands me a bag of what looks to be candy and says, "try these." I take the bag and to my astonishment it said Skittles on it. I wasn't surprised at that but what was before it ...the word "chocolate."

My next thought was "what the fack are these going to taste like?!" Now your first notions would be that it would taste like a normal skittle but with chocolate flavor. Which in itself will taste..interesting. I assure you that is not the case they actually tasted similar to a tootie roll.

With flavors such as smore, vanilla, chocolate and caramel i think. It was really weird experience, one that i'm not sure I'll be taking part in again.

WHAT THA FAC!!??

Title says it all...but the clip says more.

Modern Marvel

I'm sitting here now watching the History Channel, which is one of my favs. Anywho I'm watching the show Modern Marvels and this episode focuses on the history of the tin can. Many people don't realize this but next to the Wheel, the tin can or just any can comes in very close as being one of the most important inventions in human history. It basically changed the way we eat.

The average shelf life of canned food is two years. Thats the recommened shelf life but most foods can last a lot longer. Word has it that a man in england opened and ate a 50 year old can of chicken and had no ill effects. Personally I think that guy was lucky.

The first successful beverage cans were introduced in 1935.

One thing that kinda bothered me were the new self heating/cooling cans they're coming out with. They use chemical reactions to bring a heated beverage such as coffee or soup to a suitable temperature for consumption. Just the thought of some assclown screwing around with a can that can heat itself to 100+ degrees has me worried.

oh well.

Perfume Gummis

So today I was talking to a coworker when I noticed a bag of gummi bears (later realized they were in the shape of a moose's head) sitting on his desk. He enthusiastically handed me the bag and said "try a blue one and a red one." I figured there was going to be some drastic difference between the two.

As I began to chew on the blue one he commented on how they tasted like perfume...and he was right. About half way through my nose began to pick up a flowery scent and I started to get this slight soapy taste in my mouth. It was an interesting experience, one that I don't wish to repeat. The Red gummi tasted normal.

I dont remember the brand of gummi moose that my coworker had but I'll find out just so that I don't make the mistake of picking it up in the future.

A Wii Bit of a Problem

I recently came back from a trip to Florida, where I took my Wii at the request of my sister. Fun was had by all for the past week where we engaged in Wiicombat! (yeah i know, corny)

So I have this bad habit of buying games and not playing them, Metroid and the more recent Super Mario Galaxy have fallen under this category. So over this past week I got some time to sit down with Mr. Mario and really got into it.

So I return to Boston today hook up the Wii and realize that the Wii has trouble reading the game when it's laid down flat. Now this could be for several reasons. Up until this point I've never (er hardly ever) played the Wii laid down flat. I haven't heard any news about the Wii having problems reading disks in a certain position so...the console could've suffered some damage while I was transporting it around or the disk it's self could have been damaged.

More to come after some investigating. ;)

All employees must flush...Hey Wait!

So the other day I walk into the men's room at work and came across this sign.

"All employees must flush the urinal
before returning to their workstations."

At first glance I just dismissed this as the "You mush wash hands" sign you see in most public restrooms but then I noticed the subject of the message. Apparently there's a problem with people not flushing after using the urinal in the men's room, I never noticed since I don't get to close to them...hmmmm...(O_o)

GOP FTW!?

I originally wasn't going to do it, but while I was packing for a trip that I'm currently on I had the Republican Debates on tv. Compared to the Dem battle a few days ago...the Republicans made the Democrats look FOOLISH!

They answered the questions in a efficient and professional manner. They even asked each other questions and answered without talking shit! I was amazed but then again they probably saw the travasty of the Dems debate and made a silent agreement not to be assclowns on national tv.

I was impressed...not enough to vote republican. lawl

After the debate with the Democrats, however I was very concerned if either Clinton or Obama got into the White House on the same ticket.

Mitt Romney, made a very good point during the GOP event. He says that he was terrorfied of a Clinton White House. It's true, Bill Clinton is campaigning pretty hard for a position he's not running for. Also having Billery in the WH sounds kinda unsettling if you think about it.

I never though I'd see the day where I would agree with Republicans. BTW if you check out the user text vote on msnbc Ron Paul came in second behind Romney. :)

Super Halo Bros.

This is probably one of the more interesting game mods I've seen in a while. Note the video is 12 minutes long and you don't have to watch the whole thing to get the gist of it.

~enjoy

Crank that Souljah Weather Girl

I can't express how much I hate the Souljah Boy song and dance. It's a perfect example of everything that is wrong with hip-hop today...but everytime I hear it I can't help but sing along. It's so fucking catchy.

I do however like to see people have fun, and people always seem to have fun with this song. Maybe thats why I've been able to tolerate it for so long.

Speaking of fun I came across this video while listening to to the diggnation podcast. Honestly, if more news broadcasts were like this I would definately watch more news...which is isn't saying much since I already watch a lot of news.

~enjoy

Mom + Myspace = Frustration 2: I Fucking Hate Computers

So the saga continues. It seems that my original attempt to fix the machine was a miserable failure. It now suffers from the random restarts. Actually they're not random they happen 100% of the time every time the computer is logged into.

There's going to be some last minute scanning in safe mode, but if that fails the computer will be wiped clean. Formating takes a lot of time and effort that I just don't feel like putting into a machine right now.

Mom + Myspace = Frustration

So my mom calls me in the "I need to you fix the computer," tone and I already know this isn't going to be fun. She says something in the nature of, "Things keep popping up and showing me naked white women!" Yeah this isn't going to be fun.

So jump on the computer and battle the various pop-ups that have now overtaken her desktop. All the while fighting my way to the Ad-Aware and Spybot programs. I managed to get the majority of stuff off including some viruses. During all of this my mother is telling me of her venture into myspace. Seems that of a friend of the family does something with flowers (as you can see I was only half listening due to how annoyed I was) and promotes her business through myspace. Well mother decided it would be an awesome idea to click on random links while in myspace, which lead her to this predicament.

The virus scans are done and the prognosis is that the machine should be fine. I prescribe my usual Don't Click diet and to stay away from internet explorer. Take these twice a day and things should be fine.

Fresh for the '08!

It's is the new year so I felt that I should post at least one entry for the year. Everyone has been asking me "oh what are you new years resolutions?" I honestly stopped the whole resolution thing a long time ago. Everyone, including myself, never stick to them but this year I decided to do things a little different.

So I made some resolutions but not the usual lose weight, exercising etc. etc. Mine are designed so that there's now way I can push them off to the side. So here's my list:

Eat good food.
Hang out with friends.
Play video games.
Sleep in as much as possible.
Watch tv/movies.

Notice anything different about these? Yes I know I'm a genius...lol j/k. Seriously I do have some major goals for this year. One is to learn to play guitar, which is already underway and continue more steadly once I pick up my own guitar tomorrow. The other is to learn Japanese. Ever since I've been into anime and the rest of Japanese culture I've always wanted to learn the language and visit the country. Since it's easier to execute learning the language I choose to start with that. Besides it will help me later when I do actually go to Japan.

That's all I'm gonna say for now since it's late and I'm tired and I just don't feel like typing any more.
I'll leave you with a follow-up to my last entry.