Thursday, August 28, 2008

Jony is Online!

When my brothers and I grew up, we spent many hours playing with our stuffed animals. We gave each of them names and unique personalities. One of the longest lasting personalities among our animals, is an old "Smokey the Bear" stuffed toy named Jony.

Jony, the son of Smokey the Bear, was an inventor, entrepreneur, wizard, and all around wise guy. He had the ability to be anywhere, anytime, and always has plenty of cash on hand. A lot of things happened to this bear during our lifetime. His body got so worn, that my mom decided to make him some new clothes: new blue jeans, and a silky red shirt. At one point, he "died" and my brothers buried him in a shoe box in the back yard. A week later, they decided that he hadn't really died, and dug him back up. When my youngest brother got married (it was his bear), my wife and I made him a little tuxedo, so he could attend the wedding.

Anyway, we still talk about Jony, and he still has a place in my brother's home. Recently, Jony started a MySpace page, complete with pictures of Jony in all sorts of situations. If you don't have a MySpace account, you can't view them, but here are a couple of examples:





(PS - I just checked, and it does appear you can view the pictures without an account now... weird)

Jony has even appeared on YouTube, recently. If you haven't seen the original (not-original?) Jeff Peckman alien video, see it here:



Wait, what was that? An alien? A puppet? Look again with the colors enhanced:



Hey, it's just our lovable old Jony! Hey Jony!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

3rd Annual Portland Pirate Festival

With Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day just around the corner, I decided to visit the official website, and see what's up. After some amount of surfing (yarr, sailin?), I found that Portland, Oregon (my home town) is having their 3rd Annual Pirate Festival:



Dang, I wish I still lived close enough to go, because you know I'd be all piratey and stuff! Yarr, and shiver-me-timbers! Maybe one of me mates will attend, and keep their shifty eyes peeled for me. Avast!

Then again, maybe I'll just order a commemorative T-Shirt. Whoa, maroon is a fairly... unseemly color for a pirate, isn't it? Wouldn't be good to be a marooned Pirate wearing a maroon commemorative T-shirt! I mean, look at the guy modeling the T-shirt: he's about the furthest from being a pirate as I've ever seen! In fact, he's so far from being a pirate, he's actually an Opposite Pirate!!

Guess I wont be getting the shirt either. (ye scurvy bilge rats!)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Garfield Minus Garfield

What happens when you take a Garfield comic, and strip away the main character? You get the GarfieldMinusGarfield.net online comic:



The mission of the comic?


Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.


Some of these are actually quite hilarious, and strangely sad. What does Jim Davis think about it?


Garfield creator Jim Davis was intrigued by—and pleased with—the concept. “I think it’s an inspired thing to do,” Davis said. “I want to thank Dan for enabling me to see another side of Garfield. Some of the strips he chose were slappers: ‘Oh, I could have left that out.’ It would have been funnier.”


In any case, I'm keeping this one in my bookmarks.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Eight Eight Eight

Eight. My favorite number since my neighbor told me his was Seven. I didn't want to copy him, so I decided that Eight would be my favorite. After all, it's snowman shaped, and I like the snow. It has no sharp edges, matches the number of bits in a byte, is 2^3 (both prime numbers), and is the total number of fingers most people have on their hands (not counting thumbs, of course). The can of Mt. Dew I'm drinking right now has 12 oz, but it's my second can, so I've nearly finished 24 oz, which is 8 * 3.

Today is August 8, 2008, which can be correctly described as "eight eight eight", which means today should be my most favorite day ever. Hmmm, nothing special about today, except maybe that the Beijing Olympics is starting. Google has a neat graphic to commemorate this fact:



I'm working from home, which is always nice (I eat lunch with my family, instead of in my never-the-right-temperature office). I fixed two software bugs already this morning, and I'm on the verge of fixing another. Isis stock price is up 8% (well, 8.25% to be exact), and that would be nice if I had shares to sell. Still, it means the company is doing well, and that's good for job security.

I hear a lot of people are trying to have their babies or get married on 8/8/8. There are those that are even shooting for 8am or 8pm, as the recorded time for the event, so that they can be 8/8/8 @ 8.

For me, 8 is still just my favorite number, and no, my ATM PIN is NOT 8888.