My 30th Birthday in Atlanta.

Actually it was the day after my birthday. We stayed at the Hilton downtown and spent the day at the Georgia Aquarium which was a short walk from the hotel.

My MPG.

This is how many miles per gallon I get.

Thanksgiving in Florida.

Here are some pictures and videos of my Thanksgiving in Florida. This is Ponte Vedra Beach.

Screw That.

I'm sleeping in on Friday. Good luck to all of you suckers.

Cheap Magazine Subscriptions.

Google Checkout is offering $10 off a minimum $10 purchase from a bunch of vendors including Buy.com and Mags4Cheap.com until December 31, 2006. I like the deal at Mags4Cheap.com because you can apply it to comic book subscriptions. The cheapest you'll pay for a Marvel subscription is $20 from the Marvel.com website, but with the $10 off from Google Checkout at Mags4Cheap.com, you can get a subscription for $14 or less. Not too shabby.

The catch is you are only supposed to be able to use it if you are new to Google Checkout. This means you have to use a new Google account and a different credit card than what you may have already registered with Google Checkout. Getting another Gmail account is no big deal and most people have more than one credit card, so this shouldn't be much of a problem. I wonder, can you register debit cards with Google Checkout too?

To The Spidey Fans.

This is my first attempt at a desktop background. It's 1024 x 768 pixels. Just click the image and "save as", then set the image as the background.


Also, here's Eddie Brock turning into Venom in Spiderman 3.

Free CD-R's.

Click on the image, print the coupon, and head over to Office Depot for your free cd-r's. The coupon expires December 9, 2006.

A Haiku.

I found this at Threadless T-shirts.

I Can't Wait.

If only May 4, 2007 were tomorrow.

The Birmingham International Auto Show.

Yesterday, Becky and I went to the Birmingham International Auto Show. I've been to the one in Detroit and the Birmingham version is minuscule in comparison. It's still pretty neat though. The concept cars are always fun to look at and since there are far fewer people at the Birmingham Auto Show, you don't have to wait long to sit in the car of your choice. When I used to go to the show in Detroit, my friends and I would have a contest to see who could be the first to find the car where they forgot to disable the horn (there always seemed to be at least one). There always seems to be one at the Birmingham show as well. Becky frowns upon that little ritual, so I didn't try to hard to find it, though I did hear the horn from time to time. Also, Becky ended up "winning" a Nalgene-style bottle from the people in the Suzuki area. She was pretty happy about that.

Here are some pictures from our day.

This is a Chevy concept car.

Becky is testing out the seat in a Mitsubishi.


ALWAYS keep your eyes on the road, even when dealing with paparazzi.


Ever since I was a kid, I've always wondered why no one ever made a car entirely out of chrome, since people like it so much. Well, this it what it would look like.

That kid holding onto the chain is as shocked as I was that someone finally decided to make an all chrome car.

This looks like a concept car, but the sticker in the windshield means it isn't.




That was the leather seat, I swear.

...or was it?


The coolest dune buggy I've seen so far.

Let's Move to Iceland!

I just read this article. It says that the top 8 countries to live (out of 177) are:

1. Norway

2. Iceland

3. Australia

4. Ireland

5. Sweden

6. Canada

7. Japan

8. U.S.A.

This website says that the 17 least corrupt countries (out of 159) are:

1. Iceland

2. Finland

3. New Zealand

4. Denmark

5. Singapore

6. Sweden

7. Switzerland

8. Norway

9. Australia

10. Austria

11. Netherlands

12. United Kingdom

13. Luxembourg

14. Canada

15. Hong Kong

16. Germany

17. United States

What A Day.

Man, I woke up this morning and it felt a little like Christmas. I finished another draft of a paper that I'm going to try to get published. I finished it last night and sent it to my adviser to read over. That lifted a huge weight off my shoulders and I slept pretty good last night. Then, this morning, I turn on the news and hear that the Democrats have taken the House and could take the Senate as well. Wow. Let's see if they actually make some worthwhile changes. To top it all off though, Donald Rumsfeld is quitting! It's about friggin' time. I hope his replacement is at least slightly better.

Better than all that though, it's currently sunny and 65 degrees here. Nice.

Did You?

By the way, Election Day is probably one of the most important days in the U.S., so why don't we get this day off? How many people (and what demographic) can afford to take off on a Tuesday?

Sometimes Classics Are Better.

Which picture is more likely to get you to serve your country?

Happy Halloween.

Click below to watch the commercial.

Where Do You Want To Live?

According to this list, 61% of the cities on the list are safer than Tuscaloosa. This place has about the same number of people as Sterling Heights, MI (my hometown). Only 4% of cities on the list are safer than Sterling Heights and it's a suburb of Detroit (99.7% of cities are safer). All of the largest cities in Alabama are pretty high on the list. The safest city in Alabama is Tuscaloosa and the most dangerous is Birmingham where 98.7% of cities on the list are safer.

Scary Indeed.

Last Night.

There really aren't a lot of cool things that happen in Alabama, so when something comes around you have to jump at the opportunity. Good bands hardly ever come to this state. There might be someone worth seeing once or twice a year, while they are on their way to Atlanta. Last summer this state was lucky enough to host 311, Papa Roach, and Unwritten Law. Becky and I went to that concert and it ROCKED! I don't know if it's because I haven't been to a concert in a very long time, or if they really were that good.

Anyway, one of the few worthwhile performances in this state happened last night and Becky and I were lucky to get tickets to it. We tried months ago but it was already sold out. Yesterday afternoon I figured I would just check again. I really don't know why. It seems that they opened up some extra seats and we managed to get the last two of them together.

So, who did we see? Who was willing to come to this lame-ass state and entertain the minority of the population? One of my favorite comedians, Lewis Black!

This is probably the best picture of me ever taken.


My autographed ticket. John Bowman was the opening act. He's the guy on the left in the above picture. He was pretty funny, but definitely not as good as Lewis Black.

Garrett Ward Breaux.

I'm currently in New Orleans with Becky to visit her sister and brother-in-law who just had their first baby.

Here are the proud parents, Cathy and Mike, with Garrett.


Here's Becky with Garrett.


Look, I didn't drop him.

Tolerable TV.

I just finished watching an episode of Heroes on NBC. It's a decent show but it has a lot of plot problems. The biggest one I noticed on tonight's episode had to do with the blonde lady and her kid. She drove them both into the desert at night in a convertible with the top down. She parked the car and proceeded to use a shovel to dig up a corpse a few feet away from the car as her son was sleeping the back seat. Later she opened the trunk, removed two dismembered bodies and buried them. She didn't finish until what looked like noon, just as her son woke up.

Now even if this kid isn't a light sleeper, who wouldn't wake up with a trunk opening and closing a few feet from your head? Also, what kid sleeps until noon in a convertible with the top down in the desert? When I'm camping I have a hard time sleeping past dawn. It just gets too bright for me. If I was sleeping in the desert, I think the heat and dehydration would have woken me up.

My favorite character is Hiro, the Japanese guy with control over space and time. Peter is my second favorite, but the cop is growing on me. The character I have a problem with is the cheerleader girl. I have to say she is pretty damn lucky her power is to cheat death and have a Wolverine-like healing ability. I've never seen anyone get mangled more than this chick. Even Wolverine TRIES to avoid using his healing ability. This chick accidentally impales herself on sharp sticks, puts her hand in a garbage disposal, jumps off of grain silos, etc. Isn't self-preservation still one of the few instincts that humans have? Millions of years of evolution have hammered that into every fiber of our being, so wouldn't you still feel some doubt about your power even if you knew that you couldn't die? Personally, I would find it more plausable if this chick would think, "well I didn't die those other dozen times, but maybe my luck will run out the next time." That would definitely add a little more realism to the story, which I belive the creator was going for. Then again, he was probably just jumping on the comic-book band wagon and sold a half-thought-out idea to NBC. I read somewhere that he never read comic books and he wanted to get a more realistic take on people with powers. I don't think he succeded.

Anyway, this show definitely needs some more thought put into the storyline. Clearly, it's no Lost. It's a lot more similar to one of the creator's earlier attempts at a superhero tv show, Misfits of Science (I LOVED that show).

Happy Columbus Day.

Cool.

I saw this on the BBC News website. The caption reads,

Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity near the rim of Victoria Crater. Victoria is an impact crater about 800m (half a mile) in diameter at Meridiani Planum near the equator of Mars. Opportunity is the dot at the centre of the zoomed image. (Nasa/JPL/UA)

This is the view from the rover.



UPDATE:

Check out the astronomy picture of the day. Careful, it's a big picture.

Steamers.

Yesterday, Becky and I walked down to Steamers for her birthday dinner. The restaurant looks like a Joe's Crab Shack, only not quite so tacky (although it's not from a lack of trying). They have a main dining area that is a big open patio that overlooks the Black Warrior River. The dining area is decent, but the restaurant is in a bad location along the river. The bridge over the river for the highway is a stone's throw away. It's a good effort to have river-front dining though.

The food at this place was not that impressive. I had blackened Mahi with rice, a baked potato, and cole slaw. The Mahi and the potato were pretty good. The rice wasn't cooked enough so it was still crunchy and the cole slaw was bland.

Overall, I'd say save your money. It's pretty pricey for what you get, a so-so meal with an ok view.