Month: August 2006

As I was sorting the DVDs alphabetically on my self the other day, I noticed there was a something different about one of my Lord of the Ring DVDs. I picked it out and noticed it was the full screen version. I was like shoot, it’s been a couple months since I purchased it already. What to do. It still had the Best Buy sticker on it and it was still completely sealed. My reciept did show the wide screen version, but it’s already pass its 30 day return/exchange period. If you look closely at this image:

you can see that I’ve taken out the Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers DVD.

Anyway, I went to my local Best Buy without my receipt and asked if I could do an exchange because I had picked up the wrong version a couple weeks ago. I tell them I misplaced my reciept and they were fine with that. It took me forever to find the DVD and ended up asking for help because apparently Lord of the Rings falls under “Science Fiction”. I didn’t find any Fantasy category, so I went to Drama and Action and even Wars.

Anyway, I did get scared when I found out the DVD was supposed to cost $9.99 last week, and mine had a $14.99 sticker on it, but the customer service rep didn’t notice and now I have my wide screen version.

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Random Crap:

Haxorz license plate (photo taken by HKenshin)

Experts baffled by water-gurgling tree – Is it an artesian spring, a broken water pipe or an abandoned well? Lucille Pope’s red oak tree has gurgled water for about three months, and experts can’t seem to get to the root of the problem. Pope, 65, has sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries. They have taken pictures and conducted studies, but none have arrived at a firm answer.

The Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer (from Schwartz) – You can use the Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer to change the age, race or sex of a facial image, to transform it to the style of a famous artist, to make an exagerated caricature or even make an ape of yourself!. I had a lot of fun with this a one night and started putting in pictures of friends. Here’s mine with the original being my high school senior graduation picture:

Click image to start the animation or view it in the gallery.

Study Finds That a Type of Cancer in Dogs Is Contagious (from /.) – Scientists in England have gathered definitive evidence that a kind of cancer in dogs is contagious — a peculiar exception to the age-old medical wisdom that you can’t “catch” cancer. Uh oh…

With the recent banning of all liquids (including toothpaste) on flights, someone on /. posted this interesting comment:

I was on a flight to Kuwait deploying with my unit. We were waiting to fly out of Ft. Campbell and these guys are running around telling us we have to pack our Gerbers, Folding knives, and lighters in our stow bags and that they cannot be on your person or in your carry on.

All of our guns though – no problem. We didn’t even take out the bolts.

I understand that a military flight vs a civilian flight is totally different, but c’mon. You let me bring my GUN on the plane?

PacMan Therapy (from Game|Life)
The artist has some pretty funny cartoons on their site.

Hoarders vs. Deleters: What your inbox says about you (from /.) – The makeup and tidiness of your inbox is a reflection of your habits, your mental health and, yes, even the way Mom and Dad raised you. … Email addiction, of course, is now a cultural given. But a less-noticed byproduct of that is the impulse of the inbox. Some of us are obsessed with moving every email to an appropriate folder while killing junk “spam” on arrival and making sure Mom knows that we got her email and still love her. Meanwhile, others among us are e-procrastinators, modern-day Scarlett O’Haras who figure we’ll deal with old email tomorrow. We’re discovering that the disorder in our inboxes mirrors the disorder in our homes, marriages and checkbooks.

ACLU – Pizza (from MS Newsgroup) – A parody of what our future would be like if the government is able to step all over our privacy rights – The government and corporations are aggressively collecting information about your personal life and your habits. They want to track your purchases, your medical records, and even your relationships. The Bush Administration’s policies, coupled with invasive new technologies, could eliminate your right to privacy completely. Please help us protect our privacy rights and prevent the Total Surveillance Society.

Muppet creators go adult – The creators of The Muppets and Sesame Street are staging a rude and lewd puppet show that is strictly for adults only. I can’t believe they’re serious…

Japan man makes 37,760 calls to “kind” operators – The 44-year-old has admitted to allegations of obstructing the operations of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. by making up to 905 calls a day from his mobile phone, the daily Mainichi Shimbun said on its Web site. “When I made a complaint call once, the operator dealt with it very kindly, so I wanted to hear these women’s voices,” the paper quoted him as telling police in Hiroshima, western Japan.

Dumb has a new definition… – Spanish police have arrested four Frenchmen for jumping in front of cars on a busy road so that they could film them and post the footage on the Internet, the newspaper El Pais said Tuesday.

Mike gets a new office! (from MS newsgroup) – A few of us at work have been pranked one too many times by a certain coworker by the name of Mike. He was out of town for a few days and we had some extra cardboard laying around. This is what happens when you push creative IT workers too far! Enjoy your new office Mike!

Cops quickly find stolen doughnut truck – A stolen truck full of doughnuts? Better believe Tri-Cities police were on that in a hurry. Moments after the theft of the Viera’s Bakery van was reported early Friday in Kennewick, police issued an all-points bulletin.

Bar invites customers to take a swing – Stressed-out Chinese can now unleash pent-up anger at a bar that lets customers attack staff, smash glasses and generally make a ruckus, a Chinese newspaper reported Monday. I wish we had something here like that. A similar article is available at BBC: Chinese ‘anger bar’ is a big hit

Designer creates floating bed – A young Dutch architect has created a floating bed which hovers above the ground through magnetic force and comes with a price tag of 1.2 million euros ($1.54 million).

You know anybody who needs an “anti-stupid” pill? – It said Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilize short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

Someone posted this video on YouTube: Al Gore’s Penguin Army mocking Al Gore’s latest movie, An Inconvenient Truth, but it turns out it was created by a PR firm backed by the oil companies. Al Gore YouTube Spoof Not So Amateurish – The film actually came from a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client. Exxon denies knowing anything about the film, and DCI says, “We do not disclose the names of our clients, nor do we discuss the work we do on behalf of our clients.”

Snakes On A Plane :: Send a Message From Samuel L. Jackson! (from AT) – this is probably old news now, but the day it came out, I sent it to a couple friends and it was just hilarious having them receive a phone call with Samuel L. Jackson telling them to go watch Snakes On A Plane.

First of all, did you know they were making a sequel to the American version of The Grudge: The Grudge 2. It’s not like the 1st movie didn’t suck enough (compared to the original the Ju-on). Interesting enough is the fact that both the Japanese version and the American version are by the same director (Takashi Shimizu). I guess he thought if someone was going to leech off his movie and make big bucks off his idea, it should be him.

Any way, this posts was meant for another movie that’s copying an Asian film: The Departed. After rewatching the trailer, it’s a complete rip off of Infernal Affairs (無間道). I highly recommended this movie if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s actually a trilogy, but part 2 and 3 aren’t really worth watching. When this movie came out in Hong Kong, this was like the Matrix of HK film industry. Every movie that came after it was compared to this. They tried to bring this movie to the states, but the marketing was done pretty poorly and it didn’t really get popular. In fact, the DVD cover features a woman I don’t even remember being part of the movie. I guess it’s sole reason to have that chick there is to attract eyes.

Watching the trailer, there were some obvious things they reused:

• The cast on the arm to listen onto the conversation
• The police academy which both main characters attended
• The conversation between the boss villain and the police leak in the movie theater
• Several roof top scenes – including conversations between the mole and his supervisor (and also I’m guessing the final scene)

You can watch the trailer of Infernal Affairs trailer here.