My car, on Sunday, developed a noise.  Sort of a buzz, or a rapid rattle, inside the car.  Outside the car, it’s clearly something metal rattling.  It’s got me concerned, as it’s started happening more and more.  Something is probably loose.  I hope it’s an easy fix.  But even if it is, it’s an unwelcome expense with sucky timing.  I’m trying to save up some blasted money for GenCon in August, dammit.  Of course, spending money on food out 3 times this week, then $30 on something I truly don’t need (but is extremely cool, a 50mw green laser pointer) and $32 on beer doesn’t help that situation any.  Or $25 going to the doctor yesterday morning for her to basically tell me “you look fine, take Tylenol and gargle with salt water” because my throat was starting to itch again, and Jade came down on Monday with what seems to be the same thing that had me horribly sick before and I feared I was still contagious.

I was supposed to take it in to Jimmie’s shop Friday morning.  But because I’ve got to get up stupid early for a work trip to Amarillo Friday morning, I had to reschedule.  To the following Thursday, the soonest they can get me in now, because they’re so busy.  Grr.  I really hope something on my car doesn’t explode or fall off before then.

Link of the Day: Combination CD and vinyl record – on one disc.

Spam of the Day: “Just broke your leg…”

Funny of the Day: Rather tempting, honestly.

Pic of the Day: Kitty looks . . . happy.

Video WTF of the Day: Klenginem

First, we ate at NOLA, one of Emeril’s restaurants.  It was good.  No photos in there, but I drank Chimay Blue, an excellent Belgian beer, extremely smooth, almost a chocolatey texture (not the taste of chocolate), and 9% alcohol.  James was on an Abita kick (Abita being a local LA brewery).

After NOLA, we wandered around Bourbon Street for a bit.

Here are some pics:

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Abita Andygator beer. Pint bottle. 8% alcohol.

Still very happy about being able to open my car door from the inside.  Such a small thing, but so appreciated after being deprived of it for a week and a half.  Jimmy also got me a front license plate mount ordered.

Got paid today.  My financial status has changed from “broke” to merely “poor.”  Rent paid, electric paid, ordered more cat food, ordered a surprise for someone.

Link of the Day: “The Spy Who Accepted My Friend Request”

Spam of the Day: “As catwalk in refill. An a willpower.”

Funny of the Day: Craigslist Wanted ad

Pic of the Day: The truth about Godzilla

Quote of the Day: “There is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.” – Thomas Szasz

My car is fixed. The broken driver’s side inside door handle was replaced yesterday, finally. Such a small thing, but it’s so nice to be able to simply open the door from the inside again.

Link of the Day: Super Mario Crossover – Play Super Mario Bros. – as Samus, Link, or other characters.

Spam of the Day: “Love the mall, but only the private spots.”

Funny of the Day: Beyonce – Masonic Satanist.

Pic of the Day: Sulu likes it!

Video of the Day: Slave Leia Car Wash

Quote of the Day: “Pros: Zero to ecstasy in 3 minutes. Works great on sore and knotted muscles too.” – Reviewer on Newegg.com for Hitachi Magic Hand Massager.

*tap tap*

“This thing still work?”

I’ve been meaning to start posting at least some token trifle of the Day stuff again for a bit, because there are far too many amusing things in this world, and I find a desire to at least feel like I’m sharing them with others outside of Gtalk. I’ve however found myself rather busy and frustrated with work-related technical issues several times this week, so it’s taken me until today. A reddit post and its accompanying comment thread provided entirely too many amusing moments for me to let it drift by again. Also, I can annoy people on Facebook now too.

Link of the Day: Women: Why do you show cleavage if you don’t want men to look? Every girl gets a disgusted look when they catch me looking at what they’re displaying.

Spam of the Day: “Supersize your tomatoes with Tomato Giant”

Funny of the Day: Nikon camera ad . . . with Face Detection.

Pic of the Day: “Dude, is there something on my cheek?”

Quote of the Day: Billy Mays here!
Are you tired of not being allowed to look at breasts? Then I’ve got just the product for you! My exciting new product Bitch, please! You ain’t all that! will revolutionize your dating life.
The BPYAAT system will teach you such winning techniques as:
Does this rag smell like ether?
I have cancer and I don’t want to die a virgin.
No means yes.
And many more!
All this can be yours, for the low low price of three easy payments of braaaaaains! – _Zombie_Billy_Mays_

“Mountain dew and everclear jello. Figure out how to make it happen.”

Easy.  I’d already read about Everclear jello shots thanks to the lovely and useful My Science Project (check out their informative and entertaining site, with multiple pages documenting their jello shot experiments) – and the Jell-O packages themselves make it clear that you can use soda instead of cold water.  After some texting and chatting, the plan evolved a bit more, to make the jello shots even more potent, not using merely Mountain Dew, but Rockstar energy drinks.  Caffeinated Jello Shots, for a party in which a bunch of geeks/gamers would be getting together on a holiday.  Yes, the potential for chaos was great indeed.  After polling the attendees of the party for ideas for a good name for these caffeinated, strong Jell-O shots, the one that stuck was: Jello Shocks.

After some more communication and plotting planning, ingredients were acquired and assembled – Kara’s cat Oscar indicated he wanted to be helpful – or at least involved.

Another shot of the assembled ingredients – slightly less blurry than the one with the cuter cat above:

If you’re wondering about the variety of ingredients there, we decided to make some jello shots that should just be rather tasty, without as much concern on alcoholic potency.  That’s where the Amaretto and Rum come in.  No Oscars were harmed in the making of these liquored-up delicacies, though many laps were furred.

So, let’s get to the making of some jello shots.  First, we nuke a cup of water for 3 minutes to get it boiling hot, and carefully and slowly stir in the sugar-free Jell-O (sugar-free used for a couple of reasons – less chance of nasty hangovery aftereffects is a nice bonus, but mostly because sugar-free Jell-O requires less water to completely dissolve, and can thus more easily hold larger amounts of alcohol gelled).

Mischief-making at the ready.  Here, I’m adding Everclear to Sugar-free Rockstar Energy Drink.

Now, Everclear is 190 proof grain alcohol – 95% pure ethanol.  We used (for most of the shocks, the peach ended up more potent) 1/2 cup of Everclear per batch, right at about 1/4 of the contents of each shock.  Some quick and dirty rough math makes each Everclear shot 47.5 proof.  The plastic cups we used for the shots are 2 oz cups, and most of the shots were about 1.5 to 1.75 ounces, giving each one roughly the potency of a 1 oz shot of vodka.  The Peach shocks had less water, less Rockstar, and more Everclear, and were, at a guess, around 60 proof each.

Many of those 2 oz plastic cups arranged and ready:

While several of these pics are out of actual chronological order, they’re more or less accurate to show the steps (with some gaps – we got caught up in the fun of making the things, and forgot to take as many pics as I’d intended) involved in the event.  However, I did catch the very first pour of the first shock (strawberry jello, rockstar, and everclear):

Kara putting lids on the second batch (lime jello, rockstar, and everclear) while I prep the next couple of batches:

After the third batch of Everclear shocks (peach jello, rockstar, and everclear – the highest alcohol content of any of the shocks, but interestingly the most pleasant tasting of the three everclear varieties), we began working on our two “let’s make some that just taste good” batches.  The first of which, we dubbed the “Pirate Shocks” – Orange Jell-O, Captain Morgan’s Rum, and Mountain Dew.

The final batch, which was probably the most popular and all-around agreed upon as best-tasting of the shocks, was composed of Amaretto Liqueur, Sugar-free Rockstar, and Orange Jell-O.

Pouring the hot, dissolved jello/water mix into the alcohol/energy drink mixture resulted in some very cool patterns as the two liquids met each other in the pyrex cup, before they were stirred to be more uniformly mixed.  This proved the be pretty difficult to take pictures of with a point and shoot camera – the flash reflecting off the pyrex made most of the images useless, but I did get one decent one out of it:

The Amaretto/Orange and Spiced Rum/Orange shocks, by the way, smelled incredibly good.

I thought it would be amusing to give Kara’s little kitchen soldier a suitably themed hill of shocks to be shown as the king of.  Note that no alcohol had been consumed yet.

All 75 Jello Shocks, stacked up, ready to go back into the fridge for a few hours to chill and set:

Here they are in the fridge.  Aren’t these just things of beauty?

The two masterminds, showing off their creations:

So, how did they end up?

We probably didn’t mix the first two batches – the lime and strawberry – sufficiently.  Some of the shots were mildish on alcohol content, and some were considerably stronger.  We corrected that for the final 3 batches, which were all pretty uniform in strength.  The lime shocks were the least popular – perhaps due to someone saying that they tasted kind of like nyquil.  They had probably the most potent, burning everclear taste.  The strawberry shocks were also, for the most part, pretty strong tasting as well.  The peach seemed to either just mix wonderfully with the everclear, or masked the flavor better than the other two.  This is remarkable, because the peach shots were in fact the ones with the most alcohol content.

Here’s a pic of Kara’s cousin Tiff, before being consuming:

Next, Tiff as she had the honor of being our guinea pig consuming the first jello shock of the evening:

Tiff made a couple of really amazing faces of surprise and alarm, as the shock, as she termed it, burned its way down her throat.  Sadly, I didn’t manage to capture those on camera.

What I did get, however, is a bit of the aftermath . . .

My fingernails, after Kara and I had both had several jello shocks:

They’re still like that, now on Monday afternoon (though starting to wear and chip a bit).  I don’t typically keep nail polish remover handy, being a single straight guy.

The Army Shocks (Orange/Amaretto/Rockstar) were the single most popular.  They just tasted yummy.  A close second were the Pirate Shocks, and were my personal favorite.  Both versions were far easier to consume than any of the Everclear ones.  I’m of the mind that next time we create a bunch of Jello Shots, or even Jello Shocks, we’ll focus on making ones that just taste awesome, rather than trying for maximum impact on caffeine and alcohol content.

Spam of the Day: “Your personal bailout”

Pic of the Day:

Quote of the Day: “It smells like you took a shit in the ocean and then put it in a jar and sealed it up for about two months.” – James Cross

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3093

Except, you know, not with a bottle.  Maybe as an ad/profile on a dating site.  Or Craigslist.

So, I’ve met Wil Wheaton twice. The first time was at a Creation Star Trek convention in Midland, Texas, where he was a guest the guest and signed autographs.  The con pretty much sucked a bit, a little because it was when Creation was first starting to take over and monopolize Star Trek cons, and mostly because it was in Midland.

The second time was at True Dungeon in GenCon SoCal the first year I was involved with True Dungeon.  Wil ran through the dungeon with a group of his friends, and he was one of the best and most amusing Bards I saw that con.  Less than halfway through the dungeon, Wil started having a really bad urge to pee.  This resulted in some of the more amusing improv Bard Songs I’ve heard in all the time I’ve been involved with True Dungeon.  I don’t remember the exact details, but one room with a giant spider he was singing something like “kill kill, kill the stupid spider” and worked in something about how he had to pee.

I was coming off shift just as Wil’s group started their dungeon run, and radio chatter started to the effect of, “OMG WIL WHEATON IS IN THE DUNGEON!”  I was tired, and had honestly gotten a teensy bit jaded by seeing some of the Gaming Scene Bigwigs come through True Dungeon (we’d had Michael Stackpole run through the dungeon, a bunch of WOTC folks, including Ed Greenwood, the Hickmans, etc.) – I was like, “oh, that’s cool.  I hope he enjoys it.”  The radio chatter went on, with DMs and Blue Hands talking about how awesome a Bard he was.  So, I wearily trudged back to spy on his group from behind the black curtains.  One of our female DMs started begging to switch with a DM for the Spider Room (she ran it on the opposite shift).  After it was ok’d, she then stated, flat out, “I’m going to kill Wesley!”

She did, of course.  She was unfair, and had the giant spider repeatedly attack Wil’s Bard character.  He was kind of justificably irritated by her picking on him like that – but he handled it with more grace than I would have then.  I think he was more relieved to be able to get to a bathroom than mad.

I hope to see Wil at True Dungeon again.  He was a lot of fun, he seemed to enjoy it, and we’ve made a lot of improvements with the experience.

Spam of the Day: “DoYouHaveInsomnia?”

Pic of the Day: Now THIS is how you crowd surf.

Quote of the Day: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” – Mark Twain

Pic of the Day: Awwww.

Spam of the Day: “Great sale for today Meteor Circle” 

Quote of the Day: “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” – William Shakespeare

Video of the Day: Escape From City 17 – Half Life 2 short film

Spam of the Day: “Your future in pornography is just a click away!”

Quote of the Day: “Yes, close everything you craptastic piece of shit!” – Me.

Link of the Day: Perfect Picture (for no other reason than that it cheered me up very briefly)

The comments are great.

It’s called Basic Instructions – Your all-inclusive guide to a life well-lived.  I really enjoy the sort of analytical, off-the-cuff approach it has.  Here’s one example of one that struck me as something I can relate to: How to Analyze a Song

Maybe with my new job (I started Tuesday as Tech Support for http://www.dynamictherapysolution.com/ ) I’ll actually get around to posting on this thing with something approaching regularity again.

UF: Yeah, I Was Right
Looks like I was right (or at least two-thirds right anyway). User Friendly’s notice that the site was closed down due to pending litigation was in fact an April Fools prank. The normal site is up now with a new strip for the day in place. I do so love being right, and I give Iliad his kudoes for staging such a good joke, with all the prior setup on it.

Quarterly Statistics
I ran my web log statistics analyzer today for everything from the beginning of the year. I really wanted the 1st quarter stats but chose the wrong option and didn’t realize until it had all run (and it takes forever to do everything, so I’m just suffering with the slight errors that including today will introduce). For those of you who are interested, yggdrasil.net scored 38089 pageviews (impressions) since the beginning of the year, with 24501 user sessions (uniques). The site has had, thus far this year, an average of 418 impressions per day, and an average of 269 uniques a day. Those numbers are roughly half what I really desire.

An even 10% of all site visitors are international visitors, but there’s 8.05% percent of visitors which are tagged as “unknown” and some of those are likely international as well. AOL still leads in user sessions, but cable modem users (home.com) have pulled ahead in hits and percentage of hits. RoadRunner and MediaOne are also in the top of the pack, with 7th and 5th place spots respectively (UUNet is in the #1 spot, but I don’t know if that’s accurate, or if it’s because UUNet is my local gateway for my primary ISP). The top referrers 5 external to the site are Infoceptor, The StatBox, Tech-Base, SC Legacy, and SimpleCraft (in that order). What’s amusing though is the next-placed referral URL is listed as “c:/WINDOWS/Desktop/starcraft/list.htm” – apparently someone has their bookmarks on their desktop and my site has a proud spot in it.

On the Browser and OS wars front, MS Internet Explorer has 53.93% of all hits, with 36.61% for Netscape. 91.41% of all Netscape users are using version 4 or 4.5, whereas 86.88% of Internet Explorer users are using IE4, and 10.96% are already using IE5. The numbers for the Quarter don’t reflect it, but the graphs for March alone show IE4 in a decline and IE5 taking over. Windows95 shows up with 42.13% of systems used to view the site, Windows98 with 36.2% (98 has been gaining steadily the last few months), NT with 6.55%, and Linux with only 0.58%. There’s a mysterious “other” listing though with 12.9% of the platforms. I wonder what that entails (as I don’t have detailed information on that without digging through the raw logs, which is never fun).

Weird Links Of The Day
I thought long and hard about pulling some sort of April Fools prank with yggdrasil.net, but decided that I’d just cover the more intreresting ones other people are doing, and post other weird stuff, like the two links (unless of course I think up something really brilliant later today, then I’ll probably do it anyway) I have today. The first is The Church of the Gerbil. This site might appeal to all those weirdoes who went nuts over that Hamster Dance page. Speaking of the Hamster Dance, another site that someone mailed me about (I apologize, I forgot your name and don’t have the e-mail any longer.) that I’ve been holding off on posting until the time was “right” (read as: when I bloody well remembered it) is The Penguin Dance. As I just now checked the web site, I noticed that the “pengwins” have been removed (they are now Ex-Penguins!). Doh! Should have posted on it earlier, I guess. Anyway, it had dancing penguins to an annoying little music clip, much like the Hamster Dance.

NVIDIA and 3dfx to Merge
Yes, I know, it’s an April Fools prank. It’s the best one I’ve seen yet today, though. Check out the (entirely fake) press release for all the details. The release itself could be pretty credible looking if it weren’t for the “NV4199″ project name.

User Friendly: Down, or April Fools Prank?
I went to check out User Friendly today, and was greeted with a notice they have that the site/strip is discontinued indefinately, pending litigation against Iliad. Now, I don’t know what to think of this. My first impulse is that this is an April Fools prank that Iliad is playing. My second impulse is that maybe it’s not, and maybe it’s real, and the timing is just really ironic. I consider that a possibility because I was reading on some other sites yesterday (Geek Life maybe, I don’t recall exactly where) about an e-mail and followup registered letter from a certain Evil Empire corporation threatening legal action due to “defamatory” humor in the comic strip. My third impulse is that this is all an April Fools prank, but an elaborate one with cooperation of other sites and extensive pre-April 1st setup to make it more believable and carry the whole thing off. I don’t know what to think, but I certainly do NOT want UF to go away.