The Irish Thug

I spent all of Sunday flying back from Dallas to Boston. With all that time, I ended up with two new lists.

Things that Measure at (or about) 100 Feet

• One third of a football field.
• Length of Boeing 737-500.
• A 9 story building.
• 33 paces.
• The distance you are told to leave between your car and a fire truck or school bus.

Excerpts from a Two Page Ad in SkyMall for Gravity Defer Dress Shoes

• You will find a renewed enjoyment in walking places. You’ll park farther away at the grocery store, shopping mall, and the office just to get extra time walking in your Gravity Defer Shoes.
• It’s almost as if Aeolus, the Greek god of wind, himself has taken his powerful wind out of his bottles and put it into each of the Gravity Defer Shoes.
• The show is so much fun that the energy reciprocating shock of the Gravity Defer Shoes will actually give you the feeling of wanting to dance and be active. You might just find yourself joining a dance class soon!
• These ethereal shoes will transport you through life with such vigor that your friends and family will hardly recognize who you are.
• The shoes that world famous Secret Agents would wear the to black tie party where they end up doing reconnaissance before they are chased around a European city by evil henchmen … You will feel like you can keep up with the best of the World Famous Secrete Agents when you are wearing the Gravity Defer Shoes.

It all started over a year ago. My computer’s desktop was cluttered and I was repeatedly clicking the same four icons start my poker session. So I made PokerSelector. It was simple, it was good, it worked.

That was until I wanted to change something. Adding new things to the window was not hard, but it wasn’t clean and easy. I dealt with that fact for about a year. Then I said enough is enough.

I began work on The Opener. I set out to completely re-write PokerSelector so that it would be a dynamic window and fully customizable within the program itself. Two months of on again off again programing, sprinkled in during a great lacrosse season and a not so good run at poker, finally produced a result.

Today, I invite you to try out and use The Opener.

As most of you know, or should know, Barney Frank has introduced a bill, H.R. 2046 ‘Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007′, that would “provide for the licensing of Internet gambling facilities by the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.”

I decided that my Congressional Representative, Bill Pascrell Jr, should have this bill brought to his attention, as I felt that this bill is very important and deserves to be made law. Unfoutanately, I do not have the exact text of my email as it was sent via an internet form and not using one of my personal email accounts.

A few days later, I received a reply to my email. The following is what Bill Pascrell Jr had to say:

Dear Mr. Lannigan :

Thank you for contacting me regarding internet radio. I appreciate you r concerns and welcome this opportunity to respond.

H.R 2060, the ” Internet Radio Equality Act,” would provide royalty parity for Internet radio providers. It would vacate the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) March 2 decision to raise music royalty rates by 300 to 1200 percent and apply the same royalty rate-setting standard to commercial Internet radio, as well as satellite radio, cable radio and jukeboxes. A transition rate of 7.5 percent of revenue would be set through 2010.

Internet radio has provided the public with a way to express their views publicly, and allow others to listen for little or no cost. I am concerned that many citizens’ freedom of speech will be infringed due to the CRB’s decision to raise the royalty rates. Currently, H.R 2060 is pending action in the House Committee on Judiciary. I will be sure to keep you views in mind as this bill makes its way through the legislative process.

Please count of me if ever I assist you in any federal matter. I would like to remind you that my website, www.pascrell.house.gov, is frequently updated and provides a good way to communicate with me.

Sincerely,
Bill Pascrell Jr.
Member of Congress

I have since sent another email explaining the misunderstanding. Updates to follow.

Full Tilt Poker – No Limit Hold’em Cash Game – $1/$2 Blinds – 6 Players – (LegoPoker HH Converter)

SB: $103.05
BB: $213.40
UTG: $261.20
MP: $201
CO: $238.90
Hero (BTN): $197

Preflop: Hero is dealt 6 5 (6 Players)
3 folds, Hero raises to $8, SB calls $7, BB calls $6

Flop: ($24) 9 8 7 (3 Players)
SB bets $24, BB folds, Hero raises all-in to $189, SB calls all-in for $71.05
Uncalled bet of $93.95 returned to Hero

Turn: ($214.10) T (2 Players – 2 All-In)

River: ($214.10) 6 (2 Players – 2 All-In)

Pot Size: $214.10 ($3 Rake)

SB had 7 7 (a straight flush, Ten high) and WON (+$2.50)
Hero had 6 5 (a straight flush, Ten high) and WON (+$2.50)

+$2.50 HOLLA!!!

My friend Elsa is doing her coop at home in Tennessee. Because of this I missed her birthday and never actually got her a present. On her blog, she recently mention that she had just upgraded her car[link]. To make up for waiting so long, I decided that I would take the time to add a few alteration to her car so that she could enjoy it more.

For those that are lazy, here is what her car looks like now. It is a Toyota Corolla.

Here is the new and improved Elsa-mobile.
For those that are lazy, here is what her car looks like now.

This is something that has bugged me since was first made aware of the phenomena. The item in question is a segment of a Dave Cheppelle sketch in which Snoop Dogg recites an essay he wrote while high when posed the following question. What America Means to You? This was part of a larger sketch entitled “The Weed Olympics”. It involved amateur and professional stoners were pitted against one another to perform specified tasks. The amateurs were college students and the professionals were rappers, Snoop Dogg and one other whom I can not remember.

The phenomena in question is not that the sketch existed, but the fact that there is close to no record of it’s existence.

Searching the internet using various combinations of snoop dogg, dave chappelle, america, and means to you, no transcripts or video footage has been found. In my most recent attempts to find the full text of Snoop Dogg’s essay, I found two page to do acknowledge it’s existence.

Within Opentopia’s encyclopedia, there is an article on Chappelle’s Show. In the article’s comments on the DVD Releases, it mentions that:

“Some material from the show, such as What America Means to You did not make either DVD set and is as of yet unreleased.”

The Wikimedia article on Chappelle’s Show makes no mention of the sketch, but does mention that Snoop Dogg was a “Frequent or notable guest stars.”

From there we move to the biggest find to date. On a personal webpage (listed as belonging to the user “gilgamesh”), we have an actual excerpt from the essay. I will leave you with the words of this great lyricist in hope that his words will inspire others to dig deeper in to this mystery and see what else can be uncovered.

“…Chuuch, tabanacle, titty 1, titty 2, the prophet Eli. My mental gymnastics will flip you like an Aunt Jemima flapjack. Now, how ’bout that?”

After my parents went to sleep, I looked to see what they had saved on the Tivo that was good. I wasn’t quite in the mood for a Magnum PI marathon, so I watched an episode of Planet Earth.

The episode I watched was called “Pole to Pole” and was basically very very awesome. Even though I’ve seen it before, it’s still sick to watch the slow motion shots of great whites jumping in the air to catch a seal. The most entertaining thing from the episode was either the polar bear sliding down the snow when she first came out of her den after hibernating or watching the elephants swim and play underwater.

The most interesting part of the episode was the fact that they had footage of a pack of African dogs that hunted as a group. Just seeing them start as one group, then fan out to flank the antelope before the one leader chased part of the herd into the trap that was set.

However the episode was not all fun and games. There was one extremely depressing shot of a baby elephant who was almost blinded by a dust storm. This caused him to loose sight of his mother, all he had was her tracks to follow. Then the camera pulls back and show that he is walking the wrong way. Heading back to the desert, away from his family and away from water.

Hopefully I have enough time to watch a bunch more before I head back to Boston.

For all those who where waiting patiently for the answer of what happened to my roommate, the answer is here.

He’s alive!

His visibility returned to “normal” the middle of last week. Justin talked to him about it. The reason why we didn’t see him was because he wasn’t there. He wasn’t even on the same continent. He had gone home to Korea to spend some time with his family.

I was hoping that there would be some huge Scooby-Doo mystery behind it, but you can’t win them all.

Presently, I have 4 roommates. Pratik, Justin, Sang and Mike. Pratik, Justin, Mike and I have not seen Sang in a month.

Sang was always a quite kid and kept to himself during the fall. Would always go straight for his room and close the door when coming back from class or where ever. But you would still see him entering, leaving, going to the bathroom, or on occasion getting food. All that has stopped.

The last time I can remember seeing him was before I left for spring break. When I came home from work Sang and one of his friends were working on something at the table. The friend said Hi, Sang did nothing. After I had put down my things, I went and talked to Justin about how this was such a big thing that he was in the suite, but outside of his room for an extended period of time.

Now down to the detective work. There is no foul smell coming from his room, so we can assume that he is not dead in there. His ethernet cable is still hooked up in the living room. His outlet didn’t work so he had to use the living room one and snake it into his room. Since he is a Computer Science major, it can be assumed that he would not move out and forget his ethernet cable.

Updates to follow if there are any breaks in the case.

The bad news is I’ve been back from San Diego for two weeks.
The good news is that we ran house while we were there.
San Diego State – 14-6
UC San Diego – 14-6
U of San Diego – 10-9
Arizona – 10-4
Thanks to this trip we moved up from #15 to #9 in the Polls. Also, our goalie was named player of the week. (link)
To check us out as the rest of the season goes go here.

California was amazing. I have know idea why I used to always say, “I don’t know if I could live with never seeing snow again” for all these years. If you are ever in San Diego, go to Mission Beach and find a place called Taco Surf. You will thank me later.

Another thing you might have noticed is I am not hiding my blog anymore. It’s now right up front on the main domain. It’s the way it was meant to be. It also allowed me to spurs up some of the other pages I had before I started the blog. There is some small back-end things that need to be ironed out, but you guys don’t care about that.