ramblings of a madman

fanpants

here i am sitting in my nyc office while the millions of massachusetts residents and workers have the day off today. i've been so used to having patriots day off, the third monday in april (which somehow always falls on the 19th or 20th), usually spending the day goofing off, watching tv and hanging out in lexington center. the meaning of patriots day, commemorating the start of the revolutionary war in massachusetts (lexington and battle green!) has totally lost its original meaning, despite all those countless times in elementary school when they made us dress up in colonial outfits and eat cornbread on the battle green.

now patriots day has become the day for sports: the boston marathon (the superbowl of marathons) and red sox games. and boy is it a great day of sports. let me enumerate what i would do if i had patriots day off and i were in boston:

6 am - get up and drive down to the battle green and watch the reenactment
7 am - go to dunkin donuts and get some coffee and donuts
8 am - start heading into boston via alewife and t
11 am - go to landsdowne and watch a red sox v yankees (greatest matchup ever) game in a bar
12 pm - go down the street and watch the boston marathon
12:30 pm - head back to the bars and watch the sox game, grabbing a fenway frank on the way back
2:00 pm - see red sox beat yankees
2:22 pm - watch the end of the boston marathon and see the kenyans win again
3 pm - head home to lexington and see the end of the patriots day parade
4 pm - go to hampton beach and eat $5 lobsters (or go to revere beach and get some kelly's roast beef)
7 pm - watch the bruins win game 7 against the canadiens and move on to round 2
8 pm - hang out on the beach (87 degrees in new england today!)
10 pm - head home and hang out with homies
12 am - sleep

damn... i wish i were in boston today. :-)

good article on perceptions of asian-americans in society and pop culture

on the day that our taxes our due, let us go back to 1913 when the first income tax return came about. the irs even has a pdf document of the original! if only the 2003 return was as easy...

man, all this crazy technology out there. this service calls someone and fakes the call is coming from any number you choose. supposedly you'll be able to find out if the person you're dating is cheating on you by seeing their reaction to the call. sad... the things people do these days.

linky: http://www.acmetelephonic.com/index.cfm

i just read a /. article on how someone created a 3d fps which zipped up was only 96k. however, as a post on the message board points out, the game uses directx which takes upwards of 30mb of space. still, nonetheless impressive and an efficient use of external libraries. now where are my 4 disk ff8 cds...

of course there's also this raytracer created with 2k of code. ahh cs123. those days when i thought using doubles instead of floats and changing nested for loops to a single while loop was ingenious are now long gone.

why do i always seem to say the wrong things?

after being in nyc for 9 months, i'm starting to forget which places i've been to. time to keep track of those things so i can look back on my blog entries and reminisce...

• friday, finished my taxes
  
• saw io non ho paura ("i'm not scared") at lincoln plaza
  
• saturday, went to the street fair at 23rd st between 8th and 9th and ate corn on the cob
  
• ate a "sea dog" (salmon) at f&b, a european-style hot dog place, on 23rd & 8th
  
• swung a one iron at chelsea piers till my hands hurt
  
• enjoyed the company of my brother-in-law, his brother and his friends in my small studio for a bachelor party in nyc
  
• partook in my first strip club experience by going to two strip clubs (lace and tens) and blew a ton of money in a matter of hours
  
• sunday, went to the ny autoshow at the javits center and rode a jeep grand cherokee through a road course at jeep camp while listening to ben kweller perform live for sirius satellite radio
  
• ate an "ostrich burger" at better burger on 37th & 3rd

mmm... boobies, cars and ostrich burgers.

apprentice a sham?
and
using baby strollers to manuever down a busy nyc sidewalk

like realdoll, but really weird. some guy created an anime maid made out of styrofoam as his pc case.

so apparently they're filming the interpreter on my block this week, 84th-86th streets between york and east end. i'm guessing they're probably filming some scene at the park next to me (carl schurz park). i think i'm gonna skip work for a couple of hours to check it out and hopefully i'll see nicole kidman or sean penn!

jailbait quiz

cool:
bachelor party in nyc next week
bank of america dropped its atm fees for fleet users
google introduces a new 1 gig e-mail service

not cool:
your boss calling you at 8:30am to tell you the programs you wrote failed overnight