I'll take the Knight Rider package

We were just discussing the classic Knight Rider "seeker" light on the front of the car, if I bought a Firebird. Why not? It's cool, and it is just as apropos as the classic "flaming chicken" on the hood from the 80's.

Of course, the $280,000 Knight Rider package would be great to get straight from the factory, complete with Artificial Intelligence, a bomb-proof trunk, bulletproof panels and windows, lasers, and the turbo boost that lets you jump over stuff. For the true aficionados, the Super Pursuit Mode option would allow you to travel at speeds of up to 350 MPH. Great for avoiding those speeding tickets...

Avril Lavigne?!

During the closing ceremonies, Canada had a chance to do their little thing for the Vancouver games in '10. Most of the stuff was pretty cool, except for the musical background provided live by Avril. Is she really the best example of Canadian singing on tap?

The only redeeming thing was she looked much less like skater-punk-wannabe-sellout than I've seen in the past. Then again, I don't follow her, so she might be marketing herself as a role model now. Who knows.

New toy - Shaver

Just got back from the warehouse club and picked up a new toy - I got the Braun Activator razor. It is the one that has that self-cleaning station and so on. We'll see if this can keep me away from the venerable Mach 3. I must admit that this thing is pretty cool.

Cheesecake Factory

I got to try Cheesecake Factory today. Mia, Heather and I headed over there after our class with Kojack. It was ridiculously packed, and was standing room only. 1 hour wait?! Nice. Good thing that we grabbed one of the "temporary tables" near the bar. Luckily, it was relatively smoke-free, too. Ohio SERIOUSLY NEEDS the public area smoking ban like California has.

The food was actually pretty good. Chinese food-style Orange Chicken, but done correctly, with none of that slippery crap they cover it in in Chinese restaurants. Corn flour is the culprit, I think. Heather's Ahi Tuna was really nice as well. The best of course, was the....

(wait for it)

(wait for it...)

Naughty Cheesecake. That's what I said, alright. Sure, the menu listed it as Raspberry Lemon cheesecake, but it looked like this. You be the judge:

OMG Amazon Rox0rz

So the new 30D is supposed to sell for around $1300-1400 or so. They also just announced a new constant-aperture lens (though it's non L-series; I doubt we'll ever see an L-series EF-S) for $1100. The frightening thing is, Amazon appears to have some kind of a wacky promotion deal that offers the pair together for $1500.

Now you might think that this is a miskey of the kit lens, but the release date does jive with that of the newly announced lens, whereas the camera release date is 2 months sooner. This could very well be a limited "build up the buzz" sort of deal. As we learned in my marketing class last semester, the best kind of marketing can be the not-in-y0ur-face "underground" or "guerilla marketing." Whatever the official reason, I'm pre-ordered and waiting for my 30-Dizzle.

The 30D is out!!!

See, there is a reason to stay awake until the early hours of the morning. An innocuous little blurb has appeared on some of the DPReview forum posts regarding a Canon press conference in Amsterdam. They did not change a lot of big stuff, but they did fix a lot of little stuff, so I'll give them props for that...

More 5-ring fun

First, I have to ask why almost all of the women's speed-skating athletes have GIGANTIC thighs. I can see the need for muscles, but this is just nuts. I mean, they almost all look fat.

Which brings me to another hot chick (one who happens not to be fat, but does in fact skate the 1000m - and even won Gold just now), Marianne Timmer. She's Dutch. And apparently, she's 31. Right on, right on.

Oh, here's her Gold Medal ceremony picture; that's Anni Friesinger to the right (the infamous "Sexy Anni"):

Catching up a bit

I'm posting some back-entries while waiting for Ice Dancing to get the hell off my TV screen, and be replaced with an actual Olympic sport.

Apologies to Stacey (the other one)

I apparently misspelled Stacey Kiebler's name a few weeks back. I realized my error at Borders today when I saw her on the cover of Stuff magazine, which she apparently writes a monthly fitness column in. Yes, yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. Go fix your dangling participle.

(I have also linked her to the Wikipedia for those of you who want to see more of her 42-inch long-legged hotness. Mommy!)

A day of rest... and Olympics

Those who know me, know that I hate to do ANYTHING I don't have to on Saturday. Herein lies the irony of my weekend classes. Luckily, this is not an issue this week.

I have to admit, these South Koreans are crazy good at short-track speed skating. I did not realize it was such a big sport over in SK. But, that being said, I was especially impressed to watch the South Korean women's qualifiers for the 1500m. One girl (I forget her name) went from fifth place to first in literally half a lap. It was very impressive.

Oh, and the K125 ski-jumps kicked azz, as always. I wonder what would happen if someone without appropriate training tried that. I imagine the landing would be ugly, but would someone at least be able to stay upright, much less land correctly? I have to think there is some chance for success, but failure would be painful.

So dark the con of man

So I have yet to read The Da Vinci Code (though I have 3 months to do so). I have, however, become intrigued based on the new full trailer. I especially like the website and their hiding of various signs and symbology within it. I am quite intrigued to see how much information is out there on the site.

I'm not much for Christianity-based fiction (that religion and its related sects not being my cup of tea), but give me a good thriller, and I'm in. We'll see if the movie is worth the ticket stub.

Unwinding time

Yup, not much is planned for today, though I must admit, Stacey's blog entries are a little bit one-sided. Everytime I do call her back, I get her VM. And I get a bad rap! It's a conspiracy I tell you!

I'll let her call me this time, then we'll see who mocks who... ;)

Chillin' Downtown

Indeed, it was time to do a little downtown action today. Can't argue with an extra 40 minutes of drive time, and a $12 parking fee. On the up-side, it's always good to get mocked by Steve, the boss of my boss of my boss. ("What does that make me?" "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.")

Props to Anurag for the hitman look, and anti-props to myself for being told I looked like a banker. I really hope I'm not getting that old just yet. Yeesh.

Why, oh why, Andrew?

And, as if the Jesus quote was not good enough, Andrew whips out an even better one:

Andrew and I were discussing genetic engineering and the creation of chimera:

Nikhil: "There will be some crazy stuff that becomes possible, all right."
Andrew: "Yeah, like you'll be able to custom design your own pets and stuff."
Nikhil: "That would be pretty cool."
Andrew: "Yeah, just imagine a dolphin with, like, an arm!"
Nikhil: "??????????????????????????????"

Yeah, 'nuff said.

You can be Jesus, too...

And a Quote Prize goes off to Fusion's very own Andrew Smith.

As he, Mike and I were discussing some religious software, Andrew had the best few lines in there:

Mike: "blahblahblahblahblahblah blahblahblahblah" :)
Andrew: "So, would you be Jesus?"
Nikhil: "HUH?!"
Mike: "Um, no."
Andrew: "And you could fly and stuff!"
Mike: "Jesus never flew!!!"
Nikhil: "But he could with a power-up!"
Mike: "Like the raccoon hat?"

At this point, everyone just sat a moment in shock.

Quote of the Week 02

And the prize goes to Tom...

"I'll take them at any age."

with the brilliant chaser:

"Give her the right hook... BAM!"

Wow.

Olympic fun

OK, so aside from the snowboarding competition (which is kind of fun to watch, though I don't see why it's in the Olympics...), there was some awesome stuff tonight. The luge was fun, as always, to watch (boy, are those guys fast - 90MPH!), but the downhill was insane! 3 of the 5 world's best skiiers almost lost it over the first big jump - a blind, banked turn jump called "the Angel's Jump." Even scarier was the one guy who actually lost his grip on his ski pole and regained it just in time to hit a turn.

The cross-country stuff in the afternoon was cool, too, but it's just painful thinking of skiing at that pace for an hour, plus. Yikes. On the downside, was all the crap about Michelle Kwan, who just annoys me. Especially galling was the US Olympic Committee person saying she was "our favorite" athelete. What arrogance!
Also, on the list of bad stuff, was Apolo Anton Ohno losing in the short-track 1500m semifinal (though he did give a rather sad answer to the reporter that actually blamed the lead skater - I hope this was just a misunderstanding on his part and not more athelete arrogance). That is a ridiculously dangerous sport.

He did it again!

OK, he did the evil laugh again, but it was not quite as good as the one in the "Evil HR" blog entry. The big thing for this week is the ridiculously loud "AHEM" every 2 minutes. Awesome.

On a lighter note, props to Brandie for getting us faster service at Wackadoo's (SmackAHo's) by staring at the servers hoo-hah. Hey, at least it got us our food quicker. And, no man ought to wear pants that high up.

Oh, and someone call the Red Cross - I've got a donation for you...

Proving that HR folks can be evil...

Here's the famous "evil laugh" from our Human Values class. Our professor just busted into a total mad scientist evil laugh. It was just beautiful. I've finally had time to get this cleaned up and online. This is from the January 21 class.

So, as requested by Brent, Heather, Mia and Brandie, I now present the EVIL LAUGH...

Muhahahahahaha!

(If you listen closely to the clip, you can hear Brent and Nikhil lose it, and near the end of the clip, you can hear Heather's comment in total shock.)

At our level...

Indeed, my friends, another all-day working session with some of our favorite folks! Working with people you care about makes it all worthwhile. I hope our bosses would agree, but at our level it's tough to understand what they must have to do every day. In fact, there are many reasons that it's good to be as low on the totem pole as we are.

< /end sarcasm >

Yet another late one

Just a nice day of working with M$ consultants, who probably make twice what I do. While I have a special place in my heart for one of them (near the one for Tonya Harding), I don't share those feelings with the rest.

Also, yet another episode of Lost and Invasion that I can't watch as I'm one behind. That does not even include the 7 hours of 24 that I need to catch up on. Thank god I bought that DVR when I did - September 25, according to Amazon. I'll have to celebrate our 6-month anniversary soon. I wonder if it'd feel cheap to just rent a room for the two of us...

Look at me, I'm a sales guy!

Today was an interesting day. A lot of traveling and a lot of meetings. I guess the second part is par for the course, but the first part was interesting. My day started out Downtown for a big meeting with some of the big muckety-mucks (including the head of HR, which will be a valuable introduction when I rack up enough HRV's). So, the usual dressing up rule applies - wear a suit. The drive in was a blast, as traffic always seems to stop for absolutely no reason right up to the 490 merge.

After that, I did get to have lunch with Brent from my MBA classes, which was cool. (He works Downtown.) I finally learned the name of the good pizza place I had been to before - Vincenza's. These guys have some seriously deep-dish pizzas. It's just not right.

Then back off to Strongsville for a bevy of meetings, and then finally back to Brecksville for a dinner meeting with Chris. I don't know why, but after so much traveling while dressed up, I just feel like I ought to make a commission off of something. I'm not entirely sure what, just yet, but I'll come up with something.

And now, back off to do my BAFI homework. Yum... discounted future cash flows...

Microsoft is in on the joke

"Which joke," you ask? The joke regarding the multi-delayed Windows Vista (a.k.a. Longhorn) operating system. Apparently, they now have a site out there for people to guess the launch date. Well, at least they have a sense of humor about it...

Guess The Date...

EDIT: Here's a picture in case they remove the page.

Goo, goo, gaa, gaa. And stuff.

Once again, a more final congratulations to Karen and Jennifer for picking up the new baby. The pictures I have so far are cute, but low-res camera phone pix. I expect the ultra-high-res unnecessary closeups.

On a sadder note, while I am happy for them, I feel disheartened at Karen's refusal to name him Nikhil 2. Ah well, I still have a couple weeks to convince her before she gets used to Jacob. :)

Pittsburgh??

Why, oh why, did it have to be Pittsburgh?

This is a dark day.

Saturday Night Live

A great opening skit - with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. But, the best skit (and one of the best ever) was the financial management book seminar: "Don't buy stuff you cannot afford." Awesome. Simple, but perfect.

"So you're saying, if I want something and I don't have the money, I should buy it and hope I get the money?"
"No, I'm saying, don't buy it if you can't afford it."
"But, that's crazy! I'm confused..."

It's also nice to see my favorite gal, Maya Rudolph back on the show. She looks a bit heavier - I'm wondering if she had a baby. If so, that's sad as I was hoping to take her out to dinner someday, and I'm not big on the whole "prefab family" thing.

Not much happening...

Today was pretty much a day of studying and study breaks. Determining which one is more fun is left as an exercise to the reader.

Cornflower Blue

Tom... Tom... Tom...

A straight man ought not to utter phrases such as "cornflower blue." Incidentally, how does he even know what that color is? The official line is "his wife told him that." I don't buy it. Hatfield, maybe, but not his wife.

Since, I live in "the sticks," as the Cleveland folks say, and I have yet to see a single blue patch in all the corn fields I drive past every day. If corn flowers were blue, I just think I may have noticed. I dunno...


On a TOTALLY unrelated note, I also signed on to be a beta-tester/developer for the
new Lego Mindstorms NXT system. We'll see if I can eliminate what free time I have left! Yay, me! Boo, sleep!

Template change

This is the last of the post-flood for today.

I made some updates to the template - basically just some simple text additions to the header bar and the footer. Part of it is to have a copyright statement, the other is to put the Nikhil.Net logo on the site to tie it back to my main site.

I'll be doing a proper template design sometime, but heaven knows when that will be. And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

OK - maybe a good day

Congratulations to Jennifer and Karen on some potentially AWESOME news. I hereby rescind my verdict of this being a rough day and hereby re-evaluate it to a pretty damn sweet day.

Permalink below...


6 years of college for this?: Could it be?

A rough day

More details to follow - but this was an insane day. And to top it all off, I have a meeting at 7 tomorrow (after my 1 hour drive in to work). But, in all fairness, I did ask for the meeting, so can I in good conscience complain?

Indeed I can.

Quote of the Week #1

Mike Hatfield gets the trophy for the best quote ever:

"It's more painful to do it from the back-side than from the front-side."

I think there may have been more to it, but I couldn't hear past myself laughing, and the only other witness Tom, lost it as well.

Maybe we'll never know just how different the back-side is from the front-side...