Really? That was one of our presidents?

A few weeks ago I came across a website that has a bunch of listing trivia games, as in "Can you name all the Presidents of the US?" or "Can you name all the state capitals?" Stuff like that. There's a lot more where that came from. Its called sporcle.com and I thought I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't already seen it.

Watch This Wednesday #27: Pizza? Now thats what I call a taco!

Probably a fair number of you out there have seen this crazy SNL commercial for Taco Town, but if you haven't its pretty funny. My main point today is that if you haven't checked out hulu.com you definitely should. Its a video site where both Fox and NBC and the stations they own are hosting lots and lots of video online. There's the latest episodes of new shows, old seasons of old shows, even full-length movies. And new stuff gets added all the time. Check it out and you'll probably find something you want to watch.

A wonderful bird is the pelican...

So this morning on my way to "work", I was on the transfer ramp from I-15 Northbound to the 201 going west, and as I came around a bend right before I had to merge right onto another portion of the spaghetti bowl, up ahead on the road there was a pelican just sitting there chilling. At first I wondered if it was a real live bird or just a stuffed one or something, but as I got closer it was looking around and I could tell it was alive. It was just sitting there in the middle of the road. It wasn't in my lane so I just went past it, but I can't imagine it surviving long there. Weird.

Fin de Semana Stories

I'm having this idea that maybe if I come up with a good title/acronym I can get myself excited about doing more than just showing you a video once a week. So I've of course thought about writing on Mondays something called "Weekend Update" but that name has of course been taken by SNL and who knows how many other things. So I'm going to call mine "Fin de Semana Stories" which if you speak Spanish you'll know stands for "Fin of Semana Stories". :) Kidding aside, "Fin de Semana" actually means Weekend. Plus I figure with that name I can abbreviate it as FSS and maybe someone will thing I've got a new version of RSS going on.

Anyway to kick off this inaugural FSS edition, I'll tell you that Friday night I went to the "Grand Kerfuffle" an annual outdoor concert event up at the U. This year's show had three decent bands: Augustana, Hellogoodbye, and Shiny Toy Guns. There was also a local band that we missed. We only got there about an hour after the offical start time so we were surprised that Augustana was already playing. Personally, their music is my favorite of the three bands that played, but they were having a few issues with their sound and that really seemed to bother them a lot. Anyway, they were interesting and have at least two songs that I really like: "Boston" and "Sweet and Low".

Hellogoodbye was up next and they are pretty nerdy guys and played a fun set of songs that I really don't know. It was during this set that it became clear to me, if it wasn't already, that some people will mosh to pretty much anything.

Finally Shiny Toys Guns, who I probably am the least familiar with, finished off the show with a lot of energy, both on their part and on the part of the crowd. Like I said, I didn't really know any of their songs going in, but they were a fun concert band because they really were rockin.

Now, as for some metadata on the evening, I actually had a date with a long-time friend of mine, and we ended up doubling with her ex-roommate and her husband, who both happen to be good friends of mine as well. The sad part of the date was that about half an hour before I was supposed to go pick her up, my car died and refused to be revived. So, I was happy that this date was with someone I was already good friends with and I didn't feel too ashamed to have to call her and ask her to pick me up. My roommate joked, "You might as well forget your wallet while you are at it." But as I'd already acquired concert tickets it really wouldn't have made any difference.

I spent part of Saturday getting my car towed over to the shop and moving some furniture for my grandpa who's moving from a rehab center to an assisted living center this week. Then we went to a birthday dinner for he and my cousin at the Olive Garden, which I must say hasn't changed much in the probably five years its been since I was last there. It likely won't be breaking into my list of places I want to go out to eat anytime soon either. Just not a huge fan.

After family time, I ended up going to see 21 with some friends. I found it to be pretty entertaining, and it made me want to track down the book of the true story the movie was "based on", or perhaps "inspired by".

And finally, on a non-FSS-related note, a company in Wisconsin emailed last week to say they want to fly me out there to interview for a software developer job. However, when I got back to them with dates that would work for me in the time span they mentioned, they disappeared. Seriously, its been five days since I emailed them my available dates, one of which would require me to fly tomorrow night, and I still haven't heard back from them. Once again proving my theory that Germans love David Hasslehoff administrative incompetence is pretty much a universal constant.

Watch This Wednesday #26: Mississippi Mockery

In a second installment of obscure Daily Show clips that perhaps only I remember and find humorous, I today bring you something from 2001 when Stephen Colbert was still a correspondent for the Daily Show. I think my favorite part is when Colbert explains how the South won the Civil War. Then again maybe its the flag they propose for Mississippi to change to.

Oh, and P.S. 26 Weeks of Watch this Wednesday mean this has been going for more than half a year (remember I missed a week or two along the way). Does anyone care? Perhaps not.

Watch This Wednesday #25: I know its Thursday, but this is worth it

Just happened to be over on Comedy Central's website and found out that 1) you can now embed clips from their shows in your blog and/or website, and 2) that one of my all-time favorite Daily Show with Jon Stewart interviews is on there: An interview with Topher Grace back in 2001 in which Topher spends the entire interview giving his review of Wild Wild West which he'd recently rented. Enjoy.

Trip to NYC: Day 6

I'm sure you've all been waiting for the exciting conclusion of my trip to NYC, which ended now two full weeks ago. Anyway, on our last day in New York, the overcast but not too cold or wet weather we'd been having finally turned into a decent rainstorm. We were glad that we'd been able to see as much as we had in the previous days without needing raincoats or umbrellas. And given that we'd seen about everything we really wanted to see, we didn't feel any obligation to dredge through the rain to go see something just to say we'd seen it.

Instead, Randall's wife Traci was gracious enough to drive us around Queens in the neighborhood they live in and check out a few of the more local sites. And our first stop was a little place called Whitecastle. Of course, we'd heard nothing but bad things, but because we don't have Whitecastle here in Utah, we figured it was at least worth going to experience for ourselves.



Being that it was still breakfast time when we got there, I got a little breakfast sandwich combo, and luckily, they were still making their classic tiny hamburgers ("sliders"), so I got just one of those to go with my breakfast. Actually there was a special offer, so I got a "Savory French Onion" slider for only 89 cents (Jon picked up the Bacon Cheeseburger variation). Anyway, it didn't taste horrible, but it wasn't that great, and had the distinction of being a burger that kept on giving throughout the rest of the morning.



After our trip to Whitecastle, Traci wanted to show us a place called the "Socrates Sculpture Park" over by the East River. We went over there and it was basically a big grassy area with a few weird pieces of sculpture scattered around. Kind of a creepy place. Glad I wasn't there at night. It did give me opportunity to take a couple photos of the Upper East Side shrouded in fog.





After our stop there, we took a cruise over to a target-shaped Target department store to wander around for a little while longer before it was time for us to head to the airport to catch our flight home. Traci kindly drove us out to JFK and after a fairly normal amount of time at the airport we brought our trip to end, flying back to Utah.

Good times.

More photos from Day 6.

Trip to NYC: Day 5

After an exciting Monday, we decided to start Tuesday off with a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge. I'd heard good things about it, but was still impressed by the great views of Manhattan, some of the other bridges, and of the Harbor that can be seen while strolling across the bridge. The Bridge itself is also quite impressive.







It took us about an hour to get across the bridge, and to our next objective: Grimaldi's Pizza. We got down from the bridge and had to walk back to the area under the bridge to find it, and we arrived about half an hour before it was to open, so we strolled over to a nearby pier on the river and also admired the large buildings owned by the Jehovah's Witnesses located there. They didn't look very interesting though. Just big buildings that said Watchtower on the top.



Once Grimaldi's opened, we got inside and ordered ourselves a large New York-style thin crust pepperoni that turned out to be really good. Probably my favorite meal of the trip. After polishing off half a pizza each, we were ready to head back to Manhattan.



We found a Subway stop with a little help from a local, and made our way back. We stopped in lower Manhattan and made our way to a little place called TJ Maxx where I picked up a hoodie and a tie. From there, we got back on the Subway and headed North toward Central Park.

Before hitting the Park itself, we paid a visit to FAO Schwartz and looked around inside for a while, stopping briefly to stand on the giant piano. It was cool, but would have been cooler if 12 other people hadn't been standing on it at the same time. Hard to play chopsticks with that many people, you know?



After leaving FAO Schwartz, we ventured forth into Central Park. We walked around for a good while, strolling past the Bethesda Fountain, checking out Strawberry Fields, and then on to the Belvedere Castle. Given that it was a cooler, overcast day, it wasn't too surprising that there weren't many people out in the park.





We then left Central Park, paused outside the American Natural History Museum and considered going in, but it was only going to be open for another two hours or so, so we decided to pass. We realized we were fairly close to the Manhattan Temple, so we headed down that way. I have to say its kind of cool, the way its tucked in there with lots of other tall buildings. We went inside the building and the doorman suggested we might want to check out the LDS chapel that is on the 3rd floor of the building. That was kind of a surreal experience, because upon stepping out of the elevator it felt like walking into any other LDS chapel that I've been in. Never mind that its on the 3rd floor of a building in the middle of Manhattan. At this point my feet were pretty tired, and I took advantage of the sofas there to sit and rest for a bit while we planned our next move.



We decided to go swing past the TKTS booth and see if there were tickets available for any Broadway show we'd be interested in seeing. We headed down there and didn't really see anything that piqued our interest. Our backup plan was to check out a deli that a friend of ours had recommended on Times Square. He had commented on the huge pile of meat that came on his sandwich, and he wasn't lying. These sandwiches were pretty much all meat and only meat. Two tiny slices of bread and a thin layer of lettuce and tomato and cheese were the only things standing between me and a literal pound of turkey. It didn't really work for me. Sure, I like turkey, but just a big pile of plain turkey? Maybe I should have tried something else, but honestly I wouldn't recommend that place.



At this point we were pretty worn out, so we headed home with Randall, who'd shown up while we were eating. We finished off the evening by going out for ice cream at a diner in Queens near their place. Then I worked on getting my luggage in order, as we were heading home the next afternoon.

More photos from Day 5.

Trip to NYC: Day 4

I don't know if I was intimidated about trying to put the rest of our NYC trip to words or what, but for some reason I fell off the blogging wagon there for a couple days. But I'm back and ready to report on the 2nd half of my vacation, before the memories have totally faded.

Unlike Sunday, I did get my camera out on Monday for lots of sight-seeing and picture-taking. We started out Monday by taking the Subway down to Manhattan to scrounge up some real NYC breakfast and then in due time arrive at Randall's work, CNET.com's New York offices. We started hunting for bagels, but then were distracted by a Duncan Donuts, which is real New York enough for us, since we don't have them here in Utah. We got a couple donuts each and some HoCho (as I heard someone called Hot Chocolate this evening) and then we headed out to check out Madison Square as we had a bit of time before we needed to arrive at CNET.


The Flatiron Building. Taken from Madison Square.


Empire State Building, and me with my HoCho.

After strolling around a bit, we walked back to Randall's work and reported for duty. One of the things Randall does for work there is a daily podcast each morning talking about technology with a couple other guys there. Its called "The 404" and they broadcast live each morning and take calls and have a live chat room. They also record the show and make it available for download and/or subscription as a download. As I've been a listener since the very beginning, perhaps since before anyone else, they were gracious enough to let me join in on the discussion that day, and Jon also got to hang out in the studio as we were broadcasting. The language on the show is generally around a PG-13 level, but if you're okay with that, you can check out the show I was on here (none of the swearing came from me).


Randall & Jon in the studio

After The 404, we went to grab some lunch with Randall and ended up across the street at a deli where we got some paninis. We ate back at CNET and then left Randall to finish up work, while we headed back uptown with our ultimate goal being to get to the Ed Sullivan Theater to pick up our tickets for The Late Show with David Letterman. We took the Subway up to Grand Central Station and decided to walk the rest of the way from there. Coincidentally, it also happened to be St. Patrick's Day, and the St. Patty's Day parade was in full swing at this point. We were able to swing over to 5th Ave from time to time and catch parts of it as we worked our way northward. I guess I'm just used to Utah 4th and 24th of July parades, but this was seemed a bit underwhelming. No floats. Just marching bands and groups of people walking.


Grand Central Station


St. Patrick's Day parade

Anyway, we got to the Theater with time to spare, waited in line for maybe 30 minutes, and then were told to come back in a couple hours for the actual taping. We had some time to kill so we had back down to Times Square to do a little souvenir shopping. I picked up some mugs that I like, a deck of cards designed to look like the Subway/Metro passes, and a T-shirt from the ESPNZone. Then it was back to Letterman.

Our seats were on the 3rd row in the balcony, so to see Dave's desk, we kind of had to look down between the lighting rigs. The thing I was most struck by was how small the studio was. I always imagined Dave and the band being pretty far away from each other, and really there's not that much space between them. The CBS Orchestra was great, and played some cool songs, including some Green Day. The main guest was Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office), and he was followed by Mike (Golic) and Mike (Greenburg) from ESPN Radio. The musical guest was an Irish band (St. Patrick's Day theme?) called Bell X1 that was fine, but not that memorable. It was cool to be there, and was a fun experience.




I got yelled at for taking this one. I didn't realize the layout of the set was so top secret.

Once the taping was over, we started thinking of what we had yet to do. We decided it might be cool to go the Empire State building, and Randall had called while we were at the show, so we let him know that was our plan and he gave us a spot to meet up with him. We got down there, found Randall, and then walked over to the Empire State building. The waiting line to go up was pretty long, so we let Randall talk us into going to Rockefeller Center for our "go-up-in-a-tall-building" experience, which meant another trip back up a few blocks. Along the way, we made a brief stop in Macy's, the world's largest department store, and then it was back to the street.

Once we got up to Rockefeller Plaza, we got some pizza as we'd yet to eat some while we'd been in New York. I thought mine was pretty good, while Jon was unimpressed. It did seem a lot like Sbarro. From there, it was up to the Top of the Rock observation platform on top of the Rockefeller center. There was almost no line at all there. In fact the longest line was the line of people waiting for the elevator to go down. It gave some nice views of New York at night, including a green St. Patrick's themed Empire State Building.



Once we'd had our fill there, we headed back down to the street, and made a final stop of the night at a place called Junior's for some New York Cheesecake, that really was phenomenal. Great stuff. Very rich though, and I had to go back and buy a bottle of water to wash it all down. That was the end of our very full Monday.

More photos from Day 4.

Trip to NYC: Day 3

Watch this Wednesday is still on hiatus, but will likely return next week. In its place, the Big Digital is proud to present Day 3 of my trip to NYC.

Day 3 was Sunday, and it turned out to be a nice day of rest and recharging of batteries. We got up and went to Randall and Traci's ward, and who would have guessed that I'd run into a fellow Grantsville High alum in Queens, New York. A girl who is the sister of someone who I was good friends with in high school lives in Queens and goes to that ward. Once again showing that there really aren't that many Mormons, if everywhere you go you find some that you already knew. Either that or we know each other real well.

Anyhow, after church we headed back to Randall & Traci's apartment and had a nice relaxing afternoon. We played Scene It! on the Xbox360, which I highly recommend. Probably the funnest variation of Scene It! that I've played to date. We also checked out a demo of Beautiful Katamari, which is definitely not your typical video game, but was fun to check out. Finally, Randall told me I needed to play Portal (part of Valve's Orange Box set of games), and it definitely was another fun and interesting game.

Along the way, I also found time for a nap. Traci was gracious enough to make us kabobs with pasta and peas for dinner. Sunday night, Jon and I ventured out on our first solo subway journey, heading over to the Upper West Side to visit a former mission companion of his that is graduating from Columbia in the next couple months. We had a good time visiting with him and his wife, and then we made our way back home.

All in all it was a nice relaxing day, and a good chance to get some energy back for what would prove to be an exciting last three days of the trip.

I also managed to take no pictures on Day 3.

Trip to NYC: Day 2

Day 2 of our New York trip was packed to the brim with New Yorky goodness. We started the day out right by sleeping in a tad. We had tickets for a 1:30 trip to the Statue of Liberty, and also had tickets for the Grey Line double decker bus tours that we planned to use that day. Randall and his wife Traci were going with us, and Saturday was by far the easiest day for them to join us on all this fun stuff. Anyway, the bus tours start as early as 8 in the morning, but we didn't really get downtown until 10 or so after taking our time in the morning.

We waited maybe 30 minutes in line to get on our bus and after riding it for a while, realized that by the time we got down to Battery Park it would pretty much be time for us to get out and head out to Liberty Island, even if we didn't get off to see anything along the way there. The bus ticket is good for "24 hours" although the buses only run from 8 am to 5 pm so I'm not sure what good a "24 hour ticket" is. Anyway, what we saw of the downtown bus tour was pretty enjoyable, and if I had it to do over again, I'd maybe try to not do both the bus tour and the Statue of Liberty on the same day.



Once we got to Battery Park, we got in line, which went much quicker for having bought our tickets online in advance and fairly quickly moved through a security checkpoint before boarding the ferry to head out to Liberty Island. Entrance to the base of the monument is also available when you get your tickets online at no extra charge, so we had arranged for that as well. The boat ride over gives you some great views of both the Statue and of lower Manhattan and other surrounding of New York Harbor.









Once we got to the Island, we went through another checkpoint and then headed into the base of the Statue. There's a small museum inside that talks a lot about the construction of the Statue, and then a bunch of stairs to climb up to the top of the base where you can get out and look around.


Seen enough Statue of Liberty? :)


After getting our fill of the Statue of Liberty, we headed back to the ferry which took us over to Ellis Island, where we decided to just look from the boat and head back to Manhattan. We got back around 3 and had a full list of things to do that didn't involve getting back on the bus tour, so that was the end of our Grey Line experience.


This sphere was at the World Trade Center and after the events of 9/11 was transported to Battery Park in its existing state. I thought it was pretty interesting.

From Battery Park, we walked up past the Wall Street bull, and swung over to check out Ground Zero, where all we could really see was some construction going on. From there we went up across Canal Street ("Handbag? Handbag? Watches?") in Chinatown and somehow managed not to purchase anything there. Then we went up a few block to Little Italy and had late lunch/early dinner at an Italian place there. This was actually our first real meal since gorging on Virgil's BBQ the night before, and surprisingly, I was just barely starting to get hungry at this point.

We had tickets for Phantom of the Opera later that night, so after dinner, we continued our trek northward, or at least Manhattan-northward since the island doesn't really run north and south. Along the way we got dessert at Pinkberry, a trendy frozen yogurt place where the frozen yogurt just tastes like yogurt (or if you pay extra coffee or tea) and also checked out Union Square where Randall picked up an "Obama is my homeboy" T-shirt.

We made it up to the Majestic Theater, where Phantom was playing a little bit before the doors were to open and when they did, worked our way up to our seats in the Rear Mezzanine. Rear Mezzanine is Broadway code for "Way up in the back". From where we were sitting, it felt like watching a Jazz game from the Bear Cave, except with no Jumbotron to help out. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the show, but I'm sure the people down on the floor (or "Orchestra" as its called) had a vastly different experience. Also the legroom left a little to be desired.




The stage is way down there at the bottom where there are things covered in curtains.

Anyway, after the show let out, we hit the Subway and headed back to Queens to end our night.



More photos from Day 2.

Trip to NYC: Day 1

So, I figured I better buckle down and get started writing about my trip to New York if I was ever going to, or else I'd have forgotten half of what happened. By way of introduction, my friend Jon and I were thinking of what we could do for Spring Break this year, and then I remembered that our friend Randall had moved to New York last summer, and that he was always saying I should come visit. Jon happened to have some Delta dollars he could spend, and I had enough for airfare, so it all worked out amazingly well.

We started our trip on Friday, heading to the Salt Lake airport around 8, and arriving at JFK around 5 in the afternoon. Randall was kind enough to get off work early so he could come pick us up, saving us an expensive cab ride. We drove across Queens to his place in Astoria, deposited our luggage, and went out to hit the town.



We got off the subway near the southeast corner of Central Park and proceeded down 5th Avenue towards Times Square. Along the way, he pointed out the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and then realized that on Friday nights there is free admission courtesy of Target. Being a Friday night, we headed inside and wandered around in there for a couple hours until the museum was closing.









From there we finished our walk down to Times Square, stopping briefly to check out the Rockefeller Plaza. Once we were at Times Square, we were all pretty hungry, and Randall wanted to show us "one of the few good restaurants at Times Square", a barbecue place called Virgils. And he was right. It was good BBQ, and given its location near Times Square, not completely ridiculously overpriced. We ate meat until we couldn't eat any more, and then boxed up what we had left, headed to the subway and made our way back out to Queens.





More photos from Day 1.

Back from NYC

I'm back in town and after taking another day off to regroup and recover I'm starting to publish stuff from my trip. I hopefully will be giving a bit of a rundown of the craziness here over the next few days, but I've started uploading some of the best photos to Flickr. Feel free to check em out. So far I've just put up some pictures from the first night we were there.

Watch This Wednesday #24: If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere

In case you don't already know, I'm going to New York City this Friday. I've never been before and I'm getting pretty excited about going. Just going for fun. Its not for some conference, just me and a friend and we're going to stay with another friend of ours and his wife. I think its going to be pretty great. I'm sure I'll have pictures and the like to post when I get back, but for now enjoy this video that someone else made with pictures of New York and the classic Sinatra song.

The Big Digital Spends Money on Someone Else's Wife

"Don't spend your money on someone else's wife" -- One of my old roommates

It was destined to happen someday. You date long enough and eventually its going to happen. What's bound to happen? Well back in January I took a girl out for lunch who ostensibly was not dating anyone. Her friend told me that two months prior she'd broken up with someone and that she wasn't now dating anyone. The fact she agreed to go out with me would imply the same. Lunch was fine and I considered asking her out again, although I wasn't super excited about it for some reason. She'd told me that she was going out to California the next weekend to visit a "friend". Shortly after her trip, pictures of her with a guy in California surfaced on Facebook. These pictures seemed to imply that they were more than just "friends" and I kind of lost interest in pursuing anything further there. Fast forward two months later and she's now engaged to that guy. I'm kind of glad I didn't ask her out a second time. :)

Watch This Wednesday #23: Was that Real Manure? No It Wasn't

Kind of an oldie here, but you may not have seen it before. Tom Wilson who played Biff in the Back to the Future movies, apparently does musical stand-up and this is a song he wrote about all the questions he gets over and over again about being in Back to the Future.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #18: Does it "seam" unseamly?

Whats the male equivalent of "seamstress"? Is it "tailor"? Couldn't a woman be a tailor, though? I like to think that the right word here should be "seamster", just because I think thats a fun word. Seamster.

Making Marriage Work

Making Marriage Work
Originally uploaded by Jake T.

I realize the camera on my phone quite possibly takes the world's worst pictures, but hopefully you can see enough here to see that a "Lunch & Learn" class is being taught at my work, entitled "Making Marriage Work" and its taught by one Mr. Curtis HOOKER. I wonder what he recommends?

Update: I keep chuckling at the thought of the guy who comes home from work and tells his wife, "Hey honey, today at work I learned how to improve our marriage from a Hooker.", or maybe "Hey honey, today while I was at work, a Hooker taught me some things that might improve our marriage."

The Big Digital Gets an...Eyebrow Trim??

Yesterday I went to my local GreatClips to get a haircut, as is my custom. Of course, its always a crap shoot in terms of quality. But its close, and I don't feel as creeped out as I sometimes do at the $4 place by the University. Anyway, this time I was less than thrilled with the skill of my barber (stylist?). I always get nervous when they're using the clippers on the sides and back and can't seem to do a very smooth job of it, when the clippers feel like they're bouncing off my head as they get rammed against it.

But, beyond the apparent incompetence of the lady cutting my hair, as she was wrapping things up, she did something that in all my nearly 30 years of haircuts I've never seen done before. She put a comb over my eyebrow and ran the shaver she was using to even up my sideburns over the top of the comb, trimming off any eyebrow hair that was poking out. I wasn't sure that that was what she'd actually done until she did it again on the other eyebrow. Now, I'm not sure that my eyebrows didn't need a trim. I mean, they've never been trimmed before, so if its something that should be done, they were probably due. But its not something I asked for, and they've been feeling a little weird ever since. In the future I'll know to inform them that I'm fine with the length of my eyebrow hair.

Watch This Wednesday #22: Tom Hanks, Vintage 1986

I know I'm later than usual getting this out, but I've had a pretty full day. Anyway, here's a clip from "The Money Pit", starring Tom Hanks in which he does all but get killed while traversing some scaffolding on his sinkhole of a house.