We’re moving!

…

 

What???

 

Yes, we’re moving. I’ve acquired a new domain, www.brazilliangeek.com, for even more geekyness and non-sense. Now here’s something really, really important, if you want to keep up with the madness

• The old blog address (and that’s the one you used to get here) is http://braziliangeek.blogspot.com. That’s just ONE L.
• The new blog address (and that’s the one you’re going to use from now on, is http://blog.brazilliangeek.com. That’s TWO L’s!!!

Why? Well, the other night I purchased the domain name (got a really good deal on it!), but I didn’t check the correct spelling for “Brazilian”, so I did it with two l’s, as in “Brazillian”. Turns out the correct spelling is with just one l, and now I’m stuck with a site spelled incorrectly (the spelling nazi inside my head is jumping up and down with fury).

Now, I’m guy who likes consistency. If I’m going to spell it wrong, then I’m going to spell it wrong everywhere. So I quickly hogged the address http://brazilliangeek.blogspot.com from google and attached it to my website. So now it’s all setup!

Basically, this is the last post in this website (the one with the correct spelling).  New posts can be found at http://blog.brazilliangeek.com. I’m not deleting this blog, so you, irregular readers, will find this message weeks or months (nay, years in the future) and learn that there’s a whole bunch more stuff you’ve been missing out on http://blog.brazilliangeek.com

You, regular readers, can follow me to my new address and enjoy all the craziness and non-sense you’ve enjoyed all this time.

http://blog.brazilliangeek.com – Now with incorrect spelling!

Still alive!

I don’t quite remember how I came across this site, but it is something I enjoy visiting every now and then

http://englishrussia.com

This is a site maintained by a Russian photographer about life in Russia. Not that I’m that interested in moving to Russia or anything like that… What’s interesting to me is his “field trips”, like this one

Lost City of Chernobyl

Yeah, some of this is definitely on the creepy side of things, but very interesting nevertheless!

An Abandoned Coastline Defense Canon Battery

AK-47 Kalashnikov museum

Some of this postings are bizarre enough to prevent me from checking it more regularly, but it’s always interesting for the occasional visit.

This post brought to you by the Department of Too Much Information

After successfully becoming a waterholic (really, I’m drinking a ton of water. So much, I just don’t have the “time” to drink anything else. Gotta hit that goal!), I’ve decided to expand/abuse my reader’s patience some more.

I’ve learned long ago that accountability is one of the keys of successful delegation: If you have to report it to someone, you’re much more likely to do it, for any number of reasons I’m not going to go into. So, now I’ve decided to make You, the reader, the boss of me! Yes, that’s right! Now I’m going to update my water consumption (but not every half-hour, no way), but I’m also going to update with my… food intake!

 

(crowd stares in terrifying unbelief, starts to look for pitchforks and torches)

 

It’s true… I like food! I eat a lot. I can eat all day… candy bars, grilled cheese sandwiches, peanuts, anything. If it’s within reach, I’ll grab it. If I’m stressed, I’ll grab twice as much. If I’m tired, then you’d better hide your stash, I’ll be over in a minute :-)

So now, if you look on the right side of this page, you’ll see a section called “Food & Water”. I’ll be updating it regularly with my drinkage, and with my eatage. I don’t think I’m going to give a detailed account of what exactly I just ate (unless my wife made it, and you’ll be very jealous, specially once I describe how incredibly delicious it tasted). It’ll probably just be a “I ate something!”.

Alright, now I gotta get some work done. 

Resolution!

Following my wife’s excellent example, I’m working my darndest (spell checker thinks that darndest should be spelled dandiest – brought to you by my very short attention sp….hey, look, it’s shiny!) best to stop drinking carbonation. It’s not an easy task, specially in the IT world, where Mountain Dew is King and Lord over All Other Beverages. My shameful worst is 4 cans of Dew in a single day (but they were diet!).

Anyways, one of my excuses is that I always try to drink a healthy amount of water/day, usually about 1 liter. Interestingly enough, after some googling (hey, it was my lunch time!), I found this link

http://www.naturodoc.com/library/nutrition/water.htm

Once you drill down past the wise and sage advice, I found this definition

"Proper water intake is a key to weight loss," says Dr. Donald Robertson, medical director of the Southwest Bariatric Nutrition Center in Scottsdale, Arizona.  "If people who are trying to lose weight don't drink enough water, the body can't metabolize the fat adequately.  Retaining fluid also keeps weight up."

The minimum for a healthy person is eight to ten eight-ounce glasses a day," says Dr. Flaks.  "You need more if you exercise a lot or live in a hot climate.  And overweight people should drink in an extra glass for every 25 pounds they exceed their ideal weight.  Consult your own physician for their recommendations.

At the International Sports Medicine Institute, we have a formula for daily water intake: 1/2 ounce per pound of body weight if you're not active (that's ten eight-ounce glasses if you weigh 160 pounds), and 2/3 ounce per pound if you're athletic (13 to 14 glasses a day, at the same weight).

So, right now, I weigh a manly 190lbs. According to the formula,

190 x 1/2 = 95oz per day

then, remembering that a regular water bottle carries about 17oz of water

95/17 = 5.5 bottles/day

A lot? Yeah, that’s a lot of water. However, if I’m awake 18 hours/day then

18/5.5 = 3.2

That means I have to drink 17oz of water every 3.2 hours. Hourly, that will translate into

17/3.2 = 5.3oz

So, 5oz of water every hour that I’m awake! All y’all cooks know how little that is. For us cubicle-dwellers, if I get up every half-hour and take a nice drink of water from the water-fountain, then not only I get to stay awake, I also get to stay hydrated! Awesome! Also, remember that 85% of your brain is composed of water, so you gotta make sure your gray matter is always nice and moist (maybe soggy is even better, but make sure you don’t drench it… It actually damages the gray matter, and then it don’t work so good. Anyways.) if you want to keep your marbles not looking like the poor marble in the right

 

Good luck, and happy drinking!

Queen and Weird Al

I’m not a huge Queen fan, but I’ve always admired Freddie Mercury’s talent as a singer. Apparently, so does Weird Al… Here’s a quick compare of Queen’s original, “Bohemian Rhapsody”

 

And here’s Weird Al’s version of the same song. Same lyrics, completely different song!

I know I should be getting work done….

But this was too funny to pass. Enjoy!

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-10-13

At least I’ll die with a happy tummy

I know some of the stuff just looks horribly gross, and I had a heart attack when I saw some of the other pictures, but, to my shame, I’d try some of the following

Deep Fried Cheese-Stuffed Ground Bacon Burger

(too gross to picture, but it sounds good)

Snickers Pie

chessecase on a stick

I would certainly never never ever have any of the following

 

bacon tacos

 

Deep-fried Twinky On A Stick Dipped In Chocolate Syrup

 

And the champion of the worst, most horrible looking food of all times….

 

Turbaconucken

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, all wrapped in bacon.

What are your choices?

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

AMAZING GIVEAWAY!!!

Lucky you!The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year. (might be a little while)
4- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.
The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!
Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!
Good luck!

Laugh with me if you get it

Over the last couple of years I've slowly become a die-hard republican... Yeah, it's a long story, but I can get pretty heated under the collar, as some of you may have found out.

Anyways, tonight I was reading a thread from a blog posting about great deals online, one of such deals being "Obama and the American Story: A History of Freedom for $0." I was following the comments other readers have left, and I found the following gem:

*** Disclaimer

(I started to type a long disclaimer to make Obama-supporters happy, but it got too long. If this post offends you, oh wells)


Here it goes....

-------------------------------------

"Obama and the American Story: A History of Freedom"

*rolls eyes*

bboysca "Obama and the American Story: A History of Freedom" ...

4 replies by Saboth, klaybc, T-Will ...

• 

  Brendan Byrne
  5:05 PM

  @bboysca: I'm a big fan of Obama, but yeah, I'll have to agree. *rolls eyes in unison*

  
  
• Saboth
  5:47 PM

  @Brendan Byrne:

  Yeah, I voted for Obama, but...it's kinda getting out of hand with the hype and the media lol.

  "Obama raises hands and lifts a nation" (CNN) /spins eyes.

  
  
• klaybc
  6:03 PM

  @Saboth: Hey, that book's worth every penny.

And here's my favorite post

• T-Will
  6:31 PM

  @bboysca: Shouldn't it be "Obama and the American Story: A History of Socialism"?

Off-topic – For the trekkie in all of us

Found this on the internet yesterday, thought it was fabulous!

Here’s the link, if this image is still too small to see.

Create your own original Star Trek story

 

On TV’s and Projectors – part 2

Eventually, however, I ended up with this guy

That’s a mitsubishi projector, off of ebay. I paid about 10% of the cost of a low-end high-def tv, for an image about 4 1/2 times the size of goodly-sized high-def tv. Here's a comparison chart, to help you get an idea of how the sizes compare:

Right, it’s just like that.

Actually, it really is pretty awesome. I don’t have any pictures of the actual screen size, but if filled out most of the wall. The kids were somewhat intimidated at first, but then they loved touching the screen and kept on trying to grab whatever was displayed on the it.

Stay tuned for chapter 3 of my amazing projector adventures!

Better comments!

If you’ve wondered where your comments to my posts went, wonder no more! I’ve changed some of my settings, so now your comments should show up right away. So, no more excuses, speak up!

Where in the world have you been????

Yeah, I’ve been….. busy. Way busy, actually. Here’s quick list of what I’ve been up to in the last little while since I last posted:

• Repaired a bunch of nintendo DS (4, to be precise)
• Modified my projector to use any type of bulb I want
• Sliced my finger, got a couple of stitches
• Got a bunch of new responsibilities at work
• Played a lot of guitar hero III (awesome!)
• Did a lot of playing with my kids

I’ll probably post individual entries for this stuff, just so I can say that, in average (by total count of post alone), I’ve been posting just as much as anybody else :-). Stay tuned!

Creative protesting

While disgruntled citizens choose to brake windows, disrupt traffic and cause chaos to show their feelings over personal matters, other disgruntled citizens just choose to be creative!

http://kotaku.com/5097959/shenmue-fans-plan-toy+based-direct-action

Shenmue is a game where the main character can choose to do any number of things, including getting a job (imagine that! playing a game where you get a job). One of the “jobs” include shipping small toys.

As a way of protest the cancelation of the series, Shenmue fans are now sending small toys (just like they did in their virtual life “job”) to the developer, Sega of Japan, to remind Sega how much they enjoyed having “virtual jobs”. I’m not in any way making fun of their efforts. I’m praising their creativity in sharing their opinion. So, if you are a Shenmue fan, starting writing! As for me, I’m still hoping to get a copy of the game to find out what the fuss is all about.

Not dead yet!

I’m not dead, faithful occasional reader. Just very busy at the moment. I’ve also had an interesting case of blogger mental block. I’ve wanted to write about a couple of things, but sorta refused to do it since it would take actual work! So, in protest, my brain has refused to think up anything else creative or even remotely interesting.

I also wanted to share today’s Dilbert. It perfectly depicts what a day here at work is like. Click on the link if you can't see the whole comic. Enjoy!

My Dear Comrades

 

And that’s all I’m gonna say right now.

Times sure have changed

I don’t normally browse youtube…. It can be a very big time sink, grabbing me with its many oddities and never letting it go. This one is a gem, however, so I couldn’t pass it by. I really don’t know what to say…. Were we really that irresponsible back then?

Money in the time of Cholera

 

Alright, so maybe cholera is not the right word here, but the situation right now is really bad, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Thankfully, there’s a bunch of financially-oriented people out there, writing great blogs on how to deal with this mess. My current favorites are

www.consumerist.com

The Consumerist is a blog listing all sorts of great things, such as scam alerts, money-saving deals, customer complaints, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

www.thesimpledollar.com

This one I just discovered, but I really, really liked their 18 Things a New Homeowner Should Do Immediately to Save Money article. I’m going to make this a regular read.

www.yodlee.com and quicken online

The two links above are for two different website, both providing the same service: manage all your bank/credit card accounts at the same time.

You know that excel spreadsheet you’ve setup, with all your bank transactions, that you religiously kept updating until you forgot/deleted it/realized there was an error on it and just went crazy? These websites are the solution you’ve been asking for. The process goes something like this (using quicken online as an example):

1) Create a user account with quicken online (it’s totally free!)

2) Add your bank/credit card accounts to your quicken online account

3) Watch as quicken online downloads your transaction history, categorizes each transaction, then creates a expenses chart that tells you exactly where you’ve been spending your money

4) Come back the following day and watch quicken online update with your transactions from the previous day

5) Realize you’ve been spending too much money at gamestop, and that you need to start spending that money somewhere else (hmmmm….)

And that’s it! It’s much better than microsoft money, and there’s no files to worry about, since all the information is kept on the website. I’ve tried them both, and the process is the same (and both are free, no costs or strings attached). The main difference for me is that yodlee has a lot more features, but it is a bit rougher around the edges. Quicken is more streamlined, but much easier to use. For me, the extra features totally compensate for the occasional issue, so I’ve become a die-hard yodlee fan.

What about you, o ye reader? What do you use for your finances?

oh boy

Nothing cute to post right now…. The whole family was sick over the weekend. It actually started on thursday, and I thought it’d mostly gone away, but it hit full-force on saturday when Ginger really wasn’t doing very good, and then it hit me on sunday. Poor kids, had free reign of the house while Ginger and I mostly just limped around the house, and that when we had the energy to do that much.

We’re doing better know, thankfully. I’m at work, and Ginger is taking care of the kids. My apologies to any one we spread whatever-this-is to.

No bacteria, virus or pumpkin were harmed in the production of this post. The pumpkin depicted above is a talented stunt-pumpkin, hired exclusively for this post.

Babysitting duties & Peanuts

Some kind of bug hit at home, and Ginger and the kids aren’t doing so great today. Truth be told, I’m not feeling so great as well, though not nearly as bad as Ginger or CJ. I got permission from the boss (thanks, Jeff!) to go home and tend to the family. So I got to play baby-sitter and nurse today!

Ginger was really tired and needed some sleep, so after making sure that the kids had something to eat, she went to take a nap. Jordan wasn’t quite ready yet, so she went through some more nursing and a bottle of baby food before she finally crashed. CJ got to feel better soon, so now he’s back to his usual bouncing around the house. In an attempt to keep him under some form of control (I also needed to get some work done), we decided to go through a Peanuts marathon. So far, we probably watched about 8-9 episodes of peanuts. The funny thing is, there’s only 6 different episodes of peanuts between 3 dvds, so we’ve watched some episodes several times already. He doesn’t mind it at all, he’s loving it.

Snoopy prepares a choice Thanksgiving meal: Toast, popcorn and candy. Yum!

I used to be a big Peanuts fan when I was a little kid, until I was about 6 years old, when they stopped broadcasting it (along with the pink panther, mr. magoo, mighty mouse and a bunch of other pretty good ones). So i haven’t really minded the whole marathon thing. Besides, i was able to get much of my work done, with Jordan asleep and him mostly quiet in there watching it. Quiet, of course, doesn’t really apply to Caio, so it’d be more accurate to say that he’s not causing major chaos while watching it, so I guess we’re all good. Hopefully, everybody will wake up feeling better soon.