Phone Pictures

I know I said I wouldn't post any more in 2005, but I finally got a Bluetooth adapter for my computer (courtesy of my new Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) so I finally have the pictures that were stored on my phone. Some of my favorites:

Resolutions

This is the last of the 3 year end posts. I don't think I have ever set goals in the past years, as most people do for the new year. This year, I want to give it a shot, just so that I can have another post end of 2006 discussing how much of it I actually accomplished.

Without further ado, please welcome the "Goals of 06"!

1. Get engaged
2. Pay off all debt
3. Hit the damn gym that I prepaid 3 years for!
4. Start a company (or 2)
5. Become an insurance broker
6. Hang out with friends more often
7. Wake up early, sleep early
8. Spend less
9. Read and review 10 books
10. Watch the entire Godfather series... again
11. Write a short story
12. Get a new cell phone
13. Learn to read and write in Armenian... again
14. Write in blog at least 5 times a week
15. Learn to play the piano... yet again

That's all I can think of for now. What are your goals?

The Best of 2005

Best Movie of 2005:
King Kong

Top Tech Buzzword of 2005:
Web 2.0

Top Idiot of 2005:
Michael Brown, former director of FEMA

Most Sensationalized Story of 2005:
Hurrican Katrina

Top Toy of 2005:
Xbox 360

Top Gadget of 2005:
iPod Nano

Best Reality Show of 2005:
The Amazing Race

Most Hyped Game of 2005:
Sudoku

Top Company of 2005:
Google

Most Annoying Person of 2005:
Paris Hilton

Dumbest Quote of 2005:
"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them."
-Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 5, 2005

Funniest Quote of 2005:
"You've performed so poor, I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, 'Take a hint.'"
–Bill Maher, on President Bush


Post comments on your best of 2005.

Au Revoir 2005 - A Look Back

This shall be the third to last post of 2005. I have been pretty bad this year with entries, mainly due to the hectic schedule I had to endure. As everyone and their mother tends to do this time of the year, I want to take a quick look back into the events of 2005, both personal and non personal:

• January 16: Last skydive (#6) before promising Araks I won't do it again.
  
  
• February 1: I started working at Vigen Onany & Associates, Inc., starting a new chapter in my work life.
  
  
• March 8: Mount Saint Helens begins to erupt.
  
  
• March 18: I bought my Motorola V600, and have been pissed off at it every since.
  
  
• March 27: I rear end 3 cars on my way to work due to a brake failure on my Camry.
  
  
• March 31: Terri Schiavo dies, after a long battle between her husband and her crazy parents. My opinion (which is the only opinion that counts in the Arthur Blog World [except Queen Arak's opinion, which is actually considered law]) is that she should have been allowed to die a LONG time ago. People in vegetative states are not living, they are just in a technical state of being. It is inhumane to allow these people to continue "living."
  
  
• April 2: Pope John Paul II dies at the age of 84.
  
  
• April 8: The became the proud parent of a new 2005 Cadillac STS Luxury Performance vehicle.
  
  
• June 2: First time serving for Jury Duty. I thought it was the most boring day of 2005.
  
  
• June 9: That is, until I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. It redefined boring.
  
  
• June 13: Michael Jackson is found not guilty of touching little boys. Many argue about the verdict, but no one can argue that this guy is looking scarier and scarier by the day.
  
  
• July 7: Subway bombings rock London. 52 die, 700 are injured. It is the deadliest attack in Britian since World War II.
  
  
• July 11: I declared my love for Arizona. I still think back to that day and how wonderfully open the freeways were.
  
  
• August 29: Hurricane Katrina and the fuck up of FEMA - We got a chance to see, yet again, how well managed the government was under the supreme leadership of our King President, George W Bush.
  
  
• September 24: Araks and I celebrate our 1 year anniversary. Countless more to come! I love you boo boo!
  
  
• October 8: A 7.6 earthquake in South Asia kills 77,000 people.
  
  
• November 6: Araks gives me the best birthday gift ever: A chance for me to be the pilot! If it isn't mind numbingly obvious, I LOVE everything related to the air. I got to fly a plane with my instructor and the Queen to beaches of Santa Monica and back!
  
  
• November 8: I turned 21, leaving my childhood behind.
  
  
• November 30: Last day at Vigen Onany & Associates, Inc., closing another chapter of my work life after having learned countless lessons.
  
  
• December 13: I came back from my first legal trip to Vegas. It was awesome!
  
  
• December 25: We celebrate Christmas and my sister's birthday at their house and I get attacked by 6 kids. What a great time!
  
  
• December 31: The year ends, and again I wish I had written more entries so that I could have a better record when I come back to this blog 20 years later.
  

If you like lists, you'll enjoy Lists: 2005

Merry Christmas!

That's right, it's that time of year again when kids hope a person who doesn't exist brings them presents and adults hope a person who doesn't exist answers their prayers. On a freezing 72 degree day, we shall celebrate the birth, but not the death, of a figure from the past.

Today I went to my brother's house for a little Christmas even gathering. Most of my time spent involved watching Angela, at the senior age of 4, play IGI 2 - Covert Strike. It's a little scary how good she is at sniping people.

Earlier today, I went through my drawers and cleaned up some things from the past. I'll write more about it later, but it was great reading over the original plans Ara and I made for Dev-Center and Blue Media. We've come a long way.

If you are home and have nothing else to do, I'm positive you will greatly enjoy The Chronicles of Narnia Rap.

Movie Review: King Kong

Set in the 1930s, this is the story of a young and beautiful actress Ann Darrow from the world of vaudeville who finds herself lost in depression-era New York and her luck changes when she meets an over-ambitious filmmaker Carl Denham who brings her on an exploratory expedition to a remote island where she finds compassion and the true meaning of humanity with an ape Kong. The beauty and the beast finally meet their fate back in the city of New York where the filmmaker takes and displays the ape in quest of his fame by commercial exploitation which ultimately leads to catastrophe for everyone including a playwright Jack Driscoll who falls in love with Ann and plays an unlikely hero by trying to save her from Kong and her destiny.


First, I will admit that I have never seen the original King Kong or any other remake, except the one that just came out.

Overall, the movie was very well done with excellent display of emotion and tension. Kong is not present in the first half of the movie, which is actually a good thing since the director took his time getting all the characters in motion and slowly made you believe that dinosaurs still walking about aren't THAT hard to believe.

Once Kong is in the picture, some parts are poorly executed. First of all, any human being would have had their neck and spine shattered into at least 17 different locations with the way Kong was handling the tour through the jungle. Just a note to all the big apes that saw the movie and would like to replicate Kong: Don't hold a woman in the same hand that you use to run through the forest. Constant pounding into the ground will cause many a fans to look elsewhere for their forest adventures.

Anyways, the "bond" between Ms. Ann Darrow and Mr. Kong is very well done. You truly feel sorry for the big ape throughout the entire movie. His facial expressions are well animated, although some of his insane movements are a bit tacky.

The best part, in my humble opinion, is Kong's fight with three T-Rexs. In most movies, the T-Rex is the big daddy and no one f***s with this guy. Kong, out of his endless admiration for Ann, saves her life and proceeds to dislocated the jaws of the T-Rex family line.

Watching that part and saying OHHH, WOWWW, OUCHH, SHIT! I thought to myself, how in the world is this movie rated PG-13?!?!!?!? Someone paid quite a lot of money to the advisory board to bring the rating down to PG-13. There was a 10 year old next to me that looked like he was scarred for life. Sure, there were no sex scenes or cussing, but kids really shouldn't be watching a big ape rip out the tongue of a T-Rex then dislocate his jaw and crush his skull.

Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned.

Overall, 4/5 stars. It's long (3+ hours), but time flies when a big gorilla is involved and you watch the movie with the love of your life, as I did)

Favorite Quote:
Lumpy the Cook: [seeing a footprint that Kong has left] There's only one thing in the world that could have done this... the Abominable Snowman.

IMDB Page for King Kong

Bush's Insightful Views on the iPod Shuffle

What happens when two brilliant men, Brit Hume with Fox News and George W Bush with... America, get together and discuss the President's iPod? Here's just a small portion:

Unidentified male: . . . which ones do you play?

Bush: All of these. I put it on shuffle. Dwight Yoakam. I've got the Shuffle, the, what is it called? The little.

Hume: Shuffle.

Bush: It looks like.

Hume: The Shuffle. That is the name of one of the models.

Bush: Yes, the Shuffle.

Hume: Called the Shuffle.

Bush: Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle.


Read more here

I'm A-Start Some Drama!

This is just too funny to not post. I hope I'm like this when I'm "all grown up":

defective yeti: I'm A-Start Some Drama

Optimus Keyboard

Talk about a sexy keyboard! Now here is something special for Christmas:



"Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment." Every key can be customized to show exactly what you need it to:



Keys can also be program and game specific. For example, you can set it to a Quake layout:





More details here

Las Vegas, Baby!

What a great weekend! I spent 3 days in Vegas with my parents and did fairly ok for my first “legal” Vegas experience. At first I played some slots, which quickly (and I do mean quickly) became very boring. I moved on to Blackjack, Roulette, and Big Six, which were a hell of a lot more fun!

I lost some money, made some money, and in the end came back with a modest $150 loss. The most interesting of the wins was a $4 bet on 20 at Big Six that got me $80.

I wonder if it’s possible to create a computer program that will take the speed of the spin, the size of the wheel and the individual sections and predict what number it will land on. In theory, it’s possible. Of course, actually being able to implement it in a small enough fashion to take to Vegas is highly unlikely (and highly illegal). Nevertheless, I am going to work on the program aspect out of curiosity.




Aside from that, I have a Delphi MyFi up for auction on Ebay if anyone is looking for an awesome Christmas gift.

Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music

We have reached the peak of computer technology:

During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article Q261186

Random Links

Since I don' t have much time to post something decent, I will provide links to some very funny sites:

First up is a band that did a remake of all the Mario music: Mario Unleashed

Next up is a website with some very VERY funny T-shirts you can buy: Busted Tees
One of my favorites is:




Another awesome site is Flapart, whcih features funny as hell book covers. Imagine the reaction people will have when they see you reading:

or


You can find these at Flapart


That's it for now. I'll have an actual entry up soon!

Pacific West 134 Clear For Takeoff

Ok maybe December wasn't the once a day blog as I had wanted, but it's still something! Frankly, I've been having a BLAST!!! My lovely lady, as usual, has been making me super happy, and I'm just enjoying my freedom.

I'm trying to gather my thoughts a bit on the whole idea of how to best run a business. I've noticed that I am missing experience on the sales front, so I'm going to start working on that bit. Having varying experiences with companies in very different industries really helps me see business in a new light. It is quite fascinating.

However, the task at hand is to relearn programming (concentrating on C#.NET and ASP.NET this time). On that note, I might need some subcontracting help. Anyone know someone who is pretty good in C# and ASP.NET and needs some side money? Anyone? Hello? Ok, I guess not.

I also must try to stop playing Microsoft Flight Sim so much and get cracking on the learning. I wish flying a Learjet 45 wasn't so damn addicting!

December, As Promised

Well, it is December 1 and, as promised, I shall start writing until my fingers fall off. As my first day of "consulting only Arthur", I slept until 12 then bought domain names with my lady. I also got a deal set for a programming project. Not bad for the first day.

I want to explain the domain name deal a bit. The internet economy is starting to pick up again and it is starting to look like 1999 all over again, but this time with people being more reasonable and thought out. In Business 2.0, there is an article about domain names and the people making millions from them in this market (link to article: Master of Their Domains). Before, the best you could do was find a good name and put it up for sale in hopes someone was crazy enough to pay millions for the name.

This time around, people are buying names and putting ads on them. A surprising number of people are not using search engines and instead type in what they are looking for in the address bar followed by .com. That's where the gold is. For example, Frank Schilling bought eatingdisorders.com for $1,100 in late 2002. Now 100 people a day click on link on that site, which gives him a dollar for each click. Not bad for a single site, even better when you have 5,000 of them.

Another example: cellphones.com. Michael Bahlitzanakis makes $1,300 a day on average from the simple website with paid links. That's nearly half a million dollars per year from a single website, enough to retire and still get income.

Although it isn't easy or common to make millions, the cost to give it a shot is very appealing. At $6 per domain from 1and1.com, there is little reason to not give it a shot. All you have to do is:

1. Register a name with 1and1.com for $6/year
2. Sign up with an aggregator such as sedo.com or domainsponsor.com.
3. Point your domain to the name servers they provide.

That's it! The aggregator will put ads on the site and keep track of visits and links. You can put your site up for sale and get side income from clicks while you are waiting for a lucrative bid.

I shall give it a shot for a couple of months and see what happens!

There are two ways to make money:

1. The easy way that takes creative skills to discover (e.g. milliondollarhomepage.com)
2. The hard way, through endless hours of work and labor

Call me lazy, but I prefer the first option.