VaxCave

Since some of you are newer readers I thought I would have a greatest hits post. These are some of my favorite posts over the past few years:

• Holy Sheetz!: From November of 2002. A harrowing tale of my mother and a Sheetz MTO.
• 8 Year Old Tragedy: From February of 2003. Not a tragedy that is 8 years old. A tragedy **about** an 8 year old.
• N40° 25.789 - W079° 54.198 !! GO! GO! GO!: From September of 2003. Extreme geocaching.
• Cold Mountain: From February of 2004. A night at the movies goes wrong.
• Never Shop at Wal-Mart Again: From December of 2004. Why we don’t shop at Wal-Mart anymore.

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Filed by AxsDeny at 9:08 am under General
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For anyone that has played Super Mario Brothers, Tetris, or the Legend of Zelda on the original Nintendo Entertainment System, you must see this. It’s simply brilliant.

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Filed by AxsDeny at 9:34 am under General
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I went and watched the Random Distance Run today at CMU. You may be asking yourself what a Random Distance Run might be… let me explain.

The Random Distance Run is a race that has an uncertain number of laps. Runners may run as little as 0.5 miles (2 laps) or as much as 3.0 miles (12 laps). Runners line up at the starting line and a giant, fuzzy, 6-sided die is rolled. This determines the first set of laps that the runners must complete. The race starts and as the leader starts the last lap of the first die roll, the second die is rolled to determine how many more laps the runners must complete. Today, the die rolls were 4 and 5, respectively.

My co-worker Jake had entered the race so I figured I could, at minimum, go and hassle him for not winning. We met up with his wife and sister-in-law and proceeded to the track. It was quite an interesting assortment of runners. Most were from the School of Computer Science and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

Apparently Jake has been running for some time. He won hands down. 9 laps in under 13 minutes. I’m not 100% sure what his official time ended up being but I’ll be sure to update this post when I know.

So anyway, congrats to Jake for winning the Random Distance Run.

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Filed by AxsDeny at 9:10 pm under General
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• The White House: Some guy from Texas lives here… at least when he isn’t at the ranch.
• The Washington Monument: Pointy!
• World Trade Center: The construction area where the towers once stood.
• The Pentagon: If you look on the western side of the building you can see where the 9/11 repairs are taking place.
• Statue Of Liberty: Just to the west of the WTC site.
• Golden Gate Bridge: If you scroll to the east you can see Alcatraz.
• Heinz Field: Steelers! Scroll to the east to see PNC Park.
• Mount Rushmore: Pretty cloudy or foggy in this picture… such is the fortune of satellite images.
• Area 51 (Groom Lake): Looks like winter!
• Luxor Casino (Las Vegas): I wish they had that huge light turned on so we could see it better.
• Devil’s Tower: The tower that belongs to The Devil.
• Three Mile Island: No, it doesn’t glow.
• Arecibo Radiotelescope: Is there anybody out there?

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Filed by AxsDeny at 11:46 am under General
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The Oaks Theater in Oakmont has been showing some anime films over the past 2 weeks. We went last Friday and saw Sky Blue and Appleseed during a double feature. This past Friday we saw Katsuhiro Otomo’s (of Akira fame) newest film, Steamboy.

Of the three, I think I like Appleseed the best. It has a slight story edge on the rest of the films. Apparently all the folks who have read the graphic novels that the movie is based on are outraged. Go figure. Dorks get outraged about a comic book being turned into a movie? That would NEVER happen!

Sky Blue was interesting as it was my first look at Korean anime. Their style was quite good but the story, once again, could have been fleshed out a little more.

The washed out, olde-timey colors in Steamboy were quaint at first. Then it just seemed like Otomo was using the same tech that he had used on Akira. I enjoyed the movie, but it seemed forced. There could have been more story and less large, mechanical, retro-futuristic danger sequences. Big chunks of the film reminded me of that retro-mechanical spider thing in Wild Wild West. I think 25% of the movie involved someone being chased. I equate that to a car chase scene. Donna Weimer had a term for that. She called it ‘filler’.

On an extremely positive note; we won the raffle at the theater and got a Steamboy t-shirt. On a negative note; it’s a double extra large. Let the shrinking attempts begin!

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Filed by AxsDeny at 10:07 pm under Entertainment
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