Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Paris Paris

This has got to be some sort of hoax - I hope!
Paris Hilton reportedly engaged to shipping heir

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Ubiquitous socialite Paris Hilton is engaged to marry her boyfriend of five months, Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis, People magazine reported on its Web site on Monday.

OK, let me get this straight, Paris Hilton is going to marry her boyfriend Paris Latsis? Assuming this bizarre betrothal goes the whole nine yards, what would happen if Hilton changed her last name to Latsis? This would mean you would end up with a married couple with the same name!! Imagine the anarchy! What would people call them!?! (Egad!! I have exhausted my entire days' supply of exclamation-points!)

Imagine the scene at the Social Security office:
Paris Hilton: "Hello, I'm here to change my name to Paris Latsis. Here's form 137468991058-A/B"
Social Security Clerk: "One moment..." <typing>
Computer: BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH
Social Security Clerk: "What the..."

Meanwhile, airplanes fall out of the sky as the malfunction propagates through all federal machines.

Bill Gates: "The seventh seal has been broken. The end is nigh!"
Satan: "I thought that was when the Olsen twins turned 18."
Bill Gates: "..."
Or at a party:
Trump: "Hey Paris!"
Paris L: "Hey, how's it going? Meet my new wife, Paris! Paris, Donald Trump."
Trump: "Paris, a pleasure. Paris has told me so much about you! Have you met my wife Melania? Melania, come meet Paris and Paris."
Melania: "Enchante."
Paris H: "Pleased to meet you."
Trump: "Both Paris and Paris were at my hotel last weekend. Paris enjoyed the new spa I set up but joined up with Paris down in the casino later. Paris, I hear your luck is too good, I'm going to have to ban you from the baccarat table!"
Paris H: "Did you mean me or him?"
Trump: "You know, I have no idea."
Melania: "Paris?Paris?Paris?Paris?Paris?Paris?" <head explodes>
Trump: "Dang, Third time this week."
Oh, I can't wait to hear how this one turns out...

posted by Tao @ 11:29 AM   3 comments

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Kart Vader

This is awesome... some guy gets in a 125cc shifter kart and blasts through downtown Quebec City at 160km/h, and evades the cops while he's at it.

www.kartvader.com

Predictably, it's sponsored by goldenpalace.com

posted by Tao @ 8:39 PM   0 comments

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Bloggershirt

Got me a blogger T-shirt today.

I'll post pics soon.

posted by Tao @ 3:57 PM   0 comments

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Deep secrets



PostSecret is an awesome site. Perhaps I shall have the cojones to send in my secret some day.

posted by Tao @ 12:22 PM   1 comments

Friday, May 20, 2005

My Blog Sucks

... Well, at least Matt Wood says so.
A few weeks ago, my partner QBlog wrote about blogging Rule #1: Don't Suck. Sage advice indeed, but the truth is no matter how hard you try, your blog will suck. It will be unbelievably, mind-numbingly bad. You won't post often enough to keep people coming back, and you'll be mad at yourself. You won't get any comments, and you'll feel like a loser. Then you'll abandon your blog, and the internet will be littered with yet another carcass with six meaningless posts, four of which are apologies for not posting often enough. There are 12,000 new weblogs created every day, and 11,999 of them suck, including yours. So don't even try. Do the internet a favor, and don't clog it up with your "ramblings," "musings," or "random thoughts" in a blog. There are better places for it.
Man, that's pretty unencouraging. I do get the occasional comment from my friends though. As for attracting strangers from across the world wide web to gape in awe at my cognitive brilliance shining through my flowing prose, well I never really expected that. If I wanted to attract people to my site, I could have just come up with something really and unambiguously weird instead. If I wanted to show up on the radar of the blogosphere, it wouldn't be that hard, I would just have to rant about liberals. Loudly.

Anyhoo, I'll go back to my regular posting style - I just thought I'd just share the fact that I suck. :)

posted by Tao @ 10:46 PM   1 comments

Updates

Hey guys, sorry my updates haven't been very forthcoming lately, but I'm sure you all understand I'm studying for my CFA exam. I actually come up with some pretty good material during the day but I never really get a chance to type it out when it comes down to it.

The exam is coming up on June 4, and there shall be much rejoicing afterwards. I promise.

posted by Tao @ 12:27 AM   0 comments

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Krazy Klimate

So I was in Pomona today, scouting out the location for the CFA exam. It was absolutely amazing the difference in temperatures a few miles inland. When I left my garage, my external thermometer in my car was reading 21 degrees Celsius (about 70 F), and by the time I got to Pomona, 50 kilometers inland, it was reading 33 C! It wasn't just a fluke; by the time I got back the temperature only went up to 23.

Weird, huh?

posted by Tao @ 5:41 PM   1 comments

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Confirmed

I booked tickets yesterday for my visit back home; unfortunately the only flight within my parameters was that awful red-eye. I'll be arriving Friday July 1 at Pearson at 6:05AM and will be leaving at 8PM on Tuesday, July 5.

Cheers, y'all.

posted by Tao @ 3:50 PM   3 comments

Friday, May 13, 2005

Advance notice for a visit

I'm going to be coming home, folks. Right now it looks like I'll be in town from Friday, July 1 to Tuesday, July 5, but my exact itinerary is still up in the air as I try to get the best rates. The problem is that stupid Air Canada decided to cancel flight 744 on June 30, which would have allowed me to leave the office at 1pm, and pay $460 for the flight. Now my only option for that kind of money is to leave on Thursday, take a connection in Vancouver at 11:30pm PT, and arrive at 6am ET. What a horrible red-eye. And I'm not paying $560 for the same flight the next day. Of course, the other option is to use my miles - the only problem is that I'd have to fly business class and use up 40,000 (vs. the normal 26,000) miles. Not a great option either.

I'll see how my wrangling with online booking works out. Anyway, see y'all later!

posted by Tao @ 1:23 PM   0 comments

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Make that thirteen

Or maybe fourteen. This article has a more recent count:
The latest incident, in which a lorry driver was targeted but not harmed, follows 12 unsolved freeway shootings in the last two months, which have left four dead and four injured.
What kind of American journalist uses "lorry" anway?

posted by Tao @ 9:57 AM   0 comments

Monday, May 09, 2005

Traffic

Not sure if you've been keeping up with news lately, but LA freeways are turning deadly again. There have been at least seven attacks in the last 10 weeks, four of them fatal, the worst outbreak of apparently random freeway shootings in the Los Angeles area since 1987, when five people were killed.

There's an interesting article from the NY Times written by a journalist having spent some time in the SoCal area, where he rightly noticed that drivers are quite polite and attentive on the freeways-especially as compared with New York drivers:

As a friend from Fullerton puts it, you drive politely, without challenging other drivers even implicitly, because "they're packing." No one honks because no one wants a fight. People use their turn signals to say, as innocently as possible: "Changing lanes now! Not cutting in! No disrespect intended!"

In fact the level of aggression here is about on par with that on Toronto highways. Anyone from a small town would be frightened out of their wits, but having spent some time observing traffic through the streets of Montreal and NYC, I'll have to say it's pretty damn tame here in a metro area with more drivers than the population of some European countries.

It's a funny solution to road rage, in the city with the highest percentage of single driver commuters in the world and the most extensive freeway system anywhere. The only thing I can think of as a parallel is the Air Marshal program; you seed just a random number of planes with men with guns, and the number of hijackings dramatically goes down.

Not that I'm advocating anyone to go out and buy a gun, but I for one won't be flipping off anyone who cuts me off on an on-ramp.

posted by Tao @ 3:30 PM   1 comments

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

The Fed

Today I treat you with a comic:



Oldie but a goodie. By the way, my cash came out sparkling clean! Just an FYI, jeans pocket = delicates bag.

posted by Tao @ 9:47 AM   3 comments

Monday, May 02, 2005

Filthy lucre

Have you ever received dirty money? Not the kind that is obtained through smuggling terrorists across customs or selling crack in the schoolyard, but the really filthy nasty kind that looks as if a street person had used it as a handkerchief? I was at a small taco shop late last week for lunch when I was handed two tattered, slightly moist singles as part of my change. This money was some of the most filthy paper I've ever encountered, and has actually imparted a rotten sort of odor to my wallet over the course of this weekend. Ironically enough, the two fish tacos which I ate for lunch that day rendered no ill effects on my stomach later that evening. Luck of the draw, I guess.

One alternative would be to actually spend the damn things, but that's just the easy way out - as any economics major will tell you, due to fractional reserve banking, the dirty cash actually multiplies like a virus through the system, spawing multiple offspring for each one reintroduced into the money supply. Well today, I've decided that I shall launder my currency with the next load. I am trying to decide whether I should dump it in with my whites, which would achieve the benefit of a touch of Chlorox, or stuff it into the pocket of my jeans which would send it in with the colors on the warm/cool cycle.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

posted by Tao @ 12:21 AM   1 comments