Yesterday afternoon I got home from grocery shopping and I noticed that there was a message on the ansering machine. I was particularly excited because I haven't been in very much contact with my friends because I've been working a lot. I walked up to the answering machine and press play, and I am greeted by man named Tommy. Tommy is a telemarketer. When did telemarketers start leaving messages on people's answering machines? He started his conversation by saying that he hopes I didn't mind that he is leaving a message. Well, I did mind. I didn't want to hear about the free satelite system I'd won. Unfortunately I had no choice, because when I tried to delete it my answering machine told me that I needed to listen to all messages in full before deleting them. So as to not leave you out of all of the excitement, here is a transcription of the message:

Hey guys, this is Tommy. I'm going to leave you a message; I hope that's ok. Give me a call back at 1-877-***-***. That's toll free. I'm calling to let you know that I have good news. You have been selected to win a full satelite TV system in your home for free. I'm going to give you America's top premier channels, all of your local channels, and free movie channels, all for less than fourty two dollars a month. Again my name's Tommy, call me here at 1-877-***-***. Hey, and if you do call me back within 48 hours I'm going to give you a free TiVo receiver in your home, and that will allow you to rwind live TV, rewind live TV, fast forward live TV, anything you want - It's really exciting. Again my name's Tommy, give me a call back at 1-877-***-***. Thanks for your interest guys.

I'm sure you can all see my excitement. One thing from his little spiel did intrigue me. He said that I can use TiVo to fast forward live TV. This means that I can use it to see things that will happen in the future. Unless he is lying to me (which I'm sure he isn't, he seemed really excited), I think I need to get one of these TiVo things.

I am confident that if this message is played backwards you will hear "I am the devil, sell me your soul". So, if you ever get a call from Tommy, and are fortunate enough to talk with him, tell him that you don't want to sell your soul, you are completely satisfied with your cable TV, and that you would appreciate it if he would stop leaving messages on people's answer machines.

Yesterday I decided that I wanted some ice cream so I raided the fridge and found a quart of Edy's Toll House Cookie Swirl ice cream. I grabbed a bowl out of the cuboard and then a spoon out of the silverwear drawer. I returned to the silverwear drawer to look for the ice cream scoop, but it wasn't there. I decided a regular spoon would have to suffice for my scooping needs. When I started to scoop with the regular spoon I realized how much harder it is than using an ice cream scoop, which got me to thinking: whoever invented the first ice cream scoop must be a millionaire. Then I started to wonder what different ideas the original inventer might have gone through before getting to the model which we see today. Now I'm not much on history, so this question quickly left my mind. Then I thought, there must be some newer more innovative ice cream scoops. The ice cream scoop in my house is probably older than me, so there must be something better. Here is what my google search found:

This is a classical style scoop, but it is hollow and filled with water. before using it on your ice cream you let it sit in warm water for a few minutes. It makes scooping ice cream feel like slicing butter (sort of).

This scoop has a mechanical component that necessitates a quick release. It works like those scoops that are used in grade school cafeterias for scooping mashed potatoes.

This scoop is referred to as a blade. It is similar to the kind used at ColdStone and other ice cream parlors that mix in the ingredients in front of you. Only really hardcore ice cream junkies should use these.

This scoop is an electric scoop (hence the cord). It uses electric power to heat the scoop to make scooping easier. My kitchen already has enough electrical appliances, so I don't see this scoop in my future.

This This scoop is built by rubbermaid and is supposed to be especially ergonomic. In my opinion, if you scoop enough ice cream that you need an ergonomic scoop, you should put the spoon down and head to the gym.

Although some technological advances have been made in ice cream scoops, I think I'll stick with my current scoop (until it breaks, or I find ice cream that scoops itself).

This past weekend royaly sucked. It rained all of Friday and Saturday, and some of Sunday as well, and the only time it was sunny none of my friends were around. Instead of letting the day go to waste, I decided to play some scrabble to see if I could get my ranking up on ISC (I know to some of you this may seem a waste, but I thougt it was rather productive). My ranking is currently hovering around 1400. And I got to use one of my favorite "scrabble" words the other day, taenia.

taenia \ n pl. -NIAE or -NIAS a headband worn in ancient Greece

And since I'm sure most of my loyal readers don't really care about my favorite scrabble words, I will leave you with an interesting factoid:

Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people

I am right handed and proud of it.

It has rained here the last six out of seven days. As a result of that I have spent all my free time surfing the internet and watching reruns of CSI on tv. I have been frequenting digg, fark.com, and woot.com. I particularly like fark because of it's comedic descriptions by content submitters.

Today when I was driving home from work I was following a very slooooow car, so I decided to read the passing street signs to take my mind off the frustation of having to ride the brake. I noticed one street sign that was for the street "ROCKY rd" and I almost laughed out loud. In retrospect it wasn't very funny-it was amusing at best, but I was really bored. I wish I had a digital camera so I could post a picture of it.

This is the first post on my new blog, yay! I remember my last "first post". It was on the Algorithms and Data Structures forum. Ben Maurer quickly deleted it and posted to the forum saying that while first posts might be acceptable in places such as slash dot, such childish games would not be acceptable on the 211 forum. (I would find the exact quote, but it seems he has deleted the post).

It's been raining since friday, so I spent all of the last couple days upgrading to Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper), and writing a custom template for my new blog. I'm extremely excited about both of these events. Now that I have updated ubuntu I seem to have all the audio capabilities I crave in an operating system (Namely I can finally playback music without Ubuntu freezing). And the blog brings me to a new level in internet 1337ness. Actually, I'm just happy to have a blog that I've designed myself (instead of all of those boring cookie-cutter blogs).

Well, this has turned out to be a very short first post. I don't seem to have anything else to talk about. I'll see if I can't find more to write about on my second post.