In case of accident...

So I just got done reading "Ask A Cripple" on the Tucker Max Message Boards.
(Very good read, the kid is incredibly cool.)

It got me thinking about certain things and I've decided on a few things should I be unlucky enough to become wheelchair bound.

1. This shit is hilarious, and I would rock it as a Halloween costume no questions asked.
2. I would definitely need to have a chair like this.
3. I can only hope that I would be as cool as these guys. I would definitely be attempting it at the very least.
4. I would work out my arms like crazy. I'd want able-to-get-anywhere-via-monkey-bars strength.

OK, I'm going to stop thinking about this, I'm starting to get this paranoid fear of breaking my spine now.

Turn on your lights!

So while driving at 11:30 PM, while it's snowing, I drove past someone who found it acceptable to be driving their Jeep with only their parking lights on.

Who actually thinks this is OK?!

If you're too dumb to remember to turn on your lights when it's dark and snowy, please die in a fire. And if you haven't realized by now that if your dashboard is lit up, yet the road is mysteriously dark, you might want to check your owner's manual to find out where your tire iron is so you can kill yourself with it.
On the other hand, if you think it's perfectly alright to drive at night without your headlights actually being on, kindly keep up your standards of low visibility and stand in the middle of a major highway wearing all black at night. You end should be about as quick as you are not.

I have found the sound of insomnia

It's Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer; a thirty seven minute, eleven second minimalist techno track, which will have you wondering what's going on in your brain after about the ten minute mark.

Listen to the entire thing (on headphones, and no taking them off) and I will place money that it will have ingrained itself into your psyche.

...I can't take off the headphones.

Money Can't Buy Happiness

...but it can buy some nice things.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I have a taste for some of the finer things in life. I'm also a college student at the moment, so, for the moment, it's all just dreaming.

Now that we have the out of the way, I'm going to run down a (in no way comprehensive) list of thing I plan on buying just as soon as I make it big and get rich.

Porsche 911 GT3









This car is everything that I want out of a car: classy, timeless design, fast, amazing handling, set up for track use, and it can be customized to be exactly the way I want it.
It's just not a terribly good daily driver, which brings us to the next item on the list.


Bentley Continental Flying Spur
















First of all, it's a Bentley, that impresses enough people by itself, but this car really has it where it counts. It's based on the same chassis as the amazingly engineered Audi A8/S8 and Volkswagen Phaeton, and uses a twin turbo version of the 6.0L W12 engine. It's all wheel drive, so there's your daily driveability. Air suspension, complete with sport mode.
This is a car you could easily have fun driving yourself, or being chauffered around in while resting comfortably in the Bentley embroidered leather seats.
Oh, and did I mention, it's a Bentley.


Sennheiser HD650's




















These are the ultimate in headphones, and I'm very impressed by their HD 280's, which I currently own. Seeing as I'm pretty particular about my sound quality, these would make a good investment for listening to music through headphones. However, sometimes, you want others to hear your music in perfect clarity too.


JBL Performance Series Home Theater












JBL is what you're usually listening to at concerts, and the Performance line is their highest quality home theater speakers. And they're designed to be subtly hidden in walls and ceilings. And they're in 7.1.
Oh, and to be clear, this is just for home theater. Audiophile listening quality stuff will require far more research.

Yamaha Absolute Birch Drumset


















Specifically, one with a 20"x17" bass drum, 8", 10", 12", and 14" rack toms, all at standard depth, plus a 16" standard depth floor tom, all of which should be in Sea Blue Fade. Additionally, a 14"x5" Ludwig Black Beauty snare, and a 12"x6" Yamaha Musashi snare. For heads all Remo; the toms will have coated Pinstripes on top, with clear Ambassadors on bottom; the bass will have a coated Powerstroke3 on batter side, with an ebony Powerstroke3 resonant head with a 8" port; the Black Beauty will have a coated Emperor batter head, while the Musashi will have a coated Ambassador, and both will have hazy Diplomats snare side.
As for cymbals, Zildjian is my personal choice, and I like versatility to my setup so the list is as follows:

• 14" A New Beat Hi-Hats
• 21" A Sweet Ride
• 16" A Medium Crash
  
• 17" A Custom Crash
• 10" A Custom Splash
• 12" A Custom Splash
  
• 17" K Dark Medium-Thin Crash
• 20" K Custom Dark Ride
• 19" K Custom Dark China

And all of this is on a Gibraltar rack system.
OK, I'm done obsessing over drumsets now.


Now onto the things which I am less specific (although no less particular) about.

Watches
To start out with, it needs to be known that I don't like big, or overly flashy watches. In fact, I'd say that my preferences tend toward the sleek, lightweight variety.

Jaeger-LeCoultre - Master Ultra Thin

















Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra
























Rolex Cellini Classic (Yes, it's a subtle Rolex!)


















That's all for watches.


You know what? I was going to attempt to give a few examples for clothes, but that's too tedious, so I'm just going to leave it at the fact that I'd definitely have some James Bond quality suits and a tux tailored for me. The rest of it is various and semi-inconsequential.

A reading room with a small library are necessities. No way around it, I want some nice books to read, along with some nice books to collect and a comfy place to read them.

Keeping with the trend, I intend on having a good sized music library. Digital, CD's, and vinyl. Oh yes, vinyl. For those of you who might not appreciate it, a well maintained vinyl record has a certain quality that CD's and MP3's just can't recreate. It's safe to say that my music library would take up a whole room, as I'm the type of person who finds and artist and absorbs them, listening to their whole discography in one sitting and reading up on their history. A things that would be on the short list of vinyls to get:

• U2 - Three
• One of the individually numbered copies of the original run of 1000. Their first album.
• Johnny Cash - Live at Folsom Prison
• Original release. Deemed significant enough to place into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically important."
• Rush - 2112
• Come on, it's 2112. Not terribly rare, just awesome.
• Miles Davis - The Birth of Cool
• This is one of the single most important albums in all of jazz. Must own it.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head for vinyls. It's also safe to assume that I will have a digital media server set up, along with a hefty collection of CD's.

So let's see, cars, music, clothes, watches, and I imagine there's probably a home theater and movie library in there as well. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Check back in when I've got a few million more dollars and I'll tell you what else I've added to the list of shiny things that I must own.

About those required courses...

Has it occurred to anyone else that things which fifty years ago were cutting edge are now standard for an engineering degree, regardless of any real usefulness to ones particular concentration?
I don't see how physics problems that Einstein himself had to figure out solutions to are expected to be standard material for a computer science major to learn from a few lecture slides.

Something worth thinking about. I'm apparently expected to be able to do things that used to justify a doctorate in the course of a two hour exam. Something doesn't sit right about that.

An Example of the Pitfalls of Living in a Fraternity House

There is a keg in the fridge but no orange juice or milk.

...I just want something to drink with my oatmeal in the morning, dammit.

A quick note

Does anyone on MySpace care about readability of their site at all?
I mean, I can understand some 13-year old who has horrible taste, and doesn't really understand web design, but when big name bands have ugly backgrounds that have colors similar to their foreground text, that's just stupid.
Seriously, get whoever designs your actual band website to make it so that your MySpace doesn't look like an epilepsy test.
That is all.