Then there are those days where you say “Shit! I still have a blog?” Today is one of those days.

Stuff has been busy, but to say that this year has been better than 2009 is a complete understatement.  Got a big new job as an “Associate Mechanical Engineer” that sounds kinda impressive right? Eh not really.  But it’s a job.

Grad school is officially half way over. Couldn’t be more pumped about that.

Now that the year is coming to a close all I have to say is….. it’s been one hell of a ride!

Walmart probably has the highest percentage of shoppers driving scooters up and down the lanes than any other store.  These people usually arn’t just the physically disabled individuals who might really need such a device, but just the people who have gotten so obese that their cankles can not support their weight.  Heaven forbid a little walking does them any good.  But these people fail to realize how they came to need these rascals.  They continue to go shopping for things such as this:

Damn, I guess they just admitted they are fat and just don’t care anymore.  Then again they also probably think that if they drink diet soda while eating the pancake and sausage on a stick they will lose weight.

Moving on.  The other people That shocked me today was the woman checking out in line before me today.  This person came to Walmart on a mission… to ensure the love of their dog.  While a good parent comes home from the store with a box of Popsicles for their kids, this woman wanted to show her lap dog how much she loves it.  Bring on the Frosty Paws.  You wonder why your shopping at Walmart alone in your 50′s?  Well it might be the fact that you spent 20 something bucks on ICE CREAM FOR YOUR F*&%ING DOG! God if your gonna throw away money on such stupid stuff give it to someone who could actually use it.  Send it to Hati or Chile where people need some clean water…. but you need  ICE CREAM FOR YOUR F*&%ING DOG!

English is an afterthought here.  It is set up like many other North American cities.  Urban high-rises surrounding old historic buildings.  While in Albany there is not much to have serious pride in (other than Phil Jackson, George Karl, and Pat Riley at one point got their starts here), Montreal embraces the French Canadian culture.  Here is a few things that I noticed in my weekend there.

Maple Syrup is a big thing around here.  A common treat that I saw being sold was Maple Syrup on a stick.  The syrup was poured onto a table covered in snow-cone style ice.  After a minute the syrup become thick an gooey.  The treat is now picked up and rolled around a stick.  Not just for your pancakes anymore.  Two bites was enough for me.  The sugar overload was just way to intense, but people really seemed to like them.

Once a year Montreal has it’s High Lights Festival or Le Festival MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE.  This is the night to come visit.   Drinks all night long and things to do until five in the morning.  The festival had lots to do.  Whether it was a gigantic ice slide, a pine tree maze, or just a massive rave until the break of dawn.  All I know is I slept like a baby afterwards.  Check out some of the pictures.

And what trip to Montreal would be complete without a trip to Chez Cora for breakfast.  This is the spot for brunch.  Gigantic portions of food, the best fruit in the area, and an endless cup of coffee was the perfect wakeup call after a long night before.

3D printers are really cool.  they can print you out your part in a day.  The fact that you get to watch it be assembled, layer by layer makes it only so much cooler.

Unfortunately there is  a point where 3D printing goes wrong.  Like in food.  The notion that my food no longer needs to be cooked, but printed makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  Anyone who has ever cooked probably will tell you that combining the flavors of a pulled pork sandwich and marshmallows just does not sound appealing.  I don’t even think you could get a heavily intoxicated individual to mix those two.  So with that in mind… I give you the Digital Gastronomy Machines.  Check out the post on Core 77

http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/dont_just_cook_your_meals–manufacture_them_15954.asp

Jump ahead to last night.  Photoworks was still a very cool piece of software, but now it’s just a step.  With my new “Solidworks Student Edition” I found a new amazing piece of rendering software.  Photoview 360 take your models to the next level.  Things that looked cool in Photoworks now look amazing.  While I couldn’t stay up to all hours last night, my first couple pieces came out looking great.

There is something weird about how hard it is to get into a routine and how easy it is to get out of it.  I used to get up around 8:30 every morning for the past 4 months, but over the past two weeks I basically hit snooze for the next two hours.  While a good motto might be to “seize the day,” those who live by it have lived in their routines for years.

What ever happened to “Seize the night?”

But then again… it is a beautiful morning.

I am currently taking two classes.  One is a Computer-Aided design class where the experience of everyone in the class varies greatly.  In this case I am towards the upper end of the class in terms of experience.  I actually am helping the professor point out various features of the program.  The first homework to me was almost like child’s play. The other class was a completely diffrent story.

Programming has never been something I’ve been good at.  So of course I decide to throw myself into a graduate level C++ class when in the past I probably have the equivalent of 10 hours using it.  Simple programs are things like this apparently super easy “Hello World” application which I for some reason could not do.  Give me a more advanced program you say?  After the first week.  I’d say I’ve already put in 15 hours of homework time before the second class.   Looks like this is going to be a fun class!

So, so much to do.

The first task was finding an apartment.  Something I will likely divulge into in another post.   But to describe the whole process as a clusterf*ck, would be an understatement

The second big hurdle was figuring out what classes to take.  And finally how to pay for everything.

Needless to say, this is all stuff that had I had a month to accomplish, it would have been no big deal.  But thank you Northeastern.  2 weeks was a great heads up!  Oh and while I’m still working in the process?  Even better!

So as I sit here,  on the bus to Boston, I’ll try to post a few things to get everyone caught up in the story.

Look TV have come a long way.  It used to be that words like @ss and B!tch were off limits.  Now you can here them on Fox shows regularly.  (Fox loves pushing the envelope, from putting attractive yet dumb as bricks female anchors on shows, to flat out spewing hate speeches… Glenn Beck, I know there is a certain ring in hell reserved for you.  Needless to say a simple curse is nothing big.)

But there is almost a certain art in the editing of lines so the mouthing of the old, explicit phrase turns into something much more innocent.

In my opinion the greatest edit for TV is from “The Big Lebowski” In a classic scene where John Goodman’s character Walter is trying to get a kid to admit to stealing 1 million dollars, he decides to start smashing up what he thinks to be the boy’s new Corvette while yelling “You see what happens Larry!?  You see what happens when you F#ck a stranger in the @ss!?”  Comedy Central thought that the line was a little over the top.  They wanted to tone it down a little, which is weird because that really is one of the most normal things that is said in the movie in general.  Comedy Central found a phrase to perfectly match up to Walter’s ramblings.  On TV the line is played as “You see what happens Larry!?  You see what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!?“  huh?  If I find a stranger in the alps my car is going to get smashed up?

Other great edits include:

Fargo:  “I gave simple f#cking instructions!” to “I gave simple fruitful instructions!”

The Usual Suspects:  “Give me the keys you f#cking c*ck sucker!” to “Give me the keys you fairy godmother!“

Check out the link for some more great edits.

Top 10 edited-for-TV Movies

www.thewallpapers.org