Jason’s babblings.

Pineapple Express is another one from the Apatow/Rogen crew, and it’s my favorite yet. Gone are the romantic undertones of their other movies, but they kept up the humor. Bravo!

Batman needn’t be mentioned here but I’ll do it anyway. It’s easily the best comic movie to date, and one of the better movies overall in recent history. You’re doing the movie a disservice if you don’t see it in IMAX, and yourself a disservice if you don’t see it at all. It’s a masterpiece.

Step Brothers was meh. Watch it if you like Will Farrell or his crazy persona movies. I like ‘em enough so I got a kick out of it, but it’s really, really dumb. Rent it and turn off your brain.

Presidents of the United States of America put out a new CD a few months ago. I was listening to Pandora and I heard a song I didn’t recognize from them. So’s I opened up their webpage and saw their new CD on the front page. Kick ass! I picked it up and it’s very awesome. Highly recommended.

The Police rank up there in my top ten favorite bands. When I heard they were coming to the DTE, and I heard that my folks got us a set of tickets, I was ecstatic. They played an awesome set, and came back for two encores for a total of 2.5 hours. I’m sad they didn’t play Canary In A Coal Mine, but I can’t have everything. Elvis Costello was the opening act – he was pretty darn good too.

Books are still for suckers and I still avoid them like the plague (mostly ’cause I can’t read) but I needed another form of media so I could make that played out Wizard of Oz reference.

Want to see a magic trick?

I went to the dentist a few weeks ago to get a crown put on one of my teeth (where the old filling was wearing out) thinking it would be a two visit shindig – one to get the old tooth ground down, and one to put the new crown on. The grinding-down visit was fairly uneventful despite the Novocaine not having enough effect. So I grit my teeth (figuratively) and dealt with the pain.

A few weeks later, they received the new crown and called me in. When I got there, they put the tooth on and told me to bite down on a piece of cotton so they could make sure it fits properly. *POP* The crown chipped, of course. So they told me they’re going to repair it and call me in again when it’s fixed.

And so they do. Same spiel – sat down and bit down on the cotton. *POP* again! So then they told me they’re going to completely redo the tooth instead of just repair it, then call me in when it’s done.

Today I went in and tried out the new tooth. So I bit down on the cotton softly at first. No pop. A bit harder, still no pop. Third try’s a charm, I guess. Hopefully it stays that way.

I have a few other topics I’ll be writing about, movies, games, concerts, traffic stuff, etc. So there probably won’t be such a big drought as there has been recently. Hopefully.

Hey today marks exactly one month until my 25th birthday.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve updated my wishlist page with a few recent DVD and game releases I’d like to pick up sooner or later.

Hi boys and girls! It’s time for a bedtime story about Levent Guldal and his musically inclined friends from New York.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Levent who lived in Brooklyn, New York. Levent went through school making friends with everybody he sees because he’s the Lation Sensation and nobody messes with someone of that importance. One day, Levent decided it would be a good idea to leave home and go to college in the great state of Michigan. Sadly, this left his New York friends sad and bored from their friend’s departure.

Through this boredom, they were inspired to write an Awesome Song Of Awesomeness to remember their friend by. Over the years, the cassette braved many treacherous cassette players that slowly ate away at the quality of the recording. At the same time, Leventalation was making new friends at the Deke house in Ann Arbor, but he never forgot his boys in Brooklyn.

A few years later, Levent met a girl while delivering beer to a liquor store, they fell deeply in love, and he asked for her hand in marriage. She obviously accepted, for it is not often one is proposed to by such a jawsome individual. Of course, Levent HAD to invite all his Brooklyn buds to the wedding. They knew this would be the perfect opportunity for a re-introduction of the Awesome Song Of Awesomeness they created so many years ago.

As fortune would have it, the girl’s brother was a techie and offered to convert the tape to a digital format so it would be preserved on peoples’ MP3 players for all eternity.

Without further adieu, you’ll find the MP3s here!

I just realized something. Trail mix is a lot like Meow Mix for humans.

On a related topic, the word of the unspecified time period is: Minutia.

After an epic triple overtime in game five to lose, and a game six with a final minute that had me on the edge of my seat, the Detroit Red Wings have brought home the trophy. Congratulations, you guys earned it.

Special shout out to Dan Cleary, who is now the first Newfoundlander to win the Stanley Cup in the history of hockey. You’re my hero, Dan!

My weekend was interesting, thanks for asking.

On Friday I had to cut my workday short due to lack of energy. I’d been feeling the effects of a nasty cold since late Tuesday. I missed a goodbye party for a co-worker and a movie with other co-workers. Towards the end of the day, I started feeling severely dehydrated – really high fever, headaches, dizziness, the works. Around 9:30 I went into the basement where it was cool, and drank a gallon of water. Started feeling better around midnight, then went to bed. I have a new appreciation for water.

Saturday I was feeling much better, so I went out and ran a few errands and did a few things to start cleaning the house for my sister’s rehearsal dinner. At 9 I went to watch the guys play soccer (I hated not being able to play), then we hit the bar as normal. Looking back, I probably should not have gone, but I’m glad I did, ’cause I got to play a few games of euchre with some strangers from another table. Unfortunately, we were seated at a smoking section, which, again, probably wasn’t the best for my current health situation. Especially since the smoke smell infused itself in the mucus caking my lungs and nasal passages so every time I blew my nose or coughed, I would get that wonderful cigarette fragrance. YUCK!

Sunday I tried to get rid of some of that mucus so I picked up a thing of Mucinex on a recommendation. Unfortunately the side-effects of this particular drug (nausea, headaches, vomiting) hit me pretty hard. I didn’t hurl, but I had to summon all of my limited iron-stomach powers not to. I won’t be finishing the bottle – the side-effects are certainly worse than the symptoms it cures.

How was your weekend? How much water have you drunk today?

Scoot.

Try to use it in a sentence before I come up with another word.

The project I’m currently working on has failed to hold my interest nearly as much as the last one. I would spend a half hour typing out some code, then I’d find myself on Kotaku or something browsing through comments. I didn’t have that problem with Smart Tan.

I’ve been trying to figure out why this is happening, going through a few explanations like ‘it’s a dumb idea for a site’, or ‘the customer is too fickle, doesn’t know what he wants’. On my way home from another Saturday at work catching up from another week of lack of progress, I think I’ve pinpointed the problem: my own perceived inadequacy as a programmer.

When something is broken in the hardware and software industry, be it a server or a website, it’s very easy to please the customer. They see the broken thing before and they see the fixed thing after and there is a definite metric of improvement. I like these customers and the prospect of working on these types of projects makes me happy because I know the customer will be happy in the end. Smart Tan was one of these ‘Fixer-Upper’ projects, and I didn’t mind putting in 10 hours/day on it.

When dealing with new hardware or software, here’s where the industries diverge. If someone wants a new computer, they call us, we send the specs to Dell or whatever, then Dell makes the computer for us. It’s really a simple process; more simple, really, than fixing a broken computer.

Creating a brand new website, on the other hand, is much more stressful than fixing a broken one. The customer doesn’t have a ‘broken’ site to look at for a metric for what’s ‘better’. All they have is other sites – that have been in development for years – to use for ideas for their new site. When I receive phone calls from a new-site customer, 75% of their requests are met with, “No, we can’t do that in our time frame/budget.” It’s especially frustrating when the sales person originally tells them that something is doable, but I’m not completely aware of the scope when I give my estimate. The overall negativity in new-site projects really drains me after a while. Repeatedly telling a customer ‘no’ makes me perceive myself as an inadequate programmer subconsciously, and it takes away from the focus I try to put in every day.

Hopefully, now that I’ve found why I feel so crappy after working on these projects, I’ll be able to psych myself into coping with telling a customer ‘no’. Some requests are just too difficult to complete, and that doesn’t make me a bad programmer.

Know what that means?

Have a listen to this.