art page 22 - Dave's Blog

Caught with Fake Info for Albertson Grocery Card

Checking out at a grocery store to which I rarely go, the cashier asks me if I want an Albertson's card. I respond sure and she hands me the form on which I give up my personal information. I ask if I need to fill this out now, and she says yeah and it will only take two minutes, which surprised me because at QFC they just hand me a new card and send me on my way. I fill in my phone number as the first ten digits of pi so I don't have to worry about getting phone calls but its something I can remember next time I'm there and don't bring the card.

I turn to leave and the cashier asks me is that a '759' or '159' in my phone number. I stop for a second because I only know the digits as a sequence from the start and pause long enough reciting it in my head that its clear its not my phone number. And she calls me out on it: "Is that your real phone number?" I sigh, "No, does it have to be? Are you going to call me?" "Yeah," she says, "I'll call you." (ha ha) "Well I'll try entering this number," she says doubting the computer will accept the fake phone number. "On the number's already registered," she says, "So you already had a card." "No," says the manager who had walked up during for this exchange, "It means someone else used that same number." So the moral of the story is, try your fake phone number before trying to use it to get a new card.

Star Trek Thoughts

I watched the new Star Trek movie Thursday morning, along with many others who work on Windows. Microsoft rented out a theater and played the movie on all screens. I greatly enjoyed the movie!

Spoilers follow... I'm obviously not the biggest Star Trek nerd (or at least TOS nerd) since I didn't even pick up on the fact that Kirk's dad being dead was a discrepancy from the TV series. I only figured out the alternate time-line stuff when they killed most of the Vulcans. I was just surprised they didn't set right what once went wrong by the end of the movie with some more time travel magic to bring back Vulcan. On that note, I'm pretty sure the Spock-Spock conversation at the end, is Nimoy Spock sending Sylar Spock off to school so that Nimoy Spock can get freaky repopulating the Vulcan race. Although at first after his 'two places at once' comment I thought he was saying... something else. Also, was the main evil guy a random miner turned psycho? And his crazy looking spaceship that destroys the Federation fleet was just a mining vessel from the future? Once they invent time travel anybody can get drunk, go back in time, and conquer Earth.

Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendations

Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.

Weeds

You don't have to be a stoner to enjoy this humorous and dramatic satire featuring a widow trying to raise her children and deal pot in suburbia.

Avatar The Last Airbender

An American animated series that's an amalgamation of various Asian art, history, religion, etc. that maintains a great story line.

Paprika

If you enjoyed Paranoia Agent you'll enjoy this movie in the same animation style and by the same director and writer, Satoshi Kon. Its like a feature length version of a Paranoia Agent episode in which a dream machine lets outsiders view one's dreams but eventually leads to blurring the dreams and reality.

Grindhouse Planet Terror

I didn't see either of the Grindhouse movies when they first came out, but of the two, Planet Terror is the more humorous and exciting gore filled parody.

Outsourced

A refreshing romantic comedy that still has a few of the over played tropes but is easy to enjoy despite that.

The King of Kong

A hilarious documentary on the struggle between the reigning champ hot-sauce salesman and the underdog Washington state high school science teacher to obtain the Donkey Kong world record high score. After watching, checkout this interview with the creators of the movie and the villain.

Primer

I've mentioned Primer before, but I put it on here again because its really good and you still haven't seen it, have you?

Giraffe Art in the Forrest

sequelguy posted a photo:

Send URL to Cellphone - QR Encode Accelerator

I've made a QR Encode accelerator around Google Chart's QR code generator. QR codes are 2D bar-codes that can store (among other things) URLs and have good support on mobile phones. The accelerator I've written lets you generate a QR code for a selected link and view it in the preview window. In combination with the ZXing bar-code scanner app for my Android cellphone, its easy for me to right click on a link in IE8 on my desktop PC, hover over the QR Encode accelerator to have the link's associated QR code displayed, and then with my phone read that QR code to open my phone's browser to the URL contained inside. Its much easier to browse around in the comfort of my desktop and only send particular URLs to my cellphone as necessary.