I Suck at Life

If you don't care to know about my personal life then skip this paragraph because I have to get something off my chest. I did the worst thing I've ever done in my life a couple of weeks ago: I committed a hit-and-run accident. I was backing out from 24 hour fitness and my dumb self reversed a little too early and hit the car to the left of me leaving a little dent. At the time I wasn't insured (insurance began the following week), so in the spur of the moment the best choice was to drive off. Someone tried to stop me, but I was in such a state of shock that I just left. The covering of my front left light was a little broken, but I couldn't tell whether or not it was from that so I just had to hope for the best. I know, I know: I'm scum. Go ahead, say it. I was in agony the next few days feeling the guilt of someone coming back to their car with damage inflicted by someone else. It didn't break their bumper or cause mechanical issues, but it was still bad. I eventually got over it and though my dad discovered the damage to our car last Saturday I played dumb because I was scared of what they'd do. I figured that no one would know since we still hadn't been contacted about it, but I was wrong. We got a call yesterday about it and now I'm screwed. My mom has to say it was her so that I don't get into deeper trouble, but if the insurance company gets involved it'll be on her record! What a good son I am. To top it off, the other party is demanding several hundred dollars to replace the whole bumper for the little dent. I'm competely and utterly ashamed of myself, and what I did was selfish and inexcusable. The odds that I'll have a car in Austin now are miniscule and I'll likely give up my salary from my summer job last summer so that my dad doesn't have to put in his money. The consequences keep coming, and all I feel is depressed (and likely will for a good while). I've prayed for forgiveness but I guess not enoough.

Moving on, I do have some technology news. An international consortium is bringing the internet to rural areas in India in an effort to bring web-based services to people who otherwise have to travel long distances to have such access. This is an awesome thing and I'm glad someone is funding it. Some blogger wrote a neat essay on the importance of RSS with a focus on Google's embrace of it and it brought up stuff I never even though of before. RSS really does allow us to get more information and our diets and can only lead to good things. UT Alumnus Michael Dell has expressed his openness to providing Mac OS X to his PC customers should Apple decide to license it as such. I think it could help convert more PC users to Macs if Jobs was to do so. Another Apple mystery is their trademark of 'Numbers', which could possibly hint at a spreadsheet program to rival Excel. Not to be outdone, Microsoft is stirring things up with its P2P technology dubbed Avalanche that functions much like BitTorrent except that it encodes files so that each shared is a linear combination. This allows for more efficiency in that you wouldn't get slowdowns in the very end from a lack of complete seeds and I must admit that I'm impressed. They also had a Blue Hat summit to reveal bugs in Windows so that engineers can make better code. I wonder if it'll make a difference though?

There's a bit of movie news today. Batman Begins only made $15 million yesterday, but I have confidence that it'll make a good amount over the weekend. HowStuffWorks penned a great article about the batsuit and may be good to check out before seeing the movie.



Yahoo! Movies has a trailer for The Constant Gardener, which is much more intriguing than I thought it would be though it is another government conspiracy styled movie. Still, the people making it are real good so it is worth a look. Yahoo! also has word that Disney is placing a closer emphasis on 3-D animation with another sequel to Toy Story. Apparently, a malfunction in Buzz causes him to be shipped to Taiwan so the rest of the crew has to go save him, but it doesn't sound too creative. I was surprised to see yet another trailer for Fantastic Four given how close the release date is, but it is better than the previous trailers. AICN has the first real review of War of the Worlds and it sounds like it'll be quite a movie as expected. Lastly, Tom Hanks and Universal have purchased the rights to the Mark Felt (aka "Deep throat") story and so we can expect a myopic in the near future. No title as of yet, but it definitely won't be Inside Deep Throat.

I have some quick randomness to conclude with. Firefly, the cancelled tv series that Serenity is based on, has been picked up by Sci-fi. I've heard good things about it so I look forward to it. Good news from the economy: consumer prices have finally gone down! This could mean an abatement of interest rate increases, but don't count on it without supplementary results. Oh, and be sure to catch the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone.

This week I'm going back to the Thursday Threesome:

Onesome: I can't come in--Have you ever locked yourself out of the house or the car? How'd it happen, and how did you get back in?
I haven't myself, but one time my mom and I accidentally locked my dad out of the house (he was outside and we were going somewhere). We were gone for a good while and my dad busied himself in the yard but was not happy at all when we returned.

Twosome: to work today-- What is your dream job and why?
Google! Is that really a surprise? They seem to treat employees well as well as encourage creativity. I'd love to be part of such an easygoing office atmosphere. Plus, California is probably a funner place to live than Texas (though I do adore Austin).

Threesome: because I...-- What's the worst excuse you've ever given or heard of for not going into work/ school? Why did you really call in?
I'm a goodie two shoes so I've never missed a day of school I didn't have to due to sickness. I don't really have a worst excuse, but the coolest one was in Ferris Beuler's Day Off.