Inside the Mind of a Nerd: Halloween Weekend Fun

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Halloween Weekend Fun

Update: Bethany kindly posted a picture of me she took on Monday, so there it is. I think Halloween is the best party weekend of the year, possibly moreso than New Year's. It's unfortunate that the day itself is a Monday and I have a midterm on Wednesday, but who cares because everyone parties Friday and Saturday anyway. I think Friday night was the first time I really felt comfortable hanging out since summer. To elaborate, do you ever have the feeling when you're chilling out that you don't feel obligated to do anything and you can really just relax? I went to Josh's place with Russ and we just watched Office Space and it felt just like when I would go to my brother's place in the summer. It was definitely good for me mentally, especially after all the Rudy's BBQ I scarfed at Big Event. After the insanely frightening Oklahoma State game on Saturday, I put on my black robe, black mask, and donned my sickle. I was a damned good Death if I do say so myself. I got a lot of compliments on the street, and I encountered one of the things I love about Austin: that small town feeling in the city. When I was walking on 24th a truck honked at me, but I couldn't see a lot through my mask so I was totally confused. I actually saw these people 3 hours later on San Pedro and one of them was actually a CS major. How cool of a coincidence was that? Where else would you have that kind of experience? I was planning on going to the Lambda house party, but there was a huge line to get in, and people were actually waiting in it! We went to a couple of other alright parties as well, but it was just fun checking out other people's costumes and messing around with Mike, Josh's room mate, who was dressed in drag. It may not have been as good as last Halloween, but I still enjoyed the break.

I probably shouldn't have wasted all those words on the weekend because of how much tech news there is, but I felt like sharing my thoughts a little. I think the tech-savvy community is gradually adapting to the new iPod as TVHarmony has created a program to load your TiVoed onto your iPod. I think we're getting less naysayers now as to the significance of this new media device, and because I like reading about these developments I'll keep you posted as more happens.

Every couple of years we make more progress in mice, from the standard trackball to an optical eye to wireless and beyond. Now there are ergonomic mice and this one to the right, the Pacific Wireless Dual Mouse, is pretty cool. It offers four different positions so take a closer look at what we all should be using. Lastly, ZDNet has a great editorial on why the software-as-services model of selling products, where a user would pay every time they use the program, is inherently flawed. The bottom line is that you shouldn't continuously charge people to use your product unless you're actually offer more stuff every time or it's a value-added type model (ala Norton Antivirus), and it's scary that anyone would think otherwise.

As I'm sure many of you guessed, Saw II came out on top this weekend in the box office with an amazing $30.5 million! The Legend of Zorro made little more than half of that, and Doom dropped down to less than $5. It was definitely a weekend of surprises, but I'm only disappointed that The Weather Man didn't bring in more than $4.2 million. Since Halloween is tomorrow I feel obligated to share with you IGN's list of the 25 best horror movies of all time, and it's quite a great list if any of you wish to celebrate the occasion at home in front of your DVD player. I share their pick for #1, by the way. Lastly, I'm totally thrilled that Stephen King is partnering with Marvel to deliver comic books based on his Dark Tower series, which is still sitting on my bookshelf and I'm dying to read.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?