Shouzer

An email I sent to Bill Simmons was used in his latest article at ESPN.com. I feel extra special.

Link to the blog entry. I’m “Kyle H., Herrin, IL”.

and I’m feelin’ the madness. Thursday is here. Rejoice.

Last night, my roommate and I went to Dairy Queen to get some dilly bars. We had a bet on the first Super Bowl commercial, each loser had to buy 6 Dilly Bars. I was one of those losers. Really though, the bet was structured so that we would all be winners because we were all going to partake in an equal number of Dilly Bars, and Dilly Bars are delicious.

On the way home from Dairy Queen, we had this conversation:
“It’s really cold, we should make hot chocolate to go with these Dilly Bars.” ~him
“Yeah, that sounds great, but we’re running low.” ~me
“I was going to buy more anyway, we’ll just stop by Basler’s on the way home.” ~him
“I don’t know….it’s kind of the end of hot chocolate season. I thought we rationed it pretty well. I don’t think I would buy more.” ~me making a big mistake
“Oh, I know Alton Brown melted fudgecicles to make hot chocolate, and he said it was really good.” ~him
“I’m game.” ~me

We did in fact go to Basler’s to buy fudgecicles, and we did make hot chocolate out of them. We melted all 12 fudgecicles, and they made about 1 cup of hot chocolate. Let me just say that it was amazing. You have never tasted hot chocolate this good. We even seasoned it with a little chili pepper. Oh man, it was great.

Notice I said 12 fudgecicles melted down to about 1 cup of hot chocolate. That means we each had a 1/2 a cup of this stuff. (Our other roommate was already asleep.) So we each drank 6 fudgecicles while eating a dilly bar. This stuff was to hot chocolate what espresso is to coffee. It was incredibly strong, and probably incredibly stupid. I didn’t sleep too well last night. (Notice the timestamp on this post.)

Both of us just graduated this week so we were a little giddy about that. It was probably a good time to have done that sort of thing. We’ll call it a graduation celebration. Yeah, that’s a good excuse.

Check the blogroll and you’ll find Confabuler and Illinaisa already have some UIUC snow day pics. I’ll add mine to the collection.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kbharlow/20070213

I’d be willing to challenge pretty much anybody at some 3-on-3 NBA 2k7. Al, Kyle, and I dominate that shit. We play as the Suns every game, mainly because, well, that’s how we roll.

More importantly, however, we bring our A-game every time–none of that Randy Moss shit in our house. Oh, no sir. We don’t drop the passes ala T.O.  We don’t blow pass coverage like the Bears in the Super Bowl.  We L.T. that shit.

Our A-game consists of a consistent triple double for Nash (me), double double for Marion (Kyle) with a good shot at leading scorer and stealer, and a double double from Amare (Al) which includes about 5 or 6 putbacks. We’re waiting for Albert to a 5×5, and it’s really only a matter of time. Domination.

Ahhh, finally a little time away from studying.  I’ve been studying quite a bit since Thursday for all these crazy finals I’ve had.  I’ve gotten 4 of the 5 out of the way now, though, and my last one isn’t until Saturday.  Anybody who knows me knows that I’m gonna be taking the next few days off to just sit around.  It feels so good.

Of the finals I’ve had, only one really kicked my ass.  I had my CS 433 final this afternoon, and it was pretty crazy.  Based on the way the midterm went, though, I figure everybody had the same problem, so it’ll end up getting curved quite a bit.  I got about a 79 on the midterm, and that ended up being an A or so.  I can’t complain too much about that, I suppose.

So I stayed up relatively late anyway, but now I can’t get to sleep. If I’d have know this was going to happen, I’d have just kept the TV on longer.. Anyway, I got bored lying around unable to sleep, so I snapped a pic with my phone and decided to upload it. The result is below. Damn, I look good.

We ended up winning PuzzleCrack 2006. I’ve got to admit that I thought we had a pretty good shot, but it was still pretty damn cool. We ended up with an Xbox 360, 5 controllers, and 5 games. That’s not too shabby at all. And now that we have won, we got listed on Wikipedia, which was also pretty nice.

Probably the biggest news here, though, is not the fact that a group of 6 people from Southern Illinois won, but that they also took it over. Yup, next year around this time we’ll actually be running PuzzleCrack. I have to admit that I’m pretty psyched for it. I’ve actually already started thinking of some various types of puzzles we could possibly use, and I know everybody has been doing the same. It should be fun.

I forgot to mention that the Broncos are now 3-1. They took down one of the undefeated teams leaving only the Colts and the Bears. They play the Colts in a few weeks, and they’ll have to take them down too, I suppos. I doubt anybody else will, though it’s certainly true that Peyton has been carrying the team to victory lately. He’s good, but I don’t know how long he can keep that up.

So anyway, the Broncos have a stellar defense. They’ve only given up one touchdown in four games. In all, they’ve given up something like 34 points in their four games, as well. They just need to start scoring some points, and they’ll be golden. Plummer needs to keep it together. He’s got a running back who’s averaged 5.3 yds/carry throughout his career, and he’s got two pro bowl receivers. I don’t really know what more you could ask for.

Go Broncos.

So after recent discussions with my sister and Scott, I decided that a shout-less Shouzer had gone on long enough.  After about 4 hours of work tonight, I finished a beta of a Shouts plugin for WordPress.  Once I tidy this thing up and add a few new features, I’m going to put in on the web for anybody who wants it.

There’s some new features since last time.  Now it’s all AJAX.  Most of the things I do lately are AJAX, cuz it’s spiffy.  So here’s how it works..  You type in your info, hit “Shout!” and your browser goes to work.  It posts the shout and shows it on your page without reloading the page.  The really fancy feature, though, is that other people’s shouts will show up in real time automagically on your page.  That’s right.  If you’re viewing Shouzer, and I leave a shout, it’ll update on your page.  Now that’s just sweet.

There is a new fully electric sports car created by a company in Silicon Valley.  Here’s a story.  I’m not a huge fan of electric-only vehicles because the batteries have not been good enough up to this point to make them viable.  However, high capacity Lithium Ion batteries are starting to find use in the automotive sector.  We actually tried to get one for the car we built.  I could see electric only vehicles finding a place in the auto market, especially as a commuter vehicle.  Having an insanely quick sports car that was all electric like this one would just be awesome.

The GM interns go bowling every Monday night because one of the local bowling alleys has 1 dollar games on Monday night. I think they have cheap beer as well, but I’m not really sure on that. Anyway, it gives us something to do after work so it’s a good time. I seem to always bowl my best 3rd game which is pretty different than everyone else, but I like it. I had my best game last week at 158 I believe.

The interesting thing about last night’s bowling activity was that Rasheed Wallace of the Detroit Pistons was there bowling 3 lanes down from us. Everyone, of course, freaked out because they saw someone famous. Cell Phone usage went up about 10 fold. I just thought it was funny that Rasheed Wallace would be at the cheap bowling alley on a Monday night. I would expect someone with money to go to nicer places than that.

I wish I was a hockey goalie.  That’d just be cool.  Cam Ward is my new hero.  22 years old and he won the Conn Smythe trophy, which is given to the MVP of the Stanely Cup finals.  That’s pretty sick.

In all honesty, I can’t say I was a huge fan of the Hurricanes before the NHL playoffs started.  I’d followed them a tad throughout the season.  They were generally my favorite team–I’ve had a Carolina hat for a couple years now.  It sucks during the season, though, because the NHL doesn’t have many games broadcast on national television.  Hopefully they’ll beef up the coverage next year so I can follow them better.

The finals really turned into a great series, though.  It looked like it might be over quick with Carolina jumping out to a 3-1 lead, but Edmonton made them work for it.  Game 7 was close all the way through, too.  The final score might have been 3-1, but you can’t really count an empty net goal the same as the others.

Now if only the Broncos could win the Super Bowl next year, I’d be set.

My newest theory is that if your name is spelled wrong–and, believe me, his name is spelled wrong–you gain these super human powers. I only have one test case, so it’s certainly possible that the theory is flawed. But until somebody proves me wrong, I’m going to count it as a law.

Anyway, in Wade’s case, his crazy superman powers are insane basketball skills. Who knows what it would be for me. From this point on, though, my name is spelled Jraed. Remember that.

Dwyane blew up at the end of the game last night. It was pretty damn cool to watch. He’s been on fire the last three games, and I hope it continues. At the end of overtime, he was covered by about six guys (which, the last time I checked, was against the rules), and he just drove through them and picked up a foul. He actually set the record for most free throws made in an NBA finals game. It was ridiculous all around.

Jason Terry played pretty well, too. It’s my opinion that if the Mavs would have given him the ball more, they would have won the game. Dirk also nailed a crazy shot with 10 seconds left in OT to force Wade’s insanity. Hopefully it continues to be a good serious. When it’s all over, though, I’d like to see the Heat holding the trophy.

[Edit:] Aha! I have a new theory. Perhaps Mr. Wade is the only one spelling his name correctly. Intriguing.

Story

The date has been set for the Simpson’s movie. It’s coming out July 27,2007. Are you excited? Because I know I am.