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Showing posts from March, 2009

Old stuff is the best

I will apologize for my regular readers, but this gem is in Russian only.. One of the best KVN games ever, I still sing jingles from it. This was still Soviet times. I can't believe I found this stuff.

I hate this weather...

We've got hit by a snow storm. Big one. Up to three inches. I was thinking of putting the snow-blower away yesterday, but I should have known better. There can alsways be snow in Chicago until mid-April. I just hope our tulips don't freeze over. It should be 50 tomorrow.

You know it's spring...

When these little guys start to show up on your backyard. I was shooting him first from about thirty feet away with a 200 lens. I slowly approached him so not to scare him away. The last picture, which is below, was shot about 7 feet way. When I tried to get even closer he bolted. Soon, I hope to get some pictures of little bunnies. Maybe they'll fart rainbows.

The life of a geek...

I have found this meme at Jason's . Being the Uber geek that I am I have to match my mad geek-skills against him. The instructions: Cut-and-paste and mark the things you've done with an 'X' bold the things you've done. (I like bolding better than the X thing.) You spent a day watching all of the Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Star Trek movies. I really don't have time to watch movies all the way through the end, much less for the whole day - DENIED You spent next two days after watching commentary, outtakes, and behind the scenes footage. Gag reels is the only bonus features I ever watch And you bought the soundtrack. You went to a midnight release of a movie. I like my sleep, work and all you know :) You camped in front of the theater for more than 12 hours to get tickets. That's just silly Camping did not prevent you from being in costume. You can have an entire conversation with friends consisting of quotes from your favorite movies. Absolutely You own at le

An eye opener

There is an article in the Tribune that our professor has asked us to read prior the next class. Ivory Tower of Power The article states that there is a "Chicago" goverment installed right now. It also hints at the Clinton administration as being the "Yale" government. So, is there such a thing as a "City" goverment. Harvard goverment, Yale goverment, Cornell government, UCLA goverment? University of Phoenix Goverment? Can these qualifications be accurate in predicting what kind of goverment we will have?

If you try hard enough, dogs can be dolphins

Wel ove going to the city. Unfortunately we live in the suburbs, about seventeen miles away. We can't get out to the city as much as we want to. Because of that, we set ourselves a goal to visit a specific place or venue, and go for it. This sunday we decided that the weather was beautiful enough to visit what is called the Museum Campus in the Chicago's south Loop. There are three landmarks in the close proximity to the each other. Fields Museum of Natural History, the Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium and Soldier (not Soldier's) Field. Having experienced Natural History Museum with a three-year-old, which was less than a success, we've decided to go the Aquarium. We go there couple of times every year, The Little One loves it, the fishes, the dolphins, shows, everything is great. This time around we were a bit dissapointed. Unknown to us, there was a reconstruction project in the dolphonarium (is that a word?), so there were no dolphins. The cast of the Aquarium decid

Duplicity is confusing

We went to see a movie today. The Inlaws came-in to spend an evening with their grand-daughter, which pretty much means that we need to leave the house. We couldn't decide which movie to see. There's Knowing, getting good reviews. There's I Love You Man, not something to see with one's wife. And then there was Duplicity, a perfect match for a couples' visit to the movie theater. There Julia ROberts, and then there's Clive Owen. Miss Roberts is her charming self. Mr. Owen is good, but for some reason I thought that Mr. Clooney might have made a better job. The movie is so twisted I did not have a clue about what was real and what wasn't. Till the very end I thought the actors were playing each other, and it got to be a little too much. I think i was expecting sincerety to appear a bit sooner, than the movie-makers. They just kept throwing twists until the end. I had a fleeting thought about the ending in the beginning, which was of course a correct one, but t

Deja vu all over again

I've been here before. The final project for our MacroEconomics class is take a country and dissect it from the Macroeconomics standpoint, wich are populations, GDP, goverment involment, production, imports, exports, and the fun stuff. We've had to do that for our Global Business class. The topic for the old class was Russia. We as a class thought that we could use the previously done research to drive macro presentations. Interestingly enough a student from a parallel class raised this issue with the Dean citing plagiarism. How can this be plagiarism? It's our own work, and we should be able to use it as base. In the end we have decided that our of choice would be Spain. While I understand that this is extra work, from the stand point of learning it would be beneficial to step out once in a while from the comfort zone.

Monday night bloggings

Finished work: Surprisingly Darth Vader's TIE Advanced is smaller then the interceptor model I have. Being the geek that I am, I should go a take a look at the specs to see if in "fact" it is smaller. Why do you ask Mr. Vader is on the roof. He is tap-celebrating his most recent kill :) ------------------------------------------------------ I have switched over to CBS comedy this season. It's just so much funnier than The Office or Earl or even 30 Rock to me. Here are some couple of quotes from Monday night: The Big Bang Theory: Leonard: "Don't look at me, I am not manufacturing, I am just web design..." Two and A Half Men: Pharmacist: "Here's tampons, Pepto, and decongestant... It's a dam to plug any river.."

Sunday night is what you make it

Oh, rather what you can make on it. I am in the process of putting together Vader's TIE fighter. With the Little One, who made her daddy proud by knowing what the Light Saber is. While listeing to this.

Crazy ideas - UPDATED

Here's a crazy survey I thought off. If you had a time machine where would you travel first? Assuming the fact of course of universal invincibility. ----UPDATE---- As my brother mentioned, with time travel universally available getting rich schemes would be less than doable. My aim is more towards investigating great mysteries of history. Therefore: a. To the Big Bang b. To see an asteroid killing dinosaurs c. To see the exodus of Jews as it really happened d. Try to see if Jesus hubbub really happened e. Forget the past, I'd go to the year 2020 to see who winds World Series and place a bet accordingly. f. Suggested by Ilya . Back a day or to to purchase winning lottery ticket. e. Try to see if Atlantis existed. f. Travel to the future to see the explosion of our Sun. I am torn between the dinosaurs and the World Series. Please suggest the choices. Should I add Buddha and Muhammed to the list as well? From the curiousity stand-point. I still rather see the dinosaurs.

Weird evening

I went to see an Optomologist for dry eyes. SHe put in my eyes the stuff that makes your irises widen up. I am now typing half-blindly. Weird. I'll admit to liking watching Dancing With The Stars. Partly because of Tom Bergeran's ad-libing and partly because of Edyta Slovenska. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that woman.

Much ado with nothing to do

The general consensus of the blogosphere is that if you have nothing to write about, do not write anything. Well, screw that. I will write about a lot of small nothings today. The weekend was hectic as always, or so it seemed. Looking back we always get bewildered at the fact that we are tired as hell without really doing that much. I blame everything on the weather. It has rained for two days non-stop. The sum-pump has been chugging along for two days now, and was still working in the morning. One question we asked ourselves was how did we manage not get flooded without turning it on for the last three years. Only logical answer was that this was a very rainy last six months. The Little One has started a new rebellion under a slogan that "Sleeping is boring!" It only concerns the night time sleeping, not the afternoon weekend naps. We have no clue why this is happening now, but she falls asleep very late at night now, which is very bad, since she can not wake up normally in

March madness

You know what sucks. I really have nothing to write about. Maybe i should close this post right here. Nope. The school is going from Microeconomics to Macroeconomics in a week. The final presentation went great, and we have one final quiz to finish. I am trying to finish the damn book by Russell Kirkpatrick. It's very long. Me being the glutton for punishment I WILL finish it. Then, i'll get the other two books. The problem with erading the series is that i have to finish them. I like Kirkpatrick's work. The only problem I have is that so far there's very little action and a lot of scenery description. great description, but man does the book go slowly. He actually have to say in some places that weeks are passing by. Weird. And that my friends is all there's to it. If something interesting comes up, I'll do an update.

Jazz is good for the soul...

ON friday night me and my wife did something that we weren't able to do for the last 3 or 4 years. We went to Andy's Jazz club, on the more famouse Chicago jazz spots that features live muscisians. We were able to witness two live features.The first one was Kelly Brand Trio, consisting of a piano player, a bass, and a drummer. The played variations on Miles Davis and other famouse musicians and were very very nice. The featured artist of the night was a dual sax act of John Wojciechowski - a tenor saxophone player with a local jazz celebrity Mike Smith. Unfortunately we were able to capture only first half hour of the show, but the guys were absolutely amazing. John is in the first clip. I apologize for the darkness. It's the only video I could find. He is the taller one of the two. MIke Smith is in the second clip. Absolutely amazing night of Jazz. I wish we could get out more often. Oh, and on Saturday we watched Madagascar 2 and Body of Lies. Very good two movies. Madaga