judyonthenet

Edited 2/28 10:30 AM: Sorry guys, it looks like the glitch got fixed around an hour ago :\ There should still be 300 preview DVDs tho, if anyone plans on getting DVDs at Best Buy or wants to see 300…

There’s the sweet DVD sale/glitch thing going on right now at Best Buy. Certain DVDs were on sale last week as buy 1 get 1 free. Some of those DVDs are on sale this week for $9.99… but the buy-1-get-1-free discount still applies on top of the lower prices. AND Best Buy has a promo where every DVD you buy, you get a free preview disc of 300 that includes a $10.50 movie certificate to go watch 300. It acts like cash, so the theaters don’t lose any money. Here’s the list of DVDs that work (and keep in mind, these aren’t cheap-o versions, but nice, multi-disc special editions):

Amadeus: Director’s Cut (2-disc)
Batman Returns SE (2-disc)
Batman SE (2-disc)
Boogie Nights (2-disc)
Bullit SE (2-disc)
Casablanca (2-disc)
Chariots of Fire SE (2-disc)
Citizen Kane (2-disc)
Constantine (2-disc)
East of Eden (2-disc)
Enter the Dragon SE (2-disc)
Giant SE (2-disc)
GoodFellas (2-disc)
Gothika (2-disc)
Heat (2-disc)
King Kong 1933 B&W SE (2-disc)
Lost Boys SE (2-disc)
Magnolia SE (2-disc)
Million Dollar Baby (3-disc)
My Fair Lady (2-disc)
Mystic River SE (3-disc)
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest (2-disc)
Phantom of the Opera SE (2-disc)
Philadelphia Story (2-disc)
Poseidon (2-disc)
Rebel Without a Cause (2-disc)
Room with a View SE (2-disc)
SE7EN: Platinum Series (2-disc)
Shawshank Redemption (2-disc)
True Romance SE (2-disc)
Unforgiven (2-disc)
V for Vendetta (2-disc)
Yankee Doodle Dandy SE (2-disc)

This list was copied and pasted from DVDTalk (best forum for DVD deals), tho I first heard of this from CAG. Someone mentioned on CAG there’s another glitch that you can get as many 300 preview discs as you want (not just amount of DVDs you bought), but let’s not get greedy, okay?

Mike and I went to Best Buy during lunch to score on this deal. I just wanted to get Enter the Dragon for Kelvin. (I already own three movies on the list.) Mike wanted, like, 5 other movies. We drove all the way to Mountain View, because the Almaden one tends to have crappy stock. We were a little worried at first, because the only movies we could find at first were Enter the Dragon, and everything else was some lame cheap-o edition. Mike really wanted Heat, so I asked a sales rep if they had any special editions. He tells me that all they have left are the cheap-o editions. Mike is disappointed, but manages to find Se7en and Mystic River uber-editions. Mike looks around some more, while I go check out the video games section (hoping to find clearance games, but of course not finding any). A few minutes passed, and Mike runs up to me all gleeful, saying “They have them! They have them!” Apparently, Best Buy sales reps don’t know jack, because the drama section had special editions of Heat and Goodfellas (which had lame editions in the action section where we were looking originally). We had an odd number of films, so we had to sacrifice one. (unfortunately, they didn’t have Unforgiven Special Edition, which Mike really wanted.) Se7en doesn’t make the cut because Mike says he’s probably too much of a wuss to watch it again anytime soon ;) So yeah, we walked out with Enter the Dragon, Mystic River, Heat, Goodfellas, and FOUR 300 preview discs for ~$22. Sweet.

Right now I’m figuring out if I should keep these movie tickets or give them away. I don’t know if I can handle the testosterone level of that film. I’m also eating a pastrami sub from the Sweet Onion deli by Best Buy. Yum.

So Clarence found this deal on Slickdeals, where every time some guy named Matt Kenseth wins a NASCAR race, Arby’s offers free medium curly fries. We decided to partake in this offer, and I think this was the second time I’ve been to an Arby’s, like, ever. The cashiers were all confused when we showed them the printouts of race results, but eventually a manager figured it out. I just got their regular roast beef sandwich and free curly fries, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The Arby’s sauce is okay, tho it would have been nicer if it was more BBQ-y. So how (un)healthy is this meal?

	Calories	Fat (g)	Saturated fat (g)	Trans fat (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Sodium(mg)	Carbs (g)	Dietary Fiber (g)	Protein (g)
Regular Roast Beef	320	14	5	1	44	953	34	1	20
Arby’s Sauce	15	0	0	0	0	177	4	0	0
Curly Fries - Medium	406	24	4	4	0	949	47	5	5
Total	741	38 (58%)	9 (45%)	5	44 (15%)	2079 (87%)	85 (28%)	6	25

I realize I should probably be putting how much food this is, cuz the sandwich was pretty small (which is fine, I don’t eat much). Anyways, this was ~300g of food. I’m fairly surprised at how little cholesterol the meal has, but there weren’t any cheeses or creams, so I shouldn’t be that surprised. However, it does more than make up for it in the sodium department. I really need to cut down on the sodium.

For dinner, I went to Hong Fu with Kelvin, one of my favorite local Chinese places. We love their soups and spicy dishes (particularly the Hot & Spicy Tofu AKA Ma Puo Tofu and Szechuan Pork… which basically have the same basic sauce of hot fire). Here’s our fortunes for the evening:
Judy: Your home is a pleasant place from which you draw happiness. (in bed! I like sleep.)
Kelvin: 1) What’s vice today may be virtue tomorrow. (in bed! Uh…)
2) There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead for you. (in bed! Oh my!)

When I got home, there was a nice large package waiting for me from Amazon. Good thing no neighborhood punks swiped this box, or else they would been stuck with 12 boxes of fruit snacks and a mermaid DVD for little girls. (Actually, I don’t feel it’s for little girls, but I’ll save that rant for another day.) The snack machine at work used to sell these Florida’s Natural sour string fruit snacks. One day, as I was staring at this snack machine, wallet in hand and contemplating what chocolate bar or bag of chips to get, a coworker half-jokingly suggested I try one (he liked them as well), so I did… and I ended up really liking them. Plus, they had all these vitamins in them, which was even better. I found them at Target, so I started getting them there. But eventually, Target stopped selling them (only selling the fruit nuggets, which I’ve been buying as a substitute), supermarkets never had them, so I was stuck looking on the internet. And then Amazon came to my rescue. Now I’ve got a crap load of fruit snacks, and hopefully, I’ll get sick of them before they’re totally discontinued. I figured while I was getting free shipping, I might as well get this crappy $6 DVD I’ve been wanting and can’t seem to find anywhere else except Amazon. I probably should have saved it for a filler item for an eventual $20 order, but I’m worried it might disappear off the face of the earth again.

Blah, I can’t believe it’s late again. I need to stop surfing internet so late. Before I forget, two awesome videos:

Rainn Wilson (AKA Dwight Shrute from The Office) SNL monologue
Will Ferrell & Jack Black’s Oscar performance

Man, I don’t get this. Will Ferrell was looking so much better in Talladega Nights, and then his head exploded.

New thing I learned today: Arby’s is more than just roast beef sandwiches.

I switched themes, since I decided the one I was using was too rough and needed too much work. If you’re looking at a dark theme with some bright green in it (called Juicy), it’s actually by the same guy who did my old theme (the dark one with blue). There’s a couple lighter colored ones I’m thinking of switching to, but regardless of what I use, nothing is exactly how I want it. Anything I use will require some editing. So please excuse the mess if you see things randomly changing and disappearing.

In attempt to be more organized with my posts, I’m starting to post movie reviews and such in separate posts, as opposed to cramming everything into one large, diary-like post. I started with Talledega Nights. I’m still going to write my rambling, long, diary-like posts because that’s how I write, but hopefully there will less posts that’s listed under every single category :P

I don’t really have anything interesting to add. I spent most of the weekend sleeping (I don’t really get how I sleep so much), and I watched Talledega Nights and played this PS2 game called Chulip. It’s basically a kissing RPG. Yes, it’s a game about kissing. It’s hella weird, and I think I would like it more if it didn’t have the creepiest soundtrack. Hopefully, I’ll eventually post a review.

Kelvin was telling me that the most popular web comics succeeded simply by posting everyday. Even if they didn’t have anything interesting to say or had nothing to funny to draw, just putting something up was enough build a fanbase. Good thing to keep in mind, fellow bloggers.

Rodney’s been telling me to try Google Reader, and I’ve been wanting to try Bloglines since Kelvin works at the same office as the Blogines folks. Because Google Reader is still beta, it still seems kinda rough around the edges. Bloglines is pretty established, but I do have one major beef with it. Its reader works on a “Keep as New” system instead of a “Mark as Read” system. When you look at one feed and move to another feed, all the posts disappear when you go back to the first feed unless you marked them as new. I would prefer it to keep everything new until I mark them as read. Right now, one thing I definitely like about Bloglines is that it has a notifier (like Gmail’s notifier). I’m using one a user made for Firefox. The only bad thing about that notifier is that it doesn’t work with FireFox 2.0.

New thing I learned today: How to add a calendar to my WordPress blog’s sidebar.

Starring Will Ferrell, of course. btw, I constantly mistakenly call this movie “The Story of Ricky Bobby”. I think it’s because I’ve seen the cult classic The Story of Ricky, also known as Riki-Oh. Very, very different films.

I finally got my hands on this DVD after I’ve been meaning to the borrow this from Mike, like, ever since he bought it. I watched it yesterday with Kelvin, and I have to admit it was pretty entertaining. However, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed with the film. This is my third Will Ferrell film, after Anchorman and Elf. I’m not sure if Elf counts since it’s not nearly as crude and stupid, but whatever. Having seen Anchorman, I’d have to say Anchorman definitely a much better Will Ferrell film.

TN:TBoRB is about this guy who likes to drive fast, succeeds as a NASCAR racer, falls from grace, and then aims for redemption at the race track. For a goofball comedy, it’s got some surprisingly serious moments, particularly in the middle when he literally and figuratively crashes and burns and has to get back to the top. His path towards redemption is slow, and it drags the movie. I probably would have liked to movie more if the lagging wasn’t so obvious. It’s nice that the movie makes an effort to have some plot and character development, but… really… who watches a Will Ferrell movie for that?

In terms of the humor, yes, it is dumb. Not always my kind of humor, but it had its moments even for me. What’s weird is that some of the funniest scenes were edited out of the film. My favorite two characters were Walker and Texas Ranger, and one of their best scenes was taken out of the film. btw, kudos to Kelvin (aka best boyfriend evar) who made my favorite scene into an animated GIF.

The good thing about these kind of movies is that the DVD special features are generally plentiful and just as funny as the film. Will Ferrell and co. are very hilarious in their improvisation.

One thing I noticed about this movie is that it’s surprisingly political. The movie makes fun of patriotism and middle America, and there are several references to the current administration. Kinda odd for a “stupid” film, but certainly noticeable… and I have to applaud a little bit because I agree with its slant.

Hmmm… I don’t really remember much else about the movie (this is why I’m not-so-good at reviewing stuff). I do remember being bugged because I couldn’t figure out where I had seen the girl who played Susan before. A quick lookup on IMDB shows that she was the “hot girl” on The Office, and she was one of the main pageant contestants on Drop Dead Gorgeous, one of my favorite comedies. Also, I’m not sure if I’ve seen Will Ferrell too many times now, but he’s actually starting to look okay to me. Must be the short hair and massive sideburns.

In a nutshell, a funny film in a stupid way, but pretty slow in the middle. Will Ferrell is… Will Ferrell, which is good. However, it’s not as good as Anchorman.

Ugh… if there’s one thing I hate about not being in real/working world is meetings. Especially meetings right after lunches on Fridays. I just attended a group meeting, and I was nodding off for most of the last half. I eventually stabbed myself with my pen a few times to wake up. Works surprisingly well. Now I can’t think, so I’ll post in this thing.

Yesterday at belly-dancing, we had to do this weird leg lifts. It’s where you sit on the floor with your legs straight and in a spread V-shape (like in PE where you try to reach your toes), and then you lift one of your feet a couple inches off the ground. Freaking impossible. I don’t what muscle it’s supposed to work, but apparently I don’t have that muscle. Neither did Karen. We’re both sitting there looking like morons doing absolutely nothing. I’m we’re both trying very, very hard, but we just can’t lift our feet. The instructor comes by and physically lifts our feet, lets go, and then they drop like bricks. It’s quite sad. I eventually get desperate and try to lift my entire body in order to lift my foot, and it kinda looks like I’m trying to hop on my rear end or something. Ugh. Anyways, now there’s some muscles in weird location, kinda on my hips, kinda on my butt, that are ridiculously sore now. So even tho I couldn’t lift my foot, I was apparently working something.

Yesterday night was also the weekly The Office viewing at Mike’s place, preceded by ramen at Halu. Mike and Bobby asked for no fat in their ramen (they’re known for very greasy ramen) and determined that fat is a necessity for the broth. I can’t handle the regular fat content, so I always ask for low fat. It’s one of my two favorite ramen places (the other is Maru-Ichi in Mountain View, NOT Milpitas), so I recommend it anybody who can handle fatty soups. I couldn’t stand it at first, but then I figured out to ask for less fat, and it grew on me.

We played some Magic before The Office started. With my squirrel deck against Mike’s whatever-creature deck, I won 3 out of 5. Basically, we each won whichever game we started first on, so I’m guessing our decks are about the same speed. I finally got to use my new sleeves, which were nice. I need to make another deck though. The Office was okay… I’m getting kinda sick of seeing Michael Scott make an ass of himself in public settings, which is what we got for the last several episodes. Hopefully, they’ll stick to the office setting in the next new episode… which won’t be on for like a month!!! :( Damn NBC.

We’re finding more random people at work that play Magic, so we’re thinking of starting a club. Mike already has our name: MagiX. As in, “let’s play some magix, bitches.”

Some game news before I forget. Clover, the wonderful studio that brought us quality games likes Okami and Viewtiful Joe and was subsequently dropped by Capcom because Capcom is stupid, has been reborn as Seeds, so I’m relieved that the studio is essentially still alive. The Gamecube is officially dead (or not), and the Wii sold like hotcakes for January despite constantly running out of stock. Also, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is going to be released next Monday on the Virtual Console.

Rodney has brought to my attention that there are quite a few film events going on in the Bay Area. One that just passed was the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, from which Rodney recommends Fido and Viva. Coming up in San Jose is CineQuest, another independent film festival that runs from Feb 28 to March 11. It has some some international films I think I’d like to see. And speaking of international films, from March 15-25 in SF/Berkeley/San Jose is the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. And end of April, we’ve got the San Francisco International Film Festival. (Those folks in SF aren’t very creative with their film festival names, huh?) Anyways, if anybody is interested in watching some non-mainstream films, the ticket prices are typical theater prices ($9-$10). Let me know if you’re going to watch something, because I want to tag along!

New thing I learned today: DiGiorno’s is called Delissio in Canada. (It’s not delivery, it’s… Delissio?)

I had a really bad experience today when I went to get dinner. I’m going north on Lawrence, heading to the McDonald’s on the corner of Lawrence Expressway and Prospect. I’m in the right lane, and there’s an Element in the rightmost lane that turns into the shopping center with the McD’s. This lane is very short. He needs to get into my lane, and I need to get into his lane. I’m going faster than him, and he’s going pretty slow from just having done a right turn. It doesn’t look like he’s speeding up, so I try to go in front of him to do the lane change. I try to pass him, but I guess he’s speeding up so it goes into that weird position where it’s like who’s passing who. I accelerate very quickly to basically cut him off. I guess I figured he would see what I’m doing and take my space over once I get into his lane. What ends up happening is that I almost hit him, and I get a very loud horn blaring at me for a bit. I drive really quickly into his lane so I can make my turn into the shopping center and get out of his way. But instead of taking over my space, he follows me into the shopping center. I turn into the McDonalds, and this guy continues to follow me.

I’m quite certain this guy wants a confrontation now for an accident that never happened, so I park my car in the McD’s parking lot. He parks his car right behind me, blocking the rest of the parking lot and access to the drive thru. I see him getting out, so I get out. This old white guy with white hair goes up to me and starts yelling at me. (I don’t remember the exact words exchanged, but this is the basic idea… mostly screamed.)
Old man: What were you doing?! Did you not see me?!
Me: I saw you!
OM: You almost caused an accident! You almost hit me! What were you doing?!
Me: I was trying to get in front of you to get into this lane!
OM: (starts walking away) That’s not what you’re supposed to do.
Me: (pissed he’s just walking away, so I start following him) What was I supposed to do?
OM: You’re supposed to merge!
Me: (WTF? we weren’t merging…) I wasn’t trying to hit you!
And he pretty much ignores me and gets into his car. I apologize, and he ignores me and drives off. I glare at him as he drives off. Too in shock to actually get into my car to go through the drive-thru, I buy dinner at McDs, trying not to cry, and go home.

When I got home, I was like bawling. I called Kelvin and talked about what happened. I’m not really sure why I took it so personally. I was really upset I almost hit the guy (I already dwell a lot on my almost-accidents when they happen), but then to have this guy follow me just to yell at me was really too much for me. I don’t consider myself a poor driver. I made an error of judgment. If I had gotten into an accident, it would have most likely been my fault. And not to defer blame, but it’s not like this guy was totally clear in his actions either. I don’t think it was ALL me. I don’t feel it was bad enough to warrant him following me to my destination and confront me. In hindsight, I don’t know why I got out of the car. I don’t know if I felt it was safer or if I was looking for a confrontation. I don’t know why I was apologizing, trying to look better in his eyes. Everything was incredibly impulsive. I mean, sure, him following me to confront him is pretty psycho, but he could have been REALLY psycho. It could have been a crazier confrontation. Kelvin said I should have stayed in the car, and he’s right… And of course now I feel bad for making more poor decisions. Kel also said I shouldn’t take it so personally, and it’s not a situation where I should care what people think. That’s also true. He said the guy wasn’t judging me, which I don’t think is true… because I’m totally judging the guy as a total nutcase dickweed from his actions. I was really upset over the whole, and I guess I was really hurt the guy thought I was so horrible that he needed to stalk me and yell at me. I really need to learn to get over shit like this. (And so does he!)

btw, I hope you guys understand and like my drawing of the situation. All I have is Paint, so don’t give me too much crap about it. Actually, drawing it was kind of therapeutic. Also, in case you can’t tell, the giant red and grey turd is supposed to be the guy’s Element. Yeah, watch out for crazy old dudes with white hair driving red Honda Elements.

I went to the chiropractor for the first time today. One of my coworkers recommended Nancy Hirose. Her clinic is very old-school; she uses one of those old candy-colored iMacs and a credit card carbon paper slider thing. She was very nice and good about answering questions. This bump in my back I’ve been worried about for years she said was just a “prominent” vertebrae and nothing abnormal, which really relieved me. She said my right side is longer than my left side, and my spine does curve a little to one side. She said I had a lot of tension in my shoulders and below my waist, so she recommended that at some point, I get a deep muscle massage. She also found a knot in my back, and she said a couple vertebrae in my neck weren’t aligned (probably from a car accident). So she did like 2-3 adjustments, which kinda scared me a little bit. They don’t hurt (they actually feel kind of good), but the sudden movements and crunching noises freak me out. Like, the neck adjustment reminded me of that one part in Interview with the Vampire where Tom Cruise (I think) snaps that woman’s neck. She said despite the few flaws I had, my body was quite healthy, and it was a pleasant break from all the messed up people she’s been looking at (the average patient age is much older than me). I’m going back for a followup next week, but I had a positive experience there. If you guys need a chiropractor, I’d recommend her.

New thing I learned today: The crunchy bone/joint noises (like cracking your knuckles) is from escaping gases.

Oh dear, I’ve missed a few days of posting… time to blog!

Last weekend was Chinese New Year. Kelvin and I had hot pot with my mother on New Year’s Eve, and as usual, I pigged out on lamb and tofu. I spent Sunday at Kelvin’s sleeping and watching more bad movies. I also started playing Ratchet and Clank, a platformer that focuses more on action over platforming (thank god). Not bad so far. Monday was Planar Chaos draft day #1 at Mike’s place. No money rares :( I drafted for the late-arriving Ted, and our deck was pretty much, in the words of Ted, “di-zah-ster!”… except against Kelvin’s deck. Apparently his deck was all tricks and no punch (or really really slow punches). Oh well… stupid fungi.

I saw the The Island. It’s pretty much exactly how Mike predicted it would be, and I believed he described it as “follows the script for the first three pages and after that it’s just explosions”. Yeah, the film was actually okay in terms of the story. It definitely would have seemed much more intelligent without the nonstop action at the end of the film. Ugh, it’s really ridiculous. Michael Bay has this stupid chase sequence that involves a truck loaded with train wheels, something inspired by Michael Bay’s real life experiences. Nevermind that trains in the future do NOT have wheels. Oh yeah, and Ewan MacGregor and Scarlett Johansson fall 70 stories holding on to a giant metal building logo and live. Did I mention this logo (with them attached) hits a helicopter on the way down? Ugh, ridiculous. At least, it’s mildly amusing. I give it 4 out of 10.

I also saw Timeline, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I think we were focused on how much it follows the book (or for me, how much I even remember the book), so we didn’t notice the bad acting and lack of explanation in the plot as much. I probably don’t have best perspective on this movie, but I also give it a 4 out of 10. The movie was definitely B-movie quality, and even without reading the book, it’s fairly predictable. The bad points of this movie don’t stick out nearly as much as the other movies I’ve seen (13th Warrior)… I’m not really sure how to explain it.

Last week, I forgot to mention that I saw Independence Day. (I asked Kelvin to get this one so I could delay my viewing of The Island.)This movie rates critically about as poorly as all the other crap movies I’ve watched, but this one is different. This one is awesome. It’s got Will Smith punching aliens, Bill Pullman as the President of the United States flying fighter jets and shooting aliens, and it’s got Jeff Goldblum as the MIT-graduated cable repair guy (spoiler alert) that comes up with the genius plan to fly into the alien mothership and upload a computer virus into the alien network. Awesome. The movie is entertaining to the point where you really get into the spirit of the film (Go America!) and are able to ignore the typical retarded sci-fi logic used to progress the plot (zomg I haxx0red ali3n intarwebz) that would generally distract in a crappier movie. This one gets a 7.5 out of 10. (Really couldn’t decide between 7 and 8.)

Kelvin downloaded xXx (the movie, not porn) because he thought I wanted to watch it for the MIT reference. Lucky for him, I’ve already seen it (yeah, not so lucky for me… I mean, that’s how I knew the movie had a reference in the first place) and he didn’t want to see it, so he was spared a viewing of that horrible movie. (It’s really, really bad.) At least I got my screen cap of Agent Toby Lee Shavers, so it wasn’t a total waste.

My lack of posting the last couple days is due to my Project Runway Season 3 marathon. Just finished it tonight. Season 3 is pretty good. I think all the right people made it to the finals, and their collections were all very unique and beautiful. Not sure if I agree with the winner, but I don’t dislike the choice. I think I liked this season about as much as Season 1, with Season 2 being not as good as either. Actually, I may like Season 3 more because it didn’t have Wendy Pepper.

Beauty and the Geek Season 3 also finished last week. I really like how the season went from sad to awesome. I didn’t think I’d like this season more than Season 2, but I think I do. It’s also got a really cute couple (tho the geek from last season was definitely cuter). The latest episode of The Office was pretty decent also. Michael once again acts like a total ass, but he redeems himself pretty well at the end of the episode. Last week’s episode of House was a typical House episode… so yeah, thumbs up from me. So, now that Beauty and the Geek is over, you know what that means! New season of America’s Next Top Model! Wheeeeee!

I had more mundane crap to talk about, but I’ll stop for now. I wish I had a camera to take pictures and insert them into my blog so you guys wouldn’t just see giant blocks of text.

New thing I learned today: What “Sturm und Drang” means (when Tim Gunn from Project Runway says it).