I’m taking an open call on books that I should read.

I’ll be taking some trips soon that will involve lots of travel time and lots of free time, and since I can’t sit still for more than three minutes at a time, I’d like some books to read.

E-mail me or leave a comment.

Last night was the MLB All-Star Game, which the AL won 3-4 after 15 innings of battle.

However, I only lasted until the 12th.  Well, more accurately, I lasted until the 9th, fell asleep, and woke up in the 12th and turned the TV off.  I proceeded to have at least two dreams about the “final outcome” of the game.

In the first one, the AL got off to a quick start in the 13th and won on a home run.

I had a second dream in which the game went to 17 innings and the AL won 14-15.  I also remember looking up the box score and saw the following:

Wow!  That’s a heck of a lot of scoring in extra innings.  Perfectly symmetrical scoring never solves anything in baseball, though.  I also “read” a story on how the winning AL run was a controversial call involving David Wright and Ryan Howard.  Nevermind the fact that Ryan Howard wasn’t even an All-Star this year.

And of course, I found out the real score when I woke up, and the NL defeat matched the NL defeats in my dreams.

So I went to track some packages today, and I was greeted on www.ups.com with a language-selection splash page.  And lo and behold, what do I see?  Is that Philadelphia City Hall in the background?  For all the world to see?  I’m guessing yes.  I think that the street sign is also a giveaway since it looks like the ones you’ll find along Broad Street.

Here’s the picture to see for yourself.

Taken during the Manasquan Beach Fireworks, July 3, 2008.

So I’ve noticed that when I wake up, there is usually a song stuck in my head.  Well, about two months ago I started writing down those songs, and I present to you the first in a monthly series of songs that are stuck in my head when I wake up.

Led Zeppelin, Rot Chili Peppers, and Maroon 5 each happened three times.  All of them are pretty standard rock tunes, with the exception of Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff.  I blame 95.7 Ben FM for playing “anything we feel like” for getting that one stuck in my brain the night before.

I was going to post this last week, but I finally got around to downloading my camera.  My 2001 hyundai sonata hit 100,000 miles.

I’ll take another picture if I hit 124,274 miles.

After the jump…pictures!

[Read more →]

Forbes released an article a couple of weeks ago talking about what universities billionaires went to.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/19/billionaires-harvard-education-biz-billies-cx_af_0519billieu.html

Because I like the new charting functionality in Excel 2007, I went ahead and plotted those schools out on a chart.

It makes sense that Harvard, Stanford, and Penn are at the top because they have ridiculously strong business programs. I think that an interesting figure would be the number of billionaires divided by number of living alumni from each school. Even though the percentages would be very small, schools which have tons of alumni, like USC with 16,000 undergrads would be less versus MIT with 4,000 undergrads. They both have nine billionaires, but an MIT grad is four times more likely to be a billionaire.

Another question I am also interested in knowing is the value added to an individual on their quest to become a billionaire. I guess more specifically, did earning a Harvard degree enable them to become a billionaire, or were they let into Harvard to begin with because they possessed the “right stuff” and would have become a billionaire on their own accord?

I think it would be very interesting to analyze not just billionaire, but millionaire alma maters as well.

Since I don’t have that data handy, I’ll just sit here and bank on my Penn degree to one day throw me billions of dollars.

They recently announced the fourth installment of the Guitar Hero series, Guitar Hero World Tour. There are a few things that I’m excited about here:

1. Drums
B. Microphone
π. Customizable Characters
µ. Build-A-Song Mode
£. Downloadable Content for the Wii

I’ve already logged way too many hours playing Guitar Hero III, and I anticipate logging way too many more by playing pretend drums and honing my karaoke skills.

According to Wikipedia, Van Halen, The Eagles, Linkin Park, and Sublime have been confirmed to be a part of the game. However, there was no citation, so who knows if that’s actually true. I am tempted to add my own choice selection of artists, including Warren Zevon and The Glenn Miller Orchestra.

However, if I had to pick one song from each artist, here would be my choices:

Van Halen – Eruption. While it doesn’t have any words, it would be one of the most ridiculous guitar pieces to date in Guitar Hero.

Eagles – Life in the Fast Lane. Hotel California is probably going to be in the game, but the Life in the Fast Lane with it’s sick licks would be a great addition. And yes, I just said “sick licks”.

Linkin Park – Bleed It Out. Simple but good guitar work.

Sublime – What I Got. Because everyone knows the lyrics already.

While we’re at it, I’m going to suggest a few more songs that should be in the newest edition of the game:

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Snow (Hey Oh). A song with fairly repetitive bass and guitar parts, it’s very catchy and would be great for an earlier tier song.

The Animals – House of the Rising Sun. A great guitar piece.

Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower. Why HASN’T this song already been in Guitar Hero?

Jealousy Curve – Black Widow. A local Philadelphia band, I’ve heard this song on WMMR a lot. The guitar part changes up a lot and would offer a good challenge.

Maroon 5 – Harder to Breath. Although the lyrics are probably a bit racy.

Beatles – Twist and Shout. Because I already sing this every time at karaoke, so I might as well keep score of how well I do.

Moby Dick – Led Zeppelin. Obvious choice to highlight the capabilities of the drums, although there are no lyrics.

Pink Floyd – Money. Because this song is so money and it doesn’t even know it.

Crazy Train – Ozzy Osbourn. Long overdue to be in Guitar Hero.

I’ll probably think of more songs over the next couple of days. What other songs should be part of the game?

My friend Kate introduced Flight of the Conchords to us this past summer. If you don’t know who they are, they’re New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo. They were number three, but the tribute band ‘Like of the Conchords’ has taken over that spot. They have a show on HBO which highlights their efforts to make it big in New York, but really I think the following youtube clip sums up their act pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU

They performed at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby last week, and my friend Ryan was nice enough to send over the set list.

Flight of the Conchords Set List
May 5, 2008
Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA

– Inner City Pressure
– Beautiful Girl
– Issues (Think About It)
– Stick Around
– Too Many Mutha Ucka’s
? Freebird
– Bus Driver Song
– Business Time
– The Humans Are Dead
– Bret, You’ve Got it Goin’ On
– Jenni
– Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros
– Freaky
– Last Christmas (Demo song on the keytar)
– Albi, the Racist Dragon
– For the Ladies
– There are Angels (Encore #1)
– I’m Not Crying (Encore #2)

Edit on May 29, 2008: Barkeep pointed out that Freebird was missing.  I’ve added a question mark to it because we don’t quite remember where it was in the setlist. 

So it’s been pointed out to me that I haven’t posted anything new in about a month now.  Well, in alphabetical order, here are a list of things that have kept me busy over the past three weeks.

Battlestar Galactica – A few weeks ago, I was about to take a nap when Kristine flipped on her DVR to the last episode of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.  I quickly changed my mind when I saw robots.  Here’s the storyline.  In a galaxy far far away, there are twelve planets where humans live.  They build robots to help them do stuff.  One day, the robots become sentient and fight against the humans in what is called the “Cylon Wars”.  A truce was made, and the Cylons went away for 40 years.  They evolved, and they came back with a bunch of nukes and wiped out everything save for a handful of civilian ships and the Battlestar Galactica.  So now, the humans are on a quest to run away from the robots and find a way to a new home on a planet called Earth.  Also, the robots evolved.  Apparently, some of the shiny metal robots have blood and guts inside, meanwhile there are humans which are actually robots in disguise.  Add in an attractive alien babe named Number Six and you’ve got yourself a winning show!  Season four is being shown now, but at the same time I’ve started from the beginning and am working my way through the first three seasons.

Flight of the Conchords – I saw them in Upper Darby at the Tower Theater the other night, and it was awesome.  Further write-up on them (along with a setlist) forthcoming.

Mario Kart Wii – So far, Mario Kart Wii is a winner.  I might do a write-up about the game later, but using the plastic steering wheel attachment has been very intuitive and I’m really enjoying the game so far.  Tip of the hat to the new online mode, but wag of the finger on changing Battle Mode to be timed as opposed to just losing your three balloons.

NHL Playoffs – I am an avid New York Rangers fan and my roommate is an avid Philadelphia Flyers fan.  The playoffs have been good to us because generally the teams were playing on opposite nights, so there has been no fighting over the television.  However, since the Rangers have been knocked out, viewing rights for the games have been ceded to my roommate.

Passover – My roommate invited me to his family’s house for Passover a few weeks ago.  It was my first experience with a Passover Seder, and let me tell you, it was DELICIOUS.  I enjoyed beef brisket, a roasted chicken, matzo ball soup, and asparagus.  I don’t like cooked carrots at all, but Ms. Crespi cooked a delicious baked carrot dish that tasted like I was eating a plate full of orange sugar.

Philadelphia Phillies – I’ve been to a handful of Phillies games the past few weeks, one of which was against my favorites, the New York Mets.  Of course, the Mets won.

Rittenhouse Fair – Every year around the end of April, they apparently close down Walnut Street from Broad to 19th and host a festival where local vendors and restaurants set up tents and sell things off of their menu.  This is the first year I’ve known about it, and I guess it’s the closest thing that Center City gets to a county fair.  As my friend Wendy put it, “it’s like Spring Fling but without the drunken freshmen throwing up.”  All of the food I tried was delicious, including the Kobe beef sliders from Barclay Prime and the chicken kabobs from Wok.

Star Wars Exhibit – I finally got to see the Star Wars exhibit on the last weekend that it was open.  They ran an event where the exhibit stayed open continuously from the morning on Friday until the evening on Sunday.  I thought it was a lot more interactive than the exhibit that I saw in London, but it seemed to me like there was smaller collection of props at the Philly exhibit.  The Philly exhibit tried to tie Star Wars into the real world more, highlighting things like trains that run on magnetic levitation and having a computer terminal where you can program a mini R2-D2 to maneuver through a course.  There was also an “attraction” where you sat in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and Anthony Daniels (of C-3PO fame) took you on a tour of the stars.  It wasn’t very exciting and arguably not worth the extra $5 I spent.  However, since the exhibit was closing, they had a cool projector slash Star Wars cut-out for sale.  Only $1000!  Sadly, I had left the wallet with my $1000 bills in my other pants, so I didn’t buy it.

Well, that’s the update for today.  More will be forthcoming, including a potential site redesign.