Fidelity Investments sells off short-term US debt: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101075950 (www.cnbc.com)
Bill Gross of PIMCO doubles down: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101100268 (www.cnbc.com)
I bet Vegas is running some crazy bets on whether or not we default.
In a somewhat related vein, a bunch of people here at work are pretty anxious/pissed about the shutdown now. Since we have a ton of collaborations with the NIH labs and CDC labs, both of which are closed, a lot of experiments are on the brink of being ruined.
Since collecting samples and vaccinations and all kinds of things typically have to be done at very specific times over the course of month/year long experiments, missing those timepoints can be catastrophic. So right now we're supposed to be getting samples from a study being done at the NIH, their timepoint is Friday. Now its reasonable to do the timpoint on Monday, Tuesday is a stretch, and every day after that makes the data less usable and relevant. This one study was started back in March has so far cost about $150,000, which is not a ton of money in the world of research science. But we're just one collaborator of the NIH and CDC, multiply that across many hundreds, maybe thousands of projects that could be impacted by screwing up timepoints these past two weeks and that's a lot of money and a lot of private and non-profit institutions out there getting a bit of the shaft.
Not that the type of congressmen who are involved in the whole affair would likely give two hoots about all of the research they're negatively impacting since we are probably viewed as some kind of unnecessary waste of money and immoral to boot.
And then Steve said, 'Let There Be an iPhone' (www.nytimes.com)
By the end, Grignon wasn’t just relieved; he was drunk. He’d brought a flask of Scotch to calm his nerves. “And so there we were in the fifth row or something — engineers, managers, all of us — doing shots of Scotch after every segment of the demo. There were about five or six of us, and after each piece of the demo, the person who was responsible for that portion did a shot. When the finale came — and it worked along with everything before it, we all just drained the flask. It was the best demo any of us had ever seen. And the rest of the day turned out to be just a [expletive] for the entire iPhone team. We just spent the entire rest of the day drinking in the city. It was just a mess, but it was great.”
The Atari's cover of "Boys of Summer" is a triple threat:
Additionally, The Format has an album or two that I listened to on repeat (quite literally, as I had a 45 minute commute) while I was living in Arizona. Curiously, a lot of the songs are about living in Arizona.
My redneck is showing, but Dixie Chicks, "Wide Open Spaces" because it came out as I went to college in Arizona (wide open spaces in the west) and the description of the parents in that song pretty much encapsulated my parents reactions to me going to college.
The "Saras" have gotten me through basically every breakup ever. (Sara Evans, Sara Bareilles, Sarah McLachlan).
I have strong associations with stupid dance songs. I learned the macarena from the older "cooler" kids on a church trip and I always think about it and that trip. "Hey Mickey" reminds me of my friend Tiffany who knew all the moves to the dance to that song and would lead us all in it during middle school dances. Learned "Mambo Number 5" on an exchange trip to Germany in high school (six months before it became big in the US my hipster wanted me to tell you) and there was a bar dance to that song too but it never made it over to the US.
I'm sure you have already all seen this, but this is a pretty nice chart with size comparisons of every sci fi starship ever.
http://kotaku.com/every-sci-fi-starship-ever-in-one-mindblowing-comparis-1391608737 (kotaku.com)
The scene that should have been in Star Trek: Nemesis: http://www.youtube...;v=Vxyd7L-2YuQ#t=99 (www.youtube.com)
I'm going to go cry while brushing my teeth before work.
Interesting video about the UTF-8 encoding scheme, which more or less makes the Internet go 'round these days: https://www.youtub...watch?v=MijmeoH9LT4 (www.youtube.com)
The linked album above is "complete," in that the entirety of the 571 images I paired down from the 3,200 are included. However, if you need an album that could do without you having to explain what phalluses are, why there would be a museum dedicated to them, or the cultural significance of the "shocker," there exists an alternative album (which I'll be showing my family/coworkers instead of this one).
Apparently, a plane crashed at Akureyri airport (www.youtube.com) a few weeks before we landed there. As a warning: video is a dashcam of the crash occurring. Two perished, one survivor, according to the news articles.
Hngh.
Grand Theft Auto came out today but much to my sadface it will be a while before I can play it. I have outdoors and garage projects to focus on before I can do indoorsy stuff.
But all of you should buy the game for PS3. In a similar vein to what Mike talks about in this post (http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=5359&msg_id=5360#thd_5360), one of the main multiplayer modes is heists and rollin with your crew.
CMON GUYS
Josh speaks the truth.
I have played so much GTA IV just as downtime and chilling. I've also played the game through - *twice* - from 0 to 100%, and another time again just for the story missions. As Kyler once said, i played my copy of GTA IV so much that must have made the cost per hour (price of game/hours played) down to pennies or fractions of a penny.
I'm trying to get away from the cops in the game because I stole a fast car.
A mountain presented itself to me, and I thought, "There's no way these cops can highmark with me."
So up the mountain I go, and since it's a fast powerful car, I go flying off the ridge like the world's biggest jump.
The cops have good enough cars to follow me. I landed mostly in one piece, and was about to drive away.
One of the cops who highmarked and jumped with me landed next to me, upside down, and immediately exploded. My vehicle (and I) exploded in a sympathetic detonation, since my car was really trashed.
Probably my best death at the hands of the game's cops yet.
There have been some serious issues for the rollout of GTA Online - but I did get to play over the weekend, and it was amazing.
I have experienced some of the problems everyone's talking about - the character I set up over the weekend has now disappeared into the cloud. Rockstar says they are working to restore all characters like this, but I'm not holding my breath.
I only spent 3 or 4 hours on the introductory stuff, and didn't really accomplish anything, since i was just learning.
Note for those of you who will play GTA Online at some point - the initial setup and missions the game forces you through is about an hour to an hour and a half of time.
When more bugs get ironed out, I'll let you all know when you should sign up!
Ick. I would have hoped the online gameplay was a little more streamlined. That's one thing the Halos, Call of Duties, and Righteous Slaughters get right: pick up the controller and play.
In other, emergent gameplay news: I'm having fun forcing characters to bicycle everywhere. The bikes tend to go pretty fast, and with my driving abilities, probably averages about the same wall-clock time getting from A to B. Also, it is goddamn hilarious for Trevor to show up to a heist on an expensive, neon green yuppie road bike.
That is pretty great with the bikes. Your characters can probably win the triathlon event now.
I think it's hilarious driving around - I will get these moments where I thread through traffic, trees, and buildings, like I'm Lando fucking Calrissian flying the Millenium Falcon through the Death Star, but then I'll come around a blind corner, bounce off a tree wrong, and plow into traffic/buildings/pedestrians like that Porkins guy in A New Hope who plunges into the Death Star. My favorite is when you hit things hard enough that wheels fly off the cars.
Create a Rockstar Games SocialClub account and make sure you verify your email address.
I created a private Crew for us. I'll have to invite you to it. This makes it easy to play with each other.
Email me that you've joined and let me know your PSN email/SocialClub handle and I'll invite you!
it's all lovingly named after this site! :)
edit: (playstation!)
they just announced that if you play GTA Online before next week, then you'll get a "stimulus package" of $500,000 GTA$. They're apologizing for the launch issues.
So for all of you out there on the fence on whether or not to join in, make sure you create a character and play a couple of hours to make sure they'll count you in!
The GTA$ 500,000 hit my player account yesterday, and in the blink of an eye I spent it ALL.
I bought the highest end apartment you can get, then upgraded and blinged out all of my cars.
Now my GTA online character is house- and car-rich but money-poor.
Also I'm still really excited to play with all you guys at some point.
Holy shit! Snuck in on the end of one of their updates:
"For those asking about their lost characters or rank, those will not be able to be restored..."
I'm glad I didn't have any serious time investment on mine, but if you look around you can find people who had already attained lvl 100 who lost their character, lost their millions of GTA$, and any other progress they had made.
For those of you who join now, the character loss issues are fixed, but goddamn
Ok Josh, Mike, Erik. You guys gotta get GTA so we can all play online. I highly recommend having a PS3 headset, or knowing what I can set up through an iphone app or somethign for vox.
I just want a group who likes to do jobs together, its all about the bennies and the experience points!
I have a high enough rank I can get you guys invited to good jobs, and help you out with some weaponry too. And Josh, I'll do all the helicopter flying.
CMON
So I'm really started to dislike reviews. Like when I'm trying to research things I want to buy in the areas of technology, cars... ok so maybe just those two.
When looking to buy a car we knew what we were interested in, yet car reviews basically downplay all of the aspects of car ownership that Katy and I found important. We want good gas mileage, well the car we're looking at gets slammed because it doesn't accelerate like a porche or the model with a turbocharged V6 engine. Or that it's bland and not all flashy like a similar model made by someone who sells the same type of car but for 10k more.
Ok so now Katy and I are looking at new phones. Our needs are simple and we don't play games or watch movies. I was interested in whether or not the new iphones were worth looking at, but a fair number of reviews go on and on about screen size and screen resolution. Really? Aren't there more aspects to the user experience than how massive the damn thing is in my pocket? Aren't there tech reviewers who still value form factor, and something that actually fits in your pocket conveniently?
I kinda feel like like the kind of people who's job it is to review new technology really don't share the same desires as me and place huge importance on shit that really doesn't matter to the average user. I don't want a car that can rally super hard because I want good mpg and I know those two don't really mix. I want a phone that fits nice in my pocket, so yeah a huge screen is not want I want.
Maybe it's because I'm partial but I really like gear reviews for the climbing shit I buy. They usually actually tell me what I want to know. It's they have a better feel for what is important to consumers. At any rate I did end up buying the car I wanted despite what most reviews said and we love it. Still don't know what to do about upgrading phones... so any tech advice might be nice.
I watch this guy every so often to see what's going on with phones. Two parts technical, but as in this video, also one part practical (www.youtube.com) in how to use/buy/customize the phones.
