Tocci's Blog

Last Friday was unseasonably warm so I did a little bass fishing with my dad. Our expectations were low since I had been skunked in my previous two outings, but that set the stage for what turned out to be a great day on the lake. We both caught some nice fish, the highlight being Dad's lunker weighing in at nearly four pounds. All fish were released as usual. I hope we get another warm day because I can't wait to get out there again.

Tocci Ponders: When you're a teenager, why is it cooler to ride in the front seat of a car but the back seat of a bus? Nobody's ever yelled "shotgun" on a school bus. Even as an adult it is cooler to ride in the front of the family sedan but the back of a limo.

I turned 33 on Election Day and the voting public gave me just what I wanted: a brand new President. I'm excited for the Obama presidency and hope it goes well. I certainly don't envy him for the task ahead, with the economy in a downward spiral. But situations such as these provide an opportunity for heroism. We'll see if Obama has it in him. Regardless, I hope I can find some material to have some fun with in the next four years. W may not have been a popular President, but he was comedic gold.

Random Thought: The field of Martial Arts instruction is one of the only professional fields where people refer to you as "Master" when you're at work. That alone makes the job kick ass.

A couple weeks ago, I finally gave in to the peer pressure and joined Facebook. I'm not antisocial, but for the longest time I was antisocial-networking. Since I've always had my own site, I never had a need for anything like a MySpace page. But I heard Facebook was different, and after three people in the same week asked me if I had a Facebook profile, I had to give it a try to see what all the buzz is about. Now kids, cover your ears, because f&ck do I hate that site. It makes my skin crawl and yet it's strangely addictive at the same time. While it's great for reconnecting with people I haven't seen in a decade or two, for every long lost friend I find there are two long lost A-holes that I had hoped never to see again popping up in the sidebars of almost every page. (Facebook is a relentless friend pimp.) But despite it's shortcomings, it is a step in the right direction from MySpace. I have yet to be bombarded with crappy music on flashing pages, and I can get a sense of what people are up to. I'm going to stick with it for at least a little while. It will be good to learn more about how it works so I can design my sites to work better with all the social networks out there.

Random Thought: Halloween teaches children that blackmail is OK as long as you limit your payoff to miniature candy bars.

Yesterday I learned that I am a horrible drummer... way worse than I had thought. My immediate family came up for a belated birthday visit. We did the usual cake and song and went to dinner at La Vecchia Napoli, one of our favorite little Italian places. One of the gifts I received was Wii Music, a cool new game. At first I thought it was too easy until I started up the drum mode. I never knew how uncoordinated I am. I can't seem to move more than two limbs at the same time to any semblance of a rhythm. I guess I need to practice.

Tocci's link list starts immediately after the sentence you are currently reading.

• Some of these vanity license plates are really creative.
• Just in case you really want to look like an anime character...
• Taskbar Shuffle - I like to be able to quickly find programs on my Windows taskbar, so I used to open programs in a certain order after rebooting. Now I just drag the little boxes around. Why this isn't built into Windows, I have no idea.
• This link is a little overdue but these pumpkin carvings are still worth checking out. Thanks, Mom.
• Dickipedia - It's kind of like Wikipedia. Gotta love the logo.
• Font Conference - If you're familiar with your typefaces, this one is pretty amusing. Mailbox!

This past Monday my mother visited with Jenny and I for an evening of pumpkin carving. We had to top last year's pumpkins and I think we did just that. They turned out great, but since we all carved parts of the pumpkin wall thin so as to be translucent, they're already puckering and probably won't make it to see the 31st. Oh well. The owl on the top left is Jenny's. Mom's is the ghost behind the fence on the top right. Mine is the two ghosts in front of the spooky tree on the bottom. Once again I roasted the seeds using this recipe and they turned out delicious.

Tocci Ponders: In the Halloween costume stores, why are female costumes smaller for adults than they are for children? It's like they just take whatever the little girls dress up as and make it extra provocative. Presto! It's an adult costume. Little girls are cats, so big girls are sex kittens. Little girls are angels, so big girls are... well... slutty angels. I'm not complaining, mind you... I'm just sayin'.

Ask your doctor or pharmacist if Tocci's links are right for you:
_{(Thanks to Chris, Julia, and Nong respectively for the links.)}

• I'm running for President - Make sure you watch the video too.
• Your monitor is dirty. Let this pug clean it.
• Pandora - I highly recommend checking out this amazing online radio station. As it plays songs for you, it learns your likes and dislikes and customizes its playlist to your personal taste. It's a really great service and it's free.

Today I'm proud to announce the launch of Hunting with Palin. Head out to the Alaskan wilderness and rustle up some moose burgers and caribou steaks. At the same time, keep the wolf population under control and defend Alaska's narrow maritime border with Russia. It's all in the hands of Sarah Palin and her trusty rifle. I've only made one Flash game in the past, Britney Wigged Out, but this one was my first foray into Actionscript 3. It was fun to make and I look forward to more games in the future.

This year, Election Day falls on my birthday. I also happen to be a long-time creator of online political satire. Coincidence? Yeah... pretty much.

With politics in the national spotlight, the urge to make fun of the candidates gets too big for me to ignore. That, plus a nifty new microphone, resulted in the birth of this little ditty entitled "Vote For Me". I tried to keep this one party-neutral so it could be enjoyed by everyone, which was easy this time around since the Bush administration wasn't in the picture. Honestly I'm pretty jazzed up for this election. Sure, I have my preferences, but I think either one of these candidates will be a great step forward for America. They actually seem to agree more than disagree on many of the issues and wind up nitpicking in their debates and stump speeches. Anyway, I hope people get a kick out of it.

Tocci Ponders: What is it about riding a motorcycle and feeling the need to do so in a group? You just don't see that kind of comradery with other vehicles. You probably have never seen a fleet of compact cars rolling down the highway. Then again, if you did, would you even notice?

I haven't posted anything in about two months. Lately I've been working on this animation and spending a lot of time learning Actionscript to make a related game, which I hope to post here soon.

Tocci Ponders: Why don't any hockey players learn martial arts to protect themselves? They can't possibly like to be punched in the face all season long. I would imagine if Steven Segal were a hockey player he wouldn't have to worry about getting into fights. After he breaks the first guy's arm in three places, nobody else would ever mess with him.

Links that don't need a bailout:

• Lip syncing with McCain and W - The lips just match so well it's uncanny.
• Is McCain Palin's Bitch? - There are a lot of political satire videos out there, but this one is my favorite so far.
• As much as I love to hate her, Paris Hilton made a pretty decent one a while back.
• The winner of the election has been predetermined!
• If you like the Rick Rolling phenomenon from the previous link, you may be strangely entranced by the Interior Crocodile Alligator. I was actually "alligator rolled" to this one from probably the most random (and often horribly offensive) board on the internet, /b.
• I found two good resource sites for phone numbers lately. 1) contacthelp.com is a great place to find the hard-to-find contact phone numbers of companies who try to keep them on the DL. I always get better results with a phone call than with an email. 2) whocallsme.com is a place to lookup the number of a telemarketing call or hang-up to see if anyone else had the same problem. Apparently the same companies annoy countless people, and now we can all bitch about it together since we're basically powerless to do anything about it.
• In even more outdated news (It happens when you take 2 months between blog entries), I found some cool links while watching the Olympics. I was curious about the Olympic medal counts historically as well as per capita medal counts. Interesting stuff.
• Just For Now - Props to Imogen Heap of Frou Frou for laying down this song in realtime. I know how hard it is to record tracks even with multiple takes, so what she does here amazes me.

On the lake, events seem to happen in pairs. First I rescued birds two weeks in a row, and then I was stranded two weeks in a row. Yes, it happened again. A week after my battery went dead on me the last time, Chris and I were going to try out a new lake and I wanted to be absolutely sure that the battery would last all day. I bought a brand new battery and charger, but I didn't anticipate that the trolling motor would break. We were moving along the shoreline far from the boat launch when the propeller hit a small rock. I've hit plenty of rocks in the past without incident, but this time the drive pin (the little metal bar in the picture) shattered. The motor still worked fine but the propeller would not spin. I pulled it into the boat and inspected it. We didn't have a spare drive pin so Chris and I were forced to go MacGyver on that bad boy. We scoured our tackle boxes for anything that could be cut into a drive pin. Eventually we ended up binding three fish hook shanks together with some braided line and superglue. Believe it or not, it worked. We were so confident in our handywork that we fished the rest of the day with our jimmy-rigged motor. The fishing was not so great, but we'll be telling that story for a long time. When we got home I ordered the spare parts for the motor you see pictured here, which I will now take with me every time I'm out on the lake. I call it my "oh sh*t kit".

Tocci Ponders: Why do they call it "common sense" when so few people have it?

That same weekend we went to the Jersey shore and had some fun on the beach and Chris's family's boat. The ocean water was ridiculously cold for July so unfortunately we didn't do any swimming. Next time. We did end the day in spectacular fashion with a feast of crabs, clams, steak, tuna, corn salad, etc.

Tocci Ponders: If Bear Grilles, the Man vs. Wild guy, finds a fly in his soup. Does he bother to take it out?

In other culinary news, the Tocci tomato harvest has begun. The plants are huge and some of the fruits are starting to turn red. It's about that time of year to eat tomato salad until we're sick of it.

Tocci's Simple Tomato Salad: Cut 1-2 large tomatoes into wedges, discarding any hard parts near where the stem was attached. Add about 1/4 cup chopped red onion and a handful of finely chopped fresh basil. Drizzle liberally with extra virgin olive oil. Optionally add a splash of balsamic vinegar. Give it a generous sprinkle of garlic salt, stir gently to mix, and enjoy.

This past weekend we attended a small cookout at Dave and Meri's home. We had a lot of fun but the highlight for me was their daughter Myla. A little more than a year old, she's already talking up a storm. She's a big fan of the movie Enchanted it seems, because she would often interject any conversation with "true love's kiss". But the best moment for me was when we were able to get her to say "use the force". Too funny.

Tocci Ponders: Why is there Latin writing on American money? Last I checked, we speak English here. There are no native Latin speakers. If there's going to be a second language on money, I would figure it would be Spanish like the signs at the Target stores.

On Monday, we attended a beer distributor's party at the Saw Mill on the Seaside Boardwalk. The food was pretty good but it was overcrowded as usual. We still had fun and walked the boardwalk afterwards. I won a box of fun dip on my first dollar (I always put my money on "white sis"... because I have one) and got to play my favorite punching game.

Summer links. Actually, all're links... even if there are only some of them.

• 20 Everyday Items If They Were Designed For Batman - There are some funny ones here. Incidentally, Heath Ledger is going to win an Oscar posthumously for his amazing performance in the Dark Knight.
• Weirdest Ice Creams Ever - Click on the beet flavored ice cream with shrimp to see the rest.
• Bowser's Minions - Mario's enemies have had enough of their restrictions. Poor Mario...