UberPhipps

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Half way between man and myth…phipps

some good some bad

So I saw push with Matt on thursday. I was actually “pushing” to see taken but I settled for push only because of when we showed up at the theater. Needless to say…push is a definite pass. Not good. There was so much potential with this movie…but it never lived up to it. The action was really non existent. I think I am just going to skip any future movies that Chris Evans is in….. he tends to always be in such crap.

I saw Coraline on friday. Awesome. The movie does an incredible job of going between wonderful joy and absolute dread that it almost becomes hard to take in the visual marvel that surrounds you in 3-D….almost. In the end, I left the movie completely satisfied…and a little scared (It is surprisingly scary at times.)


Made creamy tomato soup and milanese pork chops on saturday…they both came out really well.


i am tired.

Weekend recap…

Friday night I played Texas Hold em for the first time with Matt & Jess and Jess’s bother and wife. It was fun. I basically kicked ass…if by basically you mean I never won…then yes..I kicked ass.

Saturday night I went to a wine tasting party at Lillian’s. It was actually a lot of fun (despite the fact that I don’t really drink anymore). I hadn’t seen Lillian and her bf in over 1.5 years. So it was good to see them both.
I think Lillian was trying to set me up with her friend…or rather…she definitely was and I didn’t realize until after the girl left and Lillian asked me what I thought of her. DOH.

Sunday… I watched the Super Bowl over at Matt & Jess’s place. I (we all but mostly me) cooked up a storm. I made a kick ass tomato blue cheese soup from scratch, a pineapple pie (again kick ass), and some buffalo chicken tenders. I would say it was overall a success and a lot of fun. Check out the random pictures from the day here.

It snowed again today. I am starting to hate snow. I forgot my gloves today..so I almost froze my hands off scraping my car off trying to head home. Yeah not fun.

When is groundhogs day?

Curious case of Forest Gump…

A lot of people are saying the curious case of benjamin button is very similar to Forest Gump. Eric Roth helped write both of them..so it would seem conceivable that they may have a few similarities. I personally liked both movies…but I never realized just how many similarities there were….

Curious case of Forest Gump

interesting….

results

So I have been using the Wii FIT for about a week now…..which means its time for me to ramble…

First off, I don’t own a scale. Never have. So the fact that I can now weight myself without having to jump on the scale at work which is used for mailing out packages is very nice. I also have to admit that I feel more guilty when I don’t play the game since it seems to talk shit to you when you don’t go on every day. I also like that I now have a goal in mind (even if it is unrealistic…gaining 10lbs in a month).
As for the actual exercises themselves…well the yoga is so so. It seems to be more basic stretching techniques with some elements of balance rather than full blown yoga. But I won’t complain…it serves as a good warm up. The strength exercises are either hit or miss. The push ups and crunches work just as you think they would…..so that is good. All the other strength exercises are “meh”, but seeing as I usually only did yoga, push ups, and crunches before I bought the Wii FIT this seems to be working out great in that it keeps me motivated. I do think I am going to start adding weights to the other exercises they recommend just to make it more difficult. That will probably help a lot.

So has anyone else seen the trailer for 9. This movie looks awesome. The movie is based on a short film by Shane Ackers which goes by the same name…”9″. That movie was nominated for an Animated Short Oscar, which in itself was awesome. But now…the film is being backed by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (you know the guy behind Night watch and Day watch)..2 major players in the visual eye candy department. This can only help Ackers original idea come to life.

Reading and more..

I am reading a new book. “The End of Oil” by Paul Roberts. So far it is a great book about the energy economy and the implications it has on the environment. Some of the facts that are presented in it are quite scary. When I read that by 2035 the oil demand will be 140 million barrels a day, which means that oil companies and oil sates will need to discover, produce, refine, and bring to market 140 million new barrels of oil every twenty-four hours, day after day, year after year, without fail my jaw dropped. Considering these numbers were based on current growth rates for the energy market (which means they are very conservative) we could have some huge problems real quickly.

I came into possession of a Wii Fit early this week. It is surprisingly cool. I set up a goal to gain 10lbs in a month. We shall see.

turnip search….

Yesterday was funny.  I arrived down in south jersey around 4pm.  My dad and I went to the grocery store with a list.  A list of groceries, some that I added others that Michelle added (my dad’s wife).  My dad and I had trouble deciphering the “Kiwi portion of the list” (I think packet noodles means ramen noodles??).  We also had trouble figuring out what a turnip was.  I honestly never knew what a turnip looked like.  We both sat there for a good 20 minutes looking at turnips thinking they were big radishes.  Eventually we looked up what a turnip was on my phone since the people working there had no clue either.  Thank you google.  Afterward, I felt like we had just gone through some sort of commercial for at&t

We both got a kick out of it.

happy thanksgiving

Google trends = good??

So google.org (the charitable portion of the huge billion dollar company) has been using the power of information and technology (all those hard drives…we are in the petabyte age) to address different global problems.  Google processes over a petabyte of information every 72 hours…it’s really about time they started putting all this information to use for the rest of us (and not for reasons of profiet either).

So yeah…evidently they can track flu outbreaks better than the CDC.  By correlating past flu outbreaks with “key” search terms (both in terms of IP location and search relevance) google is now able to predict flu outbreaks up to 2 weeks faster then the CDC.  This will result in vaccinations getting to key locations faster with better results.  This makes me happy.

Hopefully more ingenious tools like this are created (I know they are starting some data aggregation for clean energy…so we shall see)

I guess my only concern (as well as other people’s) is that google will be aggregating search results of just about everything for what ever they deem is appropriate and the idea of freedom while searching really won’t happen anymore.  What happens when certain people get flagged or quarantined by the government because of a certain aggregated search results of a community given to the government from google?

hmm.  It’s still pretty cool..as long as google doesn’t go all evil on us.

Deja Vu

“You got your
Big teeth with your big bite
You’re ripping off the wrong tag shaking off the right
Can you sink ships with your pink thighs?
The skin of the city is shaking at the sight
Of her, of her, of her, of her
It’s deja vu” - Karen O: yeah yeah yeahs

—–

So I get deju vu a lot.  It actually bothers me.  I don’t know if I get it because I have some sort of deficiency where my short-term memory sends wrong neuron signals to the area of my brain responsible for long-term memory.  As a result an event would be stored into memory before my brain is actually able to receive and process the information.  I tend to lean towards this being the reason (you know the whole science thing makes more sense than having precognition or clairvoyance as some would put it).  But even with me leaning towards this I still find it hard to explain when I have dreams that I remember and write down from months or years past and then feel the feeling of deja but later like I am going through the dream again.

Last night I had deju vu for 4 straight hours.  Very weird…but nice.

interesting links

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Canadian Halloween

This year I spent Halloween in Canada with my sister and her kids (my nieces and nephew).  Nothing brings back the memories of your own childhood like going trick or treating with children.  Everyone in my sisters family dressed up.  My sister, my mom, and all the girls were witches…while the boys (father and son) were Spider-man and Venom.  I of course was harry potter again (Stick with what you know).  It was a fun time.

One thing that was weird was that a lot of Christmas decorations were up as well on a few houses.  This really confused me until I realized that Thanksgiving in Canada is in early October so they don’t have any other holidays like the states have to break up the gap between Halloween and Christmas.  Even still…walking around Halloween night seeing Santa on houses made me immediately think of the “Nightmare before Christmas“.

Pictures from my trip are here.

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So it looks like Obama is our new president.  Very Cool.  I of course spent the elections hanging with Matt watching everything on TV.  It was actually fairly entertaining.

Speaking of Matt…his name as been showing up on Gossip Girl lately as the author of the fake “page six” for the NY Post.

NY Magazine ran a small blurb on “who is” Matthew Beebe in their most recent printing (its near the bottom).

“The author of the fake “Page Six” is a person called Matthew Beebe, instead of Richard Johnson. We assumed this was yet another person who worked on the show, but the only person with that name on IMDb is the “wheelchair camper” from Addams Family Values. Minus 1″

I asked Matt about this and evidently he has been helping out the graphic designer for the show a lot on set recently so she has been sneaking his name as the author of the fake paper they use for the show as sort of payback.  Very cool.

—–

I am finishing up the book Choke.  I love it.  Fantastic book.  So many good lines that make me laugh..yet somehow the book always make me think about life more than I anticipated I would.  Interesting.

Bad month for parking

It hasn’t been a good month for me in terms of parking….

What is on my mind

Photos

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