Hung Truong: The Blog!

Sorry Arturo, It’s Over.

I deleted all the Arturo Sandoval MP3s I had on my hard drive. Why? Because I realized that Arturo Sandoval is kind of a hack. Sure, he can play some pretty high notes, but everything else he does is pretty crappy. Like having an album cover for “I Remember Clifford” with Clifford Brown and himself in the same pose. Sorry, Arturo, you’re not Clifford Brown, and it’s over. Also, your version of the titular song is wayyyyy too fancy. In a bad way.

I’ll still listen to Maynard Ferguson, though, since he’s pretty fun, and he never compared himself to dead Jazz legends.

Go Bluegle!

So before the Michigan/Notre Dame game yesterday, I went to some “Google Tailgate” thingy. Basically, some tents were set up for people to enter and be brainwashed into the cult of Google. Or something like that.

We actually arrived pretty late, but there were still free things to be acquired. Like a girl was walking around asking Google/Ann Arbor questions, and if you got it right, you’d get a maize Google shirt! I have to say, this shirt is freaking awesome. It’s wearable to game days plus it has the Google logo on it!

The questions ranged from easy to difficult. I was with two other friends, and the Googlers allowed us to combine our powers to summon Captain Planet (or at least to answer questions).

The first one was “What is Google’s motto?” In a mental lapse unbecoming of me, I said “Do no evil” when it’s really “Don’t be evil.” Oh well, they gave me the shirt anyway (It’d be kind of ironic for them not to, what with the motto saying not to be evil and all).

The second one was “What unusual thing does Borders (in Ann Arbor) and Google allow in their buildings?” The girl gave us a hint that it wasn’t something like “books.” Since when are books unusual? I said it was probably dogs, since Google lets employees take their dogs to work. I didn’t know Borders did though. And indeed, we got shirt #2.

The last question was “Who is Google’s CEO?” Who knows this crap? Well, I do, and my friend did, but we’re nerds. So we went 3/3. Thanks, Eric Schmidt!

There was also a bowl ‘o pens that I ransacked (I already have a green pen from my interview, but I decided to add a blue one to my collection) and some free ice cream.

One last observation: It’s pretty obvious that the Google office in Ann Arbor is an adwords office. I say this because all of the employees I saw are beautiful, beautiful people. Whereas the Googleplex has some smokin’ HR people and, well, engineering people. Note that I am not beyond calling myself an engineering person.

Fin.

So I Moved To Ann Arbor…

Just to get that out of the way… Also, I’ve just started getting back into my usual routine. Which consists of napping, waking up groggy, reading blogs, and even writing in my personal blog!

Notes since the last post:

• Meijer is pronounced “Meyer” and not “Major.”
• Kroger is like identical to Smiths
• Dreyer’s ice cream is called Edy’s for some strange reason.
• Moving into an apartment from scratch requires buying a LOT OF SHIT!
• My new microwave is really high maintenance. Which is to say that it gets mad when I forget there’s hot food in it.
• The Michigan Football team sucks. Is this bizarro Ann Arbor!?
• I have to do laundry with coins now. So getting a quarter is about as ceremonious (and awesome) as getting a Shine in Mario.

More later, unless I forget the password to this blog.

Will it Blend? That is the Question.

So I was turned on to the “Will it Blend” phenomenon a while back when an Apple iPhone was blended. “Will it Blend” is a video podcast of sorts featuring a mad scientist type guy blending random objects that probably shouldn’t be blended.

Objects range from the aforementioned iPhone to Tiki Torches to (my personal favorite) Halloween glow sticks. The episodes take a pretty formulaic approach. The scientist guy talks about what he’s going to blend, picks a mode (like smoothie) and blends the item. The camera shows the item being blended initially, then pans out to show the dude in an awkward position, blending the object.

Once blending has commenced, the scientist dude opens the blender top. Then the phrase “___ smoke, don’t breath this” will occur. And the verdict? Yes, it blends! How could we for even one second doubt the blending power of Blendtec blenders!?

Of course, reason that everything blends is probably due to the fact that Blendtec produces the show as well as the blenders. Still, it’s pretty damn entertaining for a random video podcast. Plus when they do change up the format, it’s awesome. Sort of like if you were watching Scooby-Doo and it turned out that the ghosts were real, or Scooby was actually a ghost, or if Velma and Daphne started making out like they did in the movie!

Illustrated HTTP Error Codes

Via Boingboing, I found these awesome Illustrated HTTP Error Codes.

HTTP error codes are inherently funny to me, because of the all the possible double entendre possibilities involved. I mean, there’s 411: Length Required, 402: Payment Required (!), 414: Requested URL Too Long… The crude joke potential is just too high! In fact, Thinkgeek has a line of HTTPanties that exploits this very fact.

But these illustrations don’t pander to the lowest common denominator. Some of them are funny, like the dog that’s too big for his house (Requested Entity too large). Others are just kinda dumb. But the fact that someone drew these means there’s a bigger nerd out there than I. And I, for one, salute Ape Lad.