Year: 2003

Going to Pittsburgh – Ride to the Airport?

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I found a reasonable fare (and non-stop flights, no less), and I’m going back to Pittsburgh next weekend (July 18-20).

To Pittsburgh:

  • Flight: US Airways flight 842
  • Depart: Dallas/Ft Worth, TX (DFW) - Terminal B
  • - Fri, Jul 18 at 11:10am
  • Arrive: Pittsburgh, PA (PIT)
  • - Fri, Jul 18 at 2:56pm

Back to Dallas:

  • Flight: US Airways flight 903
  • Depart: Pittsburgh, PA (PIT)
  • - Sun, Jul 20 at 11:45am
  • Arrive: Dallas/Ft Worth, TX (DFW) - Terminal B
  • - Sun, Jul 20 at 1:35pm

Anyhow, would anyone be able to give a ride to or from the airport? I’d probably need to get to the airport around 10am next Friday, which would mean leaving my apartment around 9:15am.

Tuna Cones?

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

I’m on various recipe mailing lists, and I got this one from WhatsInTheFridge. I’m usually fairly open to new foods, but this one just didn’t sound particularly appetizing to me.

Tuna Cones
by Derek Knight

  • 1 can (6 1 /2-oz.) chunk light tuna
  • 1 /4 C. mayonnaise
  • 1 small dill pickle
  • 4 ice cream cones (flat bottomed)
  • 4 black olives

Open tuna and drain off liquid. Put tuna into bowl and add mayonnaise. Chop up the pickle and put in bowl too. Stir it all up. Fill the cones with scoops of your tuna mixture and top with the olives. Serves 4.

from Judi Leaming’s newsletter

I like tuna, and I like ice cream cones, but I’m hesitant to combine them. It’s not the texture, but I think it’s the sweet nature of the cones mixed with the savory tuna — perhaps if the “cones” were made out of toasted pita bread, that might work better :-/.

The Italian Job

Ashley Bischoff7 Comments

(no spoilers.) I went to see The Italian Job with Connie and Michael on Friday evening. It’s good popcorn-entertainment and I was able to just relax and enjoy it. In some ways, its playful tone reminded me of Ocean’s Eleven — if you liked that movie, you'll probably like this one as well (trivia: Ocean’s Twelve is scheduled for a 2004 release).

It’s rated 67 / Generally Favorable at MetaCritic, which I think is fair (MetaCritic computes a score based on the reviews of several dozen online and dead-tree movie critics). For what it’s worth, Ocean’s Eleven got 75, which is also “Generally Favorable”.

Before going, I hadn’t even seen any trailers or commercials for the movie (though I had seen a segment about it on Ebert & Roeper). But, that was probably all for the best since the trailer — which I watched last night — gives away virtually every spoiler in the film (and I’m not linking to the trailer for that reason). A couple quotes from critics which I think capture the essence of the film:

Wall Street Journal / Joe Morgenstern: “The best car commercial ever, an absolute triumph of product placement, and great fun as a movie in the bargain.”

Washington Post / Stephen Hunter: “For two hours, the bliss of the brainless fluff is yours for the asking. It cheerfully puts the escape back in escapism.”

Entertainment Weekly / Owen Gleiberman: “There's a fair amount of filler in The Italian Job, but it all boils down to the big heist, which has been staged as if it were Fort Knox being robbed by Evel Knievel.”

As an audiophile, I had a minor quibble with one of Seth Green’s lines. He was talking about what he’d like to buy and named a receiver from NAD “with Burr-Brown DACs”. However, he pronounced the letters D-A-C, whereas I’ve only heard “DAC” pronounced as a single word :-/.

Rolled BMW M3

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I heard about this from one of the LSC BMW CCA mailing lists. And, of all places, this picture sequence of a BMW M3 rolling over was posted on a Mazda 6 message board. The shots must have been taken in continuous-shot mode since there’re ten shots but I can only imagine that it occured within a span of a couple seconds. I’m interested in any conjectures on what the continuous-shot framerate may have been (some cameras with this feature allow selectable framerates).

You’ll also notice that they’re meta-photographs and, even though they turned out well, I would think that the originals would be even better.

In some ways, my favorite picture is #4 — you could just about caption it “This is the last instant where you’ll see your windshield intact and roof taut. Enjoy it for now.” Schadenfreude aside, you can really feel the fellow’s heartwrench in that last shot. See also more shots of the aftermath further down in this thread.

Turning the Tables on Employers

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Dave Suthibut is an unemployed San Fransisco resident. Sick of the way employers were treating job candidates in this economy, he decided to turn the tables and move forward as if it were 1998 once more:

Well, as one of those desperate job seekers who sent out thousands of resumes to jobs I felt I was qualified for — and who was treated with thinly veiled ennui by the few interviewers with whom I managed to gain face time — I finally decided enough was enough. […] If they were going to act arrogant and self-important, then I was going to respond in kind — by appplying to jobs using the most obnoxious, aggressive attitude I could muster. I decided to begin all email job inquiries by asking how much they were paying, and how many vacation days I would get. I also adopted a terse, blunt writing style that made it sound like I was doing employers a favor just by inquiring about the job. Bascially, I decided to act like a complete asshole, because, in my opinion, that's how many employers were (and still are) acting.

Courageous and hilarious? Yes — he even manages to muster the tone of Office Space’s Lumbergh at times. But is this a smart job-finding strategy? Hmm, I don’t think so ;). (via fuckthatjob)