apparently it's been going around that the next major release (1.5) for firefox is gonna happen tomorrow. check the mozilla site tomorrow to see if it's out.

so after work today, i stopped @ my fav supermarket to pick up stuff for lunch tomorrow. i was walking down the healthy food aisle and found spiced pumpkin pie cliff's bars. they are frickin awesome. i guess they're limited edition/seasonal. i think i'm gonna go back tomorrow and buy a box or two.

i'm really tired.

if gandalf was talking about the bills in rotk... this would be the perfect line from that movie.

"There never was much hope. Just a fool's hope"

the bills are the biggest bunch of scrubs.

the sabres on the other hand... 5-0-0-1 in their last 6, after a horrendous start to november. marty made 40 saves against montreal. they're still without briere, dumont, miller, noronen... it seems like half their team's out... but we've been piling up the w's lately.

ok that's all.

not quite yet... i'm way tired. met a nice grad student @ ub from taiwan who's finishing up her music performace degree on the piano. going to try and make plans.

still have to sift through some new music reco's. tc suggested the stereophonics...

Devil - Sterophonics

Ever dance with the devil baby? Oh no
Make my day
Do you feel lucky? Oh no
Tomorrow's another day
Can you walk on water maybe? Oh no
Turn water into wine?
Can I buy you a drink there lady? Oh no
Can you tell me another lie?

So be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star
Be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star

Have I seen you somewhere baby? Oh no
I need another line
Are you living the dream there lady? Oh no
Can I tell you what's inside?

So be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star
Be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star

Stop the car there baby! Oh no
You can't handle the truth
So what's the point then lady? Oh no
If ya can't stand to play and lose

So be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star
So be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star
Be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star
Be my Devil Angel
Be my shooting star
Bye bye Angel
Be my Devil

hey there...

hope everyone over on the US-side had a good thanksgiving holiday. over here... spent it with my fam, and some family friends... played some pictionary... was dragged out to shop today. two things about this. 1) pictionary is perhaps one of the best games out there. i really miss playing pictionary by our high school rules... which involved lots of shouting, insults, and led to someone getting sat on, wrestled to the ground, etc. fun times. i still have yet to find a group of friends who play pictionary like it's some kind of work out. 2) i dislike shopping. i dislike shopping even more when there are crowds. i'm not one of those people who tries things on.

mr. miyagi died. so sad.

booked my tix to new york/philly. prices went up since last week... and the day on which i wanted to leave was booked solid already... so i'm leaving the 29th... because apparently that's the only day left. flying in to LGA this time. looking forward to getting out of here.

everyone have a good friday night. hittin up with anchor bar for dinner with some old willie north friends.

Everything is coming up rosy and grey
Ah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow warms me today
And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away, 'cause
Everything is rosy and grey
--the lowest of the low--

why is tom cruise such a frickin psycho? who goes out and buys a sonogram machine? wtf's up with that?

ummmm... i'm gonna go now *rapid succession of footsteps, sound of a door slamming, sound of a car starting, tires squealing down the road*

gothamist post on nytimes nyc article from 1955.

so i don't have to go to work or go to school for the next 4 days! woo-hoo! i find it kinda interesting that when people say woo-hoo now, most say it like homer simpson. so i have to write a thing about who i want as my research advisor and why i want to work in their lab. one of my choices is working on isolating a possible new signal protein antibody of erythrocytes during rbc development which causes apoptosis (cell death) of the rbc. the other lab i'd like to work in focuses specifically on novel binding antibodies to metastatic cells in order either attach possible chemo-agents so that specific attack of cancer cells is promoted. or... help identify those metastatic/cancer cells when used with techniques such as flourometry, etc to help with early detection and assurance.

one of my classmate's roomate is raising money for the leukemia & lymphoma society by running a marathon. if you wish/want to contribute... please do. here's his training blog, and here's his fundraising site.

more later.

semester is slowly ending. we had our first decent accumulation of snow yesterday north of buffalo, though most of it has melted by now. it seemed as if everyone was relearning how to drive in the snow again as i was coming back from campus. i think that now everyone has gotten their first dose, the next time a storm hits travel will be a little quicker.

after looking @ possible flights to philly... it seems as if i'd be paying about $150 more than if i went to the city from buffalo. i guess a viable option could be to fly into new york, and take nj transit down to the septa.

the sky looks awesome today.

i had been working on building a database query for the last three days @ my internship. basically i was building it off of a large table with all sorts of billing and financial information that i initially had no idea how to make head or tails of. it took me quite awhile to figure all that stuff out and set the right criteria so that out of approx 50,000+ entries for each month from jan 05 - nov 05, about 20 people would show up for each month in question. props go to DW for knowing the frontend of the app so we could piece together the backend of the table in question. query building has an almost game-like quality to it. it's like a giant puzzle... here's a crapload of disparate info, now build something so that it's useful. i love it when things work.

there's a proposal on the table for new years in philly. so maybe i won't get down to the city until summertime =[. what're your new years plans?

i need new music... TC suggested the new stereophonics album. any other ideas? i also need some more dress shirts and pants for work.

AF suggested a snow hike next... maybe we can do chessnut ridge, and go sledding too.

it's supposed to snow tonight!

stay warm and drink some hot chocolate.

went down to TNP to walk the paths with AF & co yesterday. due to the county imploding and cutting funding to the science museum we were met with "the preserve is closed" signs (which we had no idea about until we got there). we forged on anyways... so i guess we were trespassing for about 3 hours. it was a great day to be out... relatively warm, good wind, and just to be out in south buffalo with the grain elevators in sight.

it was a nice and relaxing weekend. another week and a half until turkey day... and i'll get to see some people coming home i haven't seen in awhile.

hope all yalls weeks started out ok.

martin biron is killing me. he's so inconsistent. i think when the goalie is this inconsistent, the team follows. once three goals go in and the middle of the second period hasn't yet been reached, any team would be deflated. in fact, any team that plays an away game up in canada will need their goalie to be on the top of his game to have any chance at all. that's what happens when you pack in ~20,000 home fans screaming for blood in an ice arena. unfortunately for the sabres, biron has never been a night after night goalie.

i suppose i can take comfort in the fact that we still own the leafs @ home here... but i won't... because we followed up that game with another blowout. i say ruff should put noronen in and see what happens... until miller gets back in the lineup. sorry marty, i've seen enough of you.

it sure has been a bad day for my teams. wisconsin lost too, so they're pretty much out of the big ten champ picture. should i be glad the ub football finally won a game?

hopefully the weather will cooperate tomorrow... the plans to go hiking are still on.

picked up my new contacts... now i just have to pickup a snowboard with bindings and boots, and i'll be all set to fall on my arse a couple hundred times this winter. december's quickly approaching and i'm so ready for the snow and trips down to kb and hv.

enjoy the last part of your saturday and your sunday!

screw football. sabres-leafs tonight.

it's friday!

have a good one.

you have no idea how good i'm feeling today... not having to bury myself in books.

turns out i did better than i expected on the biochem. the instrumental analysis is up in the air. i don't think i did well on it at all. as it was the last and final test i studied for this week, my body and brain kinda gave out that last night. on the plus side... we get to drop an exam grade. i'm not too worried about the pub health princ exam... but it took a lot outta me studying for it. lots of info presented in a very short time. it was like studying for a history test of minor details. it wasn't just good enough to grab the concepts and run with em like i usually do.

so... i'm gonna take it easy for a couple days... and start unofficially studying again so i can finish out the semester strong. hopefully the weather will hold sat... and i'll make it out to somwhere where there are trees and leaves. maybe instead of the gorge i'll do the waterfront and tift nature preserve. maybe i'll take some pics. i haven't been looking @ the trees or anything lately... but yesterday as i was going to my internship @ bc i was rather taken aback at how nice autumn is. bcbs is headquartered by canisius, which is in a residential neighborhood off main st. so as i was walking in, i had a very nice treelined view of the entire street with leaves of all colors littering the old stock of houses, sidewalk, and road. it was quite a sight. i'd never find this kind of a view in new york city... not with trees of this age. then i found myself thinking that it's so sad that it's been so long that i've just stopped and taken in the view.

don't forget... $0.05 pies @ lombardi's today!!

btw i love that scene in tlotr which i quoted in the title. the elation that smeagol has in his voice is just awesome.

give it up for breathing room. talk about your hump-days. seminar went bad, 3 exams... no good either. total amount of sleep since sunday? somewhere between 10-12 hours. i lost count once a long time ago. i'd been trying to do stay up most of the night these last couple nights... taking 30 min "power naps" between studying. last night... i was totally drained and after waking up from the naps, i was all out of sorts.

so anyways. lots of news on the political front after election day... too tired to go into too much detail... but... buffalo has it's first african-american mayor (+++), but he's a career politician (-). my hope is brown can turn this place around. he does have one thing going for him... he moved here from OUTSIDE the area. so technically... he's at least experienced how things are away from here. on the more local front... the town of amherst has a new town supervisor... beating out the incumbent democrat who's been in charge for over 15 years in a republican town nonetheless! the new supervisor is satish mohan... an ASIAN! running on the republican line. though i'm a registered democrat... i think this whole turning over is a good thing. gov't needs to get shaken up every once in awhile. more on this all later.

before taking off... things i found funny...

got my last paycheck from working @ the computing center (maybe for good). i'm going to miss getting income from the state of new pork.


funny tech-related cartoon from eweek a couple issues ago...


i really like ibm's ad campaign with the helpdesk, and server consolidation.




that's it for now. enjoy your thur!

for a weekend. all i have to do is make it through wed this week. by then, i will have finished with 3 exams and a seminar presentation (i HATE public speaking... especially when i don't know what i'm talking about =]).

i hope the weather holds out next weekend. it may be the last weekend to head out and go hike the gorge before it gets too cold. i've been meaning to go out hiking all fall so far and have not gotten out once cause i keep falling behind with the work. very frustrating!

here's the article about the car blowing up.

imout. have a good sunday.

i was driving back from south campus after a long day. as i turned the corner from bailey to maple on my way to get gas before going home... i looked over @ the parking lot of martin's supermarket. i saw the engine compartment of a minivan engulfed in flames. so i had to pull into the parking lot to check it out. unfortunately i couldn't get close enough to take a pic (some things in the engine compartment did end up exploding). the best angle was actually from the street... but before i could break out the cam to my phone the light turned green. plus the cam on my phone isn't so good @ these pics with distance, and through dirty windows. you can see the smoke, and the slightly orange tinge of flames through the parked cars in front though.

it was all very strange.

wtf? that car is on fire! 

a car was on fire today in the parking lot of a supermarket 

yay for taxes! ny state continues to be the champion in taxes. ok just to set the record straight, i'm not one of those fiscally conservative republicans clamoring that taxes should always be cut. i think taxes are a neccessary if not good part of a socially responsible society. people that need help should get help. we should have universal healthcare in this country, or some means of getting everyone cheap health insurance. that being said... there's a lot of waste in new york state. government is totally bloated here. case in point, look at the erie county legislature, look at the city of buffalo. both governments are under control boards, both refuse to cut spending by the needed amount to get things right. the civil service unions for some reason can't seem to get a grasp that we need big change and do not want to give an inch in labor negotiations. this is a state that is losing population to the south and west... it has been for years now. instead of cutting services to the appropriate levels for the population of residents, we keep all of them. the only way to pay for these services is to tax the residents more offsetting state income lost from people leaving. it's a total downward spiral, because the more people are taxed the more government pushes people to leave (even if they went down to pennsylvania there'd be a huge savings in taxes). maybe i'd complain less if every resident had health coverage, or if all of the taxes from upstate didn't go downstate to new york. incomes upstate on average can't match the incomes of people who work in new york city, so the taxes are a larger percentage out of people's paycheck everywhere else in the state. right now, i don't own a home or anything so the one tax that jumps out at me is the income tax.

New York has no peer in the category of state and local income taxes, pulling in $1,844 per person from that source. That's far and away the highest figure in the nation
The typical state collected $802 in income taxes in 2001-02. New York is 130 percent above that average.

ok... so i pretty much could have an extra $1000/year in my pocket if i moved to a "typical" state in the country.

here's a rant. i hate people who can't seem to turn off their cell phones during times when they shouldn't be on. it's even worse when there's a bad cell phone ring set to the loudest level available on the phone. these people should be shot. why people aren't considerate of others i have no idea. i want to thank all the people who have crappy ringtones that go off in my classes. thank you for letting me experience the highest of level of auditory bliss. i can finally die now... my life is complete. i totally love this article. whenever cell phones go off at inappropriate times, the person who's phone went off should be called out and individually recognized for being a dick. i bet that will get people to turn off their phones... or at least put them on VIBRATE!

HAHAHA... there aren't even words to describe that article.

talk about a good old fashioned butt whoopin. so went to the game with my dad tonight. 10-4 sens. 14 goals in 1 game. it was totally ridiculous. that would have been the goal output of the sabres in a month in the old nhl. havlat and alfredsson had 4 goals apiece. biron got pulled, noronen got put in, then got pulled, and biron got put back in. ok... so both the goalies had only played in 1 game between the two of them before tonight. 10 goals though? there's been a bunch of talk about trading one of them because we supposedly have 3 "starting" goalies... i don't know how many takers we'll get for either now. i will say this. it's nice to have hockey back. it's nice to walk into hsbc arena and smell the ice. to have canadians mingling in the arena. there was a lot of representation from ontario tonight. a group behind us were from TO, we had some ottawa fans sitting below us. it was good to hear a bunch of people with canadian accents. canadians enunciate all their words so well. canadian english is very nice on the ears, unlike buffalo accents with the long and flat vowels.

the ub grad student association had tix for friday's game against the habs which i would've loved to have gone to, but i have 3 exams next week and a seminar presentation to give. btw i'm totally screwed for all of them.

tired. night.

i saw something which i found really funny... i have to post these things when i think of them, since my memory is totally shot in my "old age" =].

a co-worker was using this as part of their auto-reply away email message:
"the energizer bunny was arrested yesterday because of battery."

it's really bad... i know... but too funny.

oh, and actually another thing. on world news tonight sunday, they did a profile of a one of a kind company. i think i've found my dream company to work for way way way down the line after all the school. they seem to be doing everything i'm interested in.

one world health