I’m going to take this post to explain a little bit about myself. Mostly, I’m a rational human being. I tend to rely on facts and reasoning to make my decisions, not really accepting something because “that’s the way it is”. This is something that lead to a powerful internal struggle with my faith some years back, before I ended up on the path that I did. But during that quest of mine I explored many different options as far as what was out there.

Among them was astrology. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: this is just some bullshit superstition mumbo-jumbo. And to a point, you’d be right. The horoscopes on your Facebook profile or in the newspaper are bullshit. Those creepy gypsy fortune tellers are probably bullshit as well. But when I talk about astrology, I’m talking primarily zodiac charts. I was a heavy skeptic at first, then the more time went by, the more I saw more and more coincidences in what people are like in correlation to when they were born. It sounds stupid and ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t explain it. 

I’ve found more and more symptoms of astrological compatibility as time goes by. From being able to gage how people will react based on their birthday to the people I’ve found myself attracted to. I know I’m not going to make any believers out of this post, but for those curios go pick up this book, it’s like a manual for people and has been most helpful in my journeys. Check it out.

So anyways, with this in mind, I happened to have a conversation struck up with my last night with one of my brother’s comrades from work. Me and this girl get to talking, and the more the conversation goes the more I feel like I’m having a conversation with myself. It wasn’t simply one of those instances where we have a lot in common as far as liking a lot of the same things, but this was an instance of almost everything we said to each other, be it our likes or dislikes, personalities, character flaws, wants, outlooks on life, etc. It was starting to weird me out so I cut her off mid-sentence and asked her what her birthday was, sure enough we had the same one. 

I found myself talking to my astrological doppleganger. It was strange, talking to someone who feels the same way on most things that I do. Its as though you can’t ask “How do you feel about ____”, because you already know.

I’m a bit curious how to handle someone exactly like myself. It’ll be interesting.

So last week I found something that somewhat irked me. Ice cream trucks are usually awesome, as it means you’ll be getting ice cream. However there’s something extremely creepy about some cat who is selling ice cream…and calling himself Uncle Ron. The proof’s in the pudding. Check it out.

Now it gets weird. Think for a second about what kind of guy might be calling himself Uncle Ron. Immediately, I thought of everyone’s favourity cartoon homosexual pedophile, Herbert from Family Guy.

Boy was I wrong. As it turned out, the real “Uncle Ron” was even more disturbing. He gave me a good look, while preparing to service this young boy with a pink bracelet.

What’s disturbing here isn’t that Uncle Ron looks like an ex-con or someone who traded in his Harley for an ice cream truch. Or that he might even be selling cocaine out of that truck. The part of all of this that will frighten you beyond words is that you have probably seen Uncle Ron before.

Now you’re asking “Where would I have seen this creepy dude before?”

Uhm, ever see Clerks 2?

Yah. Take a better look.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any ice cream.

I’ve seen some pretty interesting server errors on all platforms, and they always come up when you don’t suspect it. Take for example, me at Meijer the other day. I go to price check an item only to be stopped by a price scanning system that has failed under windows server for a “Incorrect string input”. wow.

Click for full size.

OK So I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve been super busy with a million things and had to take a few weeks off. My sidekick is in the shop. My Macbook Logic board died and had to get replaced. I renewed my NAPP membership. I renewed my LP membership. I got an xbox 360 so I could play GTA4 (now you know where my time has gone).

My loft looks like shit. There is garbage and clothes all over the place. I need to clean it. And I will soon, but things have been going back and fourth from GTA, Homework, School, and hanging out. Not neccessarily in that order. But I have found time for some other random stuff that will work it’s way over into the Photoshop section of this website at some point. I’ve been posting up in the NAPP battleground, here’s some of my stuff

This is a CD cover, we had to make the band name a random wikipedia entry, the album name the last 4 words of a random quote generator, and the cover had to be a random SXC.HU image.

Here someone posted an eyeball and we were supposed to do whatever we could with it. This is what I got:

And this sucker is the result of battle for week 114. The image was a shield with crossed swords, and we had to make what we wanted out of that. I was a little unorthodox in my methods.

More posts and ramblings coming soon.

I had originally written off the prospects of going to Washington DC for tax day, just because I thought it would end up being too expensive or not work within my schedule.

Funny how things change.

After finding out that there were still spots on a convoy from South Dakota to Washington DC passing through Ohio I decided that it would be worth it to hop onm board. It’ll only be one day, we’re just going for the rally/protest then taking off right afterwards.

It should be interesting. I’ll make sure to grab my extra camera batteries.

I’ve partnered with Mippin to provide a mobile version of Conveniently Misplaced. This is better than the iPhone version that was on here as it provides a full mobile browsing experience for full articles, not just a preview with the article names.

Check it out at

http://m.cruzweb.net

Hash Bash and The Breakfast pictures are up, check it out here. 

I went to Ann Arbor yesterday, not because it was the annual Hash Bash, but because I wanted to see The Breakfast, some old clients of mine back when my life was nothing but college and freelance web design work.

I’ll work on getting the pictures from everything up online, but the thing that amused me the most was the religious presence in Ann Arbor. At the corner of University and State, there were people taking turns standing on a platform yelling at passers by about how everyone was going to hell from sin, less they repent immediately. It’s one of those things you think you’ll never really see in person. For those who missed it, I remembered that my digicam does video. It’s great how the kids just kinda laugh in their faces.

Interestingly enough, the bible-thumpers weren’t the only ones bringing their message of love, there was also a small parade of Hare Krishnas wandering about.

After I stopped filming, I heard someone say “If I had to choose between 2 religions, and one was telling me what an awful person I was and the other said ‘Lets go out in the street to dance and sing!’, I know what choice I would make”.

Well put. The Christians were calling people out, pointing at them as they walked through the crosswalk, telling people that they lead lives of sin and were going to die because of it. Had this been in Detroit, they probably would have gotten killed themselves.

A lot of people like to dog Detroit for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because we have some of the world’s most beautiful buildings and they’re rotting away. Maybe it’s because our Mayor is a total douche, or that our economy is non-existent and unemployment is a pandemic.

But seriously, where else in the world can you find a truck like this with a DEALER PLATE on it?

I saw this while driving today and had to snap the shot (you can see the font of my hood in the picture). Yes I Photoshopped out the rest of the license just as a courtesy of the driver.

Either way, this is pretty absurd. Sometimes, you just gotta love Detroit for stuff like this.

This is some video I shot in late 2006 at Game Crazy, this is what is done to the merchandise when people aren’t looking. Watch the video, then read all about it below.

I don’t remember who started the whole thing, but I believe it started with this little soccer ball that came either as a promo for Fifa07 or Mario Strikers or something like that. Then it evolved into this game where you would stand back, bounce the ball off the floor and see what you can hit off the shelf. How many points you get would be equal to the value of the game you hit, if you got the price tag, if you knocked down multiple copies, and it depended on if you just hit the game, knocked it on the shelf, or knocked it on the floor. There were multiple times where this happened, but this is the only time I was there with my camera to record it all. I edited out all the crap and just got the highlights of it all.

The store was still open for business, for the first half of the video where I’m not playing you can see I’m hiding behind some demo units. My camera bag was nestled in between them and it we saw a customer coming in I would put my camera back in the bag quickly and someone would grab the ball. In a couple of rounds you can see people checking over into Hollywood Video or looking outside to make sure that there are no customers  were coming. There were a few close calls but nothing ever came of it.Most of those PS2 games got a good beating out of it, and it was a substantial amount of fun.

Of course there were security cameras but the video is only in the system for a certain amount of time, and even so, they are only reviewed by the manager if there is substantial reason to review them (like they think someone is stealing or something). The district manager may also check the tapes, but that hardly ever happens regardless.  All the people who partook in this event no longer work there, which is why it’s been sitting on my computer for all this time.The last person in the video who worked there finally quit last week, so it’s all good (another one quit a while ago another was fired for another reason).

So if you’re wondering why you get a game that is rattling from a video game store, there may be a good reason for it.

Enjoy.

Props to Clovis Bowman for some input as to what I should do with the video, he is the only one besides me to see it before it went online.