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One of these days I’m going to get around to posting most of the many cool online video links in this month’s Wired magazine, I really am, but until then you can check out

Oooh, Bitey!, a great little source of personal anecdotes told in cartoon form.

Then check back here to see if I’ve finally got my stuff together …

I’ve been way too wordy lately, so let’s keep these things brief:

1. We watched Mrs. Henderson Presents yesterday, and it was excellent.

3. G4TV‘s extensive coverage of E3, the super-huge electronic gaming convention, starts tomorrow, and you can read more information and download lots of videos on E3 Insider.

2. Comedian Don Rickles turned the big Eight-Oh today.

3. My windshield wipers, which were starting to come apart before our dry season started, and, with the recent rains, they started to shred this morning, so I had to replace them tonight.

4. I ordered four sets of 1″ buttons on Ebay a couple of weeks ago (Invader Zim, Clockwork Orange, Elvis Costello, and Pink Floyd) , and since they arrived today, I’ll have photos soon.

5. Today I was telling a co-worker how much I really, really like my new office space, when suddenly New Boss in Training appeared out of thin air and told me that since they failed to get me adequate storage space, I would probably have to move into the cattle pen with the rest of my department.

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Dang, this one sentence thing is harder to do than it looks …

This is for my wife (and anyone else who loves puppies), from the same source as the previous post:

Nine puppies vs. one cat. Warning: Possible cuteness overload …

And by the way, if you’re not already browsing Google Video and YouTube on a regular basis, you’ll find lots of videos for whatever you’re interests are …

Check this out: The Blue Ball Machine. Be sure to view full screen, including hitting F11 to minize the toolbars, then sit back and be dazzled.

Bonus points: The music is Danny Elfman’s “Breakfast Machine” from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Very appropriate.

(Via Dig Your Own Grave.)

I’m hauling out the raindrop bullet point, since we just got three rain storms in the past 36 hours — and some nice cool temperatures too, so I’m not complaining.

Last fall, I posted about The Go! Team, a British band that I first heard about on the Texas Tech radio station during a visit to Lubbock. I bring that up now because they were on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on Thursday. Since I’m trying not to stay up so late now that I’m going back to work, I recorded their performance and just now got around to watching it. They did “The Power is On”, which I like better on the album version, since the performance version was too muddled. Still, I got to see them perform, but I think I’d enjoy even more finding out more about all those 70s & 80s TV music samples they used on the album.

I am such a geek.

One of the things I’ve been working on the past couple of evenings is Google Sketchup, a really cool 3D drawing program that’s FREE.

So seriously, check it out and see what it does. Of course, if you’ve had years of experience with CAD/CAM (I’m talking to you, Spook), this may seem like old news, but it’s still fun to work with …

I went in to our new offices this afternoon, because New Boss in Training wanted pictures of the completed furniture, carpeting, bathrooms, etc., in order to send to the High Holy Corporate Office. Unfortunately, all those things weren’t even near finished, and it appears that he new that since he was there this morning, before I left my house.

So I took pictures anyway, and I might be told to go out again tomorrow. Everyone was also under the impression that all our packing boxes would be moved in, so I had planned to spend some of my time today unpacking my more important work to get started on first thing Monday morning, but that also was not to be, since the crates were still over at the old building.

Of course, being there helped me make up some of my time since I’ve just been working half days, and it was easier to be there a couple of hours today that to have stayed a couple of extra hours last week, since my back and ribs start hurting after four hours; plus, I got to talk to Vickie and Main Computer Guy, and got a little more unofficial scuttlebutt on the move and a few other topics.

Still, it would have been nice to have actually accomplished something for my sixty mile round trip …

I got so much done last night by getting my post out of the way quickly, let’s try it again:

- – We’re getting ready at work to move to the new offices; tomorrow is our last day (at least for the office people), so we all spent today making our best guesses at which pieces of our stuff we would need to do any urgent work that would come up today and tomorrow, and packing the rest into these cool red plastic packing crates with interlocking lids and a stackable design.

And sure enough, about halfway through the day my supervisor needed something I had packed away. Oh well. Anyway, even though there’s always the anxiety of the unknown when going to a new place, there’s also the excitement of moving into a place that’s been totally remodeled, with new furniture and carpet and everything.

I hear the parking sucks, but oh wel …

– Speaking of work: Hey, Vickie, I didn’t get to tell you that a comment you left here last fall is suddenly getting a whole bunch of hits the past couple of days!

You had cut and pasted one of the clues from a Lost teaser site, about the survivors leaving notes for the people back home. I’ve gotten lots of searches for words in what you posted, including “Michael Orteig”and “Sally Rafflethorpe”, so I’m guessing there must have been something in the media this week about those names …

So thanks!

– And speaking of Lost: Man oh man was that a bizarre ending last night! And the rest of Ana Lucia’s stories, both past and present, were pretty wild too. Bonus points: Sawyer bumping into Jack’s dad and Ana in Sydney and quoting Dustin Hoffman in “Midnight Cowboy”.

The only thing is, all these forced “shocking twists” is getting tiring, just like it did on Alias …

– And speaking of which: As of last night on Alias, Arvin Sloane has officialy once again gone back over to The Evil Side (for good this time, since the series is almost over), with no daughter and no chance of ever finding out the ultimate Rumbaldi secret.

Yawn …

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Job’s done! Now let’s get some work done …

Tonight I’m trying to balance doing an entertaining post with having to do get something accomplished, so here goes:

This video is aonly about 10 seconds long, so check it out: Watch for what comes out of the middle of the far right side of the screen:

(Click here if you can’t see the video above.)

Whoever that driver is needs several good kicks in the teeth.

Next: I was searching for more info on that video, but all I had to go on was the title, “Real Life Frogger”. I didn’t learn anything about it, but I did find this: Real Life Frogger with a re-engineered Roomba.

And in case you’re saying, “What is this Frogger of which you speak?”, you can learn something new (or refresh your memory of the early 80s) by playing Frogger here.

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Woo-hoo! I’m done in time to work on audio and graphics projects while I watch Lost …

Last week I read a review of a new cell phone with a built-in breathalyzer, to prevent drunk dialing. Now they need the same kind of thing to prevent drunk Ebay bidding.

I’ve never done that, but I hear it happens, and I tend to believe it. Heck, lots of people regret purchases made when they were stone-cold sober — but under the influence of auction fever.

I mention this is because last night, I made a few purchases — not in a fever, necessarily, but at least a mild inflammation.

It started with the idea that my off-brand, non-ISP-sanctioned, almost impossible to find in a local retail store DSL modem/router is nearing its second birthday, which would be a full year longer than the warranty, meaning that it could bite the big one any day now, and that getting a replacement this time would probably entail either ordering one online, which can be a tricky proposition without internet access, or else wait for the ISP to deliver one, and hope that I don’t forget now to check email in the interim.

Oh man that was a long single sentence.

But I digress:

So I decided to go shopping, and found a 99 cent starting price on a refurbished Netgear DSL modem/router … and the unexpected bonus of 802.11 wireless. Of course, I’ve already got a wireless router, but it too is an off-brand, and doesn’t always play nice with my old Win98′s Belkin wireless card.

Besides, it’s always good geek policy to have spare equipment of hand (having an extra Firewire card paid off last year when my company decided to have me produce training videos), and since spare equipment I was fishing for anyway, I figured let’s go for it.

It just so happened that I had bought from this Ebay store at least twice before, including a Logitech microphone headset just last week, and I recalled seeing some other shiny pieces of geek crow-bait, so I went browsing the virtual shelves, so I could get a shipping discount on subequent purchases, and, long story short, foundgreat deals on a USB gamepad game controller (can you believe I’ve never had a real controller for a PC?) for only 99 cents, a Netgear wireless PC card (to better coordinate with my new wireless router) for only 7 bucks, a Labtec Pulse speaker system for $10 (my current one is over six years old, and again, it’s not prudent to fail to have a spare, plus I don’t have one for my Linux system in the garage), and, something I’ve been needing for a long time, a RAID HD controller PCI card, so I can jam two more hard drives (which, BTW, I’ve already got lying around as spares) into my 24″ high Antec case; sweet, I’m 1334!

Dang, that was an even longer sentence; I think that cutting down on my pain pills is having a speedish effect on my posting …

BUT ANYWAY:

I also got 2 Smartmedia cards for my wife’s Privia digital keyboard, which she bought last fall about 30 minutes before every store in the city stopped carrying Smartmedia cards.

So anyway:

This is the kind of online shopping spree I go on when I’m totally straight.

Friends don’t let friends surf snockered.

Oh man, this is too cool! Video of the I/O Brush — so called because the same brush (which looks like an extra-large, old-fashioned shaving brush) handles the both the sampling of colors and motion, and the “painting” of the sample on a special screen. I had actually heard about this last fall, but I hadn’t seen all of the video, and anyway you can’t deny that it’s really really cool.

The bad news is that it’s only an art installation, and not available for sale — yet, anyway.

Seriously: DO NOT neglect to check this out:

(If you can’t see the video above, click here.)