Tailgating...or Moving Your Living Room Outside?

Alright, so this weekend, like a good Purdue student, I attended the Purdue vs. Notre Dame game. And of course, I tailgated the entire day before the game. While I was there, I was looking around in complete awe at the amount of technology that can be found while tailgating! I'm not talking about the normal grills with the little propane tank. We're talking about satellite dishes hooked up to 32" flat screen TVs. I guess that is the sign of a committed tailgater nowadays. I literally walked by an RV that had a TV that was in the side panels of the vehicle, a TV sitting outside on a table, and a TV inside. It was ridiculous, why on earth would you need 3 TVs at a tailgate? (To watch multiple games and see how the competition is doing is the obvious, though ridiculous, answer.

I passed one guy listening to the game on a radio, it seemed so primitive even though that's relatively young technology if you think about it, I mean, the first radio broadcast was in 1915, which is less than 100 years ago!

Our own tailgate was comparatively lacking to others in the technology department, but it was still pretty amazing if I do say so myself. For a bunch of college kids and recent alumni, I was impressed, though I think it was those alumni that really made it happen. We had 2 tables full of food...pasta salad, buffalo chicken dip, deviled eggs, brownies, chips and salsa, potato chips, a veggie plate, pretty awesome. Then there was the meat! Of course we had hot dogs, burgers, and brats. But Devin smoked an 8 lb. pork butt and a 7 lb. brisket. It was DELICIOUS! He smoked it for about 8 hours and it was just fantastic.

This is (some of) the group of people at our tailgate.

One last little blip about technology, in case I haven't fulfilled my requirements for class yet. My brother came down for the game with some of his friends. One thing that I cannot get over is the fact that they got down here by telling me that they "had a general idea of where they were going." What does this mean? That they had a Garmin and just put in "Purdue" to get here. No maps, no written direction of any kind. Just a little mechanical contraption to direct them the entire 2.5 hours that they were in the car. Did they get here without a hitch? Of course not because Garmin can't tell you that there are policemen all over the place directing traffic and since they didn't have a map they didn't know where to go when they were redirected and silly little Garmin lady couldn't figure things out as fast as traffic was moving (not very quickly through campus, but still quickly enough that she was lost). So the epic failure of Garmin of course led to the inevitable use of cell phones to figure out where they were going...again, no map, not that they would know how to read it anyway, what could they possibly ever use that skill for now that they have Garmin and GPS and MapQuest to give them step by step directions? So up the hill and down the road I was running to try and catch up with their car while they tell me their each and every move over the silly cell phone that slips out of your hand as you run because the creators never imagined that you would have to try to catch a car while using it, just marveling about the fact that this is all just nuts. Completely pistachios.

Cloudy with a Chance, Cloudy with a Chance, Cloudy with a Chance of M-e-e-e-e-atballs!

Alright, so I finally got to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, as is obvious by the title of this post. The title is actually the little song that I made up that I sang everytime I saw the preview and which was very successful in driving Jonathan crazy until he agreed to take me to see it. He actually didn't need much convincing because once he saw how excited I was to see it, he promised to take me. We went on Sunday night and I was going to make popcorn and put it in a giant purse and I bought M&Ms and it was going to be awesome...until the popcorn button on the microwave popped my corn for too long and it burned. (I love the popcorn button, but I am not a fan of it when it burns my deliciousness.) We were going to go to my apartment and get more popcorn (because I apparently suck at outfitting an apartment and Jonathan's lacks popcorn) but we turned the wrong way out of the parking lot so we just decided to forget the popcorn and just eat the M&Ms.

Anyway, the movie. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!! First off, when you go to see a little kid movie at 9 on a Sunday night, there are not too many people in the theatre. In fact, we were the only people until some more people showed up (still no more than 20 of us in there). Secondly, you get to see awesome previews for other little kid movies that are yet to come! Where the Wild Things Are is going to be fantastic. There were some other previews, but I can't remember them now.

Really now, the movie. It was HILARIOUS! First favorite line? "Dad, I don't understand fishing metaphors!" (Ellen, his tone and voice just made me think of you a lot, you will love it, you have to see it, just do it.) That line was at the very beginning and it just got better from there. Seriously, a talking monkey that fights the giant size gummy bears off the flying car by ripping them apart as they reassemble themselves (picture a clear gummy body with a red gummy head) and then finally the monkey (Steve) plunges his hand into the green one to rip out his little gummy heart and yell "AHA!" and then gobble down the gummy heart? Totally hilarious and awesome. I almost cried from laughing so hard.

Steve (the monkey, duh) had some of the best things since he had a machine hooked onto him that spoke his thoughts. One of the best was when he was licking something and it's in the background over and over "Lick, lick, lick" as he was licking. Subtlety at its best.

Also, a Jell-o palace! It was amazing. And I want one. When you (Ellen, because I don't want to feel like I'm so important that anyone else is reading this and I don't want to feel like I am writing a letter in Spanish class where you have to write to Juan about your trip to Chile or whatever, and I don't want to be that creeper that is talking to everyone like I know them...in other words, it's just easier to pretend I write this all for Ellen so that when I reference a 'you' it is a certain you that I am talking to) see the movie, pay attention to the background of the Jell-o palace because there is one part where they are talking and there are just spoons stuck in everywhere all haphazardly. It's very entertaining.

Needless to say, because I'm sure it is clear by now, I loved the movie. Unfortunately for Jonathan, I was also incredibly hyper after the movie for some unexplicable reason (maybe we should blame the M&Ms). But at one point in the movie, Flint (the main character, duh) does a summersault. So of course I wanted to do one too and did so as soon as we got back into the apartment. It was so fun, you should do one because it feels like being a little kid, I kind of recommend spinning around in continuous circles then because, again, it makes you feel like a little kid.

All in all, the night was just nuts. Completely pistachios.

And now for the technology section!

I loved watching that movie, duh. But it was also really cool to see how they were able to create massive foods, Jell-o palaces, a talking monkey (Steve, duh), a flying car, fighting gummy bears that reassemble themselves, etc. Even though it was an animated movie, it's still pretty remarkable how lifelike everything looked. The Jell-o bounced back just like it would in real life, the pizza looked edible even if it was bigger than Shaq, and damn did it make you want some gummy bears! Looking back at movies, even like Toy Story, which isn't that old and that was/is (depending on who you are) considered to be amazingly well done, the Froot Loops (you know when Woody falls into the bowl to cool off his head after that mean kid burns him using the sun and the magnifying glass?) look fake. It's just pretty incredible how far everything has come so that they are now able to take a computer and create this masterpiece that has the ability to look real and lifelike even though it was all generated and it clearly fake at the same time. It's just nuts. Completely pistachios.

Sidenote/add-on. I figured out how to add hyperlinks to things! I'm very proud of myself. I also changed the background for my fishies so they are in real water! It's gorgeous isn't it? Also just nuts. Completely pistachios. (Tee hee.)

Missing Smellie Ellie...

So I have been thinking about Ellen a lot...probably because I read her blog religiously since she has ditched me for Sweden. I was thinking about it the other day and if she had gone to Sweden years ago, I probably wouldn't have talked to her for the semester that she was gone. I might have sent her some letters or something, but most likely I would have just been filled in on her events after they happened. As it is, I get to read her blog so I know what she did the day after she did it. I have chatted with her on facebook chat, I've IMed her, etc. It's crazy. If I really wanted to (and if I could afford the equipement) I could talk to her on Skype through the computer.

That all being said, I have friends scattered across the world that I can get updates from anytime I want. I know that Slovakia and the Czech Republic are 6 hours ahead of me so when I am talking to my friends there, they are usually awake really late. I read their facebook statuses (stati?) that they post while I am asleep and know what is going in on in their lives even when I haven't seen them in years. I am able to keep in contact with people that live far away, keep connected with my family, find out everything important in their lives with the click of a mouse. It's just crazy. That's all. Just nuts. Completely pistachios.

First Blog of Class

So I have to keep a blog for Com 435...Emerging Technologies in Communication. Not quite my cup of tea. I'm going to attempt to make this something interesting, but if there is every a random bit of information about technology, blame it on the class.