So with that I’ll post this awesome picture from the 49er PR department for 11-11-11.

Alex Smith Day, 11-11-11

Matt Kemp Kills Baseballs!

Hey!  It’s Dan of the Garion clan.  How about that Matt Kemp?  He’s been killing the ball.  So my wife Kelly said my blog has been boring since all I post nowadays are links…  Is that true?  Are my links boring, would you rather hear me talk about the Next Great Dancing Crew?  I mean I know I can be funny when I don’t try at all, but can I be entertaining, especially in a world where people watch crap like Pregnant in Heels, Glamour Bells, and Playdates (yes these are all really TV shows, on REAL TV).  WHO THE HELL WATCHES THIS STUFF.  I mean it’s one thing to make fun of it, which is why I religiously watch The Soup (well and that Joel McHale is awesome), but really who watches this type of shit? This will be the only blog that someone says the word shit and then starts talking about Easter.

It’s Easter this Sunday, and I for one welcome our Zombie Jesus overlords.  I’m happy I can get back to swigging soda and chowing down on chocolate now that Kelly no longer has the obligation to give up something she likes for Lent.  Other than that there really isn’t much going on.  The onions in the back yard are just about ready to get cured, we got a citrus tree that seems to be doing well, I fixed the grout in the master bathroom and Kelly is just about done with painting the shelf that our awesome neighbor made for us in the spare bedroom.  Next up we are getting the HUGE birds of paradise plants in the front yard removed and we might be getting sprinklers installed in the front yard as well.

Lastly for those that really know us, be on the lookout for information about our 3rd Annual Fourth of July Party!  Now it’s time for! DUN DUN DUN!

These are the cool things I found around the web for April 20th through April 22nd:

• The Geek Zodiak [PIC] Geek Zodiak – Geeks are Sexy Technology News -
• Owners, union discuss playoff expansion options – ESPN – NO NO NO! Please no, do not expand the MLB playoffs! Don’t dilute the playoffs to shit.
• Bristol riot over new Tesco store leaves eight police officers injured | UK news | guardian.co.uk – Peaceful… huh? What idiots.
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

  
  For those that don’t know Tesco is a like a grocery story… Way to get worked up about something completely unimportant Brits.

• AT&T: Filing Admits Network Wasn’t Ready For The iPhone – HAHA!
• petewarden/iPhoneTracker @ GitHub – Little did you know, Apple has been tracking you all along. This can’t be, Apple is not at all evil…
• SEX! « OkCupid – More research from OkCupid, this time about SEX!

Food Stuff
For Super Bowl we had a small party with our parents coming over to watch the game with us, I wanted to try and cook buffalo wings, but wasn’t at all in the mood for frying them up, I found this awesome recipe two days before the game for cooking up crunchy buffalo like wings in the oven from Serious Eats, you owe it to yourself to cook them this way!  I also found this cool site that reviews all the interesting snack foods out there called Taquitos.net, they have everything from national brands to regional favorites.  Lastly if you are the type of person that is interested in trying your hand at brewing your own beer check out this quick blurb on Lifehacker about two free open source programs that will help you with your goal.

Music Stuff
I haven’t had much music stuff lately, but I had to share this awesome project that Michael Deal is working on that is a graphical exploration into the Beatles and the creation of their music.  This is a project and any true Beatles fan will want to check out.

Sad Stuff
For those that don’t know the Mars rover Spirit is stuck and can no longer move, so they have pretty much pulled the plug on the project, xkcd has a sad comic to show us that rovers have feelings too.

Funny Stuff
If you are a friend of mine on Facebook you might have already seen this, but if not, check out this graphic on How to Suck at Facebook.   I’m proud to say I don’t do any of those things listed, so I must not suck.  If you saw the Google commercial during the Super Bowl (which was my favorite ad) you saw a clever use of their auto complete feature, the site Autocomplete Me turns the auto complete feature into a interesting look at what people search for on Google.

The Lego Millennium Falcon!

Cool Stuff
I just found this today but I wanted to pass it on, someone has taken the initiative to educate today’s men on what they need in their wardrobe, with Newbie Fashion Tips for Grown Men.  It really is a good group of tips and suggestions on how to look your best.  Wardrobe Oxygen takes it a step further, but I have to disagree with some their what to remove from your wardrobe section.  I’ve been wanting to get some Lego sets recently to put together for fun and I was checking out the online Lego store, they have a $499 Star Wars Millennium Falcon, a little more than I want to spend (it is 5000+ pieces though)…  I’ve seen a couple places recently selling recycled bottles that have had their tops cut off so you can use them as glasses, here is someone that decided they could just make them instead.  Check out this great article on the 19 Most Complex and Dangerous road in the world, I’ve seen some of these on Top Gear, the Road of Death in Bolivia looks like a bitch.  If you know me you know that Kelly and I met online, so I find the research that OkCupid is doing on their dating site is extraordinary, they recently wrote an article about profile pictures, and I highly suggest anyone that is doing any sort of online dating read their articles, they will help you make a better personal ad.  Example, Men: don’t make eye contact and don’t smile, Women: make eye contact and a flirty face.  And the last of the cool stuff, this blog post regarding the changes to the Crayola color spectrum throughout the years.

Not Cool Sports Stuff
The Chicago Cubs have thought up an complete asshole plan, they are going to charge a 20% premium on those that purchase tickets the 1st week they are on sale, and then after that they will be the normal face value.  Talk about scalping your customers.  I hope we don’t see this become a trend.  (edit, this is nothing new they have been doing it for 8 years.)

Cool Videos
Some geeks have figured out an awesome use for Microsoft’s surface, Dungeons and Dragons!

D&D on the Microsoft Surface from CrunchGear on Vimeo.

Hot Tub Time Machine will be the movie event of the year!

Someone has edited all the violence from the 2010 Super Bowl commercials into one epic Youtube video.

And last but not least does this sound familiar?

I know I didn’t mention this yesterday but it’s been pouring here in Southern California all week, some of the worst rains I’ve seen since 2005. Fortunately the house has held up well. Now on to the continuation of the Weekly Cool Links #21.

Cool Tech
For the last couple years I’ve used XBMC installed on my old Xbox as my be all media player for our living room, but with news from the most recent CES I just might look into replacing it sooner than later. Here are the devices I’m looking into.

Patriot Box Office Media Player
HDX BD-1
Asus O!Play HDP-R1
Popbox
Boxee Box (by D-Link)

The Boxee Box would be the one that is most like my current setup, since it’s based off the XBMC, but I’m not very happy with D-Link after various issues with some of their devices I’ve had in 2009. Right now it’s a wait and see approach, the Patriot Box Office is at Fry’s now for $130, but it seems a bit under whelming.

Cool Stuff
I know you thought I was done with 2009 lists after 21.1 but I had to share the Top 10 Everything of 2009 by Time. And the last mention of 2009 in this post, Gamasutra’s 99 Best Free games of 2009. Last week I watched this awesome video from TED about the intelligence of crows, it’s really eye-opening and will get you to look at crows in a whole different way. Of course this picture of search terms might make you wish you were a crow (women want their men to propose, and men want their women to give them head). If all that has made you feel a little less smart, check out this periodic table of elements with pictures!

Cool Advertising
Companies aren’t happy with just names, now they want to own colors… This is just plain wrong.

Cool Food
Kelly and I have done our best to start eating in more often, and it’s sites like No Takeout that help me plan our meals, they give a complete menu, shopping list, and game plan to get your meal done and on the table. Of if I’m just looking for a recipe based off of items I have there is Supercook or a new site I found call Cooking By Numbers.

Cool Videos
How online gamers play games in real life…

British comedy skits based on PBS like shows (this on is on Water there are others)

More PG Porn! This time with the lovely Jenna Haze!

Superhuman tape measure skills

Realistic Hollywood Sex-Scene

My new bike.

We celebrated Christmas at home, having two family Christmas parties, you might have seen the pictures from my previous post.  For Christmas Kelly got me and awesome bag for me to use for work, along with some cooking books I really wanted, a circular saw, and some clothing.  It was a really awesome Christmas.  For my birthday I got a new bike.

Raised vegetable bed.

Kelly and I used my new saw and build two raised beds for our vegetable garden this year.  We’ve already planted some onions, and are waiting for March to add the tomatoes and peppers I get at the annual sale that Fullerton College has.  That just about wraps up most of the things we have done the past month.  So I guess it’s time for the Weekly Cool Links!  Just an FYI, there is a lot of stuff to share this week, so I’m going to do something different and break this up into a couple posts the new couple days.

Cool Stuff
Lifehacker put together a kick ass table of when is the Best Time to Buy Anything, from Homes in the winter (hey that’s what we did!) to Jeans in October, it’s a great list for those that are looking for when the best deals normally are.  You say you aren’t interested in buying anything, well how about these not so cool porn ideas (safe for work), don’t miss “The Making of You” staring Mommy and Daddy with special guest Uncle Bill…  I was going to post a bunch of “best of 2009″ links, but this guy did all the work for me, so I’ll just link to him.  I was hoping I would be on the 30 best blogs of 2009, but I guess I’ll have to wait for the 2010 list.  Continuing with the theme of lists, Gizmodo posted their list of the worst gadgets from the past decade, a lot fo great ideas but they just ended up sucking.

Cool Advertising
I have some American Apparel shirts (well they are shirts from places that print their shirts on AAs) and I’ve always been fascinated with their unique marketing strategy, from using porn stars to having androgynous looking models, they cover it all, which is why this collection of their hottest ads (possibly not safe for work, but nothing graphic) is included here.

Cool Food
One of the books Kelly got me (and my brother in law Dominic) was the 1st volume of the Good Eats books, by Alton Brown, I’ve loved reading the book and wanted to share this great Good Eats fan site (it’s poorly designed but still a great resource).  Talking about food, Lifehacker shared this article of Six Kitchen Skills You Can Pick Up This Weekend.

Cool TV
Chuck and 24 started up last week, Burn Notice starts tonight, and someone is selling a barely used late night show…  By the way even though I don’t watch much late night, I with Coco.

Cool Sports
The Hall of Very Good has some great stuff about good baseball players, that aren’t quite Hall of Famers, or shouldn’t be Hall of Famers.  I liked the guy, but Eric Karros should not have receive 2 votes for the Hall of Fame.

Cool Videos
I know he’s gone, but his trip to Seattle was delayed because of an annoying USC fan.  (I’ll miss you Pete!).

The Unaired 1994 Pilot of 24!

This reminds me of calls I get sometimes when Kelly is having an issue with the computer at home… ;)

All these guys are trying to do is be Helpful!

Stay tuned for Weekly Cool Links #21.2 tomorrow!

Actress Christina Hendricks

Oh yeah the Golden Globes were the past weekend, and according to the Internet these were the only globes being talked about…

Expect a Weekly Links update by the end of the week!

Goodbye 2009 it was a great year!