Month: January 2014

This is the kind of evil genius that could only come from China

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Chinese man buys a refundable first-class ticket from Eastern China Airlines and uses said ticket to eat at the VIP lounge at the airport for almost an entire year by virtue of rebooking his ticket on every visit, over 300 times and returning later and getting back into the lounge to eat some more.

Honestly, this is pretty incredible.  Evil, but incredible nonetheless.  Of course it had to come out of China, too.  Where they’ve got people practically living in their knockoff IKEAs, using rail stations as makeshift commodes, and some people who have figured out how to live in the sewers; why not be where a dining exploit could be found too?  And in the end, it’s hard to blame the guy, because nowhere in the ticket’s literature did it say that his first class ticket entitled him to exclusively one access into the airport’s VIP lounge.  In the end, he outsmarted the airlines, and they were lucky that he was the only one clever enough to realize the loophole in their system.

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Still stuck at home on account of Snowpocalypse

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a picture of the outside of my house.  If you notice, the ice on the roads has melted a good bit, yet precisely where the asphalt of the street begins right outside of my driveway, the ice has not melted, and is still somewhat thick.  My office has been closed for two days now and I’m fairly confident that they will be open tomorrow, but the thing is that this ice directly in front of my driveway is still going to be somewhat complicating, especially in the early AM hours when I am expected to be heading to work.

It doesn’t look like a lot of ice to traverse to get back onto solid asphalt, but the thing is that it’s going uphill, and my car is front-wheel drive and compact (read: lightweight); there’s no guarantee that it will be an easy task.  Conversely, I could always go downhill, and loop around on another side street of my suburban sprawl, but what’s not seen in the picture is how much further beyond my house that the ice continues to be present, all on a downhill.  I’ve seen cars sliding down my street in the past, and I’d rather not be one of them myself.

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Snowpocalyptic musings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As it seems to be the case every three to five years in Atlanta, snow has befallen our fine city.  As it seems to be the case every time it happens, the entire city is in utter chaos; as the city and the state are ill-equipped when it comes to snow removal equipment, the roads often go unsalted and unplowed, and as the temperatures dip, everything freezes solid, and it’s safe to say that for the next day or three, it will be a very, very bad idea to get in a car and attempt to drive anywhere.  The irony in this statement is the fact that it’s literally two inches of snow that’s causing all this mayhem, because the city and state are completely incapable of clearing it from the roads.

The last time Snowpocalypse hit Atlanta, I ended up missing an entire week of work, which at the time was most definitely not a good thing, because I was still doing freelance work, therefore not being at work meant that I was not getting paid.  However, this time around, the circumstances are different, and I’m not terribly penalized by Mother Nature’s horseman.

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WWE Power Rankings going into Wrestlemania season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, it’s a good thing I didn’t see the Royal Rumble, because the general consensus from scuttlebutt is that it was pretty much the worst show on the planet, worse than last year’s Wrestlemania, the fans were unhappy all over the internet, and from the sounds of it, the fans at the venue were none too pleased either. Thinking back to the results, the heel(s) won every single match, and piggy backing onto the notion that HHH cronies always benefit, it’s a valid complaint seeing as how the New Age Outlaws took the tag belts, Randy Orton retained the World titles and Batista won the actual Royal Rumble. Hell, even Kevin Nash made a little appearance coin by being a surprise entrant in the Rumble. From the smarky perspective, it makes sense why there’s a lot of unrest amongst “the Universe.”

But I’m not here to talk about the unrest, or Mick Foley’s (IMO worked shoot) Facebook post that is taking the smark interwebs by storm. I’m here to be a little more backhanded and indirect, and I’ve got nothing else to write, so this seemed like as good as anything to write since it’s intriguing to me today.

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The Moneyball of online dating

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: math whiz conducts data research on OkCupid’s question survey profiles, and uses the data to more thoroughly compile potential compatible women for him.  After gathering enough information on what he’s typically looking for, he massages his own profile(s) to become a mathematically high-percentage compatibility match for the types of women he’s targeting.  In the end, he manages to go on a bunch of dates and ultimately meets a girl he’s now going to marry.

So I wonder when this is going to be made into a book by Michael Lewis or Ben Mezrich?  And then how long it’s going to take to be made into a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh?  I bet the movie will have the main character played by Jesse Eisenberg or Andrew Garfield, but definitely not someone that actually looks like the real person.

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Fuck Fulton County

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seriously, fuck this place.  This is the third time I’ve gotten jury summons, and the second time within the last six months.  Whatever happened to the rule of three years?  Can I at least get one calendar year without getting one of these wet blankets in the mail?

You know what though, instead of ranting again about how much this sucks and pisses me off, it turns out that the last one I wrote is still pretty much spot on how I feel about this one too.

Probably because it was only six months ago.

It’s almost a party

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, I worked with a guy who spoke with a pretty thick Cambodian accent.  One cold winter night as he came inside, he exclaimed to me and the other people present, to “be careful outside, there’s black ice everywhere.”  The thing was though, due to his accent, “black ice” sounded precariously like “black guys.”  This elicited a lot of laughter from us (it’s okayone of the guys present was black!): Watch out for all the black guys outside.  The black guys is dangerous.  Black guys everywhere!

Anyway, over the span of the last month, there has been a rash of trucks overturning on highway ramps, spilling their contents all over the place.  Now there’s no confirmation that black guys ice has had anything to do with any of them, but given the fact that it’s the winter, we here in Atlanta have been subject to some record-breaking arctic polar snaps, there’s always the possibility that black guys might have been involved.

Confirmed or not, it really was a convenient excuse for me to forcibly shoe-horn in the black guys story because I’m a terrible person and I find it amusing.

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