The World of Joel

So I am usually on my own on Tuesdays. I have a study session on Tuesday mornings and usually I head back home to study. However today I have a study session in about an hour for a midterm on Friday and Jenn had to stay around to talk to a professor. Instead of studying which I really should have Jenn and I went house and furniture shopping. We are not looking for an immediate buy but checking out our options none the less.

So first we were off to Ikea in Costa Mesa about 15 mins from UC Irvine. The Ikea was gigantic, its been a long, long time since I have been in an Ikea and I have to say I had fun. There is just so much to look at, it would take two or three go throughs to see everything. Of course I am looking for a great place to put a nice size plasma and my three game consoles and Jenn is looking at throws for a couch and art work.

So there wasn’t much in the way of “technology” but I would say that we did see a few things we liked. We learned we both are a fan of modern, both a fan of dark wood and black frames. We are also a big fan of black and white photography as you can see below in a photo of the Eiffel Tower that we should have bought for like 7.99 or 24.99 including frame. We would have went with a black frame however.

I wasn’t as big of a fan of the art work, but there was this one piece that we both liked and thought it would be good for a dining room. I wonder if Ikea minded me taking pictures in there store. Either way these were all taken with my iPhone, not bad right? Once again dark black frame.

So I didn’t take more pictures of Ikea, I decided to take pictures late in the long maze that is Ikea. However for whatever reason instead of studying, we went to Portola Spring which is one of the nicest new developments I have ever seen. We went through a ton of developments, the place a few years back would have been sold out in weeks, but this new development seems to have been stalled by the economy. Needless to say it is just really quite the community with tons of tennis and basketball courts, and a nice Olympic pool in the middle. The picture below is from the official website.

The one that Jenn liked the best and for me was tied for first with another was a 3 story town house called San Carlos that ran for the mid-400’s, which is a ton for a 3 story town house however in the OC its a lot less then a year or two ago where the same house would have gone for 500,000. Not to mention the fact that we could probably knock it down to the low 4’s or high 3’s which would be much more affordable. Needless to say the townhouse was great. At first three floors seemed intimidating but if you walk this house it really helps make a little over 1,000 square footage feel much larger.

I am going to throw the rest of the pictures from the adventure on Flickr later, so you can see all of my iPhone goodness and our great adventure in Portola springs. If our plans stay the same for a wedding in the next year then that would mean this may be somewhere we look outside of renting an apartment to buy a home. How crazy would that be, to be a homeowner in a years time? I guess we can only pray on it and take things as they come. Whatever the case looking at houses and the future
is always a lot of fun.

UPDATE: I did post the pictures on Flickr. Go here to check out all the model home goodness.

Haven’t there been a ton of natural disasters lately? I got online after class today and I hear that China has a magnitude 7.8-7.9 earthquake. From what I remember from my Geology course things like that are not only rare but extremely intense and highly dangerous. The largest earthquake since 1900 was in Chile at a magnitude 9.5, so your not talking about to far off of that.

With that cyclone in Myanmar (which I can honestly say I had never heard of before this disaster) with over 100,000 dead. That is no small number to be just thrown around. I put it into perspective, I live in Riverside, CA where in 2000 the population they believed to be 255,166. That means that 1/2 of the population is dead from one disaster, that is an insane idea to comprehend. It is just such a hard concept to try to grasp your hand around to understand, and all you can really do is pray for those in these areas.

I am not sure I have ever read a story on Gizmodo quite as odd as what I saw today. Have you read the title? A cheeseburger in a can? Can I get fries with that? What is the need for a cheeseburger in a can? Do we not have enough fast food restaurant that can provide you with a real deal cheeseburger? Here is the product page. I just can’t imagine a cheeseburger in a can tasting all that great? All I know is its an interesting find, interesting to see if a hot dog in a can is next? How about a club sandwich? We shall see.

You know it was a sad day yesterday with the passing of Heath Ledger. I usually don’t caught up in celebrity news, but with Ledger being extremely young, and involved in a handful of movies I have enjoyed it comes as a shock to hear of his passing. I was talking with Jenn and you just hope that it was an accidental overdose and not a suicide. I know many including even myself at times are betting that it was an overdose, but the optimist side of me said just wait and see. I have to say after hearing of his passing I looked at a movie website that had a timeline of the movies he starred in and I found that I owned three of them one of which is Jenn’s and those are Ten Things I Hate about You (Jenn’s), A Knights Tale, and The Patriot. He was very talented, and I still look forward to what I hear is some of his best work in the latest Batman movie.

You know it are times like these that truly make me not envy anyone in Hollywood to the slightest extent. From what I can see it is not what its cracked up to be.

May our prayers be with his family, and lets just hope the autopsy comes back as an accidental sort of situation.

So 99.9% of you have no idea who I am talking about, and that’s Ok. However for anyone who may listen to sports talk radio here in the Los Angeles/Orange County area in the morning then you know the show Roggin and Simers Squared. They have been on KLAC AM 570 a sports radio station for about a year now and it features Fred Roggin a TV Anchor from NBC 4 here in LA. Then there is T.J. Simers a writer at the LA Times, and then his daughter Tracy. The trio has made for some of the most interesting, engaging, and enjoyable radio I have listened to. Being a former talk radio host I have always been drawn to the genre, and from the very beginning have enjoy this show. The trio has discussed in the past only being on the radio for the remainder of the year, however now it seems they are getting replaced early by Dan Patrick the national syndicated show.

Of course business is business, and I understand that from my own first hand experience. However it was a sad first ride into school today to know that my usual morning drive will no longer have my favorite talk show on. Well here is to my iPod jack in my Prius, time to listen to some podcasts!

It is not very often that I get a day “off”, in fact the only day I really have nothing I “have” to get done is on Sunday and yet I seem to get more work done on Sunday’s then any other day, especially in terms of homework and online production. So today, July 4th at 12:01 am I am sitting here free as a bird, a bald eagle if you will (hint the patriotism?). Well I will keep this post nice and short, by just saying that for all the shortcomings that our country has in terms of corruption, and other interesting policies that you may or may not agree with, we sure live in one amazing country and it is always good to sit back and remember that we do live in the land of the free and for that we are very blessed! Have a very blessed, safe, and enjoyable forth of July!

I am currently taking TWO sociology courses both which deal with social psychology which are so far pretty interesting. However my first day of reading for Social Psychology 1 had an interesting quote that I think more then just myself would want to ponder.

“Could we even know ourselves if we didn’t know what others saw in us?”

It has been three years since I graduated from High School, all the way back in 2004, but wow when you go back to High School to see another graduation its like you never left. Outside of seeing a lot of people who are there supporting younger siblings (like myself), just the feeling of walking on that campus again is really kind of a trip. However outside of that here are a few observations I have on graduations as I have went to a high school and college graduation this year.

1) The speeches want to be original, but the originality is usually what ends up killing them. The best bet from what I can tell is to keep the short and sweet (don’t say its going to be short, just do it) and keep everything as light hearted as possible.

2) Rules at graduations never seem to hold, in fact its almost universal. Examples of this, no saving seats, we all know EVERYONE saves seats. Secondly don’t use any balloons or blow horns, I saw a high number of both. To me I think the schools more just say these things to be political correct, rather then for actual application.

3) Both graduations I have gone to have started out with such build up, the excitement of graduating and having your name called, and then as a viewer after all the names are called the closure of such a big event is non-existent. For example say I was the last name the be called here is how it ends “Joel Szerlip…Congratulations Class of 2007… the crowd runs like stampede, the ending ceremony that was probably planned for weeks is now non-existent.

4) Bringing little kids to a graduation is not normally a good idea. I understand the desire to have the whole family out there supporting the graduate however do the other families a favor don’t bring little children, especially those who have no idea what “no” and “stop” mean. Yesterdays graduation was a perfect example of this. Two little boys, looked like twins, probably five years old were just going at each others throats. They were hitting, yelling, crying, jumping all over the bleachers, they were uncontrollable. The parents of course tried a few times, but there efforts were half hearted and ineffective.  So as a rule of courtesy please don’t bring small children to graduations.

Yes WorldofJoel faithfuls, the first part of our big announcement here on WorldofJoel is the introduction of the World of Joel Podcast. This is our first episode, we are entitling “Test Run” and it is going to be a trial run to see our interest in the podcast. The idea behind the podcast is to instead of focusing on such a specific topic like “Gaming” or “Movies” to instead just focus on whatever is going on around the world. I am still trying to focus down on a name for the podcast, I am thinking, The World Goes Round, but any feedback on the name or the podcast would be great. Let me know what you all think and if it seems like there is an interest in keeping the podcast going then I am 100% ready to consistently bring in a podcast for everyone’s listening pleasure. Please let me know, feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Click Here To Listen to the World of Joel Podcast Test Run

 

 World of Joel Podcast Test Run [8:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Its not often enough we bring up the fact that we have thousands of our men over in Iraq and around the world fighting for our country. I wish I would bring it up more on this blog how blessed we are to live in a country such as this. I have a few buddies over in Iraq right now, with a few others in the service and it is just crazy to think some of my high school friends or teammates from both sports teams are over there fighting while I am living over here in freedom and peace. So lets remember those who have served and pray for those who are serving that they may all find peace and safety in there duty. Thank you armed forces, thank you.