Taco Time soda machine

We were in Taco Time in Issaquah yesterday and came across a fancy new soda machine.

In fact, it's the soda machine of the future.

It's touch screen and offers over 100 flavors of soda. You pick the main soda and then which flavor you want to add to it. Say you want Coke, you then can choose cherry, orange, vanilla, lime, raspberry or raspberry/vanilla.

The machine was pretty awesome.

But I can see how on a busy day it'd get annoying for the workers because with so many choices the line would get kinda long as people were trying to make the perfect soda combination.

Kiro 7 even did a short report on the machines.

A Day Made of Glass

This is a pretty sweet video. And an interesting concept.

Watch "A Day Made of Glass" and take a look at Corning's vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.

Year One: We lasted longer than the XFL

Casey informed me last night over MSN Messenger (the program that keeps this blog together) that this is the one year anniversary of "Just South of North," so we're going to take a little trip through time to celebrate our 365 days of existence.

We originally started the blog because we figured that it would be much easier if we combined forces instead of trying to maintain our own blogs separately at the time ("The Swede Factor" and "Casey's Sports Climate"). What followed since has been a whirlwind of media attention, fame and book deals. In fact, next summer "Just South of North" the movie will be hitting theatres with Sam Bradford playing Casey and Brian Scalabrine playing Me. Watch out, it's going to be a hit.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but thank's to wikipedia, I can tell you what has happen since the formation of "Just South of North"

February 20 - The United States Navy destroys a spy satellite containing toxic fuel, by shooting it down with a missile launched from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific Ocean.

(The toxic fuel in question was whatever I usually has for lunch.)

March 9 - The first European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle, a cargo spacecraft for the International Space Station, launches from Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

(Carrying a pound cake baked by Casey.)

August 17 - Michael Phelps surpasses Mark Spitz in Gold Medals won at a single Olympics, winning 8

(I surpass John Goodman's record of eight jumbo burritos eaten in one sitting at Taco Bell.)

September 10 - The proton beam is circulated for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, located at CERN, near Geneva, under the Franco-Swiss border.

(Casey uses it to play Halo.)

November 22 - Frozen water is found on Mars.

(I insist it be called Mar-Aid, and begin marketing it, now the only problem is actually getting to the frozen water).

December 31 - An extra leap second (23:59:60) is added to end the year. The last time this occurred was in 2005.

(Casey refuses to change his clock, and is therefore late for everything.)

And of course, we'd like to take this time to thank all of our readers there which consist of our friends, families, former teachers and professors, the girl I met at the bar the other night with a peg leg, NFL players who's name rhymes with "Wac-man", wanna-be Canadian hippies, federal agents trying to track me down to get me to pay my taxes, fellow bloggers and hopefully... the cast of Sesame Street.

With out your support, there wouldn't be a "Just South of North", in fact we'd probably just use this space to sell cheap Amish made wood heaters. Thanks a ton and here's to another great year at Just South of North.

EPIC movies you need to watch to survive in college

If you haven't seen these movies because (a) your parents don't let you watch PG movies, (b) you came from an Amish community, (c) you didn't have electricity because you lived in Romania until age 14 or (d) you're a communist, than I would suggest going down to your local movie store and renting them.

If you didn't meet the following criteria than you have no excuse and you've lived a very sad childhood. You're so pop culturally inept that you think that McLovin' is a new fast food burger.

Please get the independent movie rod out of your butt and watch some of these fine examples of American cinema.

The Original Star Wars Trilogy

Otherwise, the Family Guy episode of "Star Wars" is completely not funny. Although it is interesting to see how Chris makes a way better Luke Skywalker than Mark Hamill.

Indiana Jones Trilogy

Since the fourth one of Harrison Ford in a nursing home isn't out yet, I can't yet add the wheelchair races to the collection of Indiana Jones movies, but we'll see (Put old people in front of giant rolling rock and we might have an interesting movie). Who didn't pretend to be Indiana Jones when they were a kid? And how many people ended up cutting themselves trying to use a bullwhip.

And where the hell did they get the bullwhip?

I personally hate Nazis, they're a bunch of bloody jerks, so to see Indiana Jones kick their butts is really all you need for an evening of entertainment. That, and Sean Connery.

GoldenEye

I'm going to piss a lot of people off here who have a lot of macho-ism problems but Bond movies suck. They're generally long-drawn out affairs with a lot of pointless dialogue and lame acting. Luckily, that means you only have to watch one very good James Bond movie to feel like you've felt the whole secret agent part of our movie culture.

GoldenEye has it all: Tank chase scene, wonderful ending battle with the main villain and of course, one super awesome N64 game. Just ignore the whole computers from 1994 thing.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Set aside a weekend, take lots of bathroom breaks and digest Peter Jackson's masterpiece. While the running times are long, the story and characters will envelop you but I would highly recommend stopping for a few hours if you feel the urge to start a World of Warcraft account.

The Goonies

I think we all grew up with a Chunk in our childhood. And if you haven't seen Sloth on the big screen you're never going to understand why your buddies go "Hey you guuuuuyyyyysss!" when that lumpy kid walks by who's face got disfigured in a George Foreman grill accident.

Space Jam

Watching Bill Murray play basketball is worth the price of a nine dollar DVD from Walmart.

Rocky 4

Skip all the other Rocky movies because they're either too deep of flicks or just horrible (the series really swayed back and fourth). For a happy medium, watch Rocky 4. It's terribly hammy, cheesy, whatever, but that's Stallone at his best.

Tombstone

Actually watch this movie every week if you can. Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. Need I say more.

The Mighty Ducks Trilogy

I would suggest the second one "D2" when they square off against Team Iceland in the Junior Goodwill Games. You wouldn't think it, but apparently Junior Goodwill Hockey teams have to deal with endorsements, fame and TV cameras, because people really do care about how middle-schoolers do in international competition.

Back to the Future Trilogy

I want a hoverboard. I know they don't exist but I don't care. I want a hoverboard. And by the way, they travel to 2015 in this movie, which is seven years from now.

We have that amount of time to wait before we get hoverboards.

I'm counting down the days.