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I was in the store with my sister yesterday when we came across this hilarious packaging from Case Logic for a fake-leather binder that holds 48 DVDs with DVD covers or movie title notes.

We noticed the example DVD cover that Case Logic used was actually an image from Zhang Yimou’s 2002 film “Hero”, featuring Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi, among others. However, the title above the image was replaced with the puzzling word “Bonzai”, which, according to dictionary.com, is the Polish spelling for “bonsai”, as in those miniature trees my cube-mate and I are considering for our cubicle at work.

A quick look on Case Logic’s product page reveals the same image as I saw in the stores. A search on amazon.com shows the original source of the image, the DVD cover of “Hero”.

I wonder what Case Logic was thinking when they stole the picture from the movie “Hero”. And what’s “Bonzai” supposed to mean?

Case Logic has worldwide headquarters located in Longmont, Colorado and can be contacted via email at customerservice@caselogic.com or by phone at (800) 925-8111.

More photos from “engineering league” softball. Click on the photo below to view the gallery:

A couple of months ago, I had to make a couple of trips out to Los Angeles. I was working on a tight schedule (finalizing plans less than a week before travel), so I decided to use cheaptickets.com to get the best deal on a flight and a rental car. They hooked me up with Budget Rent A Car and everything worked out okay with no problems.

At LAX, you have to hop on a shuttle to the car rental place, which is all spread out around the outskirts of the airport. Each car rental company has their own shuttles, so you have to make sure you get on the right one. I got to the Budget facility in about 15 minutes after I got my bags.

Once there, I stood in line for a few minutes. I remember I had a huge headache and was watching the breaking news about Anna Nicole Smith. When I got to the counter, the guy helping me was courteous and efficient. He said something about a shortage on economy cars (what I had reserved) and offered to “upgrade” me to a minivan. In my fog of a headache I responded with a “Sounds good” that echoed in my brain. Luckily, since I’m under 25, their rules don’t allow me to be upgraded to a minivan; I guess it’s some sort of a idiot-protection for young people like me. I got a Pontiac Grand-Am instead.

The bad thing about being under 25 and trying to rent a car is the “under-age” surcharge of $25 a day. It sucks; it more than doubles the rate of a car. Oh well. I had places to go and I paid their fee. The total for three days in a Grand-Am: $150. But remember to fill up the tank before taking it back — that could easily inflate the costs with their over-priced gas fees.

Driving around L.A. isn’t bad. All the roads and highways are in a grid so it’s hard to get lost. The first time I accidentally drove through the middle of downtown Los Angeles during the afternoon rush. It’s pretty bad, but nothing I haven’t seen on I-495, I-270, I-95 or any of the other parking lots we have here in Maryland.

The second time I decided to go with a mid-size. A 22 year-old in a Chevy Malibu (with auto-starter) for three days: $210.

Getting a rental car from Budget was a relatively good experience. Traveling to any town I would definitely rent a car from them to get around town. Just follow these tips and you’ll feel the same too:

1. If you are under 25, say “YES” to their offer to “upgrade” to a minivan. You’ll get a mid-size instead for free.
2. Remember to fill up before going back to the airport. Buying gas in California sucks but it sucks more when Budget buys it for you.
3. Learn to appreciate driving American cars. My first car was a Ford Tempo so driving these clunky GM cars were like a throw-back to the good old days.
4. Finally, if you happen to choose to rent a Hummer to get you around Los Angeles (which is inadvisable to say the least), DO NOT try to drive over the spikes in the closed exit lanes:

Went to the air show at AAFB yesterday with some friends and my new camera lens. It was an impressive show on an excellent sunny day. Click below to see the gallery:

I was in the corner bodega (otherwise known as Sports Authority) looking for some baseball socks the other day and I came across a display of UA sunglasses:

I hope a lot of people buy these $99 sunglasses and UA’s stock goes up.

I’ve been getting into some softball with the company team. It’s a good way to hang out with people from the office. Click on the photo below to view the gallery:

On May 6th, the University of Maryland hosted the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of ASCE. For the third year in a row, Maryland placed third in the Regional Concrete Canoe competition. Click on the photo below to see the gallery:

I also have photos from previous year’s teams. For 2006, click below:

For 2005, click below:

On Saturday, good weather for Maryland Day, at the University of Maryland, College Park. The campus looked great.

At the CRC (now called ERC)…

…played some pong. Good times.

Then stayed to watch some of the Red and White game.

Went to the Orioles game with some friends from work yesterday. We had some great seats and it was a fun time even though it was a bit chilly last night. I’ll be going to a lot more O’s games this year.

The view from our seats:

‘JACKED’: Teammates and fans celebrate a grand slam by Nick Markakis in the eighth inning to put the Orioles up 8-1:

At first, there were only a couple of us in the office.

“The Wire” fans, that is. We rented the earlier seasons and got everybody into it. Two became three and four, and pretty soon our whole side of the office was ranting and raving about The Wire. We caught the fever for season 4 and watched week by week, whispering in hushed voices on Monday so that we wouldn’t ruin it for others that had tivo’d it. Now the fifth and final season of The Wire is filming and we caught some of the action today.

HBO’s The Wire is the critically acclaimed series about the city of Baltimore. The depth of its story-telling and accurate portrayal of our city makes this one of the best shows on television. So when I found out they were shooting scenes in the garage of my office building, I couldn’t be more excited.

When I got to work this morning, there were trailers parked next to my office and signs directing cars for “The Wire” to our garage.

The first thing I did when I got to my cubicle was to take out my camera. “Let’s get some photos,” I told cube-town. A few of us donned our coats and walked outside. After standing at the front of the building for a little, we decided to try our luck upstairs on the roof of the garage. Sure enough, the crew were all set up on the south side of the building. We stood there for a while, talking to the Sun papers maintenance guys who were watching the scene too.

Then, we heard a loud noise from the set. Behind the wall of crew members, we saw someone attacking a blue police prop car, the same one that blew by me in the garage yesterday afternoon as I was leaving work. It was McNulty, the main character of The Wire. He was kicking the car. Pretty hard, it seemed, as the sound of crunching metal echoed towards us.

After a while, he got back in the prop car and did the scene again. Then, after those two takes, they wrapped up. Someone walks over and hands McNulty a light coat, and the crew start packing their things. We make our second character spotting as the Deacon walks by. Didn’t recognize him at first, but he’s walking over to the north elevator as we make our way back to the office.

During lunchtime we set out again to get another glimpse of The Wire. For our third and fourth character spottings, we ran into FBI agent Fitzhugh and Detective Freamon down the block. We also find McNulty’s trailer but he’s nowhere around.

Our next stop was the roof of the garage where they were filming in the morning. All the police prop cars are still there, including the car McNulty kicked, with fresh dents and flat tire

We find that the prop cars weren’t locked, so we had some fun staging some photos.

After that, it was pretty much it. Cast and crew were nowhere to be found. Hopefully they’ll come around again and we’ll get another sneak peek on the set of HBO’s The Wire.