Letting out the noise inside of me

DC Universe Online

2012-01-04T00:34:00.000-05:00

It's good. Damn good. Especially for being free-to-play since November 1st. Available on PC and PS3, you should check it out if you love the fast action and constant instant gratification offered by MMOs, superheroes, and things that are free. It's not going to topple WoW anytime soon, but it doesn't have to. Can't beat the price tag, either.

Oblivion

2012-01-04T00:32:00.000-05:00

Let's see, if Oblivion debuted in 2006, I probably started it on PC in 2007, couldn't get into it, tried again a year later on PS3, still couldn't get into it, but NOW -- a mere four years later -- having forced myself to spend a few days just pushing through and trying to make sense of the openness and dealing with janky, stiff animations and niggling issues (and no longer being spoiled with certain MMOs conventions I'd grown used to, like selling anything to anyone, learning all spells from one person, having a much clearer path to success, etc.), I'm finally starting to see the light. When I started, it was while I was still playing WoW, which I still think is a more accessible experience, but not necessarily better. I also realized MMOs are designed for constant instant gratification to keep players subscribed or staring at ads, but titles like Oblivion and Morrowind (which I also struggled with initially) can be more deliberately paced and deeper, more subtle experiences.

Having said all that, as someone who found Oblivion terribly boring and unfocused for quite some time -- not realizing it has more in common with Sid Meier's Pirates than anything with Warcraft in the title -- last night I found myself purchasing a home in the game, savoring the experience of exploring my new digs, being able to store items and gear safely there at last, and learning that the reason I got it for such a "steal" is because there's an ominous sealed portal on a wall in the basement. Do I open it and risk filling my new house with demons or something worse? Do I ignore it and focus instead on the 20 other quests I'm buried beneath? The choice is entirely mine! I had to save my progress and resist the urge to open said portal since I desperately needed to go to bed. And this was AFTER stalking the seller halfway across the continent on foot, hoping he'd get mauled by a mountain lion so I could get my 5000 gold back, guilt-free. :) No such luck.

Section 8: Prejudice -- PS3 Impressions

2011-07-28T02:14:00.002-04:00

Ok, first things first -- there are still things missing. They left out the ability to change the time limit and score limit on the game, and botmatches can only house up to 16 players. If you played the original S8 on PS3, you probably noticed the same limitations.

For comparison's sake, consider that the PC version of both games allows you to customize all these features, your control scheme for every single button, and does allow up to 32 bots or players or whatever in any game mode. Plus, it's higher res and the textures are better.

So why these limitations in the console version? Why do gamers who don't want to put up with Games for Windows Live get screwed on options? I don't know, honestly. They had to actively remove content to do this. Granted, you get the first batch of DLC maps, modes, and skins for free (though we had to wait a couple extra months to get the game at all), so that kinda helps offset it.

But still, put things in and let people skip it rather than cut things out and leave us wanting.

The PC version looks better, runs better (on the right hardware) and overall has more going for it, EXCEPT for that huge caveat of GFWL. It makes backing up save files terribly difficult, separates your progress between offline and online profiles, and causes problems left and right from a technical standpoint.

All in all, it's still a fun game and a welcome change of pace from the one-hit-deaths of Call of Duty. Here's hoping they put a bit more polish into it with a patch or two.

Share and Share Alike

2011-02-02T01:16:00.002-05:00

Mom said "When your kids bicker about money, tear a dollar in half and say 'Fight over it.'" I said, "Yeah, that's pretty good. But it's a bitch when you try to do that with a quarter." :)

Porn Help Us

2011-02-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

So It Begins: Small ISPs Begin Cutting Download Limits

I expect the porn industry to get involved and throw some money at reversing this trend as it will eventually cut into their bottom line. They helped win the fight of VHS over Beta and Blu-ray over HD-DVD. Maybe they can save us from conservatives, too.

Updates

2011-02-01T03:21:00.004-05:00

My astute readers -- all none of you -- have probably noticed a dearth of content for the last year until the past few hours. While some of these are just status updates yanked from other social media outlets, I have a feeling it will be constructive and somewhat cathartic to get back into the swing of things here. If that has to start with just a couple of reposts to get me feeling reconnected to the goings on here, so be it. And while I know blogging is considered passe and "so last year," I don't really care. I'm less likely to put pen to paper and risk a hand cramp, but I need the same end thru whatever means is available and comfortable.

And besides, I like the sound and the feeling of fingers flying across the clickety clack keyboard on my laptop. I don't hear it nearly enough these days outside of simply working. Something needs to pry open my head and get all the debris out so the truly useful content can flow through my mental capillaries unimpeded.

Plus, it's rare that I get to use big words like that in my day to day writing. :)

Another Windows 7 Bug

2011-02-01T03:21:00.001-05:00

Just spent an hour or so dissecting the Windows 7 registry. Apparently sometimes in Win7, the critical battery level is stuck at 98% (should be more like 5%) and can't be changed, so as soon as you unplug the laptop, it hibernates and turns off. Wonderful. At least I fixed it. Stupid Microsoft.

Meatball Croissant = OMG!

2011-02-01T03:19:00.000-05:00

Searching for nothing more than a vehicle to transport delicious BBQ meatballs from the crock pot to my eating orifice, I settled on the only bread-like object in the immediate vicinity -- croissants. It was awfully tasty.

My Ass

2011-02-01T03:14:00.000-05:00

Usage of sarcastic expression 'my ass!' Appropriate: "The Browns are going to the Super Bowl MY ASS!" Inappropriate, pertaining to silicone sealant that was purported to expand/contract without cracking: "This caulk sure stretches MY ASS!"

Google.lol -- You Saw It Here First

2011-02-01T03:13:00.000-05:00

Ok, how long before someone makes available the domain suffix ".lol"? I would use www.google.lol every single day for my entertainment needs.

It Came From The Kitchen

2011-02-01T02:14:00.000-05:00

Mom asks if this thing sitting next to me is a plate (it is). I say, "No, its a tiny flying saucer. Frickin aliens, comin in here, making more dishes for me to do." She gives me that "you're stupid" look. Undeterred, I said, "And they brought crumbs, to boot. Probably landed and said 'We crumb in peace.'" Then we both lol'd.

Another telling of the story

2010-03-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

Tired of the uppity and scolding version of Christ's birth? Get a load of this (originally here)....

Christmas is here and that can mean only one thing: and while I have no idea what that one thing is, I'm sure it's a huge load. But whatever it means, I thought now would be a good time to share with you the story of how it all began. Christianity is so pervasive in our society that even the staunchest atheist and most indifferent agnostic think they know the story, but you've been sold a lie. Here, the TRUE story of the first Christmas.

Long ago in the town of Nazareth, there lived a girl named Mary who was engaged to a man named Joseph. One day a man named Gabriel, clearly in the midst of an opium-induced freak-out, broke into Mary's room and nervously muttered something about Mary having a "God-baby" and how she must name it "Jesus" so Gabriel would be forced to give his penis a new name. Mary sat in stunned silence, wondering why this man had ripped the wings off a goose and nailed them to his back.

Soon after Gabriel's visit, it became obvious Mary was pregnant. Mary explained to Joseph this must be the "God-baby" the "winged man" told her about. Joseph quickly agreed and convinced Mary her unexplained black-outs and vaginal bruises were nothing to be concerned with. They were quickly married and Joseph told Mary they must head for Bethlehem immediately to pay a "special tax." When Mary asked about this special tax, Joseph responded, "Just get on the damn donkey."

At last they reached Bethlehem. After being turned away from several inns, it dawned on Joseph that others were not sympathetic to his plight. There was simply no way this many inns became "full" every time Joseph asked the innkeeper to "take care of this thing for me." But eventually a kind innkeeper told Joseph, "Yeah, I can do that. Just wait out back next to the goats."

Upon seeing Mary, it became obvious to the innkeeper that Joseph had misled him about the state of Mary's condition. He reneged on the deal and told Joseph to "do what you gotta do" in the stable and that the fee for his discretion would be "the same as for the other thing." Joseph tried to handle it but was constantly interrupted by curious passers-by. It was too late. The baby Jesus was born.

Meanwhile, on a hill overlooking Bethlehem, some shepherds watched their sheep. Suddenly, a man on fire appeared on a hill above them. Suffering unimaginable pain, the man shouted "STRANGE SMELL FROM COD! TODD'S SON HAS BEAN-CORN AND BETH THE HAM!" The shepherds heard something different and, with nothing else to do, headed to Bethlehem to see what that was about.

Once there, the shepherds searched for the Son of God. They tried to start the search in a tavern, but were stunned to see a baby lying in a pile of straw and animal waste. Deciding one baby is as good as another, they knelt down to worship him. Mary asked if the "winged man" spoke to them too. The shepherds exchanged glances before one responded "Um, I only noticed the glowing, but now that you mention it, he DID have wings." Joseph was weirded out, but decided to run with it.

In the East, Wise Men saw a new star in the sky. They had no idea what this meant. And since Wise Men must appear wise, one of them, while the others weren't looking, grabbed a scroll and jotted down that this meant a new ruler had been born. The others wondered how they had never before seen this text on their only scroll, but didn't want to look foolish by questioning a Wise Man.

The Wise Men set off to find this baby. They followed the star to Bethlehem. Stars are in space and can, for all intents and purposes, lead you to any location, but Bethlehem was here and they were tired. Later, while relieving themselves outside a stable, they heard Jesus cry. Appalled by the sight of a mother so young, they left the child everything they had, which included a small amount of gold and a couple sacks of gum resin they regrettably traded a camel for.

These men, angry with Joseph, waited for his return. Joseph pulled the men aside and explained. The Wise Men, while outraged at the idea that anyone would attempt to justify impregnating a young girl, decided it was better for her and the baby to live the lie. They assured Joseph his secret was safe, but did ask if they could use his tale for "this book of silly stories we're writing."

And that's why there's a tree in your living room and you annually put your kid on a fat stranger's lap. Merry Arbitrarily Chosen 24 Hours, everybody!

I did it

2010-01-16T22:18:00.000-05:00

Prototype. On Hard. Beaten. Rawr.

Why NHL 09 Sucks

2009-11-24T22:36:00.008-05:00

A brief list of reasons...

No matter how aggressive you set your breakout, YOU will always be leading the charge. Even if you're a defenseman, last one back.
Your morons will reach out and grab a loose puck when no one's around, but when it's contested, they just let the other team have it.
Your team's shooting accuracy is zero. If you're standing in the crease and let it rip, they'll hit the rafters.
The net can be wide open, and your idiots will not hit it.
One timers do not work. Slap shots do not work. Scoring for your team does not work.
The other team can walk right up to your goalie on the side and, with the pads flush up against the post, teleport the puck THROUGH either him or the net or both and get a goal.
The computer can score literally at will. I had a 0-0 game till the third, and when I finally scored, they scored twice, and kept ahead of me the whole rest of the game.
Hitting does not work. Shoving does not work. Essentially, any form of contact does not work. Your guy will ignore a player within striking distance, give him an all clear, and then once he's 10 feet away, shove dead air.
Manual shot aim only goes to extremes, never actually on net.
Auto shot aim always puts it right in the goalie's jersey or glove.
One timers still do not work.
Shooting from the point during a screen does not work.
Shooting from the point and hoping for a redirect does not work.
The AI team can control the puck and pick off your passes while laying face-down on the ice, but your guys lose control of it if somebody in the upper deck so much as farts.
Your goalie will let total bullshit go right by him and never try to get a rebound. Theirs will stop goals from this game AND the one being played down the street.
The game resets your strategies whenever it feels like it.
If you have a breakaway and would really love to have another winger coming up with you to pass to, it won't happen. He'll go for a line change and a coffee break.
Your poke checks will rarely stop a thing. THEIR poke checks are laser-guided.
They can shoot through your entire body. Their players all must have goalie pads on, since you can't get anything between their legs.
You can win every faceoff, control the puck the entire time, get all the power plays, have all the hits, and be playing 5 on 3 and still not get a single fucking goal.
What fucking moron decided to put "hit" and "shoot" on the same stick? So you're trying to crush an asshole, he hands you the puck, and instead of hitting, you end up lobbing the puck down for icing.
Conversely, when you're trying to set up in front of the net to receive a one-timer, you can't tap the shoot button, because you'll be swinging your stick around like a fucking lariat polearm, and draw a penalty for doing nothing but trying to make this piece of shit game actually WORK.
The game will randomly switch who you're controlling. On top of that, the stupid arrow over the head is hard to see at times. What was so wrong with a circle around the feet of the guy with the puck?
Goalies cannot pass to someone standing two feet in front of them; they will always turn it over to the other team standing further back, and let them score on him.
The "custom controls" in Options only switches two buttons. They don't let you customize a goddamn thing.
They got rid of the speed burst button. As someone who actually plays hockey in real life, this is bullshit. When you need a sudden sprint, you sure can muster it. But not in this game.
The opposing team will almost always get the pass off before you can hit them. The ones they don't pass, they never lose control of, even if they spin around four times and fall down and DIE. Seriously, what the hell is this?
Your buttons will not work when you have a chance to actually score.
The opposing team can score best when they're face-humping your goalie.
Screens only work against you, not for you.
The camera typically cuts off your guys up high, making it impossible to know if you can pass back and across.
The shootout camera is absolutely horrible, and cannot be adjusted except from bad to worse.
You cannot score. You will not score. If by some accident you do, it won't matter becuase even on Easy, the computer cheats like you would absolutely not believe.

The only "tip" (if you can call it that) I received on how to score in this game is to throw random shit all over and not try to set up any plays. That isn't hockey. I don't know what that is, but I'm done with this stupid game.

Go...Whoever

2009-11-21T18:45:00.002-05:00

[Exclamation of support for team that will neither see nor benefit from it, but aligns me with the mob mentality of sporting fans and declares my allegiance to like-minded friends and colleagues so that we may synchronize grunts and gesticulations at the appropriate times]

Shooting Prevents Suicide?

2009-11-19T20:09:00.000-05:00

So I heard a news story today about a lady who was shot to death by a cop. She attacked him with a knife because he wouldn't let her climb into a bathtub full of water and appliances. He killed her for trying to kill herself. Way to get involved.

Turdburglar

2009-11-17T20:02:00.003-05:00

Yet another elaborate way to call a fellow gamer a homo: "Way to land the leading role in Thief: The Brown Project."

Touche.

GFWL: I Hates It

2009-10-19T19:49:00.002-04:00

Even tho they eventually made it free, I still hate Games for Windows Live, especially when it's required to save games....and then corrupts the save files. This corrupt save file thing is happening to me between installs on my two comps while trying to review Red Faction Guerrilla. Hate GFWL. Hate it.

Male Breast Cancer

2009-10-19T19:47:00.004-04:00

Guys, remember to check your boobs. Also, motivation to eat your veggies...

Prototype + Google Maps = Win

2009-10-11T11:59:00.002-04:00

Anyone hunting for collectibles or anything else in Prototype would do well to check this out. Enables some slick Google Maps features for a fictional Manhattan. You can click icons you choose to display on the map to get a screenshot of where exactly the item is in the world. Helped me find the Hint orbs in no time flat. :)

Turtles in Time Remake Review

2009-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00

[00:50] Mark: i have to see how bad the remake of turtles in time is
[00:51] Mark: it's giving me a headache already
[00:57] Mark: wow this is terrible
[00:57] Mark: how did they manage to fuck this up?
[00:58] Mark: they won't even let you quit
[00:58] Mark: omg
[00:58] Mark: it's hell
[00:59] Mark: i have to uninstall this before my ps3 starts developing warts

Yep, I win on Google

2009-08-24T21:02:00.002-04:00

It took a lil while for the Google overlords to get my post into the index, but sure enough, I currently have the lone result for my curious process research mentioned earlier today.

08e86f6f-e74e-48a9-b8a4-f51530ae61ab.exe?

2009-08-24T16:05:00.002-04:00

This (08e86f6f-e74e-48a9-b8a4-f51530ae61ab.exe) turned up in my task manager today, and looked awfully suspect. Turns out it's the "Alternate Start" for SuperAntiSpyware (i.e., the taskbar tray icon that enables scanning from the right-click context menu). I was a little surprised that none of the usual places had it in their databases (ProcessLibrary.com, BleepingComputer.com, FileResearchCenter.com, or WhatIsRunning.net).

So here it is for you. Let's see if this post tops out on Google. :)

Fuel = ridiculously inconsistent

2009-08-20T15:19:00.005-04:00

I still like this game, especially once I found out about the unintended "hit select when the timer says go to switch to any vehicle in any race" feature, but get this....

I start The Swamp race in Big Cauldron's Edge using the Trailblazer, perhaps the fastest and most well balance off/on-road bike available at this point, and as the 1st place guy is crossing the finish line, I'm in fourth or fifth, more than 500m behind 1st.

I try the same race again, this time using the Dustgrinder, which is roughly half as fast as the Trailblazer. I'm racing the same drivers in the same vehicles on the same track. Everything is the SAME except that I'm using a slower vehicle. The result? I win handily by 535m and 19 sec over the 2nd place finisher.

What. The. Eff.

Stupid Astroturf

2009-08-20T13:15:00.000-04:00

&amp;lt;!-- The logos depicted in this widget are the property of the respective corporations listed. --&amp;gt;

G.I. Joe Complete Collection

2009-08-07T22:21:00.001-04:00

I'm gonna have to get this sooner or later. If you'd like to get it for me sooner, I'll be your BFF.
http://www.gijoecollectorsset.com/

Tosh.0

2009-07-31T13:26:00.001-04:00

If you're not watching Tosh.0, you should be. Great stuff.

MP Wish List, 07/2009

2009-07-30T23:09:00.001-04:00

Go forth and read my musings....
Multiplayer Wish List, July 2009

CoD4 = yawn

2009-07-30T20:53:00.002-04:00

I'm amazed at how disappointed I am in Call of Duty 4 (granted, I'm just now getting around to playing it). Seriously, people think this is better than WaW? I know that'll get me shot and/or ostracized, but it's how I feel. Very on-rails, lots of random deaths you can't control, endlessly spawning enemies till you reach a certain point...I just have no motivation to keep playing it. World at War did the enemy spawn points now and then, but somehow it didn't annoy me as much as it does here. Feels like I'm playing a carnival game with nightvision goggles.

And that SAS commander guy sounds like he's talking with a mouth full of oatmeal. Without subtitles, I'd have no idea wtf he is saying. Back to Far Cry 2 for me. :\

Far Cry 2 wasn't supposed to suck

2009-07-29T01:31:00.001-04:00

I read this in GI the other day, and an extended version is on the web:
http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/200901/N09.0127.1901.42518.htm

In it, Clint Hocking (producer at Ubi Montreal) talks about all these ideas and things that were supposed to be fixed, tweaked, and fleshed out in Far Cry 2 that, from the sounds of it, WOULD have made it a much better game, but alas, everything got cut due to the publisher wanting to have it out by Xmas. That's really annoying.

The most appalling explanation he gives is about why the Camo suit costs so much and does so little. Basically they had to cut weapons and had diamonds left over, but rather than removing some from the game and having to retest to make sure it was balanced and didn't break anything, they just dumped them all into the Camo suit cost...which apparently doesn't actually do much in the game. And another thing....stealth didn't get the attention it deserved, and basically doesn't work in the game. The villages were supposed to be populated like Assassin's Creed's, the wildlife was supposed to be its own ecosystem, feeding off each other and attacking NPCs and whatnot...it goes on and on. Give it a read. You can tell the guy is apologetic of how badly Ubisoft made them screw the game over just to hit a release window. I still find it mildly amusing, but Crysis blows it away in every conceivable way. But Crysis won't run playably on my laptop. :)

Download Paradise = breakage

2009-07-28T06:20:00.005-04:00

Burnout Paradise forced me and Sean to download patch 1.90 just to play online last night. His son was playing the game just fine a few hours earlier. Apparently the patch breaks online play, and/or I read a rumor about Tuesdays being "maintenance" day at Criterion. I have yet to confirm the latter, but I can assure you that after wasting time downloading a 400MB+ stupid worthless patch, the online component of the game -- the only thing we were interested in at the time -- is completely broken, because no longer could either of us connect to the "Paradise servers."

Just another reason we don't need some frigging middleman third party futzing up the works when trying to game online. Rainbow Six Vegas kicked this off on the PC (Ubi's servers su-u-u-uck), and it's spread elsewhere. Direct-connect and/or private console to console sessions work JUST FINE. Hamachi for the win; if only it worked on consoles.

The end. Thanks for listening.

Escher Legos

2009-07-22T14:08:00.000-04:00

It's in Spanish, but the images still rock. Escher paintings, redone in Legos.

What Not To Watch

2009-07-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

Instead of "What Not To Wear," it should be called "we're going to make you look even more awful in the other direction."

Cannon Fodder

2009-07-21T17:33:00.001-04:00

A classic, packaged with its own Genesis emulator strapped on.
http://www.games4win.com/games/cannon-fodder/
http://www.games4win.com/download/cannon-fodder

Far Cry 2 PC Keyboard Config File

2009-07-21T13:15:00.002-04:00

If anybody knows where this file is stored and how to access it (to modify it manually and fix some stuff that doesn't work), please tell me and I'll love you forever.

Lolra Sez... The Movie

2009-07-20T17:12:00.000-04:00

Well, not a movie yet, but give it time.

Lolra sez... There's totally a FedEx right over here

2009-07-20T16:48:00.002-04:00

Me: So where's this FedEx?
Lolra: Just on the other side of that awning.

We walk past the awning, all the way to the end of the building. There is no FedEx Kinko's

Me: So, um, where is it?
Lolra: Maybe I saw that Rinkov optical place and just "saw" Kinko's.
Me: Reading fail.

Lolra sez... Interviews: Getting You Out Of The House

2009-07-20T16:41:00.002-04:00

Lolra: At least this interview should get me out of the house.
Me: [chuckling] What, no option to have them come to our place?
Lolra:

Resident Evil 5 penile humor

2009-07-20T15:21:00.003-04:00

Playing RE5 online with Sean the other night, and amidst all the finds of "Gold (small)" and "Gold (large)," I said, "If your wiener was an item in this game, it would be 'Penis (small).'" I lol'd for like five minutes (and still do every time I think about it). And for that, he called me stupid, and said I got way to much enjoyment out of the joke. :)

Lolra sez... Laughing = wanting to go there

2009-07-20T15:15:00.002-04:00

Watching a show on PBS where a guy goes to Bath, England, drinks some mineral water and says, "That tastes bad enough to be good for you."

Me: [laughs]
Lolra: You laughed, that must mean you want to go there!
Me: Titty bar, HAHAHAHA!
Lolra: [frown] That makes no sense.
Me: I laughed, that must mean I want to go there.
Lolra: Oh. You're stupid.

Lolra sez... USB Tweezers

2009-07-20T15:14:00.001-04:00

Lolra: Why do you have my tweezers?
Me: What are you talking about?
Lolra: Aren't those my tweezers in your hand?
Me: This is a USB flash drive.
Lolra: Oh.
Me: USB Tweezers would be cool tho.

He's Poopin'

2009-07-20T15:13:00.002-04:00

Mirror's Edge thoughts

2009-07-20T13:39:00.000-04:00

Spent some moar time helping Lolra suffer thru this game. It really is buggy and kind of unpolished. Faith's inability to grab shit right in front of her half the time stands out even more when compared to the rampant and generally well implemented "grab" mechanics in Infamous, which is a blast if you haven't tried the demo. Mirror's Edge has an undue amt of trial and error (try, die, fail, repeat) at times and the combat sucks ass; I get that the combat probably sucks on purpose to force people to want to run away, but still, this game's got nothing on Infamous, Assassin's Creed, or Prince of Persia, IMO. Frankly, I'll be glad when it's over.

PerfectDisk Error Fixed!

2009-07-18T13:37:00.001-04:00

PerfectDisk error:

DefragFs: PerfectDisk failed to start correctly.
Hit any key to restart immediately. Restarting in 10 seconds.

Starting optimization for C:\
Volume is not dirty
Failed to open volume using Defrag32 (32, 538).
\DosDevices\Volume{21b7ef55-85bc-11dda7f8-806d6172696f}
Could not gain exclusive access to drive C:\ (32)
There is a possible driver conflict. (C:\)
..........

SOLUTION:
Go to this registry key (via regedit):
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager"

Open the value named "BootExecute"

The normal entry for ME there is:
pdboot.exe
autocheck autochk *
lsdelete

Delete anything else that's in there, restart, and try doing another offline system file defrag. Should work now.

An Unexpected Return

2009-06-30T12:26:00.001-04:00

Since Myspace is a steaming pile of shit lately with crashing my browser whilst trying to post blogs, I guess I'll revert back to here, the interface I vastly preferred, but lacked in the social aspect. If you're reading, I love you. If you're not, well what the fart is wrong with you? GET SOME!

To the Point of Redundancy

2008-01-02T06:47:00.000-05:00

Domino's Pizza has gone above and beyond the call of normalcy. They have made a mobile version of their online ordering system, so you can place internet orders via a cell phone browser. I'll pause for a moment while that sinks in...

...
...
...

Ok, now why the fuck wouldn't you just CALL THEM and place the order at that point? You already have the phone in-hand, and it would require far fewer button presses. Are we so socially inept as a society now that we shun human interaction to the point that we can't even use a phone as a PHONE?

I weep for the future.

New Song Clips

2007-12-06T05:18:00.000-05:00

We were watching 'The Holiday' today on Blu-ray and a couple songs in it caught my ear. I went to the keyboard and figured out a little of each them, and made clips so I could remember them to work with them again later. Here they are, for better or worse.

Song one

Song two

Not very good, and pretty short, but it's the first thing I've recorded in a years, so I'm happy to be at it again.

MP3 players and HL2 Ep2

2007-11-11T04:54:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking it's finally time to join the portable mp3 player generation. I have a Philips Expanium portable CD player that reads CDs, CDRs, and CDRWs, plus MP3 CDs (on any of the aforementioned formats). Basically, if you can put it on a disc, it'll read it. But it was still disc-dependent, and I don't like burning disc after disc just to get what I hoped a dedicated flash-memory mp3 player could give me, with infinitely reusable internal memory and expandable SD cards.

I took the plunge on the Insignia Sport. Sports 4GB, plays music, video, and pics, and has Bluetooth for just over $100, I thought it sounded pretty good. There are several things I hated about this player.

1. First and foremost (and I guess this is pretty common, so deal with it), it doesn't allow me to just browse my mp3s by folder. It's entirely dependent on ID3 tags, which I don't have all filled out nice and neat. So, half my music ended up under "artist" or "unknown." Annoying trying to find anything that way. Is that "Fall To Pieces" by Avril or Velvet Revolver? Who knows.

2. If I delete a song off the player, it freezes up everything, stops playback, etc.

3. If I back out of a menu, it doesn't just go back to the item I was on previously. It jumps back to the top of my music library, making me scroll all the way back to wherever I was on the somewhat loose scroll wheel.

4. Ahem, the loose scroll wheel.

5. Inability to read my m3u playlists from MusicMatch, and inability to make its own playlists.

6. Impossible to remove battery cover. It's not even mentioned in the manual. Nothing about the battery at all, which makes me think to get it replaced when it eventually dies, you have to ship off your player to the shop for a few weeks. Bleh.

7. With the given form factor and unintuitive interface, it'd be a nightmare to use either while driving or with sweaty fingers on the treadmill.

That's the big stuff. I could deal with the fact that it didn't come with a AC adaptor. I borrowed Laura's iPod USB to AC adapter and it worked fine to charge it up. I guess the most telling thing about it was that the protective insert on the SD card slot said "DUMMY" on it. That's how I feel having plunked down money and being so disappointed. But hey, live and learn.

So I'm going to return it and go back to my Expanium. I can burn 700MB of mp3s to one CDRW and potentially rewrite the disc several times as my tastes change. It takes longer and isn't as convenient, but dammit, if none of these other mp3 player manufacturers are going to have a folder/file browse system like the Expanium, then they're just not going to convert me.

Started and finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2 tonight in just under 8 hours, taking an hour longer than Episode 1, though it was infinitely more satisfying. I'd heard as much from others (Tippy, et al), but it's something you really have to walk a mile in to FEEL what the game is all about. The Source Engine still impresses (especially maxed out on a Geforce 7950GT), and has a bit more polish and flair this time, including the motion blur effect also included in Portal, as well as more splatter and sheen on things. The truly frantic battle against the Striders was tense whether you have God Mode on or not.

But most importantly, when I saw the Hunter first pounce on Alyx...it made my gut sink. The animations, character definition, voice acting, and heart put into these characters are so genuine that you don't even notice it, and it stings all the more when they get hurt, as much or more than when heroes in movies take a fall. You didn't fight side by side with the guy in the movie. You didn't aim the flashlight while the hero shot up the baddies. He didn't provide sniper cover for you while you inch your way to the gate controls at the end of a heavily contested alley. It means more here, and fuck Roger Ebert if he thinks games can't be art. He states that, "video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic." Bullshit. Go play the Half-Life saga start to finish and talk to me then.

That said, Eli Vance, I hope to see you in Episode 3. Maybe the Vortigaunts can work their magic on a father as well as they did on his daughter. I'll go back down there and stomp Antlion guts till the cows come home if a little larvae will put you back the way you were.

Made a run for goodies the other night, grabbed F.E.A.R. Platinum Edition, Voltron: Red Lion (Vol 4), and South Park Season 9 (the only one I was missing). Aside from the depressing (and, of course, cliffhanger) HL2: Ep2 ending, I'm a pretty happy camper right now.

Shit on TV, Neck Pain, Everyday Sunday

2007-11-07T02:44:00.000-05:00

Tila Tequila has her own show. I won't tell you what channel/network in the hopes that you'll avoid it, or at least make it more difficult for the sad fucks who really really want to watch. People are pining to get in her pants. That's like shit getting a hard-on for garbage. So shallow. So stupid. 13-year-old boys will unfortunately keep this crap on the air for a LOT longer than it deserves. This has to be the most worthless, degrading, pointless show I've ever seen. It's better with the sound off, but best not to be watched at all. Just Google her and spank it to the nudie pics on there.

My neck hurts a little today. Started about 24 hours after the accident, which apparently is "normal." Hopefully it will go away in a few days rather than render me paralyzed.

Heard "Let's Go Back" by Everyday Sunday on the radio today and really liked it. You can hear the whole thing at their MySpace page, and while it does sound a lot like Quietdrive and the other recent kings of cookie-cutter pop-rock, I won't deny something I like on principles alone. I'm not sure yet whether to plunk down for the retail CD, select Amazon MP3s, or just that one song. Amazon's store makes it way too easy and affordable to resist. Decisions, decisions....

Car vs. Guardrail. Guardrail Wins.

2007-11-06T01:01:00.000-05:00

We're fine. Just a couple bumps and bruises. That's the important thing. Now the rest of the story.

We were driving back from a visit to NYC tonight, and it was going well. It started raining in western Pennsylvania, but still, it was going pretty well. We got into Ohio and were getting off I-76W and onto I-71S. The leftward curve was fairly sharp. It was rainy. It was wet. The back tires lost traction. The car started to slide and Laura tried to turn into it. Maybe it was a lost cause already at that point, maybe she over-corrected, who knows. Whatever the case, the car suddenly spun clockwise, putting the front left of the car into the guard rail. This added to the spin, bringing the back left of the car into the rail as well. The spin continued until we came to a stop 270 degrees after the rotation started and we were perpendicular to oncoming off-ramp traffic. Luckily, everyone behind us stopped in time and only one person immediately behind us caught a little of the rail herself while trying to avoid hitting us.

Laura was completely freaked and I tried to point her in a direction to get the car off the road so we could calm down and avoid any more trouble. We parked. A lady ran up to see if we were okay and if we wanted her to call the highway patrol through her OnStar system. We declined and said we'd be okay.

The next knock at the window was the girl immediately behind us who also just barely kissed the rail, wanting to see if we were okay and whether we should swap insurance info and such. We did, and at that point I skimmed my cell phone book for the toll free highway patrol number (I programmed it in "just in case" several road trips ago; came in handy today) and reported the accident. The cop showed up about 20 minutes later. We'd swapped info already and the girl behind us stuck around to make sure her side of things was covered.

We surveyed the damage together. Both headlights were out of commission, one not even lighting and being pushed about 3 inches into the front end, and the other lighting properly but pushed at an angle that only lit things off the side of the road. We wouldn't be driving home tonight, regardless of the other damage, which we probably could have driven with on the whole. Also, the remainder of Laura's birthday cake (Happy Bday indeed) was crushed inside the trunk upon impact, unfortunately.

Everything's squared away with the cop, he radioed the tow truck, and luckily my AAA-Plus membership was on hand to trump Laura's basic membership, giving us 100 free miles of towing as opposed to 3. Turns out we had the accident exactly 100.2 miles from home, and the tow guy didn't want to haggle over $0.60 for the extra two-tenths of a mile.

So we're back home, not planning on going anywhere for a while now. She's got to figure out what she wants to/can do with her driving situation. I could drive her to her second job when I get off work during the week, or she's thinking of renting something for a week. We'll see.

In the end, we're home, my car is still fine, the apartment is still fine, and overall we're fine. Nothing a hot shower and a bit of alcohol can't drown out for the night. Just glad to still be here. Cheers, all.

PORTAL FTW!!!

2007-10-22T07:17:00.000-04:00

The Orange Box is out, and I grabbed it primarily for Portal, to end my year-plus wait since the first videos surfaced for it. It's just as frickin awesome as it looks, and I played the main "campaign" straight though, start to finish. That's not saying much since I beat it in about 4 hours, but it was easily the most satisfying and rewarding puzzle-solving, game-playing experience I've had in recent memory. I even enlisted Laura's help solving some of those brain teasers of navigating the environment with a portable portal-throwing device. Replayability? You bet.

I'll dig into the rest of the Orange Box package shortly, having missed out on Half-Life 2 and its other episodes when they originally debuted, and my own curiosity towards Team Fortress 2's unique art style. It was a bit indimidating at 15GB of hard drive space, meaning it'll never all go on my laptop unless I come up with a bright idea.

The only real concern I have with the package is that it logs me into Steam every time I go to play it, meaning that without constant internet access, I probably can't play any of it, which is only a smidge less irritating to me than the limited activations on BioShock. Grrrr. Portal is really, really good, almost good enough to make me not think about how copy protection is yet again fucking over the paying customer. >:|

Unreal Tournament 3 comes out soon, in about a month, so I'm brushing up with UT 2004. There are a lot of parts of that game I never dug fully into, mainly the single player campaign with its team management options and gambling on 1-on-1 deathmatches. It's an interesting twist, and I'm interested to see what they do with it in the next iteration.

Gears of War is coming to the PC soon, too. And Oblivion GOTYE, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Call of Duty 2 are also sitting on my desk, not to mention a handful of demos I haven't even scratched yet. Yay for the holiday nuttiness in the games business!

More Copy Protection Bullshit

2007-10-18T09:09:00.000-04:00

I just bought Norah Jones' CD Not Too Late, brought it home, put in my laptop to listen to, and nothing happened. I tried it again, and nothing. The drive didn't even acknowledge that there was a disc in the drive. So we tried it in my portable CD player, running through my stereo in the living room. Played fine. So the disc isn't screwed up. I decided to do some research.

Apparently, companies are (and have been for a while I guess; I hardly ever buy CDs anymore, so how would I know?) producing the discs with so much copy protection on them that they deliberately are made NOT to run on PCs, in an effort to stem copying and the proliferation of MP3s and file sharing. Don't believe me? Check this out:

Corrupt audio discs, aka "Copy-Protected CDs"

CD creator burns copy-protection efforts

And finally, Lawmaker: Is CD copy-protection illegal?

They're shitting on the paying customer once again to protect their profits. Lovely.

In contrast, in the same shopping trip, I picked up Rammstein's Reise, Reise and it plays just fine in my laptop's DVD drive. Furthermore, maybe a half hour ago, I downloaded "There Is No Light" by Mairead Nesbitt off Amazon.com's fairly new no-DRM MP3 download purchasing service. For $0.89, I'm plenty happy with my one-song purchase, with no protection, no ties to one music player, and at 224kbps and 44kHz. Hey CD publishers! Take note! You just lost another customer, and your business model is on the way out.

Fuck off with your copy protection.

PC Gaming is Killing Itself with DRM

2007-10-13T21:55:00.000-04:00

I just read this, and it made me feel a little better, but still annoyed me:
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/revoketool.html

Now a little backstory. 2K Games released BioShock on the PC and Xbox 360 to critical acclaim, and as expected, it sold really well at first. Then a few days into the hubbub, PC users started getting hamstrung by the limited "activations" on the game. In other words, you can only install it a low, fixed number of times before it stops working (the X360 version doesn't have this problem). Imagine if your car dealer pre-set a fixed number of "key turns" on your car before the ignition stopped working arbitrarily. This would be completely unacceptable.

The limitation on game activations includes installing on different user accounts on the SAME computer, meaning each user account install counts as an entirely separate computer. It becomes a huge pain in the ass for the paying customer. 2K says it's designed to minimize the chances of the game being pirated, but you know what? It WILL be pirated, sooner or later, or as the folks at The Consumerist put it, "The organized piracy movements will crack almost any system within hours." The people copying games out there are far craftier than developers give them credit for, and take great joy and pride in breaking these mechanisms just to spite the companies that put them in place. Let those two groups battle it out, but who actually ends up suffering? It's not the software pirates. It's the people who paid for the game fair and square.

The info at that Revoke Tool link above isn't really much of an improvement, just allowing you to free up one activation, but if you do so much as get a new video card, motherboard, or DVD-ROM drive, you could be out an activation. What? BULLSHIT. But you're still limited in activations in the end, and if you're not anal about revoking them with their little tool there, sorry Charlie.

And this, dear readers, is why I will not be buying BioShock. Grats on the anti-piracy, 2K. You "protected" your game right out of me buying buying it! Good work!! Way to kill those sales! The only way it will wind up on my system is if they remove that DRM crap entirely--or if someone does it for them, if you know what I mean. I don't support piracy, but I do support getting the product I want in a format I can tolerate (or preferably enjoy), even if the ones who provide it aren't the company who made it in the first place.

Consider this...I just cracked open my big case of old PC games the other night, like Tribes 2, Aliens vs. Predator, Half-Life, and Heavy Gear 2. I've installed them probably a half-dozen times on a few different computers I've owned over the years. With the type of "security" 2K is trying to use, I wouldn't be able to play these games I shelled out good money to have. 2K says, "...we have a support division set up to help increase your limit so that you can always play your game." Ok, so what about a few years down the road when this particular game isn't hot stuff anymore and the support team dissolves, they shut down the activation server, or what if the company goes under entirely? No more game for you. They took your money and flushed it right down the toilet.

This comes hot on the heels of Microsoft releasing Halo 2 for the PC and saying that it absolutely required DirectX 10 and Windows Vista to run. A group of savvy coders in a garage somewhere figured out that MS is full of crap (as usual) and were able to copy a few files and get the game running on DirectX 9.0 hardware, in Windows XP. Why did MS make this brash move? Because DX10 is native to Windows Vista, which isn't selling so well (and rightly so, it's crap), so they thought making their fancy, shitty new OS a requirement to play a hotly anticipated port (of a game that was made for and ran on the original Xbox, which certainly didn't use DX10) would get things moving. They were wrong. The little guys beat them. Again.

Going back to copy protection bullshit for a minute, I got a preview copy of the game Infernal for review, and it had Starforce anti-copy malware on it. I can almost understand this from the perspective that they don't want their preview code being leaked, though the game would be out in a few months anyway, and it wasn't anything particularly revolutionary. But overall it didn't make much sense considering how negatively Starforce has come to be viewed as a DRM solution, and really, it's a preview build of an almost finished game, that I was going to write all about. Everything about the game would be noted in the preview anyway. Starforce had a 30-day expiration, which was also stupid since what if we want to refer back to that copy during the full game's review process?

What really blew my mind was that Ubisoft's King Kong PC demo that came out shortly thereafter also had Starforce on it. What the hell is that about? It's a FREE DEMO that ANYONE can download and play, and for those without speedy internet connections, being able to have a friend give them the demo is a golden opportunity to spread the good word about your game. Why any company would put copy protection on their free, publicly available demo is beyond logic and reason.

So what's the big deal with Starforce? Well, it made headlines for being particularly malicious, causing some computers to malfunction and in some cases reportedly destroyed DVD-ROM drives. It was bad enough that major publishers like Ubisoft eventually dropped using it due to customer outcry.

Copy protection--especially damaging versions like Starforce--is making users not want to buy legit games anymore, myself included, so their efforts to prevent copying are actually just driving more people to WANT to get pirated versions with the vindictive, un-user-friendly copy protection garbage skimmed off. We just want to buy something and have it work. Is that asking so much?

Contrary to this unsavory approach, developer Stardock (not to be confused with shitty copy protection maker Starforce) released Galactic Civilizations II, making a big deal out of the fact that they were releasing the game with NO copy protection on it whatsoever. All you have to do is enter the CD key for the game (a familiar process that's been around for decades now), and you can install it on as many machines as you like. It only allows operation on one machine at a time, but it doesn't have multiplayer apparently, so who cares? Here was Stardock's take on using, as they put it, "draconian copy protection."

"Naturally, some people have taken the conclusion that because we don't have copy protection on our game, that we invite piracy. That is not the case, we simply think there are other ways to stop piracy than CD checks, strict DRM, etc."

They went on to say, "If you make it easy for users to buy and make full use of your product or service legitimately then we believe that you'll gain more users from that convenience than you'll lose from piracy." You can read the whole thing here.

This is how it was in the old days, and it appears to still work now, including Unreal Tournament 2004, which once you install, you don't need the discs anymore, even the one specifically labeled "play disc." Stardock adds, "Sales reports on Galactic Civilizations II have been much higher than anticipated. We've now outsold the first Galactic Civilizations in North America in the first 10 days." The people at Starforce, in a show of rebellion against the idea of not using DRM/copy protection, posted links at their site to torrents where you could illegally download GalCiv II for free. It was a stupid move, further tarnished Starforce's already lousy reputation, and the links have since been taken down.

Beyond the realm of gaming, copy protection is also being challenged with Amazon's new DRM-free mp3 store, which certainly has a huge appeal for me. Being able to download songs and use them however and wherever I like sounds much better than being a slave to the Apple iBot way. Here's hoping consumers vote with their wallets and support this and other moves to give the content back to the users without superfluous strings attached.

Play on.

Why I (and I'm sure many others) won't buy a PSP

2007-09-06T20:59:00.001-04:00

I just read this and it reminded me of the day I decided the PSP wasn't worth investing in. When the thing first came out, it exploded due to two things: UMD movies and homebrew hackery. Within weeks of release, people figured out how to run Super Nintendo and PS1 ROMs on the system via the Memory Stick. I was stoked. It sounded like great fun and a nearly limitless library of titles that could be ported over...albeit not entirely legally (though I own tons of games, so owning the original technically means I have rights to the ROM).

Sony's reaction? Rather than embrace any semblance of user created content, they released a firmware updated REQUIRED to run any Gen 2 PSP games, and after the force-update, the homebrew stuff was quashed. I don't know if it recovered since I really stopped following it, knowing that for every step the users made to try to make the system worth a shit, Sony would be there saying "NO, YOU MUST ONLY PLAY OUR SHITTY GAMES AND NEVER HAVE FUN!"

And since I don't give a flying fuck about any "real" PSP games (other than *maybe* Jeanne D'Arc and Loco Roco), I won't buy it. I won't buy the slim model either. Sony says they care about the customer, but do everything they can to shortchange and rip them off.

Movies of Late

2007-08-31T18:29:00.001-04:00

We've been on a bit of a movie-renting tear lately, so I'll try to cover a lot of info quickly. Titles in CAPS for quick reading.

BABEL is our lead-off, and wasn't what I was lead by the previews to believe it would be at all. With all the"international incident" and terrorist messages in the trailers, I was bracing myself for a Tom Clancy-esque thriller. Instead what I saw left me bored and completely detached. Kind of like CRASH. Or TRAFFIC. Well, I actually liked TRAFFIC.

THE CONTRACT stars Morgan Freeman and John Cusack in roles better suited to Joe Pesci and John Cena, respectively. I really don't know how this sort of casting happens, but the story is dull and forgettable, and the characters have all the depth of a puddle in the desert. Casting agents, you snookered me.

THE NUMBER 23 with Jim Carrey was equally disappointing and dumb. It had potential, and it's not that Carrey couldn't deliver on the prescribed role. It's more that the script started with a good idea and did nothing worthwhile with it.

LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN was a pleasant surprise. Laura and I felt a little differently; she wanted the tone in the first half of the movie to continue, whereas I preferred that things got serious and deliberate in the latter half. This was a much better role for Freeman than THE CONTRACT, and seeing Ben Kingsley was nice, too. I hate to say it, but this is arguably my favorite flick of both Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu. They're just so damn likeable here.

STEAMBOY is an anime that gets a little too caught up in trying to weave a moral and the story slows down too much early on, but the last half saves the day with high-powered actiony stuff and some of the best animation/visuals in the genre. I liked it by the end, but I probably won't watch it again.

I wish the same could be said of fellow Japanimation flick SPIRITED AWAY. I heard it was Miyazaki's best, but I still prefer PRINCESS MONONOKE, which I consider to be his best of the ones I've seen. Maybe it was the years of hype and expectations, or maybe that the movie is clearly more of a flick for the kiddos, but it just didn't grab me. Too bad. The imagination and animation are good, but I'll probably not see it again, at least not for a good long while.

LADDER 49 surprised me, too. Again, a case of somewhat misleading previews/trailers that branded it an action movie about firefighters when really there's a lot more humor, humility, and heart in it than I expected. Good flick.

PERCEPTION we picked up solely because we're both fans of Piper Perabo, notably seen in COYOTE UGLY. This is no longer a valid reason to rent something. This movie bored us to tears. It had its moments, but I just couldn't give a shit about all the whiny, two-faced characters and how meaningless their lives were, let alone how stupid it all ended up by credits time. Pass.

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland was good, wholesome popcorn fun. I wondered why it was in the comedy section, but despite being about an elaborate heist, it really is pretty lighthearted all in all. Not the most clever thief movie out there, but good fun, without being too heavy.

KNOCKED UP surprised me as well, much the way THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN did, and rightly so. Again, what the trailers make look like a stupid slacker comedy actually hits several important and memorable themes and moments about becoming parents, growing up along the way, and making sacrifices/compromises. Plus it's just damn funny, to boot.

REIGN OF FIRE. Ha. It was pretty dumb, as expected, but was worth seeing once I guess. If only to see Matthew McConaughey getting eaten by a dragon.

ULTRAVIOLET was really great....till anyone spoke. Nice (if not wholly impressive) action scenes, but possibly THE WORST dialogue I've ever heard in a movie. Watch it with the sound off for the visual imaginativity only. Or better yet, just watch EQUILIBRIUM instead. Fantastic flick on it's own, but even more so compared to this reeking pile.

SHE'S HAVING A BABY annoyed me with too much chick crap and crying. Sorry ladies, but KNOCKED UP was much more my speed.

BATMAN (1966), which many of you have probably seen, is suitably terrible just like the concurrent television offerings. Bat Shark Repellent. How the franchise survived this era is beyond me, but Christian Bale and the rest of the crew behind BATMAN BEGINS somehow managed to make the caped crusader cool again. The animated series didn't hurt, either.

That's it for now. We still have DOMINO and THE TERMINAL on our coffee table, so I might blab about those in the near future. I had a tetanus shot yesterday with my physical (btw, I'm fine) and my arm is still a lil sore, so I'm gonna give it a rest now.

OMFG!!!!

2007-07-24T21:17:00.000-04:00

Guild Wars SUCKS. In SO many ways. Seriously, just pony up the $12-15/mo and play World of Warcraft. You'll be doing yourself a huge favor. Here's a brief list of things that irritate the holy shit out of me about Guild Bores.

I can't manage to click on the ONE pixel of a guy that's running by that will actually SELECT him, let alone double-clicking to attack. Which reminds me...single click should select a guy, and go ahead and steal from WoW here and let single RIGHT-clicking attack or interact. GOD.

Aggro range and area of awareness is totally illogical. I can shoot a guy standing in a crowd, and only he and the one other guy linked to him will come running. The others are oblivious. WHA? Or I'm pounding the crap out of some dood and his buddies come patrolling by, completely oblivious to what's going on even though they walked right THRU me.

Then there are times you'll wander into a room full of people of, say level 3, and they spot you and mob you from 100 yards away, then the next room will have similar level 3s who won't attack you even if you walk up and tap them on the shoulder. WTF?

My pet is stupid. He's entirely one-dimensional. I can't control him, tell him who to attack, can't use him to pull anyone off of me since he can't manage aggro or hold it to save his life.

The interface for selling items is retarded. Why not just let me sell straight out of my bags (like WoW)?? Why pull up a second screen, and not even let me filter the gear I have in my custom weapon slots so I don't sell the wrong thing because of the game's unintuitive redundant bullshit?

Collectors? For what? I can run halfway across a vacant level to trade 3 baked husks (i.e., garbage) to a guy who'll trade them for an item that sells for 9g.....WHEN I COULD JUST SELL THE HUSKS DIRECTLY TO THE NEAREST VENDOR FOR 9G. Who the fuck would bother?

Quests that REQUIRE you to get some other fag to party with you...and for what? Just for the sake of partying with you, and doing such exciting tasks as "come hold this lever for me while I run thru the gate it opens....you can't come with me, and after I run thru I'm going to dump you from the party, so HURRY UP AND JOIN ME!!"

Camera that doesn't just move gradually around the terrain or zoom in, but goes VWOOM VWEE up and down all over the fucking place since it can't figure out what to do with that rock it just collided with. If you're not standing in an empty FLAT field fighting the most boring creatures known to man, you will hate the game. And fighting said boring creatures will make you hate it, too.

GOD. Fighting high lvl murlocs for eternity is better than this.

WE'RE BACK!

2007-07-21T02:45:00.001-04:00

Or maybe it's just WE'RE HERE! if you never read the MandM blog before. If not, get caught up, fools. We've been gone since November, now sporting an email-to-email format since we don't talk on AIM much anymore. The man hath taken our souls and forced them into cubicles, thus we caint talk online till 4am no mo'.
http://lifebymandm.blogspot.com/

PS3, or not PS3

2007-07-16T03:34:00.000-04:00

I was perfectly happy waiting to get a PS3 until some games actually came out, comfy in the fact that we (the U.S.) weren't getting screwed out of hardware backward compatibility for all PS2 and PS1 games. The recent price drop from $600 to $500 didn't phase me either since I still didn't want any of the meager offerings currently available for the system.

Then I read this explanation for the price drop, and how it's really only being done to get people to buy a system no one cares about. There are only so many that are going to be available at this price, but again, meh. Then another nugget came out, stating that we ARE in fact getting screwed just like our friends across the Atlantic, and that the Emotion Engine will be removed to lower costs, screwing over hardware backward compatibility for the vastly inferior and far less supported route of software emulation.

So not only are they shoving the old unsold launch systems at us under the guise of a lower price point, but it's actually the better version of the hardware (you can always give yourself a much bigger hard drive later, as posted here), and the new version that they're actually saving money on, they're raising the price of, in a sense.

So now I face having to buy a console I'm not really ready to buy that has nothing to play on it, or lose the one key hardware feature I even give a crap about right now. It'd be like knowing the PS2 was going to lose DVD playback functionality six months after release, since that was a big selling point for me 6.5 years ago.

The only reasonable option I see is to put a 60GB PS3 on layaway somewhere and hope that something worthwhile comes out in the next 90 days to justify the asking price. At that point, I can choose to take it or leave it. But I don't like it. Sony is eroding even more faith with the dwindling fan base with moves like this.

Transformers

2007-07-13T21:26:00.000-04:00

Many of you expected this by now, perhaps way sooner. Either way, I wasn't impressed with the new Transformers live action movie. I had a little trouble putting my finger on just what I so disliked about it, then I read this, which sums it up pretty well:

And I want to hear people stop saying, "But it was teh based on teh toys! It couldn't be good!" That's a bunch of BS.

The movie sucked for one very clear reason: a story about a teenage boy trying to screw the hot cheerleader.

Hold on a sec... WHAT THE F!)*$ DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH TRANSFORMERS?!?!

Thusly, I put to you this theory: Transformers, the live-action movie, sucked because of all the stuff UNRELATED to the actual Transformers toyline and cartoon.

PErsonally, I also enjoyed the original Transformer designs more than the movie ones. The whole Decepticons as evil demons with teeth? Hated it. And what about Optimus with a moving mouth? AWESOME!! WOO!! Not.

This from iceblast21 and can be found here. His comment about everything NOT having to do with the title characters is also what I felt ruined the hell out of Alien vs. Predator. If you're going to spend all the money getting these licenses, USE THE CHARACTERS. Have them on the screen THE WHOLE TIME, even if they're just doing something in the background. I tried to be forgiving of the vehicle redesigns in TF. But everything else about the movie was a disappointing sham. The CG is some of the best yet, but that's about as significant as a gold-painted cow pattie.

Btw, we're back.

2007-06-18T18:56:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention the rest of the trip, now that we've been home for two weeks or so. Aside from finally meeting a buddy I've been yakking and working with via AIM for years for the first time in person, it wasn't too terribly exciting.

Salina, KS
We were gonna stop here, but decided to press on a bit further into the trip, and made it to Topeka, where the NHRA event in Kansas City had sold out all but the deluxe hotel rooms. Jacuzzi tub anyone? We splurged for a night, and the closest eatery was Hooters, so that was a new experience for us both. Needless to say, those hos aren't getting hired based on their personalities or IQ, so I shouldn't have expected the best. An hour to get one simple burger seemed kinda ridiculous, not to mention them bringing the wrong food to our table once, two waittresses trying to take our orders, and all the girls being a little less endowed than I'd been led to believe they'd be. Still, when the burger finally showed up, it was mighty tasty. Everything else was disappointing, though. Sorry Topeka. Your girls need work.

Kansas City, KS
Didn't do much here but drive through it, though it did look pretty nice. Might come back and check out the city a little more someday.

St. Louis, MO
This is where I met up with Mike at the deli. After an extended debacle that started with him saying we could crash with him, then not there, then he didn't even know if he'd have any time available that day, then forgot which day we were even going to be there, things generally worked out. We got a room at the Drury just outside of Arnold (near Mike's home/work), and played with the idea of killing a couple hours driving around St. Louis. Everyone encouraged us NOT to. They say it's dangerous, and a statistic I saw not too long ago slated St.L as the new murder capital of the country. Eh, pass. We just lounged in the hotel room for a bit and then went back out to have Mike make us some bourbon chicken after he got off work.

Indianapolis, IN
The stretch from St. Louis to Columbus was largely forgettable. Dave Letterman's hometown wasn't bad lookin, but it was mostly a footnote at this point in the trip since we were close to home and could come back and visit this place almost anytime. Didn't look bad from the highway. Laura did have a few problems getting a pic of it though. Stupid truck.

Columbus, OH
Home at last, and not a moment too soon. Weather was turning shitty when we got here (drove thru it on the way), and I had to host a multiplayer event for work literally about 15 minutes after we got home. Rushed in and set up the laptop, then helped Laura unload some of her stuff from the car quick as we could. Figured she could sort it all out from the doorway while I was working if we at least got it in out of the weather.

I worked. She unpacked. And that was about it. Combined with our drives from Columbus to NY, NY, we've now driven the entire width of the United States. Of course, mom pointed out I haven't been to Minnesota yet, which....I don't even see what that has to do with the width.

Ahh, mom. I think she loses it a little more every year.

The Gaming Landscape As It Stands

2007-06-18T18:43:00.000-04:00

Chances are, I'll never buy a Xbox 360. It'll be a while before I touch a PS3. And my Wii has had only a couple minor hiccups. So as not to bore you non-gamers too much, I'll try to keep it simple in case you were thinking about picking up a new system for yourself or your kiddos this summer.

Xbox 360
Everyone I know who bought this hunk of junk, literally everyone, has had at least one system die on them, and not a year or two down the road. I mean like a month or even the same WEEK as purchasing it. They simply don't hold up, and I don't know if it's because Microsoft is using cheap parts or cheap labor--or both--but neither would surprise me, coming from the company that would do anything--badger, steal, or kill (the competition)--to stay on top. Read more from a non-gaming site here:
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2007/06/07/microsofts-xbotch.aspx

Sure, Live Marketplace is supposed to be the "shiznit" and playing online is seamless (though you have to pay for it). But as the article puts it, if the hardware doesn't work, why would someone piss away $400-500 on it?

PS3
Speaking of price, this is one of the three reasons I don't have a PS3 yet. Even when I was working at Pizza Hut full time after school and had an all-disposable income, I couldn't have justified blowing $600 on a game console. The 3DO tried that shit back in the '90s and we all know what happened there (if you don't, I rest my case....it died a quiet and meaningless death).

Reason two that I don't have one is there just aren't any games out for it yet that change the world or appeal to me in any meaningful way, like how Smuggler's Run, SSX, and Midnight Club expanded things between the PS1 and PS2 at launch. I'm sure Resistance: Fall of Man is lovely to look at, but is it really that big of a departure from the last console first-person shooter (FPS) I played? I doubt it. Probably has more in common with PS2 launch FPS TimeSplitters than it does with that same series' robust and infinitely superior Future Perfect installment that came third and serveral years later. And it goes without saying that Blu-ray doesn't matter to me at this point, either. I'm still trying to wrap up my DVD collection as it is, and since I own more movies than anyone I know, I become the go-to guy for movies when I visit friends, and buying movies on discs they can't play at their houses doesn't help anyone.

The third main reason I don't have a PS3 yet is that I don't feel like they've really finished the damn thing yet. They're still changing the firmware and releasing patches for launch games. Download download download is all you end up doing, just to make things do what they should have done (at least, IMO) out of the box. The ironic part is, I just opened up the DVD remote for my PS2 the other day, hoping to use it with my elder PS2 that doesn't work so well but will still play movies, only to find out that the version of the DVD driver on that old workhorse is too old to support most of the remote's special features and buttons. /sigh

Wii
The Wii has held up well to all the abuse and hours we've thrown at it. Laura plugged five hours into ExciteTruck the other night without even thinking about it. Hunter and I played various games within Wii Sports and Wii Play for quite some time this past Wednesday. I'm getting new Miis from friends around the country. And the system hasn't even flinched. Aside from Wiimotes turning off for a second here or there mid-game or batteries dying (you have to expect a little of that with all wireless input, and the console DOES warn you when the batteries are getting low), the only time I've gotten a serious error out of it was when ejecting a disc and then hitting the Reset button rather than hitting Home on the Wiimote and going back to the main Wii screen that way. I learned that the Reset button is only designed to restart the game in the disc slot, not the entire console. It seems like a deliberate design choice I simply wasn't aware of. Still, making the teaching method into a system freeze so hard that I had to unplug it to get it to do anything was a little harsh.

In The End...
All in all, my Wii and PC are more than enough to keep me happily gaming these days, much to the dismay of Microsoft (note: fuck Vista-exclusive PC games) and Sony. An article in EGM recently even predicted that the Nintendo DS could reach a 90% market penetration in Japan within the next few years, making it not only more popular than the original Game Boy, but making it as common as a DVD player or a TV in most homes. At that point, the DS would be as mainstream and accepted as a cell phone, and Nintendo's gonna be laughing all the way to the bank.

Note: Stifle the Big-N fanboy comments. I was a VERY late adopter of the N64 and GameCube, and probably would have skipped them altogether if not for the always solid Zelda, Metroid, and Mario games. Oh yeah, and a little gem called Perfect Dark.

I Pooped In Las Vegas

2007-06-01T07:08:00.000-04:00

Down:
Sacramento, CA
Redlands, CA
Las Vegas, NV
Mesquite, NV
Springdale, UT
Vail, CO
Denver, CO

To Go:
Salina, KS
Kansas City, KS
St. Louis, MO
Indianapolis, IN
Columbus, OH

About halfway through this crazy cross-country road trip, and here's what I've learned so far...

Sacramento is nice, not spectacular or anything. Prolly wouldn't be my first pick if I moved to Cali. The drive from there to L.A. reminds me a lot of Ohio, except Ohio's grass is actually green, not brown.

I could easily do without about half the geography of California, namely the desert. Can't we just carve off areas we have no use for and drop them on other countries? If not for Pennsylvania, driving from home to New York would only take 3 or 4 hours.

Nevada is....bleak. Somewhere between Redlands and Las Vegas I made a few references to WoW. For instance, I swear we drove through the real world equivalents of Mulgore and The Barrens, and Laura assures me that not too far away are regions that reek of Thousands Needles (apologies to non-WoW players, as you must be lost now).

Anyway, Nevada reminded me of a circus that doesn't shut down, and the attractions are the only thing keeping the state going. Vegas itself is kind of like living in a caricature of a caricature of reality. Sure, there are live human beings there, but with that level of tourist mentality, it must warp the locals' sense of what a well-rounded person is like anymore. It might just fry my brain to live there, what with all the cardboard and illusions. But it is the best place to catch Broadway and other live acts outside of a more congested major city.

Vegas to Springdale was largely forgettable (Mesquite was nice), save for the giant thermometer. Drive up on Rte. 15 and you can't miss is. It read 90F when we got there, and 100F about 20 minutes later when we left, loaded up with Burger King and gasoline.

I also don't want to hear about "overcrowding" problems anymore. There's PLENTY of real estate out here just begging for a town or at least a truck stop to emerge on it. When you can go 200 miles without seeing any signs of life, it makes the insanely compressed life of NYC seem ridiculous. NYC is all stone and little vegetation anyway. It would do just fine if it woke up one day in place of Ute, NV.

Springdale and the greater Zion National Park area in general was quite nice. Not too hot yet this time of year, nice enough that my bro and his wife sleep outside on their deck. No screen. No tent. Just out there with the bugs and the iguanas and the bats. I admire the outdoors, sure, but I still like sleeping with four walls and a ceiling around me. The view of the stars was second to none, though. Even saw a shooting one.

Springdale to Denver was the best looking yet worst overall day for me, and the most recent. I had some ear adjustment problems on the initial flight out to Sacramento (i.e., my left ear simply does NOT adjust), but I thought it might play more nicely with a gradual ascent through the Rockies. Sorry to say that's not the case. For...I dunno, 10-20 miles straight (?) my eardrum wracked me with agonizing pain, so much so that if I were driving, I wouldn't have been able to make it through. Hooray for being the co-pilot on this trip. Somewhere past Vail it finally popped (or ruptured, I don't know which), and I was able to let go of my head and wipe away the tears. Not fun. This rules out traveling or living in the mountains for me (unless I somehow get the ear fixed), since the pain starts at about 5000 feet and gets worse from there on up. Around 9000 feet elevation in Frisco, CO, we stopped for gas, I felt headachey, went to take a piss, and almost blacked out standing in the bathroom. Thin air + an already tore-up me = 1 step shy of the emergency room.

We descended into Denver some 9.5 hours after we left Springdale, I was miserable, and temporarily deaf in my left ear. It was all I could to do mutter out the words "room for the night?" when we got off 70. Tried to get some food, but most of the stuff in west Denver closes at 10pm, and wouldn't you know it, we arrived at 10:15pm. Annoying.

I slept a few hours and started having nightmares (nothing trip-related; more inspired by seeing 28 Weeks Later recently methinks), but luckily Laura's rumbling sinuses woke me up before it got too unsettling in dreamland. I'm sitting before you now in the hopes of clearing my mind before going back to sleep.

I decided we should break up our remaining days into shorter drives, even if it means we don't stay the night in the most scenic of places or have to be gone a day longer. About 6-7 hours driving/riding in a day is my limit for now. 9.5 was simply too damn much. Makes me wonder how I made it from Tallahassee, FL to NYC in one day. Must have been something that happened the night before. ;)

And where the ear is concerned, I never thought I'd say this, but I'm really looking forward to being in Kansas.

More as it develops...

Video card goes bad....then goes good?

2007-05-07T05:26:00.000-04:00

Bought my desktop machine about a year ago, to the day. The video card has started misbehaving, causing certain pixels in the display to just stay one off-color, and to leave trails on any window that gets dragged across them. See these for reference:

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

I made those patterns by just dragging the windows around across the bad pixels, and the longer the computer was on, the more pixels started doing it. At one point, as many as 40 were wigging out, in turquoise, a pinkish-red, and yellow. I thought I was screwed and would have to return my video card, or replace it outright.

BUT!

As one not content to just take the easy (and expensive) solution, I spent today screwing around with the computer, trying to make damn sure what the problem was before dropping potentially another $250-300 on a piece of hardware that might be fixable.

I tried switching cables. Same thing. Changed monitors. Same thing. Tried another computer on both monitors, found no bad pixels in the monitors themselves. Thus, it MUST be the video card or the motherboard at large.

Sometime during that tinkering, I got a blue screen of death (BSOD), and my computer magically restarted itself. Later, I fired up Google Earth to look something up and POW it froze.

I reached for the scalpel (i.e., screwdriver) and started taking Betsy apart. Opened the case, pulled out the video card and sound card, moved the sound card down to the bottom-most slot to hopefully give the video card more room to breathe (those things run hella hot). I tried this once before without luck, but this time the comp recognized the sound card okay and just had to reinstall the sound drivers.

I took a good look at the video card for any signs of breakdown, or smells of smoke from overheating. It looked fine, save for a few flecks of dust here and there, so I sprayed it with compressed air. Then removed the heat sink and fan from the card to see if any clues lie inside there. Nope, so I screwed that back together.

Perhaps the card wasn't seated properly in the slot on the motherboard. I situated it, fired the machine back up, and nothing had improved.

Next big idea was to take a room fan and point it straight into the case (with the side still off) to push all that mofoing heat out and see if the heat trapped in there made a diff. Strangely enough, the bad pixels started disappearing.

I let it vent for a few minutes, then fired up World of Warcraft (the last trigger for a catastrophic unplanned restart). No problems. Turned on the frame counter and it was staying solid at around 60 frames per second.

Switched back to Windows Explorer and dragged the window around the screen to see how many bad pixels we had. I only saw one or two.

Back to WoW for about another 10 minutes. Kept the fan blowing. Toggled back to WE. Down to one bad pixel, and barely at that.

I shut the fan off and kept playing WoW to see if the number of pixels would go back up. It did not. In fact, the one bad one seemed to taper off and barely be there at all.

An hour later, with the case back sealed up and everything running as it should, I no longer have any bad pixels on my screen, and have had no crashes.

Say it with me, folks. "What. The. Fuck."

So apparently all I needed to do was move the sound card away from the video card so it could vent better. Let this be a lesson to you. I just saved myself $250.

You never know what tomorrow will bring, though, so I'll keep you posted.

Being Poor

2007-05-05T06:27:00.000-04:00

John Scalzi nailed this one. I remember living some of these things when I was a kid, but mom hid many more of them from us. Read on:

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.html

Appreciate what you have. I know I certainly do.

Maturity

2007-05-03T02:16:00.000-04:00

David Jaffe is head honcho at Incognito Studios, a second-party company in the Sony Computer Entertainment umbrella that makes PlayStation stuff. Incog used to be SingleTrac, responsible for some great stuff on the PS1 and PS2, including Warhawk and the better Twisted Metal games.

So now he's releasing a downloadable game for the PS3 that costs $10, has 4 levels, and is essentially an online version of the fun modes from Smuggler's Run on the PS2, Loot Grab and....whatever the other mode was called. In any case, you drive like mad to pick up an item, then try to carry it to a drop off point, all the while dodging your opponents who can steal the item by simply running into you.

This was fun in Smuggler's Run. It's the reason I still own the game. I could probably understand some people buying the thing he's pushing here (called Calling All Cars). However, one lousy review from GameSpot got him talking and re-analyzing what goes into a game review. Nevermind that most of the other reviews of it have been good. Hell, one of my friends didn't think 300 was a very good movie, despite the majority of people thinking it rocked. Who am I more likely to listen to, one guy or dozens of others?

In any case, I don't care that he questions the review process, stating that maybe it needs to be more clearly defined, have better market disclosure and analysis in the review body, or that smaller downloadable games should be rated on a different scale--and thus, different criteria--than major retail releases. He can think what he wants, he can blog his concerns.

What bothered me was that he--as a respected member of the gaming industry, figurehead for good game development, and someone with reasonable influence in the industry--stooped to say things like the following:

"...before any of you cowards who don't post your real fucking names tell me that I should stop crying, here's a big, juicy: 'GO FUCK YOUR MOTHER UP HER JIGGLY ASS TWAT' for you. Go ahead: Take it; that's right, it's just for you! So take it and shove it up your ass there real good!

"Why is that such a sign of weakness to some of you pricks? I swear I don't know. But either way, I can live with you asshats if you can live with me."

"TO THE LAME ASS WEBSITE THAT SHALL GO UNNAMED (ed: www.joystiq.com)- Fuck you, guys. Go fuck yourselves. What other developer makes a fucking change to a game when a review (IGN's in this case) has a good, valid point and is willing to open the fucking code up at the risk of more bugs to make the game better? Amazing.But hey, you guys are great, you guys rock. I hope Kotaku fucking puts your ass out of business, wanna be fucktards. And if you were actual journalists you would have read the motherfucking quote I posted on NEOGAF where I said because of the two bugs we needed to fix (not because I was afraid of the bargin bin) we had a window of opp. to fix the magnet problem. Assholes...total fucking assholes."

First amendment, free speech, yadda yadda. I'm fine with him saying what he feels. What kind of appalls me is that someone I respected a few hours ago has acted like such a forum troll/goon. Name-calling, excessive profanity, and then calling out the very people he's acting like for being degenerates. Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear) would never do this. Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario) would never do this. Hell, I wouldn't expect this level of behavior from Howard Stern. He even admits it's a pissing contest by kicking off that last rant with "I gotta get off a final parting shot before I go."

Grow the hell up.

Add yet another reason to why I won't be supporting Sony's gaming biz for a long, LONG time, and me being a guy who owns three PS1s and two PS2s. In a way, I'm hoping Sony chastizes him for acting out like this. Chris Hecker, one of the devs behind the upcoming life-sim game Spore, recently bashed the Nintendo Wii publicly, and recanted the next day. I wasn't there, but I suspect the rest of his team said "WTF?" and asked him to change his tune before their next game gets completely ignored.

Another Day, Another Writing Credit

2006-11-16T05:23:00.000-05:00

I dunno if I told you, but I started writing for www.worthplaying.com a couple of months ago. It's been a little slow going so far, what with all my other jobs sucking up most of my time lately. HOWEVER, I'm finally getting some stuff up on the site. It's nothing great, not really worth the effort to actually read, but I like to brag on the rare occasion I get to. Check it out....

CLICKIT!

A Birthday, and Working Out Your Demons

2006-11-05T14:19:00.000-05:00

Ordered the new laptop. Should be here sometime between the 15th and the 20th, sadly coinciding with the Wii launch, so I gotta decide what I want to see worse.

Laura's b-day has come and gone, and I think it was a relative success. Methinks it's more about figuring out and giving people what they want rather than just spending a lot of money on random stuff and activities.

To that end, we started the night (Stage 1) by going into Manhattan to see 'Jackass 2.' We loved the first one, and I might actually start tracking down the shows now. It reminds me of some of the stupid shit I did when I was a kid, and I gotta admire a lady who thinks stuff like the Ass Chug and the Fart Mask were seriously funny. Notice you never see any women on the sets for these stunts?

Stage 2 was a failed effort (Google Maps, how you have wronged me) to find a Taco Bell in the greater Brooklyn area. She's been mentioning how bad she wants to go there (fast food joints pale in comparison to mom-and-pop eateries here) so I tried to accommodate by surprise. Mission Failed. There was no Mexican food anywhere to be found.

Stage 3 involved her being led thru a darkened apartment towards the only light around, a lonely candle perched atop a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake. I'd say that went over pretty well. :)

Stage 4 was sitting right there in a gift bag on the table next to the cake. I threw her some fluff about not being sure I got the right size or color, making her think I'd made an ill-informed clothing purchase when actually I'd picked her up a pink Nintendo DS Lite and a few games. I'd gotten her addicted to gaming again, and I think she was about to burn out on Unreal Tournament. Also, with her iPod getting stolen during her mugging a couple months ago, I thought she might want something to entertain her on the subway again. And what macho thug is gonna want to mug a girl for her PINK DS?

We've spent hours trying to top each other's Tetris scores and trying to get our hands and heads around the intricacies of Mario Kart DS. Sooner or later I'm probably gonna have to get my own DS, given how when one of us isn't messing with the thing, the other usually is. Sleep? Who needs it!

Now getting to rest of the title of this post. I made a funny, or at least I thought so. I had this idea to build a piece of workout machinery that, the faster you pedal it, the more you get sprayed with holy water and it more quickly reads aloud various passages from the Bible. What is this contraption, you ask? AN EXORCIZE BIKE!

{awaits thunderous applause....or crickets?}

One other thing. I watched 'Good Night, and Good Luck' last night, and while I appreciated what it was, who the people were, and what they stood for, as a movie, it left me wanting more. I realize this can happen when dealing with stories about true events, but I figured it'd run a bit longer than it did (not even 90 minutes), and have a little more closure. It just sort of...ended. Oh well, at least I can send it back and get the next disc in my GameznFlix queue.

The Resurrection

2006-11-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

So I killed my laptop yesterday, then brought it back from the dead. Oddly enough, I think this was the same process that killed my old laptop (man I wish I still had that one) but I had no idea at the time.

My current notebook/laptop is a POS. It's a Sony VAIO PCG-K33. Integrated video, shared memory, fucking EWW EWW EWW. Never again. There are good Sony's out there, but they're overpriced.

Anyway, I was monkeying around with it inside, seeing if I could remove parts of the case to give it better ventilation since it's an overheating mofo. It runs shitty when it overheats, which is all the time, which is what makes it a POS.

I finally gave up (laptops are really not designed to be messed around with inside by users) and put everything back, hit the power button, and nothing really happened. The power light and the fan came on, but that was it. Deja fucking vu.

This is EXACTLY what happened to my old laptop. I was trying to add RAM, and the stick I bought to add was causing all kinds of weird errors so I finally took it out and put the original back where it was, and then this same MO struck that machine. I took it to Best Buy, and....well, you read my Best Buy post a while back.

ANYWAY, I take it apart again and put things back where they were, not knowing at all that any of this would have anything to do with it. After re-seating the RAM (taking it out, putting it back in snugly) the thing booted up just fine. WTF?

I'm in the market for a new laptop anyway, so this would probably be a good time to push ahead with that plan. I'll prolly get one from www.ibuypower.com where I got my current lovely desktop. The thing is so cutting edge, Circuit City doesn't even sell the parts yet.

So the moral of the story is, re-seat your RAM when your computer stops working IF you were just monkeying with your RAM.

Um, yeah.

Nothing Big

2006-10-26T08:03:00.000-04:00

In lieu of a proper post, since my brain is baked and fried and overeasy, here's some amusing stuff I use to unplug from reality....

Bananaphone

Do You Take It?

Manamana

One Million Thank-Yous

Tales for the Leet: Romeo and Juliet

The short version of Scarface

Watch South Park Online

Also, I'm back in The Big Apple for a while. Who wants to touch me?

Some more random brain debris

2006-09-22T03:02:00.000-04:00

So I'm back in my office and not getting as much done as I should be. Then again, I can't be slaving away ALL the time. I called to fix one of my direct deposit setups today and the pointed me somewhere else. Joy. From there, I waited for my boss to call and change my schedule. You know what I get for the first time in 4.5 months? DAYS OFF. Woohaw. I dunno, it's like "woohoo" inbred with "hee haw."

MOVING QUICKLY ON, I have to start playing Hitman: Blood Money here soon for review for several web sites. NEED to start doing that. So if you walk by and see me strangling a guy on the screen with a piece of piano wire, just keep on going. I'm WORKING in here.

Me and Mike played World of Warcraft together tonite for the first time in MONTHS, and it was pretty good. We got our asses kicked (mobbed) a few times, and I had a few lucky saves (massive healing and animal forms...druids FTW!).

Also, upon my return to visit Goliath (my crazy-big TV), I had to go old skool and break out NFS: Hot Pursuit (the PS1 original) and its PS2 sequel. It's amazing how much both of those games STILL rock, and personally I love them bunches more than any of the shitty NFS games since (Underground, Carbon, Most Wanted, bleh). I could go on and on about NFS:HP and why it might just be the best racing game of all time, but I won't bore you with it now. Probably later.

I was trying to do some editing earlier today, but kept getting interrupted, first by my boss at one job, then by my boss at another (having 6 jobs keeps me confidently insane), THEN the roomies' 8 yr old daughter comes in and wants me to take her outside for a while. Fine. Then we realize all the doors around here lock when you go outside, so if she doesn't have a key, she's stuck (we're way upstairs and wouldn't hear if she knocked). But if I give her MY key, she'll surely lose it. So instead I prop the door with a small stick just enough so she can get back in and I can get back to work.

I go out a couple hours later, long since she's come back inside, and NOW the door (the only locked door between cretins and our place) is being propped open by a LARGE ROCK. When I got back, I asked her politely to NOT do that again. I guess when you're 8, the prospect of having hooligans break into your place and take all your shit just isn't fathomable. If we lived in a nicer neighborhood, I might be less worried, but we don't.

Moving randomly on, I have issues differentiating humans from animals. I know churchy people do this quite readily as they happily accept that we were given dominion over all the other animals. I don't buy that. Sure, we're at the top of the food chain, but I don't think that makes my life any more meaningful than that of some dog or wolf or dingo or mongoose. Some would then say "So how can you eat meat?" Easy, because if they offered human right next to ground beef and turkey, I also doubt I'd differentiate there, either. And before you give me some kind of cannibalistic, heathen, pagan bullshit, remember that what came from the earth shall return to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We're all part of the same walking compost heap.

And you will one day be turned into poop, either by a person or a bunch of maggots underground. Which would you prefer?

I personally take issue with being dismembered. It's the kind of thing I struggle with when watching gory movies. I can give up all my flaming worldly shit, but don't take away my body. That's the one thing that's really mine, and I kinda NEED it to keep on functioning and making people smile. That's the business I'm in, sort of. But then I can dig into a plate of chicken wings without really thinking about it. It's amazing how much we can dissociate ourselves from what we consume. It's all dressed up and pretty now. Sometimes I envy the people in this country who still kill their dinner. It sounds so barbaric, but people, even the most advanced and intelligent and sophisticated among us are only a couple hundred years out of the jungle.

To you biblical scholars, I pose the question...what knowledge were we created with? What little bit did we manage to learn before getting thrown out of paradise? How many languages did we know? I can't imagine Adam and Eve being any more civilized than the cavemen, and yet the holy visages we mock up are so pristine. Give me a break.

Also, Jesus was almost (if not actually) black. If nothing else, he looked more like Osama than the pasty white Northern European look so popularized in the media.

Negro/negra is the Spanish equivalent of the English word "black." How many generations is it going to take before we stop seeing that as "racially insensitive"? Then again, I doubt we'll ever go back to using "bitch" only to describe female canines.

I have longer fingernails than many women I know. Then again, I know a lot of women who bite their nails. Make of that what you will.

It's apparently allergy time again. My nose started bleeding today and my throat hurts. Lovely.

I had Taco Bell today. Mmm. Yes, I know you think it's horrible and it's not "real Mexican food" but I don't care. Eat me. I like that particular taste of bad food. Leave me alone and let me be happy.

Two boobs, two hands. Coincidence?

Powdered donuts are awesome.

Apparently my computer runs hotter than it should. I'm not sure what to do about that. It's only a couple months old, all the fans are working, it's well ventilated. Oh well.

I wish the Sega Dreamcast would have done better.

Water tastes like nothing. The only time I like drinking water is when I'm really really hot, playing a sport, landscaping, etc. And I don't care whether it comes from a faucet or a bottle, you hippies. A little pollution keeps you strong.

I'm yawning.

One of my favorite words is "bonkers," and I don't use it much.

I like a restaurant where bacon is an entree, not just a side dish.

My jaw hurts, I have zits on my tummy, being well endowed is a godsend, and George W. Bush is a huge pain in the ass.

Ok, I gotta do some things tomorrow, so enjoy yourselves and each other. Sally forth, carry on, and have fun storming the castle, boys!

9/11/2001

2006-09-16T06:32:00.000-04:00

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to post my thoughts about the day anyway....

9/11/2001
I still know where I was and what I was doing. Got up for Latin class, went straight there (no TV, no radio), and everybody was talking about "it" and how surreal it was to even bother coming to class, so we'd only have a half-session then head home. I was freaking out. WHA'D I MISS??? But I didn't want to be the one guy in the world who didn't know what was going on.

I got back home, turned on the TV and the computer, and couldn't move the rest of the afternoon. Finally around 7pm, I couldn't deal with it anymore, so I called up my uncle and went to his place for dinner. We talked about daily stuff to avoid the topic at hand and rampant misguided speculation.

Around 9pm I headed back to my teeny tiny apartment in Bowling Green, the events of earlier that day replaying in my head constantly, and amidst the dark road and the cool air, it felt so far away, yet so close.

That night, I too cried. When I see the footage these days, it's still hard not to. It really is the defining event of our generation. Let's hope nothing worse happens in our lifetime.

Five Years and Five Days

2006-09-16T06:21:00.000-04:00

Tonite at work, some guy from the Netherlands was asking me why my company's game doesn't have a mission involving the actual events of 9/11. First I said it was because the game deals with the conflict in the Middle East, not crashing planes into buildings. He didn't understand why we'd leave out such a big event. He thought it was "cool" and it would make the game "better."

Next I said it was a touchy subject and would upset a lot of people, trying to recreate and mess around with what happened that day, even in a make-believe environment. He still didn't seem to get it, and I was starting to get pissed at him. Making a "game" out of the actual deaths of ~3000 civilians seems endlessly fucked up to me. Maybe I'm taking it personally.

Other wargames revolve around fighting soldiers, not civilians. Of course, with the current global situation, the enemy IS civilians, making it ever more difficult to pick out the innocents from the malcontents.

Then it occurred to me that this was probably a kid, maybe age 10 or 11, and he wouldn't even remember 9/11. There was no way he could comprehend the significance of what happened that day, if he even remembered it now. There are already people walking around the planet who just see 9/11 as a page in a history book, something that's not important or relevant anymore, something old farts like me and most of you will talk about till the day we die with a reverence and solemnity that those whipper-snappers will never have a grip on, nor will they bother trying to understand.

Maybe this is how nations heal after events of this magnitude happen. Memories fade. Generations pass. It goes from being an experience to a memory to a footnote to a legend or tale. Maybe then it doesn't hurt so much. Maybe then we can find common ground instead of exploiting our differences.

Then again, while with each generation we forget our wrongs, we also forget the things we got right, and so the cycle continues. Will we ever get it right?

On an unrelated note, I think it's horseshit of Bush to block stem cell research because he "will not support the destruction of innocent life," but then turns around and orders the bombing of more civilian targets in Iraq. Apparently he's only interested in saving innocent life that doesn't interfere with his global agenda.

Hot off the presses

2006-09-11T02:27:00.000-04:00

OMGWTF IT'S MORE OF MEEEEE. Some people have been bugging me to update and use my damn camera and whatnot, so I finally caved in and did it. Nothing spectacular, just what I had ready access to at 2am....

1. My room/office in OH for the last two months.

2. Looky who's my wallpaper today... (it's Cor and Tally for those who can't quite tell...shitty camera).

3. Furrier than usual and my neck looks weird.

4. The ol' disappearing lips trick.

5. The People's Eyebrow and a scrunchy mouth.

A couple things...

2006-09-09T23:17:00.000-04:00

First, for Alisha, who can't seem to catch a break with both hands:
http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?productid=666

Next, for everyone else who lives in reality with me, here's something else to make you scratch your head:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20380241-1243,00.html

JOKE HA

2006-08-28T00:22:00.000-04:00

I made this up, so direct all hate and groaning at me. Or whoever is nearby.

Q: WHAT DO YOU CALL A SLUTTY OVERWEIGHT HOUSEWIFE?
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A. FLOOZY HOMEQUAKER

Also, []D [] []\/[] []D. Can you read it?

Worst Buy

2006-08-27T03:03:00.000-04:00

I used to shop at Best Buy, but no more. Here are a few tales of personal woe inflicted upon me by that den of crooked, incompetent assholes. I was inspired to write this by Mike over at WetWire.

1. I buy a stick of RAM to upgrade my laptop. I take it home, install it, and all of a sudden I start getting random blue screen crashes that just shut the thing down. I take it back to Best Buy and want to exchange it. Since I have both opened it and used it, they say no. I ask what else I can do. They say nothing.

2. I go to talk to a Geek Squad asshole about the effect this new RAM is having on my computer and he refuses to believe that the RAM is causing that problem, tells me I don't know what I'm talking about (I work on/fix computers for a living), and that there's nothing he can do. Also, a couple of pixels had died in the screen and I ask how much longer my laptop warranty is covered by them. He looks up the information (reluctantly) and says I've got about a year to go and asks if I want to give it to them to fix/replace. I haven't backed up everything yet, so I say I'll wait a while yet.

3. The VERY NEXT DAY, I press the power button on the same laptop and nothing comes on but the cooling fan. It's dead. Convenient that it dies the day after I tell them to eat a bag of shit. So I take it to the Geek Squad shitfuckers again. He happily greets me with an "I told you so" demeanor and says they'll have my machine back to me in 10 days or less. Fine. I have no choice, right?

Ten days come and go. I hear nothing. I call, they say they JUST received it at the repair place. Fine. How much longer? Oh probably another 5 days, but they don't know since they haven't diagnosed it yet. Fine. I am patient.

Ten more days go by, and nothing. I call and get no answers but get plenty of xfers to different departments, but have no concrete information. I call several more times over the next ten days and still get nowhere.

Thirty days have now gone by and I have NO information about the diagnosis, status of repair, or what the hell's going on. I keep calling but just get the runaround. Finally one of my chick friends was having a really shitty day and sympathized with my plight. She called them and pretended to be my wife. Hell hath no fury indeed....somehow, ten minutes later, she hung up the phone and told me I could go in tomorrow and pick out a new laptop of my choice, and would only have to pay anything it cost above and beyond the original purchase price of the original one.

But there's a catch. They make me buy another service plan, even though the original one still had a year left on it. I was happy with my last Sony VAIO laptop, so I picked up another one with impossibly good specs for the price (that's Sony's bullshit marketing for ya, but that's another rant). I end up paying about $400 total for it, but got it taken care of FINALLY. A MONTH later.

4. I buy a small LCD monitor at Best Buy with inputs for game consoles and a PC (S-video and VGA, basically). Pixels start burning out the same NIGHT I bought it, so I took it back the next day and just wanted to return it and save my money for a better model. They didn't want to take it back. They also didn't have but one person working the returns/customer service desk right around Xmas time. Genius.

They INSIST that I must have done something to damage the monitor. The current state of it is just impossible to accept without some kind of abuse from me. Bullshit. So they take it behind some flimsy wall and hook it up to their own "diagnostic tool" to figure out what I did to break it. COULD THEY BE ANY MORE INSULTING? After about 45 minutes (I'm not kidding) they come back out and with the most reluctance possible admit that it just went bad and it wasn't my fault. But they weren't gonna give me my money back. They wanted to give me store credit. FUCK NO. So I got noisy and pissed off and insistent and dragged down some manager from the ivory tower and finally I got my money back.

5. I get a BB gift card for Xmas that year and now I just HAVE to go there one more time to spend it and be done. I'm in the market for an external DVD+/-RW drive, so I get one for about $90 and finally am done with the place. They managed to slip me a price sheet for the Geek Squad, so now I have a reference point for my clients when they think I'm overcharging them for service.

6. I thought I was free and clear, but somewhere along the way someone ELSE got me a Best Buy gift card. I was having some power outage problems over the summer, so I blew it on a battery backup, which I was about to buy when the STORE lost power, making them unable to sell it to me, and then in about the rudest way possible told all the customers to get out of the store and don't bother coming back. No problem buddy. I eventually got the power supply, but I have to warn my friends and family right here and now:

DO NOT BUY ME BEST BUY GIFT CARDS
FOR ANY REASON

I eventually got a 19" LCD wonder monitor from Sony with DVI-D, SVGA, HDTV component inputs, S-Video, RCA inputs....the works. I love the thing. I get a little ghosting when gaming due to the response time of the LCD elements, but overall I'm happy with the $900 I spent on it at CIRCUIT CITY where they were totally helpful. So helpful in fact that I went back later that day and bought a 62" HDTV from them.

Best Buy can die in a fire.

Just How Much This DOESN'T Matter

2006-08-23T16:49:00.000-04:00

Over the last few days, a few people have been giving the power and actual readership of my blog a LOT more credit than it deserves. Check it out:

Google
Blogs Are Stupid
Blogs Are Stupid
My Stupid Blog
Blogs Are Stupid
Blogs Are Stupid
And perhaps the best of the bunch, Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs

Further proof that this is neither a classroom nor a courtroom, and no one cares what I say except the oversensitive. For them, go spend an afternoon with Maddox. And you think I'M an asshole...

And for the affected parties, please know that I have unceremoniously unsubscribed from your blogs so you can go write about whatever you like without fearing the sensationalized WRATH that apparently comes with getting mentioned on my page. Now I won't feel compelled to make any more suggestions that'll get taken the wrong way and blown entirely out of proportion.

I still find it hilarious that this petty post got escalated to the heights of a "public announcement" or a "flogging." Talk about overdramatizing...

PC vs. Mac: The Battle Over WoW Screenshots

2006-08-23T16:09:00.000-04:00

There's a big dumb debate running rampant thru my inbox ever since Greg hit Reply All instead of just Reply over PC vs. Mac. It all started when I found a Web page for the 1998 Mac Gaming Championship and made a joke about how there really ARE no games on the Mac. Needless to say, all hell broke loose (seems to be a trend around here lately) and people are fighting tooth and nail about it.

Then I found this, which reiterated what I already thought. The short version is that in Windows (on a PC), to take an in-game screenshot, you hit the universally known Print Screen key, then either open the default saved image or paste the saved visual data into ANY common graphic editing program.

On the Mac, your machine may or may not have the required key, and if not, you have to fiddle with a bunch of settings, and even THEN you might have to download and install Adobe Acrobat just to do anything with the image.

Read the full details below....

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How To Take WoW Screenshots!

For Windows Users:

While in the game, press the Print Screen key on your keyboard. You should see a Screen Captured message. The screenshot will appear as a targa (TGA) file in the Screenshots folder, in your main World of Warcraft directory. You may need to get a special image viewing utility to open up or modify the TGA file such as IrfanView if you cannot do so normally. (NOT NECESSARY. JUST PASTE IT INTO MS PAINT, INCLUDED WITH EVERY COPY OF WINDOWS)

For Mac Users:

There are two methods for taking screenshots on the Mac:

Players can take a screenshot in-game using the keyboard key bound to the Print Screen functionality.

If you have a keyboard with an F13 key, press the key to take an in-game screenshot. Players without an F13 key on the keyboard can change the default Screen Shot key in the Key Bindings menu.
You should see a Screen Captured message. The screenshot will appear as a JPEG file in the Screenshots folder, in your main World of Warcraft folder. Additionally, Mac OS X includes functionality to take a desktop screenshot that will save onto the desktop. This built-in functionality can be used to take an in-game screenshot.

While in the game, press Command-Shift-3 on your keyboard. The screenshot will appear as an Acrobat Reader (PDF) file on the desktop. You may need to obtain Adobe Acrobat Reader to open up or modify the PDF file if you cannot do so normally.

How to write a blog post.

2006-08-20T22:07:00.000-04:00

Maria keeps yelling at me for yelling at her for the way she blogs, so here's an easy to follow how-to for those of you new to the blogosphere. First, the post in question (font reduced to show you what a chonky block it is, and since you're not going to read it anyway):

So I've been accused by certain MySpace, and real-life, buddies of writing blogs that are too lengthy (a-hem, Lord Boinky, I'm looking at you). Of course, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I've been called overly verbose or wordy. I do tend to ramble on at times and get off-track (in both speaking and writing :). Plus, the English teacher in me tends to obsess over supporting details, description, meticulously spell-checking/editing/proofreading everything (even though I have had a few glaring slip-ups lately......"man cocoa," etc......which was totally a typo, btw, King Boy :) Still, though, if we're going to analyze the entire "blog" genre of writing, are there really standards that dictate length? I'm a bit new to this, I admit; but, I have certainly seen quite a few amusing blog entries that span several pages. And if they're entertaining, well-written entries, who cares about length? I'd rather read a longer entry that details something interesting or is, at the very least, thought-provoking, than a paragraph about someone's monotonous work day, what they picked up at the supermarket, and what leftovers they dug out of the fridge for dinner. Seriously, I DON'T CARE, nor should I. What kind of self-important ego-maniac thinks their friends and loved ones care about the mundane details of their day? I actually read a non-MySpace blog of an acquaintance (who's NOT on here), that talked about the SOUP she ate for dinner. SOUP. It was only a few sentences, but really, if that's all you have to write about, why even bother? I mean, if she was going to go into the significance of the soup, like say, her dead grandmother gave her the family recipe, or how eating soup reminds her of cold winter days when she was a kid, and wasn't life so much easier back? Blah blah blah nostalgia, etc., I could maybe understand, but she didn't. She just talked about the "yummy" soup she heated up from the night before, and that was essentially it. No details, no significance, no anecdotes on soup, nothing. Maybe I'm being too judgemental (which I've also been accused of, perhaps accurately), but to quote Steve Martin in Trains, Planes and Automobiles, "...You know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!" In fact, I've often used that quote with my college and high school students over the years, telling them they should ask themselves if they HAD a point after reading over their work. If they can't find it, methinks they better re-think their purpose, as well as their thesis statement (or if you're using the dumbed-down curriculum in the NYC public schools, your "BIG IDEA"......thesis statement is just too old school and stuffy.....grrrrrrr).

Nobody could follow all of that without groping the screen and needing Visine. That, and just the SIGHT of that much text all at once is the ocular equivalent of trying to swallow a basketball. Without chewing first.

The major offender here is that it's just too much all at once, a common mistake to anyone not accustomed to writing for the Web. Actually, I'm not really gonna write out a whole step-by-step. Just look at the finished product and use your intuition to see the diff.

So I've been accused by certain MySpace, and real-life, buddies of writing blogs that are too lengthy (a-hem, Lord Boinky, I'm looking at you).

Of course, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I've been called overly verbose or wordy. I do tend to ramble on at times and get off-track (in both speaking and writing :). Plus, the English teacher in me tends to obsess over supporting details, description, meticulously spell-checking/editing/proofreading everything (even though I have had a few glaring slip-ups lately......"man cocoa," etc......which was totally a typo, btw, King Boy :)

Still, though, if we're going to analyze the entire "blog" genre of writing, are there really standards that dictate length? I'm a bit new to this, I admit; but, I have certainly seen quite a few amusing blog entries that span several pages. And if they're entertaining, well-written entries, who cares about length?

I'd rather read a longer entry that details something interesting or is, at the very least, thought-provoking, than a paragraph about someone's monotonous work day, what they picked up at the supermarket, and what leftovers they dug out of the fridge for dinner. Seriously, I DON'T CARE, nor should I.

What kind of self-important ego-maniac thinks their friends and loved ones care about the mundane details of their day? I actually read a non-MySpace blog of an acquaintance (who's NOT on here), that talked about the SOUP she ate for dinner. SOUP. It was only a few sentences, but really, if that's all you have to write about, why even bother?

I mean, if she was going to go into the significance of the soup, like say, her dead grandmother gave her the family recipe, or how eating soup reminds her of cold winter days when she was a kid, and wasn't life so much easier back? Blah blah blah nostalgia, etc., I could maybe understand, but she didn't. She just talked about the "yummy" soup she heated up from the night before, and that was essentially it. No details, no significance, no anecdotes on soup, nothing.

Maybe I'm being too judgemental (which I've also been accused of, perhaps accurately), but to quote Steve Martin in Trains, Planes and Automobiles, "...You know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!"

In fact, I've often used that quote with my college and high school students over the years, telling them they should ask themselves if they HAD a point after reading over their work. If they can't find it, methinks they better re-think their purpose, as well as their thesis statement (or if you're using the dumbed-down curriculum in the NYC public schools, your "BIG IDEA"......thesis statement is just too old school and stuffy.....grrrrrrr).

Now I'd actually READ that. Same content, but MUCH easier to digest, from an internet-reader perspective. It's not "traditional" writing, but it's not a traditional medium either. People who read stuff on the web need it to look snappy and keep their eyes moving, not getting lost in a sea of verbage.

It's also worth noting that blogging spawned from the keeping of personal online journals. They're written for the AUTHOR, not so much for YOU (except this particular post, of course). Blogs have such random audiences, maybe someone really needs the bright spot that IS someone's yummy bowl of soup in their day.

Still, at the end of the day, I'll say the same thing I'd say to people who want to ban prayer in school and take God off our money: If you don't like it, ignore it and look the other way. Hell, I'm an agnostic and I support people praying or putting God on money or whatever. Does it affect me? Not till they start burning crosses on my lawn.

Ain't That Some Shit

2006-08-19T04:53:00.000-04:00

I've pretty much ruled out flying as a way to travel as long as this paranoia regimen is governing the security detail at the airports. Really, it's not making anyone any safer, and the crazies will just keep thinking up new ways to make air travel more exciting for everyone.

So I looked into a Greyhound ticket. Bear in mind it takes 12 hours for me to drive from Sandusky, OH to Worcester, MA, and about 8 hours from Sandusky to Brooklyn. The best I could find for OH to MA takes more than a DAY, and to NYC takes over 16 hours, or twice as long as it would take me to just drive it myself. So funk that noise.

So what about Amtrak from Sand-town to Penn Station? Takes between 13 and 15 hours. Will someone hurry up and invent auto-pilot for cars? It's not the time lost that bothers me; it's the BOREDOM of staring at pavement for 8 to 12 hours at a time. At least on a train or bus I could be reading or writing or 'rithmeticking

I read a review for Darkstar One tonite, and it reminded me how neglected one of my favorite game genres has been lately. If there's one thing videogames can do really well, it's simulate outer space, even on low-budget hardware. Freespace and Homeworld instilled that sense of awe, of the huge and empty nature of the universe, and what it feels like to drift around weightlessly.

Of course, then there was the time in Terminus that I shorted out my ship's power system (overloaded it somehow) and it killed the engines, navigation, then life support, and as the ship drifted helplessly away from the space station I'd just upgraded at, I watched salvation inching ever further away, me trapped in this steel, jet-propelled coffin of my own design. Then the screen started to turn red as the pressure inside the ship dropped and my eyes grew ready to burst. Fade to black.

THAT was a creepy moment, living my own death in space, and all because I pulled a little too much juice for a few seconds. Eeeeeery. I keep thinking I might like EVE Online, but hearing that everything is menus menus menus is a huge turnoff for me.

I <3 space. And yet I can't stand Star Trek. Go figure. Huh, I started out bitching about terrestrial travel and wound up in orbit.

Game. Winning. GOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!

2006-08-15T23:06:00.000-04:00

Corrina should enjoy this....so I'm up at the park throwing a puck around, taking my precious moments off from my 5 jobs to perfect my tough-angle shots (far to either side of the net) and ringing the posts, as always (YOU try hitting the front three posts of a hockey net with a puck from 15 feet away and tell me how easy it isn't). I'd been out there for a couple hours, working up a nice sweat, just about ready to call it a day when 5 more guys show up. I HAVE to stay now. For weeks I've been up there and no one shows. Opportunity is knocking, and I gotta get the door.

They amble over to the benches and start getting their gear on while I keep trying (and failing) to ring the posts audibly to intimidate them with my not-skill. They decided we should all play together, if for no other reason than 3-on-3 was fair teams. Puck or ball? We end up going ball. This alone should mess me up cuz the feel of shooting with a ball is very different from the puck I'd spent the last two hours (not to mention the previous two WEEKS) practicing with. Plus, all of these guys had to have been at least 5 years younger than me. I felt I might be in trouble, but cast out all thoughts of performance anxiety, says me.

So we start. We throw sticks to decide teams at random. My team wins the first faceoff. We score the first goal (we're playing three-post, as described earlier, to present at least some challenge in lieu of actual goalies). Things are looking good. Then I take a semi-hard backwards tumble after getting tangled up with another player. It's not the fall that hurt; it's when my stick struck my right shin on the way down (I'm icing it as I write this). I've got a nice goose egg of a shiner on there now, and I skate gimpy for a few minutes. On top of that, the other team finds their stride and comes back to beat us 5-1 in five straight goals/posts. I had an assist on the one goal we DID get, but that wasn't much of a boost considering the sound thrashing we'd just taken.

We break for water and to cool down. The skeeters are biting. After a few minutes we decide to go at it again, same teams, same everything, despite some debate about changing in the face of our previous ass-kicking.

But it wasn't the same. Something changed. We got in their faces more. We didn't hang back and wait for the play to develop and read things after they start happening. One of my teammates feeds it over to me, shot, DING off the post. Score. We're up 1-0.

One of my other guys scores. Now we're up 2-0. Then the other team starts to get into the groove again and posts one, we get one more, they get one more, we get one more. Now we're up 4-2, game point. I strip the ball off one of their players and am GONE. Clean breakaway, shot, (don't get your hopes up yet) DING, but it was contested because it hit the ground at almost the same time it hit the post. Rule says it has to be in the air when it hits the post. I let it slide, we were still up 4-2, but I said "Okay, well I guess I'll just have to do it again." They all sorta chuckled, they take the ball, and we go at it for probably another 10 minutes with no score despite several shots by both teams.

Then it happened. JUST like it happened the time before. Stripped the ball off the same guy and took off. One of their guys managed to keep pace with me, but just barely (it's all about the legs, ladies). I pushed hard to stay ahead of him, and was heading toward the corner, which is always a bad place to be nearing at high speed. I thought, "I don't want to die today. I want to score a mofoing goal." So I turn hard, my feet almost at the red line (look at a hockey rink; it's the line that runs across the ice right in front of the goal; shooting from the red line is THE hardest angle to get one in from). Turn and rip it, just in front of the guy about to clobber me, and DING off the FAR POST HOLY SHIT. To the unenlightened, not only did I score from the toughest angle in hockey, but on the narrowest slice of available real estate. WHO'S THE MASTA, LEEROY?

So I drove home just in time to clock in for work, pretty damn proud of my 4-point game. Two goals, two assists, including a no-look behind-the-back pass to center as I was going behind the net to one of my teammates who proceeded to ring the post with it. That's highlight reel shit. So needless to say, despite feeling pretty gross right now (I desperately need a shower....anyone wanna help?), I'm also pretty damn happy with myself, thank you very much.

We joked a little after the last goal. I said, "Does THAT one count?" knowing full well there's no way they could challenge it. They pretended to anyway. "Yeah, you didn't have both feet on the ground" and "It was too high on the post" and other things, but we all had a good time. They said we might play again Thursday night, if my leg heals up in time.

Then again, it's hockey. I'll play injured just to play, dammit. WHO'S WITH ME??

I hate to say it.....

2006-08-13T06:50:00.000-04:00

....but I agree with this.

Death To Modern Video Games

HA FUCKIN HA HA

2006-08-12T06:28:00.000-04:00

Put this up as your wallpaper. I DARE YOU.

Random

2006-08-11T15:58:00.000-04:00

NANANANANANANANANANANANANANANANA

B@MAN!

Just to Prove a Point

2006-08-08T21:56:00.000-04:00

I went to the BMV today to get my new license. There was a gorgeous young lady working there. I asked for her number. She said, "I already have a boyfriend and I don't think he'd appreciate it."

This brings numerous things to light. For one, to those of you in the Intarweb community who repeatedly say I am "teh hawt" and you don't understand why I'm single, here's proof. It has nothing to do with her supposed "boyfriend;" it has everything to do with the fact that she and I currently occupy the same zip code. My hypothesis stands. (Might I remind the audience that my gf in NYC actually lived in Queens, which is a different zip code from Bklyn)

The OTHER big thing that this brings up is...WAY TO SOUND LIKE A FUCKIN AUTOMATON, YOU PUPPET! Do you sit and speak and roll over and this guy's beck and call? I just wanted to call you sometime. I didn't offer to replace the asssaxophone. I dunno, I guess I thought the phone was pretty non-threatening and anonymous. Way to sound like a submissive who can't decide anything for yourself.

So in some ways this makes me think she isn't worth the trouble. I'd HATE to have someone I was dating completely blow someone off just because they thought I'd be upset that they have opposite-sex friends. Funk that noise. No one who controls who their significant other spends their time with actually has a happy significant other.

On the other hand, I can *sort of* appreciate where she's coming from, being loyal and all that, but I'm more inclined to think it was an easy out, rather than telling me that she finds my visage terrifying and will need to sleep with the light on for a month just having seen it once. O, how I probably broke the web cam thingy they use to take licence pics and whatnot.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, Miss In Training (that's what her nametag said), you are a beacon for everything I adore and loathe about dating and women and relationships, all at once. Congrats.

How Much for a Lap Dance?

2006-08-08T00:43:00.000-04:00

Well it was cheaper and friendlier than the place we went to in NYC, and the girls were a lot more personable and agreeable (and fully nude), but there were fewer of them, methinks, but not by a lot. For a Monday night, I think we made out pretty well. Here are the stats, as best I can recall:

Left home with $150 to blow between Deja Vu and Platinum Showgirls (FYI, we never made it to Platinum...the unc turned into a pumpkin and...if you can believe it...got bored and wanted to head home)
Got 5 vodkas (1 cherry, 4 grape) with Red Bull (my drink of choice) at $4.75 apiece (the unc bought two of them)
Got six boobs on my face of varying size and at varying times, but all told I had an absolute value of probably a dozen face-to-titty interactions (stage gratitude plus couch dances)
Three couch dances total at $15 apiece (the unc paid for one), the first was very nice, the last two were just one LONG one with a gal named Racquel who came to sit at our table and bullshit with us afterwards for about a half hour....naked....and completely comfy with it. Gotta love that.
About $9 spent in stage tips, and the ladies were far less greedy than the ones in NYC, where one had the nerve to tell me to tip $100 or not at all. You can guess which option I chose.

So was it better than Rick's in Manhattan? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Rick's had a bit more atmosphere and a LOT more people, but it was also a party night (not a Monday night) and it was our staff party so about 40 people were there by default. However, the level of personal attention and accessibility of the girls here (in Ohio) was a bit higher, and they got a lot more physically involved in the couch dances. They sure knew how to stoke the fire, but I wish to crap I had someone at home waiting for me to take advantage of that pent up energy. Any takers?

I walked in with $150 and walked out with $97. Not bad at all, in my mind. I expected to spend more, but I have it down to a near science. Would you like to know more? Of course you would.

I grab a seat, not right at the stage, but pretty close, and examine the merchandise. I don't make any bones about this. It's a meat market for all intents and purposes. I watch how they dance, how they're built, and after the first full rotation, I know who I'm going to start spending some money on. Even then, I don't go berserk with it....a few bucks here and there, the occasional lap dance, and it's all good. PACE YOURSELF. If you run out of money in the first hour, you're gonna start feeling the booze wear off, and the ladies stop paying attention to you. That's a shitty place to be.

I also do not buy into the facade that they really are interested in me any more than a grocery store cashier is interested in how many hot dogs and ravioli I buy, so long as I pay and walk out with a smile on my face. I will never get a date with any of these girls, despite the unc pressing the issue between me and Racquel; it's legally considered prostitution if she even accepts a phone number from the clientele. However, I respected that and told her that the sentiment was there nonetheless. She was great. It's hard to compare one great dancer to another. It's like picking the impurities out of a gold bar. Who the fuck cares at that point; both she and my fave vixen at Rick's in NYC were top shelf acts. The rest is just details.

So the story has a happy ending, but I still want to see what Platinum has to offer. Tonight was Foxy Boxing, which didn't really pique anyone's interest anyway. I'm happy to see that no one's vocally chastizing me for taking these little adventures in bachelorhood, not that it would stop me at this point anyway. Now I just need someone willing to reap the whirlwind of a hornified me. Now accepting applications....

Boobs and Birthdays

2006-08-07T03:00:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to all who came out of the woodwork to wish me a happy birthday. I plan to spend the day eating cake, drinking vodka, and watching bare boobies bounce to and fro in front of my face. My original idea was to just hit Deja Vu or Platinum Showgirls up in Toledo, but then the unc said, "Hell, let's do BOTH!" And so it shall be. I've only ever been to Rick's in midtown Manhattan, and that was an upscale swanky joint I'd love to go back to. After tonite, I'll have two more experiences to compare against. The funny part is the unc has NEVER really been to a strip club in all his 60-some years of livin'. His biggest concern is falling in love with one of the dancers (he falls in love via the wrong head IMO), whereas my biggest concern is him having a heart attack.

Should be a good time. I'll try to remember enough of it to deliver upon you a full report either after we get back or the following morning. YAY FOR TITTIES!

QUICK POLL: I'm thinking about wearing the black suit from my current profile pic to the club. Would you advise me for or against this idea, and why? I don't wanna look like a chump, but I don't want them expecting $100 bills from me either....

Winkytiki

2006-08-02T00:37:00.000-04:00

Check it out. Some cool themey photography that some of you photo-hounds will likely adore...

http://www.winkytiki.com/thegirls/girls/index.html

A Letter To Maria

2006-08-01T04:38:00.000-04:00

(This was originally just to my friend Maria, but I figured you'd enjoy it, too. Plus, I'm too lazy to reformat this into a proper blog post. Also, I said some things I thought were pretty priceless in here.)

Hey Buttbucket,

Yeah, I finally saw it. Your dolt sister said "check out the new post" and to ME, that means BLOG post, not BULLETIN. Terminology is important. Would you call a gerund a predicate? No, I think not.

So you're toiling away in the temping doldrums. Sounds delish. I, on the other hand, got promoted today at my funky tech support gig, which ironically is based in NYC, but didn't get until I LEFT NYC. I have to do a little more work, still all from the comfort of my lazy desk at home (this means I can work naked if I want to), but my schedule rounds out to an even 40hrs now, plus I get a raise, and I'm STILL self-employed and of course I just plain rock in general. The really cool part is my boss passed up people who'd been working there for a few years and thought to offer me the promo FIRST cuz I'm such a swell guy (I've only been there 2.5 months). She called me "conscientious," which I think is a nerdy way of saying "sexy." Yeah, I rawk.

So here's two more things I started that you can start blabbing all over and make me famous for:

1. Instead of telling people to FUCK OFF, tell them to FUCK ON. Actually, a lesbian friend of mine started this, but I feel authorized to steal her thunder and sell it at warehouse prices.

2. "Drinks from the hose." This is used to describe something either BAD or GAY or BOTH. I think we talked about this already cuz I seem to remember saying to you "Mario sure does drink from the hose" as an example of using it gaily. Plus, when my computer locks up, that really drinks from the hose, too.

Also, I've been up in BG just about every other or every third day lately. Lotsa good times up thurr, especially at the hockey rink in the city park. I don't think I'm quite done with the east coast yet tho. I want to CEMENT my job situation and still enjoy parts of New England that are NOT Worcester, but I think I'd be pretty content raising a family in the Findlay or BG area. I got everything I need here. Someday man, when I find the right ho....

Speaking of, I've been getting on swimmingly with this chick lately. The MS page won't open right now, but it might by the time you read this. She's a lot of fun and very easy on the eyes, too. And, of course, since it's ME, she doesn't live within 1000 miles of me.

So, I rule. And if I rule any harder they're going to put two-term limits on MY AWESOMENESS! Kneel before Zod.

Mark!

The Customer Is Always Stupid

2006-07-30T01:51:00.000-04:00

I just wasted almost 40 minutes of my life with this piece of shit, and I just wanted you to enjoy a taste of what every day of my life consists of:

________________________________________

jimmy: when ur down loading game it stops on regersting why

Mark: Hi there

Mark: Are you using a firewall or antivirus program?

jimmy: hi

jimmy: what

jimmy: i got a Q

Mark: Firewalls and antivirus programs are security measures that can block the installation of the game.

jimmy: i got got antiviris im runing an windows me

Mark: Try disabling that while you install the game.

jimmy: kk w8

jimmy: ok i did

Mark: Now try to start the installation again.

Mark: If it gets stuck, it may also be caused by internet traffic or the server being busy. If it still doesn't work, you might want to try it during a different time of the day.

jimmy: well im downloading gmae but it stop and it say registering c: files\kumawar\missonhelper

jimmy: now it doing any thing

jimmy: not mavi

jimmy: it not moveing

jimmy: wat now

Mark: Either something on your computer is blocking it from completing installation, or the server is too busy to finish right now.

jimmy: so wat should i do

jimmy: i neer end of download

Mark: Make sure nothing else is running, even a chat program like AIM, and try installing again. Or wait until later to make sure the server isn't just too busy to complete.

jimmy: ok

jimmy: ok it says selceced componet to install

jimmy: wat do ii coose

jimmy: ???????

Mark: What are the choices

jimmy: install directx or gamespy or desttop item

Mark: Where did that come from?

jimmy: wat i coose

Mark: Installing the game shouldn't ask you that

Mark: http://company.kumagames.com/clients/KumaWarSetupFull1A.exe

Mark: Use that link

jimmy: i clicked download and clicked open and i came up

Mark: Use the link above, and SAVE it to your desktop. Then double click the icon it creates when it's finished.

jimmy: i did and now its back

jimmy: ???

Mark: It shouldn't be doing that. It should go to the web and start downloading files.

Mark: Try restarting your computer, then disable the antivirus, then try to start the installation again.

jimmy: i clicked next and now its downloading

jimmy: so now wat

Mark: Is it installing or not?

jimmy: yes it is

Mark: So let it go and don't touch anything unless it prompts you to.

jimmy: ok but it al way will stop at the one part

Mark: We won't know for sure until it happens.

jimmy: ok

jimmy: one sec

jimmy: AFK

jimmy: im back

Mark: ok

jimmy: it stoped

Mark: All I can suggest is trying again at a different time of day when there may be less server activity

Mark: Or if you DO have a firewall, find it and disable it.

jimmy: i dont

Mark: Ok
jimmy: waht the fuck

jimmy: ok it loading agaIN

jimmy: it stop at registering c: files\kumawar\missonhelper

jimmy: wats that meen

Mark: I told you already, either your system is stopping it from finishing or the server may be too busy or have an error preventing it from finishing. At the very least, restart your machine. At most, try the download again later.

jimmy: u were no fucking help bitch ill neever play ur fucking gay ass to herd to down load game fuck ass hole

Your party has left this session.
________________________________________

If any of you would like to write to "jimmy" and tell him what you think, his email address is zman_ one@sbcglobal.net

Also, his IP address is 70.238.151.195, which according to GeoBytes and InternetFrog doesn't exist. Way to mask your IP "jimmy," you complete douchenozzle!!

Back in Black

2006-07-27T22:30:00.000-04:00

I know it's a morbid occasion, but I thought some of you might want a newer pic of my ugly mug....in a suit. Ladies, it's okay to drool (you just have to tell me you did!).

http://www.torricane.com/pics/BackInBlack.jpg

Viagra Is For Women

2006-07-26T14:02:00.000-04:00

The ads and promotional crap all make it out like Viagra is a product designed to benefit men. I disagree, and if any of you doubt me, try wasting one of those pills just to get a blow job. Methinks she'd be none too pleased. :)

In other news, I'm gradually returning to World of Warcraft and just learning to live with the horrendous lag (often 1500ms or higher). I just don't care enough to avoid playing it anymore; I can learn to cast things 3 seconds before I need them to actually happen. Who knows. It might actually make me a better player.

Caught up with Sean for a few last night and he intro'd me to Guild Wars. My inner cheapskate likes the idea of a no-monthly-fee MMO, but that also (as he even pointed out) draws a lot of assholes to the game, and I may end up playing mainly with parties made entirely of A.I. non-player characters (NPCs to my niggas in the know).

If nothing else, I miss my faux-social life. WoW was a part of that, and the MySpace outage didn't help, and now Tally has gone completely MIA for the last several days. I miss my e-friends!

I'm beat and feel a little sick, so I'm gonna go take a nap. The rest of this week is still gonna be pretty busy, so I need to rest while I can.

The End of an Era

2006-07-23T04:39:00.000-04:00

Sometime around midnight, early in the morning of July 23, 2006, my dad passed away at the age of 77. Frankly, I was more relieved to hear it than upset. After what I saw of him yesterday, it really is for the best.

I'm okay with it at the moment, just sort of pushing ahead, trying to stay busy. I think I got most of my emotions about it out yesterday and I'm ready to be the one my mom and sisters can lean on if need be.

I'll be around. Take care, one and all, till next we meet.

O, How the Mighty Have Fallen

2006-07-21T23:10:00.000-04:00

I went to see my dad today. Re-read yesterday's post first, since it somewhat constitutes the "before" in this "before/after" scenario.

Ok, done? One of the nursing home ladies showed me to his room, which consists mainly of a hospital curtain, a knee-high bed, and a mat on the floor next to it (presumably to roll him out of bed). I walked around the curtain and looked at him. If I'd not known that this was in fact my father of the last 29 years, I'd have thought it was a leftover prop from a John Carpenter movie. My sister had been telling me for a while now that he'd been "declining," but that's a serious understatement. It's like saying Hiroshima was a little smoke and a couple of fires.

I hadn't seen him in person since Thanksgiving, and in the last 8 months, to see him now, you'd think 20 years have passed. Walking into the room and looking at him hit me like a truck. It was chilling to see him in his present condition....he doesn't talk, can't move, has lost a lot of weight, and his jaw has drooped down on his face to the point that it just hangs open. His eyes were sort of open but completely vacant while I was there, and he was completely unresponsive the whole time. His eyes moved a couple of times, but it seemed more random than focused. I'm not even sure he had any idea I was standing there.

It's a sight I may never forget. I wouldn't wish his current condition on anyone. Just laying there, immobile, unable to even speak, only vaguely aware that he's alive. I wasn't sure what that would feel like, how I would react. I went in there to see the man who annoyed and frustrated me to no end for years, and in the blink of an eye, seeing this gaunt ghost of what's barely a human being anymore, all of that resentment vanished. I couldn't be angry or upset at this person anymore. He's a mind trapped inside a body that's lost the will to live. I can't imagine anything worse than that.

So I knelt down beside him, took his stiff, unresponsive hand in mine, looked into those vacant eyes and said, "I wish things could have been better between us, but I know you did the best you could."

I said I was going to go for a while, but that I'd be back later. It was all I could do to get outside the building before that choking feeling grabbed me like a vice and the tears started coming. It's almost 7 hours later and they haven't fully stopped yet.

About My Dad

2006-07-21T04:01:00.000-04:00

The last I heard, he's not walking, not talking, rarely eating or drinking, and really looks like he's about at the end of the line. One would logically assume that I'd be kind of broken up about it. Yes and no.

Yeah, there are a lot of things he and I have never seen eye to eye on. We generally don't get along, don't understand each others' interests or outlooks on the world, life, politics, or even religion. There are times he seemed to deliberately make my life more difficult and stressful than it needed to be. I can't remember him ever playing catch with me, or showing me how to ride a bike, or teaching me the finer points of dating. He doesn't know ANY of my girlfriends, or my other friends for that matter. There are two things I firmly do remember about him:

1. He used to fight with my mom a lot, often in the car on long trips to some vacation destination where me and my brother were trapped in the back seat, forced to listen to it all. Then they'd fight some more when we got where we were going. My brother actually stood outside in sub-zero weather after swimming practice one night until he heard the screaming stop. I'm not sure if he was more afraid to get involved, or that the blame would suddenly shift to him.

2. My dad always brought his work everywhere he went. On holidays, birthdays, anniversaries...no occasion was sacred. Christmas morning he'd stick around just long enough to open presents, then he'd go into the office until at least dinner time. My fondest memory was making paper airplanes out of his extra tax and accounting forms and flying them into the fireplace, maybe subconsciously in the hope that if he ran out of papers to fill out, maybe he'd pay as much attention to me as he did to his adding machine.

I don't have many positive memories of the few years he was "in" my life (mostly at the office), and once I grew up and started gaining my own perspective of how he lived and what his priorities were, I liked him a little less with every passing day.

I'm not fond of him. I think everything about his parenting was wrong. He was never there for me, especially if it conflicted with his schedule. And yet, he could be dead in less than a week, and the gravity of that is hitting me harder by the minute. Why would I suddenly worry about losing someone I never really had?

I think there are also two reasons for this, neither of which will ever be possible, but the permanence of death seals off any chance, however remote, once and for all:

1. I want him to say he's sorry. I know he won't, because I'm sure he doesn't think he ever did anything wrong.

2. I want the dad I never had. I see kids at the park or the ball field or getting piggy back rides or getting help learning to ride a bike. If he willingly got involved in any of these ways with me, I don't remember them (mom did it a lot, not him). I wanted someone to show me how to be a decent man, to stand up for myself, how to charm a lady, how to shave, how to fix machines, how to make your mark on the world and be a good person (those roles all went to my friends and fictional characters in books and movies). I'd like for him to say I did the right thing instead of telling me everything I do wrong, and to admit that I turned out all right despite his best attempts to screw things up and never be there.

I'm going to see him tomorrow, maybe for the last time, and the only thing worse to me than him NOT saying he's sorry is him actually saying he is and meaning it. What then? What have the last 29 years of feelings of frustration and anger and resentment and disdain and abandonment been for? Suddenly everything I believed and felt in my core would be wiped clean, my base eradicated, and my life unsteadied. What if he didn't mean to be a prick, but there really was someone trapped in there all along who wanted to be the role model I so desperately needed all those years? And now there's no time. It's too late.

It's stuff like this that makes you re-center your life, think about your choices and what you do with your time. It's a realization. We're ALL going to die someday. He's my dad. I don't have to like him or look up to him, but he's still my dad. And in maybe a month or less, one of my parents will be in the grave. Forever. Think about that.

Tell someone you care about just how much they matters to you. I did exactly that. Talked to my mom for about three and a half hours tonight and said plain as day, "When you go, it's gonna mess me up. I know I give you a lot of crap sometimes, but you're the reason I turned out anything like I did. You made all the difference." She didn't say much, but I think I got the point across.

I'm not looking forward to the day she or my uncles or my sisters or my brother pass on, but before that happens, I can make sure to tell them they matter a whole lot more to me than they'll ever know.

Regarding Next Summer's Transformers Flick

2006-07-20T15:13:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I was a little aghast at first at the idea of Optimus Prime being a longnose cab, but I withdrew some of my loathing and spite when I realized something. We're staring down the barrel of 20+ years of Transformers evolution. Just look at this:

http://www.tfu.info/2002/Autobot/OptimusPrime/optimusprime.htm

There are so many crazy redesigns and configurations there, I don't even think the guy has an identity of his own anymore (not to mention he's already died and been resurrected at least TWICE). The problem is, the hardest of the hardcore fanbase are the people who were there from the beginning. However, those people are all grownups and parents and are having mid-life crises by now. So who's going to love this movie? The recent fans, ones who started with Generation Two and the Minicons and all this other stuff that the purists spit on. Just look at the PS2 Transformers game. Prime is a longnose cab in that, and I didn't even bat an eye when I saw it there. That's just what he's become, and frankly, if they tried to go back and make a movie solely of Generation One characters and designs, they would make that cupful of hardcore TransFans orgasm repeatedly, but no one else would get it. They'd say "That's not what Prime looks like" or "I thought Megatron was a tank not a piddly Walther handgun with a--of all things--SILENCER on it." They'd be making the same complaints that we purists from the olden days are making about the new stuff.

And I gotta admit, whether I like the redesigns or not, the Dreamwave series of Transformers comics that came out in the last few years--at least artistically speaking--was freakin incredible. Everything down to the last scratch, glint, and rivet was in every frame. I just stared at each panel and drooled. I didn't get enough of the issues to really evaluate the story ($3 per issue? Yeah right...I remember when it was $0.25 or $0.50 per issue!), but there might be something good there to base the upcoming movie off of.

This flies in drastic contrast to the Alien Vs. Predator movie. There were tons of novels and comic series they could have drawn upon for inspiration, but they didn't. Paul W.S. Anderson is the American equivalent of Uwe Boll, in my opinion. The AvP canon hasn't changed a whole lot outside of the printed page in the last 10 years, so it's not like his issue was picking which generation of fans to please, like Michael Bay has to do with Transformers. Anderson just made a humongous turd of a movie, and I'm ashamed I paid to see it in the theater. Way to cash in on brand loyalty, Hollywood.

So I'm not going to grill Transformers to death just yet. Bay is known for making movies with pretty explosions and effects and minimal story, and frankly, if any movie could rely on that formula and still please its fanbase, it's one involving giant robots waging war on one another. I'm certain some part of it will disappoint me on some level, but it's such a tricky equation, I doubt ANYONE who sees it will be completely satisfied.

How To Use A Fleshlight.

2006-07-13T23:16:00.000-04:00

I guess some people out there actually need to be TOLD how to use this, which would be the core market for this sort of thing, I suppose. Guys who don't know how to fuck, and thus do not attract women. For them (and your amusement), I present this how-to:

http://www.fleshlight.com/main/video_byo.cfm?aff=67415

Don't worry, it's nothing too dirty, probably PG-13 at worst, but if someone sees you watching it, they might wonder.

Wanna see what bullshit looks like?

2006-07-13T14:13:00.000-04:00

First, the profile, perfectly sculpted to be every guy's wet dream:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction
=user.viewprofile&friendID=37388416

And now the compltely generic message I got (I usually just get a friend invite), designed to be the every-woman with no personality included, not even a shred of proof that they read my profile:

Hello there! This site seems kind of cool. I am on my best friends account right now. I think that I will create one for myself now that I see how this all works. Just so we don't lose each other, here is my email. fastykitty1313@yahoo. You can contact me there any time that you'd like.

I like your profile. I couldnt even think of what I would write. LOL Let's see. About me, I am blonde with blue eyes, about average height I guess. I am slim and petite, and very fair skinned. I can send you some pictures. I enjoy things like just haning out, or going to bars and or clubs and doing some dancing and letting the freak in me out. I really like dancing.

I think that would be just about it. We can discuss my "dream man" later. If it all works out, you can help me explore the freaky side of me.

You've got my email, so write me anytime...

bye

Ahh, the portrait of a spam-bot.

I can't wait...

2006-07-09T03:10:00.000-04:00

...till science builds me a girl who'll have sex with me whenever I want. Lord knows none of you "real" women will. Yeesh.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/2545/

Required reading.

2006-07-08T23:28:00.000-04:00

Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed: great insight into the Star Wars prequels, Alien 3, and the Matrix Flicks.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/scifi.html

The Great Internet Porn-Off: are you an addict? Read and find out.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/pornoff.html