The Chronicles of a Geek Savant

Killing Time

2008-09-15T09:37:00.002-04:00

Just sitting here at work, nothing much to do. Power didn't go out for my building, but my manager and the manager under her won't be in today. My manager has an electric pump well, and therefore has no water, so she can't shower. The other manager has to watch his kids because their school district was closed today due to the power outage. Seriously, the wind yesterday was STRONG. It knocked out power for some parts of Pickerington, including Press Start Gaming, where I was hanging out yesterday afternoon. We ended up chilling in the parking lot. We played some game where Greg would stand on one speed bump, Joel on the other, and I would let go of two water bottles and let the wind push them towards where they were standing, and they had to try and catch one or both as they blew by. Yeah, we were bored.

Overall I'm liking it here at SOPHOS. I've learned some new things, made some new friends and acquaintances, and I like the environment as well. Went to some happy hour event with co-workers on Friday, and gained some good insight into some other things here that I had been curious about.

I've also added a PS3 and 360 to my system collection. Picked up both used for really cheap prices. I got the 360 just a couple nights ago, actually, and I've been having a lot of fun with it. I've mostly been playing GTA IV, which has proven to be more fun than I initially took it for. I'm hesitant to say, "OMG BEST GAME EVAR," but so far it's the kind of game I'll put down after a couple hours saying, "that's enough for a while," only to be right back on it within 30 minutes, if that. I also snagged Gears of War Special Edition (in a BOGO deal Daniel let me have for buying the system and a bunch of other crap), and I would have Call of Duty 4, but the power went out at the store before I was planning on buying it (usually buy games when the store closes), so yeah.

Naturally all this is hooked up to my HDTV, which I bought the day before the Olympics started. Gave it a good break-in period with these Olympic games being the first broadcast in HD, which was awesome. Naturally since I have a PS3 as well, I've been buying Blu-ray movies like mad. I still wish they would come down in price, to at least $27 to $30. Right now Amazon is proving essential in growing my collection. I'm not in some mad dash to replace my entire DVD collection on Blu, mostly because not everything I have on DVD is out on Blu yet. For now I'm replacing select titles that I really, really, really want to see in HD. Most of what I'm buying, however, are titles I didn't own previously, such as The Patriot, Blade Runner, and the Kill Bill movies.

Woah, I just heard someone say that we're likely on our generator power at the moment. I thought all those generators were intended mostly for the server farm. Blarg, I was hoping for a nice little day off. I wanna play some more GTA IV.

Phones and Small Talk

2008-07-06T01:54:00.004-04:00

So a couple of times over the last week or so my brother has called me to simply, "shoot the breeze." Wants to know what I'm up to, how I'm doing, am I excited for my new job, shit like that.

Here are the answers: Waiting to start my new job, I'm doing fine, I guess.

Thing is, I hate small talk, especially over the phone. I don't know what it is, really. Should I need to talk on the phone, it's usually for business, I need some information relayed to me or relayed to someone, I need to know where you/someone are/is, things like that. I literally hate just talking on the phone for the sake of talking. Even just making small talk in person I find aggravating, pointless, forced, and a little difficult, almost tiring I guess. Talking for the sake of talking is just completely stupid in my opinion. I've noticed that it's more annoying to me when it's someone I really know/have known for a long time. Should it be someone I'm meeting for the first time, I can kind of manage small talk, but only because I'm wanting to sort of get to know them for some reason.

I dunno, I'm sort of weird with it I guess. I can talk to great lengths about something I'm very interested in, the latest movie/video game/tech news, shit like that, but to me it sort of has a purpose: either I'm learning others' thoughts and opinions in conjunction with my own, receiving new information on the item being discussed, or relaying new information to them myself.

Yeah, even I'm finding this pointless, like small talk.

I <3 The Genius Bar

2008-06-25T23:20:00.003-04:00

So first of all, I managed to land a job with Sophos in Dublin. They're a HUGE global company that makes security software for businesses, and I'm starting there as a Software Engineer I. I was totally stoked when they made the offer, mostly because of how quickly it came. I interviewed this past Friday, and as soon as I woke up on Tuesday my phone started ringing, and they made me the offer. My start date is July 7, and I can't wait. Now I can just relax until then! ^_^ \/

Anyway, it wasn't all fun and games unfortunately. I went and hung out with some friends from Press Start that evening, watching Baseketball, then hitting up O'Charlies for some awesome food (it's all about the rolls baby), and then over to Matt's house to play an Italian card game called Bang!, which is addicting as hell.

Anyway, I left his place around 1AM and came back home. Went up to my room, and jiggled my mouse a bit so the screen saver would go away and I could unlock my MacBook. Problem is, the screen saver stayed frozen for several minutes. I held down the power button to shut it down, then powered it back on. Unfortunately it just sat at a white screen, and then went to the Mac equivalent of the BSOD: the blinking folder with a question mark. This basically means that the computer can't find the System folder, or the hard drive. Sadly, after doing some research, it appears that the drive in my MacBook decided to crap out. I hopped on my iPhone and made an appointment with the Easton Apple Store's Genius Bar for 12:20 in the afternoon.

I got up there quite a bit early, and just sort of mulled around the store for about 30 minutes waiting my turn. When they finally called my name, the guy at the Bar pulled out their diagnostic drive and booted to it from my Mac using Target Disc Mode. Sadly, his findings confirmed mine: the system could not see the drive at all. Fortunately for me my Mac was still under warranty, and even better still was they had my model hard drive in stock. Since I knew how to install OS X myself, he said he would just replace the drive, format it to HFS+ for me, then I could take it home to install the OS. I said that was fine, and he had the new drive in the system, formatted, and ready for me to take home by 12:30.

You have no idea how awesome it is to be able to do this with your Mac unless you own one. Run into an issue and want some help figuring it out, or a second opinion on the problem? Make an appintment with the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store, and you can do just that. I love that I can actually talk FACE-TO-FACE with someone about a technical issue regarding my Mac, instead of relying on tech support over the phone. What's better is they can do basic repairs like mine in-house, meaning I don't waste a week or two sending my system out for repairs. Definitely getting the extended Apple Care plan for my MacBook sometime after I start my job.

I. Fucking. Love. Apple.

Uh, Yeah, 'Sup?

2008-06-19T10:31:00.003-04:00

Man, I haven't updated this thing in over two months. Guess the only reason I'm doing so now is due to how bored I've been lately, so it'll give me something to do.

Clearly I've graduated from college, and now I'm looking for a job. Had an interview with a company up in Independence, Ohio a couple days after graduating, but they decided to go with someone who had two years of experience. Apparently they're adding several more positions throughout the year, and when the next one opens up they'd like me in there should I still be available, but for now they've encouraged me to seek employment elsewhere. I've been doing that, but so far not much. I have an interview with Sophos tomorrow, first round, but I'm hoping something comes of it. It'll be local, so I could stay with my parents for a while before getting my own place, so yeah, I'd like it.

Other than that, I haven't been up to much. I only have my job at Marcus right now, but I've enough money saved up and from graduation to survive for a while, just have to watch where I spend it. I've decided that unless something looks promising two or three weeks from now, though, I'm going to look for another job, both to help keep me financially stable to pay for the things I need, and so I can go out and have some fun now and then. The bigger reason will so it'll give me something to do during the week, because unless I'm working at Marcus or out on an interview, I'm sitting at home looking for other jobs and hoping I get a call from one of the recruiting agencies I'm working with. Definitely hard going from school and work 4 to 7 days a week for four years, to suddenly doing practically nothing at all.

As for summer movies, my favorite thus far is Iron Man, followed by Kung Fu Panda, Speed Racer, and Indiana Jones 4. I saw The Incredible Hulk last week, and while I found it enjoyable, I'm not in any rush to see it again or buy it as soon as it hits DVD. This week looks to be so-so for movies, with Get Smart and The Love Guru. I want to see the former over the latter, since Guru looks like it's just Myers rehashing his jokes from the Austin Powers movies, just as a guy from India. Next weekend should prove to be entertaining, with Wall-E and Wanted.

With Great Power Comes Awesome Responsibility

2008-04-05T00:49:00.003-04:00

Okay, so a lot of you know I work for a movie theater as a projectionist. As such, one of the perks of my job is I can get into movies for free any day of the week except Saturday. Movie over 75% sold? No problem, I get passes that knock the price down to $1! I've only had to use those a couple of times in the year I've been working there, but hey, it's nice.

Anyway, this is another reason I love my job: kicking kids out of the theater who sneak in.

Let me note some things here. First of all, I have never snuck into a movie, nor have I ever lied about my age to get into one I wasn't old enough for. Having said that, I'll say this: if kids sneak into a movie I'm watching, whether I see them or not, I won't kick them out so long as they're polite members of the audience. I did stupid things when I was a kid, so who am I to harp on kids for being stupid kids?

Thing is, some kids are stupider than others.

Take tonight for instance. About halfway into the movie, this kid suddenly starts to yell out random things and is carrying on, with people occasionally telling him to, "shhh!" Now see? Had he simply come in and watched the movie, I wouldn't have cared. Hell, I didn't even see him come in, so I wouldn't have even known about it to begin with! This kid, however, decides it's cool to yell things out, hootin', hollerin' and carryin' on, and oh, he's listening to music on his phone as well!

So I lean to my friend and say, "I'll be back in a minute."

I make my way up the stairs (this is in the UltraScreen by the way), and make it look like I exit the house, but I don't, and pop a squat in a vacant seat near the door. As I walk up, this kid's playing with his damn phone (one off my pet peeves in a theater), listening to music so loudly I can hear it even with the soundtrack blaring. I'm a reasonable man, though, and decide to give him a minute or two to change his ways.

I wait about 20 seconds, because he's still talking and making an ass out of himself, and people are starting to look in his direction.

So, I get up and walk over to his seat.

"Sir, do you have a ticket for this movie?"

Dumb kid has his music up so loud and is boppin' to it that he doesn't even hear me! His little brother ends up getting his attention.

"What?"

"You have a ticket for this movie?"

"Yeah!"

Dumb mistake one: if you answer yes to a question asking if you have something, you should know beforehand that the followup question will be along the lines of, "may I see it?"

"May I see it?"

"Yeah, hold on a sec . . . ."

Kid starts fumbling around in his pants' pockets for it.

"It's too dark, I can't see to find it. Let's go up to where it's light." An honest request, so I agree.

We get up to where there's more light, but he still can't find it. So he kinda gets smart, or so he thinks.

"Man, I can't find it, but the manager dude that was standing at the door to the theater checked it before I came in, so yeah."

"Sir, there were no managers or ushers posted at the entrance to this house prior to the movie. You'll either need to show me a ticket, or you and your brother will have to leave."

He reaches into his back pocket, "Oh, here it is."

I'm expecting a piece of paper or something, so I motion for him to hand it to me, and he does. Wow, it's actually a ticket! No problem . . . if it's for this movie that is. So I bust out my phone to illuminate the front of it.

Drillbit Taylor. Too bad the movie that's in this house is Leatherheads.

"Sir, this is for Drillbit Taylor."

"Isn't that what this is?"

"No, it's Leatherheads. Drillbit Taylor is playing down the hall in house 3. Yeah, I'm gonna have to ask you and your brother to leave."

So he grabs his little brother, and heads out.

Now what did we learn here? First, this kid is a moron. Seriously, how could you not expect someone who asks you to prove you have a right to be in a movie to not show your ticket stub? Did you honestly think saying, "yes, I have a ticket," would make me say, "oh, okay, well, just keep it down then?" Second, if I'm in the theater as well, I would know if ushers were posted to check ticket stubs. I've already told you I work here, so I know the procedure, so I know they usually have the user stand in front of the doors until about 15 minutes into the film, and I'm never late for a start. Thirdly, if you've been in here since the start of the film, you should know from the opening credits if it's the right film or not.

Man, kids today can be so retarded sometimes. Oh well, makes for funny blog posts like this one!

Oh yeah, Leatherheads was pretty good. I wouldn't buy it on DVD the day it comes out, but it was humorous enough to make me consider it at some point, like when it's cheap in the bargain bin.

Animation High

2008-03-02T15:36:00.005-05:00

So I've been on a sort of animation high for about the past week or so.

First, I started downloading and watching an anime called Claymore, and so far it's very impressive. Essentially, Claymores are half-human/half-demons who are created for the sole purpose of slaying other demons, as humans are incapable of doing so themselves. Their most defining feature are silver eyes, earning them the nick-name silver-eyed witches, which glow gold when they tap into their demonic powers. Interesting to note as that the term Claymore is one that's been applied to them by humans, but overall they have no official name from the organization that creates them.

Overall the animation is high quality for a short series, with plenty of action and drama. I particularly like that they refrain from using your typical "anime expressions" for the characters, which is a nice touch given the serious tone of the series. Definitely check it out if you haven't already.

Tuesday I picked up the new Justice League: The New Frontier movie at Wal-Mart, 2-Disc special edition. I've always been a fan of cartoons produced by Warner Bros. and DC (save for The Batman, dear god the character design is horrid), and this movie takes it to the next level. Sadly it's not a part of the DCAU continuity, which are shows spun-off from Batman: The Animated Series from the early 90s, but regardless it's a fantastic movie.

Set in the Cold War era, the movie tells of the formation of the Justice League of America. The members of the League must band together to thwart the plans of The Centre, a sort of sentient being created around the time Earth was formed, which seeks to destroy all of humanity due to their constant struggles with each other and the planet itself.

The quality of the animation is superb, and the voice acting top-notch, but then again you can't go wrong with big names like Lucy Lawless, Neil Patrick Harris, David Boreanaz, Kyra Sedgwick, Brooke Shields, Jeremy Sisto, and Keith David. Yes, I pretty much just named the entire main cast. I don't know what it is about them, but every time I start to loose faith in American animation Warner Bros. and DC come out with a show or movie that just blows me away. I give a lot of credit to Bruce Timm, who has been a creative influence in several DC and Warner Bros. cartoon shows starting with Batman: The Animated Series. The man is a genius, and needs to work on pretty much anything Warner and DC decide to do in terms of animation.

Lastly, I finally picked up the first season of Justice League on DVD since Best Buy marked it down to $22 plus tax this week. This purchase has been a long time coming, but was spurred on more so by the inclusion of three episodes of Justice League: Unlimited included on the second disc of the new Justice League movie. Sadly my parents have never had cable while I've been alive, and I was unable to watch the show when it ran on Cartoon Network some years ago. I'm definitely impressed with the continuity thus far, and the stories as well, some serious, some hilarious.

I love the series so much now, that I've already watched all 26 episodes of season one in the first weekend I've had the set . . . . I have no life.

Anyway, that's pretty much it.

iPhone

2008-02-13T11:10:00.003-05:00

So I got a nice big overage check from my school last week, and decided to use a good chunk of it to purchase an iPhone. I've been wanting one since launch but didn't want to spend $500 or $600 to get one, but now that the 8GB model is $400, I find it rather reasonable. Throw in the fact that the only iPod I've ever owned was a hand-me-down 4GB mini from my brother when he bought a newer one, and I felt it was time to take the plunge and buy one for myself that is the latest and greatest (even if it may only be for another 4 months). I decided to wait at least a week before writing something about the iPhone so I would have a good idea of its usage in various areas and situations.

As it stands, this is easily the best phone I have ever owned, with it being the fourth phone for me in the last four years. While it is a tad heavy, the design is sleek and stylish and feels very comfortable in both my hands and in my pocket. I'm very impressed with how high end the phone is yet it's actually pretty small and thin for what it packs. Sure the screen can look like a smudged piece of crap after a long day of use, and it's made worse when you're eating greasy food, but if you didn't expect that going in, you are incapable of thinking of all possible "problems" that can occur and shouldn't be spending this kind of cash on a device of this nature.

I really like how it lets me stay connected to all my information, letting me live the digital lifestyle I've wanted for some years now. The included dock is very nice, and when connected to my Mac allows me to not only sync music and videos, but also iCal, Address Book, pictures I take cause iPhoto to open so I can import them, and even my mail syncs with the phone. All of this allows me to take my data with me and use it whenever I need to, no matter where I'm located.

The apps on the phone are also excellent, though some of them are lacking with features I would expect for a phone running a stripped down version of OS X. The included Mail application is wonderful. After activating my phone, it already recognized that my e-mail address was with Gmail, and setup the phone to work with my account. I ended up deleting it and redoing it so I could use Gmail's new IMAP features, and after doing so I'm very impressed with how easily I can manage my e-mail with my phone. To clarify for those who don't know, IMAP makes it so that when I read an e-mail on my iPhone, it's marked as read on the server and shows up as such in the web interface. It also syncs sent e-mails, so there's a copy on the server and not just on my phone, which is definitely peace of mind should it ever be stolen or broken.

The Safari browser is also nice and surprisingly fast even on EDGE, by which I mean to say I don't find it as slow as other people were leading me to believe. With the exception of Flash and, well, any video that's not compatible with Quicktime, I can get to any website and view any content I want. I love that meebo made a special page for iPhone users, so I can log in to any of my IM clients and chat with my friends no matter where I'm at.

iCal is also a joy to use, and I'm very happy I finally have a phone that lets me keep track of my schedule on my phone and my computer with ease. I can add, update or delete an appointment on my phone, and when I sync it with my computer when I get home, all the changes are made in iCal as well.

Maps can be some fun to use. I love seeing how accurate the new "Where am I?" feature is, which uses cell tower triangulation to determine your position. It can't give you pinpoint accuracy, instead offering a circle which indicates, "you're somewhere in this general area." Occasionally it's been inaccurate. Last week I tried it while at Marcus, and it said I was somewhere up on the freeway that runs near Marcus, but my actual location (visible on the map mind you), was no where in the circle. Other than that, searching for businesses is also cool, since not only does it give me their location, but also their full address, phone number and website with just one more touch of the screen. I can even add the information to an existing contact, or create a new one from the information given.

Now, for the complaints:

I wish Mail had the data detectors that Mail in Leopard has, or if someone sends me their contact info (like a phone number I just got in one e-mail today), to not just give me the option to call the number, but to also either add it to an existing contact, or create a new one with it.
I love the notepad, but I wish it would sync with Notes in the Mail app in Leopard, and give me the option to set due dates for them on my phone.
Copy and paste . . . . Both in individual apps, and across apps.
The ability to record video. I have 8GB of space to play with, which is plenty enough to hold video.
iChat. I hate that cell companies tie IMing to the SMS system. I'm paying for unlimited data, let me chat with friends via AIM, Yahoo!, and MSN at will. SMS will still have a reason to exist for those times I need to send a message, but they're not signed in. Hell, even if I could only use it while connected to a Wi-Fi network I would be happy.
The ability to delete music or videos from the iPod section to free up space if needed. Currently my music and videos comprise less than 3GB total, but I go to conventions and could use a lot of space for pictures.
The ability to browse all of YouTube. I realize this won't happen until Flash is made available for the iPhone (and I've read it could be coming very soon). Also, let me sign in to my YouTube account so I can add videos I watch on my phone to my favorites, and watch any of my favorites on my iPhone if they're available for the iPhone.

Aside from all the above gripes, I again state this is the best phone I've owned, and I will likely never be able to use a non-smartphone again. I wouldn't recommend this for the business professional who needs to view and edit documents on-the-go, but for everyone else, buy it if you can. Apple really needs to bring out a model that's $300 or less for it to really have more mass market appeal, but for now it's selling quite well, and they have one more happy customer.

An Open Post to Dattebayo Fansubs

2008-02-02T17:40:00.000-05:00

Hi there, my name is Matt, and I enjoy your fansubs of Bleach. A friend of mine got me into the series back in May of 2005, and I've been hooked ever since. I even stuck it out through the entire Bounto arc, as boring as it was, because I simply wanted to watch the show. I normally don't get into long series, only doing so when one strikes me in a way that Bleach does.

Anyway, I'd like to talk about your recent decision to cease all fansubbing of Bleach and Naruto. I'm not a fan of Naruto, but it's popularity is on the same scale as Bleach so I've decided to include it.

Now, I understand your policy of not wanting your fansubs uploaded to streaming sites like YouTube and Veoh. You put a lot of hard work into subbing the anime that you choose to work with, and as such would like people to download your hard work and enjoy it at the fullest possible quality you can give them. I get that, I understand that, and I appreciate that, which is why I download the AVI files.

Here's the thing though: you technically don't own a damn thing when it comes to the anime that you fansub, and as such those who download it are kind of free to do with it as they damn well please. Sure you put a lot of time and effort into translating, timing, and subtitling anime, but unfortunately you have to look at it as a labor of love. When you put a copy of it out on the Internet for others to enjoy, since you really have no legal right to any of the intellectual properties involved in the anime, all you're doing is merely making it easier for those of us who don't speak Japanese to enjoy these series.

You argue that users uploading your fansubs to streaming services increases your potential exposure to the powers that might try and send you all a Cease and Desist order to stop fansubbing their anime. Here's the thing though: you distribute your fansubs via torrent files. Go to just about any torrent search engine (Mininova, YouTorrent, The Pirate Bay, just to name a few), and you'll find results for your torrent files, and can therefore be seen by anyone who knows how to conduct an Internet search, that is, to say, anyone over the age of 7. Studio Pierrot or even Viz Media could easily find you, and send you a CaD order faster than you can say bankai.

Additionally, Bleach was licensed for distribution in the US over 90 episodes ago. Given the fact that you've been able to sub this show for that long (and Naruto even longer from the looks of it), tells me that a CoD won't be coming your way anytime soon.

So, stop being a bunch of twats about it all, and just continue to fansub anime. Given the tenacity of Internet users, though, we could just as easily switch to another fansub group or another one could take up the call, leaving you with your hands in your pockets and a, "well golly," look on your faces.

Shut up. Fansub anime. Make us happy.

<3,

Matt

Life Thus Far

2008-02-01T23:16:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, but I haven't been able to bring myself to blog much of anything lately. I guess senioritis has carried over from school life to personal life.

Classes are pretty meh so far. I honestly think that if I didn't decide to go for an internship with the IS department at school, it would almost be too easy. My health and wellness class is a joke, as is my personal finance class. I have had practically no homework from either of them thus far. Weightlifting seems alright. Yeah, that's right, I'm in a weightlifting class. I'm tired of being fat, and have been meaning to "work out" to some degree other than DDR, but never really found the motivatoin to do so. As such, I figured why not make graduation ride on it to a degree? My communications class is also pretty interesting, but also kind of a snooze. GIS on the other hand is fairly interesting, and I'm looking forward to tinkering with something new in computer science I've never really been exposed to before.

The internship is going pretty well I'd say. I'm rewriting the parking pass request form from ASP to ASP.NET at the moment. I spent a good part of the week just setting up the form to emulate the look and feel of the current one, and now I'm starting to actually do things with it. Yesterday I had to automaticaly generate years for the car's model year, but they didn't want me to simply add a ton of tags for the years, instead wanting some code to generate the years in the code behind file so it wouldn't need to be added to each year. They suggested I simply figure out a way to have it write the years to the form's page as a start, then figure out how to bind it the the dropdown item. I wrote a simple Do Until Loop to generate the years, which was simple enough. Dana then showed me how to create a constant variable on the web.config file that I could refer to in my code behind file to make it easier to update later if needed (so we could change the range of years without having to redeploy the entire app).

Today was a bit more challenging. The first task was simple enough: make an XML file with all the car makes in it. Then I had to bind it to the drop down item using ADO.NET. I followed the design structure in the books and MSDN articles I found, but couldn't get them to work. I felt rather reassured when my internship advisor was also rather perplexed in regards to the problem. He found that a lot of other people had run into the issue, and actually had to add a value="" attribute to the XML items (ex, Honda), which could then more easily be read by the VB in the code behind file. I applied it with the snippet of code he gave me, and it worked, but I can't help but feel it's rather redundant. I'm going to do some digging and see if I can find a way that works without having to add the value= attribute to the XML tags.

Next week I get to start playing with sending the data that's input on the form into the SQL database my advisor setup. Never done that before, so it should be fun. He also asked me to come up with ideas for how we can allow students to register more than one vehicle under their name. I've got some good ideas, but still need to run them by him. I'm happy with the progress I'm making so far, but at times I feel like I'm relying a bit too much on the other devs for help. I give it the good 'ole college try, and end up getting close, but they usually have to give me the final nudge in the right direction. They haven't just flatout given me the solutions, but, welll, I dunno. I guess I just went in expecting a bit more of myself than I should have. I do appreciate their help though, and i guess if I were asking too much of them that they would have already told me so.

Now it's up to finding a job I guess. Where do I want to work? No idea, but then again I guess no one really has an idea at this stage in life, they just want a job. I would love to be able to stay on at either the Helpdesk or IS department in some way, but I'm not entirely sure of how feasible that is. I do have a desire to develop website applications, and would really love the chance to work with some of the more advanced and current languages like Ruby and AJAX (which is more of an amalgam of languages, but it's still pretty damn cool).

I'm also looking into a fellowship with the Air Force Institute of Technology's CyberCorp. Basically, they would educate and train me to become a leet haxor with a full Master's in computer security and digital forensics. A short list of what I would learn includes protecting/attacking networks, writing "hack-proof" code and cracking other's code, biometrics, digital forensics, and lots of other cool stuff. I'd also get to participate in a sort of "war games" where the NSA would use some of their unclassified cracking methods to hack a network I and my colleagues would setup. Overall they would pay my tuition in full, I would get $25k a year for living and general expenses, a computer, books, and in the end would have to work a government job (federal, state or local) for 2 years as repayment, which isn't a bad deal given what I would learn. Throw in the fact I would have government training and experience in computer security (a growing field for those who don't know), and a full Masters in computer science before the age of 25, and it's not a bad deal at all.

Anyway, it's been a long week, and I have anime to watch. Later.

Funny AIM Conversations

2008-01-13T00:33:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, but lately some of my AIM conversations have been absolutely hilarious. Thanks to Adium keeping a log on all my conversations, I can bring them to you!

Here's one that just happened, and it relates to this article:

12:30:27 AM Kyle Weisenstein: sad

12:30:34 AM Matthew DeGoey: not really

12:30:51 AM Kyle Weisenstein: from a sociological standpoint it kinda is

12:31:26 AM Matthew DeGoey: but gives good insight into how the brain functions, and what stimulates it into retaining information better

12:31:52 AM Matthew DeGoey: why do you think kids in our age bracket can remember practically every little facet of oregon trail, but dammit if we could name all the prepositions?

12:32:15 AM Kyle Weisenstein: because oregon trail is fucking amazing

12:32:18 AM Kyle Weisenstein: and prepositions arent

Another one from earlier today:

3:32:16 PM Pogo: whats the virus protector that u use

3:32:29 PM Matthew DeGoey: well, i'm on a mac, so, OS X

And now the piece de resistance. This is an argument between my friend/co-worker Adrian and I over who is gayer: Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid, or Link from The Legend of Zelda. This is a conversation only huge video game nerds can have, and at this particular hour of the morning.

2:44:01 AM Matthew DeGoey: so i guess when brawl comes out you'll be playing as snake?

2:49:16 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya all the time, unless they make him suck

2:49:31 AM Adrian Zentarsky: then ill stick with ness and young link

2:50:02 AM Matthew DeGoey: pshh

2:50:10 AM Matthew DeGoey: i'm a real fan, i stick with link to the bitter end

2:50:31 AM Adrian Zentarsky: well snake could take link anyday

2:50:38 AM Matthew DeGoey: whatev

2:50:50 AM Adrian Zentarsky: he could

2:51:03 AM Matthew DeGoey: he could take your MOM any day

2:51:07 AM Adrian Zentarsky: he would kill link before link would see him

2:51:13 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya he could

2:51:42 AM Adrian Zentarsky: i mean come on he has a sword

2:51:51 AM Matthew DeGoey: until link transforms into a wolf, and comes up to him all unsuspectingly

2:51:54 AM Matthew DeGoey: and mauls his ass

2:52:01 AM Adrian Zentarsky: my mom has a kitchen knife that she doesnt know how to use

2:52:12 AM Adrian Zentarsky: turning into a woulf is so gay

2:52:22 AM Matthew DeGoey: until you're killed by one

2:52:26 AM Matthew DeGoey: or you kill someone as a wolf

2:52:39 AM Adrian Zentarsky: last one i played was ocerina of time

2:52:46 AM Matthew DeGoey: ocArina

2:52:51 AM Adrian Zentarsky: who cares

2:52:56 AM Matthew DeGoey: <-- zelda nut

2:52:58 AM Matthew DeGoey: hence, i do

2:53:06 AM Matthew DeGoey: it's my favoritest game of all time

2:53:08 AM Adrian Zentarsky: zelda nutted on u?

2:53:19 AM Adrian Zentarsky: thats sick

2:53:24 AM Adrian Zentarsky: is that even possible?

2:53:33 AM Matthew DeGoey: how pussy is it that you like a character who can't take someone on face-to-face, and has to sneak up on them?

2:53:36 AM Matthew DeGoey: fucking pussy

2:53:58 AM Adrian Zentarsky: he can take people face to face

2:54:07 AM Matthew DeGoey: yet he prefers to sneak up on them

2:54:07 AM Matthew DeGoey: gay

2:54:28 AM Matthew DeGoey: then he looks like he's anally raping them when he hauls their carcass off. so you also like a necrophile

2:54:28 AM Adrian Zentarsky: i have beat the shit out of somany guards by punching them

2:54:35 AM Adrian Zentarsky: or sliting throats

2:55:03 AM Adrian Zentarsky: you cant rape with close on

2:55:07 AM Adrian Zentarsky: duh

2:55:12 AM Matthew DeGoey: okay, dry hump

2:55:19 AM Matthew DeGoey: either way, it's gay as fuck

2:55:26 AM Adrian Zentarsky: well link wears tights and talks to faries

2:55:42 AM Adrian Zentarsky: so think twice before you point the gaydar

2:56:02 AM Matthew DeGoey: talking to a fairy is one thing, actually humping a guy as a guy is a completely different thing

2:56:15 AM Matthew DeGoey: navi's just there for advice and shit

2:56:18 AM Matthew DeGoey: but she's annoying as fuck

2:56:48 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya i know, i played alittle bit of mojora's mask

2:57:06 AM Matthew DeGoey: midna was a bad ass partner though

2:57:11 AM Matthew DeGoey: total bitch

2:57:28 AM Adrian Zentarsky: i dont know there names

2:57:30 AM Matthew DeGoey: she's all, "i'll help you, but first you have to help yourslef. afterwards you're my bitch"

2:57:50 AM Matthew DeGoey: midna is the little imp girl who partners with link in twilight princess

2:58:02 AM Adrian Zentarsky: o

2:58:11 AM Matthew DeGoey: seroiusly though, she's awesome

2:58:16 AM Matthew DeGoey: she calls you lazy, good for nothing and shit

2:58:19 AM Matthew DeGoey: she's a total bitch

2:58:27 AM Adrian Zentarsky: thats sweet

2:58:40 AM Matthew DeGoey: and your guy humps corpses

2:58:57 AM Adrian Zentarsky: that was in metal gear solid 2

2:59:11 AM Adrian Zentarsky: raiden did that all the time with his naked cartwheels

2:59:32 AM Matthew DeGoey: see? kojima can't even come up with his own names

2:59:48 AM Matthew DeGoey: raiden borrowed from mortal kombat. otacon borroed from otakon

2:59:50 AM Matthew DeGoey: lame

2:59:51 AM Adrian Zentarsky: he pronounced it differently

2:59:57 AM Matthew DeGoey: whatever

3:00:16 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya well i have never seen link eat a raw snake

3:00:25 AM Matthew DeGoey: plus, he's ending the series. because he know's it's bad and is tired of sony making him do it all the time

3:00:41 AM Matthew DeGoey: that's because he goes into people's homes and steals their health hearts

3:00:47 AM Adrian Zentarsky: sure if its so bad why does it sell so much

3:01:04 AM Matthew DeGoey: i want a game, not a fucking movie with brief interactive moments

3:01:05 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya getting hearts is so gay

3:01:13 AM Adrian Zentarsky: it is a game

3:01:22 AM Adrian Zentarsky: you can do alot more on the side

3:01:32 AM Matthew DeGoey: like humping dead henchmen!

3:01:37 AM Adrian Zentarsky: and than it is so fun fucking around with the stealth

3:01:49 AM Adrian Zentarsky: no i slit their throats

3:01:59 AM Matthew DeGoey: yeah, i bet snake enjoys "fucking around" all "stealth"

3:02:01 AM Matthew DeGoey: i get it!

3:02:07 AM Matthew DeGoey: he likes it better when they don't see him coming!

3:02:12 AM Matthew DeGoey: he likes kickers and screamers!

3:02:27 AM Matthew DeGoey: wants it raw and rough, unrehearsed

3:02:39 AM Adrian Zentarsky: whats the last metal gear u played?

3:02:46 AM Matthew DeGoey: twin snakes for the gamecube

3:02:52 AM Matthew DeGoey: first and only

3:03:00 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya u missed out on 3

3:03:05 AM Adrian Zentarsky: and portable opps

3:03:08 AM Matthew DeGoey: did i really?

3:03:09 AM Matthew DeGoey: oh no!

3:03:17 AM Adrian Zentarsky: they were the best

3:03:20 AM Matthew DeGoey: i spend 6 hours in a jungle just to get to the main objective!

3:03:24 AM Adrian Zentarsky: the first one sucks in comparison

3:03:52 AM Matthew DeGoey: know why they dropped him off so far from the operation point?

3:03:54 AM Adrian Zentarsky: its fun in the jungle except for the one boss fight

3:03:59 AM Matthew DeGoey: they hoped he'd DIE ALONG THE WAY

3:04:25 AM Adrian Zentarsky: no it was so he could be badass and eat snakes

3:04:41 AM Matthew DeGoey: yeah, he probably pictured them as a big dick or something

3:04:56 AM Matthew DeGoey: mmmm, yummy, he would think to himself as he sunk his teeth in

3:05:14 AM Matthew DeGoey: guns are gay too

3:05:20 AM Adrian Zentarsky: how?

3:05:55 AM Matthew DeGoey: total pussy to kill a guy from far out. at least link gets into the throws of battle and pits his strength against his opponent. snake just finds a hole through some cover, and fires, guy he kills doesn't even know who killed him

3:06:00 AM Matthew DeGoey: so it's a dick move, and a pussy one at that

3:06:38 AM Matthew DeGoey: link gets down and dirty in a fight

3:06:44 AM Matthew DeGoey: stabbing guys and monsters

3:07:16 AM Adrian Zentarsky: well link doesnt kill brutally enough

3:07:25 AM Matthew DeGoey: he doesn't have to

3:07:29 AM Matthew DeGoey: he follows bushido

3:07:35 AM Matthew DeGoey: you know? honor

3:07:39 AM Adrian Zentarsky: and i have no idea

3:07:41 AM Adrian Zentarsky: o

3:07:52 AM Matthew DeGoey: why do you need to kill someone brutally? kiling them is killing them

3:07:58 AM Adrian Zentarsky: well snake does what he has to

3:08:20 AM Matthew DeGoey: yeah, hides behind a tanks, shoots a guy from 100' out, then goes over and humps their dead body

3:08:23 AM Adrian Zentarsky: and 4 is going to be the best

3:08:44 AM Adrian Zentarsky: no, when i play i usually go right up to them

3:08:48 AM Adrian Zentarsky: and i leave the body

3:09:04 AM Adrian Zentarsky: and if i do move it i make them give me oral instead

3:09:10 AM Matthew DeGoey: yeah, so more men can come after you, and you can have a big gay orgy with dead bodies

3:09:32 AM Adrian Zentarsky: no to much blood shooting out of their necks

3:09:47 AM Matthew DeGoey: oh, so he likes to make new holes to fuck?

3:09:50 AM Matthew DeGoey: wow

3:09:57 AM Matthew DeGoey: that's really gay and sadistic

3:10:03 AM Matthew DeGoey: anyway, i need to sleep

3:10:14 AM Matthew DeGoey: fyi, i'll likely blog this whole conversation at some point

3:10:23 AM Matthew DeGoey: because it's totally hilarious

3:11:07 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ya well fuck u and your fairy boy

3:11:25 AM Matthew DeGoey: you would want to, wouldn't you? snake has made you gay

3:11:49 AM Adrian Zentarsky: think what u want

3:12:00 AM Adrian Zentarsky: i get the hot spy chicks like he does

3:13:01 AM Matthew DeGoey: yeah, of course snake would want a reward. link is a real hero, does his duty, saves the day, asks for nothing in return

3:13:21 AM Adrian Zentarsky: wow link takes a poop big deal

3:13:33 AM Matthew DeGoey: you know that's not what i meant

3:13:49 AM Adrian Zentarsky: well it seems like thats all link does

3:13:59 AM Matthew DeGoey: right, right

3:14:10 AM Matthew DeGoey: well, i'm off to bed, see you at work tomorrow

3:14:14 AM Adrian Zentarsky: ok

3:14:15 AM Adrian Zentarsky: bye

I Heart My Mac

2007-12-05T13:14:00.000-05:00

Wow, long time since I've posted here. Seriously wonder if anyone will even read this, but I'm bored at school, so here we go!

Alright, so I got a MacBook back in late August, and I have come to love it to death. I seriously think it's one of the best things I've ever spent money on. The design is simply beautiful, the display is sharp, and the OS does what I want it to do: work. I'm very demanding of the technology I use, and one thing I really began to hate about Windows was how needy the damn thing was. A dialog:

Me: Windows, I just downloaded Bleach 134 and want to watch it.

Windows: Okay, no prob! Oh, wait, need you to do a few things first.

Me: (sigh) What now?

Windows: Well, some updates came out today, and I've downloaded them for you already, but I need you to tell me I can install them. I also noticed that you moved a ton of files around over the weekend, so I could use a good defrag.

Me: Okay, that's it?

Windows: Well . . . I also noticed that AVG is out of date, so you need to update it. You also haven't run it in a few weeks, so I suggest you do that. Ad-Aware is also out of date, and it's been three months since you ran that, so you should do the same for Ad-Aware as well.

Me: God dammit, Windows, just play the video.

Windows: Alright, but if I crash in the middle of it, don't say I didn't warn you.

That's pretty much how I felt using my Windows machine after a while. I want to do something, but I have to do something for Windows first. I believe in equivalent exchange, but my hardware is my bitch, so it needs to do what I tell it to, and only ask me for something now and then, not every god damn day.

With that, here's a nifty little list of things I love about my Mac so far:

1) Updating. This only happens now and then, and so far has only required me to restart my machine maybe three or four times over a series of about 10 updates, maybe. Usually the updates can be installed without requiring a restart, which is awesome. If they do require a restart, and I say I'll get to it later, OS X says okay, and doesn't pester me to restart every hour on the hour.

2) No need for anti-virus. Seriously, I don't have any anti-virus software running on my Mac, and it's awesome. One less thing to update, one less thing to remember to run on a regular basis, and one less thing hogging system resources in the background. iTunes and Firefox do that enough.

3) GUI. Holy crap, the OS is beautiful. I thought things looked good with Tiger, but after upgrading to Leopard it just got prettier. Everything has sharp lines, text is very legible, and overall the screen is a joy to look at. It's also very simple, so my tasks come forward and the OS sort of slips into the background. I have ADHD, so that's a good thing.

4) The little things. For example: Quick Look. Holy crap I don't know how I lived without this feature. Want to know if the notes I'm looking at are the ones I need to open? Select them, hit the space bar, and boom! Instant preview, in full screen if I want it! I can scroll through documents, preview images and Keynote presentations, and even preview audio and video files with it, all without opening them in their default applications.

5) Lets me be creative. I've been using Apple's iLife and iWork 08 suites for several months now, and I don't think I can go back to anything else, at least not willingly. I wanted to make a video of clips from Japanese music videos to use in a presentation I had to give. After transcoding the video files to .mov, I imported the ones I wanted to use into iMovie 08, clipped them, arranged them, added text bumpers with artist and song info to the clips, fade transitions between them, and exported them for use in Keynote. All of this took less than 30 minutes, not counting the time it took to transcode the video files. I also plan on making a wedding album of pictures for my brother and his fiance with iPhoto which lets me not only arrange them, but also send them to Apple to be printed up in a hardbound book. Why? Because I can, that's why.

6) Lets me be a control freak. I love how Keynote lets me control pretty much EVERYTHING in the presentation, and make things happen exactly the way I want them to. I wanted to label the islands of Japan for the previously mentioned presentation, and I was able to have the text appear atop each island, then move in an arc to a more open space on the slide. Keynote also lets me remove annoying backgrounds from images with an instant alpha feature, and I can also add nifty borders to images (my favorite is the torn edges one). Best feature, though? The alignment features. Move an object around, and orange lines pop up when something is aligned in an orderly, flush position with other objects on the slide. I've always been a neat freak with my presentations, and this lets me make sure everything is organized nice and neatly.

7) The, "so you don't have to," attitude of the software and hardware. I love how if I get an invite to something in my e-mail, Mail is smart enough to recognize dates and times, even if it says something like, "next Friday at noon," then lets me click on the text to open iCal to the correct date and time, and add the event. Does the same thing for contact info as well. The above mentioned alignment feature of Keynote is another example. I also love how I can connect the CRT on my desk at home for a dual display setup, and my Mac automagically recognizes when I plug it in, and switches to extended display mode, unlike Windows, which required me to manually change the settings unless it was booted with the display already connected. Every external device I've plugged into my Mac has also just worked for me. A computer that just works with your stuff and lets you get to work, no muss no fuss? Fuck yes.

For any Mac users that read this, what're your favorite things about working on a Mac?

Trying something new . . . .

2007-09-09T14:20:00.000-04:00

I'm trying something new for blogging. I've signed up for a 60 day trial of .Mac, and will be using iWeb to create and publish a blog for the time being, unless I either run out of space, or simply end up not liking the service.

You can find my new blog here.

New Semester

2007-08-24T01:45:00.000-04:00

So the new semester has started for Ohio Dominican. Should everything go according to plan, I shall be graduating in the spring, so this is pretty much my last fall semester at ODU. It's odd thinking back to three years ago when I arrived on campus, a total n00b, and here I am today, a senior. Well, academically the school says I'm a junior because of my credit count, but that will all change come next semester.

Classes seem relatively okay for the moment. My week started off with a Sociology class at 1PM, but I ended up dropping it. For a 100 level course, it had me doing way, way too much work. The work that made me drop it was a project involving 15 hours of community service, and 6 group debates, each a week apart, and each requiring a 6 page paper, half devoted to each side of the argument, and no less than 6 academic resources cited for each, written before each debate. Yeah, that's not a 100 level course to me. Throw in the fact that the majority of the students were freshman who have never written college papers before, and I feel nauseous about doing 6 long ass group papers with them. I've done group papers before, and I really, really don't like them. Not saying they're not capable, well, actually, yeah, I guess I kind of am.

So I dropped the course for a 200 level American History course that meets one night a week on Wednesdays from 6 to 9:30. Everything in there is pretty cut and dry, and pretty much all lecture, but at least I know what to expect. Throw in the fact that it's only one night a week, and therefore 16 class meetings total, and it's not so bad. I just don't like the room it's in. The desks are those kind where it's the desk and the chair all-in-one. I can't stand those desks, as there's simply not enough room to work on. These particular ones also don't swing up when you go to sit down in them, so they're kind of a pain.

I'm also enrolled in a 100 level Geography course, which seems pretty interesting so far. It's in a nice classroom with large tables so I can really "veg out" with my notebook and other crap. The class takes a look at how the geographical location of people and their societies shapes how well they perform in the advancement of their civilization and daily lives. Over the weeks we'll also be watching a sweet National Geographic documentary called Guns, Germs and Steel. I've seen the first part on PBS some months ago, but never remembered what times the second and third parts were on, but thanks to this class I'll finally get to see them.

Ha ha! White and Nerdy!

And then there's my easy class, CIS 105, and at the half-way point of the semester, CIS 106. Basically, these are the "baby" CIS classes, the kind non-CIS majors usually take to meet some general education requirement set by the university; I'm the only CIS major in the class, the rest are Education and Business majors. What sucks is the instructor that teaches it has also taught several of the CIS courses I've taken. He can't believe my adviser allowed me to take the course, but understand that I'm doing it to make some easy credits to graduate in the spring. Unfortunately, he says I have to show up for class every day just like everyone else . . . .

Lastly there's my Philosophy course. It's . . . different. I've always enjoyed cognitive thinking and reasoning, and so far the subject matter seems intriguing. The instructor seems very knowledgeable and is recommended by my manager at work, so it's not all bad. He's a bit too enthusiastic in the tone of his voice, often nearly yelling certain parts of his lectures in a sporadic manner, but it makes for amusing moments that can sort of lighten the mood, and tells me he's very enthusiastic about what he's doing and teaching, and I respect that. For those who don't know, I simply have a tough time learning from instructors who don't seem to give a damn, or whom I don't respect. If they don't give a fuck, why the fuck should I? He also doesn't allow the use of laptops in class to take notes, because, "other students may not like the distraction of the keyboards clicking." I think by other students he means himself, but hey, I need the credit, so I'm not going to complain. This is also the only class of the ones I've had so far that has one other person I actually know in it, which is rather disheartening and a relief at the same time.

I'll also be having a Saturday biology course, but that one's only half a semester, during the second half, so not until late October.

For the most part I'm kind of sad things are winding down. The majority of my remaining requirements can be filled by pretty much any class, so it's like throwing darts at a board just to finish the rest of my schooling. Other than one CIS elective remaining to fulfill, which sadly 105 and 106 are not open to fulfill that requirement, I have no definitive CIS courses left to take. If anything it's made me rather restless, pining for graduation more and more as the number of remaining classes and class meetings dwindles. I find myself thinking that I'm ready for a real life to start, that I'm ready for some sort of career and all, but at the same time I'm nearly scared shitless. Normal feelings, perhaps, but ones I'm usually adept at dealing with and overcoming rather quickly and easily. I have a sort of Vulcan mindset when it comes to irrational and exuberant emotions, callous towards them if you will.

The work schedule is also rather nice. I have lots of time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays to get lots of work done between work and classes, and I don't work or have classes on Fridays, which is fucking great. That may change around mid-October when my Saturday class kicks in and I have to reschedule my Saturday work hours to either Thursday or Friday, but I'll definitely enjoy it while it lasts.

And should things go smoothly (read: barring no major financial fiascoes), I shall be the proud owner of a MacBook Pro sometime late next week. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption also hits store shelves next week, and I can't fucking wait. I've seen videos of the first hour of game play, and holy shit, this game is going to rock my fucking socks off.

Sweet times, for the most part.

Neil Patrick Harris Guest Stars In . . . .

2007-08-18T16:07:00.001-04:00

Harold and Kumar 2! Fuck yeah!

I've Just Realized Something . . . .

2007-08-13T01:18:00.000-04:00

It came to my attention just now that this week begins the last week of what is pretty much my last official summer vacation ever. Should everything go according to plan, I will graduate in May of 2008 with a BS in Computer Science focusing on Web Development, and will likely begin a career in the specified field of study. When that time begins, I shall no longer have an officially scheduled summer break.

Fuck . . . .

You Know You're A Loser When . . . .

2007-07-28T02:55:00.000-04:00

You've got the house all to yourself for the weekend, you don't have to work until late Sunday that weekend, and you use Friday night for an all-night gaming binge.

By yourself . . . .

Yeah, I suck sometimes . . . .

Review: The Simpsons' Movie

2007-07-26T02:52:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I just got back from building one of our two prints of The Simpsons' Movie, and then pre-screening it. There is really only one thing to say about this movie:

ABSO-POSI-DIDDLY-DOODLY-OODLY-SCHMOODLY-HILARIOUS.

Seriously, this is one of the best movie I have seen all damn summer, and should any other movies fail to wow me, will be THE best movie I've seen all summer, period. If you've been a fan of The Simpsons as long as I have, which would be since 1990, you simply have to see this movie. From the start of the film until the end, you will not go more than a few minutes without either chuckling or laughing hysterically. Yeah, it's THAT damn funny.

The gist of the movie is simple: Homer does something that screws over the entire town of Springfield, and in the end has to redeem himself to both the town and his family to save everyone. Honestly, that's all that can really be said without spoiling the funny parts, which as I said is the entire movie. Stick around through the credits as well. Why? Because I said so, that's why! Trust me, you won't regret it.

So yeah, that's my simple review of this fantastic movie. The theater I work at, the Marcus in Pickerington, is holding midnight showings tomorrow, so come one come all to the greatest movie this summer.

I'm Bored

2007-07-24T01:48:00.000-04:00

As the titles states, I'm bored, so I'm going to update my blog.

Nothing much has been going on really. The summer is pretty much winding down, not too many must see movies in the pipeline until September, but it's not too bad. Definitely looking forward to The Simpsons' Movie this week. Hopefully we'll get our prints on Thursday so we can pre-screen them, or even Wednesday would rock, but that would only happen if we do late evening or midnight showings on Thursday. My friend Kyle tells me that select prints of the movie will have a teaser trailer for The Dark Knight, but it's merely a rumor at this point I believe, though it would still kick ass if one of our prints had the trailer. There's also The Bourne Ultimatum a little while after that, which should also be awesome.

I didn't get around to seeing I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry this weekend, mainly because I had family visiting and I heard it pretty much sucked balls. I did get to see the majority of Hairspray in the booth last night, though, and I must say, it's very entertaining. Then again, it damn well better be if it has Christopher fucking Walken, and John Travolta dressed in drag. I've always enjoyed musicals and plays to begin with, but I'd never seen Hairspray before, nor had I heard of it until trailers for it started to pop up. Anyway, it should make for a good date movie, or if you just want to have a fun time watching a movie.

I've also been crunching down anime and video games with veracity lately. I've added three new games to my "collection" in the past few weeks alone. I picked up Puzzle Quest, which is a fun "Bejeweled meets RPGs" game, and very addicting. Then I picked up Lethal Enforcers for the Genesis, which is a great retro title despite what the twits at PSG say. A few days later I picked up Elite Beat Agents for the DS, and have since become addicted to its rhythmic use of the stylus. I may or may not pick up a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collectors Edition for the GameCube. GameStop (despite their evilness) had three copies of this hard-to-find game for $45 when I was there on Wednesday last week. Since you could only get it in the US if you had a subscription to Nintendo Power Magazine during November 2003, it's highly sought after by Zelda fans and collectors. You get four titles on it, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda II, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask, all on the same disc. I have the special disc you received with your pre-order of Wind Waker, so I need this one to round out my collection. I'm also attempting to make my way through Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echos for the first time, in lieu of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption coming out in late August.

On the anime front, since Death Note is done, I've had to find other things to live off of. Bleach is still going strong, but I usually like to watch several series at once. I've latched onto Lucky Star, which is a funny series in similar fashion to Azumanga Daioh, which is one of my favorites. There's also The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which is absolutely hilarious, and apparently pinged for a second season. I've also started watching Romeo X Juliet, a 26 episode series currently running in Japan that is very loosely based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The animation is very well done, and the story isn't bad so far, even though it takes a lot of liberties and has been, "Japan-itized," per se.

Yeah, I have little to no life . . . .

I was also one of the millions of fans who picked up the final Harry Potter book at midnight on Friday. That night is actually kind of funny. I went to my local Barnes and Noble to obtain a wrist strap as I had done for the last two books, then went to visit with a friend who came into town for an appointment for a few hours (and summarily helped her sister get some stuff working on her new MacBook Pro, **drool**), then back to my house to chill for about an hour. Kyle called me and asked if I was going to wait up at Barnes, and wanted to know if I wanted a ride up there so he could hang with me (he was returning from his girlfriend's). So he picked me up and both of us obtained straps (gave my first one to another lady, since I would have to wait for Kyle to get his book anyway). So, midnight rolls around, and we're bored.

We don't want to wait until 1AM to get our books, so we go to Wal-Mart to see if there's a line there, and there is. So then I tell Kyle we should check out Kroger, as Jim and I had done so years ago and got the 5th book without any hassle or waiting. Sure enough, we get to Kroger and they have a bin filled with like, 60 books, all for the buying, same price as Barnes and Noble. They were also screening the movies and giving out free pop-corn and Jolly Rancher soda, so we partook of said hospitalities. In all, we obtained our books by 12:30, which was awesome. Kyle has never read any of the books, but wanted to read the 6th and 7th ones before the movies came out, so I lent him my 6th book to read before he started the 7th. I still have to finish the 5th . . . . Anyway, he goes home and finds his sister has the first two books, and decides to start reading the entire series, which is awesome.

Anywho, that's pretty much a summary of my life since my last post.

This is hysterical by the way, and would be completely fucking AWESOME if true:

(Click to Enlarge)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Movie Review

2007-07-10T03:22:00.000-04:00

So I've just returned from seeing the latest of the Potter films, and let me tell you now: it's fantastic. By far it is the best of the movie series thus far, and I really want to see it again. Sadly I wasn't able to finish reading the book before seeing it, but it actually gave me a view I'd not had since the Potter movies started: that of someone who hasn't read the book about which the movie is based. Having now had the opportunity, I must say the movie was a little more enjoyable, as I didn't have to have my initial mental images of scenes reconfigured, or moan the loss of what I might have considered a vital item from the book. Also, since I wasn't aware of the character who dies in the story, and the outcome of each conflict, the movie was much more suspenseful than previous ones.

SPOILERS

To sum up, the fifth story begins the climax of the entire saga, the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the resulting outcome of the press and Ministry of Magic, and Harry's determination to fight the powers that would try to disavow You-Know-Who's return, and prepare himself and his friends to do battle with the Dark Arts.

Having read at least the first 200 or so pages of the fifth book, I must say that the beginning of the film felt a little rushed, but only to get to the meaty parts of the story. Seeing Hogwarts taken over by the Ministry by subverting Dumbledore's authority with a figurehead of their own, Harry teaching a group of willing students how to truly defend against the Dark Arts, and a grand showdown in the end with Death Eaters and Voldemort himself. The battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort at the end is truly magnificent, turbulent and overall, huge. Where as the first few films seemed to plod along quickly from one point in the story to another, it appears the writers are getting the hang of adapting the books into films, as the fifth one moves at a nice, steady pace in my opinion.

END SPOILERS

And for those of you who have read the fifth book, a coworker of mine who also read it says that it is by far the most accurate and true to the book itself.

Basically, if you're a fan of the books and/or films, you definitely need to see this movie.

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

2007-05-29T00:37:00.001-04:00

I think I have a problem. My problem is simple, yet potentially expensive: I have a strong urge to hoard video games. As of right now, I have three games I've purchased within the last two months and have yet to beat . . . yet I want more. Here's how it all started:

Me: Let's see I have [counts titles on shelf] 34 games on this shelf . . . .
Inner me: You could use more video games!
Me (10 seconds later): Yeah, I could use more video games . . . .

Do you see the conundrum I'm in?! Video game collecting is probably one of the most expensive hobbies, next to Fabergé egg collecting, and world domination. This seems to be a typical problem with enthusiasts: you buy a game, maybe beat it, but usually don't, and then end up buying another game. I have some games on my shelf that I have yet to beat, and it's probably sad that I keep buying more.

Don't even think about telling me to trade in the ones I don't play anymore, because it's not that simple. Each game on the shelf is like a fond memory, and honestly, I can't put a price on that. It's already sad enough that companies are bundling my childhood into little plastic controllers you connect directly to your TV, and for $25 you too can relive, or experience for the first time, classics from the 80's and 90's. That's a rant for another blog post though.

To make matters worse, Circuit City is having a pretty decent sale on games, marking a lot of good ones at $10 a pop. TEN BUCKS A POP! I could seriously drop about $30 on three games in one outing, maybe more.

Gah, I'm never going to get that iMac I so dearly want!

A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...

2007-05-25T18:13:00.000-04:00

Man, odd to think that 30 years ago today, Star Wars was released in theaters across the US. Granted it sounds odd for me to say that; I wasn't alive in 77. All the same, though, I've grown up watching these movies. I remember walking into my living room one afternoon back in Arizona, and my dad watching the first movie on VHS. As I asked him what he was watching, he told me to sit in the chair and check it out, so I did. I came in during the opening crawl, just in time to see the epic chase between the Tantive IV and Imperial Star Destroyer, followed by the entrance of C-3PO and R2-D2. After some small gun battles, the next scene is what hooked me for the rest of the movie: Vader stepping onto the Tantive IV. I don't know what it was, but I wanted to know what this guy was about.

My first chance to see them on the big screen was when they were released as the special editions in 1997. I remember watching the premiere of King of the Hill one night, and the commercial for the movies coming on. "For the last 20 years, you've only been able to enjoy Star Wars like this," with the camera focused on a TV screen with a black background, and a dogfight from the first movie playing,"prepare yourself to experience the greatest space saga of all time on the big screen once more," and the fighters and Millennium Falcon fly out of the TV. "Star Wars: Special Edition, only in theaters."

Me: "Oh my god . . . oh my god . . . OOOH MYYYY GOOOOD! Dad! We HAVE to go see it!"

My dad was behind me on the computer, already grinning, and telling me that we would definitely be seeing them. I think I still have my ticket stubs around here somewhere . . . .

And right now, I'm watching Empire Strikes Back on DVD.

I wouldn't describe myself as an uber-fan of the movies, but a fan nonetheless. We are talking about what are arguably the best sci-fi films ever made. On top of that, Star Wars helped to reshape and renew an entire industry, heralding a new age of special effects and cinematography. Thanks to the success of Star Wars, my speakers are certified with THX quality sound, several of my favorite movies over the years have had amazing CG characters and effects, and several of my favorite computer animated films have been possible as well.

How did you first come to watch Star Wars? Fondest memory of the series?

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

2007-05-24T01:46:00.001-04:00

So I've seen the latest movie in the Pirates trilogy, and I finally feel like the summer movie season has arrived. After the debacle that was Spider-Man 3, and Shrek 3 being merely okay, Pirates 3 sails in at the end of May to send off the opening month with a bang.

The story begins a short time after the events of the second film. Jack is trapped in Davey Jone's Locker, so Elizabeth and Barbosa go to the Pirate lord Sao Feng to retrieve a map that will lead them there. After rescuing Jack from the locker, they set forth to gather the nine Pirates Lords for a special council meeting, to discuss the fate of the pirates of the world. It seems that Lord Beckett is bent on destroying the pirates and their way of life, and with him in control of Davey Jone's heart, and therefore the Flying Dutchman, it seems the sea is his to command. The pirates, as usual, have a trick up their sleeve, and Jack has a difficult decision to make regarding his future in the pirating business.

First of all, the story is considerably dark for a Disney film. There's death and destruction at almost every turn, deception abound, and all sorts of nasty, piratey goodness. Perhaps the most confusing part is all the deception. As other critics have written, and I can somewhat see their point, you may find yourself in need of a chart to keep track of whom is working for whom, or better yet, whom may be tricking whom. Everything is sorted out nicely in the end, but still, it can be rather confusing.

The special effects are also, naturally, very well done; ILM proves yet again that they are the best CG effects company in the industry. You'll find yourself falling off the edge of the world, visiting a huge pirate city, and fighting to the death in a swirling vortex in the middle of the ocean. Davey Jones looks even more realistic than he did in the first film, so much so that you'll still find yourself thinking that it's an actor in a very elaborate suit.

And finally, what would a pirate movie be without swashbuckling action? Pirates 3 offers plenty of that, and then some. The movie starts out with a sizable battle within the first 15 minutes, and sets out to start even more. At the end of the movie is the final, and biggest, battle of them all. The entire sequence rages on for around 20 minutes, and is honestly one of the best action sequences I've seen in a movie.

Of course, things are set up for a potential fourth film, should Disney choose to do one. With how much money this movie is bound to bring in this summer, why wouldn't they?

Overall, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is highly recommended to anyone seeking a great action movie to start off the summer.

Reader Beware, You're In For A Scare!

2007-05-21T00:10:00.000-04:00

Every so often, usually on weekends, I begin to wax nostalgic over days gone by, usually fond memories from my childhood. Oftentimes it's about the awesome cartoons I watched growing up as kids, or games I used to play at school. Today, it was about reading.

I was rummaging for things in my basement this afternoon, when I came across a few boxes I hadn't seen in a while, one for an old Independence Day alien commander toy, and another an Act II popcorn box. Curious, I opened them, and my nostrils flared at the smell of musty old books, and my eyes gazed in wonder at a sight I had not seen for many years.

I found my old Goosebumps books.

For those of you either too young or too old to know what Goosebumps was, I'll try to sum it up. Back in the 90's, R. L. Stine wrote a series of children's novellas called Goosebumps. The books were a series of children's horror novellas intended for young readers, usually in late elementary through middle school. Stine wrote the books based on classic sci-fi and horror movies, TV shows and stories. For example: the book It Came From Beneath The Sink! was a play on the original movie It Came from Beneath the Sea. The series lasted a number of years, from 1992 to 1997, and spanned 62 books in the original series. All the books were rather formulaic, usually involving kids the same age as the reader getting into scary situations, and ending with a twist, followed by the first few chapters of the next book in the series. The series became so popular that it even spawned a series on TV from 1995 to 1998 on Fox Kids.

I was a very voracious reader when I was younger, and loved this series to no end. My mom had purchased a few of the latest novels for my cousin Tyler for his birthday, and after seeing how intrigued I was by them, bought me one as well. It was book 19 in the series, entitled Deep Trouble, and from that point forward I was hooked on reading Goosebumps books. Any chance I got I would ask for a new book, usually after a good report card or two, and especially whenever one popped up in the book orders teachers would send home with us. Since they were books, and rather cheap ones at that, it wasn't very hard to get my parents to buy them for me. Over the years I spawned a pretty sizable, though still incomplete, collection:

A few of my favorites include the first Haunted Mask, Monster Blood, The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, Night of the Living Dummy, Welcome to Camp Nightmare (the first book to make me reluctant to sleep), Deep Trouble, Ghost Beach (the second book to make me reluctant to sleep), Attack of the Mutant, A Shocker on Shock Street, and The Beast from the East.

Did anyone else read these books? Do you still have a collection of them sitting somewhere? What were some of your favorites from the series?

Randomness

2007-05-13T23:22:00.000-04:00

So I'm free of the torments of school for a few months, those months culminating in the glorious entity known as summer break. I think I should make the most of this one, since if things go according to plan class-wise next year, this will very well be the last summer break I actually get, so to speak.

Finals went okay. Not my best semester ever, but I didn't fail anything, so that's a plus. I still need to register for next year. After talking with a friend of mine, I may have found a way to still graduate in the spring of '08. He told me that I was able to take CIS 105 and 106, which I thought I couldn't take since I had taken CIS 180. He assured me this wasn't true, and to my excitement, he was right. Basically, CIS 105 and 106 are pretty much the "baby" intro to computer courses. I'm talking BABY, in terms of my knowledge. They teach you shit like Word, Access, FrontPage (shudders), how the computer works, so basically, shit I already know. Hell, even if I HAD taken these courses when I was a freshman, I would have already known all the shit they apparently teach in the course. Each class is a half-semester, and are worth 2 credits each, which when added together, will take out half of my 8 credit deficiency. I would just need to take another couple of half-semester, 2 credit courses the following semester, throw in a few half-semester Saturday classes to free things up for working during the week, and if all works out, I'll be receiving my diploma in about a year's time.

I'm thinking I'll just take out loans to cover all of next year as well. I already took out close to a 10k loan last year, what's a little more this year at this point? I just want to have everything paid for, so I can simply focus on my studies next year to get my diploma in the time frame I want; having to worry about how I'll come up with the money to pay for it all is the last thing I want. I'll be graduating college with the average amount of debt a college student in the US comes out with, and since my whole life has been pretty average, I think this little matter will keep things par for the course.

Anyway, I've been enjoying summer break, all four days I've had of it so far. I've been feeling sick for a good portion of it, though. My sister's boyfriend was pretty sick a few weeks back, and I think she brought some of it home with her after she took him some stuff to make him feel better. Coupled with staying up late to study and finish things up before finals, and to watch Spider-Man 3 at Marcus, didn't help the matter either. I'm feeling pretty good at the moment, which is nice. I don't have to be at work until 4 tomorrow, so I can sleep in. w00t!

I picked up a copy of Super Paper Mario on Thursday. I wanted to grab it when it came out a few weeks ago, but Pokemon was due out in the same time frame, and I didn't wan to double up on games going into finals. I figured Pokemon would be enough of a distraction, and at the time the lesser expensive of the two evils, so settled on it for the time being (the fact I could pick it up several days before its street date sealed the deal completely). So far I'm very impressed with the game. Nintendo has definitely proven that highly impressive graphics are not necessary when it comes to making great games. Everything is in a 2D side-scrolling format for the most part, with all the characters appearing as 2D paper cutouts. During gameplay, however, Mario can "flip" the world into a 3D view, opening up new paths to complete levels. Everything is very stylized and visually appealing, playing to the "paper" aspect of the game very nicely. It's shit like this that makes me love Nintendo, and feel that they are, arguably, the greatest game development company in existence. The game is fun, visually appealing, and addicting (I've put in between 8 to 10 hours so far, game clocks in at almost 30 from what I've read).

It's also really made me love wireless controllers. Since my fan is primarily aimed at my bed, I can lay on my bed and play the game at the same time, since the dialog text is black, bold, and easy to read from a distance.

I went to a graduation party for my friend Jason the other day. He's a fellow CIS major at ODU, and a good friend for the last few years. Kinda going to be a little boring in classes, since he'll no longer be in them, though in terms of required CIS classes I still have to take, I have none, so I guess it's not all that bad. I gotta say, college grad parties are MUCH better than high school grad parties, especially since there's beer involved. I only had a few before I left (wasn't feeling so hot later into the party), but some people can be pretty funny when the liquor starts to flow . . . .

Next few weeks should also keep me busy at Marcus. Shrek the Third comes out this week, and we're holding early showings for it Thursday night, starting at around 8PM I believe, no midnight showings. Pirates 3 will be even bigger and even busier, since we're having 8PM, 8:30PM, 10:30PM, and 12:00AM showings the Thursday before its release. At least there will be two new movies to watch when I'm working booth on Saturday mornings, though. 28 Weeks Later is good, but I'm tired of watching Spider-Man 3, since it's not very good.

Anyway, just a random update.

Spider-Man 3

2007-05-03T08:15:00.000-04:00

So last night I watched the movie I've been waiting months to see: Spider-Man 3. The managers allowed us to stay after to watch it, primarily to make sure all four prints would play through flawlessly. The print my friend and I watched ran through just fine, which is good because he built the print we watched, and I told him I would castrate him if we had to stop it to fix an error. After having seen it, however, I kind of feel like Spider-Man in the image above: bad ass, but depressed at the same time.

Potential spoilers ahoy.

The movie clocks in at around 2 hours and 20 minutes, so it's pretty long. The movie starts out by establishing Peter and Mary Jane's relationship (both good and bad), as well as Harry's bane for Peter, whom he still believes killed his father. We also see one of the new characters, Frank Marko (aka Sandman), established early on as well. The character of Marko is billed not just as an escaped convict, but one who committed his crimes out of passion for his family, and a desire to protect them and keep them safe. Eventually he falls into a particle accelerator filled with sand, and is transformed into the Sandman, which was done very nicely with some impressive CGI. Everything in the beginning pretty much revolves around Peter planning on marrying Mary Jane, and Harry launching his attack against Peter, attempting to avenge his father's death. Eddie Brock is also established fairly early, and the character as portrayed by Topher Grace was one of the best new characters added.

Eventually Peter and Aunt May learn that Marko is believed to be the true killer of Uncle Ben; how that aspect plays out I won't say, because I don't feel like spoiling things, but let's just say it's not one of the more convincing aspects of the story, at least until towards the end of the movie. Naturally Peter wants revenge, as he still feels guilty for what happened, only now he also feels some guilt for punishing the wrong man (think back to the first film).

This is where Peter comes into contact with the Symbiote, eventually giving him his black suit. The way they introduce the Symbiote is very lax, and no where near as cool or dramatic as it has been in the comics and cartoons released before now. Let's just say they establish that it's from space, and, well, that's pretty much it. The Symbiote bonds with Peter's suit, giving him enhanced powers, but also ratcheting up his aggression levels. Eventually the suit begins to take over, and emo Peter Parker enters the scene. He shirks Mary Jane, who is manipulated into leaving Peter later on, and starts fooling around with Gwen Stacy, another famous character who isn't really portrayed much, if at all, in this movie as accurately as I would have liked.

To sum it up because I'm getting tired, Peter parts with the Symbiote, it latches onto Eddie Brock, who is pissed as hell at Peter for costing him his job, and creates Venom, one of the best villains in the Spider-Man universe, who is unfortunately short billed in Spider-Man 3, most likely due to Rami's dislike of the character. Honestly, he becomes more of an instance character rather than a major one.

Alright, onto actually reviewing what I liked and didn't like with the movie.

First of all, the action sequences are fantastic. The CGI isn't the best I've seen, but is pulled off very well. The acrobatics were better in the second film compared to the first, so it stands to reason that the ones in three should be better than those in two, and they don't disappoint. You'll see Spidey swing his way through narrow passages, around large falling objects, and using his web slinging to really lay into the bad guys.

Then we get into the parts in between the action, which is hit and miss. The events taking place between action at the start of the movie are well done, establishing the feelings and actions taken between characters very well. Then, and this is actually an unfortunate event in the film, Peter comes into contact with the Symbiote. Until he gets rid of the suit, all of his actions seem hokey and wooden. There are lame sequences where he's strutting down the street, ala Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Eventually he takes Gwen Stacy to the Jazz bar that Mary Jane begins working at, primarily to show off to Mary Jane, who has dumped him at this point in the movie. An, "oh shit," moment happens here, and the action kind of returns to normal, until Peter decides to partner with someone to take out Sandman and Venom later on.

It all seems very high school later on in the movie, which is entertaining, but sort of off-putting at the same time.

My biggest gripe is the largest one going around among critics, and that is the fact that there are way too many villains. You've got Harry as a second Green Goblin (per se), Sandman, and Venom. This leads to what feels like a very disjointed story, where Harry's hatred for Peter/Spider-Man is very weakly touched upon, Sandman has a strong presence in the beginning but gradually gets weaker as the movies progresses, and finally Venom, who only really pops up at the end of the movie. Honestly, they should have definitely kept Harry as a new Green Goblin, but cut either Sandman or Venom. Sandman was very convincing in the beginning, and if more screen time were devoted to the character he would have done very well. The same goes for Venom, who is a very intricate character, since the Symbiote is originally controlled by Peter, and finally ends up in the control (or controlling) Eddie Brock, and interesting character in his own right. The problem is there is way too much going on with these characters that giving them enough screen time and maintaining a good pace is nearly impossible.

Overall I liked the movie, but can definitely see why it's not receiving many positive reviews. Spider-Man 3 has great action sequences, but a very disjointed story, which is hokey at some points.

I'm giving it an 8 out of 10.

Seen the movie? What do you think?

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

2007-05-01T23:56:00.000-04:00

For those of you not in the loop, the above title is the HEX key needed to decrypt pretty much any current HD-DVD, allowing you to copy it. There's a big fuss about it right now, and I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon. It all started here, post #105 on that page, and has now exploded into the latest "fad" on the Internet. The AACS launched a campaign to try and stop its spread, but it's backfired, and is now the most popular string of numbers on the Internet. There is also a HUGE user revolt happening on digg.com over the site's admins removing any stories involving the number. As such, the users have resorted to creating clever images, sites and whatnot involving the number, and submitting them to digg for fellow members to digg to the front page. It's also not helping digg that users have mentioned that their pod/vidcast, Diggnation, is sponsored by HD-DVD, leading its users (myself included) into believing that they are removing the stories to maintain a sponsor.

It's like Joe Rogan's character on an episode of Newsradio once said: You can't take something off the Internet, that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool. He's right, becuase once the users grab hold of it and spread it to the ends of the Internet, there's pretty much no chance of it disappearing.

Again, just thought I would jump on the bandwagon.

Would You Rather I Buy Porn?

2007-04-28T19:36:00.000-04:00

So I'm at work today, and I go to pocket my Nintendo DS while walking to projector 9 to thread it for the 5:10 showing, when I accidentally drop it. No big matter, I've dropped it before, but I still open it to check that everything is alright (system was still on, in sleep mode. You can put it in that state simply by closing the upper screen). I open it, and everything appears to be okay.

**SNAP**

Crap, the hinge on the right side cracks and partially breaks off. The system is still usable, but the top screen is a bit jiggery.

So I pocket the system and the bit that broke off, and decide I'll deal with it when I get home.

I own the original model DS, aka "DS Phat", just so you'll know why the prices are so low for what comes next.

I call Nintendo's customer support line, and the guy tells me I have two options. Option one: I can send the system into them for repair, for a flat fee of $75. Catch one: doing this can sometimes cause issues with Nintendo's retarded Friend Code system, how that would happen is beyond me. Option two: I can purchase a refurbished system for $65, plus $5 shipping. Catch two: well, there's really no catch, other than it's a refurb I suppose, and I would have to wait a few days for it to arrive, though I can still play on my current system in the mean time. The third option is I can simply buy a new DS Lite for $130.

So I do what any sane person would do: attempt to super glue the piece on first. I run to Kroger, buy a bottle of Krazy Glue, and rush home to attempt the repair. The problem is one of the breaks is very deep in the hinge, so making sure it makes contact is nearly impossible, without running the risks of either gluing my DS shut, gluing my hand to the DS (which so far has been only a proverbial thing), or both.

I ask my dad if he can give it a try, and he arrives at the same conclusions. While lamenting the fact I can't repair it myself, I mention the options I have at hand.

Naturally, my dad chimes in again about my age and playing video games and all again. "You're nearly 22, why are you still playing them?"

**sigh**

Look, I'm a gamer, and have been since age 4, so for nearly 18 years now. I've grown up playing video games, and enjoy them very much, especially when I really got into them around the age of 12. As it stands there are currently 32 games on the shelf next to my bed, and more in various other places; if I had to guess, I'd say I have around 60 games at my disposal, along with at least 7 systems to play them on, not counting my PC. I went to a symphonic concert a few nights ago called Video Games Live, which was a sort of celebration of 30 years of video game music. Gaming is my hobby, and it is my passion.

So why can't my dad understand that?

My dad is into science fiction, particularly Star Trek, Star Wars, and just today handed me a DVD of old Twilight Zone episodes. He's collected Star Wars figures in the past, and currently owns the entire original Star Trek series on VHS, including the original, unaired pilot episode. He took me along to Star Trek conventions when I was younger, and is the main reason I'm the geek I am today.

So why can't he see that I have my own hobby?

I'm sure if I collected Star Trek or Star Wars toys and memorabilia, he would be singing a different tune. Why he feels video games are so different, I doubt I'll ever know. The friend I was going to the concert with a few nights ago had to back out, so I found another friend to take his ticket. I was considering calling my dad to try and get him to go, since all the music would by symphonic, and he likes orchestrated music. Perhaps I should have given it a go to see what he would say. I wonder, if he went with me, if he would finally see why I love video games, and why they are my hobby. Given my age, there are a lot worse things I could devote my time and money to (hence the title of this post), so why video games are singled out in his mind, I have no idea. Why does it seem "immature" to him that I like them? As far as I'm concerned, gaming is about attitude, not age. There's nothing wrong with playing them, and they make me happy, so why does he dislike them?

Anyone have any thoughts on teh matter?

Think I'm gonna go play some more Pokemon Pearl for now, which is awesome by the way, and I'll write about it later.

Busy Busy Busy

2007-04-26T09:15:00.000-04:00

I swear this is the last semester I try to take three, 300 level courses at the same time. Technically one of them was split into two separate, semester courses, so you could technically say four, 300 level courses. I've had a large paper due in my Film and Literature course this week (yesterday, actually). I decided to do the screenplay, and it had to be between 30 to 60 pages long, though 60 wasn't the limit. Mine totaled 46 pages . . . . I've also had lots of shit to do in class for my 350 programming class (C++), and I'm a little behind in my SQL class.

So can't wait for the next two weeks to pass, so I can enjoy summer break. >_<

Then again, I'll likely be working a lot this summer. There's an 8 credit deficit in my credit count at ODU, and I can't afford to take summer classes to make up for it (it's $425 a credit hour at ODU). I could do something at CSCC, but I would have to take four classes, since only half the credits would transfer to ODU, so the cost would likely be similar, but the workload would be greater. As such, I've resolved to the fact that I will likely not graduate Spring of '08, and will bank away money to take some summer courses next summer, and shoot for graduating Summer of '08. I was pissed at first, but realized that I'm not the first person to not graduate in four years, I'm not the last, and I'm not the only person who was scheduled to graduate Spring of '08 that isn't going to. To me it's of greater importance to work out what you can, and just get it done. I've come too far to be pissed at myself over this.

So, the majority of the money I make this summer will likely go towards the purchase of a shiny new iMac computer. My current machine is pretty much dead. The backlight flickers like mad, and then just quits, so I can't use the LCD display on my laptop anymore. So I switched to using a CRT display I got from work, which was working out pretty well. Then Windows decided to hate my video drivers, and would boot to a black screen no matter what I tried. I reinstalled, but it still refused to play nicely with my video drivers (anytime I installed them, Windows booted to a black screen. Remove them, and it booted fine). So for the last few weeks I've been running the latest version of Ubuntu, and it's worked just fine with the CRT display and video drivers.

As such, I've decided I've had it with Window's bullshit. Vista isn't that fantastic, and I've been wanting to switch to Mac OS X for the longest time, so now's my chance. I'm aiming for the 20" model, but will bump that up to the 24" if I can swing it. The sad thing is, I'm likely still going to boot Windows on it using Apple's Boot Camp software, but only for PC gaming, and any programming needs I have that require I compile for Windows or something. Other than that, I plan on switching over as much as possible. My dad and I went to the Apple Store at Easton on Sunday, since my brother was wanting to buy a MacBook for some classes he'll be taking while in the Marines, and my dad was interested in them. After 1.5 hours in the store playing with everything, he was very impressed, and said he wouldn't mind owning one himself.

Anyway, just a random, inane update. I'll try to post again soon, but next week is the last week of regular classes, followed by finals, so yeah.

I'm Tired

2007-04-17T23:45:00.000-04:00

I'm tired . . . .

I'm tired of not being taken seriously by the majority of my peers . . . .

I'm tired of the things I require to conduct my daily business breaking on me . . . .

I'm tired of constantly having to pay to fix the things that break on me . . . .

I'm tired of constantly feeling like I need money . . . .

I'm tired of my dirty room . . . .

I'm tired of buying new clothes because the clothing I own now is too small . . . .

I'm tired of school . . . .

I'm tired of my internship not going anywhere . . . .

I'm tired of being unhappy . . . .

I'm tired of life in general . . . .

Hell, I'm just plain 'ole tired . . . .

These Kids Are 'Effing Metal

2007-04-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

Seriously, these kids are good. Vocals need work, but I'm not going to give them shit about it, because they're kids, and they play this damn good:

Three things I love about this video:

1) The little girl head banging. Seriously, that is awesome.
2) The kid on bass rocking the Pikachu on the mic.
3) The lead guitarist's awesome solo. He seriously shredded that guitar.

Only advice I would give would be to the lead guitarist, and that is: don't wear your guitar up by your stomach. You're not The Beetles.

The Westboro Baptist Church Is Gay

2007-04-09T19:48:00.000-04:00

Alright, before people who aren't familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church rebuke me, read up on them, and then continue reading this.

Basically, they go around picketing the funerals of our service men and women, calling them fags, and saying they're supporting fags by defending this country. They call the flag gay, the government gay, and any member of society gay who isn't a member of their church or upholds their beliefs. Even if they aren't actually gay themselves, they either support gays or don't rebuke them the way their church does, so everyone but them is gay. They thank God for 9/11, for Hurricane Katrina, for the tsunami that ravaged India and the island nations of the area, for dead soldiers, for IEDs that kill our soldiers, and for AIDS.

Lovely bunch of "Christians," no?

Now, I've steered clear of this for a while, but after seeing this video, I just can't stand idle anymore:

Find this video and thousands of others at vSocial!

Seriously, how the hell can they teach children, children, these kinds of ideals? One of them didn't even understand why they were out there, and the other seemed to spew out whatever it is they told him about why they were there. I mean, aren't there laws against corrupting a child like this? How the hell is it forming them into a productive member of society? What if one of them utters this in school, or calls another classmate a fag or something, how do you explain that?

"Oh, sorry Principal Smith, but you can't expel our child because it's apart of our beliefs and practices. He's been told these things by us, and to believe in them, and utter them at will wherever he is"

Does that sound right to anyone reading this?

Look, if anyone from Westboro ends up reading this, you're all nothing but a bunch of fanatical fundamentalists. I honestly feel that the only reason you allow this kind of crap to spew from your mouth is because you're nothing but attention starved manics. If anyone actually believed in what you believe, why does your church only seem to consist primarily of your own family members? A church that preaches hate and enmity towards any group of people is not a church at all. Sure the Bible says that being homosexual is wrong, but it also teaches forgiveness and compassion for your fellow man, in spite of his or her shortcomings!

John 8:7 says, "7So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”

No one in this world is perfect, and we are all sinners. I am not a very religious man myself, and tend to be rather skeptical and cynical towards the beliefs of most people I've come to know. However, this world is full of enough hate and animosity towards our fellow man that adding more is completely unnecessary.

As Edward Elric said in Fullmetal Alchemist, "We all just need to live and be content while we can."

Step Aside, Emo Kids . . . .

2007-04-08T22:29:00.000-04:00

Ever have a long period of time where nothing seems to make sense, you think everyone you work with hates you, and you wonder where the fuck your previous life went? That's how shit feels at the moment.

First, there's my programming team at school. I'm absolutely convinced they hate me. They appear to see me as nobody, just someone who sits there and mildly contributes to things, while they do all the "hard work". Not like I'm the one who spent a good portion of a weekend debugging their code for our first assignment. Not like I'm the one who, when it came to our program for testing the speed of certain sorting algorithm's, was smart enough to see all the code was in the book, wrote his algorithm to work with the existing program, and had it work the very first time it was tested, all the way to the time the program was turned in. Not like I'm the one who pointed them down the right path for converting an equation to prefix notation. If it weren't for the fact that the class is 75% over, I would just say fuck it and get out of there.

However, that would also be a bad idea. Since I failed my 200 class the first time I took it, and then the following semester only took three classes instead of four, there is now an 8 credit discrepancy in my class credit count. As such, if I want to graduate in Spring of '08, I'll have to take five classes per semester next year. Thing is, I have to pay for anything beyond 17 credit hours. I also have nearly no desire to have homework for 5 classes at the same time. I'm considering taking courses at CSCC over the summer, but since they're on quarters and ODU is on semesters, only half the credits would transfer over. That means that I would have to take 4 classes to make up for the 8 credit discrepancy.

I also still have to file my taxes, then fill out my fucking FAFSA.

Why did I have to go to the expensive school?

FUCK COPYRIGHT LAW

2007-03-27T22:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, so it's Tuesday, and new movies are out. The two of them I want are Pursuit of Happyness, and Children of Men, both fantastic movies. Was planning on getting Children tonight, and Happyness next week, but my mom really wanted to see Happyness, so I decided to get that first, because I'm nice like that.

Anyway, Best Buy is closed, so I head accross the street to Wal-Mart. They have a display of Happyness right at the front entrance, which is nice. I'm looking through them, and notice they have a packaged deal going on, one with a sampler CD for the soundtrack from the movie, and another two-for-one deal that would net me Jerry MaGuire as well. I haven't seen MaGuire, but have heard good things about it, so I decided to buy the two pack. Now, I assumed that Happyness would run me $15 to $20, and MaGuire would add between $7 to $10 on top of that; the whole thing rang up for $15, for both movies. I pay for it, and as I'm pulling my receipt from the U-Scan station, I think to myself, "I wonder if they have a similar deal going on with Children of Men . . . ."

So I head back to the electronics department, and sure enough, they have a two-for-one packaged deal, with both Children of Men, and End of Days. Having never heard anything about End of Days, I call my friend Kyle to see what he has to say about it. He told me it was pretty good, and that he had bought it on DVD, which was enough for me. This package deal ended up being marked at $20, but I figured it was worth it since I would be paying ~$35 for four movies to add to my collection.

I arrive home, and begin opening them. I open Happyness first so my mom can get started watching it, then proceed to open the Children/Days package. This is where my problems start. See, I only buy movies in the widescreen format, if they were filmed in a widescreen format. Full screen versions of widescreen movies is blasphemy to me. So I take the plastic joining the two DVDs together, and proceed to open the Children of Men DVD. As soon as I get the plastic completely off the Children of Men DVD, I see the mark of the beast: I've bought the full screen version of the movie. Pissed, I tell my mom I'm heading back up to try an exchange it, since I've exchanged open DVDs at Wal-Mart before, and it had only been 20 minutes since I had made the purchase.

So I get in line at the return station at Wal-Mart. As soon as I get up there, and explain the situation, the lady tells me this: they can only exchange the same item for the exact same item when it comes to opened DVDs. I say that's fine, I just want to get a pack that has the widescreen version. She tells me, "No no, what I'm saying is, it has to be EXACTLY the same, meaning full screen for full screen, it can't be full screen for widescreen."

What . . . the . . . fuck . . . .

I ask her if she's shitting me, and she says it's not Wal-Mart's policy, it's copyright law. She says if a manager approves it she can allow the exchange. Luck was not on my side, as the manager said her hands were tied. Angry, I grabbed the DVDs from the counter, said it was utter bullshit, and walked out, pissed as hell.

Let's analyze the logical falacies in the statements above, shall we?

First, why the fuck would you package two movies together that are different formats? I know some people are retarded and grab whatever copy they find on the shelf without a care in the world, but a lot of people I know prefer a certain format (and if it's full screen, they're retarded in my book). That said, they should have made sure both movies were in the same format. For that matter, I'm still baffled as to why DVD makers don't just put both formats on one disc. It's entirely possible, and they can put the special features on a two-disc set. Since a lot of people I know don't even watch the special features, they could be happy spending less on just the movie, while I could spend a little more on the two-disc set, but not have to worry about checking for the format first.

Second, I had only purchased the movie 20 minutes prior to exchanging it. It takes me five minutes to get to Wal-Mart, both ways, this time of night. There's no way in hell I could have pulled off a rip in the 10 minutes in between.

Finally, the law itself doesn't make sense. See, I was asking for the EXACT SAME MOVIE, but in the widescreen format. Same number of discs, same content, different aspect ratio for the main feature; that's all. Now, had I asked for a refund I could see why they would deny me one since it was open "software", but for the exact same movie in a different format? That's just retarded.

My friend Kyle gave me an idea though. He says he's purchased DVDs from Wal-Mart and Best Buy before, and didn't realize he bought the full screen versions. He also says they tell him the same thing when he brings them back already opened. So this is what he does: while they can't let him exchange it for the desired format due to an overbearing law, he exchanges it anyway for the full screen version. Why? Because now he has it still wrapped in the plastic. He leaves, comes back a day or two later, and exchanges it again for the widescreen version. Both the plan and Wal-Mart employees are stupid enough, that it just might work.

Anyone else had problems like this before? Care to share any ideas about how to get them to make the exchange? What are your thoughts on copyright law, particularly in this situation?

The RPG Itch

2007-03-15T23:06:00.000-04:00

I've noticed that my taste in video games seems to be rather seasonal. Particularly, during the month of October or there about, I have a strong urge to play horror games, naturally because October is associated with Halloween, and generally scary motifs. The biggest ones, though, are the time around Spring Break and just after classes let out for the summer, which is mid-May. Around these times, I develop a strong urge for one genre of video games, and one only: RPGs. Short for Role Playing Game(s), RPGs allow me to done the persona of someone else or a troupe of heroes, travel a vast world, and usually save it. After the completion of my first year of college, it was Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube and Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power) for the PS2, though I never really completed either (both clock in at ~80 hours of game play, each). Spring Break 2006 caused me to borrow Kingdom Hearts II from a friend, and that was played through to completion. Summer 2006 was spent trying to get through other RPGs I already owned and never beat, only to still result in my never really beating them.

The game scratching my itch this spring break is Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS. Now, this may sound crazy to the uninformed, but this is the first time Final Fantasy III is being released in the US, even though Final Fantasy XII just came out for the PS2 back in October 2006. Sure there was a game called Final Fantasy III released for the SNES back in 1994, but that game was actually the Japanese Final Fantasy VI. To my understanding, localizing Japanese games back then took significantly longer than it does today. Final Fantasy's II and III were NES titles, but were released as SNES titles here in North America, with Final Fantasy II actually being the Japanese Final Fantasy IV. Since localization of games took so long back in the late 80's to early 90's, Squaresoft (now known as SquareEnix) decided to repackage the then current Japanese SNES games as the latest in the series for the American debut. Final Fantasy II was eventually released on a special compilation PlayStation game called Final Fantasy: Origins, which contained both games I and II, and Final Fantasy: Anthologies, also for the PlayStation, netted the US market Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI labeled appropriately. Both of these games featured slightly updated visuals, with some FMVs (full motion videos) added for sale value.

Anyway, back in November, Final Fantasy III FINALLY made it to US shores, and in a completely new form. Rather than simply port the old NES game over to a DS game, SquareEnix was awesome and completely remade the game, sporting new 3D environments, an awesome opening FMV, and a newly added dungeon to add to the back story of the four main characters. With the exception of the new dungeon, nothing was altered from the original game. Final Fantasy III is the first game to employ the renowned Job system. With the Job system, the player is free to assign each of the four party members different specialties to advance as, which would also affect game play later on. It's rather confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, you can really tweak your parties strengths like no one's business. Overall, the game is quite impressive, with my only complaints being the severe lack of use for the upper screen on the DS, and the lack of save points in dungeons (you can only perform a legitimate save while on the world map). Other than that, the game is scratching this years RPG itch quite nicely.

Laptop = Desktop

2007-03-11T14:42:00.000-04:00

Today the inverter card in my laptop decided to tell me to fuck myself, and stopped working. For those not in the know, the inverter card controls the backlight for laptop LCD displays. Without it, the screen is pitch black. You can kind of see some things, but using the laptop is beyond impossible. Fortunately the screen started flickering madly before it died, tipping me off to the issue. I was fast enough in installing a new set of modded drivers that allow me to shut off the LCD display, and use an external CRT I got from work. So, for all intents and purposes, my laptop is essentially a desktop until I can get it fixed.

There's no way in hell I'm sending it to ABS to be repaired. The enter key on my laptop started going not too long after I got the machine from them. Bastards wanted to charge me $25 for a new keyboard, $40 in labor costs (damn thing was still under warranty), and charge me for shipping it to them. They also said it would take at least three or four weeks to get it back to me, which was unacceptable, since I'm a CIS major and my school work heavily depends on having a computer. Upon asking them if they could just send me a damn enter key, and I could put it on myself, the lady on the phone said that they don't do that, it's either complete replacement, or none at all. Key still hasn't been fixed, but thankfully I was able to teach myself how to hit it so it wouldn't pop off, nor slow down my typing.

I guess I'll have to see if I can find a replacement inverter card, and have a coworker make the repair. He's certified by IBM to fix their laptops, and offered to replace my keyboard back when the issue first came around. Now it's just a matter of finding and buying an inverter card.

Watch Now on Netflix

2007-03-03T00:43:00.000-05:00

So I read a while back that Netflix would be rolling out a new feature called Watch Now that would allow you to stream movies from their website. You receive a number of hours to stream video equal to every dollar you spend for your plan. What's more, it doesn't affect your queue, and you can still receive as many DVDs in your mailbox as you can handle for whatever plan you're on.

I've been checking the Netflix homepage for a while now, waiting for the Watch Now tab to appear in the navigation up top. Well, seems all you need to do to have it added instantly is click on this link, log in to your Netflix account, and boom, it's added! Fire up IE (the only browser it works with, sadly), install a small app, and you're watching movies instantly.

The service is quite nice. Movies load surprisingly fast, and can be viewed using your entire screen. There are zero ads on the site, and you don't have to put up with, "load 10 minutes of film, play, pause while loading the next ten minutes, play, repeat," which adds to the niceness. Wait, it gets even nicerer. Say you have the three at a time plan, which nets you 18 hours of streaming a month. Now, say you start streaming a movie, and don't like it, and are, oh, 20 minutes into it when you decide to stop viewing it. Well, all you've lost in terms of the amount of time you have to stream movies is that 20 minutes, and no more. So, you can still stream 17 hours and 40 minutes of movies. The selection of films up for streaming isn't that vast or that great, but hopefully that will change when they roll out the service to all their customers in June. For now, there's enough to get by and still have fun.

Now, I wouldn't be much of a blogger if I didn't bitch about something, so here are my gripes with the service so far:

Movies appear to only be available in full screen, with no option to view them in widescreen, which to me at least is blasphemy. The Matrix was filmed in widescreen, and dammit, I want to watch it in widescreen.
The service tests your connection, and selects the quality you can stream movies in. According to their site, Basic (the lowest) requires at least a 500kbps connection, Good requires a 1.0Mbps connection, and High requires a 1.6Mbps connection or greater. My connection is 1.5Mbps, but since I'm connected via WiFi, and my family uses the line, their tests indicate I can only use the Basic quality. Let me chose the quality I want! I don't care if I have to wait longer for the movie to load, I want it at a higher quality.
Anime titles only seem to be streamable dubbed and not subbed, which sucks. Most dubbs are complete crap, so I usually prefer to watch my anime subbed.

The above gripes are really not that bad when you consider them. I'm paying to use Netflix instead of another rental service or simply pirating what I rent, so I should get what I pay for. Make it happen, Netflix, make it happen.

I guess the only other item I think would be nice is if they let their users roll over unused minutes/hours to the next month. That's kind of a stretch, but holy crap would people who use this service LOVE Netflix if they did this.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the service. Anyone else using it? What do you think? Any gripes you have that I haven't mentioned?

I'm Alive, No Need To Panic!

2007-02-20T20:31:00.000-05:00

Yeah, look at that title, thinking people care about me . . . .

Been busy with stuff lately, by which I mean video games, movies, and a second job. I've done it before, so here it is again, bullet list of events that have happened recently!

I got a second job. Yeah, I now work at Marcus Cinemas Pickerington as a projectionist with my friend Kyle. He started working there about a month ago, and he made the job sound cool. You get a lot of downtime if you can do things quickly, free movies for me and one other (except on Saturdays, which sucks) so if there's ladies looking for free movies, I'm your man. Free popcorn/soda, and the chance for free movie posters/banners/standees, t-shirts, and other swag. Rather, I think that would be sneg, which is "stuff not everyone gets," at least for free. Going pretty well so far. Got to thread some projectors Sunday night, which was kind of cool.
Low tire pressure + (icy + slushy roads) = crappy driving. Ice + broken free outdoor air compressors = having to use a pay compressor. Who knew the equivalent exchange for three minutes of air was 75 cents? Money grubbing bastard gas stations . . . .
Nintendo is trying to bankrupt me. Over the last several weeks, they've released several hit titles to their Virtual Console service on the Wii. Since I bought the system, I've spent $80 on Wii Points to buy some games from there. The only cure, is to buy more awesome retro titles.
24 continues to kick much ass, as does Heroes.
My 350 programming class is awesome. We have about four hours to program twice a week, since the instructor just gives us basic notes and leaves us to our on vices, so there's not much work needed to do at home sometimes. We're like a real programming team, too. Around 12:30 to 1, someone usually says, "okay, who's hungry, and where do you all want to get food from?" Sometimes we go to Wendy's or something, other times we'll just go downstairs to the Plaza and get some pizza and all. I love laid back classes.
PSG held a Wii Sports tournament about 1.5 weeks ago. We did all sports, with Baseball being a home run challenge, Golf being the target practice game, and Tennis and Bowling as double elmination brackets. I placed first in Tennis (undefeated), second in Boxing, third in Bowling and Golf, and fifth in Baseball. I received a Princess Peach Pink Wii remote glove for being the Tennis champ (Daniel lovingly held that one as the prize for that event), and since I placed higher in more events than all the other participants, I was declared to be the Penultimate Wii Sports Athlete, and received a sweet Legend of Zelda Wii carrying bag, which was my motivation for the entire tournament, because I love the Legend of Zelda. I look forward to doing another one sometime to defend my titles, and make some new ones.

And . . . that's about it really. Yeah, I live such an interesting life.

The Light Bright of TERRORISM!

2007-02-01T08:18:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry to start an entry with this, but the majority of people in Boston are fucking morons. I say this because many of them are apparently scared by Light Bright, thinking it's a terrorist bomb. Now, for those of you who still have yet to hear about this, it seems the the Turner Broadcasting Company decided to do a special advertising campaign. In 10 cities across the US, the company hired artists to create special magnetic LED images of two characters from the show Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the Mooninites Ignignokt and Err, as an advertising campaign for the Adult Swim show. The images are magnetic on the back so they can "stick" to certain parts of buildings. The image is made using LEDs, which are powered by a set of D batteries, and include a special sensor so they shut off when there is light during the day. The images were placed around 10 cities in the US, and have apparently been up for the last two to three weeks.

Well, some Bostonians finally noticed them, and rather than laughing at them or simply saying they're a vulgar display of art (the characters are giving the finger in the images), they took it one step further: they thought they were TERRORIST BOMBS. Yeah, that's right, BOMBS. Apparently several of the images had been found by people, and major traffic arteries were shut down so they could be safely removed by the bomb squad.

Okay, first of all, it took them TWO TO THREE weeks to find what they believed were bombs. Yeah, great timing morons, glad to know the money citizens pay you is making you work hard and fast to thwart threats. Second, I'm sure terrorists would not choose cartoon images, particularly ones prone to giving the bird to people and telling them to, "suck it, bitches," to use for their bombs; they tend to be a little more professional than that. I was listening to some whiny talk show moron say that the guys who put the signs up around the city and several officials who gave the OK for the project at Turner should be arrested for scare tactics and causing a public panic. He was also saying that it wasn't bright to play hoaxes like this in a post-9/11 world, and that the perpetrators should get what they deserve, because, "if people shrug this off this time, the next time someone may be without an arm, or some kids without a parent."

Am I the only one tired of people using 9/11 as an excuse for why people shouldn't have done something totally harmless? People need to friggin' lighten up. I'm tired of how strict and overbearing some people have become because of that damned day. If there's one thing the terrorists seem to have accomplished, it's making people more paranoid and uptight than ever before.

Oh, if you want to own a piece of terrorism history, and have a fuckload of cash to blow, you can buy one of the LED images here.

UPDATE: I totally forgot that an incident similar to this happened nearly a year ago right in my own state of Ohio. As an April Fools prank, five awesome girls made several Mario "question mark" blocks and hung them around their town. Rather than be amused by them hanging there, residents though they might be terrorists bombs as well. I love the quote they have at the end of that article. If I remember correctly, the girls were only told not to do something like that again or something, but they weren't jailed or punished or anything.

Ugh . . . .

2007-01-30T23:40:00.000-05:00

I'm tired of how things never seem to go the way I would like them to. Not long ago, just a few years in fact, the world seemed a fine place to be in, and everything was going right. How ironic that quickly that state can change in such a short span of time. Mathematically and paradoxically the only constant in everyone's problems is themselves, but that just doesn't seem logical for some reason. I've always believed that life is a game of patterns and chance, and that those who play the game well win. However, my life seems to just be following the same set pattern of abject desolation, week in, week out. Tragically, I'm afraid of big changes as well. Usually I'm the one saying, "what's in the past is in the past, so there's no sense in dwelling on it," yet that seems to be exactly what I'm doing now. Typical that I seem hypocritical even to myself and my ideals.

I dunno. Maybe it's just withdrawal because I haven't taken my medication in months. Who knows . . . .

And Now, Here's Nintendo With The Latest

2007-01-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

In typical awesome fashion today, Nintendo released the News Channel a day early. There has been a place holder for the channel on the Wii's interface since the system launched, but day after day it would taunt the player by saying it wasn't available yet. Well, the day has finally come, and I must say, the News Channel is probably the best addition to the Wii yet.

Clicking on the channel picture on the Wii's main menu brings it up, along with playing a nifty little tune that sounds like the opening to a news channel you would watch on regular TV. All news comes from the Associated Press. Starting it will cause the channel to automatically update with the latest stories. Unfortunately, you only get story updates when you start the channel, and not while you're using it, which is kind of lame, but the remaining features kind of make up for that.

Once in, you have your typical news sections to choose from; International, National, Sports, Arts/Entertainment, Technology, and the like. Clicking on one brings up a list of stories for that section. You can scroll up and down to find a story you want to read. Text not big enough here, or perhaps too big? Simply press the - or + keys on the Wiimote to increase or decrease the text size, and summarily how many headlines are displayed on the screen at once. Even while reading the article, you can press either of these buttons to increase or decrease the size of the text. Doing so results in a nifty word jumbling effect as the words resize and reposition to fit the screen, which is really neat to see, and a wonderful touch to the interface.

Each headline has either an article like icon, or a sphere one. Article icons indicate that the headline is simply an article, while the sphere icon indicates that you can view which part of the world the story is coming from on a globe shown to the right of the article, which is very neat. After reading a headline, the icon next to it will "grey out", indicating that you've read it. The sphere's remind me of the ones next to new podcasts in iTunes, and it's always a feature I've enjoyed, so it's nice to see it used here, too.

As stated, you can see where news is happening on a global scale, by viewing a globe exactly like the one in the Wii's Weather Channel. Spinning the globe will show little images or article icons for where a story is coming from (provided it has location data associated with it, which isn't done for all stories). Simply spin the globe to find news! You can zoom out, and articles will start to stack on top of each other, so you can see where the most news is currently coming from. Should there be an image associated with the article, you can cursor over it, hit A, and the image will be enlarged. Additionally, you can view each news section as a slide show on the globe. It's really fun to do this, and watch the globe spin from country to country, city to city as the headlines change and therefore the region from which they came changes as well.

There are a few features I wish the channel had, though. For one, automatic updating of stories, even while I'm in the channel would be wonderful. I don't want to have to back out and go back in to get the latest head lines. I would also have loved to be able to add RSS and/or Atom feeds to the channel, to pull in stories from my favorite websites like digg, GameSpot and others.

Other than that, though, the News Channel is simply awesome. I can easily see myself spending time with it on a regular basis, as it's a very fun way to read the news.

Pope: Video Games = 73|-| 3\/|L!!!11!1

2007-01-24T23:46:00.000-05:00

So apparently, Pope ~~Palpatine~~ Benedict XVI had this to say about my favorite hobby:

"Any trend to produce programs and products -- including animated films and video games -- which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behavior or the trivialization of human sexuality is a perversion."

So apparently, I'm a sinner, and I'm going to hell for playing Mario and Zelda. Do Catholics like to have any fun?

I guess he could be right, though. Zelda has caused me to think it's okay to go into my neighbors' homes, break their pots, open their chests, and take whatever is inside them for myself.

24, Season 6. Here we go . . . .

2007-01-16T09:24:00.000-05:00

The first four hours of 24, season 6, have come and gone, and holy HELL were they awesome.

Spoilers . . . .

The one thing I'm impressed about this season so far is they're showing a more human and compassionate side to Jack Bauer. Having been held captive in a Chinese internment camp for 20 months (apparently not speaking a word the entire time), Jack has returned to the US a pretty broken and battered man. Never in the entire series have I seen Jack so quiet and removed from the rest of the world; it was eerie. Naturally, though, that's not enough to keep him from springing into necessary action. First kill of the season by Bauer? Friggin' bite to the neck while strapped to a chair? Fucking. Awesome. Seriously, it's the best kill Bauer has ever made, and proves you don't fuck with him.

This season is entirely insane though. Rather than starting it with the terrorists plotting something, CTU and Jack trying to stop it, but the terrorists manage to pull some things off before ultimately stopped, this season throws you right into the middle of the story, per se. The terrorists have already managed to suicide bomb a dozen locations around the US in a few months, and one guy that says he can give them the location of the leader, a terrorist named Assad, organizing all of this wants Bauer to himself, to kill him via torture, like Bauer killed his brother back in '99. Retard fucks up, though, and tells Jack he's leading CTU to the wrong man, that Assad is actually here to stop him from carrying out the bombings himself. Naturally, Jack escapes and rescues Assad and the guy keeping tabs on him for interrogation. Here was another first: Bauer gave up on interrogating the guy! This is Jack FUCKING Bauer we're talking about here! Assad sets things straight, though, jamming a knife in the fucker's knee to get the info, and tells Jack that he'll remember how to, "do it," in due time.

Best and most tragic moment this season: Jack shoots Curtis dead. I could already tell Curtis was going to be a complete douchebag this season, but I wasn't wanting him to be killed off. I figured he had some past history with Assad, which was true, but I didn't think he would try and take Assad hostage and try to kill him. Jack can't have that, and puts one straight in Curtis' neck, killing him. This leads into one of the most hallowing moments in 24 ever: Jack breaking down and crying. Yes, the man with the plan, who has saved the world 5 times, and died for his country twice and lived to tell about it (that's no joke either) walks away, falls to the ground, crying, saying he can't do it anymore. Naturally, the terrorists setting off one of their many Soviet suitcase nukes pulls him back in.

This season looks like it's going to be awesome, possibly even better than season 5, if that's even possible.

Also, Chloe is fucking HOT this season. She's always been hot in my opinion, but DAMN, this season she's is smoking hot. She has some competition though . . . .

Mr. Delusional Michigan Fan

2007-01-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine sent me this via AIM today. Read it in the same manner you hear those Bud Lite tribute commercials on the radio:

Today we salute you, Mr. Delusional Michigan Fan (Mr. Delusional Michigan Faaaaaan!)

Season after season, year after year, you try to justify your absurdly high preseason ranking (clutching at straws!)

Season after season, year after year, you scramble to make futile attempts at damage control when the Wolverines lose to a grossly inferior opponent (How'd Northwestern score fifty fouuuuuur?)

Inevitably, you'll bring up the past, and boast of National Championships won 40 years before you born (those were the daaaaaays!)

You will point out that you have more wins than any other program as though that is relevant to the current season (been playing since the 1870s!)

Go on, ignore that home loss to your arch rivals in the regular season finale and continue to believe that you'll defeat your bowl opponent with striking ease (we'll win by thirteeeeeeey!)

So crack open an ice cold Bud Light, oh Emperor of Excuses, and take comfort knowing that when you finish ranked number twenty, you'll be back to number three when the preseason polls come out next year (Mr. Delusional Michigan Fan!)"

Priceless, simply priceless.

Click = Crap

2007-01-04T14:57:00.000-05:00

A while back my friend Guru blogged about watching the movie Click. My sister asked for the movie for Christmas, and got it, so I decided to check it out since I had the day off today.

I seriously feel like I just wasted a large portion of my day.

Let me put it this way: this movie is shit. Basically, and for those of you who didn't pay attention to its massive marketing campaign blitz last year, Adam Sandler's character is tired of his family life and work life conflicting. After several attempts to merely turn on the TV only to grab the wrong remote and, say, open the garage or something, he decides to go and get a universal remote. So, he ends up in the most logical place to get one: Bed, Bath and Beyond. I mean, didn't you all go there for your electronics needs? He ends up going into the, "Beyond," section (a joke you saw coming before it even happened), then the, "Way Beyond," section (yep, saw that one, too), and obtains a universal remote, the design of which resembles a Fischer-Price toy more than it does a functional remote. To save myself some work, basically the remote controls his whole fucking universe, and can program itself to perform actions based on his previous choices.

Now for my favorite part: tearing this movie asunder.

The plot, while somewhat intriguing, was poorly carried out. Everything started out cool, with him figuring out what the remote could do. Then it just gets a little boring, and finally the damn thing starts auto-piloting his life, and the movie becomes all but redeemable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a metaphor for how we need to enjoy life and being with others and shit, but the way everything plays out is so contrived it's sad. The ending is so predictable, with him waking up on the bed he feel asleep on while in the store. Seriously, anyone who didn't see that coming before it happened is a moron. They try to make it original by having Morty, the guy who gave him the remote and is also the Angel of Death (I KNEW he worked for Bed, Bath and Beyond!), warp him back to that point in time because he deserved a second chance. Where the fuck was he when I failed CIS 200 last year? Prick . . . .

My favorite scene? The part where he's in the future, at his son's wedding. Can someone please explain to me why movies like this have to depict the design of everything as so radically changed? People had weird hair cuts, the cars were slender and looked like huge bikes or something, even the instruments were redesigned to portray that, "this is the future!" Okay, it's the future; WE GET IT. You don't need to radically change the design of everything to convey that. Look at typical fashion over the last 50 years, or building design, or car design. What do you notice? Not that much change, or at least changes that aren't very radical? Then why the fuck depict radical design changes happening 30 or so odd years from now? Nice way to be cliche and show your set and costume designers have no concept of original design. The only redeeming part was Sandler's character having a heart attack, heralding the end to this debacle.

Seriously, don't watch this movie. Also, don't bitch because I didn't put spoiler alerts at the beginning of the last two paragraphs, because I don't care. This movie is crap, and no one should watch it, so if anything I just saved you a shit load of time, and either $6 at Blockbuster, 5 days of waiting for Netflix to deliver another movie to replace it, or worse, $15 to $20 if you were actually planning on buying it.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

2007-01-02T11:35:00.000-05:00

I'm bored at work, so I took some quizzes on-line that I've seen around this past weekend. Normally I hate taking them, but these involve determining which superhero and super villain you are. As it turns out, when it comes to superheroes I'm:

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		80%
Green Lantern		75%
Iron Man		70%
Superman		50%
Supergirl		43%
Robin		40%
Catwoman		35%
The Flash		35%
Hulk		35%
Batman		35%
Wonder Woman		28%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

And when it comes to super villains I'm:

You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom		65%
Apocalypse		59%
Lex Luthor		52%
Magneto		51%
The Joker		46%
Riddler		43%
Dark Phoenix		41%
Mr. Freeze		40%
Juggernaut		37%
Green Goblin		33%
Venom		31%
Poison Ivy		30%
Mystique		29%
Kingpin		27%
Catwoman		26%
Two-Face		25%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Pretty sweet. Spider-Man has always been my favorite superhero, and the one I've, "identified," with the most. Dr. Doom is also pretty bad-ass.

So, what superhero and/or super villain are you?

EDIT: The formatting issues are not my fault.

And A Crappy New Year

2007-01-01T03:47:00.000-05:00

Seriously, it's like everything that's important or necessary to me has decided to fuck up in the last few days.

I let my sister borrow my car last week so she could get used to it because she wanted to use it on her drivers test. My car is a small '96 Honda Accord, so it's nice for using on the maneuverability test. While out driving it, my parents said the brakes needed to be fixed. So after much pestering from my dad, I take it into a local Tuffy, thinking it was only the front brake pads need to be replaced. Drop the car off, guy says he'll call me in about an hour to let me know what they find and how much it will cost to fix everything. True to his word, he calls about an hour later, saying the front brake pads are fine, but the rotors are too thin and need to be replaced, along with a bit if shaving on the back rotors, and a complete flush and replenishment of the brake fluid system. Total cost: $440. This is mainly because it takes them about 1.5 hours to remove each rotor, due to their design (he only mentioned the front rotors needing to be removed). Yeah, that was a kick in the wallet.

So I go about my day, lamenting the loss of about 3 weeks pay (roughly), but try to carry on. I go to bed, wake up ready to have some fun at a party later tonight, but my computer has a wonderful message for me this morning: The system cannot find the OS. Greeeeat . . . . So I restart, slow as fuck. Boot to Safe Mode, run system restore to a save point yesterday, and it fails. Run it again to a point from last Monday, and it works. System still boots slow as fuck . . . . I run CHKDSK. Thing was runing for over 3 hours when I had to go to my friend's house, and was only 25% through the final test when I left. I return home about 30 minutes ago, and see it's completed. I restart the system . . . still boots slow as fuck . . . . "This is not good," I say to myself, as I grab a copy of SpinRite 6 my dad made for me, and start it up. After an initial check, SpinRite tells me my drive's SMART controller is reporting that my drive is close to imminent failure.

Wonder-fucking-ful . . . .

I'm running SpinRite on it now, having it examine the drive, but now it's 2% done and saying it's gonna take another 16 hours, wait, now 17 hours, to complete. Should the time not move much, or grow more by the time I wake up tomorrow, I'm backing up data, and ordering a new drive. Now it's up to nearly 18 hours . . . . I'm writing this from my Linux machine, which has literally become my backup machine now.

Whoever said, "and a Happy New Year," needs to be shot in the face right now, because this is not the start to a happy new year, but a continuation of the crappy one that just ended.

Oh, and the remote for my DVD player stopped working, too.

Enjoyable Break

2006-12-27T11:17:00.000-05:00

My Christmas break was rather enjoyable. I spent most of it watching a new anime series called Death Note, which is insanely addictive, and probably the best series I've seen since Fullmetal Alchemist. Friday some friends and I saw Rocky Balboa. Having never seen any of the previous Rocky films, I actually really liked the new and supposedly final installment of the series. There were several flashbacks to the first film, or so friends told me, but not so much that it made the film confusing or anything. Highly recommended. Christmas Eve was a quiet one at home, with nothing major going on at all. Christmas Day was pretty fun. Only received one new game, Rayman Raving Rabbids, which is fun, but will probably sit on my shelf of games for a long time at some point in the near future. It's basically a bunch of mini-games, which isn't bad, but there's no real point to any of it, either. Story Mode can barely be called that, but hopefully it will prove a fun party game come New Years Eve. My mom also bought an extra remote for my Wii, though sans a nunchuck attachment, so I need to pick one of those up. I also received Superman Returns on DVD, but it's full screen, so I need to return it (full screen = blasphemy, unless the movie was originally shot in 4:3). Things topped off with the usual assortment of clothing and gift cards, so all-in-all it was a pretty good Christmas.

Not much else to go on.

I'm Not Dead

2006-12-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

Yeah, kinda took a much needed break from things. Last week was finals. I finished on Wednesday, but then got Gunstar Heroes for the Virtual Console on my Wii, and coupled with Sonic and Mario 64 it's been all retro the past few days. Still the greatest system ever.

So I didn't fail 200 again, instead passing it with a solid B, which I'm very happy about. Downside is after looking at my program evaluation, I have 39 credits to earn, and only two semester in which do do it, which would be my senior year. To ease things, I may end up taking summer courses at CSCC or something, just gotta make sure that what I take will fully transfer and shit. Not looking forward to having classes in the summer, but graduating in the spring of 2008 is important to me, so if it has to be done, it shall be so. Overall not a bad semester. Earned an A- in 352A and a B in 352D, both part of the Intro to Internet Apps class, which isn't too shabby. Got a C in my History of Science class, which was a thematics, but not really a "core" or "major" class, just a formality, so I don't care what the grade was, just needed the credit. I only had to read through one of the three books for the class, too, and only because the last quiz he gave us before the final was over the entire thing. The other two books I didn't even read. Wonderful waste of $30. That's a fucking DS game man!

Anyway, life is pretty much same 'ole same 'ole. Typical single, loser self wallowing away his time in his room, playing video games and watching pirated streams of TV shows and shit. Yeah, I live a life of luxury.

Bored at work, since I'm closing tonight, alone, and it's Christmas break, so there's been jack shit to do all night. Just thought I would assert my livelihood since I haven't updated in a while.

The First Wiik

2006-11-28T13:33:00.000-05:00

I've had my Wii for a week now, and holy crap is it fun. I spent all of Thanksgiving break playing it every chance I got, specifically Twilight Princess, and easily logged between 30 and 40 hours of playtime over the four-day weekend. This is also my excuse for having not updated in the last week. I've also been up to Press Start Gaming four times this past week, taking my system up there to play with others. We've discussed starting a Wii Sports Bowling league at the store. I also took it to a friends house, who's usually been rather neutral/negative towards Nintendo, and he got a kick out of making a Mii, hearing how the messaging system worked, and playing Wii Sports.

The system is by far the best thing I have ever purchased. I only have two games for the system at the moment, but dammit if they're not fun as hell. You have to give Wii Sports mad props for being an insanely fun, albeit insanely simple game. Who would have thought a pack-in game could be so worthwhile!? It's extremely easy to start playing it, only to look at your watch later and realize that an hour or two has flown by.

What's more, I actually have my sister knocking at my door almost daily, asking if she can play Wii Sports. Needless to say, this is something I'm not used to. It's been several years since I've played video games regularly with my sister, and even then she never begged me to play. Now she can't get enough of my system or Wii Sports. Bowling is by far her favorite, and she loves to go rounds in Boxing as well. She's also been experimenting with Golf, though she says she hates the sport. Being a soccer player, she keeps telling me how soccer should have been a sport in the game, despite my telling her Nintendo wanted to keep things simple.

Here's a shocker for you: my parents like the system, too. Neither of them have actually played the system yet, a detail I'm determined to change, but my dad always smiles when he sees my sister and I playing, and my mom enjoys watching us, too. She actually held pumpkin pie hostage from me, saying I couldn't have any unless I brought my Wii downstairs so she could watch me, my sister, and her boyfriend, play Wii Sports; she thinks the Miis are cute.

On top of that, when asking for me to make a Christmas list for her yesterday, she actually said, "and any games for your Wii you may want," as a suggestion for items to put on the list. Not only did my mother actually, specifically, mention putting games on my list (she normally seems to despise or downplay the fact I ask for them), but she even got the name of the system correct. Believe me, after several years of her asking if the game(s) I asked for are for my, "GameBox/X-Station/PlayCube," this is a welcome change. Thanks to the Wii, my family now seems to have a greater respect for my hobby/addiction, and appears to want to join in the fun, which is awesome.

You know a game company has made a great system when your mom loves it.

Last week, my C++ instructor let us go 1.5 hours early, in lieu of Thanksgiving break. I jokingly stated that had I known she would dismiss us so early, I would have brought in my Wii. As luck would have it, my friend Jason said he actually had his in his car. After hearing this, I told him he had to go get it, and had no choice in the matter. He grabbed it and returned 10 minutes later. Two other students came to class late, heard of our plans, and one of them ran back and grabbed his two controllers from his dorm, so we would have four to play with. It was awesome to spend the next hour playing, you guessed it, Wii Sports on the projector screen. Our instructor came back in to check on us, and stayed for about 15 minutes to watch us play, saying the system was very cool.

Our C++ class turned into a Wii++ class. ^_^ \/

So far, this last week has been the best week I've had all year. I'll try to get back to posting about non-Nintendo things with my next post, though I make no guarantees.

Wii

2006-11-20T22:03:00.000-05:00

The Wii has arrived, and it's in my room!

Saturday was a blast. OSU vs. Michigan game ended in victory, and I got myself a Wii. I left right after the third quarter to head up to Wal-Mart and wait for the Wii. Upon arriving, a customer service person told me the line for the Wii was outside in front of the Home and Garden fence. I inquired about the number of systems they had, and she said 27. When I arrived outside, the crowd waiting for the Wii was rather large, and I was a little worried the line was full already. As luck would have it, they had a sign-in sheet, and said to write my name down. The store actually had 29 systems, and I signed my name on slot 25.

A lot of my friends from Press Start were waiting there as well. Apparently they had been there since 4 PM, and even pitched a tent, which I sort of ended up calling the Press Start Party Tent. Lots of DS playing was done, as well as some Super Smash Bros. in the back of one of Joel's friend's van. Joel had a Wavebird controller to play with, and got as far away from the van as he could to play with the range, which was quite large.

Around 8:30, a manager comes out to check the list, and says that the'll start handing tickets out at 10, so we all need to stay here until then, and needed to have ID with us when she called our name. We could still go inside to use the restroom though, which was nice.

10 PM rolled around, and she came out with the tickets. She made her way through the list in about 10 minutes, and I got my ticket. I ended up getting 23, as two people didn't have ID, or weren't the individual on the list (they were "waiting in place of someone"), so she skipped them. After the tickets were handed out, we were free to walk around the store until midnight.

The majority of us mulled around in electronics, talking video games and playing on the demo PS3 the store had, which actually crashed at one point. Was kinda funny, actually.

Finally, 10 minutes to midnight. They tell us the systems will be brought up front, and sold at the registers up there. I dashed to the front of the store, but the majority of the people from the line were already up there, so I was pretty close to the end. True to form, there was still no such thing as a fast checkout lane in Wal-Mart, so I didn't walk out with my system until 12:45. I held the system tightly to my chest, as I had no intentions of getting mugged on the way to my car. After driving home and connecting the system, I played around with it for about 1.5 hours, then too tired to continue, I went to bed.

So far, the Wii is the best system I have ever owned. The controller is very intuitive, and makes gaming insanely fun again. Wii Sports is a lot of fun. My sister came in around 2:30 on Sunday to check out my new system, and I had her try Bowling. I have never seen her so giddy to play a game in all my life. Later in the day, I setup the system downstairs for her and her boyfriend to play, while my mom watched them. They had a blast trying to best each other in Bowling and Baseball.

The only other game I bought was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, as as far as I'm concerned, it's the only other game you need right now. Twilight Princess is simply GORGEOUS, with huge landscapes; Hyrule simple has to be seen to be believed. I've also never seen characters as expressive or emotional in any Zelda game I've played. Their faces convey what they're feeling, as does their body language. Link's new partner, Midna, is also a very welcome addition. She's a spunky little creature, who has no problem ordering Link around. Midna is probably the most expressive character I've encountered so far.

What's cooler, two of my friends also bought systems. They waited with other friends of theirs at Best Buy all night, with the intent to eBay the systems the next day. Well, they both ended up keepign them. One of them hasn't played video games regularly for a while now, at least a year, and the other has been rather negative towards Nintendo for as long as I can remember. Now they love the system.

Looks like Nintendo was right all along . . . .

Pictures here.

Happy Birthday Shiggy!

2006-11-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post before I head out to see Casino Royale. Today marks the 55th year the God of Gaming has been alive. His name is Shigeru Miyamoto, and he's been making the games I love for the last 20 years, showing no signs of stopping. He's 55 today.

Happy birthday, Miyamoto! May you live for years to come, and bring me another 20 years of gaming greatness!

Adult Swim Broken

2006-11-08T21:24:00.000-05:00

So Adult Swim decided to take the wonderful Adult Swim Fix and ruin it. Just a few days ago, I could go there with Firefox, select the video I want, launch it externally in Windows Media Player 11, take it full screen, and after a quick ad I could watch the entire show from start to finish without err. Well, now the whole site is Flash based, shows are broken into smaller clips (even the 11 minute shows), and I have to select to go into full screen mode when each new clip of the same show is loaded . . . . What's more, the site no longer works with Mac and Linux machines, which is a shame as I was planning on making my main machine primarily run Linux this weekend, but now I'm not so sure. The forums are filled with tons of people who dislike the change, and want Adult Swim to return Fix to the way it was.

I hate it when people try to fix things that were never broken to begin with.

Scrybe

2006-11-07T13:53:00.000-05:00

This has been around for a few weeks now, but I'm bored at work and thought I would write a quick blurb on it.

According to their site, Scrybe is, "a groundbreaking online organizer that caters to today´s lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way." Scrybe is essentially a web application (apparently designed with Flash or something) that by all means is an on-line version of the organizer you likely use everyday, but way cooler. Allow this video to demonstrate why Scrybe is going to be both a groundbreaking and insanely popular app:

Okay, after watching that, can you tell me with the utmost sincerity that you don't think Scrybe is awesome? Yeah, neither could I. Everything about it is so fluid and useful, and the ability to use an online app offline is incredibly cool. PaperSync is just ingenious, whether you think you'll ever end up using it or not.

They're currently accepting e-mails on their site for anyone interested in beta testing the service. I signed up when TechCrunch blogged about the service a few weeks ago, but I have yet to receive an invite.

I'm definitely keeping my eyes on this little startup.

Two Wii-ks Of Hell

2006-11-06T08:41:00.000-05:00

These next two weeks are literally going to be hell for me.

Nintendo's new system, the Wii, drops on the 19th of this month, and those two weeks just can't go by fast enough. I've been anticipating this system for 1.5 years now, and it's major launch title, Twilight Princess, for at least two years now. The wait for the system was already pretty unbearable, but then Nintendo just HAD to drop two new trailers for Twilight Princess, and made the wait even more unbearable. Seriously, just watch those two trailers, and with your knowledge of how much I love the Zelda series, you'll know how insane it drove me. Either way, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii also has another name: 2006 game of the year. This hasn't been announced by other magazines or websites yet, but trust me, it's game of the year.

I've also been enjoying the user experience videos Nintendo has been posting lately. Brings me nothing but joy to see these gamers, both young, old, and even families, playing the Wii and having a blast. I really hope that when I get my system, that I'll be able to enjoy it not only by myself, but with my family as well. They've always had a rather pensive attitude towards my gaming, but this system could change all of that. Whether my parents believe it or not, they are gamers as well, albeit casual ones, while I'm definitely a hard core gamer. They're always playing computer games like Uno or Spider Solitaire, and my parents are rabid players of Skip-Bo, with some Phase 10 thrown in for good measure on occasion. Would be wonderful to play video games with my dad again, something I have not enjoyed since I was in early elementary school.

Perhaps Cartman had the right idea of freezing himself until the Wii comes out . . . . Unfortunately I have two programming classes that have homework each week, and a 7 to 10 page term paper due for my History of Science class literally the day after the Wii drops. Definitely need to start on that this week, otherwise I doubt it will get done.

Perhaps these will be enough to keep me occupied until the sacred night of November the 19th?

Doubtful, but it might help a little bit.

Earnin' A Nickle, While Spendin' A Dime

2006-11-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

It's occurred to me that I have been spending entirely too much money over the last three months. Over these three months, I have managed to spend enough money to have paid for nearly all of my car insurance payments for one full year. I've been spending it on a lot of fast food and junk food that I really don't need, and a few other impulse buys thrown into the mix.

This is not good.

As such, I've decided on the following drastic measures:

None of my money will go towards purchasing fast food for at lest the rest of this month. Now if my parents or someone else pays for it, that's another story, but I won't be footing the bill. Furthermore, I'll save a little bit on gas since I won't be driving to get food a lot, and I should also be able to loose a good amount of weight.
Netflix is gone. Sure it's only $15 a month, but I've had one DVD for nearly three weeks now, and the other for over a month. It's not that I don't find the service useful, because I love Netflix. The problem is that I get distracted with bigger things, and forget about the DVDs. Besides, I can borrow most of them from friends, download them, or stream them on-line from certain sites. Whey spend money if I can get it for free?
I'll be contacting Cingular to cancel the unlimited bandwidth option I have on my line. I really don't use my phone to surf the 'net anymore, and the service doesn't even work half the time, or I have to restart my phone to get it to work lately. Sure it's been fun, but I think that $20 a month could be better spent.
Zero alcohol purchases for at least the next month. I don't really need it, and again the money could be better spent on something else. Here's hoping my friends are generous . . . .
Going to the movies? Acceptable (Matt still needs a social life). Buying snacks from the theater? Unacceptable. Not only are those snacks way overpriced, they're also bad for you. Since I usually go to the theater twice a month, that's nearly $20 I'll save myself.

Now, to answer one question some of you may have: yes, I'm still buying the Wii as soon as I can. I have enough to pay for that and my required expenses for the next few months, so I'll recoup that money and then some by then. Hell, there's also the possibility of doing small jobs like shoveling driveways or something, which will put some cash in my pocket, and the exercise will be good for me. Unless there's some kids going around doing the same thing, because I'm not a prick.

Here's hoping for a richer, healthier me a few months from now.

From The Halls of Montezuma

2006-10-29T23:08:00.000-05:00

Well, as of 15:30 this afternoon, my brother was picked up by his recruiter, and will be departing on a flight to begin his training to become a United States Marine. He's been working hard for this day since before he graduated high school in 2005, and now his hard work has come to fruition. Over the last 1.5 years he's managed to shed a little more than 100 pounds to get down to just inside his ship weight, working with other friends who have already become or will become Marines. He'll be joining other individuals such as my cousin Mike, my high school friend Wayne, and another high school friend and church friend Andy, who was in Lima Co. over in Iraq.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little happy he's out of the house, but I'd be lying even more if I said I didn't miss him a bit; if anything I'm a little jealous my younger brother has managed to make it out on his own (technically) before I have. It's definitely going to take some getting used to his not always being around. However, I'm happy that he's finally getting to do what he's wanted to do for so long, and I'm proud that he's worked so hard to achieve his goals. He's come a long way, and sacrificed a lot more than I likely would in order to achieve his goal of becoming a Marine.

Only downside is that I likely won't be able to see him graduate, since his ship date was pushed back an additional three weeks, and he now graduates right around my first week of classes for spring of '07. He seems to understand this, however, which is a good thing.

Semper Fi, Kyle, semper fi.

One For The Money, Two For The Show

2006-10-28T23:29:00.000-04:00

I gotta tell ya', having two monitors connected to your computer is sweet. A while back I picked up an old monitor from a friend of mine to setup as an extended display on my laptop while at home. At work one of our OSS stations was setup with a second display, and it was nice to be able to have the Helpdesk e-mail open on one screen, and our call tracking software open on the other. After using it for a while, I had to get a setup like this for my room at home.

Ever since connecting a second monitor to my laptop, my productivity has gone up. Unless you've used a dual-display setup before, you have no idea how nice it is to have your browser open in one window to surf the net, and watch a video full screen on the second monitor. When it comes to web design and homework for my Internet applications course, it's insanely nice to have my editor open one one monitor, and my browser open on the other. Made a change that didn't work or look right when viewed in the browser? Simply make the necessary changes, select the browser window again, hit F5, and your changes are made automatically. No closing the window and then opening another, or minimizing windows, or alt+tab'ing to switch between them. I was also able to better edit some photos for my sister by having the one I was working on in one display, and the original in the other to make quick comparisons.

Needless to say, I now find it very hard to work without at least two monitors. Now I need to bump it up to dual widescreen displays. Oh yeah, that would rock.

Save The Cheerleader, Save The World

2006-10-23T23:15:00.000-04:00

Okay, if you haven't started watching Heroes, get to watching it. I finally got around to watching it last week, and after tonights episode, holy shit am I hooked. I've never really found much to watch on NBC these past few years, at least since Friends went off the air, but this show is goooood. I've only seen the two most recent episodes, but both of them have caused me to have goosebumps for nearly the entire show, which is rare for me, and I've been a fan of 24 since it started back in 2001. Heroes debuted as the top-rated show in the 18-49 age bracket, and continues to totally dominate Monday nights, causing NBC to pick it up for a full season.

The show centers around several main characters who each wake up one day to find they suddenly have amazing powers. Over the course of events, each character will come to fully realize what their power is, and that they apparently play a vital role in the survival of the human race. However, there's a crazy guy out there who wants to get a hold of their DNA to use in his own wicked plans, which have yet to fully be revealed. For now, each character is merely either toying with their power, trying to figure out what it is and how to fully use it, or in the case of some characters, try to figure out what their power is in the first place. Eventually, it will come down to, "do they use it for good, or evil?" I'm sure as that happens, the show will only get even better.

Anyone who's already started watching this awesome show, I'll tell you that my favorite character so far is Hiro. For those of you that know me, please don't think it's, "typical," of me to pick the Japanese guy due to my background. The reason I like him is the same reason nearly everyone chooses a favorite character in any series: I identify with him the most. Hiro is a programmer, otaku, and believes in a common good, and I identify with this very closely. I also must say that I'm very impressed with how much research the writers of the show put into defining his character, accurately referring to video games and manga/anime characters/series that I'm familiar with and a fan of myself. I'm also very happy that the writers don't break the language barrier, and actually have Hiro and his friend speak Japanese, providing subtitles for the audience to read. Very high end, and a very nice touch to what is already one hell of a show.

Anyway, you can catch Heroes on Monday nights at 9 on NBC. I really hope this show gets picked up for more than just one season, and that either it or 24 move to another night in January, because I'll have a hard time watching both.

The History of Zelda - Part One

2006-10-15T18:56:00.000-04:00

GameTrailers.com, one of my favorite sites to visit, is holding a retrospective video series on my absolute favorite franchise of all time, The Legend of Zelda. Now, unless you're new here, or don't read my posts that often, or don't know me well enough, here's the thing: I have a massive hard-on for Legend of Zelda games, or anything regarding the franchise. What's that? I can only buy one video game a year? Is there a Zelda game coming out this year? I'll take that then. Yes; I'm that hard core. I have the twin boys I used to babysit back in Junior High to thank for introducing me to the series, as they had me sit down one night and play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Not only did I become hooked on this game, my appetite for anything Zelda related became insatiable. I always pick Link when I'm playing Super Smash Bros., and need to get my hands on every new game made for the series, provided it's economically feasible for me to do so (and maybe even if it's not).

The first part of the retrospective covers the first two games for the series, The Legend of Zelda, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

The first game in the franchise was a massive success, and would pioneer gaming in a new direction for years to come. The game was one of the first successful games to have a massive, non-linear, and free-roaming story; it was up to you to choose the path you would take to get to the end. You could play the dungeons out-of-order, obtain items out-of-order, or, well, do anything in any damn order you damn well pleased! Hyrule, the world many of the games are set in, was massive for games of that time, so massive, in fact, that many say it's impossible to navigate through the world without the use of a map, even if you've played the game several times. I believe this has become a little easier as time went on, since future games came with a map of the entire world that would fill in as you traveled to new places, and many areas became more uniquely identifiable than in previous games. Never-the-less, The Legend of Zelda was huge for its time.

The Legend of Zelda was also the first game ever to allow players to save their progress. This feature alone would tell users that it's impossible to get through the game in one sitting. It also had a very successful inventory system, allowing players to carry numerous items around Hyrule to complete various tasks, such as getting to new areas. Among other firsts, The Legend of Zelda was one of the first games ever to have a musical score composed for the game itself. Before, most video game music was simply programmed in by the game's programmers themselves, based on what they felt the mood of the game in certain situations was. As time progressed, the Zelda franchise is one of the few remaining franchises in which the original game's theme has been featured in every game made in the future. Even Mario and Metroid can't make this claim.

The second game in the series, The Adventure of Link, is regarded as both the black sheep of the family, and quite possibly the hardest game ever made for the franchise. The second game took a side scrolling approach while in towns and dungeons, and an overhead approach while walking around Hyrule. NPCs (Non-Player Characters) were also more numerous and actually moved around as well. The method of fighting was also greatly overhauled, in that you actually had to look for openings in your opponents, while at the same time guarding against the enemies own high and low attacks! Unfortunately this method of fighting took a backseat in most of the later games, even when the series became fully 3D, but looks like it may be back with the latest incarnation, Twilight Princess.

This is just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to the Zelda franchise. Part two of the retrospective will analyze the SNES and hand held games of the franchise, and their contributions to both the series and the history of gaming. I will definitely post about those parts of the retrospective, and provide my own insight as I can. When the retrospective comes to and end, I suppose I'll outline my top reasons the franchise is so successful, and why I personally regard it as my favorite franchise ever.

And All Of It Meaningless . . . .

2006-10-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

It's amazing how much can change in just one year's time . . . .

Even more amazing is how unfair some people can end up being in that one year, suddenly, and for no reason at all . . . .

At the same time, it's amazing how one can suddenly become better at something they failed to do the first time around . . . .

Still . . . when one isn't used to major shifts in the paradigm of their own life, they begin to question their beliefs, their methods, their motives, and constantly wonder, "what if," or, "why?"

And all at once, everything seems so meaningless . . . .

Quite possibly, for the first time in my life, I've called into question the person I've become, the path I've chosen in life, and wondered, "do I regret what I've become?"

Even greater, "is there anything I could have done to change the outcome thus far?"

I've never been able to accept the concept of one having an ultimate, inescapable destiny in life, as I dislike the idea of not being fully in control of my own life.

If destiny is to be real, that life apparently leads to a predetermined end, then it also must mean that there's nothing one can do to change the outcome of that end, or how one gets there.

Everything becomes meaningless, and inescapable . . . .

Yet, here I am, wondering if where I am now is what I'm likely destined for in the grand scheme of things.

. . . .

I sound like a fucking emo . . . .

If Michael Jackson Were Indian

2006-10-01T18:34:00.000-04:00

This video was just up on digg, and is down right . . . fuck I don't even know how to describe it:

Looks like Michael Jackson is also into outsourcing.

If you're tramatized after seeing this, I'm not sorry.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

2006-09-22T22:34:00.000-04:00

One of the things I love about Facebook is all the memories it can bring back. Just tonight I found a group named, "If you remember this you grew up in the 90's," and BOY did it cause some fond memories of my childhood to come flooding back. There's always things that you remember and agree on instantly, some you don't see listed and want listed, but even better is when you happen across something you completely forgot about; it is a feeling like no other.

So, I'd like to just list off a few of these fond memories from when I was knee-high to a grasshopper!

Reading Goosebumps. (book series)
Knowing all the words to, "Fresh Prince of Bel Air." (TV show)
Carmen Sandiego. (Computer/board game, game show, and cartoon)
Captain Planet. (TV show)
The ORIGINAL Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. (TV show)
Playing Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, and everyone wants to be Tommy. (fond memory)
Trapper Keeper. (school supply)
Pogs. (fad)
Sideways Stories from Wayside High School. (book series)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (TV show)
Oregon Trail day in school. (Educational computer game)
Yikes pencils and erasers. (school supply)
Beanie Babies/Teeny Beanie Babys. (fad)
Ghostwriter. (book series and educational TV show)
The Macarena. (popular song and dance)
"Talk to the hand!" (catch phrase)
Nintendo = King of Video Games. (console and video game maker)
"Get Over Here!!!" (catch phrase, from the video game Mortal Kombat)
Slip-n-Slide. (backyard toy)
Double Dare. (game show)
Bill Nye the Science Guy. (educational TV show, and science class video staplehood)
Crossfire. (board game)
Nerf. (toy)
"Psyche!" (catch phrase)
Reading Rainbow. (educational TV show, and english class video staplehood)
Tamogatchi. (fad)
YOMEGA yo-yo's. (fad)
Airwalk's. (brand of shoes)
Creepy Crawlers. (toy and TV show)
Wishbone. (educational TV show, and very cool dog)
Skip-It. (toy)

God I miss my childhood . . . .

Sony Is Genius!

2006-09-20T22:13:00.000-04:00

It seems that Sony has found an ingenious way to recoup the money they'll lose selling the PlayStation 3 at a loss in a few months. At E3 back in May, Sony talked about the concept of microtransactions (quite extensively, actually, guess they needed content), which is where a player pays for things like songs, music videos, and even new items for the games they own. Yet, only using the microtransactions system for users to buy additional content for games they own seems so short-sighted. Why not go further?

Enter Gran Turismo HD, stage right.

Gran Turismo HD is essentially Gran Turismo 4, but with graphics that cause you to orgasm at the mere sight of the game running on an HDTV. Well, Sony has the bright idea of releasing the game in two versions. One version will come with thirty cars and two tracks. The second version will come with . . . nothing! That's right: you get to pay money for a game that has nothing on it that you actually need to play the game! How, prey tell, will you obtain cars and tracks to make the game playable? Why, through microtransactions you big silly! Cars can be bought for between $0.43 and $0.80 per car, and tracks can be bought for between $1.71 and $4.26 per track; there are approximately 750 cars, and 50 tracks for the game. Sony has succeeded in taking a game and making it like a Linux distro: you can get it pre-packaged with some stuff, or you can make your own! Yay! A veritable pay-as-you-go plan for a video game!

Okay, enough joking around. Sony, you're fucking stupid. First you hit up your fans with an outrageous price for the PS3. Then you copy Nintendo's idea (though in typical half-assed fashion) for a controller with motion sensitivity, or in the case of your new controller, movement along 6-axi. Now you're telling gamers you're actually going to offer a game where they have to pay additional money to even play it after they initially buy the game disc? Are you fucking serious? I'm sure you'll come out saying that, "gamers will have a choice in the content they want in their game, and they can pay less to get the game, and then choose how much they pay afterwards to make their own, custom game," or something like that. You know what I say? I say gamers won't pay for a game with NOTHING ON IT, only to then be forced to pay more money to actually have a playable game.

I think Phil Harrison's breath smells like bullshit . . . .

Weird Al - White and Nerdy

2006-09-17T23:28:00.000-04:00

I've been hearing about this song for a while now, and someone finally has the video for it up on YouTube!

In a parody of Ridin' Dirty, it's White and Nerdy!

Damn funny song. Weird Al is the master of parody.

Wii Set To Launch On 19 November

2006-09-14T08:46:00.000-04:00

At a press conference in Japan that happened around 1AM (GMT-05:00), Nintendo officially announced when you could get your hands on the Wii, and how much it will set you back.

The system will launch on 19 November for the US, and 2 December for Japan (like the DS, the US once again gets the system first). It will retail for $250 (based on yen to American dollar conversions at the moment), and will include the system (duh), the vertical stand, one remote with nunchaku attatchment, two AA batteries (likely for the controller), one sensor bar, one sensor bar stand, all needed connection/power cables, and a copy of Wii Sports to play with. Around 25 to 30 games will be available for the system by the end of the year, and each will cost $50. No official word on a complete list of titles available on launch day.

New remotes will sell for $40, the nunchaku attatchment for the remote will sell for $20, and the retro controller for virtual console games will sell for $20 as well. Again, all prices are based on yen to American dollar conversions. When Nintendo holds their American press conference sometime today, hard numbers for prices should be set.

As for the Virtual Console, as many as 30 titles will be available for download on launch day. NES games will cost 500 yen (~$5), SNES games 800 yen (~$8), and N64 games will cost 1000 yen (~$10). Pricing for games from SEGA and Hudson's systems have yet to be announced. Games can be bought using a credit card, or some sort of Wii points system, the details of which haven't been discussed (yet . . .).

Nintendo also added several new features to the Wii to make it a home centerpiece. Along with an included Opera web browser, which we already knew about, users can also use what is being called a, "photo channel," to display their digital pictures on their TV. There will also be a, "weather channel," which will report the weather from all around the world, and a, "news channel," which will update with the latest news headlines. Lastly, there's also a, "Mii channel," which allows the user to create a customized avatar, and will likely also be used to allow multiple users to save their in-game settings, and have them automatically loaded when they start a game. The Wii controller apparently has around 6kb of on-board storage, and it's believed that it can be used to store a gamer's profile information to take with them to other Wii consoles (like at a friends house).

Overall, I'm very impressed with all of this. I was a little miffed about the $250 price tag at first, but then when I saw what I get when I buy the system, I thought it a fair price. The Wii will be the first system in over a decade to include a game with the system at launch, and from what I've seen of Wii sports should be fun for both new, casual, and hard core gamers alike. I'm also a little surprised at the 19 November launch date, since I remember Nintendo saying that they would get the system out before the PlayStation 3. Hopefully they chose this date to ensure a large number of available systems at launch. Also, from what I've seen of several polls on sites I visit, nearly everyone who's a gamer wants the system, either by itself or in combination with the other two. As such, I think Nintendo figured that, given these numbers, it didn't matter if they launched before Sony or not, so they chose a later launch date to produce more units by then. I also have a little more time to save up a bit more money to buy a ton of games, too!

Nintendo is also holding an American press conference today (can't remember at what time), so I'll edit or add any amendments and new information to this post when I find it.

Facebook Feeds and Paranoia

2006-09-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

Today Facebook unleashed two, sweet new features: News Feed, and Mini Feed. Essentially, these feeds take the updated data from your friend's profiles (ie, when they update their status or write on someone's wall, etc.) and puts it all in a nice feed on the homepage. Then, on everyone's individual profiles, there's a mini feed with the same information, but only what is pertinent to that particular profile. Facebook has managed to take all the data updates on their service, and combine it into nice little feeds to allow its users to keep up-to-date on what their friends are up to, and thus communicate better. Before, when I would click on the My Friends link to see which friends had updated their profiles, I would be left to guess at which data they actually updated. With the inclusion of these new feeds, I can now see exactly what it is they updated.

However, in an entirely predictable manner, the majority of Facebook's users seem to regard the new feeds as some form of, "stalking," per se. They seem to think that because Facebook now publishes every little update you make on Facebook (again, writing on someone's wall, joining a group, adding a new favorite band, etc.) in a feed that your friends can see, that Facebook has crossed into the stalker territory. Oh no! Facebook is telling all my friends about something I did that they could have seen anyway had they viewed my profile! Now people can stalk me with information that I MYSELF have made public knowledge to them!

Settle the fuck down, and grow a fucking brain you morons.

As I stated, Facebook is merely publishing information about things that you have PUBLICLY done. YOU made the update, YOU made it in an area that is visible to others, and therefore YOU have given consent to others to be knowledgeable about those updates. I could have seen the update you made anyway, but now the feeds just make it easier to spot.

Now, it needs to be stressed that not everyone can view what you have done. If you update your cell phone number, but in the options section for that nugget of data you have it set so that only people on your friends list can see your cell number, then ONLY those users will see that update in the feed. To put it bluntly: I can only see updates that you have already told Facebook I am allowed to see, based on the security settings you've setup for your own profile. Others outside of your network(s), or in the case of some data outside of your own list of friends, CANNOT see these updates. Either way, it's not really stalking if you've put your information out there for everyone to see, or have already allowed certain people to see that information. Oh, did I mention that you can also delete individual feed updates? Sure you have to do them by hand, one-at-a-time, but still, you can prevent certain updates from appearing across all feeds.

I do, however, agree that they could have added the updates in a much nicer layout. I personally don't mind the new layout, but I can see how some people say that it is rather obtrusive. Thing is, it does give you more control over what content is visible on user profiles. Don't like the new mini feed on everyone's profile? Collapse the section! In a smart move, Facebook set it up so if you collapse a section on one person's profile, the same section is collapsed on EVERYONE'S profile. Now, if you go to a different machine, the sections are back, but you just collapse them again, and they're no longer visible on every profile. Facebook has given you some control, but most people haven't noticed it yet.

Honestly, I don't know why so many people become so paranoid about so many things on the Internet. You need to fear reality more, folks. Fear the fact that someone who really would want to stalk you could come to the campus, see you in person, follow you wherever you go, find your number in a phone book (possibly), or any number of other ways someone could get information about you. Hell, there are services where I can pay to have a full background check on anyone I want. The point is: you're being paranoid for nothing. Sure it seems a little annoying now, but it's a radically new update that no one saw coming, and hasn't really been done before. Give it some time, and I think you'll come to appreciate the feeds as a mechanism for keeping up with your friends, and communicating.

Little Miss Sunshine

2006-08-27T00:21:00.000-04:00

I literally feel like I just saw the best movie of the summer. I've seen MI:3, DaVinci Code, Pirates 2, Miami Vice and Snakes on a Plane, but dammit, this one little independent comedy topped them all. Little Miss Sunshine is my favorite movie of the summer.

The story centers around the Hoover family and their dysfunction. Mom and dad are bankrupt, grandpa is a drug addict, the brother hates everyone, and the uncle tries to commit suicide. Then you have the little daughter, Olive, who's sort of caught up in all the drama and dysfunction in her family. Her aunt got her into beauty pagents, and she was runner up in the regionals for the Little Miss Sunshine pagent. Well, the girl who won was disqualified (something about diet pills), and Olive is now able to enter the competition because she is the technical winner. Due to budget and other family issues, the entire family has to go to California in an old yellow VW Bus. Along the way they learn to cope with their dysfunction, and appreciate being losers in an otherwise winner-centric culture.

While the story is actually pretty dark when you look at it, the satire and comedy used to tell the story is done very well. Sure you have the typical running gag in there, but it never really seems to get old. Each actor plays his or her character to the tee, and in the end you get a very intelligent summer comedy that holds its own with the other big-budget films that have come and gone over the last three or four months. I would definately say see this movie, I would definately see it again given the chance, and I will definately be buying the DVD when it's available.

Big Fish

2006-08-24T23:21:00.000-04:00

I have to say, Big Fish is definitely at the top of my list of favorite movies, and I could watch it all day. I've always been a fan of movies that are just outside the ordinary, and Big Fish definitely fits this mold. Even though it was directed by Tim Burton, who is normally known for incorporating lots of dark and gothic style to his movies, it's a very light-hearted and endearing movie.

The story is about a man named Edward Bloom, and his interesting path in life. Essentially the story of his life is told through his own tall tales, or, "big fish," stories. Though they seem rather extraordinary, they tell the story of Edwards life very well. His only son Will, however, is growing tired of his father constantly repeating them. When his father lies in bed, dying of cancer, Will tries to sort out his father real life through those stories. What he finds is that even though they're a bunch of tall tales, they're based on actual events and people in his father's life; his father merely fabricated the stories to make them seem more interesting. In the end he learns that it's not just the story of ones life that matters, but how it's told and lives on after they're gone.

Tim Burton was the perfect director for this film. The story involves several, elaborate scenes and characters, and Burton's imagination serves the movie well in creating them. I also found myself really liking Ewan MacGregor's performance as the young Edward Bloom. He manages to find a nice mix of charm, wit and sass to make his character believable and likeable. I really think that Big Fish is an excellent measure of MacGregor's acting potential, especially since the only other movies I've seen him in are Sci-Fi. Overall the movie has a very lush story, with a very endearing ending, perfect to watch with anyone. Big Fish really is an adventure as big as life itself, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Facebook Notes

2006-08-22T20:18:00.000-04:00

Hot on the heels of last weeks release of an API, social networking newbie Facebook has added a new notes feature. With it, you can post notes on your own profile, post notes about other people on their profiles, and have posts you make on your blog uploaded to your profile's notes section. Now if someone doesn't come here to read my inane ramblings, they can read them in my Facebook profile! Though according to Facebook the notes section is not a blog, "because then you'd be a blogger."

I feel like saying it again: I retract what I said months ago about Facebook. Since then, the community seems to have settled down and grown up a bit, and now Facebook is a premiere site for the college crowd. In around 2.5 years it has seemingly taken everything that was regarded as bad about MySpace, and made it better. The site's design is clean and easy to navigate, and everything just seems to work and come together the way a social networking site should.

Toonami Jetstream

2006-08-17T22:33:00.000-04:00

How I completely forgot about the launch of Toonami Jetstream, I'll never know. Jetstream is the latest in "IPTV" offerings from various broadcast and cable companies, this time from Cartoon Network. Just like Adult Swim Fix, you can view several popular shows that play on the regular Toonami slot, with a few shows only viewable on Jetstream, like The Prince of Tennis and Hikaru no Go. The episodes stream in four, 5 minute segments (to keep load times and buffering to a minimum), and can be watched in a fullscreen mode, which is very nice.

I've watched the first three episodes of Hikaru no Go, along with the first episode of The Prince of Tennis on this new setup, and it's really quite nice. I'm a big fan of the Hikaru no Go manga, and am pleased to finally be able to watch the anime, especially since I don't have cable and can't watch the regular Toonami, where it likely would have been shown if not for Jetstream. The Prince of Tennis also looks to be fantastic, with a nice little twist at the end of the first episode, and enough action to keep me watching. I'll also have to check out shows that have already run in their entirety on Cartoon Network that I've missed, like Samurai Jack.

Yes, I'm 21, and I watch cartoons. I don't care.

The only downside to the new service is you have to be running either Windows 2000 with SP4, or Windows XP with SP2. Along with that, you need to use Internet Explorer, and you have to have Windows Media Player 10 and at least Flash 8 installed. I prefer Firefox myself, and am considering switching to the Mac platform, so with Jetstream being Windows only, it's not making the intended transition choice very easy.

It's nice to see television companies realizing that viewers will gladly stream shows for free, even if they're broken into smaller segments or contain ads in them (albeit in small doses). Check it out if you get the chance.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Racially Profile 'Em!

2006-08-16T08:51:00.000-04:00

Talks have arisen lately around the foiled attempt to blow up several British airliners last week with special, explosive liquids in a bottle. The attack, if there was in fact going to be one, was successfully averted, but the issue has now drawn a huge new questions: should we profile any Arabs and followers of Islam who want to travel on our airlines, by sending them through, "special," lines for, "special," screening?

Conservative talk show host Mike Gallagher seems to think so. On Fox news the other day, Gallagher suggested that we do exactly that: send Muslims and Arabs through a special screening line in an attempt to thwart terrorism.

His exact words were, "It's time to have a Muslims check-point line in America's airports and have Muslims be scrutinized. You better believe it, it's time."

Is this really necessary? We've seen what prejudice and racial profiling has done in the past, so do we really need, or want, to do this? I am strongly opposed to any notion of racially profiling Arabs and Muslims in airports, simply because they are either Arab or Muslim. We see news reports nearly every week about some cops somewhere beating blacks for no apparent reason, followed by an investigation into possible racial profiling on the part of the cops. We detained Asians back in World War II because we were afraid they might be sending information back to Japan, but in the end it didn't really amount to much, if any added security.

Furthermore, racially profiling people based on race or religion has proven ineffective in the past. Remember Richard Reid, the shoe bomber? Doesn't look Arab, yet attempted to blow up a plane with some explosives lined in his shoes. What about Timothy McVeigh? The DC Sniper that everyone thought was a white guy? Better yet, how are you going to tell them apart, or did it ever occur to you that not all Arabs are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arab? Do you want to force everyone to put their race and religion on their drivers licenses, or passports?

Perhaps the biggest question of all: where does it end?

Under these practices, we could potentially subject innocent, American-born citizens to these unruly and unnecessary screening processes, should they be implemented. I have a few friends who are of both Arab decent and are followers of Islam, and they are very vociferous about others who follow their religion and resort to terrorism to push their agendas. Could I honestly agree with subjecting them to such a screening process, simply because they want to fly somewhere? It's not their fault that they were born Arab, and I would also have to say it's not their fault their Muslim, as odd as it sounds to say that.

Imposing such a screening process is both a violation of the rights our forefathers wanted for us, and will only lead us down a path of distrust with our fellow man. The attempted attacks were successfully stopped without the use of profiling, so I think the system that is in place is effective as it is.

Facebook Just Got Cooler

2006-08-15T22:42:00.000-04:00

Some of you may remember that I had some gripes with Facebook some time ago. Well, all of that has changed over the last several months, and Facebook is now my choice for social networking on the Interweb. I like that only people in my school and my general area (in this case Columbus, OH) can view my entire profile, and even then I can keep certain information like my cell phone number and home address visible only to those I have established as friends on the site. The layout has sort of grown on me, by which I mean it blows MySpace out of the fucking water, and even the idiots that used to run rampant on the site now seem to have settled down and realized, "oh yeah, other people besides me and my friends view this shit."

Today they took another ginormous leap forward, and have released an API for the site. I've always sort of wondered when this was coming, since there is a TON of data to play with on Facebook. As you can see in that link, there is already a nifty app which lets you keep track of how much you owe your Facebook friends, or how much they owe you. Naturally, and in accordance with Internet law, a Facebook + Google Maps mashup has also been created, apparently in two hours according to the creator. I'm taking some XML and JavaScript classes this coming semester, so maybe I'll look into these for any projects and/or playtime when I feel I'm good enough.

Facebook: now complete with DIY stalking!

To All My Blogger Buddies

2006-08-15T08:35:00.000-04:00

Looks like Google is finally going to add some new features to Blogger. The biggest one is you'll be able to merge your existing account with a Google account (aka, your Gmail account), which adds security and possibly even more added goodies from the Google Empire to your blog later on.

Some of the new features include:

No more republishing your entire blog after every post. All new posts will be automatically posted to, and updated on, the Blogspot servers.
Blogs can now be public, private, or read by invitation only. I agree with the majority that it seems rather counter-intuitive for what blogging really is, but it's not a bad feature regardless.
For us Technorati users, the ability to tag posts has finally been added, which will make your blog more easily searchable in tag search engines. This also means that you won't have to rely on third-party hacks or apps.
Drag and drop template design. This looks to take a page from Google Pages (pun intended), but means you'll be able to design the layout of your page the way you want it, which kicks ass.
New feed support, including RSS 2.0 in addition to straight-up Atom feeds.

TechCrunch has a very nice write-up on all the new features, and you can take a tour of them by clicking here. Can't wait to get started? Click on this link to start making your own new Blogger blog using your Google account, though if you already have a Blogger blog, the ability to merge your current Blogger blog with the new beta version which uses your Google account is not active. I'm going to wait until I can merge them, and then play with all the new goodies; I just included the link for anyone who reads this and is impatient to wait.

This Is Gonna Be Fun . . . .

2006-08-14T08:55:00.000-04:00

At work we've switched to a new system of registering student computers with the network called Bradford. With it, we can remediate students over the network to make sure they have the latest Windows updates, a valid virus scan installation, and the latest updates for that virus scan installation. The system scans the student's machine, and if it finds they're missing either some Windows updates, or the latest .dat's for their virus scan software (or don't have one of the 15 virus scan software installs on our list), they have to obtain these updates before they can get on our network. We can allow them access to certain sites like microsoft.com and the sites of the 15 virus scan options we have on our list, but it's up to the student to make sure they obtain any needed updates to successfully enter our network.

And there in-lies the problem . . . .

Now, some of the issues have been our network ports not working properly, but that's only been a few cases. Some of the problems have been student machines aren't set to automatically receive an IP and DNS from the DHCP automatically, but that may or may not be their fault, and is easily fixed. Some of them are either using the wrong cables, or are plugging them into the wrong ports; that's a 50/50 issue there as well. However, the majority of them just don't seem to know how to run updates, and it's starting to get insane. They have virus scanning software on their machines, but they have no idea how to update it with the latest definitions; this also applies to simply running Windows Updates. The system was designed to lower the amount of students bringing in computers for us to run a patch/scan on, but unfortunately seems to be doing just the opposite. We've already had a high-ass call volume over the last week since athletes have moved in already, but we're expecting that volume to either double or even triple when everyone moves in this weekend, and throughout the following week(s).

This is gonna be fun . . . . Looks like the three new STAs we've hired will get acquainted to our call logging system very, very quickly.

PS3 vs. Wii - Apple Style!

2006-08-11T00:28:00.000-04:00

The sad thing (for the PS3) is how friggin' true this is:

**drools** Yes, you will see me soon my pet . . . sooooon . . . .

Boy Was I Drunk!

2006-08-07T12:47:00.000-04:00

Wow, last night was probably the best night I've had in a long ass time. Started out at a friend's house where I had my first drink (both legally and ever). 'Twas a concoction of Parrot Bay Pineapple Rum and orange juice, with a little more on the juice, since I didn't really like the taste of rum that much. This was followed by two bottles Hornsby's (hard apple cider, good shit, tastes like sparkling apple juice), and lastly a shot of straight vodka with two friends. The vodka fucking burned.

Then we carried the party on over to GameWorks, where we hooked up with some more friends. There, one friend bought me a mixture of vanilla vodka and ginger ale (tastes like cream soda, and I downed it like it was), then another friend bought me a Jack and Coke, which was nasty as hell, but I drank it anyway. I got another vanilla vodka and ginger ale (slightly smaller), then a friend bought me my first actual beer. Something called Blue Moon, supposedly a Belgian wheat beer. I didn't really care for beer that much, even the sip of Budweiser select I had later on. DDR is both difficult but insanely more fun when you're inebriated. They had the new version of DDR there, and I actually set a record on it, if you can believe that.

Some of my friends left, and those that remained carried the party across Easton to Adobe Gilas. This is where the real shit started to happen. We opened up with some shots of rum (not as bad as the vodka, but not much better either), then we learned it was $4.75 margarita night, so we ordered up some of those. Damn the margarita was good, probably the best drink I had all night. One of my friend's friends bought me something with some Bacardi 151 in it. I sorta nursed it the rest of the night, but it was kinda good. Then my friends got two chicks a few tables from us, and made me do a shot of tequila with one of them. Something like lick the salt on the rim of the glass, do the shot, then suck on the lime that was also on the rim. I think I hated the tequila the most, since it was hella bitter. They got me another one later in the night, and I spit back about half of it into the glass because of how damn bitter it was. They started to get a little pissed that they bought it and I didn't drink it, so I dumped what was left into the margarita, and they called it fair. The two girls left at some point, and wouldn't give me their numbers, saying I wouldn't remember them after last night. Jokes on them, because I do remember them.

Anyway, just for the record, I DID NOT drive my ass home; in fact, I didn't drive anywhere period. I had a friend pick me up at the start of things, and one of my friend's girlfriend dropped me off at home when all was said and done.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Oh, and if any of my bosses read this, please note that I don't plan to make this a regular occurrence. Unlike many of my peers, I actually waited until I was 21 to start drinking, so by that reasoning I think I was entitled to some fun last night, and believe me, fun was had.

I Am So drunk

2006-08-07T01:45:00.000-04:00

Holy crap I am so drunk right now. This is kina coo. Man, I am wasted and ditred. damn womane at adobes wouldn't vive me their number. i don't like them. whores.

i don't condonethis to anoe.

meebo me!

2006-08-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

EDIT @ 13:16 (GMT-5:00): Welcome all fellow diggers! Please feel free to message me if I'm on, but I can't get to everyone.

Okay, meebo has now become totally cool. They've launched a new feature called meebo me!. With meebo me!, I create and add a spiffy widget to my site, which then allows my visitors to chat with me, or me to chat with them! The only stipulation is I have to be signed in to my own meebo account, and not just my AIM or other chat client account. So it might not be used that much, but hey, it's pretty damn cool. I've opted to get rid of the Flickr badge for now since I havn't added many new pictures to my Flickr account, so we'll see how this works out for now. I really don't use file transfer much on AIM anyway, so I might start using meebo exclusively, since it's web based, fast, and will allow me to guage the usefullness of this new widget.

If you think my page is starting to become a little too clutered with crap, you're not alone. I'm currently considering getting rid of some shit and making it look a little cleaner. But, I'm lazy, so I say that now, but it will likely only become cluttered with more crap. I don't think it's as bad as half the pages out there, but it's not the best either.

Anyway . . . .

I'm usually signed on to meebo while at work (tell anyone and I'll kill you), so if you're visiting my blog and see me online, drop me a line! Whether I answer or not depends on if I'm taking care of something here at work at the moment or not. While you're at it, why not get your own meebo account?

3 Out Of 4 Women Prefer Plasma TV over Diamond Ring

2006-08-01T22:08:00.000-04:00

Um . . . yeah, not going to argue with this one. All I know is that my job got a shit load easier.

read more | digg story

Countdown!

2006-07-31T14:50:00.000-04:00

In approximately 6 days time, I will be able to legally drink. That's right, Gooey is turning 21 on Sunday! I was planning on spending my birthday in Baltimore attending Otakon, but from an earlier post, you all know how that one went. Determined to not simply sit on my ass the whole weekend and merely get older, I decided to combine my newly gained ability to consume alcohol legally in a public venue, with my passion for video gaming. This lead to only one good location in which to par-tay: GameWorks. Sure there's Dave & Busters, but they don't have DDR, so fuck them. I don't care if they have Step Mania or whatever the fuck it's called, it's lame.

I'm doing a little thing with some close friends and co-workers, and should be fun. I've been able to avoid drinking until the apropriated age designated by our esteemed government officials (giggles), so yeah, I'm gonna fucking party.

Expect a hilarious blog post sometime after Sunday, possibly complete with pictures.

My How Things Have Changed

2006-07-30T19:47:00.001-04:00

So I'm bored off my ass, and doing one of the things I normally do when I'm bored off my ass: surf YouTube for random videos. This evening I find myself searching for Resident Evil, a video game series regarded as the de facto standard in the survival horror genre, and for good reasons. The first game on the PlayStation was a smash success, going on to churn out 2 sequels, with a special game, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, released on Dreamcast and PS2. Eventually Capcom gave Nintendo exclusivity to the series, remade the first game entirely for GameCube, ported the second and third games, and made two new games for the system: Resident Evil 0, a precursor to the first game, and Resident Evil 4, which earned Game of the Year in 2005 from several publications, and literally took the series in a bold, new direction (in a good way, which is rare).

Anyway.

I'm looking around, and someone posted the opening video for the first game, which was released on PlayStation back in 1996. Damndest thing, though, it literally was a video opening, as were all the cut scenes in the game; learn something new every day I guess. The opening (unfortunately) used live actors, (unfortunately) used the actors dialogue, and (unfortunately) was really, really bad.

Here's the opening from the Directors Cut version of the game, released in 1997. It's the same as the one in the original, but with more blood, gore, and obviously more bad acting:

Yeah, that was bad.

Well, Shinji Mikami (series creator) got a little crazy (cool) when he was made GM of Capcom's new Production Studio 4, and decided that Nintendo would be given exclusive rights to the Resident Evil series. As such, he decided to completely remake the first game to use the GameCube's new hardware, which was more powerful than PS2's might I add. The game became an instant critical success, sold very well, and really showcased the true power of the GameCube. When I played it for the first time, I was literally taken aback by how great the game looked.

Here's the opening sequence to the remade version, released in 2002:

Yeah, that was awesome. I was literally amazed at how big a difference there was between the remade version and the original, which I mean to say: it kicked the ass of the original. It never ceases to amaze me how much video games have changed over the years. Some changes have been good, others have been bad, but they're still fun to play.

Oh Bill . . . .

2006-07-29T14:59:00.000-04:00

You never seem to catch a break, do you?

PWND!

Geeks Are Nice To Have

2006-07-26T18:10:00.000-04:00

I had to go to my friend Dorian's house the other night to fix some network issues for her family. Her mom called and said that Perrin had a new motherboard installed, but now the wireless network card wasn't working right, and Tobin hasn't been able to print to the downstairs printer for a while.

So I stroll on over. I start with Perrin's computer. I check My Network Places, and XP isn't even recognizing the wireless card. I started to head upstairs to check the wireless router, but realized that was retarded, because Perrin's computer wasn't even seeing the card in the first place. So I figure it's probably either not completely in the slot, or something's broken, which would suck. I crack the case open, and sure enough, the card isn't in all the way. Just to be safe, I remove it and place it in the slot just below the one it was in, secured it in place, reconnected the essentials, and turned the machine on. Sure enough, it recognized the card, and wireless networking was had. People rejoiced, and virgins were sacrificed in thanks.

Then onto Tobin's computer, which wasn't able to print to the downstairs printer for a while. This problem was actually sorta kinda my fault. See, a few months ago I reinstalled XP on the main family computer, where the downstairs printer is connected to. In the process, not only was the computer renamed, but was also joined to one of the default Windows networks, not the one I had set up for them months earlier when I initially configured their Wi-Fi network.

For those of you who don't know, to connect a remote computer to a printer connected to another computer on the same network, you need to tell Windows the name of the computer the printer's connected to, and the name of the printer itself (after setting the printer up as a shared printer, natch). After that you just need to make sure the computer the printer is connected to is at least on for the second computer to print. Well, since both the computer and printer were renamed when I reinstalled Windows on that computer, the mapping on Tobin's computer was no longer valid. I simply changed it, and all was fixed. More rejoicing was had, and additional virgins sacrificed.

As a thank you for my efforts, they gave me $10. I didn't require that they pay me at all, since they're practically like family to me (I've been friends with their daughter since 4th grade). I tried to get them to relent, but to no avail. I took the money with gratitude, and headed over to Chipotle to procure a steak burrito and large drink with the money I earned.

All-in-all, not bad. It's nice to be appreciated for my computer geekdom.

NOTE: no virgins were actually sacrificed durring the events described above.

INTP

2006-07-22T12:47:00.000-04:00

So one of the higher-ups here at work decided to have everyone do what's called a Myers-Briggs test. The test asks you some questions, and based on your answers you can be sorted into one of sixteen personality types. I usually don't care for this kind of shit, since tests like this usually show up in some lame form on sites like Tickle.com, but this one has ended up fascinating me. After taking the test, I'm of the personality type INTP, or The Thinker. INTP stands for Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving. The descriptions of my type actually outline my personality to a near perfect tee. It's also cool that only around 1% of the population (by population I assume they mean people who have taken the test), classify as INTP, making it one of the rarest personality types out there. I took this as an explination for why 99% of the people I talk to don't understand a damn thing I say, and summarily come off as complete idiots (**wink wink, nudge nudge**).

An interesting list of famous INTPS', both non-fictional and fictional:

Socrates
Rene Descartes
Blaise Pascal
Sir Isaac Newton

U.S. Presidents:: James Madison; John Quincy Adams; John Tyler; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Gerald Ford

William Harvey (pioneer in human physiology)
C. G. Jung, (Freudian defector, author of Psychological Types, etc.)
William James
Albert Einstein
Tom Foley (Speaker of the House--U.S. House of Representatives)
Henri Mancini
Bob Newhart
Jeff Bingaman, U.S. Senator (D.--NM)
Rick Moranis (Honey, I Shrunk The Kids)
Midori Ito (ice skater, Olympic silver medalist)
Tiger Woods

Fictional INTPs

Tom and Fiona (Four Weddings and a Funeral)
Dr. Susan Lewis (ER)
Filburt (Rocko's Modern Life) *personal note: I love this one!

Source: http://www.typelogic.com/intp.html

The following sites also have very good expinations about my and other's personality types:
http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP.html
http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP_car.html
http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP_rel.html
http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

I can't seem to find a decent online test for anyone who reads this to find what their personality type is (if you want to). If anyone finds one, let me know and I'll put a link to it up here.

This Summer Sucks

2006-07-19T22:35:00.000-04:00

Seriously, it does. I have done pretty much nothing, and now it looks like it will remain that way. It started off okay, good grades the semester before break, nothing too big to worry about, everything was looking pretty good. In late May I was told about an internship possibilty in the IS department of my school. Then there was the big thing: Otakon. I had been looking forward to it since around March when pre-reg opened up. It's sort of my vacation for the year, a time to go and be among over twenty thousand otaku for a whole weekend, as we take over the city of Baltimore in celebration of our favorite hobby. I'm serious, too; it's one of, I think, 7 events that are considered city-wide events in Baltimore. Even better, the last day of Otakon is my birthday, so it would have been extra kick ass.

Well, here I am, damn near the end of July, and I still have nothing solid on the internship. The manager I'm talking to is telling me it's all tied up in budget issues. The president of the university asked all the departments to help contribute to a million dollar budget scale back, and the IS department contributed a fairly large sum to that. Basically he said they were waiting on hard numbers to come back for the next fiscal year, and then they could decide if they could go ahead with the position or not. He says there's a definate position there, but it's the budget that's holding everything up. Apparently the hard numbers for next year came in late on Friday, so I'm hoping to hear something good this week. Might talk to him tomorrow . . . .

Now, today, Otakon has left the picture. My friend who went last year has been on the fence for a long time about whether he wanted to go this year or not, and when I asked about it today he says he can't because it's too expensive. It makes sense, since he wasn't really planing on going and hadn't budgeted for the trip. Then another friend who was all in, and unfortunately my last hope, says that his new job screwed him over as far as pay goes, and now can't go as a result. I asked a bunch of other friend if they would be interested, but they either already have plans for around the time of the convention, or can't afford it. So, I've pretty much given up, and resided myself to the fact that it just won't happen this year. Still, though, I'm pissed. This was my one shot this year to get away from work, school and home for an extended period of time, and now it's not going to happen.

So, I sit here, eating some Ben & Jerry's, watching layer two of Serial Experiments Lain, trying to figure out why the fuck my life has sucked so much ass this year. I guess, if anything, I have Ohayocon to look forward to in January, but it's no where near as fun as Otakon, nor near as big. It's local, though, so I can definately make it. I just need to figure out a way to make my life stop going further down the shitter every few months.

Attn: Nintendo Haters

2006-07-16T17:25:00.000-04:00

This is one of the reasons I love Nintendo's systems: they are extremely durable.

First, the DS Lite:

As you can see, the touch screen on the bottom is withstands a lot of pressure. You could hear some cracking, which made me cringe by the way, but the damn thing still played, and was still visible. The only thing I don't like is the guys in the video used a store's demo unit for the test, and I do not condone the destruction of property that you do not own, or have the permission of the owner to destroy for testing purposes.

Next, GameCube. This one is in Spanish, but you don't really need to know what they're saying to get the gist of it:

How's about that? The damn thing broke in TWO pieces, and it STILL started up. For anyone who's never seen a GameCube start up before, the reason the final startup looked different was because there was no game in the tray, so the system went strait to the system setup screen.

Want a fun, quality, HELLA DURABLE system? Buy Nintendo's products. Hell, given the price of 360 and PS3, you might want to consider it . . . .

Recent Keyword Analysis

2006-07-15T12:18:00.000-04:00

I was checking my StatCounter account recently, and noticed that my blog as been hit a bunch of times from search engine searches. Thought I would share the list with you all, because I'm bored and have nothing else better to do!

gordon college mario
college sucks
savant brain
odu wifi nintendo
save the stolen sidekick diggs
mike novick livejournal icon
dennis haysbert token black
ubuntu on toshiba tecra 8100
putting air in tires how to
21 year old anime geek
large geek background image
24 spoiler end 5th season
button top button collar on hangar
gordon college nintendo
facebook geek
honda accord layouts for myspace
ubunt
facebook ruined my life badge
why do obsessive compulsive people button their shirts to the top button?
chat client for ds
mario level one gordon college
naked athletes
meebo block
old boost mobile commercials
linux pickerington
gordon college mario live
not stepping on floor cracks ocd
dod to release video
at&t eula
nintendo geek
24 season five ending

The naked athletics one is for my entry about Kent State blocking Facebook for athletes, the large geek background image was for my post about Facebook entitled Stupid People + Large Groups, and I have no idea what entry brought up the mike novick one. And the one item on the list labeled as ubunt isn't a typo, fyi. All of those searches have really only resulted in about 36 hits to this site, but hey, they're hits. StatCounter is a sweet and free service to keep track of your site stats. I also signed up with Google Analytics recently, so I may blog about how that one ends up working out some time from now when I've been using it enough to make a decent writeup about it.

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

2006-07-13T23:18:00.000-04:00

Been dicking around on YouTube all day today, and stumbled on this, the original Pokerap, featuring all 150 original Pokemon!

Man that brings back some damn fond memories (and some bad ones). This was THE SHIT back when I was in Junior High. I did the video games, the card game, and watched the TV show like it was my religion, and yes I could name all the Pokemon that were in that little song.

It's been years since I've really done anything with the series, though. The last games I bought were the Gold and Silver versions, and when I had my cards taken from me for nearly a year (bad grades, we'll leave it at that), I ended up dropping out of that as well. Also, early on in 1999, channel 53 switched from being the WB to crappy UPN, and lost all of its Kid's WB programming, much to my dismay. It'll be back on in September when the two networks merge to form The CW. Alas, though, 4Kids sold the rights to the anime to a new company called Pokemon USA, and the show is being moved to Cartoon Network; and me without cable . . . . From what some friends have told me, though, the new company fired all the original voice actors, and the new ones are apparently crap, so I guess it's not all that bad.

There are apparently two new games coming out for the DS, Diamond and Pearl, and from the looks of them I may just have to pick one of them up.

Sticking with AT&T? You're a fool.

2006-06-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

From the article: "...anyone out there who believes that AT&T has announced this sweeping new data-collection policy to support the government's fight against terrorism is truly a fool. This new privacy policy goes way beyond even the most absurd arguments for monitoring Internet users." Probably to be expected from Ma Bell 2.

This article outlines almost exactly what I was trying to tell my dad in a conversation about this very issue on Saturday, a conversation which turned into an argument. How many more things will have the, "it's for the War on Terrorism," phrase slapped on them? Unless AT&T's EULA specifically states that only United States Government entities/agencies can request the information (note, I said request, not buy), then I guess I'm sort of maybe fine with it, since I still don't like the Government snooping on me when they don't need to be; sure I have nothing to fear if I have nothing to hide, but if I'm not suspected of anything then why do they need to monitor me?

I really wish my dad would pull his head out of his ass when it comes to things like this. Particularly, I hate how he always thinks that anything I read is nothing but media snuff trying to spurr emotion where none needs to be spurred. Thing is, I don't just read this shit from random blogs or personal pages, I read it from reputable technology advocates and publications like C|NET and Computer World.

So can't wait to move out some day . . . .

read more | digg story

My Spidey Sense Is Tingling . . . .

2006-06-27T14:55:00.000-04:00

And it's telling me I can look forward to another great movie.

Oh . . . hells . . . YES.

Kent State Bans Facebook For Athletes

2006-06-27T10:05:00.000-04:00

This one is straight from the local news paper!

Soon, Kent State's nearly 400 athletes will be banned from Facebook -- not by the Web site, but by university administrators. Here's why: One student chose a picture of himself shirtless holding a Miller Lite can for his profile photo. He's on the baseball team. Another belongs to the "My cell phone is my best friend when I'm drunk in Kent" group and lists skinny-dipping as an interest. She competes in track and field.

Okay, while I'm all for trying to eliminate retardation on Facebook (in this case, shit like what is listed for the female athlete in the above paragraph), I really think that Kent State is going overboard with this. What? College students get drunk and like to have naked outings with their fellow classmates on occasion? 0|-| ||035 (translation: oh noes)! 73|-| |||73R||37Z |5 73|-| 3/|L (translation: teh internetz is teh evil)! For crying out loud, this is dumb, and even I'm saying it is! While I agree the athletes are retarded, it should not come as a surprise that they go out and drink and possibly **gasp** swim naked with other people! I myself haven't done anything of the sort, but I know a lot of people/friends who have (at least the drinking part).

What's more funny is they're worried about their school's reputation being ruined by these Facebook groups and listed interests, but only if the students are athletes. Someone on digg found that the number of athletes at Kent State accounts for less than 2% of the total student body. This means that the other 98% can carry on like this, so long as they're not an athlete. This includes honors students (trust me, they drink), clubs, and even the most average of students. 98% of Kent State's student body can say they enjoy skinny-dipping, take pictures of themselves shirtless and holding a beer can, falsely brag about the size of their dick, so long as they don't play a sport . . . . Yeah, I think Kent State isn't going to help their, "reputation," too much if they allow 98% of the other students to carry on at Facebook in this manner.

As the saying goes: there is a time and a place for everything, and that time and place is called college.

read more | digg story

President Al Gore

2006-06-25T23:01:00.000-04:00

This was on SNL over a month ago (the season finale I think), and it was literally the funniest opening I had seen in a long time.

DAMN THE GLACIERS!

I Never Catch A Break

2006-06-22T00:55:00.000-04:00

I feel like an idiot.

I was going after something, feeling the entire time that it would never work out the way I wanted it to, and ended up completely ignoring something else that was right in front of me, that could have worked out. Now both are apparently never going to happen.

Fuck.

How NOT to Steal a Sidekick Concludes

2006-06-21T00:28:00.000-04:00

After a three week saga that involved a taxi, a stolen Sidekick, a girl from Corona, a man from Manhattan, and thousands of internet fans, the stolen Sidekick saga concludes. The girl was arrested, charged with posession of stolen property in the fifth degree (a misdemenor), the phone apprehended to be returned to the owner, and the girl summarily released.

I still find it funny how the mom says, "we told him he could have the phone back if he paid us the money that we paid for it." Yeah, it makes sense for them to pay money to buy back what they rightfully own, and you had no right to buy and keep in the first place.

This is when I start to really wonder if Darwin was right . . . .

read more | digg story

Sensor bar is the reason Nintendo has not named price/date for Wii

2006-06-16T15:29:00.000-04:00

Nintendo has given a reason as to why we haven’t heard an official release date/price point on the Wii. The sensory bar that will sit on top of your TV for Wii play is yet to be finished.

read more | digg story

Over 9 years of events since Duke Nukem Forever was announced.

2006-06-16T15:20:00.000-04:00

Back on 25 April 1997, 3D Realms announced the next game of the Duke Nukem series, Duke Nukem: Forever. At E3 2001, they finally showed a trailer for the game, with the tagline, "when it's done," telling viewers when the release date for the game would be. Well, here we are, 9 years later, and gamers still can't get a copy of Duke Nukems next adventure.

This list is a nice little showing of major video game releases that have happened since the announcement of Duke Nukem: Forever, as well as some other interesting factoids, such as events that took less time to come and go. A funny read for any gamer out there familiar with this little saga, and I guess even for those who aren't.

read more | digg story

AO-LOL Copies Digg.com

2006-06-15T19:32:00.000-04:00

From TechCrunch.com:

On Thursday, AOL’s Netscape property will no longer be just another portal - it’s being converted into a Digg-killer. I was briefed on the new site by Jason Calacanis last week. As of tonight, he owns the Netscape property at AOL. The new site will run at beta.netscape.com for now, converting over to the main Netscape.com property soon.
It’s not exactly a Digg clone. Submitted stories are voted on in much the same way, and the more votes a story gets the higher it appears in a category home page or on Netscape.com itself. However, the top few spots in each category and on the home page are determined by an “anchor” - essentially an editor choosing from stories moving up the ranks.
There are 30 topical channels, from “Art & Design” to “Women”. Eight full time and eleven part time editors will manage the site, determining both the top stories as well as staffing a 24×7 chat room where users can discuss stories in real time.
The fact that AOL is launching the new service under the Netscape brand instead of building out a new property says how serious they are about the space. According to statistics provided by AOL, Netscape serves a whopping 811 million monthly page views - far more than Digg today.

Putting this kind of audience in front of a Digg like service could spell trouble for many sites that ultimately make it to the top of the site. A Digg or Slashdot story can send tens of thousands of visitors to a site in a matter of minutes or hours. With Netscape, this effect could be many times larger - possibly resulting in outages at sites headlining the new service.

There are a number of other notable features of the new Netscape. Story submissions can be tagged by the submitter along for easier search in the future. Every category, user and group of friends has their own RSS feed. Also, category anchors will follow up on many stories and post their own editorial content on those stories.
Typical AOL, can't seem to come up with an original idea so they copy someone else. I've been to the site, and I hate it. WAY too many ads, particularly RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COMMENTS, and the design just seems hashed together with no real sense of organization. I also don't like how it frames the original article when you opt to view it, placing a frame on the left side of the page with user comments and such, and the originating site on the right; very annoying.
I think I'll be sticking with digg for quite some time.

TechCrunch

technorati tags:AOL, digg, tech, Netscape, digg killer, AOL-Netscape, TechCrunch

I'm Here, Now What?

2006-06-07T22:34:00.000-04:00

So, I installed Ubuntu on an old laptop a few days ago. Thing is, I'm sitting here and I'm all . . . now what? It's installed, running, doesn't disconnect me from the Internet, and lets me do what I was able to do before (roughly). But see, that's just it: anything I can do here, on my Linux machine, I can do over there, on my Windows machine (the joke is that the machines are right next to each other, hahaha). So . . . when do I become 1337? When do I get to call myself a Linux geek?

Where's the point?

Is it cooler because it's free, that I'm sticking it to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and their huge bank accounts? Because I don't have to pay for the applications that are on it? What is the difference between this and Windows besides the price? I hear that it's more secure, and I guess the arguments seem logical, but then again, I can't really see a difference. You could chalk it up to the fact that I'm a Linux n00b, but to me that's not good enough. I've been on Windows for so long, but Linux doesn't seem all that different besides the layout and that I didn't pay for it. I guess the one cool thing about it is I can now easily watch a video on my Windows machine, and use my Linux machine to check email now and then and chat with friends, but that's about the only benefit it's afforded me so far.

Can someone give me a reason why this is supposed to be better, and not mention the fact that it's free and (theoretically) not as buggy as Windows?

How NOT to steal a Sidekick

2006-06-06T23:13:00.000-04:00

These guys not only kept the Sidekick they found in a taxi in NYC, but then took pics of their whole family with it as well as signing on to AOL. Note: I know this is on my own website, but I have no ads and am not making any money on this. NO outside links on this page other than to these people's info.

This is starting to get pretty funny. I hope the retards who took it get what's coming to them. I love how in the most recent update, the girls brother told the owner of this site that she bought the phone from a cabbie, so, "she's not going to give up something she paid for." Yeah, until the cops bust her ass for buying stolen property. Last time I checked, I couldn't buy a cell phone and plan form a NYC cabbie.

UPDATE: Man, this story is getting better and better. In recent updates on the site, the "brother" who's an MP, has closed his MySpace account, and the two other MySpace accounts seem to have been changed as a result of this story. I guess he has lawyers telling him he's in the clear on everything he's done so far (I guess you could equate his site to a lost poster you would put up for a missing pet or bike or something). He's called off work today to keep up with this story, and I guess is going to the cops today to file official charges.

I emailed him telling about my blog post regarding the story, and it looks like he's linked everyone who's told him they've blogged about this story. I checked my site stats today, and JUST TODAY, before 10 AM, my site has received 95 hits, 86 of them officially unique. It didn't matter to me that he linked me, I just wanted to let him know that I blogged about it and was behind him 100% on the matter. Still kinda cool though. Here's hoping that he gets his friend's cell phone back today.

read more | digg story

Ubuntu: Making Linux Gurus Obsolete

2006-06-03T23:08:00.000-04:00

Okay, I say this with the utmost sincerity: Ubuntu fucking rocks. I have never, and I mean NEVER, had an easier time installing Linux on a computer. I'm on it right now, installed on a Toshiba Tecra 8100 (my dad's old work laptop, which he got back in 2000). I've tried installing Knoppix, Slackware, Arch Linux and other distros on this machine, but have always run into problems. The screen would never start up on the right resolution; the Wi-Fi card I have for it wouldn't work; the mouse wouldn't play nicely; I couldn't use my USB drives; and a slew of others.

Not with Ubuntu. I'm on via Wi-Fi, the screen rez is 1024x768 (and stays that way), Firefox works, Gaim works; I'm in fucking Linux heaven. What's cooler, I reboot the system after installing from the CD, and not only does it actually boot normally, but it even tells me I have updates! It downloads them, installs them, and I'm good to go, no restart needed! I definitely agree that Ubuntu is by far the most user friendly and easy to install/use Linux distro out there, and the one to beat. If you want Linux, look no further than Ubuntu.