Because No-one Ever Goes There By Themselves...

I'm inviting you to venture over to Blogger, where I just posted my latest angry rant on Xeno's Paradox.

You'll like it.

I talk all kinda of smack about Windows Vista; point out John McCain and Hillary Clinton's obvious hypocrisy; rant about a huge miscarriage of justice in Georgia; tell the tale of the coolest excuse note ever given to a school; make fun of Katie Holmes; mock Jenna Jameson; poke fun at a very, very stupid woman; lampoon Islam; joke about the English; and reveal the cure for cancer.

Yeah, I said "cure for cancer."

And all that in one post, titled "Nothing Is More Fun Than The Stupid."

Is that cool or what?

You Only Wish Your Wedding Party Was This Much Fun

...Because it wasn't, I promise.

Really.

What did you do?

A slow dance?

"Party games"?

You didn't do anything that was this much fun - or this funny - and I assure you that 99% of you guys couldn't do what the groom did in a million years.

Ready?

Now THAT is one dude who watched that music video tooo many times, IMO.

But still. I know you wish you had had that much fun at your wedding.

Just for comparison, and maybe for the nostalgia...




...He ain't no Michael Jackson, maybe, but the groom can dance.

Oh, the 80's cheese.

It's odd how iconic that video is. You may not even remember ever seeing it, but I bet you recognized the dance - and the song - immediately, didn't you?

It's pervaded popular culture to an extent you really wouldn't believe.

It's even invaded gaming. For example:




The female Necromancer's "/dance" emote, from Guild Wars.

That, friends and neighbors, is a legacy. Regardless of all the horrible things Jackson has done, and will no doubt do some more of, he will always be remembered for that video. I suppose there are worse forms of immortality, hmmm?

The Personal Cheap Chef Strikes Again...

...so, since there was such a positive response to my last recipe, here's another one.

The great thing about this recipe is that it's easy and cheap; you can get everything you need at Wal-Mart.

So:

In a medium saucepan, combine the following:

• 1/3 pound Velveeta (We used "Great Value Melt and Dip" from Wal-Mart) in small cubes
  
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 tbsp. butter / margarine. (Obviously, butter is better.)

Set that on medium heat, and simmer slowly until the velveeta and sour cream both melt completely into the sauce.

Add:

• 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 tbsp. chili powder
• 2 tbsp. minced garlic
• EITHER 1 tbsp. onion powder, or 1/2 small finely minced onion.

Simmer, stirring frequently, until all ingredients are smoothly mixed and sauce is uniform.

At this point, the sauce itself is done, and can be removed from heat. It should be used fairly quickly, though, because it will gel and thicken as it cools. You know this; it has cheese in it.

Now what _I_ did with it was:

When adding the spices, I also added 4 chopped hot dogs to it.

In a separate pan, I made a crisp vegetable boil, with carrots, peas, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, lima beans, and celery. Once the veggies were just tender, I turned off the burner and drained them. Then I poured the sauce over them.

There will be plenty of sauce left when the vegetables are gone, so I suggest doing what we did, which was to dunk lightly toasted, thin sliced Italian bread in the remaining sauce.

All together, maybe $7 for the whole meal, not counting stuff that went back in the fridge to be used as ingredients in other stuff later.


A note about sour cream.

Everybody knows Daisy brand sour cream.

I don't use it. I find that of the off-the-shelf stuff, Breakstone Dairy sour cream is the best tasting and best cooking of the bunch.

That's a strictly personal preference, and based only on my own observation, but I'd say if you've never tried their product, withhold judgment until you do. It's definitely the best I've been able to find.

That is, without talking to the Amish. They just rock.

I just wish they'd put ass-bags on their horses.

Issues, Man, Issues.

Our computer has 'em.

For weeks, we've been plagued by a particular kind of bizarre crash, causing us no end of OMGWTF.

The computer will be running fine; everything is working, when suddenly, it freezes - I mean like it got sprayed with liquid nitrogen - and the hard drive activity light comes on, but the hard drive isn't spinning.

Lights are on; nobody home.

Sooooo, seeing as my research on the 'net has come up with bupkis to explain this, I tried replacing things.

The problem is, it keeps faking me out.

For example:

The first time it happened, I thought it was maybe overheated. My evidence? Turning it off and letting it sit for a few minutes produced a period of usability, after which it would lock up again.

...Maybe the CPU cooling unit is all bogus, or something. So I swapped it out for a new one.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Checked - just to be sure - for spyware and viruses; nope, nada. Maybe it's not the HSF that's out, maybe the processor is bad, hmmm? Swap it.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Maybe it's the memory. Swapped out the memory.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Maybe it's a device driver, because it often crashes while Windows is trying to initialize the drivers during load-up. The solution? Remove and uninstall the offending devices.

My video capture card? Gone. Sound and video? Replaced. Network card? Swapped.

Riiiight.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Lowered the bus speed - and processor clock speed on the motherboard - to see what would happen.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

So, being the last two components that haven't already been swapped in the ENTIRE FRIGGING MACHINE, it's either the motherboard, or the hard disk.

So, tomorrow I am going to pull the entire machine down to the bare case, and rebuild it on another motherboard, which will no doubt be accompanied with much swearing. Much MORE, if it still doesn't work.

I don't have a spare hard drive to swap it out with. Grrrrr.

Wish me luck that the mobo swap works.

In the meantime, I tried a food experiment - about which I was somewhat unsure - tonight, and it worked out well beyond my wildest dreams, so I will share it with you.

I wanted to make a vegetable stir-fry, with green beans, carrots, snapeas, red bell pepper, cauliflower florets, broccoli florets, and asparagus, but when I went in the fridge to find the plum sauce I would normally use for such an endeavor, *pause for gasps of shock* we were all out.

I wasn't gonna even try the round trip to Burnham to get more, so I was forced to improvise. I had a Chinese sweet chili sauce, but Tara's a hot-food wuss, so I had to dilute it, and I wanted a more fruity flavor to it anyway. So, I dug into the fridge and found a bottle of Manischewitz blackberry dessert wine, which seemed like a great find, and decided to make a creative solution to my problem.

What a great idea.

I took about altogether 3 cups of coarsely chopped veggies, tossed them in my skillet with a bit of margarine, and let them get started cooking.

Mixed in a small bowl about 1/2 cup each of the wine and the sweet/hot chili sauce. (You will, if you try this, want to stir this with a fork or whisk quite thoroughly. The chili sauce tends to separate at first.)

I know, it sounds crazy, and if you try it before cooking, will taste pretty crazy, too. But, I am an adventurer.

Once the veggies were starting to soften up just a bit - you want them still crisp, but well cooked - I added the sauce mix to the pan, and stirred the veggies around to make sure they were all well coated. After a couple more minutes of stirring and simmering, I turned off the heat, and we were ready to go.

It worked out wonderfully; the chili added a good bite to it without being hot, and the alcohol cooked right out of it, leaving the veggies with a strong but not overpowering fruit flavor.



Because you know I love you guys, I felt like sharing.

Cope. I watched a marathon of cooking shows today.

I mean a marathon - we watched Food Network Challenge, Iron Chef, and Emeril Live! all in a row. Emeril finished me off; I didn't even get all the way through his show before I was in the kitchen, LMAO.

This is why I try to avoid the Food Network; they make me want to experiment, and while the results are usually good, every once in a while you get a flyer, you know?

I have to say, though, that if you've never watched Iron Chef, that show is awesome. This was the American version, but it's the same show, just in English. The challenger today - who won, by the way - used some crazy shit in his kitchen. By which I mean a food-capable laser printer, a class 4 burning laser, a tank of liquid nitrogen, and a genetic-testing kit as a delivery system.

Wild. But the food looked great, and the judges liked it, so, there you go I guess.

Anyway, you might give my stir-fry sauce a try. Manischewitz dessert wines aren't that expensive, and I recall paying like $2 for the sweet chili sauce at Aldi's. It definitely complimented the vegetables more than I had expected; both of us were sort of expecting "edible, but let's not do it again," but what we got was "Damn, that was tasty."

"I love it when a plan comes together."


[*Edited to add: the word "florets" behind "broccoli," because Samara demanded it.*]

Politics, Deadly Radio Contests, And LION ATTACKS! No Slow News Day Here, Or Anything...

First up is politics.

I'd like to talk for a sec about racism.

See, racism is a problem that perpetuates itself when any division between the races is implied.

For example, if we're all equal, and there's no issue of race involved, then why does Unemployment want to know what race you are? If it doesn't matter...then what does it matter?

So, today, a great idea went ignored, and in fact treated with contempt, because a white man dared to address a race issue.

Namely, the existence in Congress of a "Black Caucus," whose membership is entirely black.

If they're not racist, then why are they separate? If the real issue for blacks is equality, then why exclude white members? And, more importantly, if it's ok for blacks to have a club that whites can't join, but whites can't have a club that blacks can't join, isn't that racist against...

...whites?



Which is exactly why Representative Tom Tancredo - a white man - thinks the Black Caucus ought to be abolished.

And it is because of his RACE that his idea is being treated with contempt, instead of thought.

I put it to you that anyone disregarding a valid point because of who's saying it is discriminating - openly - against the person doing the talking. In this case, it's black Congressmen and women, discriminating against a white Congressman.

On to more unusual news:

You may have heard about the lady in California who won a Wii in a radio contest - by drinking so much water she later died. Of course, her family is suing the radio station; this goes almost without saying.

But I have to ask: does the radio station bear liability for people too stupid to be alive? I mean, come on, folks. Yeah, the radio station's idea was dumb, sure, but what does that say about everyone who entered it?



Is there not some point at which you begin to question the wisdom of your actions?

I mean, for me, the point at which you start to feel like hell, is the point at which you stop, not the point at which you complain to the DJ and then go right back to guzzling down the water.

...Wait, isn't that exactly what she did?

Yes. Yes it was.

I have a great idea for the family: try looking for a new, better Mom, to replace the old, stupid Mom. You'll make out better, and most likely end up happier, than you will even if you win your lawsuit against the radio station.

...Moving right along...

So, this couple is camping.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a mountain lion leaps on the husband, knocks him to the ground, starts trying to gnaw off his head, and by doing so, proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that these are two of the most cool-headed, hardcore people, ever.



How so?

Well, let's see. First, the husband didn't scream; he asked his wife for help.

She grabbed a 4-inch-thick branch and starting beating the cat with it.

He, while his head is being mauled, says "I have a pen in my pocket, stick it in his eye."

She did. The cat still wouldn't let go, so she went at him with the log again, until the cat finally went "OMGWTF" and let go of him and ran away.

Dude. You had your HEAD BEING CHEWED BY A LION and you had the presence of mind to tell your wife to try a different tactic?

I'm pretty cool in a crisis, but I probably woulda been saying something like "AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHOMGWTFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFAME" or some such.

"I have a pen in my pocket, stick it in his eye."

Jesus Christ, dude, that's one way to try out for the Hardcore Master of 2007 Award.

Ok, here's the link to the story, but be warned that the guy is pretty mangled, and the pic is right up top.

Oh, and to complete the Hardcore Award, she's 65, and he's 70.

Damn.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Part One Of Two... HDTV

This is a two-part entry, which I have posted in REVERSE ORDER, so that part 2 comes before this one. This is so that you can read it top to bottom if you really want to. If not, they will both be highlighted, so you can read part one and come back to part two whenever you want.

Fair warning given!

Some of you - not many of you - may own an HDTV. If so, you may have realized, or you may not, just how very, very many problems you've let yourself in for.

Thank goodness I'm here to break it down for you.

First, I'll begin by saying that I really hope all the issues can be worked out. HDTV doesn't make a whole lot of difference on a TV I would be able to afford, but on a big screen, it's remarkable, and the introduction of gaming consoles capable of HD resolutions makes it even more so.

More on that later. Don't worry, we'll talk about Sony.

The bad thing is, I don't think that they can be worked out, and it's because of a gigantic collaboration of the worst minds ever allowed into corporate boardrooms, anywhere, ever.

I've written before, here and on Xeno's Paradox, about the entertainment industry's ongoing war against the consumer. I've said before that it was going to bite them on the butt eventually.

I believe that it's in the process of doing so, and I will tell you why.

For a new technology - in this case HD - to reach global adoption as the accepted standard, it requires several factors to be in place.

First is a perceived need for an upgrade; second is a clear improvement over the existing technology; third is price; fourth is ease of adoption and use; and fifth is availability.

Sadly, HDTV meets none of these.

First, the overwhelming majority of consumers are loathe to simply toss out electronics that function as desired. My TV works just fine; I don't need a new one. For 5 years I've seen TV's with better picture, crisper sound, bigger screens, and more features, but I have yet to see anything impressive enough that I'm willing to replace a perfectly functional device, at great expense, for the sake of the improvement. I think most folks would agree with me, thus taking care of factor number one, perceived need for an upgrade.

Second, frankly, unless you can afford a big screen, say 35+ inches, the improvement in visible picture quality for most viewers simply isn't that great. Certainly not a big enough difference to cause people to casually throw out electronics still in their useful life; factor number two isn't present either.

Third, price, is the biggest barrier, both to the companies manufacturing the product, and to the consumer. The companies are desperate to recoup expenses from research and development, which while understandable is shortsighted. The consumer is simply not going to pay an exorbitant price, by and large, for anything, unless the product is a huge, glaring improvement over their existing product choices. See points one and two, above. HDTV isn't such an improvement, and as such is simply not worth the prices the manufacturers are asking. The price tag for an HDTV starts in many cases at $500 - already a hefty chunk for most people these days - and goes up wildly as the screen size increases. There are HDTVs available at smaller sizes, and prices, true; but again, HDTV doesn't really LOOK like much until you get to the really crazy screen sizes. Point three is a killer for HDTV, because unless the companies can get their pricing under control, they will never get market penetration. Right now they're at about 5% - in other words, 5% of homes that own a television, own an HDTV. That's not even as good as the percentage of Macintoshes to PC's, and an HDTV is an actual improvement, as opposed to an alternative. Factor number three isn't on HDTV's side, either.

Fourth is one that may stop HDTV altogether. The entertainment industry is seemingly totally incapable of understanding that when you make a product so secure as to prevent piracy, you make it so secure that your customer basically cannot use it either. The result is that even at this late date - HDTV's have been in the pipeline for several years now - the music and movie companies still cannot agree on a standard for the copy protection to be used with it. Of course, the real reason for the copy protection isn't piracy; it is SPECIFICALLY to make content difficult to use, so the companies can sell it to you more than once.

Not coincidentally, this is a problem for more than just HDTV; it is also a problem for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as future audio formats, game consoles, you name it.

Ease of use is simple. Ease of use is when you pull an item out of the box, plug it in, and it works as advertised. Ease of adoption is when you pull it out of the box, plug it in, and it works with everything else you already have set up. This is also called interoperability. HDTV isn't like that. In order to get the most out of an HD product, you must first ensure that it will interoperate with the other electronics you have, which is mostly not the case. Again, largely, this is due to content protection of one stripe or another.

Some of you may remember buying a Playstation 2, hooking it up to your TV through your VCR, playing a DVD - and realizing that for it to play properly, the PS2 had to be hooked directly to your TV, or the content protection would screw with your picture and sound fairly dramatically.

This phenomenon is far worse with HD products, in addition to the fact that you have to buy special cabling, most likely a new DVD player, and perhaps a new stereo; the older equipment will simply be viewed as "insecure" by the HD equipment, and will not function correctly.

But there's a bigger problem of which I think many early adopters are as yet unaware. The copy protection is still changing. This means that once a final standard is agreed upon by the media companies, anyone who bought a product earlier than that standard will be UNABLE to use movies recorded since that date; watch TV aired after that date; record media using that equipment after that date; nothing.

Those early adopters will likely find themselves the proud owners of a gigantic, multiple-thousand-dollar, standard resolution television.

Or computer monitor; or, in the case of gamers, XBOX360 or Playstation 3.

More on this in part two...

However, ease of use and adoption is simply not present in these products, and whether or not they realize it, the media companies are doing everything they can to make HDTV fail, despite having legislated it into required purchasing. Yes, I said "legislated" and "required." See, in 1997, Congress passed a law requiring all broadcasters to be broadcasting in digital; its purpose was to eventually "close the analog hole," both by requiring that new consumer electronics be all digital, and by requiring that broadcasters gradually eliminate analog broadcasting.

I don't think they realize the effect this will have on the public's perception of them once this happens. See, once that shift is done, your old, but working TV will no longer be able to receive a signal. At all. You will get nothing but snow until *drumroll please* you buy an HDTV. They are counting on this to spur sales, and therefore adoption, of HDTV as the de facto standard. However, there's one flaw in their plan. A simple - and available for as little as $30 - set-top box can down-rez the HD signal, and convert it for use on your standard television.

I'd bet on the overwhelming majority of consumers opting for this, rather than spending hundreds or thousands for a new HDTV.

So would the cable and satellite companies; they've been quietly putting the circuits to do the conversion into their set-top boxes for the last 5 years or so. This is because they don't want their customers inconvenienced, something the media companies don't really seem to understand. Factor number four - ease of use and adoption - is simply not present for HDTV.

Fifth is a whole issue unto itself. Availability has been an issue for every HD product so far. See, for people to take one home, it not only has to be affordable, but the store has to have one. There are an awful lot of people who will take an inferior, but available, product home with them, as opposed to a backorder slip for a superior product. Factor five works against HDTV as well.

And, beyond all the issues with HDTV itself, there's the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

This is what leads us into our discussion of Sony in Part Two.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Part Two Of Two... Sony

...Which brings us to Sony.

Recently, Sony launched the Playstation 3 console.

The launch - to put it mildly - didn't go well. The console itself is buggy; developer support is scarce, with Valve software (the makers of Half-Life and Half-Life 2,) head Gabe Newell going so far as to say Sony should give it up and start over from scratch; there are very few titles currently available for the PS3 itself, and it has compatibility issues with many of the older titles; and a bottleneck in production ensured that quantities of the system available on the street at launch were ridiculous, to say the least.

All that notwithstanding, Sony had an agenda with the specific design of the PS3. See, Sony is one of the companies heading the push for Blu-Ray, and their plan is to put a PS3 into as many homes as possible, thus giving themselves market penetration without selling people multiple products. The idea is, if you buy a PS3, you not only have a next-generation gaming platform, but a Blu-Ray DVD player as well, at a time when the typical Blu-Ray disc player is around $1000.

Sony didn't plan on point five being such a problem for them. The hardware for the PS3 costs them approximately $800 to manufacture for the "basic" model, and nearly $875 for the premium model, and even taking a $300 per console loss, the industry literally reeled at the impact of the base model's $500 price tag.

So did consumers. They looked at the price tag and decided - in huge numbers - "I think I'll buy a Wii." When the PlayStation 2, and the XBOX, were released, their $300 to $350 price tags were seen as staggeringly high, and industry analysts opined at the time that such price tags might prevent widespread adoption of those systems. Thankfully, the prices dropped nearly immediately, and disaster was averted.

Sadly, thus far there is no indication that costs to produce the systems will fall this time; there has been no associated technological breakthrough allowing the systems to be made much more cheaply. And, also sadly, it is a fact that Sony cannot continue to lose money on the systems forever.

There is another flaw, inherent in both the Playstation 3 and the XBOX 360, which has thus far apparently escaped attention. Both systems are not only HDTV "ready," but are also players for their chosen HD disc format, the PS3 for Blu-Ray, and the XBOX 360 for HD-DVD. In this regard, the XBOX 360 has a significant advantage in that their player is an external attachment; I will talk more about what makes it a risk as well in a minute.

The external player gives the XBOX 360 a huge advantage over the PS3 in that HDTV copy protection IS still changing. With a PS3, if the industry settles finally - as seems highly likely - on a content standard that the PS3's hardware cannot support, early adopters, in other words all of their customers to date, will be screwed. With the XBOX 360, on the other hand, the external drive allows for the final product to be upgraded on-the-fly, so that customers won't be out the cost of the whole system, but only out the cost of replacing the player.

That's the part that makes it a risk. Microsoft made a big publicity campaign out of the fact that their system costs less than the PS3; in fact, it does not, because their system as it comes out of the box does not possess the same capabilities as does the PS3. In fact, only the addition of the HD player "accessory" raises it to the same playing field - but it also raises the cost an equivalent amount. The real cost of the XBOX 360 thus becomes equivalent to the cost of the PS3, making the risk of customer refusal equally high. The lucky purchaser of an XBOX 360 might well - and in fact I expect a large percentage of them to - believe that their system ought to work out of the box, and see it as a failing that it requires additional components; even to the extent of refusing to buy the additional components.

See the trap? Microsoft hides the costs, and reduces the risk of obsolescence, by making the player external, but they also raise the risk of failure to achieve market penetration. Sony, with Blu-Ray, on the other hand, guarantees market penetration of each home that buys a PS3 - and guarantees, with the price tag, that there won't be many.

Nintendo has taken a wiser route.

This might be because they are strictly a gaming company; Nintendo doesn't have its fingers in the laundry list of industries that either of its competitors do, and because they haven't forgotten that their system's ultimate purpose is to serve as a game, they might just succeed where the others fail.

The Wii requires no other components to work; it can plug in and go.

It features 100% backwards compatibility with every title ever published by Nintendo, something neither of the competitors have accomplished in this iteration. (The PS3 claims it does, but in fact has problems with hundreds of titles; XBOX 360 has about 30% compatibility "based on popularity of the title.") But that wasn't enough for Nintendo. The Wii can play all the titles from the Sega Genesis and the NEC TurboGrafx-16 as well. Downloads of any game you want are purchased with a points system - $20 gets you 2000 points, and then you use the points to buy games. According to Wii.com, the pricing is as follows:

• NES: 500 pt.
• SNES: 800 pt.
• N64: 1000 pt.
• Genesis: 800 pt.
• TG-16: 600 pt.

Gamecube games can be played directly, so they are sold as per normal. How awesome is that. As a side note about the TG-16, which many of you may never have heard of: I got mine in 1989. Over the 5 years or so between when I got it and when the PlayStation came out, I bought a ton of games. The TG-16 still works. All the games still work. And they're the size of a credit card. Go, NEC. I wish you'd try it again.

It features an innovative controller; direct play capability of the games for the previous system; better graphics, but nothing requiring you to buy a new TV; and best of all, it costs literally half the price of either of the other two systems, at $250.

Now, here's my difficulty with the entire concept behind the Playstation 3.

Sony has literally, according to analysts, put its neck on the chopping block with the PS3. So much of their financial assets are tied up in its success that its failure may literally sink the company.

Which leads me to ask why they hired morons for every level of their management structure.

I'll tell you why I make such a claim.

Sony owns Columbia Records; they own half of BMG; they own Columbia Pictures; they own MGM. Vast chunks of the entertainment industry function as Sony's subsidiaries, to a point where music and movies account for nearly 15% of Sony's total business. (Gaming accounts for 12%.) In fact their list of subsidiaries outside Japan is quite startling.

You'd think with all that media clout, prior to launching, or even seriously developing, their latest and greatest flagship product, they might have gone to the MPAA and said "You chumps sort out this content protection issue, right now."


A conglomerate with Sony's clout coming to the table with an ultimatum would virtually certainly have eliminated debate, allowing Sony to come to the market with a product which virtually guaranteed enormous sales and, therefore, revenue.

This did not happen.

Sony let the HDTV issues pass unnoticed, they let the content protection issues pass unnoticed; they let the notion of a do-it-all system seduce them; they ignored the impact of such a gigantic price tag, and they blew it.

But wait, there's more™!

Not only did they make that laundry list of catastrophic errors, they made the console's development kit quirky and hard to use, and they didn't compensate for the system's gigantic price tag by offering much in the way of peripherals or service. Not only does the system come with NO bundled game titles, but it comes with only a single controller, requiring a $40 purchase before players with families can do more than take turns. In addition to which, before you can even use it, you have to run right out and buy an HDMI cable to hook the system to your HDTV - the PS3 does not ship with one.

Lest I forget, it MUST be a Sony brand cable - despite the fact that the cables are virtually indistinguishable in terms of product quality, use of any brand of cable but Sony's voids your warranty.

Now, imagine a universe in which Sony went bankrupt.

The largest corporate bankruptcy in the history of the world.

It would have staggering impact on markets not only in Japan, but in the U.S. as well. Not to mention its impact on the entertainment industry; imagine if a quarter of the industry were suddenly liquidated, tomorrow.

Sony has staked its - and by the association, the entertainment industry's - survival in its present form on the success of a console which cannot perform as advertised, is perceived by the industry itself as buggy and difficult, contains DRM timebombs that will render early adopters' consoles obsolete if a decision on DRM is ever reached, and most of all, costs so much that almost no-one can afford it.

Instead of supporting it in every way possible, in an effort to stave off disaster, the entertainment industry seems to be trying its damnedest to torpedo it.

I hope when they succeed that they get fired, in boxcar lots. The current generation of executives is staggeringly stupid, and they deserve to reap the rewards of their actions, but I doubt that they personally ever will; they will no doubt go to retirement - or worse, a different boardroom - with golden parachutes worth millions upon millions of dollars.

In the meantime, the only people really getting screwed are the customers.

I'm not one of them, though. Want to know why?

I'm buying Nintendo.

A Very, Very Brief Blurb...

...because our computer continues to have very serious issues which I am as yet unable to diagnose, but which result in a baffling variety of BSoD's.

Yes, more than one; in fact, it seems to be a different, new one, each time. This suggests to me that perhaps the issue is not in Windows, since a virus scan and a spyware scan came up clean earlier, and checking the hard drive resulted in a clean scan as well.

I suspect that it may be the processor itself, so tomorrow I will yank the processor and replace it with a new one, processors being essentially the only spare parts I have left.

AT ANY RATE!

I just wanted to say, I have an infallible system devised which allows me to predict immediately which American Idol contestants will be eliminated, and which will be kept.

Are you ready for this? It is absolutely infallible.


My tiny infant son kicks the crap out of his mother whenever they are bad singers.


He is completely still if they are good.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Every Once In A While...

...someone posts something that inspires you.

Maybe not in terms of "OMG! I know my purpose in life now!" but in terms of, "OMG! I gotta write about that too!"

Hey, thanks, Wendy. You just plain made my day.

Soooooo, to use Sheila's phrase, let's take a ride on the way-back machine, shall we?

When I was a teenager, I worked in a movie theater. Maybe not the most glamorous job in the world, but it made me enough money working afternoons and weekends that I had pocket change.

What I didn't have was a car, and my parents got tired of shuffling me back and forth to the theater - or worse yet, letting me borrow one of their cars - so I could go to work.

So I began a campaign of pestering, and finally the decision was reached that I could get a car.

My first car was a blue rollerskate. By which I mean, a 1981 Honda Accord hatchback.

One problem.

It was a stick shift.

Now, I am of the firm belief that men and women speak different languages. Never has this been more clear to me than when my mother tried to teach me how to drive that car.

"Ok, now, you have to be careful with the clutch, and watch the gas at the same time, and then just shift."

. . . o (Watch it do WHAT?)



*CoughcoughcoughCOUGHGRINDDDDDDGRINDSPUtterwheezeJERK*

....and the car died.

It died again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and...

All the while, my mother and I were both getting more frustrated with each attempt, as she tried hundreds of different - though equally incomprehensible - methods to explain to me exactly what I was supposed to do.

Finally giving up, we went back home, under obvious cartoonish storm clouds.

My father, never one to miss a trick, cornered me later that evening.

"Son, I hear the driving didn't go well today."

"OUTSTANDING talent for the obvious, Dad."

"You want me to teach you, or you want Day Two of this fun?"

"This is the sound of me not saying shit."

"Right. What you gotta do is let up on the gas and hit the clutch at the same time - flipflop your feet - then you move the stick - then flipflop the other way."

"That's it?"

"Yep. It'll take practice to get quick at it, but that's all there is."

"What the fuck. Thanks, Dad."

"No problem. I figured this would happen; your Mom speaks Girl."

Ah-HA.

So, bright and early on Day Two, my Mom takes me out and gives me basically the same incoherent speech about the clutch I heard yesterday.

It took me two or three tries to actually get it right, but then off we went.

Granted, it was like two weeks before I had gotten the hang of not grinding the gears too often, and not stalling the car, but I was all set.

That car wasn't pretty, but it hauled me - and loads of my friends - around the rest of my time in high school.

It even saved my life, once.

Yeah, why not? As a bonus, I'll tell you that story too.

I was driving to work one afternoon, crossing under a freeway through an underpass, when an 18-wheeler decided he didn't really have to stop for that pesky red light, after all.

I looked over just in time to see the "Mack" emblem on his grill disappear over the roof of my car. (Yeah, Hondas are tiny.) Now THAT is a scary sight. I remember saying something normal, like "SHIT!!!"

I had been in the right-hand lane of an eight lane (four each way) street. When I came to rest, I was sitting on the esplenade in the middle, all the way across the intersection. I looked at the intersection - which I was facing, having gotten turned completely around - and there was the trucker, driving merrily away.

No, I don't think all truckers are like that.

No I don't know who he was driving for; I got knocked around pretty good and wasn't all that focused, hmm?

I sat there for what seemed like ten minutes. I know it was at least two cycles of the light at the intersection. Finally, someone pulled over into the left lane, turned on his four-ways, and got out to check on me.

I was actually unharmed, just really, really surprised and a good bit shaken. Getting t-boned by an 18-wheeler will do that for you. Fortunately for me, my car was as light as a ping-pong ball, and reacted accordingly; I had gotten bounced, instead of crushed and mangled. That, dontcha know, is the "saved my life" part. Had I been driving my father's Mercury, I almost certainly wouldn't be here today - they're heavy steel, sure, but they don't "bounce" much, either. The truck would almost certainly have won that one, as much as it pains me to admit it.

The Good Samaritan, having established that I was basically unhurt, decided that his coolness did not extend to hanging out with cops, so he bailed.

After a few minutes, based largely in the fact that I didn't know what else to do, so did I; I was better than half-way to work, so that's where I went.

That was fun.

My boss, a great guy, took one look at me and said "go in the office and lie down."

He went out and looked at my car, and came back in and said "dude, I'm calling your folks to come get you."

I liked that job.

My folks came, and made appropriate noises.

Later, after my father - always a good man in a crisis - got with the cops and talked them out of busting me for leaving the scene, it was established that none of the businesses near the accident site had seen anything. They heard it, but no-one saw the truck, or what company it was.

The trucker, to the best of my knowledge, got away clean.

My poor car didn't. The right strut and spindel assembly was totally broken, the rear tire was all destroyed, the frame was bent - and separated in one spot - the whole rear right of the car was all bashed in, and the truck's grill had left what looked like claw marks of torn metal in the side panel of my car.

My father, with enormous patience, spent I don't know how many weekends - but a lot - rooting through local junkyards with me to find all the parts, and getting that car back in roadworthy condition. The body panel was the most fun I've ever had with a dent puller.

We got the car back on the road, though. I drove it the rest of my time there, before I went to college.

Thanks, Dad.

I don't remember now if I said so at the time. I feel like I must have, but it doesn't seem like I said it enough. Thanks for teaching me in five minutes the secrets of the stick shift. Thanks for letting me go where I wanted and do what I wanted, even when it wasn't what you wanted.

Thanks for taking the time - and loads of effort - to keep me rolling.

I hope I can be as good to my son.

No Doubt, You've Heard This Before...

Mark Twain once said "In the beginning, God made idiots. This was for practice; then He made school boards."

This is true, as you've no doubt realized from the dozens and dozens of stories over the last few decades in the news of school boards and their associated idiocy.

This isn't one of those stories.

*Pause for gasps of shock*

Oddly, in this story, the school board was the hero until this last election.

See, across the board, all over the nation, our public schools suck. The educational policies of the last two generations have resulted in schoolchildren who are expected to require a $150 graphing calculator in the eighth grade, and yet cannot pass acceptable basic standards tests in - as the older standards used to say, "readin', writin', and 'rithmatic."

Finally, Little Rock, Arkansas, a state renowned for its poor schooling and Billion Dollar Bill, decided to do something about it.

Overturning the new in favor of the old, the school board created a program in which, instead of lowering standards when students failed, they paid teachers a bonus if students did well.

Five schools were the initial test; and in those five schools, students' test scores have risen by -

wait for it -

TWENTY-NINE PERCENT.

Oh, the horror.

The calamity.

The absolute calumny and injustice of a school system under which teachers are paid better for doing their jobs well.

Oh, the humanity.

...Or, at least, that's what the teachers' union says. And they're pulling out all the stops to try to get the program shut down, because it allows teachers who do better at their jobs than others to earn more money, which is obviously unfair.

Now we see it. Despite my saying so many times before, you may not have believed that the unions were simply a force for communism.

This is proof, folks. What could be more communist than paying people the same despite their performance? Taking the efforts of those who produce, and using it to feed those who don't?

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

That's the communist doctrine. That's also, not coincidentally, the unions' doctrine.

The surprising part of this, at least to me, is that the unions are willing to so openly defy a program which so obviously benefits the students. I hope most sincerely that the people of Little Rock catch on to this, and treat the unions' attempts with the utter contempt and derision that they deserve, and that those efforts fail magnificently.

In this day and age, our students need help desperately. Any program that results in significant improvements in our school system deserves at least serious scrutiny.

And despite the unionists' cries of injustice, I ask you this:

What could be more FAIR, than paying MORE to people who WORK HARDER?

Certainly not a doctrine which has never worked for the betterment of its citizens anywhere it's ever been tried in all the history of the world.

The True Story Of The Cowardly Lion.

You may remember the old nursery tale of the lion raised as a sheep, who, when danger struck, realized his true nature as a lion and saved the day, to the immense gratitude of the sheep.

Yeah.

Most people, not just here, but in the world, are sheep. They are raised as sheep, taught to believe they're sheep, and frown violently on anything un-sheeplike.

The operative word there is "most."

Some people are wolves, some are sheepdogs, and some...

...Well, some are lions.

Now before I spell things right out, I want to tell you the true story of the Cowardly Lion.

Note before I begin that this story IS NOT about me. I served in the 82nd Airborne, and was in Kosovo, but I've never been to Iraq, and would rather not, if I had a choice.

Despite the name, there wasn't any cowardice in my friend - let's call him "Joe," because he probably wouldn't appreciate my reference otherwise - or in his upbringing. He was brought up in a nice, suburban, middle-class family, good, solid left-wing moonbats, as seems to be all the rage these days.

He was by all accounts, a nice, respectful young man; he got good grades in school, did enough after-school crap to stay with the pack but not get a lot of attention, and generally behaved like a good sheepie, like his parents before him.

Then he turned 18.

You may remember that year; that was 2001. In September of that year, some very crazy, very bad people did something so awful that even now, five and a half years later, people are still trying to pretend it didn't happen, or was someone else's fault.

His parents ranted about how our government had failed, blah blah. But Joe found within himself some very un-sheeplike urges.

And Joe joined the Army. Not only that, Joe joined as an infantry ground-pounder; the very antithesis of everything his parents believed. They were, unquestionably, shocked by this demonstration of non-sheepieness.

And when 2003 came rolling around, Joe got himself sent to Iraq.

Iraq is violent. This is true. Iraq also has created casualties among our soldiers. While this is true, the news media loves to make much of the numbers, without bothering to note - just for comparison - that there have been fewer U. S. casualties in Iraq than homicides in Washington, D.C. during the same time period.

During his time in Iraq, Joe watched the news, and got more and more confused as to why the media was portraying Iraq, and the troops, in such a negative light; especially considering that he was in an extra-violent province and wasn't seeing the same things that the reporters were apparently witnessing daily.

But something else happened, while Joe was in Iraq. Joe learned self-discipline; restraint; a good bit of tolerance for the differences of others; he learned to rely on himself, and how to use his strength of will to overcome difficult situations.

Used to be, we'd call that "growing up," or maybe "becoming a man," if you want to go way back to where men were assumed to be tolerant, disciplined, and self-reliant.

But what really happened was that Joe figured out that he wasn't a sheep at all, but a lion.

A lion isn't a sheepdog.

And soon enough, his rotation was over, as was his time in the Army; he chose not to re-enlist, and went home, having served his country in honorable fashion, and acquitted himself well in said service. DD-214 stamped "Honorable" and such, he got home, and found himself in a different country than the one he'd left.

He found himself in a nation of terrified sheep, who had been trained to believe that lions are wolves, and sheepdogs are wolves, and everything that's not a sheep is a wolf.

A lion isn't a sheepdog.

A lion isn't a wolf, either.

Now Joe was home, with firsthand experience of what was really going on in Iraq. He knew that the claims of hundreds of thousands of casualties were simply not true; he knew that WMDs were found; he knew that the insurgency was coming from Iran and Syria; and he found out quickly what happens when sheep don't like something.

They ignored him.

Joe has no place at home, now. His family has reacted in ways ranging from calling him a liar to his face, despite his first-hand knowledge, to ignoring and refusing to discuss the entire situation.

Because his experiences overseas changed his outlook on the situation, he now believes that although it's unpleasant, we SHOULD BE in Iraq. His family and friends are unable to understand this. They claim the war "traumatized" him, or that he's been "brainwashed" by the military establishment.

Because they're sheep; they are unable to understand a worldview in which their nonsensical ideology simply doesn't work. They are unable to understand that all the piffle about non-violence goes out the window when bullets zing! past your ear. They are unable to understand that they managed to raise a lion instead of a sheep, and because of this, Joe has basically lost his family and the friends he had outside the military.

Joe is seriously considering joining back up, despite the great likelihood that he would get sent back to Iraq. This is because, as he told me a while back, "these folks just plain don't understand things. I gotta have someone I can talk to."

I really hope he doesn't. Because we need more of the lions to tell the world what's really going on.

There are sheep. Most people are sheep. There are wolves; those are the folks who bomb buildings just to kill a lot of sheep they don't even know.

There are sheepdogs. These are the guardians we have here at home; the cops and firemen who were going up the stairs when the WTC buildings came down. I've said before how deeply I honor them, and their sacrifice.

And then, there are lions. Our soldiers aren't all lions, although most of them at least manage sheepdog; but there are a hell of a lot of lions in the military.

And the sheep forget that they serve a purpose.

And more importantly, they forget that lions aren't sheepdogs; or, for that matter, sheep. They are LIONS.

A lion has no place in a herd of sheep.

It is a sad truth that throughout our country's history, we have treated our veterans very poorly indeed. Warfare IS traumatic; even those relatively functional when they return home have a - sometimes lengthy - period of adjustment before they are able to fake being a sheep well enough to get along in society, and some - maybe a lot - of them never really make it.

Go find a vet. It doesn't matter what war, conflict, or "police action;" go find a vet. Male or female, black, white, brown, or green; it doesn't matter. Go find a vet, and thank them.

Because it wasn't just their lives they risked in your defense; it wasn't just their jobs or their families they gave up to protect your liberty; they risked the very great possibility that they will never again HAVE a home - not a real one - with the herd, ever again, so that we would have the privilege of armchair-quarterbacking their actions.

They risked their reality, and their place in our society, to protect that society.

If you die, you're just dead. It sucks for those you leave behind, but for you, not so much.

If you lose your place in the herd forever, that is a lifetime of punishment in exchange for honorable service.

We owe the lions more than that.

Go find a vet and thank them. The sheep owe them that.

A Totally Minor Gripe...

Ok, so Yahoo 360 has caught up with the rest of the world and included tagging on blog posting.

Woohoo!

That's not to say that they bothered - EVIDENTLY - to tell anyone how to use it, and it's SCREAMINGLY apparent that some people have no idea what it's for.

This is nitpicky, but Jeesus, folks, come on.

You're not supposed to create new tags for EVERY SINGLE POST YOU EVER MAKE.

You're supposed to use the tags to group your entries by content, so people can come to your blog and, say, click "politics" in your tag cloud and see a list of ONLY the political entries on your blog. The tag cloud even highlights the tags that have more associated posts, so someone can look at a glance and find out what issues constitute the majority of your content, saving visitors some time in making decisions about whether they want to read your posts.

When you make 5,000 goddamn tags, you totally defeat the purpose of this.

It's your blog. You can if you want to. But it makes the whole feature completely pointless when you abuse it so flagrantly.

See, if you have a small tag cloud, it's a convenience for your readers.

If you have a huge goddamn tag OMGWTF, then you have created something that's A. not useful to your readers, and B. really taking up a lot of sidebar space for no damn reason.

Like I said. It's yours; do what you want with it.

But it is a total waste of an otherwise really useful feature.

[*Edited to add: The Yahoo 360 team talks about tagging. And speaking of, here's what they said about it the first time:

"
Blog Tagging: A lot of Yahoo! 360° users have asked for easier ways to categorize your blog entries, so we’re introducing the concept called blog tags.
New to the idea of tags? Don’t worry; it’s really not that tough. Think of blog tags as keywords or categories — you can assign multiple tags to your blog entries, and if you ever need to reference the entries again, click one of the tags in the tag cloud on the left of the Blog View page. For example, clicking the “blogtopic” tag brings up all our former blog-topic-of-the-day entries. Go ahead and experiment with tags on your own blog; they’ll make a lot more sense once you play around with them.
They're pretty useful, but we know that tags are a new concept for a lot of people, so we plan on having a separate blog entry about them later.
"

That last comes from this entry from December.*]

More Video Goodness, But Mildly NSFW. You Have Been Warned.

Ok, seriously, there's nothing too offensive here, but it's not really appropriate for work, you know?





Anyway, a while back Saturday Night Live had Justin Timberlake host.





Astonishingly, they actually did one sketch that was really funny, although it didn't make it on air uncensored.





It DID, however, make it to YouTube uncensored, and here it is:

Now, sometimes, you see something on TV that just inspires you to do something.





This time, this particular SNL sketch inspired one girl to make a video response, which I thought was inspired and clever, so here, without further ado, is her reply:











Now THAT's funny.





Also, she's hot. But that video is quite amusing, I thought.





So I shared.





Have a great day!

MORE VIDEOS FOR YOU!!!

...Because Tara and I just recently quit playing World of Warcraft.





...Because it's been a lonnnnnng time since we played Final Fantasy XI.





...Because Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call (and AC2 FTW,) Dark Age Of Camelot, Everquest, Shadowbane, and Lineage just don't have what it takes to hold our attention anymore...





...We got Guild Wars. Both the Prophecies and Factions campaigns, actually, thanks to the generosity of one of our friends.





Prophecies:

Factions:











New MMO!!! WOOHOOO!!





Especially since it's free month-to-month, all you pay is the one-time purchase fee - great for us poor people.





But: new MMO.





And you know what that means.





DANCE VIDEOS!!!





See, in virtually any online game, there's a way to do those friendly emotes you know and love from chat. But in a game, since you can SEE them, there's always one set that chat never gets: dancing.





Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes ripped off of famous music videos, sometimes stolen from movies, but it's always there.





Now since we just left WoW for GW, let's start this off right, with a GW vs. Wow dance-off, shall we?










\r\nNow if you guessed that WoW was the one with orcs, elves, and cartoony looking graphics, you'd be right. The more detailed and realistic looking one is GW.

\r\n

\r\nBut dancing against WoW isn't the whole story. GW can dance to Weezer:

\r\n

\r\n

\r\nGW can dance to Eminem:

\r\n

\r\n

\r\nGW can dance in huge teams:

\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAnd because Guild Wars loves you, you can even play GW if your series of tubes comes from dialup.

\r\n

\r\nOh, "what series of tubes," did you ask?

\r\n

\r\nWhy, this one:

\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThank you, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. You, sir, should never ever speak in public again.

\r\nTo sum up, Guild Wars is awesome, it's free, we totally like it, and I will put up screenshots after a while.

For Those Of You Who Were Worried...

...I just got off the phone with Sheila.

She's had bronchitis the last couple of weeks, which is why she sounded so terrible when she left us that holiday message.

Apparently, that wasn't good enough. Our Sheila is an overachiever, don'tcha know, and so she had to go all the way to pneumonia, which is why she went to the hospital.

Apparently she's getting better - she's still sounding out of breath, but much better than the other day, and she told me she's already breathing better and the doctors think she's out of the woods. She just needs to stay in bed and get rest and let her lungs recover.

I told her we love her and would rather NOT hear from her - so she can get better - than have her wear herself out letting everyone know she's ok, and have a relapse.

She says she doesn't want anyone to worry - like that'll stop us - and will be up and around "soon."

I told her to get herself back to 100% before she starts worrying about 360 falling apart without her.

I don't know about you, but if the price of Sheila being back to health and wellness is missing out on her blogs for a couple more weeks, I'll gladly pay it.

At any rate, that's the deal, from her own lips, and now you can all relax just a little.