Blogs in Space

Okay, this is just kind of cool. Not that I really think for a second that my 'blog is headed to space, but hey, it's free, and they have nifty buttons and graphics you can put on your blog to proclaim that your blog is being transmitted up to where the Enterprise can receive it in a couple of centuries.

But they do carry this disclaimer:

Bloggers who use this site are urged to keep their blogs devoid of any language, comments or content that might offend, taunt or provoke alien life forms in any way. Let's not start an intergalactic war :)

And here are all the different badges/buttons they have:











I haven't quite decided on which one I'm going to use, but I'm leaning towards the first one.

Lost teaser on this week's Chuck

I had to post something about this, so I get bonus points for two posts
in one day for my 30 Days of Posts experiment. For those Lost fans out
there, there was a Lost teaser in tonight's episode. Did you catch it?

The scene was when Chuck was being shown the images by the doctor. An
image of an airplane appeared on the screen, and Chuck says "Oceanic
flight 815 was shot down by [unintelligible] experimenting with
underground warfare". This is from memory, so it might not be 100%
accurate, but both myself and the 5/8 caught it!

I know, two different networks, but I will swear on a stack of bibles that this is what he said.


Technorati Tags: Television, Chuck, Lost, ABC, CBS, Oceanic 815

Leaving Las Vegas

One of my favorite shows the last few years has been "Las Vegas" on NBC. I started watching it because of James Caan. Since "Rollerball"(the original, not the crappy remake) I will pretty much watch anything James Caan is in.

Caan's character was great. Ex-CIA spook guy now running a Casino in Las Vegas. Knows all the old-timer mob guys, and how to take care of business 'off the books'. Last season (I believe it was) Caan's character left for awhile. The show was somewhat draggy then. Without Caan, it just wasn't going to fly. I was about ready to give up on it when he came back.

In this season's opener, he left for good. And I'm pretty sure it is for good this time. But I have faith that they can do the same great show without him this time. Last time, when Caan left, there was nobody to fill his shoes. All that was left was the young eye-candy characters - don't get me wrong, the eye-candy is nice. This time though, they have brought in a new character, and new old salt kind of guy. A Wyoming rancher who simply 'wrote a check for $247 million to pay off the casino's back taxes. The character is portrayed by Tom Selleck.

Twenty years ago, Selleck was the bomb as "Magnum, P.I." but his after Magnum career has somewhat stifled. He did some crappy movies and some guest shots on other TV shows. If the western genre was better received, he would have had some good hits with westerns. He seems to just kind of slide into the cowboy role, and this character acts exactly how you might expect a cowboy to act. When an oncologist from Kansas City is caught cheating at black jack, instead of sending the guy to jail, Selleck himself deals cards to the fellow and makes the proposition "You stole over $1 million of my money. Now, I believe sometimes people make mistakes. So what we're going to do is play blackjack until I win all my money back, every cent, then you go back to Kansas City and save some lives." (ok, it was paraphrase, my memory isn't that good, but you get the drift).

I think Las Vegas will last without Caan just fine. Unfortunately, I don't think "Criminal Minds" will last without Mandy Patinkin. Another show I started watching for the actor, Ever since "Princess Bride" I have watched most things Patinkin has done. Sadly, I missed the whole "Dead Like Me" era of his career, but I'm sure that somehow I'll get over it.

Holy Cow! Look at all those reference links. You'd think I'm getting paid for that many links but alas, I don't.

Have a great rest-of-your-Monday!

The weekend is winding down. I'm just waiting for some pants to dry so I have something to wear to work tomorrow. The kids and the 5/8 are in bed and the house seems eerily quiet except for the wood-cutting sounds of the dog snoring in the next room. Every now and again I can hear someone sneaking around upstairs, the floors in this old house creak something awful - a burglar would never make it around the house without being heard.

The weekend was mostly uneventful. Friday night was great, no casino runs, no picking kids up at the football game. Just me, my mates, and several uninterrupted hours of killing bad guys in Raven Shield. Some members from the Strike clan showed up on our server. Back before we had our own server, the Strike clan server was pretty much our home away from home. There were times though, that the server would get full and they would kick someone off to allow one of their own members to play.

It was then that we noticed they usually kicked people who weren't "wearing tags" to make room. Wearing tags is a term referring to people who are not in an organized group or clan. We decided to devise a tag of our own, so we could appear to be a clan, and save us from getting booted. Originally our clan symbol was "(.)(.)playername". But we changed that about eight or nine months ago as our kids were getting old enough to play with us. We just felt it was not appropriate for 12 and 14 year olds to have a symbol representing womens' breasts as their tag. So we changed it to "[FGN]playername".

The strike server is gone now. They have mostly moved onto newer games. We haven't. Many of our players are in the military, and simply cannot afford to upgrade or purchase new computers that would allow them to run the newer games. Raven Shield is 5 years old. And there are enough after-market maps around to keep it lively. Add to that, in multi-player mode the maps are never really the same because you are playing with other live people, and people very seldom do the same thing over and over again. The ones that do don't last long in the round because others playing will figure out their pattern and lay waste to them.

Even though we had our collective rumps handed to us by the strike clan, it was a great deal of fun playing with them again. You would think that after playing the same game for five years we would be better at it by now, but sadly that is just not the case, we still stink.

Machinima

Machine + Cinema = Machinima

Machinima is a fairly new artform which utilizes graphics engines from games, and creates short (3 - 7 minute) movies. You record the game, and then go back and add voice-overs, background noise/music or whatever, then upload it to the YouTube.

I have obtained a passive interest in this since my kids turned me on to "Red vs. Blue" via YouTube. Red vs Blue are a series of Machinima shorts created in the Halo game. They do contain some bad language, so I wouldn't recommend that any young kids be allowed to watch them. I would rate them along the lines of PG-13 movies.



The above is episode 1. You pretty much have to start at the beginning. And even if you are not a Halo fan (I have played it only once or twice myself), you should still find them enjoyable. It would be great to get all of these on a DVD as one continuous episode.

It doesn't always pay to be the smart one

I got a call from my brother yesterday. Seems his computer has started giving him a message from Norton Anti-Virus saying he has a "Trojan.Vundo" residing in "C:\Windows\System32\mljigda.dll". Of course, the virus (according to Norton) is over 2 years old, so I suppose this is the reason Norton can't get rid of it. Their website says to download their "FixVundo.exe" file to fix it. I tried to talk him through it on the phone, first by asking him to disconnect his computer from the internet.

Him: "How do I do that?"
Me: "Well, just unplug it from the cable modem."
Him: "How do I do that?"
Me: "Well, you could just unplug the cable modem from the wall."
Him: "What the hell is a cable modem?"

That is when it occurred to me that the only thing he ever does on the computer I think is read his email and do his fantasy sports stuff, and when I knew this was not going to be solved over the phone. He was supposed to bring me his box on Friday, but showed up Wednesday night with it instead. Tonight I plugged it all in, booted into safe mode, and ran the FixVundo app. Nothing. The application said it could not find Vundo virus on the machine. Have I mentioned how much I hate Norton? Personally, I use AVS and have had zero problems with it other than having to manually start the email scanner after every other update. And it is FREE! And it took over two hours to search his machine.

After that, I rebooted into regular windows mode and went to install Ad-Aware (I love ad aware for malware detection). And sure enough, the stupid "you have a virus I can't fix" message comes up, constantly. Click to close it down it alternates messages from "Unable to repair file" to "Access to the file was denied." So I figured I would run the FixVundo in regular mode (completely disconnected from any network, BTW). I start running it, and about 2 minutes into it, I get some debug messages saying the FixVundo is trying to improperly load a C++ library.

Fracking NORTON! I HATE YOU GUYS!!!!

I click through those, and the thing is still running so I'm simultaneously running AdAware (probably not a good idea, but doing it anyway). I'm heading to bed and will just have to see what pops up in the morning.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike the over-priced, bloated resource hog that is Norton Anti-Virus?

AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!

*** 28 September, 2007 - Updated ***
Ok, just to show you that I am not unreasonable in my dislike of Norton Anti-Virus, here is an image from my brother's machine.

Now, please note the bright red box which says "Norton AntiVirus has detected a virus on your computer." You see that? Yeah, that came up just about 30 seconds after the box that said "Trojan.Vundo has not been found on your computer."

Why math is important.

We all did it. Well, the 'normal' ones anyway. All through Jr. High (that's Middle School for you younguns) and High School. We complained incessantly about math. Why do I need math? When am I ever going to use math? Why do I need to know how to divide fractions? And on and on with the whole "I don't need math" rants.

Never mind that math is so basically and utterly important in every day life. Never mind that you use math constantly, without even thinking about it. To figure out how hard you have to stomp on the brake pedal at your current speed so you don't hit the lady crossing the street with a baby carriage? Yep, it's math.

But forget all that stuff. You NEED math. It is essential. Because you people in the 7th grade now, in about 30 years your probably going to have kids in the 7th grade. And guess what? They are going to be taking math. And they are going to ask for your help. Do you really want to look stupid to your kids?

Ancient methods of the plumbologists

It is said, whispered really, in the great halls of plumbers, that the ancient practitioners of plumbology had a great and closely guarded secret. It is not discussed openly. Very few will actually admit to believing in the tales. Somewhat like UFO's. Many want to believe, but few will actually admit to believing. It is currently rumored that some scholars of plumbology have stumbled upon something that borders on the miraculous.

After spending centuries chasing the secrets, and spending untold billions of dollars traversing the globe, it is said that a small, but powerful group of elite plumbologists have happened upon ancient writings which reveal the grand secret. That is the secret of hot water. No, not just water heaters, or just heating regular water, but of actually creating hot water from nothing. Just out of thin air so to speak.

This is my belief. I can't help it. I have tried for months to figure out another explanation, but, believe it or not, this one seems most plausible. Let me explain:

Back in February "Bertha", the water boiler at the downtown YMCA was replaced. She was old and tired and had seen her best days long, long pass. It was time to put her out to pasture. But now, this new hot water system boggles the mind and, quite possibly breaks several laws of physics...or psychics...or something like that.

This is what happens; one enters the shower area and turns the shower on to hot water. As expected, a short time elapses and hot water comes pouring from the shower-head. Then a second person enters the show area and turns his shower on to hot water. The first person, having spent more than 4 decades in learning the proper mannerisms of hot water behavior, tenses, ready for his show to get colder as person 2's water gets warmer.

That is where the magic comes into play. It has to be magic, because I can find no other logical explanation; and as Sherlock Holmes once said "We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The magic is that the when person 2 turns on his hot water, the water for person 1, instead of getting colder, actually get hotter! Amazing! I know, I know, I can hardly imagine it myself, but that is what happens, as true as I'm sitting here typing this out.

How else can this be explained? Water gets hotter the more of it is required? And colder when less hot water is required? It is so backwards. I'm certain that the physics police, or the quantum militia are, even right now, as I type this, hot on the trail of those brave, intrepid plumbologists who have not only discovered, but have had the gumption to actually use this ancient and forbidden wisdom.

Swollen shoulders

A conversation between No. 2 Son and myself at the YMCA one morning:

No. 2 Son: "Dad, I think there is something wrong."
Dad: "Why? What do you mean?"
No. 2 Son: "My shoulders, they're all swollen."
Dad: "Well, do they hurt?"
No. 2 Son: "No, they're just swollen."
Dad: "Let me see." Observes No. 2 Son's shoulders closely. "Dude, they aren't swollen, that's just muscle."
No. 2 Son: "Really? How?"
Dad: "Well, you know how we've been coming to the Y? And how we've been lifting weights? Well, that's what happens when you lift weights; you get muscles."
No. 2 Son: "Cooool."