A little over 14 years ago, the 5/8 and I sat in line for several hours attempting to obtain tickets to the Garth Brooks concert. We were at the Jones Store Ticketmaster outlet. Several things about that ordeal ticked me off. One, is that this outlet didn't start selling tickets until almost 20 minutes after the official start time. Second, the bloke in front of my bought up the last two tickets.
Well, we get another chance to see him in concert. Garth is coming to Kansas City, and the radio station in Kansas City is billing it as 'one city show'. That is, he is not doing a whole tour, just playing Kansas City.
This time around, we had better luck. And we didn't stand in line, and we didn't have to deal with smelly, rude people while not standing in line. This time we went online to the Ticketmaster website and got tickets to see Garth Brooks show in Kansas City next month. The radio on Friday reported that Garth had said he would make tickets available as long as people were buying them. I thought this was a kind of bogus line. I mean, seriously, the Sprint center only holds so many people.
But as we were frantically trying to obtain the tickets - three of us; myself, the 5/8 and No. 1 Son all hitting the Ticketmaster website over and over trying to obtain the tickets, we got a message the original 14 Nov show was sold out, but another show date, 12 Nov, became available. We were able to snag tickets to that one. The last I looked at the Ticketmaster site, there were 9 dates for Garth in the Sprint Arena in Kansas City. I guess he was true to his word.
Along with this, I was impressed with the price at $27/ticket, they were extremely affordable. We paid $60-something a ticket to see Shania Twain about three years ago. And that $27 is for all seats, they all carry the same price. Which is way cool. And Ticketmaster stated the online and phone sales were limited to folks in Kansas, Missouri, SE Nebraska and SW Iowa, based on the credit card billing address. Which was also way cool. This would keep the ticket bots from buying up all the tickets like that Hannah Montana fiasco.
08 October 2007
07 October 2007
I could have made it all up.
This whole 30 days of posts thing doesn't seem to be going over very well. Here is it, 4 days since my last post, and I don't have any valid reasons for not posting. Sometimes, you just have nothing to say, and sometimes you have plenty to say, you just don't have the right words to say it. Then again, sometimes you might put the whole thing at the bottom of the list of things to get done. Placing a lower importance on it than, say, pressing the "Stumble Upon" button in the browser tool bar. Sometimes, you just want to kind of vegetate and do mostly nothing, especially something that will require you to think, and possibly express some kind of idea, or thought, or tell a story.
But who knows really, mostly I think sometimes things just - are; and you are just too damned apathetic to give a rat's hind end about much of anything. So here it is, yet another Sunday, and I haven't posted anything since Thursday and I'm thinking to myself 'why didn't I just take five minutes and put something, anything up?' and there is no answer. Just nothing. But I'm making the effort anyway. As this whole experiment goes on, it just seems like what there is to write about doesn't seem all that interesting. And if it isn't interesting to me, I have to wonder how interesting it is to anyone else. I'm not going to give up on it though. I missed a few days, but there were some days that I posted multiple times, so that should count for some extra credit at least.
But then again, I could have just made the whole thing up.
But who knows really, mostly I think sometimes things just - are; and you are just too damned apathetic to give a rat's hind end about much of anything. So here it is, yet another Sunday, and I haven't posted anything since Thursday and I'm thinking to myself 'why didn't I just take five minutes and put something, anything up?' and there is no answer. Just nothing. But I'm making the effort anyway. As this whole experiment goes on, it just seems like what there is to write about doesn't seem all that interesting. And if it isn't interesting to me, I have to wonder how interesting it is to anyone else. I'm not going to give up on it though. I missed a few days, but there were some days that I posted multiple times, so that should count for some extra credit at least.
But then again, I could have just made the whole thing up.
03 October 2007
Bionic Woman Redux
After two episodes, I'm still trying to get past the vast and sweeping changes to the Bionic Woman mythos that are created in the re-imagining of the show. About the only things that are retained from the original show are; the bionic woman's name is Jaime Sommers, and she has robotic parts. Apart from that, almost nothing is retained.
There is no Oscar Goldman. There is no government spy agency called OSI. There is no Dr. Rudy Wells who pioneered the bionics project. And there is a bionic woman 1.0 - who is 1/2 crazy - running around mucking things up.
Instead of the OSI, Jaime works for some super-secret private firm who are trying to keep the world from being destroyed, and she cost $50 million (instead of $5 million in the original). I guess it would have to be a private agency to get all those bionic parts (two legs, 1 arm, 1 ear and 1 eye - the eye is another deviation from the original) for only $50 million. I'm quite certain if it was a government project, it would have run closer to $5 billion. In a government program, she probably could have gotten a bionic little toe for $50 million.
I'm going to give it some more time. At least with Battlestar Galactica they mostly kept the familiar names around. With this, the only name they kept was Jaime Sommers. But I'm still waiting for Lindsey Wagner to do a guest appearance - I'm almost certain that is in the works.
There is no Oscar Goldman. There is no government spy agency called OSI. There is no Dr. Rudy Wells who pioneered the bionics project. And there is a bionic woman 1.0 - who is 1/2 crazy - running around mucking things up.
Instead of the OSI, Jaime works for some super-secret private firm who are trying to keep the world from being destroyed, and she cost $50 million (instead of $5 million in the original). I guess it would have to be a private agency to get all those bionic parts (two legs, 1 arm, 1 ear and 1 eye - the eye is another deviation from the original) for only $50 million. I'm quite certain if it was a government project, it would have run closer to $5 billion. In a government program, she probably could have gotten a bionic little toe for $50 million.
I'm going to give it some more time. At least with Battlestar Galactica they mostly kept the familiar names around. With this, the only name they kept was Jaime Sommers. But I'm still waiting for Lindsey Wagner to do a guest appearance - I'm almost certain that is in the works.
02 October 2007
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:
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.
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.
01 October 2007
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
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!
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!
30 September 2007
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.
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.
29 September 2007
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.
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.
27 September 2007
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."
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."
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