I would have to say that this is definitely one of the creepiest, most disturbing things I've ever seen. I still have not figured out what Senator Hussein's messages of 'Change' and 'Hope' translate to. CHANGE what??? Does he want to CHANGE the fact that this is the greatest country in the world? What is he HOPING for? I just don't get it. To me he is a perfect combination of egomania, narcissism and hubris. A simpler, more succinct word would be 'dangerous'.
Lots of folks have asked me how I get the cool, customized ringtones on my LG enV phone on the Verizon network. Even searching the web is filled with goofy how-to's. Here is a way to do it somewhat easily without a useless, expensive data cable or having to record a crummy video file:
At around $39 the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro seems like it would be an underachiever, but that would be an utterly false assumption. I purchased this huge hunk of copper and aluminum after reading many great reviews. The only real cons, if you can even consider them as such, are that the pre-applied thermal paste is spread too thick and it doesn't perform as well as its $75-$95 brethren. That being said, for about $40 you get a perfectly performing hs/fan that sucks the heat away from my E8400 via an all copper base and blows it out the back utilizing an ultra quiet 92mm fan. Even at 100% fan speed, the Arctic is quieter than the stock Intel cooler at its lowest setting. From what I see so far, there is not a single negative about this cheap performer. Overclocking may exhibit less cooling capacity than stock speeds, but even so, the fan speed will ramp up and should provide adequate numbers, I would imagine.
WHEW!!! The only thing worse than spending close to 11 hours in the courthouse going through jury selection, waiting, going through more selection questioning and more waiting is actually getting chosen for the trial. I am so glad that I dodged that bullet today, but DAMN! I spent 11 hours at the courthouse doing my 'civic duty' and don't ever want to do it again. All that I have left to do now is down some wine and forget the whole ordeal. Goodnight.
I've updated my Pix page with pictures taken from my Chicago datacenter maintenance trip. It was a 2 day business trip with a few hours of tourism thrown in. You can click on the image itself to see the full sized image. I know Chicago is a big place, but I'm not much of a picture taker.
I have seen The Happening. The new movie by M. Night Shyamalan is the most revolutionary, stimulating and awakening experience I have ever seen. You must see this film. Once you see it, you will have one of two revelations: a) you must IMMEDIATELY begin recycling and healing the environment by moving yourself and your family from wherever you are to a deserted island and resolve to humping trees and bending over to the local animals, or b) realize that environmentalism is a brand spankin' new religion which must be stopped at all costs just like radical Islam.
There is obviously a great divide among we humans in the 21st century. On one side there are those of us who are living in a world where the Earth is an entity unto itself and is at war with the humans living upon it. The other side is living in the real world. I have chosen to live in the real world, a place so obviously foreign to people like Shyamalan, or perhaps just a world forbidden to him by his investors and producers. I can't turn on the T.V. anymore without seeing a 'green' commercial, whether it be for an SUV or cleaning product. I don't pretend to be perfect, but can in fact tell you, whomever you are reading this, that we are living in times similar to those before Christ. There is a new religion brewing and you need look no further than your T.V. to see that it is true.
I meet people most every day who "believe" the world and humanity will end because we burn to many fossil fuels and are destroying the ozone layer. These ideals have been scientifically disproven by many scientists the world over. C02 has nothing to do with global warming. The amount of C02 before WWII was higher than it is now and many scientists are saying that global warming cannot be caused by increased industrialization. Fossil fuels (oil, natural gas) may not even originate from dead animals, or so some scientists say. China is currently the number 1 pollutor in the world, but the U.S. the only nation criticized for energy consumption... why? Senator Kennedy tells me and other citizens that it is my duty to pay more taxes toward cleaning up the environment, yet he personally was part of an anti-windfarm organization dedicated to
On Saturday Senator Clinton officially pledged her endorsement of Obama and gave up her bid for the next Democrat party presidential candidate. I have to say that I am happy to see an age of oligarchy closed, but am still saddened that one so ignorant of U.S. history, devoid of common sense policy and just so outright Marxist as Obama has made it as far as he has. Barack Hussein Obama is probably the most left wing, radical, anti-Capitalist Marxist to ever serve in this Country's history. He is an excellent politician and I can see why our youth has embraced his circular dialogue.
We are living in trying times. Yeah, like WWI and WWII wasn't trying. Actually, we have it pretty damn good. In the U.S., the poorest of the poor have a TV, at least one car and access to the same schooling and all the rights that everyone else has. But we still complain. We still cry racism when a partially black man has just been accepted as the official Democrat party presidential nominee. Granted, Obama is only about 7% black (he is mostly white and Arab), but he is still considered the first potential black president. Yes, there is still racism in America, and it comes from exactly the same people who pretend to want to end it: Socialists like Obama himself, Hillary and a good deal of the Democrats. The only racists left in America are those who constantly cry racism and seek to broaden the gap between race and class.
Obama's admitted solution to the current oil crisis is to implement a tax on oil companies, issue a $1,000 family tax break and begin investigations into oil company price gouging. His solution will cause gas and oil to skyrocket, the national debt to rise and stifle any possible advancements the oil companies could make with more legal quicksand. This is typical Socialist tactics: play the downtrodden proletariat against the great Big Business while both overtaxing the consumer and business and creating further conflict between the rich and poor. Meanwhile, the poor guy driving to work every day is willing to pay more taxes to punish the oil companies instead of focusing on working to better himself, educate himself or maybe even starting a business to compete with the oil companies. We also must forget the thousands, maybe millions of jobs these oil companies have provided the American public. Big business is how this country was made. Obama understands this fact about as much as a dog comprehends where its food comes from.
Where is the obvious solution to the current oil crisis Obama should be endorsing??? Take on the environmental lobbyists... in fact, tell the environmentalists to go away and find their own Earth friendly island to live. Let U.S. oil companies drill America! Lift the drilling bans and cut the red tape! Unchain us from internal hatred and we can show the world AND OBAMA that the U.S. is the same great place it was 40 years ago before the stupid hippies infected it. We just need a bit of common sense to infect the subconscious of America.
See also my buddy Bryan's opinion.
I can't believe Time Warner is STILL following through with their metered internet pricing "trial" in Beaumont, TX. It just boggles my mind. Even if they offer me 100Mbps with 999GB/month I will still move to Verizon FiOs. Goodbye Time Warner. We all figured the industry learned something after AOL's swift decline with the trend of unfettered internet use, but alas not. At least not Time Warner.
Kevin Leddy, vice president of Advanced Technology at Time Warner, had this incredibly ludicrous comment: "Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines. We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure.". Why not use the money you already have and invest in more capacity? I think I'll support Verizon's more forward thinking investments in fiber and give them my money instead.
This is the Optimus Maximus Keyboard. This is the coolest keyboard on the planet. This keyboard has an individual OLED screen on each of its 113 keys. This keyboard is $1,600.
God of War II has finally hit the $19.99 mark and I'm happy to say it's even better than the first! God of War, IMHO, was the best, most polished, intuitive, compelling game ever put out on the PS2... or at least it was out of the PS2 games I've played. GOW2 takes all the best aspects of the first, compresses them into the first part of the game and adds much more robustness. =] It's a blast! If you have a PS2 you owe it to yourself to pick up both games in the series and play them to the end.
Early this morning at about 4AM I experienced my first tornado. Plano was hit with some really bad thunderstorms and some of the areas around me as well as farther down in various spots were extremely torn up. Trees were uprooted and tossed about into streets and homes. Some houses actually had roofs torn off and walls knocked down. I was awakened by the cliched 'freight train' sound everyone describes when a tornado hits as well as my bed shaking and walls creeking and moaning. Very scary, to say the least. Thankfully, my power went out only for a couple minutes, but not everyone has fared as such. Many people are still without power, including my office. Check my Pix page for images from throughout the day.
I found an awesome CSS picture gallery and have updated my Pix page with it. It is called SmoothGallery and was developed by JonDesign. It's free, fully configurable and pretty easy to set up within your current site. I've been looking for an intuitive, clean, configurable gallery which fits into most any window size and this one does all that with aplomb.
My new Unicron build is complete! It's stable and chilled well via the Antec Nine Hundred case. Gaming performance is incredible and plays Crysis, the current gaming system benchmark, on high settings extremely well. My old rig served its purpose well for much longer than I expected and will still serve as a media storage device for my movie and music needs. More pics on my Pix page.
I spend more time online being entertained now than the ancient, degenerating medium of Television could ever hope to do in the future. Gone are the days of shows which beg for my weekly attention, save maybe Heroes, which is invariably derailed due to the incredible ingenuity of the Writers Guild. Hey, WG, thanks for taking the high road by striking and turning the only people who keep your lazy asses in a job, your fans, against you. Anyways, YouTube can be ferociously anemic and pedantic when it comes to traditional entertainment, namely the vlogs... ugh! Obviously YouTube is a perfect avenue for this sort of activity, but it's just not my thing. But, it does have vast potential, some of which rears its head every once in a while. The only presumable downside to this form of entertainment is that you have to search for it and sometimes just happen upon it. You could say that this is ironically part of the entertainment sum.
I am more interested in the serial vein of videos, mainly on YouTube. Things like madV and ScrewLooseChange are just jewels. MadV came and went, leaving an inevitable fan base and some very mysterious magic tricks. ScrewLooseChange is extremely long, but the total knowledge you gain is priceless.
The most recent thread of thrilling theatre is Anonymous' attempt to undermine the Church of Scientology. If you search for Anonymous you will find more videos from the group. So far, there are about 4 official messages to the church. To wit, you can find the Church's reply to Anonymous here... nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Fox News is also applying their brand of schlock to the fray with a few investigations into Anonymous and their questionable terrorist activities like how to blow up the yellow van and killing off famililies. Mua Mua Muaaaaa. The main plot, as it were, is this: Anonymous, an anonymous group of people purportedly located in most every city around the world and which is comprised of folks from all walks of life including law enforcement, education and even within the 'church' itself, has banded together to publicly denounce and ultimately evaporate the Scientology organization leaving the true believers free from internal fears and threats and enabling them to organize proper churches which will disseminate the cult's teachings in a free and open environment. They are also planning a peaceful protest on February 10th, providing a guarantee for more free entertainment, even if the protests barely make the news. To me, this is the combination of the legend movies exhibit, the empathy of reality TV and the uncertainty the news and current events arouse.
Time Warner, my ISP, will soon begin testing teired pricing for internet usage in Beaumont, TX. This is the equivalent of a higher tax for those drivers who happen to frequent the highways more often. TWC, if you are going to provide a specific service to customers, I would suggest against punishing those who actually utilize those services. If you do decide to begin a felonius tiered service plan, don't expect your customers to abide. Thankfully, there are many... other... ISPs... ummm... oh, wait, I only have 2 choices. Hey!!! I thought this was a free market??? Why are there only 2 choices in ISPs for my major market? Oh yeah! It's a free market for monopolies!
George Romero is at it again and is preparing the next in his series of 'Dead' films, Diary of the Dead. This is, of course, the 5th movie in the official 'Dead' series and I'm pretty excited about it. It centers around some college filmmakers who get caught up in the beginnings of a zombie outbreak. It seems not so much a sequel to the originals like Land of the Dead, but more of a prequel or possibly a retelling.
If you are not a fan then it is easy to get confused by the deluge of zombie flicks, all of which are in some way inspired by Romero's original 1968 cult classic masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. The series can be thought of as a progression of a 'zombie holocaust' (another unrelated zombie flick, hah) beginning with Night of the Living Dead where a satellite crashes and unleashes a toxin which begins to spread and cause the dead to suddenly 'awaken', craving living flesh. As a side note, the dead do not crave brains specifically, nor do they speak, both of which were popularized in the unrelated comedy series Return of the Living Dead. The second film, Dawn of the Dead, begins sometime after the events of 'Night', when the world struggles to come up with a solution to the epidemic which has infected humankind. The third (and best, IMHO), Day of the Dead, follows a small team of an assumed endangered human race holed up in an underground government bunker studying the reanimated dead. 'Day' was claustrophobic and nerve grinding which makes you feel kind of dirty and slightly shaken, exactly what a horror flick should do. The most current movie, Land of the Dead, depicts the remains of humankind defending a degenerating city still conflicted with political strife.
Often imitated, the 'Dead' series is still my favorite genre of horror films and I'm excited about Romero's upcoming release. Werewolves are scary, vampires have been done to death and the rest of the monster myths are to the point of cliche. However, weaving politics, pop culture and the natural human fear/fascination with life after death into films like the 'Dead' series is just plain good ol' horror to me.
The new Civic Type R is here and I want one. Unfortunately it's Euro-only and is not planned for a U.S. release. 198 horses from a 4 cylinder v-TEC. A bit more eggy than my '05 hatch, but I think I like it.
You might be laughing and thinking how a tiny little egg could stand up to a monster V8 Mustang or similar American muscle car... but, think about it: 196hp from a small 4 cylinder engine @ 31mpg. Well, if you want a huge, bulky, heavy car which will accelerate quickly in a straight line and eat gas like it's water, you can have your Mustang. However, if you want an inexpensive, extremely agile, fun to drive, gas sipping, marvel of engeneering, you owe it to yourself to at least test drive a Civic Si, and if you're lucky enough, the new Type R. Hearing an engine scream up to close to 8,000rpm and knowing that you can do that all day without it even breaking a sweat is pretty cool.
