Right...
This happens every now and then when I start up my computer:



Funny, especially since I have 256 MB RAM. I must still be having sound card issues since formatting not so long ago. The only way I can get rid of it is to change Winamp's output to DirectSound (which will fix Winamp, but nothing else), or shutting down the computer and turning it back on and hoping it doesn't happen next time. Bah. Tribes 2 is out
Buy it.
Play it.
Live it. I am not a happy camper.
Please read this post before reading any further.

All set? Good.

Yesterday afternoon, I found out that I do still need a humanities course in order to graduate, but it can be of the 200-level or 400-level. This fucking sucks. It also means that I won't be getting my diploma at the same time as all of fellow classmates, but I have to wait until it gets delivered to me in late September. It also means I have to take ONE DAMN COURSE this summer, which EXTREMELY sucks.

The reason for this huge amount of sucktitude is four-fold: First off, it means that I'm gonna have to postpone making lots of money working for some company until the end of June; maybe as late as September if they really want to be anal about the fact that I don't actually have my diploma. This is kinda bullshit, too, since the course I have to take isn't even an information technology course nor has any relevance to what I will probably be doing for the rest of my work life.

Secondly, it means I have to stay in Troy, NY for a little longer than anticipated. This reason kinda overlaps with my first reason. Since I only have to go to class twice a week for a few hours per class period, I will have a lot of free time to do... uh... whatever I want to do. Hence, I will probably work. However, I will have to work for a company somewhere in the capital district of New York, thereby eliminating a lot of the other locations I was willing to work after graduation. If I end up working for some IT company, I may end up staying with them after I take and easily pass my one damn course. Ok, this is a really weak reason (since I don't have to work in Albany forever), but it also means I should concentrate my job searching in where I'm currently typing this post from. Interviewing for a company in Boston seems fruitless at the moment. Maybe my current belief will change after I stop feeling bummed out yet pissed off.

Unless, of course, I can take the class from the comfort of my own home... that would be cool. H&SS courses are so bullshit anyways, I might as well be told at the beginning of the semester what kind of papers I have to write and just email them to the professor by the time the course ends in June. Spare me of the boring lectures. Actually... hmm... I'm seriously going to have to look into that, in which case reason #2 can be waived.

Thirdly, it also means I have to cough up about $3,000 to take this one damn course. I may have to cough up even more for housing. And what wonderful courses I have to choose from. To graduate, I'm going to have to pick between American Films of the 80's (wtf?), Asian Philosophies (because I might almost be interested in this), Environmental Philosophies (maybe if I was still into environmental engineering), or Writing for the World Wide Web (I think we have a winner!).

Fourthly, I could have avoided this a lot sooner had my advisor said something earlier. The problem with the IT curriculum is that I have two advisors. I visit one of my advisors once a semester to confirm which classes I should take and make sure that I'm going to graduate. Unfortunately, it was the other advisor that spotted this H&SS problem. And I thought I had met the H&SS requirement for AT LEAST three semesters. Even my workstudy peeps thought I was fine. Guess not. And do you know how much free time I had this year? I could have EASILY taken another humanities course last semester or this semester without being overloaded. Bam. Problem solved. Graduate on time.

Fucking A.

Heh, and I didn't even mention the wonderful CANOS exam I had last night.

What a great time to be me. :p No more incident blotter?
*shrug* It hasn't shown up in the campus paper since the beginning of March. I don't know what's going on. And I am just as decimated as you are. More proof why I hate everyone on campus
You got to be kidding:

BAt At the end of this e-mail is a recipe for Jello Jigglesrs. Bill Cosby would
be very amused is f all stugraduates brought with them a jello jiggler. There
will be a large bowl on the stgage when you revcieve your diploma to place
the jigglers in. Good luck with the res t of oyour semester.

If you can read the message through the sea of typos, some RPI genius thinks Bill Cosby would love it if there was Jello in the hand of every graduate during commencement. While many of the people at this school like to brag about how much money they'll be making and how intellectually superior they are, it is very clearly evident that most of them lack common sense.

HELLO! Jello melts! That's exactly what I want in my hand for three hours while waiting to get my piece of paper and bolting out the door, never to return. And I'm sure the guy that hands out each diploma would love to shake every sticky Jello-filled hand in the graduating class. Bill Cosby himself will probably be thinking "What a bunch of tools" and/or "These kids sure like using their $50 gowns as napkins" or something else that he shouldn't have to think.

Think before speaking, people. And use a spell checker. Sheesh.

And thanks for saying something stupid for me to ridicule. M$ Outlook stops a virus
Hehe. It seems like every virus made since M$ decided to bundle their email client to the operating system has been made by using Outlook as the main way for it to travel to different computers and infect everything. But Outlook has done a good job against foot-and-mouth disease. For now.

This is why you should use Eudora. :) And the guest speaker for my college class's graduation is...
Bill Cosby!

Bill Cosby rules. And long live the Jello pudding pop. Bye bye ads... again.
Looks like superstar bridge builder Atticus found another way to get rid of ICQ ads. I mentioned a site called Adbuster a while back, but it looks like that site is down indefinitely. So, just in case the same thing happens to the message board thread Atticus found, I have the zip file available right here. Awww yeah. Just follow the readme file's instructions.

I think you need the most recent version of ICQ in order to get this to work. I am running v2000a, and I ended up having to reinstall ICQ after installing this patch. Randy Johnson vs "the dove"
Read the article. Then check the video clip out. It's definitely one for the ages. Just click on the magic asterisk: * Someone, say something stupid.
Hey! An alliteration!

I feel like I have nothing to post about. There's things in the news that are kinda important and should be addressed, but... whatever. I don't care. They don't spark anything in me. So, send me a message using one mean or another, preferably something that I can use to belittle you on this unvisited web site. :)

Actually, your input is probably not necessary. I do have stories to tell, it's just a matter of actually typing them out. That, of course, requires motivation. Like the story of how RPI tried to screw me last semester with my financial aid; and now this semester, they don't want me to leave by claiming I need a high-level humanities course in order to graduate.

On second, thought, I'll tell the "RPI doesn't want me to graduate yet" story. It's a short one.

I got a letter last week saying that I wasn't going to graduate this May because I need to take a psych capstone project course and a 400-level humanities course. Too bad there's some flaws in this logic. I'm currently registered for my psych capstone. In fact I talked about it near the end of this page. I should get an "A" on that, assuming a certain someone actually builds the physical models for the project (hehe ;)). And the humanities course? Supposedly, I need it to meet RPI's humanities and social science requirement: I have to have a total of six such classes, no more than three can be freshman level, one must be 400 (junior / senior) level, two must be in the humanities category, and two must be in the social science category. So, I need a 400-level H&SS course of some sort, not necessarily a humanities course. Lucky for me, my IT concentration is psychology. In that particular curriculum, I have to take a zillion 400-level psych courses, and psych courses fall into the social science category. I win.

I talked with my advisor about this. He's kinda new to the whole advisor job, so he sent me to see someone who deals with H&SS requirements for a living. I have a meeting with this person on Thursday. I should be able to graduate in May after seeing her. I can guarantee it. I know the woman, and she's friends with the people that work in my work study office, so I got some pull in my favor. :) But it would still suck if I didn't get my diploma for a graduation requirement I thought I completed at least two or three semesters ago. Ick. Mmm... arsenic...
It's a few days old, but I have been looking for this article for a while. Actually, just got bored and remembered that I wanted to comment on George W. Bush's environmental blunders. But the writer of this article wrapped up my thoughts somewhat nicely.

In barely 60 days, Bush has attacked clean air, clean water, national forests and federally protected lands. [...] How far is Bush willing to go? Consider this. He'll even leave more arsenic -- yes, arsenic! -- in your drinking water, if that's what the mining companies want. They do. He just did.

Yum. That's one of the beauties of having a Republican president: business gets highest priority, followed by rich people.

These rules, also adopted during the last few weeks of the Clinton presidency, merely required hardrock miners, operating on federally-owned lands, to post a bond guaranteeing to clean up their sites when finished in order to prevent groundwater contamination. One would think that would be standard procedure. But mining companies balked. And Bush walked.

I want to run a project and not have to clean up after I suck the place of its resources! I also want to be a person who writes commentary and ends his paragraphs with three-word rhymes.

I don't want to comment on what the rest of the article has to offer, but here are some of the other cool things Bush did:

* Continued logging of timber in national forests
* Not adding carbon dioxide to the list of pollutants that cause global warming (and therefore, industries don't have to worry about restricting the amount of it they throw into the atmosphere)
* Bringing back nuclear power. Actually, I don't have a problem with this, although the author does. A lot has changed technology-wise in 25 years that I believe nuclear meltdown won't occur as often. But what do we do with the added nuclear waste?

I want to see what Bush is gonna do with Alaska's oil and national forests. I bet it will be good... for oil companies. Auction oddities
I found another good weblog you may want to check out. The site's content revolves around stupid crap that people put up for sale on eBay and what not. It's a definite winner.

As a sample of some of the crazy stuff people have tried to pawn off on online auction sites, take a look at this. Nothing says lovin' like a big storage tank for... well... go find out! Where the hell is my mail?
I'm getting all giddy, for I have two packages I gotta go pick up from the mail room on campus; but I need the mail delivering professional to give me my package slips. What the hell... the mail's usually here by now.

And why is it snowing right now at the same rate as that crazy snow storm where RPI actually had to cancel two days of school? It'll be April in a week, for crying out loud!

And Blogger ate my archives. Son of a... well, at least recovering my archives will divert my attention from the mail for two minutes. Cry me a river.
Then build me a bridge and get over it.

I've had this for a while now, and since today has been slow and boring the hell out of me, here's something you may want to play with. Keep in mind that this is an executable file, so, uh, scan it for viruses just in case.

So what do you do with this file? Install it. Then play it. It's a game where you are given a chasm of varying depth and length, and you need to build a bridge (or bridges) for a train to be able to cross without it plummeting down into the center of the earth. You also have a budget to work with, so you can't just slap an infinite number of trusses together. Thanks Atticus for the file. Diablo II given the "Game of the Year" Annual Interactive Achievement Award
The awards were handed out a couple days ago, and in repsonse, I decided to slap some Diablo II links on my suck-tastic gaming page.

Hmm... I'm having an urge to install Diablo II on my compuer again... But I also don't want to start a game in vain if I get my copy of Tribes 2 from Electronic Boutique in less than a week(!).

Why does Everquest get an award for best MMORPG of the year? Bah.

Deus Ex got a number of awards. You have to play this game if you are usually interested in first-person shooter type of games, or strategy games, for that matter. ...
Sorry, Jon. That's freakin' gross.

I'm kinda happy I don't live over on your side. :p Psycho female clogging up the phone lines
This chick is really, really, messed up in the head. She called her "boyfriend" 24 times in a 4-hour time span! Her voice messages are pretty messed up, too. I tried to listen to them all, but after #7 or #8 or so, I couldn't without trying to gauge my eyes out with a soup spoon. *shudder*

I'm glad I don't have to put up with her. :p

This post and the treehouse one below brought to you courtesy of Metafilter. Got wood?
I remember when I was younger that I wanted a tree house. I never got one, though, but my buddy Ray did have a fort-like thing on a big rock.

Many years have passed since then. Now, I want one of these houses, preferably the first one or the last one pictured. Micro$oft Hailstorm project
I don't have any witty commentary to make about M$'s latest attempt to smother the competition, but I will leave you with a pair of quotes and a pair of links to read:

HailStorm is a group of services, using Microsoft's Passport authentication technology, meant to provide secure access to e-mail, address lists and other personal data from virtually anywhere via PCs, cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants). The catch? Users of the services will be required to pay a fee to them. Analysts said that if the HailStorm model is widely adopted--and if people will pay a premium for security--the days of ad-subsidized Internet services, such as free e-mail and messaging, may be over. HailStorm is a group of services, using Microsoft's Passport authentication technology, meant to provide secure access to e-mail, address lists and other personal data from virtually anywhere via PCs, cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants). The catch? Users of the services will be required to pay a fee to them. Analysts said that if the HailStorm model is widely adopted--and if people will pay a premium for security--the days of ad-subsidized Internet services, such as free e-mail and messaging, may be over. [ learn more ]

Most troubling to AOL and others, Microsoft says it plans to include some support for HailStorm in Windows XP, the next version of its dominant operating system, due out in the fall.

That is unfair, says Barry Schuler, chief executive of the America Online division of AOL Time Warner. He draws a comparison with the battle for Web-browser dominance that sparked the government's successful antitrust suit against Microsoft in 1998, now pending before an appeals court. "When Microsoft feels like it can't compete, it goes back to the old tactic of integration with the operating system to try to kill all competitors," Schuler says. "It's the same thing over and over again." [ learn more ]

There's also some information about next-generation instant messaging in the second article. A week in review
When there's nothing left to do but to reflect on what's been done (75 style points if you can get which song that set of lyrics comes from), the theme that seemed to run through this week for me is "death." Do I need to back this theory up? Check out my reasoning below:

* Death of several internet companies. Apparently they just figured out that banner ads don't really produce much in the way of revenue, so a lot of places that host lots of sites are going under. The NASDAQ and the Dow Jones Industrial has seen better days, too; that's for sure.

* Death of innocent bystanders of random high school shootings. Kids just never learn. What the hell is the point of bringing a gun to school and spraying lead throughout the place? 15 minutes of fame? There is absolutely NOTHING that happens in high school that could make someone so depressed or pissed off to warrant the need for packing some heat. What the hell are those kids' problems? How could life suck so much that you NEED to take a bunch of people out? You're a GOD DAMN teenager! Life remains meaningless until after high school! Those bunch of arrogant fucks make me want to puke. Oh oh, I'm starting to get angry now. Next death scenario.

* Death of Ultima Online 2. One of the many second generation MMORPG's in the works, the project got canned in favor of making the first Ultima Online game better (could it be worse? :p). Smooth move, Electronic Arts and Origin. But at least Shadowbane now has a little less competition to worry about.

* Death of my grandmother. My father's mother was up there in the age category. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I wasn't incredibly close to her, so the amount of impact her death had on me was kept to a minimal. But what really sucks is that she's the second one on my father's side of the family to die in the past three months. I had a 17 year old cousin die in a head-on car accident in December. Not only does the fact that she died a week before Christmas suck beyond belief, her boyfriend drove the car when they had the accident, and he lived and was fairly unscathed. Guess who cried the most at the funeral: her parents or the boyfriend? Ouch. What a very depressing trip to Canada I had to make.

* Death of Mir. In case you live under a rock, you would have learned that Mir came tumbling down early Friday or late Thursday, depending on what time zone you're in. I wonder if a similar fate will occur with the international space station, since those silly "Clinton is the Devil" Republicans in Congress would rather suck the oil out of an Alaskan wildlife reserve instead of put money in the budget to complete this project.

Fun fun fun. I hope next week turns out to be a little better.

Great, now I feel kinda bummed out now. And I wish I was in Panama City still. *sigh* Woe is me. I guess today is over
I had dinner and I was starting to fall asleep watch something about volcanoes on NBCi or NBCn or something to that effect, so I decided to take a quick nap at about 7:15 PM.

I didn't wake up until 3 1/2 hours later. Heh, I must have been tired. Site updates
I had quite a bit of spare time today, so I decided to finish some of the stuff I started on this site. Most notably, there's a link over on the left somewhere to a list of my old sites and projects. It's nothing extravagant, in fact it's probably not worth your time to check the page out, but it seemed like a neat idea at the time.

There's also a random Buffy The Vampire Slayer (actually, all Buffy quotes are Xander quotes, except for one) or X-Files quote generator. I hope to include other TV shows' quotes in the future; The Family Guy will hopefully be my next addition. Unfortunately, do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to find a page with a list of Family Guy quotes? I ain't watching every Family Guy episode and pausing every five seconds to copy down something funny. :p

My original plan with this quote thing was to make it appear on every page instead of just this front page. I want "the system" to pick a quote at random and print that chosen quote for the entire day, regardless if someone keeps refreshing the page or someone else visits. Unfortunately, I don't know how I can do that with my limits on technology. I could let each quote be predetermined by what the current date or time is, but I don't want to go through 46 Buffy quotes before seeing an X-Files quote. I want the randomness thing going on.

So anyways... yeah. There's a quote thingie and a new page up and a few other minute changes you probably won't notice. For my very fine work, I think I will go reward myself with a shiny golden star sticker right now. Blogger keeps breaking
And it's pissing me off. I wanted to have the Mir post up at 2:00 or so, but every time I tried to submit a post up until now, it times out. Bah! Don't make me create my own news posting program! *shakes fist* And while I'm bitching about blogger, what's with the wrong times when each post gets posted? This particular post was put on my site at 3:06:46 PM, not 2:51:30 PM. wtf? Mir falls to Earth in one piece
...or was it several thousand itty bitty pieces? I can't remember. maybe if I read one of the several news articles about the event, I'd know. But I haven't. All I know is that no one in America gets a free taco. Damn. I feel so deprived. Mir didn't hit the 40-foot by 40-foot Taco Bell target which they strategically placed where Mir had no chance of landing, off the coast of Australia. Maybe the target was placed where it was because, well, it was the Russians that were bringing Mir down from the atmosphere. Hence, there was a good chance it would have hit the target. Heh. But more than likely, it was placed where it was to save Taco Bell's ass from having to cough up 281 million free tacos. Ok, I'll stop rambling now. Happy 20th birthday, Chantal!
Of course you're not gonna be reading this because you don't even know this site exists... unless you can prove me wrong.

Happy birthday, Sis. Me fail English? That's unpossible!
d00d, this article sez that ppl like u and me cant spel or use go0d gramar cos uv t he inernet. i dont no wat they r talkin about. me english iz good, an d lokk how i +urn3d 0ut!!!!1!!1! & i dont c how havin g0ood Gramar +r4nzlat3s int0 h@vinG goo d m4narz. 5oUndz lik a bunch uv h0rsee shiaat if u a5k m3!!!!!!!!!!!11!! chek out the pic kapshun 2. Break for moose. It could save your life.
It could also make your car the recipient of moose love if you aren't careful. It would also hella suck if you were actually in the car. *shudder* No new blotter... yet.
I guess this week's Polytechnic is running a little late, so while you wait for my very informative report about RPI's recent vandalism and lunacy, check out this User Friendly cartoon. Funny shiznit. Notice the lack of a keyboard in the cartoon; it is being operated by voice command. Thanks to my former iSpouse partner Brian for the link (More info about iSpouse later). Today's little chuckle
Due to lack of things to post today, I'm pretty psyched to say that I had a neat conversation with my cousin. Besides being the only relative I have that talks to me via an internet medium of some sort (besides my mother), she's also in 7th grade and on my mother's side of the family. I think that's all of the background information you need to know for now:

my cousin: Ahh we got a kitten
me: nice
me: what color?
my cousin: gray w/ white boots
me: awwwww
my cousin: yeah he is wiked cute!
me: you should fatten him or her up to my cat's size
my cousin: what do you mean cat
my cousin: i thaought it was a horse
me: lol

For your information, my tiger cat is 20 pounds of... erm... "fur." Actually, who am I kidding? He's a 20-pound stress toy. ph34r. Buy a MIR protection helmet!
There's a sucker born every minute, and you can usually find them in AOL chatrooms and on eBay. For this particular example, some toolshed shelled out $61 for an aluminum foil hat to protect him or herself from any Mir debris that may land on one's head. Right. Like aluminum will save your cranium from several tons of metal. The thing got 20 bids from 9 different people, too. Do you know this man?
Take a look:



You may remember him from his invention of the stock market (heh), being able to predict the economic future, and his insatiable desire for kiddie porn. Ok, I made the last part up. Maybe.

His critics don't think his 1/2% interest rate cut is gonna save the Dow Jones from sliding down to a net value of -4000, but you just wait. He's the man. You can't fuck with Greenspan. And he's been warning everyone about this huge money "bubble" since 1996. So there. Yeah. New tax in New Hampshire?
Being from New Hampshire, I can say that the state doesn't really tax anything. Well, there's a property tax and a "room and board" (restaurant) tax, but that's about it. No sales tax. No income tax (I think). No random taxes on things like alcohol and cigarettes besides the federal government's.

But will there now be a movie / rental tax? Maybe, although I can't seem to find any other information about this supposed tax in any of the local newspapers. "The bill would tax film and game rentals 5 cents each, video game and game players $1 each," whatever that means. Since "game players" will be taxed, are you gonna have to register somewhere to get a certificate that says you have paid a dollar to be a game for x amount of time? Heh. Looks like one journalist needs grammar assistance.

The money goes to "help compensate victims of sexual assault... the tax is fitting, because video games and movies often feature sexual violence or portray woman as objects of sexual gratification." Right. I can see how some movies and TV shows portray women as objects, but I can't think of any games that do so. There are several games out there that portray violence, but sexual violence? Hmm... nope. I don't know of any. I bet there's a few foreign Anime titles in Japan that do, though. But whatever, it's for a good cause.

I stole this link from ShackNews. Reading the comments to the article made me chuckle. All of the "l33t gam3rZ" that visit the site don't understand why video games are being taxed. And New Hampshire is "gay" for this tax idea. WHO CARES? IT'S 5 CENTS! Heh. And New Hampshire is gay, but I don't think this tax makes NH so. Long live sports and sexism
I found this story over at Metafilter. Apparently, a school girl of unknown age in England chose not to play soccer because it was "a boy's game." In her defense, her wonderful father said, "Maybe I am old-fashioned but [soccer] is a boys game. It is thuggish. Girls should play something like tennis or [tetherball?]." Right...

This is friggin' soccer, not rugby. And it's not like you're allowed to hard tackle people during PE class. At least we didn't when I was back in high school and middle school. You just kinda hang out on the field until the ball is in your general area. Then you try to either kick the ball away (on defense) or kick the ball through the net.

And our high school's girls varsity team was one of the best in the state. It probably could beat our boys varsity soccer team as well. Chapped lips suck
And so does getting sick midway through spring break, like me. I have this nasty cough going on, and it won't go away. I think it's starting to die off though, four days after it raided my body. That thing has been doing pretty well against the Nyquil and minute amount of Listerine I've tried to destroy it with. Bah. "Werd up, Dawg"
A while back, there was this auction at eBay: have your own posse!

This seller must know people up in high places. $31 well spent. RIAA wants to make money Napster-style
The recording industry hates Napster for taking money away from them, and now they want to make money using a scheme similar to Napster's. But one thing is hindering their progress: copyright.

Suckers. What goes around, comes around. I'm back, unfortunately
Had a lot of fun in Panama City. It's a damn shame I had to come back to Troy. It is so unfair to live up here when there is much better weather elsewhere. It was sunny most days with temperatures at about 75 degrees. There were lots of hot girlie girls, lots of drinking involved, and... eh... the exchange of beads. :) And partying. And clubbing. And good food. And white sand beaches. And daily bikini and wet t-shirt contests. And beach volleyball kicks ass. Yeah. Oh, and in case you were placing bets at home, I didn't get sunburned until Tuesday afternoon, where my legs got a slightly pink tone to them. The sunburn is gone now.

We stayed at the Bay Point Marriot for the week. That place was beautiful. Private beach, several outdoor pools, 2 golf courses on the property... it wasn't really close to everything else though. Front Beach Boulevard was where all the action was. There was like 6 billion hotels and restaurants and clubs on that road.

There were some down sides to Panama City. When it rains, it freakin' pours. What can you do on a rainy day? Get some beer at WalMart (!!!) and have a little fun in your apartment. Also, the ratio of guys to girls was worse than that at RPI! It was not good at all! But, the good thing is 9 of the 10 girls in Panama City are really hot, as opposed to the 1 in 50 or so at RPI.

Now I have to come back to this dizzily, snowy, 40-degree weather dump. *sigh* If I wasn't in my senior year, man, I might have considered pulling a stunt like the waiter at Pineapple Willy's did: he never went back to college at the end of spring break; he moved to Florida for a year or so.

And here are some fun facts for you:

* Sonic (a drive-in restaurant chain) kicks ass!
* Waffle House is EVERYWHERE in the South, and usually one or more letters in their sign will not light up.
* Grits, a substance I may consume once every ten years, is a popular breakfast choice in the South.
* Steak and eggs are a popular breakfast combo in the South, too.
* Every state smells when you drive through it, although Georgia was more pleasant than most of the others.
* We didn't have to pay any tolls south of Washington, D.C., while New Jersey and New York were toll money bitches.
* Gas was as cheap as $1.219 in parts of Alabama through North Carolina.
* Jon is deathly afraid of Chexx, but we won't get into that. An experience there made him capable of driving from 7 pm to 7 am!
* A lot of novelty shops in Alabama and Florida on the way to Panama City bragged about having butter pecans, boiled peanuts, and bonsai trees.
* Cars are left on the side of the road in alarming frequency from North Carolina through Alabama, especially in Georgia.
* States south of Maryland mark their highway exit numbers by mileage, not by what number comes next.
* My car needs an oil change every 7,500 miles!
* Billboards for fireworks just won't go away the closer you get to South Carolina.
* Albany, NY has way too many overpasses and loops. I want a scaled down model of Albany's road system, put a marble at its highest point, and see where gravity takes it.
* Dr. Pepper replaces root beer when you go to a Southern restaurant and order a drink. What a scam.

Well, that's it for now. I probably have more to say that I can't think up of right now, but hey. It's not like I can't post again.

Friggin' snow... Last post
Some time tomorrow, I'm gonna get myself a haircut, go to my last class for the week, pack, and then take off for Florida. I won't be back until Sunday the 18th. Or, if we get bored, I may be back as soon as Thursday the 15th. Needless to say, I won't be posting for a while, nor will I be checking my email or doing anything involving computers. And if I do end up posting, I hope someone gives me a beating. I got some clubbing and sunbathing to do... yeah, that's it. We (my roomies) haven't done anything interesting on spring break since coming to this woman-lacking college; now it's payback time. :p

In the mean time, read my archives, provide links to my site (hehe), wonder how long it will take a white boy like me to get a sunburn, whatever. I'll probably have stories to tell when I get back.

Later! Fluorescent moth larvae coming to a crop near you!
I was looking through CNN's latest stories for some dumb reason and I came across a story about genetically engineered moths with jellyfish genes which are being used to eradicate their un-mutated cousins.

It is known that if you use a certain weed killer enough times, each future generation of insects become more and more immune to it. I guess the next logical step (heh) is to send waves of sterile insect mutants after them. Supposedly the engineered moths with still have the same amount of sexual desire as their wild brethren, and hopefully they will be doing the horizontal mambo with the lady non-mutants (instead of the "normal" male moths getting all the action), thereby decreasing the number of un-mutated offspring and eventually killing off the "normal" moths.

If we can't get them out, we'll breed them out. Metrosexuality's Gay-O-Meter
I scored a 29% of the Gay-O-Meter. Is that a good thing? Probably, even though at the end of the test it said I should "Loosen up, mate! Women like a man who has some softer edges." I also didn't realize I was in Australia. :p

Kudos to me for finding this link at pretentious and self involved somehow. Mir to become a firey ball of death on March 20
Mir has been a piece of floating Russian junk for quite a long time now, and it has been "falling" closer to the earth every day since... uh... something happened (It's been a while, and I haven't really been following the Mir stories). After 15 years of operation and attacks by killer mutant fungi, those crazy Russians are finally gonna make it plummet into the Pacific Ocean at full force. I bet that will be a bright sight. No worthwhile blotter incident this week
Two l33t white boyz tried to take someone's laptop but ran away when the "victim" refused to give it to them. That's about it. It was a pretty lame week, but you can check out what happened on campus by clicking here. mp3.com gets reamed, too
I was giving mp3.com some love for being a place where unknown Indie artists and whatnot can get publicity by putting some of their songs in mp3 format and letting them be downloaded off the net. Apparently they have little side projects akin to Napster. Whoops. Looks like both of these sites could go the way of the dinosaurs. Dumb stuff that happened yesterday that no one cares about
I shovelled quite a bit yesterday (by yesterday, I mean Tuesday. Usually when I say "yesterday," I mean the day before today, but today doesn't start until I go to sleep and then wake up. So, by my traditional definition, it's still Tuesday.). We managed to get all of my roommates' cars out of the 17 feet of snow but mine and Jonny's. Well, ours and Andy's, but he didn't shovel with the rest of us, so tough noogies for him. Hopefully I will actually be able to drive some time tomorrow afternoon. I got shit I need to get done before spring break, like... uh... get gas. And get my oil changed because Jon, Jarrod, and I are using my car to drive down to Panama City. That's gonna be one hell of a ride. And I need a haircut pretty badly. And shorts. And sandals with soles that aren't falling off them. And other stuff.

I bet we could have gotten everyone's car out if people didn't start bailing out of shovelling. :) People were getting cold and tired before I broke a sweat. :) Us folks from Cow Hampshire can naturally stay out in the cold and shovel all day. Oh yeah.

Later that night, most of us went to a Weezer concert at SUNY Albany. It seemed like a pretty short show (we were there just for Weezer, not the two opening bands) and I kinda wished I was out on the main floor jumping around like a fool like everyone else (we found some stadium-style seats off to the side), but hey... it was all good. $15 well spent. :)

So uh... yup. The end. Another reason why I hate everyone
If this actually goes through, I'm gonna have to break something, preferably the 8,000+ people that choose to make their official religion "Jedi." Star Wars is a series of movies, people; not a friggin' religious institution! Isn't there something in the Bible about worshipping false gods being a no-no? There's probably similar rules in the other major religions of the world. Lack of classes and Tribes 2
No classes today, either. And I don't have classes on Wednesday by default. And spring break starts this weekend. What a rough two weeks. :) Too bad I still have nothing to do.

Maybe if Tribes 2 came out... oh wait, it might be! Maybe by the end of the month, I'll have a different game I can lag like hell in besides Subspace, a game so simple, how can you not lag? :p Thanks Jake for the link.

Update: According to Gone Gold, this game goes gold March 19th.

Second Update: Dave Georgeson (one of the head guys of Dynamix, makers of Tribes 2) said, "I haven't announced a date...so it ain't official. Anything you hear at this point is still conjecture." God damnit. Don't have to go to class today
Mainly because classes were cancelled. I guess this gives me plenty of time to do the same stuff I did this entire weekend: little and nothing. w00t! I don't want to go to class tomorrow
Supposedly, the legendary snowstorm of doom is gonna take out every state from Maine to West Virginia tonight and tomorrow. There's a winter storm warning in effect and I should be expecting to remove about a foot or two of snow from my car. Yay. I should also be expecting snow, then rain, then sleet, and then snow again. Double yay.

I wonder who's going to be sleeping in tomorrow morning. :) I wonder if RPI will cancel classes; this college is notorious for never canceling class even if all hell breaks loose.

As a side note: you know the show The Lone Gunmen? So not the greatest show ever. I think any show that tries to use computers and technology as the method to accomplish tasks is doomed for failure. People who know enough about computers know that most of what happened in that pilot episode was flawed. This show will probably join Harsh Realm as shows that Chris Carter didn't think through enough. Give me back my damn X-Files, k? Good techno / club music to watch out for
While some people may think that "good techno" may be an oxymoron, you can actually find a good amount of it at mp3.com. I was originally at this site getting an mp3 that some guy at Something Awful said to get (because he made it). After downloading the song (which wasn't bad at all), I was bored so I browsed through the techno stuff they had. I was originally skeptical as to how good the songs my be; I remember downloading some rock / alternative stuff from mp3.com in the past that was just repulsive.

To make a long story short, here's three bands you may want to listen to if you're into this sort of junk:
* NINA - Goddess of Dance - She must thing highly of herself to be a goddess. Her ICQ song freaked me out, but anything that made the mp3.com techno top 40 list owns. Lots of Euro-dance stuff.
* DARKANGELES - Lots of techno / electronica / ambient stuff by some American guy.
* t r a n c e [] c o n t r o l - Two Swedish dudes kick out the phat house and trance beats... or something.

And you don't even have to worry about Napster going down. These artists willingly put their work up at mp3.com.

Does liking techno make me one step closer to landing a cameo appearance on Gay or Eurotrash? Dumb article of the day
What the hell is with this headline?
Napster Promises Changes But Users Keep Downloading
Think about that title for a minute.

What the hell is the author's problem? "Ooh, Napster is the news, I guess I won't use it anymore." "Ooh, there's a chance I might get banned. I better not use this then." "Ooh, I better find a similar service while I still can." Please.

Did anyone expect the use of Napster to decrease as they have been getting closer and closer to being shut down? If it's gonna be shut down anyways, you might as well get your money's worth and download every mp3 you can get a hold of. Duh. Then when Napster goes down, move onto another similar service and repeat the process until CD prices are actually reasonable.

The article itself has nothing useful in it. I just had to bitch about the title. A cabbage could come up with a better title. Quayuh!
Candlepin bowling is wicked pissa. But after a long day of bowling, you're gonna get hungry. Should one go with a spuckie, a roll, or pick something up at Cumbies? Give me a bowl of American chop suey, and I'll be all set. A creamsickle frappe would wash that down really well. Mmm... that'd be mint. Or maybe some green death. Heh. Na-ah, you'd have to go to the packie and pick up and drink some green death before bowling. :) It sure beats pulling a Uey at the rotary with all of the human billboards... or something.

Boston slang rules. Thanks Mike for the link. Long live the weblog
This is just a story about the ever-growing use of the weblog. It looks like a lot of peeps out there are reading weblogs (I refuse to use the term "blog." Not only does it sound dumb, it's a term coined by Blogger as an indirect form of free advertising. There are other Blogger-like programs out there...) instead of news sites to find the "good" stories out there.

To me, it seems like a lot of weblogs out there can be considered either filtered news sites or online diaries. Mine seems to be a mix of both. ph34r. I should probably stick with either just news or just my personal experiences, huh? Most news out there sucks and isn't worth posting because you can access those news stories everywhere. And my typical day here at RPI isn't fascinating enough to post about. Damn. Stupid dilemas. Or perhaps I should move this site elsewhere (like the thesevoices.com server?) and it can be used as a template for a news site collaboration project (this linked site is the first weblog I found that I actually like). I don't really have enough to post on my own in a day to generate what I want: an audience. Your typical web surfer hates you
... assuming you're one of these people whose web sites are not designed with your visitor in mind. In case you haven't figured it out yet, people hate MIDI's and other sounds playing upon entering a site, and stupid animations that are slow to load and... well... stupid. That's what this article claims.

I think it's all too easy to assume that your typical site visitor will have computer specs similar to your own. If you're one of those who can get 100 frames per second in Quake 3, this is defintely the case. Close to 60% of the surfers out there are still using 16-bit color or worse. Nearly 60% of your potential visitors will be using an 800 x 600 resolution or even 640 x 480(!). And about 88% of the net users out there are still using the cursed modem at speeds of 56k or slower. Ick.

So, in short: keep it simple, Stupid. :) While most of the people out there are using resolutions that, if they were using my monitor, were designed for the blind, be nice to them when making a web site. And don't piss off the modem users with dumb crap like broken links, java applets, pop-up windows, sounds, etc. They didn't wait 2 minutes to load your web page for jack and shit. Thanksgiving revenge
"Drink Bud Ice, but beware of the turkeys." 3D printing
Got roughly $500k to burn and the urge to make a 3D model of your head? All you need to do is make like a CAD drawing of it and put it in one of these new fangled doohickie thingies. Voila! You're a proud owner of a spare head.

Supposedly the never-to-be-finished space station has one of these for when a part breaks. They get a blueprint from NASA faxed to them or something, push some buttons, wait 30 minutes, and bam! Replacement part. Pretty damn cool. The Jesus Christ Superstore
Who wouldn't want the Almighty God action figure, complete with a Kingdom-Come Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle and hallowed cloak of invulnerability? Or perhaps the Pope with his 'Meek and Mild' Walther PPK handgun and blood red Vatican Assault uniform? And this place is even open on Sundays! Check out the price tags, too.

You might want the URL though, huh? Here you go. Sports salary caps
While reading a bunch of news articles about how a bunch of really good football players getting cut from their team because they cost too much given the salary cap restriction, I found this one that not only mentioned why the Vikings are pretty well reamed, it also mentioned what the caps are in the four major sports:

* The 51 football (NFL) players on a team's roster must not be being paid more than $67.4 million.
* Baseball (MLB) does not have a salary cap. The Yankees paid over $100 million for their line-up of 25 or 40 (probably 25), and Alex Rodriguez got $252 million for a ten year contract.
* Hockey (NHL) has a rookie salary cap and a weird free agency system. The average team payroll this year is $33.4 million. A roster is made up of 23 players.
* Basketball (NBA) has what is described as a "soft'' salary cap; the average payroll this season is $34.5 million. Keep in mind a team roster consists of 12 players.

This is fucking insane. I'm not sure how else to comment on this.

I thought football players were way overpaid, but then again, they really aren't compared to the other major sports. Well, actually, maybe they are. In that first article I mentioned, the Vikings had 5 players that took up more than 50% of their salary cap space.

Baseball is just out of control. Some of the less fortunate teams have already lost the season before it has even started. So much for parity. And the guy who owns the Rangers paid $250 million for them. Rodriguez now plays for the Rangers. Think about that.

Hockey 0wnz j00! And it looks like the NHL is on par with the NFL. I wonder if Mario Lemieux has to pay himself, since he is both the team owner and a player for the Penguins. Hmmm...

The ratio of roster size to salary cap is pretty Amish is the NBA. Almost $3 million per player on average... sheesh.

God damn.