Anyone who has surfed the web knows that at its best it’s a wealth of instantaneous information, and at its worst, it’s a misleading pile of poorly written advertisements. The difference between these two is only a matter of who you trust.

In the early days of the web when people hooked in to their university’s VAX to dial into BBS after BBS, “surfing” may have been an accurate term. Most of the time was spent waiting in the hopes of catching a worthwhile site or two. With the astronomical amount of sites that are created (or abandoned) every day, finding the information is no longer the issue. The real issue is finding the valuable information. Now, web surfing might be better renamed web “sifting”.

We do it every day: we go online and sift through sites in hopes of finding information or entertainment. When sites repeatedly give us value, we bookmark them or add them to our RSS feeds. When they don’t, they get left behind. Each RSS feed that we on our lists has been singled out as something that has delivered weeks, months, or even years of value to us. Each of them has beaten out thousands of other sites vying for our attention.

And that list of feeds can provide a goldmine of value to both you and the people who trust your opinion. By publishing your feeds list, you can save someone an incredible amount of sifting time and give them some great reads.

This is exactly what Dumb Little Man did for me when he made his list public. Because he has consistently delivered good posts on his site, I was sure that his feed list would provide me with some value. Out of his 110 feed export, somewhere around 60 feeds got added to my feeds list. That means, thanks to him, 60 sites got a new reader and I got a ton of new reads with minimal sifting and searching.

I’ve been using a feed reader for a long time, but this put me over a line where Thunderbird has become an indispensable time saver. For those of you who use a feed reader, you know what I mean. For those of you who don’t, I can only tell you that using a feed reader is a simple way to save you time for sites that you habitually visit. If you’re unclear about how feeds work, check out my “What is an RSS Feed?” page.

Now, if you’ve been reading along for a while and you’re willing, I’d love to take a look at your exported feeds list, too. Post a link to them in the comments or mail them over. If you’re interested, I’m also posting the OPML Export of my feeds, which you can import into most feed readers. If you need a little help with importing, here are instructions on how to import an OPML file into Thunderbird, Bloglines, Google Reader, and Sage.

With a little sharing, we could all end up with some great reads.

6:12 AM

Got up, made the coffee. Started cleaning stuff, got bored once everything was in a series of piles. Had a bagel. Got #1GF! out the door to work. Started making a list of stuff that needed to be done. Couldn’t decide whether to brush my teeth or call for a haircut. Wondered why I was debating. Continued debating back and forth and finally opted for the haircut. Read my email. Paid some bills. Showered. Started updating my contacts list. Called a friend and asked him what people without jobs do. He said that I was asking the question two months too early.

10:30AM

I swore it was lunch time. Shut the air off and opened the windows. Talked to parents on the phone while eating an apple. Made more piles. Made myself a sandwich. Closed the windows and turned the air back on. Thought about taking a crap and then farted and gave up on the idea. Decided to go to the supermarket. Opted to go to the market that was 5 miles away rather than 4 miles because the drive is nicer. Wandered around with old people and ladies with kids. Wondered if I was the youngest shopper with a credit card in the store. Wondered why the old people were working and the shoppers weren’t. Wondered if anyone wondered why I wasn’t working.

3:00 PM

Brought in the bundles and cleaned the dishes. Caught up on some blogs while listening to my heavy metal high school playlist. Took out the trash. Got the mail. Tracked a package. Submitted a bug for the Democracy Player. Moderated a ton of channels over at their Channel Guide. Started wrestling with Python. Shut of the air and opened the windows again.

7:04 PM

Sat for an hour to watch Attack of the Show and have a cup of tea. Did a minimal number of pushups during the commercials.

9:56 PM

Moderated more channels. Answered more e-mails. Realized that I somehow just blew through my first day of being a hobo without really relaxing.

While googling for internet radio information to help Tankboy legally get his DJ sets online, I came across FineTune and got a bit hooked.

FineTune is another free internet radio station creation site, where people can compile playlists from FineTune’s library of tracks. Once the lists are over 45 songs long, anyone can tune in and listen to them. Because there is something wrong with me, I set up yet another cowbell station and ended up adding 70 cowbell-rich tracks before giving up. For those counting along at home, I have now created six cowbell CDs, one lala Cowbell station, and one FineTune Cowbell station.

I have to say that I was so impressed with FineTune’s wide selection of tracks that I threw together a musical oddities station that should keep you amused once your cowbell fever subsides.

And FineTune even let me embed the stations right into this post for your personal listening enjoyment.

If you tune in and have any comments or suggestions, I’m all ears.

Enjoy!

This morning I sat in rush hour traffic with my engine off because The Fore River Bridge opened at 7:30 rather than the scheduled 6:30 AM. When your as useless as I am in the morning, every minute counts, so I thought I’d post some info on how to perform the DST update for bridge operators, sea captains, and other folks that have yet to update their systems.

If your clock is still an hour off because you didn’t get/don’t want the DST patch offered via Microsoft Updates, you know that you can’t just adjust the clock forward an hour and be done with it. Without applying a patch or by adjusting the start and end dates of Daylight Savings Time with this method, you’re going to have to adjust your system clock four times a year to be on the right time.

While Microsoft does provide a large and complete article on how to manually adjust the start and end dates of DST with their time zone editing tool, TZEdit, I doubt that normal folks will be able to quickly extract the information that they need from it. For those foks, I thought I’d provide a simplified version of the instructions.

Simplified DST Update Instructions

1. Download and run Microsoft’s tzedit Tool which will extract the TZEdit.exe and the TZedit help file. By default it will try to extract them to C:\Program Files\TZEdit\, but you can extract it to wherever you want.
2. Run TZEdit by double-clicking TZEdit.exe
3. Select your time Zone from the list and click Edit.
4. Set the Start Day to the Second Sunday in March at 2:00 AM.
5. Set the Last Day as the First Sunday of November at 2:00 AM.
6. Click Ok and then Close to save the changes and exit the program.
7. Open the System Control panel (Start / Settings / Control Panel) and double-click Date/Time.
8. Select the Time Zone tab.
9. Select a DIFFERENT time zone than you’re currently in and click Apply.
10. Click your real time zone and click OK.

Your system should now show the correct time.

Maybe you barely even noticed it, but as a tech worker, I can tell you that a lot of effort went into making sure that there was minimal impact from the government’s decision to move up the start of Daylight Savings Time. I can’t even begin to estimate how much time and money were spent to make sure this change happened without a hitch, but in the tech world, moving Daylight Savings Time was a miniature Y2K.

According to the government, the whole reason for spending the effort was that it would result in substantial energy savings. Personally, I just don’t see it.

When Netflix announced that they would offer instant movie downloads to their customers, I might have gone so far as to send them an e-mail requesting early access to the program. Now, I don’t know if it was the e-mail or mere coincidence, but I just got a “Watch Now” tab on my account and have one hour of movie downloads available for every dollar that I pay for my subscription fee. The service is offered with no impact to my Netflix queue and at no additional cost.

Although the technology won’t run outside of IE (Sorry, good browsers), and requires Windows (sorry, Mac folks) with installed digital license and security updates from Microsoft, I was still intrigued by the coolness of it. When the movies streamed in good quality with no noticeable lag or pixelation, I was practically giddy. I tested several movies, and they all looked surprisingly good, with the exception of “Stroker Ace” which looked like it had been copied from a VHS tape that had been stored in a damp basement since 1985.

I output the audio to my stereo with an optical cable, but the sound was only encoded in stereo. The movies also lacked DVD-like chapters, but skipping to any point in a movie took only about 15 seconds to re-buffer. Even though I think chapters and multi-channel sound would have been nice, I can’t say that I actually expected them. To be honest, I really didn’t expect the service to function very well at all, so getting a decent quality movie streaming to my desktop in stereo with no noticeable lag far exceeded my expectations.

But, no matter how cool the technology is, if you don’t bring the content, no one is going to care. I will admit that Netflix has a ton of movies listed, but none in my queue were available. After searching for an hour or so, I did manage to find a small number of movies that I was glad were available, but most of what I found was nothing more than a collection of Saturday afternoon UHF specials and older classics that people only watch when they’re home sick. Hopefully, this is just an initial batch to test the service, with more popular movies being added as it catches on.

So, I’m torn. I’m psyched about the potential in the technology, but I’m only slightly more impressed with the service than I am with Comcast’s pathetic on demand offerings.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, keep checking your account because the “watch now” service will be available to you soon. If you don’t have the tab listed yet, you may still be able to get it by following HackingNetflix.com’s Watch Now activation instructions. It worked for at least one person I know.

Good luck, and enjoy!

(On a related note, Blockbuster will once again be offering it’s free rental program for Netflix subscribers between 2/15 and 2/21.)

A $16 way to identify people whose World of Warcraft obsession has gone a little too far…

(Clicking the shirts will land you in porn, and porn is NSFW)

Note: This post ended up having a link in place of the pictures because the image location of the shirts changed. Nothing like allowing the interwebs to fuck up the flow of a post.

While Macophiles are poking fun at Microsoft’s latest bloatware by posting Apple TV spots that make PC users look like the tucked-in shirt wearing, non-itunes using, “who the fuck is My Chemical Romance” wondering, fashion unconscious, back-office nerds that we are, PC folks like myself are being bestowed with greater powers than the Mac Community can wrap their little iMinds around.

Today, while trying to manage a windows machine, the following message popped up:

“Computer \\Lazarus cannot be managed because the computer was not found on the network. It may be powered down or otherwise not connected. Would you like to manage it anyway? Yes/No”

I sat for a moment staring at the screen before whispering “Yea, fuck logic. Let’s do this thing.” After giving thanks that Windows would deem me worthy of the power to pull this dead, unmanageable machine right out of the ether, I spent a few moments contemplating the plethora of other items I would soon be producing out of thin air.

At some point between “Chai Siu Bau” and “Beard-Loving Strippers”, I decided against clicking “Yes”, and closed the window. If I was going to inherit godlike powers or possibly be possessed by Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer, it was not going to happen in my tiny cubicle on a Thursday morning. No, I would save this power for a time when it would be most momentous. Like perhaps around Y2k V.2.*

Who’s cool now, Mac-holes?

Ok, Ok, but who gets ahead on his polished corporate charm and finely honed business sense?

Right, fine, but who will soon be surrounded by a plethora of Chinese food and strippers?

Screw you guys, if that window comes up again, I’m clicking “Yes” twice.

All Hail The Keymaster of Gozer.

*Corrected per Peter

In my haste to avoid any actual writing by cramming this blog full of crappy video links, I failed to mention a few things recently…

One: MABeGroMo

I failed to mention the start of MaBeGroMo on December 1. I started on November 7th to beat the holiday rush. Like women synching their menstrual cycles, Team Beardo at work started around the same time without discussion or provocation. My beard is now two months old. How’s yours?

Seriously. I’ve never understood the draw of D&D, but someone asked me to find some of the D&D related clips that I had found in the past. I found the old ones, and tacked on a couple of new selections to get you through today. You’re not paying attention, anyway. You don’t want to start anything new, and you’re short-timing because of the holiday. Give in and let the sloth wash over you.

Dungeons and Dragons Nerds

I originally mentioned this way back in 2002, but the original link points to a deserted island in this tumultuous sea that we call the internets. Because it’s a slow fucking week, I dug up a fresh youtube link, and re-posted for those people that I know that aren’t in on the joke, yet.

Family Guy Role Playing

We had also been talking about a recently aired repeat of the family guy that contains Dungeon and Dragon references. This clip was previously posted in June.

Exclusive Connections: Geek Phone Sex

SNL’s spoof. Pretty much safe for work, and unlike the next two clips, it’s worth a watch. “What’s that, baby? You’re a level 5, evil, chaotic half-orc? Ohhh, that makes me so hot.”
[Video removed from youtube]

Stephen Lynch D&D Song

This is a golden oldie in internet time, reworked with Machinima. Is it worth your time? Meh.

I’ve been itching to get the video at the bottom of this post online for a week now, but I keep getting sidetracked by other posts…

1337$p34k Danger

I guess “It’s part of a complicated, and experts warn, potentially dangerous code designed to keep parents in the dark…” was a better hook than “It’s as complicated to crack as Ubby dubby and it’s used to compensate for poor typing skills.” I swear, if they did a story like this about Ubby Dubby in the 70’s, the newscaster would’ve been laughed out of a job. This is the state of journalism, today.

Nintendo Wii Rejected Games

This is an oldie, but it’s a few games that those jobless bastards who stood in line for a Wii won’t be getting this year.

PS3 vs. Wii

A recent commercial from G4 that makes fun of the PC vs. Mac adds. And the Wii. And the PS3.

Jedi Breakfast

If you don’t watch any of the videos in this list, at least watch this one about Doug the Jedi. Even #1GF! was laughing at it despite it’s wholly geeky subject matter. If Youtube happens to be blocked where you are, try this alternate link.

I spent this weekend trying to knock off the Xmas shopping, and it didn’t seem like there were as many people out as in past years. Until I got to the nerd paradise that is Microcenter, the lines didn’t seem any longer than at a Walmart on a Saturday afternoon.

While we stood waiting to spend less than the length of this particular line warranted, a checker in the next aisle opened her register with, “I can take the next person in line.” The Russian Neanderthal in front of us quickly walked around the front of the registers to be first in line, while the two gay dudes in back of us bolted around the correct way, just missing the pole position.

While I was finishing up my first sun jar, my Dad called…

Dad: Hey, it’s my anniversary.
Me: [through a mouthfuls of snack mix] Right! Hey, happy anniversary! You going to dinner?
Dad: No, your mother’s gone out, and I’m going to my music lesson.
Me: Right. So, did you do something for your anniversary already? Go out to breakfast or something?
Dad: Actually, on the way to get coffee, I jokingly suggested to your mother that we go into Walgreen’s and pick out a couple of cards for each other…
Me: Uh huh…
Dad: And she took me up on it.
Me: Okay…
Dad: Yea, we went in, picked out one serious card and one funny card each, gave them to each other, read them, said ‘Happy anniversary’, and put them back.
Me: No, way.
Dad: Yea. It was actually pretty cool.
Me: Wow.

I feel like I’m plowing through days to get to the next, and then when I get to the next day, I plow through that, too.

I’m playing the same CDs while driving back and forth to my job, and I can’t seem to find anything that is getting through to me except metal. My job is boring the crap out of me, which is pretty typical for employees of financial institutions toward the end of the year when the budgets dry up and annual maintenance tasks loom. At home, I’ve been wasting my time on weird projects like trying to build my own speakers out of magnets and shopping bags, or baking batch after batch of biscotti.

On the web, I have a billion half-written posts that I haven’t been able to really sink my teeth into and get completed.

Maybe it’s the change in season, but I’m restless as hell. I need a good project. I think I have this need to contribute, but not in the “do something meaningful for someone” kind of way. I have a general need to find, fix, or create something that, in essence is fun, and total waste of time.

And I’m stuck. If anyone has the ideas, I have the energy. If anyone needs me, I’ll be the half-bearded guy walking around Lowe’s picking up and staring at seemingly random items.

*While playing with a Fresnel lens I had stashed away, I found 2 bags full of resistors, diodes, a soldering iron, and a laser pointer. For some reason, I think it was part of a project to run sound over laser that I meant to start when this same feeling hit last year.

Reason #1: Data Deletion

You might remember that in September, IPOWERWEB shut down my site and rolled it back 2 weeks without telling me. Like a fool in a bad relationship, I decided to stay with them when they promised that they would fix their backup process. I even gave them another year’s fees in early September.

This week, they decided to shut down my site and delete three months of data. When I called them with the big, “What the fuck happened and how are you going to fix it?”, they just batted their eyelashes, squeezed their jugs together, and shrugged.

You Stole That Bridge, Bitches

Remember that song from a few years ago called “Steal My Sunshine” (listen) by Len? Today, while listening to the radio, I realized that the whole song was ripped from the bridge of that old disco song “More, More More” (listen) by The Andrea True.

I used to like “Steal My Sunshine” solely for the popping sound. And 7 years later, I find out that they ripped it off.

Stinkin’ sons of a bitches.

You Distracted Me, Bitches

Distraction! (via In4mador): A very simple game to catch fruit with a bird, while the game tries to distract you. I laughed my ass off at this one…

You Love Metal, Bitches

I’ve tried out past versions of ITunes, and honestly, I’m not really a fan. In the past, I’ve found it to be bulky and intrusive for music management, and because I don’t own an ipod, there really isn’t a reason for me to use it (Instead, I’ve been using mediamonkey for years).

Now, Itunes7 has incorporated an application called coverflow that actually lets you flip through your album covers as if you were flipping through your CDs (see the example at itunes).

While I don’t think this is a reason to switch to itunes, you have to appreciate the original company incorporating Kyuss’s “Welcome to Sky Valley” in their screenshot:

I have this dilemma that I’ve been thinking about over the last week or so. I got to talking with a supposedly geeky co-worker and we got to the point in the discussion where geeks sort of conversationally test each other to figure out where the other stands on the geek scale.

There are many litmus tests that geeks will throw out in discussion to determine group membership. Every firewall that you pass gets you deeper into the network core. Miss too many responses, and the geek sees you as an outsider and will steer conversations away from the more geeky topics.

The most basic litmus test that can be thrown at a potential geek is whether they like Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings. They don’t have to love any of them or attend any conventions, but every geek will have an admitted preference for at least one of the choices and be able to discuss it.

Now, imagine my surprise when my co-worker not only says that he doesn’t like any one of the choices, but plainly states that he makes fun of people who do. Sensing a possible authentication problem, I actually threw him a bone and offered up the non-standard sub-choice of BattleStar Galactica, which he also passed on. If this were a normal person, the failure would’ve indicated that it was time to silently drop any outbound packets and safely lock down my geeky core, but the guy was a co-worker who I already thought was a geek.

My jaw dropped and I really was dumbfounded for a few seconds before returning to normal conversation.

Masons have a secret handshake.

Frat Boys spank each other with paddles.

Geeks have a preference for either Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings.

It’s in the handbook or something. Am I out of my mind here?

Hey Jon, what happened to the site? Everything ok?

It seems my web host, ipowerweb.com, blew away my site on 9/1, and decided to roll it back to 8/15. They then locked me out of my site for 9 hours (violating their 99.9% uptime guarantee) and set my space quota to 0 MB. I spent the last 4 days talking to 8 different techs who brushed me off and misinformed me about the issue. They never responded to my e-mails and they even tried to charge me $50 to do a restore of a database they blew away.

Nice, huh?

Finally, today, four days later, despite prior assurances, they admitted that there was nothing they could do to restore the data they destroyed. They also suggested that I keep regular site backups, which I think is a good idea, but should you have to keep backups to prevent data loss by people who you pay to host your site to protect it from data loss?

Fuckin’ A.

A few posts, 25 unpublished CD reviews, and a lot of other writing down the drain. This is not to mention the time spent trying to get answers from their technical support. I know it’s just a blog, but it’s a lot of fucking work to write these posts. I can’t imagine if I was some sort of store and they had lost 2 weeks of orders with no explanation.

I need PHP and MySQL, and some reliable web hosting suggestions…

- GameSpot, August 15, 2006 - Boston, MA

In an unexpected press release, it was announced today that in addition to releasing the new videogame “Guitar Hero II” this Fall, Harmonix will release two companion products that it hopes will take its popular franchise to new levels.

“I loved the original Guitar Hero,” Ravi Shankar told us. “I thought it was a very novel idea, but I wasn’t very happy to have beat it on the expert level in just under 2 weeks. I thought, they should ramp up the difficulty on this bad boy with a sitar version. Before I knew it, I was on the phone with Greg over at Harmonix pitching the idea.”

“When Ravi called I actually hung up on him,” said Greg, Vice President of Product Development at Harmonix, “I thought it was IBM support playing a joke on us. When I realized that we don’t use IBM support, I was horrified and called Ravi back immediately. Luckily for us, Ravi was pretty cool about it, and I’m glad he was. Without him, Sitar Hero would be just another idea instead of the signature edition game that will inevitably return the sitar to it’s rightful place in popular music.”

“That’s right. He did hang up on me,” chuckled the 85 year old Shankar, “But he called right back and the project took off. We have been working hard to keep the whole thing quiet, but while hanging out and playing a little Guitar Hero with my buddy Herbie Hancock, I accidentally let the Sitar Hero idea slip. I remember his jaw just hit the floor, and he immediately missed like thirty notes in a row, allowing me to solidly wail him on “Cowboys From Hell.” When he snapped out of it, he wanted to know if I would mind if He called Greg with a similar idea. I told him to go for it.”

“When Ravi told me about Sitar Hero, I lost it, because if there is a forgotten instrument that needs resurrection, it’s the keytar. The sitar has been around for thousands of years, and has had plenty of popularity. The keytar, on the other hand, danced America right through the 80’s, only to get dumped like a pair neon leg warmers as soon as the 90’s rolled around. If I didn’t have to play 15 more rounds of GH with Ravi to prove that I’m the bigger hero, I would’ve called Greg sooner, but I called him as soon as I got home the next morning.”

“You’re not going to believe this, but I actually hung up on not only Ravi, but Herbie, too. I mean it’s not that often that two legends call me in the same week. This time, I thought it was Mike cranking me from the conference room. I actually said, ‘Whatever, Love Bug, call me back after your next tune up,’ and then just hung up. Before I could finish (accidentally) filling Mike’s cube with Styrofoam peanuts (Sorry, Mike!), Herbie called me back. Herbie is one serious dude when it comes to the Keytar and I have learned to respect that. After his rendition of Rockit, I wanted to be a Keytar player myself, and I had to give Keytar Hero a solid green light.”

The company is keeping quiet on the track listings for the games, but they have said that both “Rockit” and “The Final Countdown” will appear on Keytar Hero, while “(Listen To The) Flower People” and “Up, Up and Away in my Beautiful Balloon” will grace Sitar Hero.

To keep the experience uniformly great, Harmonix has stated that the current Gibson guitar controller will not be compatible with the companion games, which will require their own unique controllers. The companion products will be released in the US in November 2006.

Images from the Games:

Cubicle Wars 2006

While skimming the MSDN Flash Newsletter from Microsoft this morning, I came across the following lines (that are mysteriously missing from the online version):

“From the Editor:

A short film http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5252877 that’s a huge Internet hit has been making the rounds on the workstations… After watching these hard-working employees, you might want to learn more about robot programming…

And the link is a redirect to a non-Microsoft site featuring the video below. My questions are these:

1. Why is Microsoft masking a link to an offsite video like it resides on their site?
2. Is it just me, or does saying that a “video has been making rounds on the workstations” make the writer sound like he makes his living sweeping up for your barber rather than editing a newsletter for the largest software company in the world?
3. What in the flying fuck does the video have to do with robot programming? There are high school freshmen editing school papers that routinely make better transitions between cafeteria menu changes and who the football team has been gang raping this week.

It is a good video, with lots of great lines, just the same. And if Microsoft includes something in a newsletter, forwarding said link to one’s co-workers can’t possibly violate any corporate policies, can it? I didn’t think so, either.

Mother’s Day

From the same guys who did Cubicle Wars. Sometimes getting a simple picture taken for your Mom can be a process.

The Good Word

Again from the same guys who did Cubicle Wars. Sometimes you have to go that extra mile to spread the good word.

Oh man, don’t ask me how I came across this, but when I did, it pushed today’s regularly scheduled post to the back burner.

You go to this site, select a few personalizing options, and get a personalized message sent by Samuel L Jackson by e-mail or phone. The turnaround time between answering the last question and getting the call seems to be about three minutes.

It not only doesn’t verify the phone numbers that you put in, but it spoofs the number that you input into the caller id of the person receiving it. Remember, I have no idea if they’re collecting the phone number data, so you might want not want to send it to your grandma’s unlisted number, just to be safe.

I realize that it’s just a cheap promotional gimmick to push Samuel L. Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane, but I and everyone I showed it to seemed to say, “Best. Message. Ever.”

Personal Message From Samuel L. Jackson by E-mail or Phone.

Enjoy!

When my Nerd Party post spawned a multi-site mini-discussion on who was a geek and who was a nerd, I figured there might be some confusion about the actual definitions of the terms being argued. Today, Geek, Nerd, and Dork are used interchangeably, but there are subtle defined differences between them:

A Nerd, by definition, seeks knowledge at the expense of social skill. These people grade your papers and price your comic books.

A Geek, by definition, values technological proficiency at the expense of social skill. These people read your e-mail.

A Dork is a general term for someone who is simply socially inept. These are the people that make geeks and nerds feel cool.

A Jock, by definition, values physical fitness at the expense of matters of the mind. These people are your gym coaches and the sworn enemies of the Nerds.

So, now that we have defined the buckets, I created this quick quiz to objectively end the argument of which group we each belong to. There are no right or wrong answers. Just select what’s best for you so we can end this once and for all.

Enjoy.

Geek, Nerd, Dork, or Jock: The Quiz

This has been one of those weeks where all I’ve wanted to do when I got home is sit in front of the PS2, mindlessly punching my way through rappers. Unfortunately, the console started freezing up couple of days ago, ending with my trusty PS2 no longer loading discs.

After instantaneously looking up new and used PS2s online, I found that even a used one couldn’t be had for less than $90. It was at that point that I became aware of my inner geek who said,

“Just what the hell are you doing? A real geek wouldn’t be price shopping for a new PS2 right now. A real geek would get a screwdriver and open that fucker up to find out what’s was wrong with it. It’s dead, the warranty was over 5 years ago, and even if it catches fire, you’re no worse off than you are right now. You’ve got a whole bunch of screwdrivers, a fire extinguisher, nothing to lose, and you’re standing here comparison shopping? I’m actually feeling ashamed of you, right now.”

My inner geek was right. I closed out pricegrabber, and did a little googling on PS2 repair. Eventually, I came across an excellent article showing how to take apart the PS2 to clean and readjust the laser. After successfully performing those tasks, I realized that the disc loading issues were due to a grinding noise coming from the screw that drove the laser up and down its guide rails.

If you hear a grinding from inside a PS2, the lube that you are going to need to fix it is not red lithium grease or plain lithium grease, which you can get at Wal-Mart in the auto section. No. The stuff you need is called white lithium grease. The problem is that while a few forums might mention that this is the stuff you need, no forum or article actually tells you where you can get it. Neither does Google.

I’m here to tell you. You can get White Lithium Grease at Sears in the Tool/Automotive section for about $3 a tube.

You smear the head of a Q-tip full of grease and run it along the two laser guide rails and on snake motor screw, and put the rest back in your tool box, never to be used again. You then gently move the laser assembly up and down the rails until it moves smoothly without catching. Once it does, reassemble the console and pop in your favorite game.

By doing this, you can rid yourself of $87 if not $126 worth of shame and get back into the ring.

Concerned Parent: Do you know how dangerous myspace is?

Admiral Ackbar: Come on.

Concerned Parent: There are predators that prey on children there.

Admiral Ackbar: Oh come on. It’s media hype. Predators have been around for a thousand years. That’s why your parents told you not to talk to strangers or get in vans with clowns. Right now, the media hypes the predatory hunting ground as myspace to freak people out and get them watching the news. 20 years ago, the same stories ran about telephone chat lines for the exact same reason. And in the beginning, the news was controlled by the Church, so the story was quietly squashed so as not to choke off the supply of alter boys. Oh, and video games cause violence and Judas Priest kills children.

Concerned Parent: [stunned] But, I like Judas Priest.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized that CircuitCity has a rolling, semi-secret sale on PS2, Xbox and GameCube games. There is a rotating inventory of good games under $10 on the CircuitCity website, but the inventory changes so fast that the stores don’t seem to have time to mark them down on the shelves. Last weekend, I went in to one of the local stores to troll the sale bin, and decided to have a few games that weren’t in the sale bin price checked to see if the bargains extended further than even the website indicated.

Sure enough, they did. I left the store with 3 games for me, and 2 games for other people, with a marked cost of around $200. I walked out of the store with all 5 games for a grand total of $40. While I’m not particularly fond of button-mashing fighting games, I remembered Def Jam Fight For NY getting good ratings on Gamespot. When it priced out at less than $9, I found it impossible to resist.

The basic premise of the game is that you’re the new guy in a underground fighting gang that sponsors underground fights and you climb your way to the top of the food chain. At first glance, the unique feature of this game is that the all the people that you fight are today’s Rap and Hip Hop stars. The other unique feature that I was unaware of is the game’s brazen brutality. I’m no stranger to violent video games, but after popping the disc into the console, I sat there slack-jawed and almost appalled at the absolute brutal nature of the fighting in the game. This is marked mature for a reason.

You start the game by creating your own character including height weight, build, skin tone, facial shape, nose shape, eye type, eye color, ear shape, and voice preference. In essence, if you’re a guy, you’re building a cartoonish model of yourself. From there, you have to learn one of five skills (street fighting, kick boxing, submissions, martial arts, or wrestling) from the gym master Henry Rollins. What Henry fucking Rollins has to do with hip-hop, I have no idea, but I find it both cool and corny that he actually sends text messages to me to get my ass down his gym to hone my fighting skills (the only person that I might’ve found more amusing in the role might have been Glen Danzig). Did I say my skills? I meant the skills of the 6′0, 210 pound, blue eyed, brown haired, street fighting character with the big ears and crooked nose that I created.

Once you’re “in the game”, the learning curve is a little steep, but once I got the hang of it, it’s pretty fun. There are the basic punching, kicking, and grappling moves, but game also includes specialized moves that can be purchased from Rollins. These moves are similar to finishing moves found in other fighting games, but without the complicated button mashing that is usually required to execute them. This should not imply that the game itself is simple, though. Each opponent has a unique style and takes me an average of 5-10 rounds to beat. While this type of repetition would normally have me shutting the console off in frustration, I find myself happily getting pounded round after round. What is more unusual about this is that I don’t really consider myself a fan of fighting games.

#1GF! finds it more than a little disturbing to watch her boyfriend get his ass kicked by Ice T over and over again, but I have to say that there’s something very satisfying about controlling a fighter that looks and dresses like you. And even if I felt a little bad about eventually kicking Ice T’s ass (he is the O.G., after all), I can tell you that there is immense satisfaction in watching that tiny version of me kicking the shit out of Sean Paul.

Pros:
New level of brutality
Very custom characters
Vast finishing moves with relatively simple execution
Paying back Sean Paul for his music

Cons
You have to buy clothes and jewelery
Long, long load times

Platforms
PS2, XBox, GameCube

Cost
$9 at CircuitCity

Rating
B+

1010. There are pony tails, but not enough Choppers to justify them.

1001. There’s a lot of expensive equipment, a fire pit, a lot of drunk people, and nothing gets broken.

1000. There are more technical people present than work at a CompUSA, and all of them would agree that calling CompUSA workers technical people is arguable at best.

0111. There is a ten foot by ten foot professional outdoor movie screen, which is attached to a Playstation2 that is surrounded by a driving wheel and “Guitar Nerd“.

0110. The opening movie is still in theaters.

0101. A planned Double feature turns into a quadra feature, with The Big Lebowski and Aqua Teen Hunger Force featured and quoted relentlessly.

0100. “What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?” doesn’t go over many heads.

0011. Someone asks how you “boot up” the hot tub.

0010. On at least 2 occasions “KHAAAANNNN!!! is heard screamed for no reason.

and the number 1 clue that you’re at a really good nerd party:

0001. Someone drives home at 1 AM specifically to bring back a copy of the Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan. And gets cheered for it.

It’s almost a constant in my work life that I get approached by The Sarge and harassed about when I’m going to step up and join my other co-nerds in their nightly games of Battlefield2. This is no casual game. This is an enlistment. These guys talk about it more than I talk about Guitar Hero, they have a home page with their game stats, and they even pay for a dedicated server to host voice chat so they can communicate with each other while playing. While it’s always nice to be asked, it’s gotten so drug pusher-like and happens so often that I’m glad Nancy Reagan ingrained “Just Say No” into my head during my formative years.

While I’m certainly not against gaming (and definitely not against gaming with co-workers), I refuse to get sucked into Battlefield2 because of the unyieldingly geriatric pace of previous versions of the game. In a game, I’m looking for “shut off brain, shoot, run, jump/shoot, taunt/shoot, shoot, run, shoot”, not “get in jeep, drive for an hour looking for some form of combat, repeatedly ask everyone where the hell they are, take Metamucil ration, and… get blown up by an artillery strike launched from the other side of the map without firing a shot”. That’s just me.

Anyway, when The Sarge came over to my desk for yesterday’s recruitment speech, he started off with, “So we were reading your blog last night…” which left me staring at him trying to figure out who the hell “we” was and what sort of damage control I would be facing. Because he gave no sign that he would surrender further information without direct engagement, I was forced to ask, “We who?”
“I was reading your blog over TeamSpeak [The in-game chat software] and we were saying how you probably needed a good game of Battlefield to clear your bad mood.”

Holy crud.

After four years of writing, the closest that I have come to syndication is having an entry read over an in-game chat session. I may not be Howard Stern, but the astronomical nerdiness of my first syndication may be impossible to duplicate, so I’ll take it.

I would’ve spent some time writing something witty or informative, but I accidentally bought Guitar Hero this weekend, and it’s eating all of my free time.

I thought this would be the dumbest game ever (especially for someone who has a real guitar), and it is, but I have to say that even at a hefty $70, it’s easily one of the most fun games I’ve owned on the PS2.

Need a second opinion? Ask non-gaming #1GF! or my non-gaming parents if it’s fun. They’re not here now, but I can assure you that they enjoyed it.

Guitar Hero 2 is due in the fall, which is about the time when I should finish this one.

Has anyone played multi-player?

I really gotta go. Virtual rock is awaits.

meedly meedly meedly

Let’s say that you check your web logs regularly to see if anyone is checking out your site. And because you’re a closet link whore, you like to visit new sites that link to you to see what you might’ve gotten the link for. Let’s also say that you happen to be scanning one particular site, and you don’t see your link under “Cool Blogs” or “Daily Reads” or even “Blogs that Don’t Suck.”

Your site is simply listed under “Reciprocal Links.”

My question is: Do you feel good because no matter what, the site owner had to take the time to at least type in your URL and give you a link (which they didn’t have to do), or do you feel bad because you didn’t get linked for any other reason than you linked to them first?

+ + || - - ?

Because I sent one of my co-workers a message from Kitt for his birthday, I was obliged to send Sneezy Pete something for his. I sent this:

I thought it was funny, but for four hours, I didn’t hear anything about it. The lack of response made me think that the thing was probably just not funny and that I was probably a big, fucking moron.

I finally had to walk over and ask about it. This is what I learned: Sending weird pictures to co-workers on their birthdays is appreciated. Saying “It would look really good in that frame you got your son in right there” is not. Follwing up with “What? It’s not like you don’t see the kid every day” will not win any bonus points.

(One thing that I put into the picture that no one seemed to notice was the slight glow around Commander Adama’s head because, well, he’s dead, Jim.)