Ah, a new year...

Time for reflection on the things that happened these past 364 days, and strive for a more prosperous and peaceful world......



Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Meanwhile, I'll be getting shitfaced. Party starts in 2 hours.

PGA Tour........OWNED

I won two PGA tournaments in a row now -- Troon North and Kapalua. Next up.....Pebble Beach.

Where the hell have I been?

Eh, around. I've been addicted to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006, been playing that for hours on end leaving little time for much else. Then when I'm not doing that, I'm watching some of the new DVD's or reading some of the new books I got for Christmas. So, being online has come down to only looking for downloads and that's it.

Now I think I need to go give Stubbs the Zombie a try -- what could be more fun than playing a computer game where YOU'RE the zombie?

The fat bastard in the red suit went overboard again...

Crazy son of a bitch, look what he did to my tree!


MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

The gift that keeps on giving...

So as most people know by now, because my mother is quite insane and takes on waaaaaay more than she can handle during the holiday season, I'm constantly helping her out with various holiday tasks. One such task is helping in the baking of the Christmas cookies.

The ones that I make are the nut rolls, the peanut butter balls, and the lady locks. This year, however, she took the lady locks off of her cookie list, which made me very happy because I hate making (and eating!) those gross mother fuckers.

However, unbeknownst to me, my asshole of a brother-in-law (I mean that in the most loving way possible. He *is* my drinking buddy after all) really pissed on that parade. Someone where he works wanted lady locks, so he talked my mother into making a batch. Which meant I had to fill the fuckers.

So, given that fact, I decided I needed to give him a REALLY, REALLY special Christmas present, to let him know exactly what I thought about that. Click the link below to see said gift. However, I will warn you ahead of time: the gift is a 8x10 picture of my ass.

If that's not something you wanna see, I would suggest you skip clicking the link. Really. I'm serious. It's a picture of my ass, for Christ's sake.

http://www.pastatdude.com/blog/ass.jpg

Tis the season to be drunk...

A lot of people ask me why I feel it needs to be tradition for me to get fucking wasted over the holidays. While most of the time I simply tell them, "Because I want to get fucking wasted, what other reason do I need?", that is not entirely accurate.

One of the reasons is, that because every member of my family is quite insane, I *NEED* to be fucking wasted. After I get through the days leading up to Christmas, I need to just numb my brain to the point where I don't know what the fuck is going on, because I'll enjoy myself much more when I do that.

Every year, someone (if not EVERYONE), in my family throws a hissy fit over some small, MEANINGLESS detail, and it's usually up to me to bring them to their senses and calm them down so that the holiday can continue cosily. Most of the time, it's my mother that throws the hissy fit, because she is much more insane than anyone else in my family. (Which provides even further evidence to my suspicions about being adopted.)

I'm not going into details on what exactly happened, and it doesn't even MATTER what happened, because it was so fucking stupid it's not even worth talking about. All that matters is that I fixed it, and now pouring myself a large glass of Captain Morgan's.

The holiday has officially begun.

People are stressin' out...

I went to Wal-Mart after work today to get some things I'll need for the weekend, and it's good to see that the holiday is starting to get to everyone. Mass hysteria!

I will admit, though, that people seem to be remaining pleasant with each other -- and they're using Merry Christmas. (The SHOPPERS, not the workers.)

Then, there are the check-out people. The one I had this evening must really, really hate her job, because she wasn't happy at ALL. She put my bottle of Formula 409 in a bag, and set it on top of the bagging apparatus. I leave it sit there for several seconds, and she goes, "See, this is how it works, you take the bags I put there and I'll put the next one up."

I look at her like she has a cock on her forehead, but oblige and put this bag THAT HAS 1 FUCKING ITEM IN IT, and I put it in my cart. Next, she packs three sweaters and two pairs of jeans into a bag, and sets that up. I go to take it, and she nearly slaps my hand and goes, "I'm going to put more in that one."

I had a 20 lb. jug of kitty litter in my other hand. She's very lucky I didn't clock her with it.

Ohh Baby Baby

I'm quite ashamed that I know this is "Push It" by Salt 'n Pepa.

More proof...

Yet more evidence towards my theory that I must be adopted.

I was visiting my grandmother at the nursing home Sunday morning with my mother, and for once my grandmother was actually in the land of the living -- awake and smiling. So, my Mom wanted to take her picture with her phone and send it to my brother.

She turns on the camera and points it at my grandmother, and goes, "I can't see anything!"

So I take the camera, look, and I can see just fine. "It's fine." I say, and hand the phone back to her. She looks again and she's like, "I still can't see anything!"

I look over, and then yell, "YOU HAVE YOUR FINGER OVER THE DAMNED LENS!"


Yep. Adopted!

Peripheral Vision

Can you tell from the title that I've just finished watching the 40 Year Old Virgin?

So I was in a restaurant yesterday. Okay...I lied...it was McDonald's.

Anyway, I'm sitting at a table eating breakfast and reading the paper. (Damn, I sound all mature and businessman-like after saying that. Allow me to add that I was reading the FUNNIES.) I noticed that there were these 3 chicks sitting about 10 o'clock from where I was, in a booth. I could tell by using my peripheral vision that they were around my age (probably younger), and very good at making themselves look hot.

Two of them were sitting together in one side of the booth, so their backs were to me and I couldn't get a good look at them. The other one was sitting across from these two, so her face was pretty much visible to me. Now, all of you who have had the following happen to you, please raise your hand.

Purely by reflex, I eventually looked over right at her.....as casually as possible. She was looking back at me at that EXACT moment, and we both do one of those "OH MY GOD LOOK AWAY QUICKLY BEFORE SHE/HE NOTICES!"

I didn't even have enough time to comprehend what she looked like. =(

The 12 Hours of Christmas

To hell with 12 days of Christmas. If the holiday was any longer than a day, I'd be dead from alcohol poisoning. So I thus present PD's 12 Hours of Christmas.

On the first hour of Christmas, the poop fairy brought to me.....a very gross taste in my mouth when I wake up around 9:00 AM after the Christmas Eve party. I drink a 2 liter of ginger ale, and a bottle of pepto bismol, and I'm good to go.

10:00 AM: Time for my first drink of the day (well, technically, my first drink since passing out earlier in the morning.) It's usually something of the wilderberry schnapps and 7UP variety, since my stomach still isn't 100%

11:00 AM: I open the goodies in my stocking.

12:00 PM: I'm wandering around the house waiting for people to get here so I can open my presents.

1:00-2:00 PM: Open presents!

3:00 PM: Open more presents!

4:00 PM: The room is starting to look awfully bright. The bottle of schnapps is empty.

5:00 PM: Dinner! And I've switched over to Captain & Coke. It's just not Christmas if I'm not spending some quality time with the Captain.

6:00 PM: Captain leftsh foer the day. No's worrie's tho cause I ahve a bottle of vodak.

7:00 PM: Mes and my brohter-ikn-outlaw areee goiiiing to pu;ty my mooom's new compouter des;k together.

8:00 PM: I gluesed my breother-in-law-and-order to the deskkkkkkkk, but he's point ed tt te TV so itssssssss ok

9:00 PM: Mhy thung ist shtuck inth the empthy vodthka bottle......buti it's aokay cauwse i can still breathe......nighty night..........


What I'm Listening To: With God On Our Side by Straylight Run
What I'm Playing: Age of Empires III
What I'm Watching: Naruto, Karin

Slippery when frozen...

If I'm going to slip on ice and fall on my ass, I'm going to do it when it matters -- or in this case, ALMOST slip and fall on my ass. Gotta love those icy sidewalks.

I was helping my Mom carry groceries into the house, and I was carrying a box of 5-dozen eggs. Yep, five dozen eggs. And I slipped on a patch of ice. Amazingly enough, I shifted my center of gravity just enough to put myself back on balance, and was able to save the eggs in an impressive juggling act. And of course, my Mom goes, "Are the eggs all right?"


Yeah, nevermind that your son nearly split open his skull on the sidewalk.

The 2005 PD Screenie Awards!

Well, it's near the end of the year, so I decided to compile a list of my favorite gaming screenshots for 2005 -- it's the Top 25, and they are joygasmic.

2005 PD Screenie Awards

I was right...

Yup, I'm addicted. It's not a pretty sight.

I entered the New World as Pharaoh PD of the Egyptian Empire, and build my glorious cities and lands into a force to be reckoned with. For this turn, I didn't go the route of Alexander the Great, where I tried to conquer the known world. Instead, I simply concentrated my efforts on the land that I had, building it up the best that I could. The result wasn't as good as I had hoped, and it's no one's fault but my own. (I'm not familiar enough with the nuances of the game yet to actualy build a super-power civilization.)

My diplomatic skills must be incredible though, because I never went to war once. I pissed off Spain a lot, and France really wasn't too happy with me either, but it never came down to invasions or all out wars. (Isabella was a fucking bitch, and Napoleon is a retard.) I think it's a cruel twist of fate that the game put France right beside me. Grr!


But, nonetheless, my PD-topia did well, though I found the number of turns to be too...short. I forget how many turns I had, but I finished up a turn in under an hour. Now that I have a better feel for the game, I'll be playing another turn and hopefully doing a better job at keeping my people happy. (They kept complaining that it was too crowded last time. Damn breeders.)

The one thing that I haven't figured out yet is how to develop more of the raw land within my borders. That's something I'll need to work on next time around too.

Then I'll declare war! Mwa-hahahahahaha!

I am a GOD among troubleshooters.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself right at this point in time, for I've just experienced quite a glorious moment. As you may or may not know, I've been having problems with a PC game by the name of Fable: The Lost Chapters. i couldn't even get past the opening logos on the game before it would crash completely. I would double click the icon for the game, get a black screen, then BAM. Crash and burn.

I went to the support site for the game -- which was made by Microsoft. There were a list of 15 possible reasons why my game might be crashing like this. I tried all 15 solutions and none of them worked.

Ever try to send microsoft an email for techinical support? It's quite a laughable experience, let me tell you. I needed the product ID to even get to the page where I could start sending them a message. To get the product ID, I have to open the program. I CAN'T FUCKING OPEN THE PROGRAM, THAT'S WHY I NEED TO EMAIL YOU FUCKERS! Bill Gates can lick my pubes.

So, I *kind of* isolated the problem to being my VIA Bus Master IDE Controller. I wasn't totally sure that was what the problem was, but it was the only option left. I went to VIA's website to download the latest drivers for this hardware device. Guess what? Yep -- I couldn't load the driver page. VIA can also lick my pubes.

I visited lots of forums, searching for some geek that might have had the same problem as me, and had already figured out a solution. Nothing. All I could find was that the IDE controller had issues with Windows XP SP 2 (what I have). All the geeks in this world can also lick my pubes.

I was at my wit's end, ready to give up and just throw the game away. Or try to return it. But lo, I had a terrible idea. A wonderful terrible idea. I went to the executible file for the game, right clicked on it, went to the Compatibility tab, and clicked on Windows 2000 Capatiblity.

And the game runeth.



I am NOT a geek. I am the deity that overshadows all the geeks in the world as they lick the dirt off my sandals.

Ghost Images Work!

Back in September, when I did my bi-monthly PC wipe, I made a Norton Ghost DVD Image of my hard drive so that I could possibly save a lot of time when it came time to do another PC wipe. Well, it was time to test it out tonight, and the results were great -- everything worked.

So, now instead of sitting here for six hours reinstalling all my software, I'm already back up and running. Ghost images OWN.

*Poke Poke Poke*

It's come to my attention that some people are RELIGIOUSLY against downloading fansubs. So, I'd like to make a public announcement.


1.09923159179688 TERABYTES.


Thank you and good night.


This twisting of the knife has been brought to you by PD Doesn't Give A Flying Fuck What You Think.


Content Notice:
Does this post upset you? Then click here.

Am I a magnet for lower life forms??

Everywhere I go, I see stupid people. Is it me? Do I attract them? Do they flock to me like Robert Downey Jr. to a crack dealer? Or, is it just that a vast majority of the human populous is stupid?

Whatever the answer, here's the latest story:

I had to stop at Giant Eagle yesterday to get a case of Nestea. I should have expected some kind of stupid person attack, since the supermarket is just about the best place to find stupid people. I go to the back, find my case of Nestea, and then found a checkout lane with a small line -- only 1 person in front of me, and they were already getting their items bagged up.

As the chickie behind the counter scans the Nestea, and slides it down to the end of the counter, the bag boy says to her, "I smell funk." and then proceeds to stick his head into his shirt and sniff himself.

WHAT............THE....................FUCK!

Needless to say, I didn't really want him touching my Nestea. After the chickie slid it down to him, I attempted to intercept it, but he got to it first. Now -- it's a 12 pack of Nestea. You don't bag those. The LOGICAL thing for him to do would be for him to hand it to me. What does he do? He shoves it underneath the little pad thingy where you can lay your checkbook or whatever down to write on. So, to get my Nestea, I had to reach UNDERNEATH the thing and pull it out, while leaning over the damned counter so I could reach. I wanted to throw the fucking case at him after that, but that would have been a waste of perfectly good raspberry goodness.

Latest Addiction? Maybe...

I was talking to a guy at work today who said he would like to try Civilization IV -- the new Sid Meier game that came out recently. I had read about it, saw all the good reviews etc, and figured I'd like to try it too, so I looked for it. (Initially just to burn it for this guy.)

After I downloaded it, I installed it so I could test it to make sure it worked. After the intro movie had my jaw hanging down around my pasty white ankles, I knew that there was going to be a problem....

The intro started out in outerspace and then proceeded to zoom down to earth to show a MASSIVE army in what looked like ancient Roman era, followed by a whole SHITLOAD of battle ships on a sea (think Troy). It then zoomed through the lands to what looked like an Egyptian capital, where a new king was being crowned.

I need to play this.......

Server config files? OWNED.

I love how much of a LACK of information there is regarding config files in games. It's like the developer's are saying, "Well, if you don't know how to make a config file, you're fucked, we're not helping you."

Fine. If that's the way you want to play, bitches, so be it.

I got a list of all the commands in Counter-Strike source and picked the ones that I need. Then, I put these all into my own config file, and found out where to put the file on my own. (I actually had to make a new directory that didn't exist -- don't ask me how I knew what to name it.)

Yeah, so there's my big FUCK YOU to Valve. (Once again.)

Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea...

So my parents got one of their Christmas presents from me early this year -- new cell phones. I'll be regretting this until the next time I get them new cell phones. It's not so much of a problem with my Dad, he can pretty much figure everything out on his own and he's good to go. With the MOTHER, however, it's a bloody ho-ho nightmare.

Tonight she tried to text message me, and I get one BLANK text message, and 2 duplicates. Then, she wanted to find a good ring tone -- and she's like "I want a Christmas ringtone." Of course, to her dismay, her phone doesn't HAVE any Christmas ringtones. And the price to download ones from the site are ridiculous. She finally did find one she liked on her phone, though.

I don't have work tomorrow either, so I already can see what's going to be happening. Twice an hour I'm going to be getting one of those "How do I..." phone calls. Hopefully, since my mother works as the secretary at my brother's shop, she'll be driving HIM nuts all day long, instead of me.

*Crosses fingers*

The joys of public restroom facilities

I went to the mall yesterday after work to get some gift cards and just generally look around. I was surprised -- there were a lot of people around, but it wasn't the normal insanity that I had expected. (In other words -- there were people everywhere, but they weren't all in my way.)

As soon as I went up to the second floor, my stomach began telling me that lunch wanted out. Nothing new, perfectly normal event there, but I wish it wouldn't tell me in public places all the time. No matter, I quickly found the nearest bathroom -- in Kaufmanns.

Only took me about five minutes or so to...ahem...take care of business, and I was about to stand up when someone came into the bathroom. Now, I dunno if there's anyone else like this, but I'm not one who leaves a stall while someone else is around. (I'm sure women aren't like this -- I get the impression that they're quite social in the bathroom. But with guys, it's not like that, prolly due to the epidemic of homophobia that a lot of guys have.) Anyway, I just prefer not to have an audience as I'm exiting the stall, so I just wait until this guy leaves.

Well, as he's at the urinal, I hear him....."Oh yeah. Oh that's good. Oh yeah.......Oh. Yeah..."

I just keep telling myself, "He just had to piss REALLY bad. Yeah. Just had to piss REALLY bad!"

Ugh.

Where'd ya get that safe?

Right before I left work this afternoon, I read in the news that there was a mini-crime wave in the city -- apparently a few banks were robbed within only a few hours of each other. I found this humorous, but really didn't give it another thought at the time.

Then, about 20 minutes into my drive home, I pass a truck on the freeway that had a safe strapped to the back of it. I just about drove off the road from laughing so hard.

Wha!

So I went to my webdomain control panel to check out my disk space situation, bandwidth usage, etc, since I haven't done it in awhile. Well, I see a little link that says, "Your account has received a free upgrade." Free? I like free. So I click on it to see what exactly they were giving me for free. I had to pick myself up off the floor:

- Disk space increased from 2GB to 20GB
- Monthly bandwidth increased from 100GB to 750GB
- MySQL Databases increased from 10 to 30

Fook!

One disadvantage of a 45 minute work commute...

...when you realize you have to take a piss 5 minutes into the drive home. Gotta love those bladder ruptures.

I hate computers...

Okay, I can handle computer problems that make sense. Those are fine. I'll work them out. What I can't stand is when shit just starts happening for no fucking reason. Case in point:

I was burning some music CD's -- 1 MP3 CD and 1 Audio CD. I burned the MP3 CD first, fine, no problems, done. Then, I clicked on the Create Audio CD button in Nero -- and the program crashed. At this point I was thinking nothing of it, so I clicked the button again. Crashed. I closed the Nero control panel and reopened it, and tried it again. Crashed. I tried a DIFFERENT button, Burn Data CD. Crashed. I tried Burn MP3 CD (THE BUTTON I JUST USED!). Crashed. I rebooted my computer and tried again. Crashed. I reinstalled the Nero and tried again. Crashed. I uninstalled Nero, then reinstalled it, then tried again. Crashed. Then, I used system restore to go back to yesterday evening. Tried again. SUCCESS!

BAH!

I survived!

What an exhausting experience THAT was. I was so fucking tired when I got home, I passed out on my recliner on TWO different occasions over the course of the evening. I'm quite sure that my sleep schedule is now totally FUCKED. (It's 1:10 AM, and I don't see myself falling asleep again any time soon.) Thankfully, I have a day to get myself back on some sort of normal time schedule before I actually have anywhere to go.

I didn't really get much shopping done at all -- I got my Mom's present, and I got a few things for my sister. That's it. LOL! I got myself a Network Storage Server, which I planned on using to set up an FTP server. Sadly, it seems that's an impossiblity for me to do. Apparently, FTP servers are very difficult to setup on an internet connection that is filtered through a router. I followed all the steps, but it still doesn't work. So, I deleted the server. No matter, this Storage Server still solved one of my other problems -- the fact that I couldn't attach anymore hard drives to my computer. Since this external hard drive plugs right into my router, that's now a non-issue and I have this drive mapped to my computer and can use it on my internal network just like a normal hard drive. So I gained 250 GB in space, and can add additional external hard drives to this storage server.

We ate lunch twice while we were shopping (Shopping makes us hungry...), once at Krispy Kremes, and once at Steak 'n Shake. Yeah, we pretty much killed any exercise benefits that running through the stores provide dead in their tracks.

Time to eat again?

I'm full. Very, very, very full. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, gravy, and pie. Lots and lots of pie. Oh, and pumpkin rolls. And I drank enough wine for it to be considered part of the food portions as well. I couldn't leave the dinner table for about an hour after I was done eating, because I simply couldn't move. At all.

In other news, my sister somehow talked me into going shopping with her, her husband, and her husband's brother-in-law tomorrow morning. Black Friday? It'll probably be RED Friday after I go on a killing spree because of all the fucking people in my way.

I love new fallen snow...

It just looks really cool when you're driving home in it, if you can ignore the multiple car wrecks that you have to avoid along the way. I saw 3 today on the way home, one of which was bad enough to require medical attention. But still, the snow looks nice. My favorite part about driving home in the snow is when I'm the first person to be driving on a road that has been snowed on. Because then it's time to mess with people's minds.

As I was driving home on my road, which was covered with new snow and had no tracks on it, I joyfully swerved to and fro both sides of the road, driving like a drunk heroin addict on crack. I wish I could sit somewhere and watch the next few people who drive down the road, seeing my tracks and wondering what crazy son of a bitch had just been through there.

You know you live in the middle of nowhere...

...when migrating birds use your yard as a pit stop.

Today's Sound Byte Part Deux

Enjoy...

Define "day off"...

A day off is when you just finished playing CSS with yourself, and then you go upstairs to find your Dad getting up to go to work, when you yourself haven't gone to sleep yet. Oops.

Nope, don't wanna work...

This day is never going to end. Never! I've died of boredom exactly 56 times already, and it's not even 1:00 PM yet. Not only that, but everyone in this fucking office is getting on my nerves today. (And for "you know who", I said THIS office. The only people in YOUR office that are annoying me is fucking accounting and their "Oh, check the counter on the printer but we don't know where it is." Fuckers.)

So let's see, I guess I should give this post direction.......Okay, I'll share the story about the UPS guy.

Yesterday, we noticed a UPS truck parked at the side of our office for quite some time, right outside the one window near my desk. After about an hour, I looked out and he was still there, sitting in his truck and playing with his cell phone.

So, I went and got a piece of paper, and wrote on it with a sharpie "SHOULDN'T YOU BE WORKING?" and taped it to the window.

Time passes, and we notice he then went into the back of the truck for a while. At this point, we're making jokes that he's back there playing with himself, and I considered changing the sign to read, "YOU'LL GO BLIND FROM THAT!" But I didn't.

Then, a few minutes later, he beeps his horn, and leaves.

One way, or another...

I actually made this video clip a rather nice 640 x 480, so I can't embed it into the blog directly. So click here to view it!

What.....the......?!

There is something horribly, horribly, HORRIBLY wrong with this picture. Can you see what it is?

Oh boy, I was ambitous

Yeah, so I went on a mission to create some inlays today -- I got a whole ONE created. Woo for me! So now I have approximately .0002% of my anime inlayed. At least it's higher than my BT share ratio.

Today's Sound Byte

It's actually way more than a byte, but who cares?

Ride 'em, cowboy

I never liked western movies. They all look the same to me, they all seem to have no plot, and they all are set in a boring landscape where nothing ever seems to happen until the last 30 seconds where two guys shoot at each other in the middle of Dodge City on a hot, sunny day at high noon.

Thus, I wasn't thinking I would enjoy Gun very much, given that it's a western game with all the western trimmings. Well, after playing about 30 minutes of the game, I've discovered that PLAYING a western is a hell of a lot more fun than watching one. I started out very unimpressed -- the first mission consisted of hunting elk in the wild with some old guy named Ned who looked like Burt Reynolds character from Without a Paddle. After we killed a few elk, we then had to shoot the wolves that tried to eat our elk. Be still my beating heart.

After the steamship arrived, things got a whole lot better however. The next 20 minutes contained an attack by savage indians on the ferry, explosions, and gunfights. The steamship was sunk, and I was found on the shore of the river by some really ugly guy with two horses. I horse raced him for one of the horses, but of course two of his buddies showed up and it was a gunfight on horseback. Golden.

After that, I was off to Dodge City. To do what? Why, to visit a whorehouse of course. Oh, I'm so enjoying this game...

Beep, Beep!

I was at the supermarket this morning -- Nestea was on sale and I needed cat litter plus something for dinner. I was with my Mom, and we finished getting everything and checked out. (We ended up with a much more soda than we anticipated, because the sale included a free 8-pack of 12 oz. bottles as well. Gotta love Giant Eagle.)

As I was pushing the shopping cart to our car, someone parked right beside us at that moment. So, I had to go around a few cars to the empty spot behind us so I could access the trunk. It was then I realized that the person who had parked beside us was a very old woman, and at that point I knew we were in for an experience.

I finished loading everything into the trunk of our car and returned the shopping cart to the drop off area. When I got back, I saw the old woman was just starting to get out of her car. Leaving her front door wide open (meaning that my Mom couldn't get in the car because the woman's car door was in the way), the woman went over and got a shopping cart and brought it back to her car. Then, she opened up her BACK door (she now had both of her doors wide open at this point), and began putting a few black garbage bags in the cart, filled with what I would assume were aluminum cans or some other recyclable objects. It was at this point that the old woman turned around and noticed my Mom patiently waiting for her to get out of the way. She said:

"Oh dear, why didn't you just say 'beep beep!' and tell me to get out of the way?"

It took everything I had not to bust out laughing right there in the parking lot.

My bowl runeth over...

Yesterday was a weird night. I was exceptionally tired for some reason, and as a result wandered through the house in a seemingly drug-induced daze. An event that happened right before I took a shower makes me think this was brought about in a divine nature, to prevent a tragedy from occuring. (Okay, not really, but hey it's cool to speculate like a deranged TV Evangelist sometimes.)

I went upstairs to take a shower, and realized that I also had to take a dump. Nothing unusual about that. This dump was an exceptionally masterful dump. In fact, had I realized it was going to become part of a blog worthy story, I would have taken pictures to share with you. Alas, at that moment, I didn't realize it was going to be anything more than just an exceptionally masterful dump.

I flushed the toilet and then started the water in the shower (no, we do not have that problem where flushing the toilet causes water temperature issues in the shower). The toilet flushed and the masterful dump disappeared into the oblivion that is the septic tank, but not all the water went down suggesting that there was a small backup. Nothing out of the ordinary there either, since my dumps (especially the exceptionally masterful ones) do tend to occasionally cause backed up toilets. I intended on just letting it go, since a lot of the times the water does eventually just flush on it's own and everything is peachy. This time, however, since I told you I was in a rather dazed state of sleepiness, I just stood there staring at the toilet for some unknown reason. This proved to be quite the lucky turn of events, because the stopper on the inside of the toilet that goes over the hole (where the water pours out of the tank into the bowl) didn't properly place itself over the hole, and thus the water from the water pipe wasn't filling the tank, it was just running into the toilet bowl itself. This, of course, started to cause an overflow of water onto the floor.

Had I immediately jumped into the shower after flushing the toilet, I wouldn't have realized this for another 10 to 15 minutes, and by then the whole bathroom floor could have had a few inches of water on it, and probably run into the basement (MY ROOM!) as well. Therefore, it was quite fortunate that my brain functions were so degraded from lack of sleep, that I stood there staring blankly at it while this happened.

Acting quickly, I grabbed the plunger and removed the blockage, allowing the water to flush normally. I then removed the lid from the tank and fixed the stopper, and all was well.

The best part was the question I got from my Mom when she got home:

"What happened to the toilet?"
"It overflowed."
"Why?"
"I took a dump."

It's like being naked in public!

There was a nice violent storm yesterday, which blew over trees and destroyed homes. Worst of all, it took down my internet. Oh the humanity!

I called my cable provider, and listened for seriously 15 minutes as they named all the areas that had an outage. Mine of course was one of them. That was 2:00 PM. As of this morning, when I left for work, I still had no internet. However, I have hope: I just called them a few minutes ago, and my city is no longer on the outage list.

I may not have to commit suicide this evening, afterall.

CSS Pwnage

So what happens when two guys who haven't played a co-op counter-strike match in probably a year load up CSS and try to take on 3 bots? This happens:


We got pwned. But not for long -- after about 20 rounds we got in the groove and started BOOM HEADSHOTTING all over the place. It was good times.

Completion Visualzation

Finally complete!

After months of waiting patiently for someone to post them, I have finally completed my X-Files DVD collection. That's right, I have now downloaded all 56 FUCKING DVD's, in completion. Woo!

This stuff better work...

So it's cold season, and I have a cold. Go figure.

There's a new cold medicine on the market called Zicam, which is supposed to "Reduce the duration of the common cold." and "Reduce severity of cold symptoms."

Everyone I have talked to about it says it works, so I figured, what the hell, I'll try it. Turns out this stuff doesn't come in pill form. Here are the choices:

Chewable squares
Oral mist
Nasal spray
Medicated spoons
Mouth swabs

For the daytime doses, I went with the chewable squares, and I have medicated spoons (you stir them into a drink) for nighttime. The chewable squares taste like shit and chalk mixed together. This crap had better work damn good for the agony I just went through in chewing this mini-turd.

Walking on thin.............glass.

The video says it all.

Nazi Blasting -- Taking an age old past time to the next level.

I love World War II games. Unlike many other wars, it was VERY CLEAR who the enemy was. (The short deranged walrus looking Nazi with the funny moustache. Easy to figure out.) Besides that, no war had a more varied scope of battlefields.

As such, I was quite excited when Call of Duty 2 was released. And after playing about an hour of it, I must say that I'm impressed. So far, I have only one complaint -- CHECKPOINT SAVING. OMFG, when the FUCK will game makers realize that checkpoint saving is the gayest, most retarded, most annoying thing EVER?! I want to save my fucking game whenever the fuck I want to save it!

Anyway, with that aside, this game is SOLID. It's war, plain and simple, and you're dropped right smack in the middle of it. The first missions revolve around the defense of Stalingrad, so you're playing a Soviet rifleman. There were points in the firefights where I actually felt as though me and my squad were going to lose. It was THAT insane. My favorite part was being holed up in a trench, and watching five German panzer tanks roll across the gap right above my head. Golden!

I walk the streets of Japan till I get lost, cause it doesn't remind me of anything.

So I was in Kmart today, due to the fact that they had kitty litter on sale and I needed some. While I was there I got a few things I needed in preparation for the big party, such as snacks to soak up the alcohol in my stomach, and cleaning supplies for when I start cleaning this place up tonight. After almost running three people over in the parking lot because they pissed my off, I finally get inside and get my items. In the checkout, there's one person in front of me. A woman. With a showercap on her head. It was then that I knew I was in trouble.

The cashier had to tell the woman five times what her total was. And even then, the woman had to look at the little digital display thing. And, of course, she was paying by check. Which, as I'm sure everyone knows, is the fucking SLOWEST way to pay. (You wait for the total, you write out the check, you give it to the cashier, they study the check, they ask for your phone number, they write something on the check, they ask for your driver's license, they put the check in the machine, they wait until the machine prints something on the check, they wait for the receipt to print, they hand said receipt to customer. Shoot me now.) After this was finally over with, the woman puts her bag in her cart, (a bag that had one item in it, an item smaller than a bottle of shampoo. You need to CART this to your car?!). She then starts pulling the cart out of the checkout lane. It snags on a box sitting on the next counter. She tugs and tugs. My hands are full, but I place my 20 lb. container of kitty litter on the floor, and move the box. No thanks. No smile. Only a look of dissent as she quickly leaves the store. 14 seconds later, I'm scanned, paid, and bagged. And I had 15x the items she had.

Gotta love debit cards.


What I'm Listening To: Doesn't Remind Me by Audioslave
What I'm Playing: Counter-Strike Source
What I'm Watching: Looney Tunes

Two more days until the "Weekend of the Drunk"

For me, this weekend marks the official start to the Drunken Season, the time of year where there are lots of parties and gatherings happening in my life, which are nothing more than an excuse to get shitfaced. (A.K.A. the level beyond SSJ Drunk.)

So this weekend starts it all, with the Halloween thing going on, and of course my sister's birthday. It's my duty to get her drunk. (And the quicker the better, so than I can work on getting *me* drunk.) So Friday night it's off to the liquor store to get three bottles of my lovely beverages. Bailey's (for my sister), Captain Morgan's (for me), and Rum Island Iced Tea (for EVERYONE).

Thankfully, I have Monday off (again), so I don't have to sober up anytime soon either. Glorious.



What I'm Listening To: Rip Out the Wings of a Butterfly by H.I.M.

Organization!

After burning Full Metal Panic TSR, I had to, of course, search through the bazillion discs of anime currently residing on my shelf to find the original Full Metal Panic and Fumoffu so I could put them all together all nice like. Searching for it pissed me off to the point where I decided to alphabetize all the completed anime that I have. A few hours later, it was done and here's the result. (Editor's note: It looks the same as it did before, except now there are two LABELS to tell everyone that it's in order now!)



There's still the matter of all the incomplete anime that I have sitting in a pile waiting for the bloody show to end. (Or waiting for the damned fansubbers to hurry up and finish subbing it.) That pile is growing. (Stupid Naruto and One Piece)

Can you hear me now? Huh? What? WTF?!

Using the voice command feature in Counter-Strike is like talking to someone with two tin cans and a string. I know it's not my microphone, because when I record something with Sound Recorder in windows, there is almost NO background noise at all. Yet, when I test my microphone in Counter-Strike, I can hardly hear what I'm saying. I have no idea if that's how people are hearing me on the other end or not, but it's kind of annoying. They shouldn't even include the feature if it's not going to work right. Grr!

Oh, and I also know my microphone isn't that bad on Yahoo Messenger, because I was using that new Call feature the other day, and the person I was talking to didn't have a headset, thus I could hear my voice through their microphone after I said something, and there wasn't that much background noise, considering how many devices it had to be filtered through in order to get back to me.

Tonight's show, broadcast with fewer commercials, is brought to you by Philips...

I don't watch TV. I'm just pointing that out in case you've been living under a rock for as long as you've known me. The only time I watch TV is when I happen to turn off my DVD player and there's something there that immediately catches my interest.

Tonight, after I finished watching a DVD, the show "60 Minutes" was just starting as I turned the player off. This usually causes me to turn the TV off even faster than I normally would, but the introduction perked my interest, but not because of the acutal content of the show. (Well, except maybe when someone mentioned sex, but it was a momentary thing...)

Mike Wallace said, "Tonight's special broadcast of '60 Minutes' is brought to you with fewer commercials, so we may spend more time on each of tonight's stories."

It was at that point that I said, "Oh yeah, this I gotta see."

Immediately after he was done speaking, a big Philips logo came on the screen, saying, "Tonight's "reduced commercial" 60 Minutes is brought to you by Philips." Then, they went to commercial, and proceeded to show 3 different Philips commericals in a row. Given, this was less commerical time than normal, but by the time they were done I was so sick of the Philips jingle that I was begging for a Geico or Capital One commercial.

But sadly, those commercials were better than the show. I quickly turned off the TV when it came back on.

On another note, this is the first non-gaming post in about 8 posts. Don't worry, gaming will be back later this week, since Call of Duty 2 comes out on Thursday. Oh, yes.

What I'm Playing: Quake 4 Multi-Play
What I'm Watching: The Terminator, Reservoir Dogs
What I'm Listening To: Feel Good Inc. by The Gorillaz

I'm Quaking in my.......grey shirt.....

Took me 8 hours to beat the game. I never fired so much ammunition in all my life!!

Feeling ignored? Pick up the shiny yellow object!

I just finished giving F.E.A.R.'s multi-player aspect a whirl. At first glance, there's not much there that is any different than any other multi-player portion of a game -- you've got Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag games, with various maps for each.

But then I noticed something: Slo-Mo Deathmatch. Nani?!

Oh yes, you can use bullet time in multi-player. As if that, in itself, wasn't glorious enough -- the way they incorporated it into the game is rather ingenious. (Not to mention extremely fair.)

Get this: You go into a Slo-Mo Deathmatch game with 8 players. You all spawn into a different area of the map with your weapon. Somewhere in the level, there is the yellow injector that will give you the slo-mo ability. You just have to find it, and get it before someone else does. The game even points you in the right direction, with an arrow telling you in which direction it is, and how far away from it you are.

Then you pick it up, and wait for it to charge so you can use it. The catch? Everyone else in the game now knows where you are, and that you have it. And they're coming to take it from you. When you pick up the slo-mo injector, the game automatically tells everyone else in the game, and gives them an arrow telling them where you are and how far away from you they are. It's a great device that makes it so the slo-mo isn't an unfair advantage -- it's a risk. When you pick it up, you have no idea if it will completely charge before anyone reaches you. Brilliance. At times, I found myself reluctant to go find it, and simply settled on my own skills to kill the enemies. But once I got brave enough, I went after it, killed the person who had it, and took it. And let me tell you -- if you ever feel neglected in a multi-player game, and feel as though no one is paying any attention to you -- just go grab the slo-mo injector. Then EVERYONE will be paying attention to you. In other words, everyone in the game is then HUNTING YOU DOWN.

But I soon found it worth the risk. Huddled in a corner waiting for it to charge, someone threw a grenade at me. I ran out into the open as the guy leaped in a karate kick to take my head off, but at that moment my slo-mo was completely charged. I activated it, and watched as the entire world slowed down around me, including Mr. Karate Kick in mid-air. I then blasted him in the head and went hunting for more prey. Resplendent!

10 hours later, and it is done

What a ride! F.E.A.R. is now situated at #2 on my All-Time Greatest Games list, below only Half-Life 2.

This game played exactly like an action-horror movie, and I felt as though I was changing the outcome of the "movie" with every step I took. The ending was brilliant, and different. There was no token "boss battle" at the end where you've got the biggest gun in the game and you have to kill the last bad guy. Nope. They totally went in a different direction, an ending that's really never been done in a game before, but has been used in horror movies many, many times.

I will be sorely disappointed if they don't make a sequel. I demand it!

PD says: 98%

A Better Best Buy

So, after work today I headed to Best Buy to purchase two new games -- F.E.A.R. and Quake 4. First off, allow me to state how much I *despise* the Beaver Valley Mall. It's fucking impossible to get from point a to point b. (Reminds me of the whole city of Pittsburgh, actually.)

ANYway, I get to Best Buy and start cruising around the store for my games. I find F.E.A.R. right away, and soon thereafter I find Quake 4, however both are the CD-ROM versions of the game, not the special edition DVD versions. I look around a bit more, and can't find the ones I want, so I ask some girlie. She's like, "Hmm, I do believe we have them. Let me check in the back for you." I was wanting to follow her to "the back", but I was on a mission and couldn't afford any distractions. A minute later she reappears with my gaming goodness, and I then ask her to direct me towards the PC Gaming headsets, which she does. (I'm impressed. She knew where TWO things were in store. Must be a pro.) I choose the headset of my choice, and frolic over to the checkout.

The girlie behind the counter disables the magnetic security strips on my items, scans them, and puts them in a bag. She gives me my total, and as I swipe my debit card, I'm thinking to myself, "Gee, that price seems awfully low."

But, I didn't say anything, and instead finished my transaction, and left. When I got home, I read over my receipt, and lo and behold, the girlie didn't scan one of the games! I got Quake 4 for FREE! This is better than downloading!!!

When the folks got home, I told them my awesome story. My Dad says, "Are you sure you can live with that on your conscience?"

To which I replied, "Well, I'm certainly not having any difficulties with it so far, and I don't see any in the foreseeable future."

Mwa-hahahahaha.

There's nothing to fear, but F.E.A.R. itself

It's HERE! Finally! I've been waiting for this game since I finished Half-Life 2 the first time, and I'm finally playing it. One hour in, and it's fucking brilliant. It's got it all -- great story, awesome graphics, great gameplay, BRILLIANT artificial intelligence. The AI is really impressing me at the moment. Case in point -- I just offed one of the bad guys, and one of the remaining grunts radioed "I need assistance!", and then said, "Flank him!" and they proceeded to sneak up from behind me. Brilliant! I actually feel like I'm PART of the game, and that my actions are changing the outcome. It's good stuff.

It's also one of the creepiest games I've played since The Suffering last year. My character is plagued with macabre visions, very unpleasant stuff. And don't even get me started on the horror moppet. I think I now have a permanent fear of little girls.

Anything But Serious

8 hours, 28 minutes, and 3 seconds. That's how long it took me to beat Serious Sam 2, over the course of three days. Actually, it was probably closer to 10 hours, because I had to completely replay two levels, but no matter. That's close enough.

Now it's time for PD's Gaming Review. We'll go through each area of a game that is important to me.

Graphics: This game is powered by the new Serious Engine 2, a completely upgraded version of the Serious Engine, which powered the first two Serious Sam games. This engine does not render realistic graphics, they are borderline cartoonish in nature, but they look brilliant. The colors are vivid, and the models are sharp and crisp. All in all, it's very pretty to look at, especially when you are looking at something HUGE on the screen, or looking at landscape from miles away. (Long shots are it's strength.) Also, I noticed that the dark scenes on the volcanic Kleer planet looked the best, so perhaps that is the engine's specialty. I also noticed that every cut-scene in the game was either blurry or grainy -- I'm guessing they used some external rendering program to do them, and it really murdered the quality. (Not the first time I've seen that happen. Painkiller, Red Faction, and Star Wars Jedi Academy come to mind.)

Story: Well, there really isn't much of a story, but that's okay since story isn't why you play a shooter like this. This game picks up right where the first one left off -- Sam started the first game going back in time to try and stop an evil alien overlord known as Mental. The first one took place in ancient Egypt, and the second one continued the "back in time" trend in South America and other places. Serious Sam 2 abandons the time travelling aspect of the game, and instead has Sam teleporting from planet to planet across the universe, collecting pieces of a medallion that will enable him to kick Mental's ass.. It all comes to an end with an epic battle against the Mental Institution on Mental's home planet of Sirius. What carries this game along are Sam's antics in the game, normally transmitted through cut-scenes. A lot of his dialogue and actions are so stupid they're hilarious, with him uttering such lines as "Woo! Now I can really do some gang-banging." and "Finally! Some sci-fi mumbo jumbo." It seems the developers knew this was one of the big draws of the game, and they sapped it for everything it's worth, and beyond. Sam talks a bit TOO much in places, and some of his dialogue is just downright stupid. (Such as the cut-scene where he's banging two bones together, yelling, "Kleers! Come out to play!" NINE TIMES. But sometimes, it's hilarious, like when Sam hooks up with a princess of one of the planets. And the party at a native village where Sam gets sloshed. Golden!

Gameplay: Croteam was obviously listening when their last Serious Sam game was reviewed, particular to the part where everyone said, "More of just mindless running and gunning." Don't get me wrong, there's still LOTS of running and gunning in this game. (And I *LOVE* running and gunning!) However, the developers also threw in lots of other tasks to keep us busy. The biggest addition were the tons of vehicles that Sam can now drive. All of these were just so much fun, they had me squealing like an orgasmic warthog. I particularly enjoyed the mid-air battle late in the game against at least 200 enemy planes. Another innovation was the Reality TV show from Hell when we first land on Sirius. Sam is dropped into a Mental version of The Amazing Race where he must endure three days of challenges, such as running through a jungle obstacle course, needing to pass through checkpoints before a certain amount of time so the necklace around his head doesn't blow his head off, and the track challenge where he gets inside a gigantic ball and jumps through flaming hoops (all the while destroying HORDES of Mental's forces.)

Artificial Intelligence: It's a bit better than it was in the first two games, but it's nowhere on par with games like Doom 3 or Half-Life 2. Some of the newer enemies, such as the Footballer, actually run for cover and hide before attacking, rather than just running at you head first. The Kleers and Werebulls zigzag their way towards you know, instead of running in a straight line. And the new enemy helicopters will actually dodge your slower moving weapons, such as the rocket launcher. But most of it is more of the same, but like I said, I'm not complaining about that.

Bottom line: Croteam went in a different direction on this one, aiming for the humorous, or downright absurd. For the most part, it works, and the result is a very enjoyable shooter for people who are looking for a change from the story-driven, uber realistic shooters that have been coming out over the past few years.

PD says 82%.

Sam I Am

There's really no point in me talking about it, because I'm too fucking giddy to form sentences.

The Calm Before The.............Weekend

Oh yes, it's coming, it's coming! (That's what SHE said.)

No, really, I'm talking about the WEEKEND. Oh yes. And not just any weekend. Oh no. This weekend is SPECIAL, and in more ways than one. First off, I have a three-day weekend. Nothing says "Fuck off place I work!" than a nice three-day weekend. To make things even better, this is just the first one of THREE in a row! (She also said that.) That's right -- it's a fucking trilogy of trilogy weekends! Woo!

Now, this is ALSO the start of the uber-gaming season. Gotta love when the holidays are on the way -- that's when all the GOOD games come out. After work tomorrow, I'm stopping at Media Play and picking up three titles: Bet On Soldier, The Suffering: Ties That Bind, and Serious Sam II. I'm creaming my jeans as I speak. (And yes, I'm going to BUY these games. Because I already know they will rock.)

I really have no idea how I'm going to calm myself down to the point where I'll be able to go to sleep tonight...


What I'm Listening To: Every You Every Me by Placebo
What I'm Watching: The X-Files Season 5
What I'm Playing: Counter-Strike: Source

It's a big ad. Very big ad.

http://gprime.net/video.php/bigad

I Kill You.........................in CS

Ahhhh, Counter-Strike. The staple for online gamers. How I've missed thee.

So after watching these videos that CM sent me about CS, it got me wanting to play it again. So I loaded up my Counter-Strike Source to give it a whirl. Now, given the fact that I haven't played CS in well over a year, I decided I would just create my own server and play with a bot. (Yes, you may all start the "He was playing with himself!" jokes now. Har har har.)

After getting blasted by the bot and left whimpering in my chair three straight times (on EASY no less), I finally got my game on and whooped some ass. Now my skills are honed once again, and I'm ready to kill (and be killed by...) some REAL opponents.

McDonald's has a Monopoly...

No, they're not the next Microsoft Corp. I'm talking about the GAME. Yep, the monopoly game is back at Mickey Dees, everyone's favorite peel and win contest. We've now adjusted our lunch schedules at work to include McDonald's 2 or 3 times a week now, in the sad and slim-to-none hope that we'll actually win something. (Like money. Money is always nice. Or the Dodge Viper, which we will sell on eBay for money.)

So I was at McDonald's today, and had just ordered my food. There was this guy standing beside me, who had already ordered. He was probably somewhere in his mid-50's. He suddenly starts talking to me about his Monopoly pieces. This was a suprise in itself, considering that perfect strangers normally don't just start talking to me casually. (Perhaps I'm intimidating in some way, or maybe I just look mean. Or deranged. Yeah, I'll go with deranged.) So, because he WAS making conversation with me, I realized that there was clearly something wrong with him. He says, "Look, I got Boardwalk. Now all I need is......what's that other one......?" Assuming he was asking me for the answer, I simply repled, "Park Place." "YES, that's it! Park Place!" Then, he looks at the other game piece he got, and it was for a free small soft drink. He was all excited about this too. He had already used one of those on a free small fry, and the game piece states, "Limit one per visit."

I saw the question coming a mile away. I knew it was going to happen. I braced myself as he turned to the gal behind the counter, and said, "This counts as a visit?"

THANKFULLY, my food arrived at that moment, and I ran away as fast as I could.



What I'm Listening To: All of This by Blink 182
What I'm Watching: Bleach 52-53 (For crying out loud, Ichigo, BANKAI ALREADY!)

2001........no, not the damn Space Odyssey

After adding the newest John Lennon compiliation tracks to my MP3 player, I have passed the 2000 mark in regards to individual songs. I've discovered that this lies somewhere right smack in the middle of the normal music lover and the hardcore music lover, because when someone asks me how many MP3's I have, and I tell them, they either go, "Whoa!", or "Is that all?". So I guess that means I'm an "above-average" music listener.



What I'm Listening To: Stand By Me by John Lennon
What I'm Watching: The X-Files Season 4

Damn, 3 Posts In One Day

I should consolidate or something. No matter, this is fucking hilarious!

http://gprime.net/video.php/peugeotstyle


What I'm Listening to: Shinedown - Save Me
What I'm Watching: George Romero's Land of the Dead

Worst Phrase Ever!

"man i really really need a girlfriend... too much dudage.. not enough girlage. "

For the love of God, that's not something you admit in public!

Tone

I've always been aware of the fact that it is very difficult to sense tone when just reading text. This is most apparent in email and instant messenging, where the whole point of the text is to talk to another person. Often, something that you type out can be taken differently by other people, simply because the other person doesn't know the tone in which are are saying said phrase.

I've also found this problem in another place -- subtitles.

Case in point: I was watching an episode of Tsubasa Chronicle, and there was a scene where Fye and Kurogane were fighting a goblin. The goblin hit Fye in the leg, injuring him, and Kurogane took them out. After the battle, Fye is on the ground, leaning up against a brick wall, and says:

"Well, I won't die from it."

And Kurogane turns and replied:

"It's not that you won't die from it. It's that you can't die from it."

The first time I watched it, I was puzzled, because I had taken it to mean that Kurogane was implying that Fye could not be killed. The guy is a magician afterall, so maybe he had some way of becoming immortal. But then, after watching it again, I realized what, exactly, Kurogane meant.

He was simply saying that Fye had the wrong attitude. Kurogane thought Fye should have said, "Well, I can't die from it.", meaning that he refuses to die before he accomplishes his mission. Kurogane then says he hates anyone who takes their own life for granted, after which Fye replied, "Then you must hate me most of all."

Silence...

Yeah, not much worth writing about lately. That happens every once in a while -- I find myself sinking into a pattern of predictability and must start doing things to lift myself out of it. No matter, soon I'll have some interesting new games to talk about.

Today was such a relaxing day -- I really need one too. I didn't really announce to the world that I was awake until about noon -- I just laid around and watched some movies for a while. Then, I went outside and did some more work on the new court. (If I get done what I want to get done tomorrow, I'll be posting another picture.)

After that, it was more vegetating in front of the TV. I got Season 1 Disc 1 of Quantum Leap today, so I watched that. I forgot how much I really loved that show. I sure hope they keep posting these discs. Else, I might actually have to go out and buy them! After I was done with that, I turned off my DVD player and there was a college football game on. Normally, I don't watch football, but I was too lazy to change the channel, let alone move myself. I watched about a half a quarter of the game -- Alabama vs. Florida. Then, someone on the Alabama team got hurt. When they showed the replay *I* was even cringing. He jumped up for the ball, and landed in such a way that his ankle was bent completely up against his leg. That ankle HAS to be broken. It was just dangling there when they put him on the stretcher. Yikes!

That's all for now...

Fore!

Of all the games I could have gotten addicted to next, I never would have guessed it would be Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006. I'm so hooked.

I'm sure once I start sucking, I'll be throwing things around and cussing this game out in every way imaginable, but until then, I'm going to enjoy kicking ass.

What I'm listening to: Blink 182 - Down
What I'm Playing: DUH!
What I'm Watching: Flight Plan

Owie!

Tip of the day: When stamping limstone sand, wear gloves. I have two blisters on each of my hands now, one of which I ripped the flesh off of before I even realized I had a blister. Ouch.

On a completely different note, I'm going to start adding something at the end of each entry I make. (If I remember each time.) It'll be "What I'm Listening To", "What I'm Watching", and "What I'm Playing". I'll start doing it on this post. (Of course, if the particular content doesn't change from one post to the next, I won't post about it again until I switch to something new.)

What I'm Listening To: Move Along by The All-American Rejects
What I'm Watching: Just caught up on Tsubasa Chronicle
What I'm Playing: Just finished Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 Defeated

Even though the game raises more questions than answers, it was quite satisfying sending Dr. Breen plummeting to his death as he was about to teleport off of Earth to the Xen universe. Bastard had it coming. I'll give the story writers credit: The end of the game leaves you BEGGING for Half-Life 3. Well, we're not going to get Half-Life 3. Instead, I think we're getting something even better: more Half-Life 2. Valve is planning on releasing episodic add-ons to HL2, in the form of 6-hour playtime games that will be distributed via Steam. The first such episode, Half-Life 2: Aftermath, is set to be released very soon. (I'm hoping this Fall.) I can't wait!

And, from what I've read, there's going to be a lot more Alyx in it. I hope there's a lot more Dog too, I love that robot.

Stage Three

We got the frames in the ground and lined up, and we've laid down the landscaper's cloth.

Artificial Intelligence

As I was playing Half-Life 2 last night, I realized just how smart the AI in this game is.

I was in narrow train yard. All was quiet, except for the two headcrabs that I just blasted as I stepped out of the mine leading from Ravenholm. At random points through the trainyard, there are these covered walkways stretching widthways across the yard. As I walked underneath the first one, I could see the laser sight of a sniper rifle, and I knew there was a sniper perched above me. I crept out until I could see the opening, and lobbed a grenade into it. This was followed by the sniper yelling, "Oh shit!", an explosion, and his body flying out of the hole and crashing to the ground at my feet. Glorious.

The next overpass was a few hundred yards down from the first, and the sniper in this one had a clear view of me for most of that distance. Not a good situation. I crawled underneath the train car in the center, and crouched near the far end of it, just barely out of the sniper's sights. I looked to my right, and I could see a row of wooden crates leading up to a walkway filled with goodies -- ammunition, health kits, etc. As I was about to dash across the yard using the crates as cover, the sniper did something that I would have never expected. He SHOT each one of the wooden crates, breaking them into millions of pieces, thereby leaving me stranded in the middle of the yard with no where to go. A very impressive and HUMAN manuever for an AI bot to accomplish.

But, I refuse to be defeated by a mere bot. First, I used the gravity gun to snatch the ammo and health kits off the walkway that was now unreachable to me. (Unless I wanted several bullet holes in my digital head). Then, I noticed that two if the now destroyed crates had been sitting on a large metal cart. Using the gravity gun again, I pulled the cart towards me, then tipped it over on its side. I then picked it up and used it as a shield as I casually walked across the yard with the sniper's bullets bouncing ineffectively off its metal bottom. I was soon out of the sniper's range, and was able to lob another grenade, and I watched with morbid delight as the fool was blasted from his foxhole and landed in a bloody mess in the middle of the yard. Ahh, victory.

Don't Touch That Dial!

Life with central air conditioning has been a beautiful thing so far. I really don't know how I survived without it. But, today, a problem arose. Not a mechanical problem, there's nothing wrong with the system. It's more of a human problem.

I was down here in my "studio apartment" (I really like that term), and my Dad comes down and says, "Hey, it's getting cooler outside. I think we should turn the air conditioner off, at least just for a day to see how it goes." And I say, "Sure, fine."

About two hours later, I'm summoned upstairs by my Mom, who exclaims, "Did your father turn the air conditioner off?" And I says, "Yep."

The next question was so obvious she didn't even have to say it, "Why?!"
And I say, "To see how it goes."
"It was 85 today!"
"Actually, the high was 81" (She didn't like that response)

So, I turned and walked away, going back downstairs to ration food and supplies for the war I knew was going to breakout.

Several minutes later, Dad comes down to get something out of the dryer, and says, "Your mother is up there complaining about how hot it is." (It was only 76 in the house after the A/C was turned off, mind you.)

I'm sure if it's 81 degrees again tomorrow, it will indeed be too hot in the house. And if it was me in charge of the thermostat, I would probably just turn it up rather than shutting it off completely. But, I'm not touching the damn thing! Leave me out of this!

Lining Stuff Up Sucks

It's probably for the best that I'm not an architect, engineer, or construction worker. I hate squaring things up. Especially things that I can't physically square, and must use measurements to do so. I am, of course, referring to lining up two opposite ends of a horseshoe court. I never knew it could be such a pain in the ass.

I'm still not sure the two frames are square with each other. They kind of look square. I measured both diagonals, and they are only a quarter of an inch off. That means they are basically square, or so I've been told. It then occured to me that I was trying to find one side of a right triangle. So I measured the width of the frames, and figured out how long the entire thing should be if 40' was in the center of the boxes as it should be. I squared both of these, added them together, and took the square root of the result to get 44', which is what the diagonal measurement should logically be. It's 43'11". Close enough, I'm not concerned with an inch.

So, measurement wise, they should be square. So why am I still here thinking about it? Because when I look at them, they don't look EXACTLY square. I know I should trust the measurements more than my own eyes, since the contours of the ground could easily throw the perspective off, but it still bothers me that I can't PHYSICALLY check to see if they are indeed square with each other. (I would need a laser to do it, and I'm not paying $1000 for a laser level)

If anyone ever mentions how easy it is to install a horseshoe court by driving two stakes in the yard, I'm going to shove a horseshoe peg up their ass sideways.

It's Like Homecoming!

I haven't played Half-Life 2 in a long time. Obviously, it's been way too long, because playing it tonight reminded me just how much every other game in the world SUCKS in comparison. And I'm not just talking about the graphics. (Even though they are very, very, VERY pretty.) As a whole, it's just so damn superior to anything else out there right now. It's a SMART shooter. You actually have to think while playing, not just run around shooting everything that moves. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) The surround sound is godly, the voice acting is Hollywood quality, and the story is involved and intriguing. Oh, and I can't forget to mention the physics. BRILLIANCE. Enemies lurch around when hit, and fall realistically with exceptional ragdoll effects. And the graphics. My GOD! When I loaded up the first level, I just sat there and stared at it. (This always happens when I start playing it again.) It's not just that the graphics are vivid and sharp -- it's that they are so damned REALISTIC. Perhaps the best way to showcase the graphics is from a rooftop in City 17.


I'm now totally hyped up for Half-Life 2: Aftermath. Bring it, G-Man!

Hispanic Shooting Range

Incredibly racist and politically incorrect, but HILARIOUS!!!

http://www.pastatdude.com/blog/hispanic.wmv

Isn't This Obvious?

Okay, you know how they sell those CD/DVD laser eye cleaners in stores? Yeah, the ones that have the bristles on them, and you put the disk in your CD or DVD player/drive and it cleans the laser inside.

Can someone tell me why they just don't install a button on a DVD player that you press, and have the player itself clean the laser eye?? Wouldn't that just make sense?

You Can't Get There From Here

Pittsburgh is becoming one big pain in the ass when it comes to transporting yourself from one place to another. (I mean WORSE than it already is.)

I hit construction as I pass the Pittsburgh International Airport. And apparently that's going to get a lot worse very soon, because I've heard their going to just CLOSE the the six-lane highway. Completely. Just CLOSE it. No one going north OR south. WTF?! How the FUCK do you get permission to close THE main thoroughfare into a city????

Then, because of all the detours, they're going to restrict the traffic on the ONLY road leading to my office. No left turns. At all. Huh??

I hate PennDOT.

Progress

So it's been about 2.547 months since I decided I was going to build myself a new horseshoe court. Progress has been slow, mostly because the first stage of construction involved asking a favor of a friend who possessed the equipment needed to clear and level the ground. Therefore, I was then on THEIR time, and had to wait until they were able to do it. Well, finally, that part of the project is done, so now it's all back in MY hands now.

First, a picture of the area at the beginning:
Lots of weeds and crap. Now, STAGE 1:

Much better. Today I went out and raked the rocks out. Next step is laying the frames in the ground and putting landscapers cloth down. First, however, I have to get 12 more corner brackets for the frames, and some WoodLife to treat the wood so it doesn't rot away quickly. I'll get these tomorrow on my way home from work, and tomorrow night I plan on attaching the brackets to the frame and treating the wood.

My Dad will be getting the landscapers cloth for me from where he works, so I hope to have that before the weekend.

Ranking 8.7 on the Gross-O-Meter

I came home from work today, parked my car, got out and walked towards my porch. When I got to the sidewalk in front of the porch, I felt a squishing sensation, and reluctantly looked down at my foot to see what it was that I had stepped on. Seeing nothing on the bottom of my foot, I continued on my way, only to once again feel this odd squishing sensation. I looked again, and to my horror I saw the source of the discomfort. Somehow, as I was walking towards my house, a caterpillar fell from a nearby tree and landed IN BETWEEN my sandal and my foot. Thus, when I took the next step in my stride towards the house, it was then ground up into a congealment of green goo UNDERNEATH my foot. Not on the bottom of my sandal, mind you. ON THE BOTTOM OF MY FOOT!

UGH!

Curse You Blogger! *shakes chibi fist*

So at 5:58 PM, I start typing a new post in my blog -- probably the post you will read right above this one, that is if I decide to RETYPE it. I finish the entry at 6:02 PM, and click publish. I then get taken to a page that says that Blogger will be down for maintenance from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM. And my post disappeared into oblivion.


GRRRRRRRRRRR!!

New Gas Gauge

PD's Convo of the Day

PaStatDude (7:29:55 PM): dood, it's a FUCKING pain in the ass converting PAL to NTSC
VAmusclemn (7:30:30 PM): just a little bit
PaStatDude (7:30:51 PM): and of course
PaStatDude (7:30:58 PM): every DVD you can download on the internet is fucking PAL
VAmusclemn (7:31:34 PM): well duh everywhere else gets shit first
PaStatDude (7:32:39 PM): it's not that -- it's that it's easier to pirate them everywhere else
VAmusclemn (7:33:19 PM): lol
VAmusclemn (7:33:29 PM): well maybe you should start paying for them
PaStatDude (7:33:43 PM): asshole

Bored At Work!

This is awful. I'm so bored here at work that I've resorted to writing about abosolutely nothing in my blog. Clipping binder clips onto Special Ed has finally lost it's entertainment value, and I've played EVERY SINGLE online game known to man. If this keeps up, I'm going to start bringing something to do from home so I don't go out of my mind. It's amazing: I sit here at work and the minutes seem like hours. When I get home, the hours seem like minutes. Hey, Einstein, THERE'S your explanation of relativity!

In This Case, I'm Happy To Be Wrong

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/02/katrina.world/index.html

My Attempt at Quarters

Before watching this video, watch the video in the post below this one so you're understanding what's going on. Then watch this.

Got Change For A Dollar?

This is quite possibly the most amazing video I've ever seen.

JOYGASM!

I'm a stats oriented person, and have a constant urge to calculate things. Therefore, the tracking feature that I have installed on my webpage provides me with hours of quality entertainment, because I can see what pages people are hitting, how often they are hitting them, how long they are staying, where they are coming from, and how they found my site.

The way it works is that there is a simple script inside the HTML coding on each and every page of my site which the main counter site uses to track my pages. Then, when I log into their website and go to my control panel, and can see all the stats.

Well, the website recently overhauled their site, and one very important button no longer existed. It was the page that listed the total hits for each of my pages. The absence of this button thus made it impossible for me to ever update the "Visitor's Top 25" page. Ever. Oh the horror! The humanity!

But I didn't lose hope. I didn't give up. I kept checking the site everyday in the hopes that one day, my magical stats button would return. And lo! Behold! Tonight, it is back, and all is right with the world. Ahhhh, beautiful, beautiful numbers.......

Gee, Thanks for the Assist

Normally, I avoid talking about anything that remotely resembles politics or foreign policy, mostly because no one is ever right and it's impossible to win an argument. But there's something I gotta get off my chest...

When the Tsunami hit Asia, America sent thousands of troops and millions of dollars to the stricken areas to help them get their lives back together. When floods hit the Dominican Republic, we sent millions of dollars in aid and relief services. When Madrid was blasted by a terrorist's bomb, we offered help, even though Spain pulled out of the reconstruction effort in Iraq. We hold no grudges. When London was hit with its worst attack since WWII, we offered aid and assistance in bringing those responsible to justice.

Hurricane Katrina just caused over 10 BILLION dollars of damage in the Gulf, and over 1,000 people could be dead. Not one foreign nation has offered America help or aid. Not one. I even did a SEARCH on Google News for stories regarding it, just in case it wasn't something that was on the headlines. I got zero results.

This isn't about whether or not you hate our current leader. This isn't about whether or not you agree with our foreign policy. This isn't even about whether or not you like us. This is about helping people whose lives have just been torn apart by a natural disaster. Everything else is trivial at this point.

So, I just want to say thanks for returning the favors we've given all of you over the past 200 years. We'll make due just fine on our own....

Siberia! Brrrr....

There's one thing I learned very quickly when it comes to central air conditioning. Don't take naps! No, seriously, you'll regret it for the rest of the day. I was sitting in my recliner early this afternoon, watching Return of the King (extended edition of course), and naturally I dozed off. When I woke up again, I was damn near shivering from being so damn cold. My ears and nose had that "I'm colder than the rest of your body. Mwa-hahahaha." thing going on, and my feet were getting there as well. The house wasn't any colder than it was before I fell asleep, of course. It was just the fact that not moving at all for that amount of time, and the general sensitivities a body has when it's in a state of relaxation related to sleep makes a person much more susceptible to temperatures. And it takes you a HELL of a long time to warm back up!

A Whole New Level of Piracy

As many of you already know, I've been working on getting the complete 9 seasons of The X-Files on DVD. I'm over half-way done now, and thankfully the disks seem to be appearing on Giganews in order now, so hopefully they will continue in that manner, and I can get them ALL. Woo!

Anyway, with one of the disks that I downloaded, there was a package of DVD boxset cover images. Amazingly enough, they are made to slip into the plastic sleeve around the 8-disc plastic DVD cases that I recently bought on eBay. *GASP!* So, one day over the weekend, I printed one of them out to see how it looked. Sadly, letter sized paper isn't long enough for the covers. (For all of you out there who just screamed "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID", you can kiss my white ass.)

I then went on a search to find 37 lb legal sized paper. Sadly, I don't think it exists in nature. (Or in any office store, for that matter. Definitely not in any office store.) I had to settle for A3 sized HEAVYWEIGHT matte paper. It's a bit thicker than what I wanted (oh SHUT UP already!), but it's perfectly usable. But for those of you unfamiliar with what, exactly, A3 sized paper is, allow me to spell it out: 11.7" x 16.5"

Yeah, that doesn't fit in my printer. LOL!

The solution? Elementary, my dear readers. I simply cut the paper down to legal size before I put it in the printer. Madness you say? Well, just check out the results:




Why, yes, yes I did buy these in a store! Certainly! Would I lie??