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??

I want a trunk midget!

Hilarious!

Price of gas getting to be too much for you?

*blinks* Where am I again?

I haven't logged this much time into a game since........well.........since Half-Life 2. I'm totally engrossed, and it's started to take it's toll. My eyes are screaming in agony, my ass is numb, I can't feel my legs, every joint in my right hand aches, and my neck has more crinks than a fat man on a treadmill. And yes, I'm loving every second of it. I've never, ever been a fan of RPGs. They always bored me to tears to the point where I wanted to rip the game out of my computer and bury it in the backyard, never to be seen again.

This game, however, is quite different. You cannot walk more than a few yards without getting attacked by SOMETHING, whether it's a witch doctor, a ghost, a gigantic scorpion, a troll, or any other of the thousands of creatures inhabiting the world in which you're traversing. It's MAYHEM. And that's exactly what I like!

And so my journey through this vast universe continues. I'm currently a level 16 Marksman, with a level 14 rank in archery. The goal by the end of the weekend is level 20. Considering how fucking long it takes to level-up, I'm in for some long, painful sessions. But now that I've found the COMPOUND BOW, all it right with the fantasy-world. Now I just need some new abilities...

Not Just a Walk in the Park

Last night, after it got a bit cooler out, I took a drive to the park to do a little pitching. For those of you who don't know me, or have been living under a rock while you've known me, I'm a horseshoe pitcher.

Anyway, I went to the park, pitched a little, and then decided to call it quits and go home. I walked over to the nearby water outlet and proceeded to wash the clay off my horseshoes. (Sadly, these courts have the WORST clay in the world. It sticks to your shoes something awful.)

As I began washing my shoes, a huge insect came flying out of the drain, clearly annoyed that I had disturbed it's happy little existence. It proceeded to attack me in a barrage of swooping fly-bys, much to the annoyance of myself. I shooed it away several times, and it finally appeared to have flown off. So, I finished washing off my shoes, dried them, and then proceeded to wash my hands. It was at this point that the little winged son of a bitch reappeared again, continuing his untiring attacks from before. I then realized that it wasn't going to be satisfied until I fought it, man-to-bug.

I threw my towel down (as opposed to throwing in the towel, don't get those confused!), and took a defensive ninja stance with my hands out in front of me, ready to attack. The insect swooped at me again, and I proceeded to counter all its attempts while at the same time chopping at it with my deadly hands of justice.

I'm certain this scene was quite amusing to the people driving past on the nearby road, for I surely doubt they would be able to see my attacker. Thus, all they could gaze upon was some moron standing in the middle of the horseshoe courts, madly jumping around and swinging his arms about in the air.

Finally, I smited my opponent with a death chop, and cast him down to the grassy pits of doom which lay at my feet. I left the park beaten, battered, but VICTORIOUS. Once again, good has indeed triumphed over evil.

Courtesy

I tend to not pay attention to other people when I'm in public, mostly because I've discovered that I don't like a vast majority of the human race. The reason for this stems from two major things, the most relevant being that most people aren't nice human beings at all.

This is especially apparent on the roads. Put a human being behind the steering wheel of a car, and they instantly become a raving lunatic. I've been guilty of this very same vice on more than a few occasions, but I must add that most times it was sparked by someone ELSE. (Really! It's true!)

Every once in a while, however, the good natured side of humans peeks it head through the ugliness of the modern world in the smallest ways possible. I was driving home from work today, and I came to the intersection in my city. A car to my right approached the stop sign at about the same time, and he probably got there about .3948674 second after I did. I waved him on, however, because sometimes I really *am* a nice person.

I've given people the right-of-way many times before. Commonly, you get the quick wave. Sometimes you get nothing at all. Ungrateful bastards. Well, this time was completely different. As he drove past me, he nodded and I saw him mouth "Thank you!". It struck me as something out of the ordinary that, as lazy as human beings are these days, he took the time and energy to actually SAY "Thank you!" even though there was no way I was going to hear it. That was rather cool, and obviously left an impression since the thought is still in my mind 8 hours later. He showed gratitude, which is probably one of the RAREST things to see from normal people these days. Kudos to him.

Blonde Crossing

This entertains me. Yet another GIF from the Internet Whore, who is currently taking the term "getting wet" to a whole new level.

Utter, jeans creaming, undies soiling gaming goodness.

I get excited over games all the time. But rarely do I get *this* excited over a game. I just downloaded the single-player demo for F.E.A.R., and played a little bit of it. The question is not whether the game is good or not. The question is how much better this game is than every other game I've ever played. Yes, it's that good. It's hard to say after only playing a little bit of it, but I would say I like it better than Doom 3. And believe me, that is saying a *fucking* lot. I doubt it will be better than Half-Life 2, but I'll believe anything at this point.

The game is TERRIFYING. You start out in a dark alley full of weird noises, and things just get worse from there. A bloody skeleton here, a weird figure moving in the darkness there, a scream over there. Classic jumping-out-of-your-seat-and-landing-in-a-pile-of-poo scaryness. The graphics? They had my jaw hanging down around my pasty white ankles. This game has THE best shadow effects EVER! Better than Doom 3. Half-Life 2 had shadows like this, but that game didn't USE them like this. I turned a corner in a game and shot at the wall because I thought it was a monster. It was my SHADOW! Brilliant!

So, if it happens to be October 11, 2005 and I'm no where to be found, you'll know why. It's F.E.A.R.'s release date, biatch!

Worst Puzzle Ever!

If there's one thing I hate about computer games, it's the puzzles that some developers try to incorporate into their games. As if the hordes of zombies, demons, and cyborg mobsters wasn't challenging enough, then they have to add stupid jumping puzzles that make it nearly impossible to get from point A to point B. But whatever, jumping puzzles I can handle. The platform jumping where I had to shoot at buttons on the wall to get across a broken bridge was a particularly amusing.

However, the current puzzle that I'm stuck on right now SUCKS ASS DISCHARGE! In the middle of this building, there is a control panel where you have to enter in a 5-digit code to activate the portal. Each code is in a different room in the building -- 5 different rooms then. Which means you have to WRITE DOWN each code as you find it, because there's no way in hell you're going to remember them all. Not only that, but each code is displayed to you as a spinning hologram, ala the Star Wars death star image, therefore it won't necessarily appear to you on the control panel in exactly the same way as it appears to you in the hologram. Brilliant.

This puzzle annoys me so much, that I might never play the game again. And that's not because I haven't solved it yet. It's because it's something as simple as punching in 5 numbers made to be impossibly difficult when it doesn't have to be. Way to botch up a decent game, assholes!

Typical Day at the Office

Actually, this reminds me of Mary, our Database Administrator. I have the unique talent of getting her to let loose a string of "fuck" words in only 3.56838594 seconds. Hey, it's a gift.

Oh, and to avoid an email containing "Oh, so all I'm good for is sending you images?! I don't even get RECOGNITION! You WANKER!", this was forwarded to me at work today by the official internet whore. She knows who she is. Cheers!

Bonk!

This is the funniest video I've seen in quite some time. Picture me sitting at work, everything is quiet, and all of a sudden I start busting a nut in laughter. I was in tears! Watch it now!

300!

Today I passed the 300 mark on my movie list. Check it out!

Hell's a long way. Make it come to you!

If there's one thing I've noticed about first person shooters, it's that they have a favorite genre in which to base their games. And that genre is "Hell Unleashed". I have played more computer games that revolve around Hell than any other genre. The most famous example of this, of course, is the whole string of Doom games. Painkiller is another good example, which I just beat the other night.

Since I couldn't get the Painkiller expansion pack to work (at all!), I've moved on to a BRAND NEW game that features.....what else?........demons, zombies, and the usual hellspawn! The name of the game is Hellforces. The game started out rather slow -- as fun as hacking zombies to pieces with a butcher knife may sound, it really wasn't. I craved REAL weapons. Then, I got my hands on the .357 Magnum, and life was bliss once again with the one-shot-kill-rain-of-death that I began handing out to the hordes of shambling zombies trying to nibble on my cranium.

The graphics are not top notch -- I would call them average at best. But the rag-doll physics are great. It's a blast watching zombies go flying backwards after taking a hit from a machine gun. And the ability to blow off body parts (and still have the zombie torso continue to chase after you) is also loads of fun. I'm definitely going to be playing more of this game very soon.