Just call me FUTURE BOY!

No, we still don't have transporters in the future. DAMMIT.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

From the movie Cool Hand Luke, in case you didn't know.

This movie quote is probably my most used move quote, EVER, because people as a whole don't communicate with each other very well. I see it every single day, and today was no exception. And as usual, all I could do was sit back and watch the show unfold before me.

You FAIL! AGAIN!

Quote from an ISO Hunt torrent posting:

I found it! MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis DVD-rip. It is ripped from television.

Failed!

New Layout

The drive to and from Erie was nice. Beautiful weather. Of course, on the way I nearly made a detour. I was 3/4 of the way to Erie when I see a sign near Edinboro for a new Japanese Steakhouse. Sake and steak sounded REALLY good at that point. But then, I could see the owner chasing me out of the restaurant with a samurai sword after I put the moves on his hot daughter, so I quickly talked myself out of going. Whew. Close one.

I changed the layout of Uncorporate America, putting only 1 panel across now so you won't have to scroll left and right while reading. I think this works out much better. Enjoy Issue 003, it's hiliarous.

200th Post...Woo!

200th blog entry. Gotta love a milestone....

Anyway, I'll be leaving for Erie in about 30 minutes for a meeting. It's a beautiful day today too, and the meeting will be outside. That's a bonus. I got me a new CD burned for the car. (You can see my priorities are in the right place.)

Last night, I went on a mission. I had 146 GB free on my anime downloading hard drive, and my goal was to free up enough space so that I had at least 200 GB free. After massive amounts of burning to DVD, the final free space count was...........218 GB. Yay! I'm over 1.5 TB of anime now. Yeesh.

Back later tonight......with a new issue of Uncorporate America! Don't miss it.

You FAIL!

I downloaded this episode of Marchen Awakens Romance (better known as simply MAR). It's an anime based on an RPG. Anyway, I download this episode, and it comes with 3 files -- the actual video file, a subtitles file called an .srt file, and a readme.

I have dealt with .srt files before -- they are simply a small file that contains the subtitles for the matching video file. These are especially useful with dual audio video files, or if you just want to turn the subtitles off completely.

I was curious as to what the readme file said, so I opened it up. Here, it was a guide on how to use the .srt file. I started reading through this utter pile of steamy bullshit, and just shook my head in disbelief.

They had you doing stuff, running command prompts, doing more stuff, running programs, etc, etc, doing more stuff. And then they said you can only use certain media players, or the subtitles won't show up.

Would you like me to tell you a little secret? Rename the .srt file to the exact same name as your video file, and keep them in the same folder. Guess what? The subtitles will magicially start working! With any media player! That's it!

They fail.

Reminiscing

I went out and pitched a little on the new court this evening, right before dark. Being out there got me thinking about the summer's I spent at my grandparent's house when I was a kid, back when during the summer there was nothing else TO do other than throw horsehoes.

I would throw anywhere from 150 to 300 shoes every single day. Now that I look back on it, it's no wonder I became a world champion. Comparing to how throwing a horseshoe felt then to how it feels now, it's apparent that the key ingredient in doing well at the sport (as is the case with ANYTHING) is the practice.

I don't consider myself naturally talented at horseshoes. When I first started, I would throw about 1 or 2 ringers out of every 100 shoes. After about 4 or 5 years, I was up to 80 out of every 100. These days, without practice, I can get about 40 or 50 out of 100.

Uncorporate America Issue 002

Ah, toilet humor. There's nothing quite like it!

Success!

At last! This all started with a very simple need for myself: I wanted the main character in my new comic to have different clothes. Specifically, right off the bat, I knew I wanted him to have an orange shirt. (My favorite color.) After scouring forums, I couldn't find one anywhere. So, I knew I was going to have to make my own.

And let me tell you --- skinning a model is NOT easy. Nor is it difficult. It's just......annoying. I'm not even going to begin to describe everything I had to do to figure this out, but take a look at the end result below. The model on the right is the original that I started with. The one of the left is the new model that I made with the new orange shirt.

We shall dominate your hard drive...

I recently took a gander at the total size of my STEAM folder on my hard drive. For the uneducated, STEAM is the program that houses all the Half-Life games and mods, including Counter-Strike, Garry's Mod, Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode 1, SiN, etc.

It's 20 GB!! Holy disk drive rapage, Batman!

Birth of a new comic...

Before you ask: No, Counter-Struck isn't dead. I simply needed a larger canvas for some of the ideas bouncing around in my head, and Counter-Struck is meant to be a parody on Counter-Strike, not on life in general.

The new comic is titled Uncorporate America and will follow the adventures of a typical 20-something individual who works in an office and lives in an apartment. It will basically be a parody of my own life, and mimic some of the experiences I have day in and day out with stupid people along with some of the dumb things that I sometimes do. And naturally, there will be exaggeration. Lots of it. This *is* fiction, afterall.

Enjoy the pilot: Issue 001

Christened the court...

I went out and christened the new court today by throwing out the first shoe. Even though it wasn't the prettiest throw, amazingly enough it went around the stake. I guess someone is trying to tell me I built it correctly. I still don't have pictures -- by the time I thought of it today, it was already starting to get dark.

In other news, I went over to a relative of a relatives place for a father's day picnic. For the most part, the day was uneventful. With the exception of my parents and my sister and her husband, the people there fell into two different categories for me: either I didn't know them well enough to carry on an interesting conversation, or I didn't like them. And, of course, my parents and my sister and her husband were busy talking to these people, so I watched golf on TV. Such a thrilling day for me!

But there was ONE thing that made it worthwhile. This house I was at has this deck that is kind of strange -- in the MIDDLE of it, there is a step. The first time my mother walked across it, she didn't realize there was a step there, and went flying across the deck and on top of some guy sitting on a lawn couch. Funniest. Thing. Ever.

Fun in the Sun.........and a comic

Today I finished one of the projects I started last year -- that being my horseshoe court out in my yard. Well, it's not TOTALLY finished, but now it's useable. Woo.

And, I have a comic for you. Check it.


Yes, I know I'm being brief. Believe it or not, sometimes I really don't feel like talking about myself!

Counter-Struck! 013

So while driving to work this morning, I realized I forgot to post about Issue 013. Guess that happens when you try to do 50 things at once. D'oh.


Enjoy...

It's a crime deterrent...

Counter-Struck! 012

I like how no one seems to care that I've completely abandoned any continuing plot, and just go with the utterly random.


It's okay, I enjoy the utterly random more as well. Issue 012 is up.


In other news, I saw the trailer for Half-Life 2: Episode 2. And now I won't be able to sleep........

Retro Gaming

Today was a weird day. To start out with, I didn't feel very well this afternoon and kinda just lounged around in the recliner. I was so out of it, I was even too lazy to change the channel on the TV and ended up watching a marathon of Murder, She Wrote.

After some rest, though, I felt better and was in the mood to play a computer game. Nothing new has come out lately, so I looked through my current collection to see what I wanted to play. I knew it had to be a shooter, since that was what I was in the mood for. After some debate with myself, I decided on the original Half-Life. I haven't played through that game in quite some time, and playing it again was weird. I must say, for a game that came out in 1998, the graphics still hold up. The only part about them that kind of made me cringe were the models of the human characters. They're just awful. But everything else is pretty good.

Now, I'm playing a the newest version of Half-Life, which was reconfigured and put into the source engine, which is the engine that runs Half-Life 2. So, the physics in the game is a bit more advanced that any other time I've played the old version of the game. The most noticeable part was this jumping puzzle near the beginning of the game.

There are these 20' metal containers suspended over this pit by cables. You have to jump from container to container to get to the other side. I used to be able to do this puzzle with my eyes closed, but with the added physics the Source engine provided, it was a bit more difficult. When I would jump on a container, it would actually start swaying back and forth because of my weight -- it was quite neat.

Comic #11

I redid the layout of the main page to make more sense -- the newest comic will now appear at the top, rather than the bottom. Enjoy!

Oh yes, #10

Counter-Struck 010.


*yawn* Need sleep.

Letters to the Cartoonist....

And now, ISSUE 009 of Counter-Struck!

Bite it, critics

Take my advice: Never judge whether or not you're going to watch a movie based on what anyone else says about it. Just don't do it.

I watched The Pink Panther (2006) tonight. It was the funniest movie I've seen in a very long time, and it will be one that I watch again very soon. Average review by movie critics was C. The IMDB rating is a measely 4.7/10.

Hey, people, guess what? It's not supposed to be a clone of the originals. Welcome to 2006, fools.

Really Big Rock

I was just reading a science article that was quite fascinating.

A group of scientists led by an American team from Ohio University have discovered a massive crater under the ice of Antarctica. It was caused by a meteor approximately 50 kilometers wide. 50! That's like, the size of a city. It created a crater 500 kilometers wide. ! ! !

They reported that this is probably the missing link scientists have been waiting for -- the reason why 95% of all life on Earth died 250 million years ago. This meteor is now the largest ever known to have hit the Earth -- even bigger than the 10 kilometer wide meteor that hit Mexico and killed off the dinosaurs. And, most likely, it's the reason why Austrailia, India, and South America broke away from Antarctica.

Seems like every few hundred million years, Mother Nature likes to press the reset button on life.

I'd make a lousy assassin....

I'm trying out Hitman: Blood Money. After playing Half-Life 2: Episode 1 for the second time tonight, I needed something new, and it was the first new game that I hadn't installed yet.

I've learned one thing: I'm *not* a stealth gamer. The general idea behind the Hitman games is that you sneak in, kill the person you are assigned to kill, and sneak out. Undetected. Yeah. Cut to me having a shootout with the entire Colombian drug cartel while trying to infiltrate the drug boss' mansion. NOISIEST ASSASSIN EVER!

I've also realized that the Source engine has spoiled me. (The graphics engine that powers Half-Life 2). Compared to HL2, Hitman looks like ASS JERKY ON A STICK! I feel like I'm watching claymation.

But I will say this -- completing a mission gives you a genuine sense of accomplishment, because of how difficult they are.

Know what I like?

I like reading a review of a game, seeing the screenshots, and noticing how much better MY screenshots look.



Heh.

A game so good, you have to play it naked.....

...because it's one jeans-creaming moment after another. Just ask this guy:


Okay, don't ask him. He's a liar.



I haven't been this excited about a game since Half-Life 2 came out. And a game has not so enthralled and submersed me into itself so fully ever before. Ever. And it only took me 4 hours to complete it. Normally, a game that short comes across as rushed, sloppy, full of plot holes, and generally a wasted effort. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 is the EXACT opposite. THAT'S how well constructed it was.


They took everything that was great about Half-Life 2, refined it, polished it, and crammed it all into this first episodic release. One of THREE. Yes, it's going to be a trilogy, and episode 2 will arrive by the end of the year. (Shit, need another new pair of pants......)


The game picks up exactly where Half-Life 2 left off, and let me say how much I fucking loved the vortigants saving the day as the citadel blew up in our faces. Brilliance! I don't even care that this episode didn't answer a SINGLE question that was asked in HL2. I don't care! I was having too much fun playing the game!



Never has a game surprised me this much. Take the beginning for example: you are posed with a puzzle. There's is this HUGE gorge in front of you, and you have to cross to the other side. In a typical game, you would find a way around, or find a switch to flip that will lower a bridge. In this game? You get into this old car, and a robotic dog THROWS you across. FUCKING BRILLIANT!


I'll definitely be playing through it again really soon, since it has an audio commentary track that you can play while you're going through the game. Must listen!

Adventures with the Stupid

People are stupid.

I got dinner from KFC tonight. I ordered an 8-piece meal, and the menu states it came with 2 sides. So, I got mashed potatoes and coleslaw. After I ordered, I look over and see this sign hanging on the counter that says that I get a free large mashed potatoes with any 8-piece meal or larger. So, I turn to the girlie behind the counter and say, "Oh, I get a free side of mashed potatoes?"

"Yes." She says.
"Oh, so I actually get 3 sides?"
"No."
"Uh.....huh. Okay well then I would like potato wedges and coleslaw."
"Okay."

I waited two minutes, my order was done, and I left the restaurant with my chicken and 3 sides.


In other news, Half-Life 2: Episode One was sitting on my PC ready to play when I got home today. So.....I'm gonna go play it. =)