11/2/2008
2008 Voting Guide
For this election’s voting guide we’re going to skip past the presidential election: not only is the outcome a foregone conclusion, but not enough of you listened to us last time we tried that. So let’s hit the proposition circuit.
If you are in California, please vote against Proposition 8 on Tuesday.
Like all good things, the 2008 JesusH Voting Guide fits on the face of a pumpkin.
The asinine “protect marriage” crowd is busy telling you all sorts of horrible things about gay marriage’s legality in California, but here’s the straight scoop: homosexuals ought to have exactly the same rights as heterosexuals, no more and no less, and their ability to enter into a life partnership that exactly matches the one that man and woman can enter into should not be subject to the whims of people who shake their head and say “no, I’m just not comfortable with that.”
Until 1943, Chinese immigrants did not have the right to become US citizens and vote. My wife could never have acquired the same rights and responsibilities of United States citizenship that Paris Hilton has, no matter how hard she worked or how much better she made America, because she was born in China and Hilton was born here. That is Extremely Fucking Nuts, and we know it now, but I’m sure back then there was a bunch of people shaking their heads and saying “no, I’m just not comfortable with Chinese having a path to citizenship and enfranchisement.”
Read the rest of the Voting Rights Timeline if you have time. It’s an eye-opener.
That’s a jarringly recent example of constipation of justice in the United States, but this country has a long history of that kind of nonsense. If someone *doesn’t* have the same rights as you, they ought to have done something felonious to get themselves in that position. Being born homosexual shouldn’t count. In fifty years, this will look as silly to everyone as barring Chinese people from access to citizenship looks to us now. This isn’t the first time we’ve covered the gay marriage issue around here, and we haven’t changed our tune one note.
Let’s all do our part to ensure equal treatment for Californians regardless of sexual orientation on Tuesday.
Non-Soapbox-y postscript: I left my jack o’ lantern in front of the house Halloween night and the next morning the “Yes on 8″ organization had kindly left me a voting reminder right in front of it.
Really stupid, really funny, or both: you be the judge.
Thanks, Yes on 8 team! I’m still ashamed of you, but I got a chuckle out of it.
10/24/2008
The William Hung of Politics
I’d like to break the JesusH posting hiatus just long enough to say that I, for one, do not give a shit what Joe the Plumber thinks.
Also, congrats to Brent, Official Cop of JesusH, on his graduation from the academy, and Jeff has some nifty video of Matt, Other Official Cop of JesusH, distributing justice in the mean streets of Oxnard which he’d surely share with you if he wasn’t such a dog in the manger about posting.
Thank you.
9/29/2008
No Bailout
The first bailout has epic failed in the House. From the article:
The overriding question for congressional leaders was what to do next. Congress has been trying to adjourn so that its members can go out and campaign. And with only five weeks left until Election Day, there was no clear indication of whether the leadership would keep them in Washington. Leaders were huddling after the vote to figure out their next steps.
You already have the advantage of incumbency. How about you stop looking ahead of the current crisis and stay in session until you get this thing worked out, Congresspeople?
9/27/2008
Thoughts on First Presidential Debate
Some initial thoughts on the first presidential debate:
- Jim Lehrer’s “say it to him” shtick at the beginning made him sound awkwardly like a marriage counselor.
- I’m surprised the post-debate polls seem to have scored it so clearly for Obama. I didn’t think there was a clear winner, though I do think a tie on the foreign policy debate is a great outcome for Obama.
- I was disappointed with both candidates’ answers on the bailout issue. Clearly it would have been foolish to say “I do” or “I don’t” support the plan, but it was a missed opportunity to demonstrate leadership by laying out a clear framework for what a successful plan ought to look like.
- McCain advocates a federal government “spending freeze” on everything except defense, Veterans’ Affairs, and entitlement programs? This is a huge policy proposal. Why isn’t everyone talking about this today?
- “You’ve sung songs about bombing Iran.” - it’s nice to finally see the Democratic candidate hitting back hard instead of going on defense. There’s something to be said for Chicago politicians.
- When McCain forces a smile even though he’s kind of annoyed, he looks like Skeletor having dinner with the in-laws.
- Don’t the VP candidates normally appear on all the networks for post-debate commentary? Interesting that one campaign decided to take a different tack. That’s so maverick!
Discuss.
9/26/2008
The Debate is On!
It was a close-run thing, but John McCain and Barack Obama will debate tonight, just a few scant days after McCain “suspended his campaign” to go fix all the high finance crap going down in the nation’s capital.
I’m sure this is because McCain cat-herded the bailout meetings to a successful conclusion after heading back to DC in such an all-fired hurry, and not because the average voter’s response to McCain’s campaign suspension seems to have been “the fuck’s he going on about? does he want to be President or not?”
9/16/2008
Aw, Snap?
Google Chrome, which I’ve been testing out for a couple of weeks as my primary browser, does something very strange when it crashes:
Sad Tab: the Sad Mac of the Internet Generation
“Aw, Snap!”? I thought it was “Oh Snap!” Hell, let’s check Google’s own search engine: nearly two million results for “oh snap” versus about 25,000 results for “aw snap”.
A usage model for the term “Oh Snap!”. “Aw Snap!” is conspicuously absent.
Last time JesusH covered a corporation dicking up a pop culture reference, they started taking it in the shorts just scant months later. Watch yourselves, Google.
9/14/2008
Going for Two
Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan has already been widely praised in the postgame writeups for his “gutsy decision” to go for the two-point conversion after the Broncos scored a touchdown to pull to 37-38 with only 24 seconds left in Sunday’s game against the Chargers.
This was not a gutsy decision. This was an obvious decision, especially for a coach of Shanahan’s tenure who has plenty of job security and doesn’t need to worry about everyone in the world second-guessing him to the team’s owner the Monday after the move doesn’t work.
You might argue that, especially on their home turf, the Broncos ought to play for overtime, but that argument falls flat when looking at the current state of the game. Just like last week, the Chargers started off with a very limp effort, but this time they turned it on at halftime instead of waiting until midway through the second half–they had scored 21 straight points, capped with a nifty two-point conversion of their own, and the defense had pitched a shutout until the Denver TD. If this game had gone to OT, it wouldn’t have been the 50-50 or close to it affair that most overtime action tends to be.
Sure, you lose the game if you miss the conversion, but according to the stats I can find on the subject with a couple minutes of googling, the two-point try is trending towards a 50% success rate in the NFL. I’ll totally take that over playing for a tie and having to run my team out against a superior team in overtime, and Shanahan made the right call.
Not that it should have gotten to this point… I’ll also take awful work from the broadcast booth over awful work from the referees anyday. Denver was gifted a turnover when an “equipment failure” kept NFL Ref Strongest Man Ed Hochuli from seeing that Chris Chambers was down before being stripped, which everyone with a TV tuned to CBS saw multiple times while he was trying to work that out. In the fourth quarter, the Broncos got another present when Jay Cutler’s fumble was improperly whistled dead by Hochuli before the Chargers recovered. Not a good day at the office for the zebras, unless you’re a Bronco fan.
9/8/2008
Rosario Dawson, Actress/Tight End
I generally don’t care about accuracy in football play-by-play, but it was really weird how many people couldn’t keep Panthers tight end Dante Rosario and actress Rosario Dawson straight during the Chargers loss yesterday.
Often mistaken for one another on Sunday.
* broadcast team Dick Stockton and Brian Baldinger, who did horrible jobs in general, made the mistake more than once.
* the postgame UPS Leaderboard graphic gave props to Rosario Dawson’s 7 catches for 96 yards and a touchdown.
* hours later, after the Sunday night game, NBC’s local “Football Night in San Diego” commentator Akbar Gbaja-Biamila referred to Rosario as Dawson at least once on camera.
I know Dante Rosario’s not a big name football-wise, but who knew Rosario Dawson had such a high Q score in NFL circles?
9/3/2008
Google Chrome
You might have heard Google has a browser out. I’ve been a Firefox user for years now but as I’ve followed the recommended upgrade path the browser has gotten slower and less stable in exchange for a bunch of features I don’t really care about. After Firefox 3 crashing twice yesterday, I downloaded Chrome and have been using it for the last 24 hours. So far, here’s what I’m seeing:
* it seems faster and more responsive than both Firefox and IE. Fast page loads, fast scrolling.
* I’ve read about incompatibilities with some webpages but haven’t been bitten by any myself yet. The only feature I miss is right-clicking to get to dictionary when I misspell something in an edit window like the one I’m typing this in. I’m sure that’s coming soon.
* The tabs got moved up top of the browser window. I’m not at all sure that’s a win–further to go with the mouse to get to them now. Otherwise they’re easily re-orderable and popping them out to make their own windows is a neat touch.
* The address bar is smart: if it can’t resolve what you type as a URL it’ll function as a search engine, so no need to have a separate search engine text entry box. Duh. This seems like such obvious behaviour I don’t know why every browser doesn’t do this, so kudos to Google for implementing it.
* Things I’m having trouble getting used to:
+ no stop button–weird! It’s actually there, but it’s all the way to the right of the address bar and that’s not intuitive for me when compared to the standard browser. I use ’stop’ a lot more than ‘bookmark’ (at the left of the address bar) so I would switch the location of the two if I could.
+ no ‘home’ button–I use this all the time in my other browsers. I could turn it on, but my homepage is also the first link in the bookmarks link bar so I’m going to try to get used to clicking that.
+ no menu bar across the top of the app. I’m not sure I like this.
* Some of Chrome’s most vaunted features are useless to me. The New Tab behaviour is that when you create a new tab, Chrome loads a ‘you usually do these things with a new tab–click to do one of them now’ page. If you have a personal web page you use as your homepage I’d hope that you’d already have set it up to fill that need.
* The Safe Browsing features, which raise alarms when you visit sites that Google thinks might be phishing or pushing malware, are probably useful if you like to visit dodgy sites and click every link that asks you to install weird software. Those of us who aren’t browsing like ten-year-olds have probably never had a problem with this stuff. I don’t need the additional security, and when it identified as suspect a site I visit every day with no problems, I turned it off.
* Running each tab as its own process actually does work the way Google claimed–one tab would slow down while doing something and I’d flip to another and it’d be running full-speed. Nice!
* That said, Chrome’s already gotten balled-up enough I had to restart the entire thing once. Sad face.
* I miss the “did you mean to close all 20 tabs you had open” dialog box Firefox gives me when I click the close app button. I usually didn’t mean to do that.
I’ll keep playing with it. It’s definitely promising.
Abstinence-based Sex Ed: Epic Fail
There are a lot of amusing angles to discuss about John McCain’s recent choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his ticket mate, but here’s the one that just kills me: she’s apparently a good choice for McCain to appease social conservatives due to her stances on, among other things, sex education. Palin supports ‘abstinence-based sex ed’ in schools, which as near as I can tell is someone getting up in front of a classroom and saying “premarital sex is wrong, you might get pregnant, no birth control is 100% effective, sexually-transmitted diseases can be bad news, any questions?”
Here’s the problem: not only is there no evidence that this actually accomplishes anything as far as keeping teens from having sex, it didn’t even work in Palin’s own family, as her oldest daughter, Bristol Palin, is pregnant at 17. If you can’t keep your own nuclear family in line with the unmarried-young-sex-is-bad party line, how is this message possibly going to resonate anywhere else?
And if you acknowledge that people generally like to have sex and won’t all listen when you wag your finger (or other appendage) at them and tell them not to, wouldn’t you want them to be educated about how to protect themselves and their partners from STDs and unintended pregnancy? No, I guess you’d want them to get married young and that makes everything all right.
I tell you what, some people are so stupid it’s lucky for them breathing is an unconscious reflex.
8/29/2008
Bioshock
Many irritating operating system gymnastics sessions later, I finished Bioshock late last week. I was pretty close to throwing up my hands when the game started crashing regularly when I reached Fort Frolic, about midway through. I ended up having to clear out my save games, turn off a Vista OS feature or two, and start all over.
I’ve been blaming Vista for a lot of my issues with computing ever since I got this computer, but I’ll throw some blame 2K Games’ way for this situation as Bioshock’s issues with Vista have been so widely reported, and the Orange Box games I finished a while back were rock-solid on the same computer. Get it together, 2K Games!
* There are a lot of weapons. I barely even used the last few I got. The research camera was a wonderful addition to the standard FPS arsenal.
* There is a lot more character development possible than in Half-Life 2, what with the plasmids and buffout upgrades in addition to all the weapons. However, most of that ended up evening out by the last third of the game–unless you were a complete tool, you were going to have all the cool stuff one way or another by then.
The downside of allowing this kind of development is that the game becomes unbalanced, which Bioshock did for me. After a ton of buildup during the level load, I killed the last boss in the game by running up to him and hitting him with the wrench (the default melee weapon in the game–think the crowbar in Half-Life) repeatedly… the biggest click-fest since Diablo.
* You’ve got a hard limit of $500 in your wallet (at least on the Medium level of difficulty, which is what I played). I kept running into this, which tells me two things: that I’m a cheap bastard, and that yet again I probably should have played the game at its hardest setting.
* I think the possibility of a security camera seeing you and sounding the alarm was supposed to be more of a consideration than it turned out to be. Once I got Natural Camouflage, which I did pretty early on, security alerts were a total non-issue. Also, the previously-mentioned Pipe Dream-style hacking minigame remained ridiculous throughout.
* After starting off fairly underwhelmed by the game experience I got progressively more into it. The back-story of Rapture was interesting, the characters seemed to have some stories to tell, and the designers did a good job of building suspense and interest in the game universe.
Then came the Sixth Sense-style reveal down the home stretch, followed by increasingly less interesting levels and story in the second half. I really started to lose buy-in, and that continued through the finale. Like the New England Patriots, Bioshock peaked way too soon.
Two Pochaccos. Parts were quite fun, but the game was oversold and crash-tastic.
This game review is for Patrick.
8/20/2008
Veto Power
Q: When is it proper for me to veto a trade in my fantasy league?
A: I’m glad you asked! There are two circumstances in which it is proper to vote to veto a trade.
- collusion. Let’s say Owner A and Owner B get together for lunch one day, and Owner A says to Owner B “how about I trade you two of my best players for two of your worst players if you pick up the check?” That sucks for everyone when that happens and it is totally reasonable to veto a trade that is made under these parameters.
In this case, your veto is also a vote of no-confidence on the personal integrity of both owners.
- imbalance. Really, the only difference between this and collusion is intent. Maybe Owner A is much smarter or paying more attention than Owner B and browbeats or cajoles Owner B into trading some talented under-the-radar players for formerly productive big names. That might well damage the rationality of the league’s talent distribution, and as a fellow owner you have the right to vote against this if it’s going to impact your enjoyment of the game.
Be sure Owner B doesn’t have an angle before you do this, though! It’s possible to trade from strength to address weakness and come out ahead even if you give up more talent in the abstract. If you can come up with a reason for Owner B to be doing what they’re doing in the trade as it is reported to the league, even if you don’t agree with the reasoning, you shouldn’t veto.
In this case, your veto is also a declaration that Owner B is being a moron. If someone cites an imbalanced trade in your trading partner’s favour as a reason to veto a trade you are involved in, they are insulting your judgment.
There is a lot of confusion about this in the fantasy gaming world because people like to make things more complicated than they need to be, but there are no other circumstances in which it is proper to veto a trade in your league. In addition to this being the only policy that makes any sense, it’s also very easy to apply.
Q: what if, after the trade was agreed to but during the period of league review of the trade, something causes value on either side of the trade to change? For example, the best player in a trade is discovered to have a sports hernia after terms are agreed to.
A: you should consider all players to have changed hands as soon as the terms were agreed to. The only reason Owner A’s players are still on Owner A’s roster is because there’s a league review period to evaluate the trade for unfairness–otherwise, they’d be transferred immediately. Owner A’s players should be considered Owner B’s property the instant the trade is reported to the league and vice versa. Nothing that happens after the terms of the deal are agreed to has anything to do with the fairness of the trade as it was conceived, hence you have no cause to veto.
Q: but why is there an open period of n days when other owners can veto?
A: because not all owners log on every day. That’s a simple, reasonable answer. Here’s a more complicated answer: other veto-enabled owners are supposed to be shields of justice and lemon law administrators, watching for changes of status in the players that are slated to change hands and acting accordingly if the value proposition of the trade is skewed by an injury, trade, or demotion.
Do you really believe that?
In fantasy leagues, trading is creating. It is engaging. It is proper to encourage this behavior, and improper to believe you know better than the people actively managing their own individual teams without extraordinary evidence to the contrary. When you veto outside of this ruleset you are meddling. This is the same kind of behavior that made the founding fathers distrustful of strong centralized government. This is the same thing the feds are doing with the mortgage bailouts. This is really bad policy.
If you disagree I’m going to do my best to never play fantasy baseball with you.
8/8/2008
Cheap Dum Dums
Want to get your Halloween candy shopping done early? Need some cheap long-lasting candy for the office? Or maybe you just like Dum Dums pops like I do…
The Vons across the street from my house is selling a 2-lb bag of Dum Dums for $1.14 after Vonsclub and the coupon on the bag. I’ve already bought two bags and I’m going to keep getting at least one a day until they run out.
While doing exhaustive research for this post, I found this ode to Dum Dums, which contains both the term “Dum-Dums. Are. Completely. Totally. Rad.” and the origin story of the Dum Dums “Mystery Flavour” pop. This story is 100x more awesome than I was expecting, and I was expecting greatness.
7/29/2008
Old AIM emoticons in Pidgin
I’ve been using Pidgin (which was mentioned in the JesusH wipe and re-install Windows guide last year) for instant messaging. I had some problems recently connecting to my various IM accounts with it, so I upgraded to 2.4.3, which seems to have fixed those connection issues. I’ve never liked the Pidgin default emoticons so I found and installed Andrei Neculau’s Original Smileys, which allow Pidgin to use the original emoticon set for each client–in other words, I see Y!M emoticons when I’m talking to someone with a Yahoo! Messenger account. I see MSN emoticons when I’m talking to someone with an MSN account.
Yes, over the last few years I’ve really started to lean on emoticons in instant messaging. This is not something I’m proud of.
Anyway, I discovered upon invocation that the AIM emoticons had gotten animated, weird-looking, and ugly since I last saw them (for example, 
vs 
). Apparently, a new version of AIM has been released since the last time I looked, and AOL has taken this opportunity to update their emoticons. That might look like progress to the kids, but it looks like crap to me.
I couldn’t find a convenient way to get the old AIM emoticons back. I ended up having to find the old ones at elouai.com. I downloaded them, cropped them up–the originals are way too padded–and made the backgrounds transparent. In case you like the old-school AIM icons better than the new ones and want to go to a little bit of trouble:
- install and activate Andrei Neculau’s Original Smileys.
- download this archive of the old AIM emoticons and unzip them inside the folder created by step 1. On my system the folder path is
C:\Documents and Settings\dpease\Application Data\.purple\smileys\pidgin-original
so I created
C:\Documents and Settings\dpease\Application Data\.purple\smileys\pidgin-original\aim_old .
- open the theme file created by step 1. On my system this file is
C:\Documents and Settings\dpease\Application Data\.purple\smileys\pidgin-original\theme .
- find the following text block in the themes file and select it:
# AIM 6.5 [AIM] ../pidgin-original/aim/smiling.gif :) :-) ../pidgin-original/aim/winking.gif ;) ;-) ../pidgin-original/aim/frowning.gif :( :-( ../pidgin-original/aim/stickingouttongue.gif :-p :-P ../pidgin-original/aim/surprised.gif =-O ../pidgin-original/aim/kissing.gif :-* ../pidgin-original/aim/yelling.gif >:o ../pidgin-original/aim/ecstatic.gif :D :-D ../pidgin-original/aim/moneymouth.gif :-$ ../pidgin-original/aim/footinmouth.gif :-! ../pidgin-original/aim/embarrassed.gif :-[ ../pidgin-original/aim/innocent.gif O:-) ../pidgin-original/aim/undecided.gif :-\ ../pidgin-original/aim/crying.gif :'( ../pidgin-original/aim/lipsaresealed.gif :-X ../pidgin-original/aim/cool.gif 8-)
- replace the text selected in the last step with the following text block:
# AIM 6.5 #[AIM] #../pidgin-original/aim/smiling.gif :) :-) #../pidgin-original/aim/winking.gif ;) ;-) #../pidgin-original/aim/frowning.gif :( :-( #../pidgin-original/aim/stickingouttongue.gif :-p :-P #../pidgin-original/aim/surprised.gif =-O #../pidgin-original/aim/kissing.gif :-* #../pidgin-original/aim/yelling.gif >:o #../pidgin-original/aim/ecstatic.gif :D :-D #../pidgin-original/aim/moneymouth.gif :-$ # #../pidgin-original/aim/footinmouth.gif :-! #../pidgin-original/aim/embarrassed.gif :-[ #../pidgin-original/aim/innocent.gif O:-) #../pidgin-original/aim/undecided.gif :-\ #../pidgin-original/aim/crying.gif :'( #../pidgin-original/aim/lipsaresealed.gif :-X #../pidgin-original/aim/cool.gif 8-) # Old-school AIM, cause newer AIM sucks # 2008-07-28, DMP [AIM] ../pidgin-original/aim_old/happy10.gif :) :-) ../pidgin-original/aim_old/wink10.gif ;) ;-) ../pidgin-original/aim_old/sad10.gif :( :-( ../pidgin-original/aim_old/tongueout10.gif :-p :-P ../pidgin-original/aim_old/shocked10.gif =-O ../pidgin-original/aim_old/redlips10.gif :-* ../pidgin-original/aim_old/angry10.gif >:o ../pidgin-original/aim_old/biggrin10.gif :D :-D ../pidgin-original/aim_old/indifferent10.gif :-$ ../pidgin-original/aim_old/footinmouth10.gif :-! ../pidgin-original/aim_old/embarrassed10.gif :-[ ../pidgin-original/aim_old/angel10.gif O:-) ../pidgin-original/aim_old/confused10.gif :-\ ../pidgin-original/aim_old/crying10.gif :'( ../pidgin-original/aim_old/nospeak10.gif :-X ../pidgin-original/aim_old/cool10.gif 8-)
- Save the file. Your AIM emoticons should now be the old-school versions in Pidgin.
- Profit!
7/26/2008
My Second (and probably last) Skydive
After a great first experience, I decided to skydive again today. Jeff and I arrived about 4 PM and I informed the lady that I wanted to do the AFF level 2 jump. During this jump, I am again jumping with two instructors. This time, I would be focusing on turns and forward movement. After a brief review with my instructor, I boarded the plane, excited and eager to execute a perfect landing this time.
The plane ride went off without a hitch, I performed my exit perfectly, did my circle of awareness, my practice handle touches, 90 degree turns both left and right, and moved forwards, before waving off and deploying my parachute. I arched, counted to five, and performed my canopy control checks. I was feeling pretty good about the skydive, how I was more confident and had successfully fulfilled my mental checklist. However, this time the winds were very strong and it was harder for me to maneuver my parachute. I also noticed that I was descending at a faster rate than last time, and that I was way off course from where I was supposed to be. And despite my reminder to my instructor about how my radio was out of batteries last time, I had problems with my radio again. Sometimes I could hear little static noises, but no actual audio came through it. I was on my own yet again.
Because I was so off course, I was really worried about the landing. How was I going to manage to get myself to the landing field when I was descending so quickly? I tried my best to make it to the landing area and was trying to find a clear spot to land. The winds were not being particularly friendly towards me today though, as I thought I was about to land on dirt, but at the last minute, a gust of wind steered me towards the right, and I ran into the parked plane. Yep, you read that right. I. HIT. THE. PLANE. My feet hit it first, then my body ricocheted off of it, forcing my face to hit the plane as well, before falling and landing on my back. I started to get up right away, and saw people running towards me. A couple people yelled at me to lay back down and not to move. I saw Jeff’s worried countenance and was trying to reassure him I was all right.
They unhooked my gear, and the medical staff came to look at me. They asked me all these questions, what did I hit, how do I feel, can I see, hear, etc. I told them I was feeling fine, albeit a little banged up. They helped me up, and escorted me to a bench where they performed more checks on me, in which I passed. My faculties seemed to all be there, but they warned me to stay cognizant if anything changes and go see a doctor.
I had a semi-busted lip from when my face hit the plane, and some blood in my nose (it’s a good thing that I have a flat asian nose because it would’ve been broken for sure), but otherwise was fine. As I was walking back to the parachute packing area so that I could get my jump evaluated by the instructor, some concerned people asked me if I was okay. I smiled at them, “I’m all right.” My pride was hurt more than my physical body. The one thing I had wanted to work on was my landing, and it was the one thing I had totally screwed up. Royally. In front of scores of people, I had rammed into a plane. How embarrassing is that?
As I was waiting to hear what my instructor had to say and write in my logbook, I was contemplating just leaving. Do I really want to hear that I had failed my second jump? Obviously running into a plane means I suck at skydiving. To my astonishment, he cleared me for level 3! His written comment for next time is “Hit plane! Needs extensive canopy control brief before next jump.” Ha ha, I don’t think there will be a next time. I do not want to ever put Jeff in that position again. As much as I have enjoyed it and as exhilarating as it’s been, my brief foray into a skydiving career has officially ended today.
Oh, and unfortunately I didn’t get a video this time so you’re not going to be able to view my craptulacular landing. And I’m doing fine now, but I have a feeling I’m going to be super sore come tomorrow morning…
7/22/2008
Social Security Again
Everyone knows Social Security is busted. Heck, we said it years ago, and nobody accuses us of being deep thinkers. Someday in the not-so-distant future the entire system will collapse on itself and run out of money. Presidential hopeful John McCain does a nice job testifying to the problem.
Last week, McCain told observers at a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio, “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers … and that’s a disgrace.”
You know what might help? If people of age who reported $$millions of income last year voluntarily eschewed Social Security benefits. I mean, even for a politician, that’s amazing to me–that this guy can’t do without the 0.3% of his marriage’s reported income that Social Security issues him, while he talks out the other side of his mouth about how disgraceful the system is.
You’re not helping by cashing those checks, Senator, and if you tell me you need the money I’m going to laugh at you. What a dick move.
7/21/2008
Bioshock: Pre-review
Having finished all the Orange Box I cared to play–I tried Team Fortress 2, and it seemed cool, but I was just getting my ass beaten all over the place by my online opponents and I don’t really have the desire to play through that to get to the point where I can actually do something useful in the game–I installed Bioshock last Friday.
I couldn’t get the sound to work. Turns out Bioshock has a problem with sound in Windows Vista. The advice 2KGames gave me had to do with RealTek onboard sound, which I don’t have. After screwing with Vista’s “compatibility modes” for a while I found the solution was to run the game with DirectX 9. If you have to do the same thing, be sure to add the -nointro switch to your shortcut (e.g.
“C:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release\Bioshock.exe” -dx9 -nointro
so you don’t have to look at a half-minute of lame unskippable branding before the game starts.)
I’ve only played the game for an hour or so so far. My initial thoughts are that I’m not having as good a time as I did with Half-Life 2 and that the Pipe Dream-style “hacking” of vending machines and turrents is kind of fun but really ridiculous.
7/19/2008
Jury Duty
I served on my first jury a couple of weeks ago. Apparently I’m a bit more respectable than I used to be–showing up at the courthouse in something other than cutoffs and sandals and having gotten a haircut in the last few months might have been a factor there.
While I was walking back to the court from the parking lot after lunch on the first day, I passed a young mother on a bench holding her infant daughter. I pay a lot more attention to babies than I used to so I noticed her bouncing the kid on her knee and thought the whole scene cute. As I walked by I heard mom start talking to the baby in that singsong cutesie voice that people always use when they say stuff like “are you a good booooy? do you want to go to the paaaaark?” to babies.
“Mommy’s going to get a restraining order against dadddddy
So he can’t hurt her anymore”
7/10/2008
I prefer ugly feet
I just saw this commercial for the PedEgg on TV… while I was eating. It might be the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.
It’s a cheese-grater. For your feet.
7/7/2008
My First Skydiving Adventure
On June 29th, 2008 at 9 AM, I found myself walking past the port-a-potties, up the stairs, and inside the registration office of Skydive San Diego. “I have a reservation for the AFF course.” I told the smiley woman behind the counter. She motioned for me to start filling out some forms. Inside the green packet were pages upon pages with little boxes for me to initial and lines for me to sign. Essentially each statement reiterated how dangerous the sport of skydiving was, that no insurance would cover me if something were to happen to me, and that in the event of injury or death regardless of gross negligence on my part or the instructor’s, I waived the right to sue. Just in case I wasn’t reading closely enough, the TV screens parroted the warnings. When I finished signing my life away, I handed the packet back to the woman, and paid the $339 so that I could start my skydiving adventure.
The Accelerated Free Fall training course had only two other takers that Sunday morning. Chris and Hannah were a couple of British newlyweds on their honeymoon. They had just finished a scuba diving jaunt, done Vegas, and wanted to get in a few skydives before jetting off to New York to finish their tour of the states. Both Chris and Hannah were in the British military. Chris had completed 20+ jumps and was on his way to obtaining his A license, but needed a refresher course since it had been 11 months since his last jump. Hannah had completed several static line jumps in the past, but today would be her first skydive. And then there was me, an innocuous looking Asian woman, a 7th grade life science teacher without any skydiving experience whatsoever, who possessed a minor fear of heights (my apologies to those who have witnessed my histrionic fits on the Freefall ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain), who decided as a lark, that it would be fun to jettison herself a couple miles from a perfectly good plane to celebrate being done with her masters’ program.
6/17/2008
Paraphernalia rebate from Microsoft
In support of their Live Search search engine Microsoft has unveiled a program where one can get cash back for making purchases online after finding them with Live Search.
I don’t typically use Live Search, so I heard of this program through my favorite hot deals website. They recommend using Ebay in conjunction to Live Search to get up to 35% cash back on qualifying purchases, and quite reasonably note that it’s best to use this rebate for big ticket items like Playstation 3s and Wiis.
I’d like to offer an alternate strategy: were one so inclined, apparently one can also get the rebate for purchasing an industry standard, very expensive Storz & Bickel Volcano vaporizer. If only this deal had come along in my younger, more rambunctious days…
Don’t miss out on your $188.65 rebate from Microsoft for this qualifying purchase!
6/16/2008
Portal
In my previous post about Half-Life 2, Andres asked about Portal. I played it this week.
The gimmick is instead of a weapon that does damage you’ve got a gun that shoots an orange and a blue portal. The orange portal connects to the blue portal, so you can do things like walk through walls to go across rooms or fall long distances through portals and conserve your momentum to fly out the other side like Superboy.
The game is short, but I think that’s the way it had to be, because none of the challenges was particularly hard and there’s only so many ways I can envision setting up puzzles with the Portal gun as the only way for the player to interact with them. I probably got six or seven hours out of this game and I don’t know how I could possibly get much more. There are ‘advanced’ levels that become unlocked upon beating the game; maybe I’ll take a look at those.
The gameplay is definitely innovative, but I found myself really wishing for a real gun like I’d have in Half-Life at many points–not because I needed it, but because I wanted to drop a cap in something all aggressive-like. The game looks just like Half-Life 2, so I’m sure that colored my perception there… I found it strange to be running around and not dodging zombines or antlions.
There has been a lot said about how clever and funny Portal is. I didn’t really find that to be true. There were funny parts but I wasn’t LOLing about much that computer voice GLaDOS was telling me while I was working my way through the game.
In this article about the Old Man Murray guys working on Portal there’s an interesting quote about Portal and Half-Life existing in the same universe and intertwining in the future–indeed (spoiler alert, I guess) Aperture Laboratories is mentioned in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Black Mesa is mentioned in Portal, so that’s got to be where things are headed. If I can use the Portal gun and real shoots-bullets guns in the same game, I can’t imagine where the difficulty is going to come from… just shoot a portal behind a bad guy, shoot one safely behind cover, change weapon to something that does damage, and shoot the dude in the back. I’ll be really interested to see how the Valve folks work this out.
Three Pochaccos due to my really high expectations not entirely being met.
Update: I had no idea Mike Patton of Faith No More was in this game. And here’s a download site for “Still Alive”, the song that plays over the credits, which is pretty cool.
6/10/2008
Half-Life 2 Re-Review
Did I tell you that I got a badass new computer a couple of months ago? I’m now able to play video games of more recent vintage than Diablo II for the first time in years.
I got the Orange Box and re-played Half-Life 2 and both Episodes, which took me about a month because I don’t get a lot of free time to blow on video games lately for some reason. I wanted to update my moldy old Half-Life 2 review with some additional information.
* I previously owned Half-Life 2, obviously, and got the Orange Box because I’m a lazy sack and wanted to get all the episodes and Portal without tracking down my old game (which I gave to Woody anyway). I figured when I installed the games Valve’s Steam system would say “ha ha, thanks for buying multiple copies of the same game dummy” if it remembered that I had the games previously at all, but instead it gave me credit for two copies of HL2 and offered to allow me to send one to a friend. I was originally very skeptical of Steam but this is really cool!
* The graphics in this game are awesome. When I previously played it I was plumbing the limits of my hardware; now I can play it at highest res and still get good framerate and no glitching and I enjoyed it.
* I pumped up the difficulty this time around and died more often as a result. That’s a good tip for you l33t gamerz like myself.
* I still thought the end of HL2 was a little more like a cutscene than a playable video game. That’s really my only complaint. The episodes were very fun, and I enjoyed the gameplay a lot more than I remember the first time around.
Five Pochaccos, Valve. Excellent job. I can’t wait for Episode Three!
Post-publication edit: I can’t believe I forgot this one… I live and work near Miramar, and they’ve got those big two-prop cargo choppers that fly around on a regular basis. Lately I’ve left my building at work or the house and heard a couple of those things whomping around, and I’ve reached for my laser-guided RPG to take them down–not because I hate the Marines or America but because I’m so used to blowing up the gunships in Half-Life 2.
6/3/2008
A World Without Nachos
You probably know that John McCain was born during the Great Depression and will, if elected President, be the oldest person to take that office and chase kids off the White House lawn during the annual Easter Egg Roll. But have you considered that John McCain had to live the first seven years of his life without even the possibility of being served nachos, because they hadn’t yet been invented? So certainly, between that and being imprisoned in Vietnam, the man has endured more hardship than I could handle.
Also, I have recently discovered that you should not read about nachos when you are dieting. Damn you Ignacio Anaya!
5/31/2008
The Case for Detroit
First off, I’d like to congratulate the Boston Celtics. They certainly fought a hard battle, and they did well in the playoffs. Boston’s a good team, and they had a good run. However, the leaders of the Eastern Conference should ignore the outcome of the conference championship (as is their God-given right as free men and AMERICANS), and send the Detroit Pistons to the NBA Finals.
Sure, Boston had a 66-16 regular season record compared to Detroit’s 59-23. But you can’t look at the whole season - you have to give the most weight to the recent contests. They both ended the season on a four game win streak, so isn’t it really a wash? And what about the playoffs? Boston lost 8 games in the playoffs, while Detroit only lost 7. Ouch.
Also, Boston’s regular season advantage existed primarily in road games, where they were 31-10 to Detroit’s 25-16. The two teams were nearly identical at home. And who has home court advantage for the NBA playoffs? Why the Eastern Conference champs, of course! So Boston has only performed better than the Pistons in the types games that are going to matter least in the championships. They should be called the Boston Paper Tigers.
Boston has very little high level playoff experience. The Pistons made the conference finals in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, and won the conference championship twice during that period. Boston has only made it as far as the conference finals once in the last 20 years. Look, maybe in four more years Boston can amass the Pistonesque experience that you’d need to get involved in such a stressful situation as the NBA Finals but right now it just seems too likely that they’ll crack under the pressure.
For those who say that it would be unfair to overturn the results of the playoffs, I counter that it would be unfair not to take into account the preferences of the people of Michigan. Who cares what the rules say? Rules that ignore the will of Michigonians are like apartheid, Jim Crow laws, female voter disenfranchisement, and the civil war in Zimbabwe. Michigan represents the heart of America… working class white folks who build American cars. What does Boston have? Over-educated, clam chowder-eating, latte-sipping yuppies.
At the end of the day, shouldn’t the Eastern Conference send the team that has the best chance of beating the Lakers? That team, my friends, is the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons know how to match up against Kobe and in fact ended the Kobe-Shaq dynasty when they beat the Lakers in the 2004 NBA finals.
Rasheed Wallace is ready to lay the smack down on Kobe… just give him that chance.
When you really step back from the hype and look at the facts, it’s clear that only one outcome would be both fair and give the Eastern Conference the best chance of taking home the Larry O’Brien trophy. I implore you, the leaders of the NBA Eastern Conference… nay, I beseech you… send the Pistons of Detroit to represent you in the NBA Championships of 2008.
Thank you for your time.
5/29/2008
rel=nofollow… metaphorically speaking
I can’t really say anything about this that would make it Google searchable given the, er, unique nature of the item, so just enjoy the back of my head in all its irreverent glory.
Yeah, thine eyes do not deceive. That’s suede, punks.
Second Wind
fivethirtyeight.com does some nifty wide-scale analysis of poll results. According to their work Hillary Clinton has gone from a big deficit on March 6 to a sizable advantage today in her projected results versus John McCain, when compared to Barack Obama’s.
5/26/2008
Pizza Hut: Now Theoretically Serving Pasta
Friday night, we had a couple of friends over for dinner. Michelle and I weren’t going to be able to have time to cook, so we decided to try the pasta from Pizza Hut, since we’d been seeing the commercials on Top Chef and we’re very vulnerable to commercials.
3:30pm: I place an order online for the chicken pasta, to be delivered at 6:30pm.
6:45pm: no pasta. I call my local Pizza Hut (this is the one) and talk to a guy who identifies himself as Aaron. He tells me that the pasta is ready to be delivered but he just needs to get his delivery guy back to the store, so real soon now.
7:15pm: no pasta. I call Pizza Hut again and talk to Aaron again.
“Hi, I still haven’t seen my pasta.”
“It’s going out for delivery now. You should see it any minute.”
“Yeah… so I was supposed to get this at 6:30. I’m not real happy about the delay here.”
“I’ll zero out the charge on this.”
“OK, thanks.”
I’m pretty sure the pasta’s never showing up.
7:30pm: no pasta. I run across the street to Vons and get one of those cooked chickens instead. We eat.
8:30pm: no pasta. I call Pizza Hut again. We’ve already eaten, but now I’m kind of pissed off.
“Hi, I ordered pasta for 6:30 delivery and I still haven’t seen it.”
“Let me look up your order… oh, ok, it hasn’t been made yet.”
“That’s surprising. I was told earlier that it was ready to be delivered. How could it be ready to be delivered if it wasn’t cooked?”
“Sir I’m just telling you what I see in the system. Your ticket is right here–number 128. One chicken pasta.”
“Is it common for people to be told their food’s about to be delivered when it isn’t even made yet?”
“I don’t know who you talked to, maybe it was someone new who doesn’t understand the way the system works… it’s been a really busy Friday for us what with the rain and all and we’re way behind but we’ll get this out to you as soon as we can.”
At this point I should bring up that the dialog in this post is all from memory and condensed a little so you won’t have to read me saying the same thing five times, but as a rule I try my very hardest not to be a dick on the phone to the pizza place. I used to work at a pizza place, you see, and I saw what happened a couple of times to a really mean customer’s order, and it wasn’t pretty. We’ve all heard stories. So I was really trying hard to communicate my rising dissatisfaction in a mystified, ‘I’m so confused, how does this jive with what the previous guy told me’ way rather than a ‘what the hell is wrong with you people’ way.
“It’s been two hours and I’ve been told twice that my food was about to be delivered and now that I find out that this was impossible… I’m unhappy about this.”
“I understand. We’re still really busy but we’ll get this to you as soon as possible, and what I’d recommend is that you call back in an hour or so when things calm down a little and ask to speak to the manager and tell him your situation and we can see what we can do to make it right with you. Just ask for Aaron.”
“Wait, Aaron is my buddy! I’ve talked to him twice! He’s the guy that said my pasta was all ready to go. Now I’m really confused. Is Aaron a new employee?”
“Sir, I can’t explain that but he’s the guy you will need to talk to.”
“OK, thanks.”
10:15pm: no pasta. Damn it, Pizza Hut, come hell or high water you and I are going to see this transaction through.
“Pizza Hut, this is Brandon.”
“Hi Brandon, can I speak with a manager?”
“I’m a manager, sir. This is Brandon.”
“I was told to ask for Aaron.”
“Aaron left at 6:00.”
“He did? I talked to him since then! I had an order of pasta for 6:30pm and I’ve called several times and I still don’t have it.”
“Let me look it up… OK, I show your order as being cancelled.”
“Cancelled? I didn’t cancel any order!”
“I see two orders. Ticket 30 and ticket 128. Both were cancelled.”
“Brandon, does Pizza Hut cancel customer orders without the customer doing the cancelling often? Because I’ve got to tell you as a customer I’m starting to feel very jerked around here.”
“I understand, sir, this is very strange.”
“Who cancelled the orders?”
“Aaron did.”
“I thought Aaron left at 6:00.”
“Maybe Aaron was in his office or something. Aaron has an office.”
“Brandon, as a customer I’m very unused to this type of treatment. I can’t possibly understand how what you are telling me happened here went down.”
“Sir, I’m all about customer service. I’ve got a driver here and we’ll get that pasta right out to you. How many do you want?”
I think I could have told him I wanted five or something, but I just wanted the pasta that I ordered at this point.
“One’s fine, and thanks. What I’m really interested in is figuring out why Aaron told me what he told me.”
“I’m writing your number down and I will get this figured out.”
“OK, and you’ll call me with that?”
“Yes sir.”
10:30pm: pasta showed up. No charge.
Now I never expected to hear from Brandon. Unless Aaron and whoever I talked to at 8:30 were hanging out watching him talk on the phone and giggling, he did fine and it would be truly above and beyond for him to actually investigate this matter and call me back (though it’d also be what he said he was going to do, and he’s all about customer service.) I also get how things can get balled up sometimes–heck, I screwed up a customer’s order more than once at Little Caesar’s. But what I said was “I’m sorry about that, my fault, I’ll fix this”, not a bunch of fabricated nonsense.
Heck, I don’t even mind mediocre customer service from a Pizza Hut because I know the turnover in the foodservice industry–85% high school kids, mean service time of 22 days or so, many of them from a fairly nice neighborhood, who aren’t exactly highly motivated to keep their jobs as opposed to getting fired and finding another minimum wage gig. But Aaron is apparently the manager. What on earth is the manager doing giving me the runaround like this?
I’m not the world’s most ardent Pizza Hut fan, but I do like some of their menu items (quepapas… mmm). I ordered from the branch by my old house every so often, and I always got satisfactory service. But the Scripps Ranch Pizza Hut has managers that make things up. Get your pizza somewhere else.
5/6/2008
Mortgage Crunch, Gas Crunch
The Fed is looking for more action on the mortgage “crisis”. Bob Bernanke has some specific ideas about what to do [via Drudge]
The current housing crises has clobbered some borrowers home prices dropped. That left them with mortgages that are bigger than the value of their home. When that’s the primary problem, Bernanke said the best solution may be reducing the amount that the borrower owes on the loan or some other permanent modification to the loan.
Meanwhile, this article about owners of gas-guzzlers looking to sell their cars at huge losses just to be rid of them also hit the Drudge Report.
Some desperate car dealers and consumers, are willing to lose thousands of dollars just to get rid of their SUVs. Last July, 20-year-old Sannan Nizami, of Lowell, bought a 2007 Toyota 4Runner SUV for $32,000 when it cost about $65 to fill the tank. Six months later, as a gallon of gas soared to $3.50 and more, and tank refills climbed over $80, Nizami put the vehicle up for sale. He posted it online for $27,000 but received no responses for months.
Frustrated and unable to afford prices at the pump, Nizami last month turned over the Toyota to a dealer who only sells vehicles from private owners. Nizami is still paying the $450 loan but now is bumming rides to work with a cousin and worrying about making enough from the sale to cover the car loan.
“I didn’t think gas would shoot up this much. I’m willing to take a hit just to take the pressure off,” Nizami said. “I’ll probably get a really cheap Camry or Corolla. Something that gets more than 18 miles to the gallon.”
In the current ridiculous political-economic climate I half expect to read a statement from Bob Bernanke about how people with cars that get under 20 MPG should be specifically targeted with some sort of financial relief effort such as reducing the amount they owe on their auto loan.
If you bought too much house and are underwater, its nothing personal but I really hope the government doesn’t do anything to provide you relief. You bet wrong, you’re screwed, time to buy Ramen in bulk and cut back those personal expenses or look for a better job. Take your Bear-Stearnsing with pride, keep making those payments and do your part to keep property values as high as they can go. Either that, or don’t, work something out with your lender, sell at a loss, and move to a one-bedroom apartment. Not my problem, and I promise not to make my house’s falling market value yours.
5/2/2008
Politics that matter
So Clinton and McCain want to suspend the $0.18 federal gas tax, while Obama correctly points out that’s a dumb-ass idea for a country that’s trying to reduce its dependence on oil and has some of the lowest gas prices in the world. But, really, who cares? I want to know where the candidates stand on issues that really impact me. Take, for example, the anti-Taco Truck ordinance that goes into effect next week in L.A. County.
I fancy myself a bit of a taco connoisseur, and some of the best tacos in Los Angeles come from these trucks. Seeing these trucks around reminds you that you’re in Los Angeles and not, say, Flint, Michigan. Obama’s right, dammit. This gas tax thing is just a shell game to distract us from the real issue: tacos.
