Home Sweet Home

Yes, folks, I'm home!

Stay tuned for further details...

I"m On My Way

It won't be long now, kids. I'll be seeing you all very soon. Not like you're looking forward to it or anything.
Oh, by the way - Hi Dawn! :P

Slide It In

Posts of Weirdness Past... If you've found this, congratulations. I thought I buried this one quite well, but alas and alack, here it is.

I'm required to post a lil' something about my new widget over there, the Live Activity feed. So, here's the obligatory Best Ice Cream Makers link, and obligation satisfied. Simple as that.

It's a small price to pay for such a neato widget. I think it'll be fun to pinpoint visitors a bit better than the Clustermap can (though I still <3 that as well)...

The Near Future

The near future doesn't bode well for me, which sucks.

I'll explain more on Sunday. For now, though, I'm going to enjoy the living hell out of this week.

Good Riddance

Apparently, today is the 5th anniversary of the death of one Dale Earnhardt, Sr. You know the guy. Hell, you can't go anywhere without seeing some form of #3 merchandise on someone's car, hat, shirt, anything. For some reason, this wee little man with a mustache was the most celebrated "athlete" in his "sport."

By the way, these "athletes" sit in a seat, push pedals with their feet, and turn a wheel.

And this "sport?" Go fast, turn left, repeat.

And then he plowed into a wall. No more Intimidator. No more hero.

Hero of a "sport" that calls disorganized crime it's father, and the bosom of redneck culture its mother.

NASCAR's roots are easily traceable. Let's go back to Prohibition. In the South, Moonshine was the answer to the Government's banning of alcohol. In order to distribute the Shine, hillbillies souped up their cars, pushing the limits of the vehicles of the day in order to outrun the cops. They became known as Shine Runners.

Unsurprisingly, since rednecks are often the center of their own individual universes, boasting began over who's shine hauler was the bee's knees, and races were organized to see just who had the most pimped out ride. Thusly, NASCAR was born.

Go to any given NASCAR event, and just watch people. Tell me what you see. 90% of the crowd there will most assuredly be straight out of Deliverance. Seriously. Watch people smile, then start counting teeth. I bet you won't get to a very high number, and it most certainly won't create a good teeth/adult mouth ratio (which should be at least 20/1).

I'd hoped it would finally die with Earnhardt. The most iconic driver in NASCAR history, killed by the sport he devoted his life to. I'd hoped his accident would raise questions as to the safety issues brought about by racing at that level and kill it. But no, it began to thrive more and more.

And people just won't let go of the fact that Dale is dead. They continue to plaster #3 on everything: Car windows, flags, shirts, hats... It hasn't ended, even five years later. They treat this man like a damn saint, almost to the point of worship. Go into any random redneck home, and chances are you'll see a shrine of pictures and collectibles devoted to the guy.

Why?

A sport born of alcohol, sponsored by alcohol, and watched by people who consume absurd amounts of alcohol. There's nothing wrong with that? Somehow, it's hard to miss the connection of "Drinking and Driving."

And I love the local color that NASCAR culture creates. Nothing like getting passed in a double yellow by two good ol' boys in their 15 year old Chevy Celebrity, pretending they're behind the wheel of the #24 Monte Carlo while they've got Merle Haggard jamming full blast in the stereo 8-track, windows down screaming "Yee haw" as they drive past you. Yeah, real smart there, Duke Boys. Might be time to go visit Uncle Jesse and re-up your shine supply. Brilliant.

What these tools fail to realize is that every company that offers them Dale Earnhardt Sr. anything is just trying to cash in on a dead man's fame. They're not doing it for "the memory of a great athlete," they're doing it for George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and Benjamin Franklin. They know that you'll buy anything with a #3 on it. They know you're willing to shell out a good amount of cash because of your "love" of a rotting corpse.

Yep. He's a rotting corpse. He has been dead five years, you know.

Let it go, people. Take the stickers off your windows, take your flags off of the cheap wood "porches" you've built onto your trailers. He's dead. He's not coming back. He's a decaying mass of bones and flesh five years through the breakdown process. Open the coffin, it will smell very bad. He's not on the track, his spirit is not on the track. He does not haunt Daytona. What he haunts is the minds of people who are sick and tired of hearing about him, constantly reminded by your mindless devotion to a dead man.

Please. For the love of humanity. No more #3.

Outatime

Gee, thanks, Wil. His latest post over at WWdN:IX just had to be about retro gaming, didn't it. Back when I was a kid, I was addicted to video games. They were new, they were super cool (you could play a game... On your TV!), and after the 1983 crash, they were dirt cheap. The system in question here is the Intellivision (Intelligent Television, the second generation of which is shown at right), and yes: I indeed had one of these bad boys. In fact, I had all three versions at one point. Come to think of it, I think my original Intellivision I is still downstairs somewhere...

JC and I were hooked on these consoles. In the pre-NES days, they were the king shit console of consoles. They made Atari's consoles look like they were trapped in the PONG era. Though it's not widely known, the INTVs were, in fact, true 16 Bit systems. At its peak, the INTV family had over 100 games available for it, and consoles of one style or another were produced up until the end of the 80's, well into the NES era.

After the industry crash of 1983, Intellivision alone survived. Other companies had given up on the home console market after a flood of systems and shoddy games polluted the genre, but INTV managed to stick it out. At the time, one of the local pharmacies (and only store within 30 miles to carry games) had begun selling off carts for $2 and $3 apiece, leaving JC and I to up our libraries considerably. One such trip, I remember, brought about the addition of the uber-classic Triple Action to my collection.

Night Stalker. SNAFU. AD&D. Space Hawk. Star Strike. Donkey Kong. Mouse Trap. Utopia. Lock-N-Chase. Burger Time. Quite a few different TRON titles. Ka-BOOM!

Seriously. I just spent the last hour at the official Blue Sky Rangers website. Awesome. Just... Wow. If you're in your mid-20's or older and want to take a great walk through the past, or if you're some punk kid spoiled by your PlayStation 2's and your XBox 360s and needs a lesson on why you have those consoles at all, pay it a visit.

Super Bowl Weekend Pics

Alright, alright, so I know this is shameless self-promotion. But I'm allowed. Here are links to all of my cameraphone shots from Super Bowl weekend in Pittsburgh. All seven of them. Heh.

Angel And I, Pre-Game
Angel At Paulie's
Cortez
Shorty
Paulie and his Polamalu-ish hat
The Gang At Paulie's
BK being a lazy cat

Do enjoy them.

Welcome Aboard, Angel...

I'd like to be the first to welcome Angel to the Blogosphere! She's joing up as a member of our team blog, and will be helping contribute to the project when she finds time and nifty crap to post about. But I'm proud as hell that she's giving it a go. Hopefully, she'll be better at it than Derreck has been... (Something That Makes Sense)

HERE WE GO STEELERS!!!

Hell yes, one for The Bus! Go Steelers! Feel free to use this as your buddy icon/display image!

Touched By An Angel

Can you say "Happy Eric?" Sure, I knew you could.

Love ya, Angel!

Why Do People Hate FOX?

The following is a post I made at the Internet Movie Database's page for the forthcoming Futurama movie. It has to contain the single funniest line I've ever typed in a serious argument, and I've highlighted it specifically. Why? Well, because I think it's pretty damn funny. Anyway, here's why people hate FOX:

Because the suits at FOX are nothing more than a bunch of morons. Need proof?

Canceled: Futurama, Family Guy, Firefly. Three great programs with sizable cult followings. Because they're not shameless ratings fodder like American Idol, the suits at FOX like to "trim the fat," often cutting out what is honestly great programming. Family Guy was saved by us, the fans, by buying up DVDs and giving the suits heck. Futurama, as is evidenced by this entry, is making a slight comeback. Firefly? It was probably the best new SciFi show on TV along with Battlestar Galactica. But FOX suits don't understand what that means.

All they understand is what sells. American Idol sells because complete idiots watch crap like that in droves. Firefly didn't sell because SciFi is still considered a "niche" genre. Heck, they probably think that stuff is just for 30 year old fanboys who still live in Mom's basement downloading poorly hacked nudie pics of Britany-Jo Spears-Federline-Cletus-McHatfield. They don't recognize a little thing we like to call "Fresh, Quality Entertainment." They'd rather feed us an entire season of Simon Cowell being the poor judge of talent he is, pushing it just because people like it when he trashes someone.

Nope. FOX isn't the network it used to be. In the beginning, FOX suits were brash upstarts who gave envelope-pushing programming like The Simpsons and Married... With Children the greenlight and scored big. Now, it's Rupert freaking Murdoch, who's older than dirt, and his money-grubbing, Bush-supporting old fart Country Club buddies who are calling the shots. And all they want to do is make their kids' trust funds a little fatter by pawning off crap.

But we can't blame this all on FOX. No, a lot of the blame rests on the complete tools who think shows like American Idol are "cool" and tune in, week-in and week-out, to watch like the mindless zombies the suits want them to be. The viewing public is just as indifferent to and ignorant of FOX's programming decisions as the people who actually make said decisions. "You want more morons like William Hung, but not a fresh, interesting and thought-provoking show like Firefly? Good on ya. Now pay us."

And you people buy it up like good little ants. Sad.

Shows like Family Guy, Futurama and Firefly BELONG on our TVs. Why? Because it's good entertainment floating in a nasty, brown-tinted sea of crap, complete with that oh-so-pungent Northern New Jersey smell.

And now, because I feel that I have not used enough hyphens, here are a few more:

------------------------------------------

Now then. That's why people hate on FOX. What's really sad is, those people are in an obvious minority. They're the people who can find something better than American Idol to watch. They're the smart ones.

American Idol Fans/FOX Lovers - You might want to eat your mental Wheaties...

Heh. Hyphenate names suck! Oh. And if you're looking for me on the IMDb boards, I post under AnimationJunkieX...

Upgrade

Here's the results of my recent upgrading session, which is the precursor to my overall goal: a six-operating-system monster featuring Windows 98, XP Pro, three flavors of Linux, and a final OS as yet undetermined:

Windows 98SE --> Windows XP Pro - A good change, if only for the fact that XP handles XML WAY better than 98 ever could. I got sick of having to restart Yahoo, Winamp, and Firefox everytime the rendering engine went kaput.

Photoshop 7 --> Photoshop CS - The only barrier there was CS required XP. Now that I have XP, I have CS

Goldwave 5.12 --> SoundForge 7.0, ACID 4.0 - Talk about an upgrade! My audio editing will now be MUCH easier with this combo of programs. SF handles recording, and ACID is beautiful for multi-tracking and mixing. Sweetness.

Firefox 1.0.7 --> Firefox 1.5 Beta - When I installed the beta in 98, I lost my scroll bars, my options screen simply wouldn't render, and downloads were clipping themselves at just a few K instead of the Megs they were supposed to weigh in at. Now I have no problems, and can join in the chorus of "It's Awesome" with the rest of my fellow Geeks.

Now, mind you, I didn't upgrade 98 to XP in that sense. I put XP on a seperate partition on my primary drive, allowing me to keep 98 just in case something goes horribly wrong. That, and I wasn't sure if a Celeron 566 with 256MB of RAM would be sufficient to run XP. But once I saw Joker and Angel's machine (a Celeron 450 with 256MB of RAM) take it like a champ, I felt better and went ahead with the installation.

So far, so good. Now I get to download and install my Linux flavors, as well as the mystery OS I haven't decided on yet.

NES Review: Dig Dug

When it c omes to ultra classics, there's probably no one you ask that won't name Dig Dug. And all behold, the translation to the NES was pretty much flawless.

I'm not entirely square on the storyline of the game, but here goes all the same. Rhyme aside, you're some sort of subterranian explorer who's apparently awoken some nasty baddies. Armed only with his high-tech harpoon/air-pump, he digs around just below the surface, trying to inflate the baddies until they pop out of existance

Level after level, the baddies multiply and get faster. The dragon things alone are quite the pain, given their inate ability to shoot fire, and sometimes through a seemingly solid-enough wall of dirt. Alas, it can indeed go through, and it can really mess your day up.

One nice thing, though. You can totally pull a similar version of this tactic on them. If you dig 'almost' all the way through a thin spot, the monster will be prevented from getting at you, but you can still squeez your pump thing through and catch them when they walk up against the thin spot. Beware, though, for as you can see, the baddies have the ability to seeminly transmogrify and fly through dirt, materializing only when they reach a tunnel.

But fear not! They're still vulnerabile in this state, and a well-timed shot from your harpoon on crack will start them on the way to poppitude.

As you progress through the levels, the colors of the soil change, and rocks appear to assist you. If you dig directly under one and a baddie is chasing you at the right time, it'll fall and squish them out of existance. You don't get much point wise for that little maneuver, but hey, You can't argue when baddies die, and you get to up your count of flowers across the surface.

It's a common theme, I know. But kids these days are spoiled. Way back in the day, this game consumed our thoughts and our quarters, and back in the day it was buzzing, booping and popping on our TV screens. You can't mess with an ultra-classic, recognized as such the world over. If you can find an original upright cabinet, kudos on ya, because you have in your basement a part of gaming history.

When you needed a break from PacMan, Dig Dug was the way to go.

Dig Dug - NES - Action/Puzzle

Stop And Think

While it's been fun to watch the Nerd-frontation between Wil, Shane, AJ and Annie, sometimes we have to be reminded that underneath all the fun, life is plodding ever forward, and in the end, despite our humor or even our fame, we're all still human.

Sadly, Annie got some of that reality over the Holidays when she lost her step-mom to cancer. Before I go any further, I want to send my thoughts out to her entire family, and a huge hug as well.

But it's odd for me to do that, really. I'm instantly reminded of my Aunt Mardine's battle with cancer, which she sadly lost when I was in the 5th grade. Here was the world's most perfect person - Loving, caring, fun, always a joy to be around, never smoked, hardly (if ever, as far as I know) drank - reduced before my eyes to a frail woman in a cot in her living room. That. Sucked.

But Aunt Mardine isn't the only thought I have. You see, I still have both of my parents yet. And hearing about someone else close to my age losing a parent, well, it kind of makes you come face to face with the mortality of your own loved ones. I can't imagine a world without Jim an Cheryl Jacobson.

And it's very hard to write about it.

Just another one of the worries on my mind these days. I know I don't post as much here as I did on the Ranch, since most of my efforts are directed at Blog Prophyts. But it's one of the few things these days I can find that I can actually write about without fear of backlash. I really wish I could write more. Maybe someday I will.

It'll be a How-To on how not to live your life...

Evolving Beyond God

You've all heard it at least a hundred times. You know the story, the one where a bunch of kooks want something called "Intelligent Design" taught in schools. The kooks who whine and complain that "evolution is only a theory and hasn't been proven," and that life is so inherantly complex that it "must" have been designed by a higher power. A judge here in Pennsylvania saw it for what it really is: the Biblical (read: Chirstian) idea of Creation, done by the hand of their one and only God, thinly veiled behind a pseudo-scientific language that would make anyone with half a brain chuckle at it at best.

But still, the extreme Right Wing pushes ever forward, emboldened by their victory in Kansas. Even Kansans aren't in Kansas anymore as Creationism is being taught, under the guise of Intelligent Design, in schools thanks to a State School Board ruling on the matter. They're still trying to quash Evolution (a theory, yes, but one backed up by boat loads more evidence than just a book and blind faith). Why are they trying so hard?

Because they fear it. They know it holds more water. And one particular element of Darwin's theory scares them most of all.

Natural Selection.

Oh yeah, it applies to Humans, too. After all, we had Neanderthal man, which gave way to Cro-Magnon man.Cro-Magnon gave way to modern humanity over a short time, and we have in turn evolved into extremely sophisticated, technologically advanced and highly knowledgable versions of our former selves. Since the dawn of modern man, though, our evolution has been less physical and more mental. We've begun to use the power of the human mind and thought process to conquer things evolution would take millenia to overcome on its own, if the current rate were to hold firm.

The belief in a "supreme being" might have worked in a time when humans failed to grasp the reality of the world around them, when we were just beginning to understand what it was we were dealing with. Humans are prone to fearing things they don't quite understand. Early on, it was the elements: fire, lightning, severe storms and natural disasters. Why did these things happen?

"God is angry with us!" the cloth would cry. "We must be more obedient!" Bang. Instant social control. Preying off of human fear in order to establish power for the select few.

But then, we began to understand. Slowly, yes. But failed sciences like Alchemy led to the true science of Chemistry. Philosophy gave way to modern rational thought. Mathematics were used to give things order and explain more complex principles. While mythology still held great influence, we were slowly beginning to understand our world, and by default, becoming less fearful of it as well.

Back then, it was accepted belief that, as God's supposed children, we were at the center of the universe: Everything, including the Sun and Moon, revolved around us. "Not so," said people who sat down and gave it some thought. "We revolve around the sun, as do the other planets we know about!"

"Heresy!" cried the Church! "We are arrogant and believe ourselves to be just that special!"

Now, try and tell someone today that everything in the universe revolves around the Earth. What do you think their response will be? I'll bet dimes to dollars your ass will get pointed and laughed at, and that person will run and tell the better part of the Milky Way galaxy what a complete retard you are.

Why? Science. Things that were once decried as Heresy were challanged as Theory and proven as Accepted Fact through Science.

Once upon a time, people thought the Earth was flat. This had nothing to do with Religion, other than the fact that the people who believed this shared this common flaw with Religion: Ignorance.

"Not so," said Christopho Columbo (Christopher Columbus), "I bet I can sail to China and India by going west!

"You're nuts," said the people. But the Queen financed him, and he sailed. He didn't know there were two continents in the way, and that the northern one had been discovered hundreds of years before by Scandinavians. That in turn led to the journey of one Ferdinand Magellan, the first man to circumnavigate the Earth, proving that it was, indeed, round.

Science scored a secular victory, challanging with Theory and proving as Accepted Fact.

God (and like him, Allah, Zeus, etc.) has always been thought to live in the "heavens above." Back then, we didn't understand the sky too much, because we simply couldn't get up there by ourselves. Traditional religious teachings on death always talk about our souls "ascending into heaven." This would constitute a rise. Sure, now you can say that its a metaphore for moving from this world to the next, not litterally up. But back in the day, that was the accepted truth. God lived in the skies.

"Not so," say the scientists. "Above us is an atmosphere, which contains the air we breathe. And beyond that is a seemingly endless void of nothing, pockmarked by things like rocks and big burning balls of gas, with no breathable air to speak of!"

"Heresy!" Again the Church tried to keep its stranglehold on an unsuspecting and uneducated people.

And again, the Church was challanged by Theory, and eventually proven as Accepted Fact when we developed the power to leave the Earth and travel beyond the clouds.

Walk up to anyone today and tell them that God has a mansion in the clouds, right up there (pointing to a random cloud) all for you when you go to meet him. At the very least, you'll get brushed off with a sigh, a smile, and the rolling of your subject's eyes.

Why? Science.

"But... But... But... The Earth is only 6,500 years old, and people lived alongside dinosaurs, which Noah had on his Ark, and..."

"Not so!" Science has proven that the Earth is a metric assload older than just six and a half millennia.

New trains of thought are replacing old, outdated trains of thought.

Mental Natural Selection.

This is why the Church is afraid. This is why they're trying to exert their influence in this manner. It's a last ditch effort to save itself from becoming obsolete. Darwin's "theory" of Natural Selection states that the weaker version of something dies off as the stronger version comes to dominate. Religion is an ages-old concept based on fear. Science has grown by leaps and bounds, especially in the last 200 years. In that time, Science has undercut Religion time and again, and has come to a point where it is ready to overtake its predicessor as the dominant train of thought.

The extreme Right knows it, and they're trying one last time to sound the cry of "Heresy" by being sneaky and trying to duck around a provision, written into the Constitution by the God-fearing founders of this country, specifically designed to discourage the promotion of a single religion. After all, this country was founded on Religious Freedom, not to be a single-faith theocracy with that faith's doctrines taught on a mandatory basis.

Sorry, Fundies. But schools are paid for by Tax Dollars. Tax Dollars are collected and distributed by The Government. And The Government isn't allowed to get involved in Religion thanks to The Constitution of the United States. That's why your Churches don't pay any Tax Dollars. No Tax Dollars, no Influence. And just in case you thought Seperation of Church and State is nowhere implied in that great Constitution of ours, here it is in white on black:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That pretty much covers it. If the US Constitution says that the US Congress can't do it, you've got a problem. No State can override the Constitution. And Congress can't override it, either. Seriously. Are you going to commit political suicide by trying to ammend the Bill of Rights?

You see, Public Schools are just that. Schools run by Public Funding. Teaching the Christian idea of Creationism, over the Theory of Evolution or any other Religious idea, is the sponsoring of one particular brand of religion using Public (Government) funds. It's unconstitutional.

In short, you're going to fail. Again. And this time, your attempt to use Science's strategy against it by attacking instead of being attacked first, will be the final nail in your coffin. Say a prayer for yourselves. The next "victim" of Natural Selection is you...