I just stumbled across a new post at Ain't It Cool News partially titled "Want To See The Promo For 24 4.1??". Agh!!! No... musn't... click... link... avoid... spoilers... I'll try to avoid them for as long as I can, but I have a strange suspicion that at some point between now and January, I'll break down and watch the damn things. For my own good, I hope they get pulled down before I break down. Update Well, I broke down and watched the trailers. They didn't give too much away. I'm very hopeful that this season is better than last. Although Season 3 was still better than 95% of anything on TV. While I was at it, I found a ...
Fantasy Football, for the uneducated, is a relatively simple game. You and anywere from 9 to 13 of your friends take turns "drafting" NFL players. Each week, you play one of your friends' teams head-to-head. You score points based on your draftees' performance: Brett Farve is on your team, and he throws a touchdown pass? That's 3 points for you. Farve thows an interception? You lose 2. In short, fantasy football changes the way you watch the game. Forever. When you're watching a game on TV, the most important thing on the screen isn't the action, it's the ticker. (Washington just scored a touchdown? Was it my running back?) This has been my 10th year of fantasy football. I've been incredibly fortunate ...
In the aftermath of Friday's basketbrawl, I'm absolutely shocked to hear how many people are trying to defend the actions of the NBA players involved. I'm not absolving the fans who instigated things, but to proclaim that someone has a right to defend themselves in this instance is ridiculous. self-de·fense (slfd-fns) n. # Defense of oneself when physically attacked: took a course in self-defense. # Defense of what belongs to oneself, as one's works or reputation. # Law. The right to protect oneself against violence or threatened violence with whatever force or means are reasonably necessary. "Reasonably necessary". Let's see, a guy hits you in the chest with some warm beer. I think it would have been "reasonable" to have one of the 40 security guards ...
Step one in my quest for world domination making it on my own is nearly complete. When I wrote a few weeks ago about leaving Layer One and moving into the world of freelancing, I said that I'd keep this blog in place, but re-tool it to focus more on my business activities. After giving that a little more thought, I decided it was a bad idea - for several reasons. It makes more sense to have a site dedicated to promoting my business. Potential clients really aren't going to be impressed by my fantasy football updates, or what bands I've seen recently. Also on that note, I can be a bit... opinionated. It was ...
I recently reformatted a 250GB drive with SUSE Linux Professional 9.2. I tried the 9.1 version out, and was very impressed with it. Everything I had struggled to mount or use under Fedora Core 2 was automatically probed and configured - with two exceptions. First - and foremost - was my monitor. It's a Sony SDM-V72w (widescreen). I have it connected to an ATI Radeon 9000 card. When I installed SUSE, it was picked up at 1024x768 - not the actual resolution of 1280x768. I tried running YAST to reconfigure it, but it never quite came out right. After about 50 tries, I finally got it right. One of the problems I had is that, under Fedora, I used a set of drivers from ATI. The SUSE 9.2 has moved to the Xorg server, and those drivers haven't been updated yet - they won't run. According to some of the chatter I heard, "maybe in November" they'll be updated. I had been trying to use a Modeline Generator to create entries for my xorg.conf file. Apparently, I was doing something wrong, because every time I tried to switch to the wider resolution, my screen would black out, and the hardware would display a message: "Resolution not supported - switch to 1280x768 @ 60hZ". On the ocassions that I was able to view at full-width, it looked like there were a few extra pixels, and the fonts were a bit smushed and fuzzy. I wish I knew exactly what I was doing wrong, but I don't. Eventually, things fell into place. I even toyed around with the xcomposite extensions - live dropshadows and translucency. Neat stuff, but slowed down the system a tad, and was actually a bit distracting. Next up, trying to get SUSE to handle my Hauppauge TV Card. It's being recognized, but when I try to scan channels, I get nothing. I've tried removing the card and reinstalling it, but I get to a point where YAST asks me to point to the firmware file ("sc_main.mc") - which has to be pulled out of the Windows system. Urgh...
Chuck, Rajan and I went to see the Pixies show at the Milwaukee Theatre last night. I think Chuck summed it up pretty well after the show: workmanlike. The Pixies came to town to kick your ass. Mission accomplished. I lost track of the song count, but they dug deeper into the catalog than I had hoped/expected. I'd guestimate that they played 2 songs from "Come On Pilgrim", 4 from "Surfer Rosa", probably another 10 from "Doolittle", and one from "Bossanova" - leaving us with nothing from "Trompe Le Monde". So, I was a little disapointed not to hear something like "Motorway to Roswell" or "Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons". They also ...
The Curse of Tecumseh "Harrison will die I tell you," the Prophet reportedly said. "And after him, every Great Chief chosen every 20 years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of my people." Read all about it at snopes.com or the Wikipedia
When I sat down to watch the returns last night, I didn't think twice about what network I'd tune into - Dan Rather in a landslide. That guy is just nuts. I love it. Also, CBS had this fantastic 60" touch-screen setup. I'd love to get my hands on the software it was running. There was a menu bar on the left, and all the interaction and animation was happening in real-time. I forget who the anchor operating the thing was, but he obviously had been well-trained on the interface. It was very cool.
Did anyone catch Tim Michels' "concession" speech last night? What a classless fuck. "Just was't our day - we'll get them next time". Not a mention of the (typically) obligatory "I'd like to congratulate my opponent..." On the other hand, Russ Feingold's speech was a little... weird. I think he may have been drinking (of course, if there's ever been a reason to drink, it's winning your third term in the senate, with a bullseye on your chest from the Republican attack dogs). Russ was just "enthusiastic", then went on to thank, oh, *everyone*. Good for Russ, though. I'm ecstatic that he won.
If anyone knows when the burning and the looting will be starting, let me know.