My Car, and No One Else's

I bought my first car back in 2006, because I was tired of taking the bus to work or catching a ride with my Dad. One more step in the plan for independent living, you see. We went to the local dealership, haggled over price a little, and I drove home my little blue Cobalt. It felt good. I remember going home, sitting down on the couch, jingling my keys saying, "Heh. I'm a car owner now! :-)".

My Mother, whom I suspect likes taking on the role of Captain Bringdown pointed out that actually, my financing company was a car owner, a privilege I wouldn't fully have for a few more years. Bummer...

Four Years, one leap up the career ladder, and several thousand dollars later, now I say to thee all (especially Mom):

"I Am A Car Owner!"

For I now have the title to prove it:

PS: Full disclosure - the afore mentioned Blue Cobalt met its end way before its time, when a Freak Blizzard, a big hill, and a phone pole conspired to end its life. This title is for my little Orange Cobalt.

Follow Up on my New Computer

One year after I really wanted to, I finally replaced my Laptop with the Glowy Blue Beast Box for my primary computer. Take a moment to stare at The Awesomeness:

Oooooh, pretty!

So, what did I do first? Well, let's go through the list chronologically:

1. Connect to the Internet
2. Got Microsoft.com to order my free upgrade to Windows 7
3. Installed Zone Alarm
4. Played a game of Pox Nora (a game that's not graphically intense, and STILL manages to send my laptop's CPU into overdrive, overheating, and forced shutdown)
5. Downloaded Microsoft's free anti-virus utility recommended by a coworker.
6. Attempted to install aforementioned tool, installer froze and the process had to be killed
7. Succeeded installation of tool, another freeze-up and kill episode on updating it
8. Curse Microsoft
9. Attempted to install one of them new-fangled MMORPG thingies that are all the rage with the kids these days. The installer freezes and locks up, much like the Anti-Virus tool.
10. Repeat previous step 4-5 times; curse Microsoft
11. Begin to suspect that the ZoneAlarm program mentioned in step 3 was having difficulty on a 64-bit system, being a 32-bit progam and all.
12. Uninstall ZoneAlarm, reboot, subsequent attempts to install MMORPG and run Anti-Virus are successful
13. Sheepishly recant curses directed at Microsoft
14. Played through the Eve-Online Tutorial. Remembers how it feels to be impressed by Good Graphics.

And so, the adventure continues. I'm going to have to hook up this laser printer too, and see how that action works.
So, between the myriad PC games that are now open to me, the next Wheel of Time book that came out two days ago, and the fact that I just got another coworker addicted to another old hobby of mine (he was an easy sell) My leisure time is booked until further notice. At least it's getting cold now, so I have a good excuse to stay indoors all day! :-)

Beatings from the World of Tomorrow!

In Terminator, Skynet sent an android back in time to kill the mother of the Human resistance faction. Did you ever wonder what would happen, if the Humans had been able to send a squadron of guys to destroy the time travel device before Mecha-Schwarzenegger went through the portal?

I've recently read through Rant by Chuck Palanhiuk, which also explores questions of the Grandfather Paradox. It provides a different theory altogether, rather than the usual destroy the universe or cause a second parallel universe to come into existence.

I mention this all because I've just discovered Achron, a yet to be released Real Time Strategy game that allows you to send units back into time, or even forward in time at certain intervals. Want to prevent an nasty attack on your base of operations? go back 60 seconds and shore up your defenses. While it's not the first game to feature manipulation of time, I think it's the first one to allow you to to make sweeping and dramatic changes. Check out the video below, and go to Achron's own website to see more. I'm not sure how it's all going to work, and I can't even wrap my head around all the combat possibilities, but it's nice to see someone trying something new.

Gonna run all night, Gonna run all day...

That promise I made about having the results from the Barroom Banter post will most likely be broken, as the person in question has had a slight medical emergency, and I wasn't able to get that list to him until today.

So in the meantime, here's My Top 10 in no particular order:

Offspring
Squirrel Nut Zippers
Franz Ferdinand
Reel Big Fish
Green Day
Spin Doctors
Five Iron Frenzy
"Weird" Al Yankovic
Gin Blossoms
Evanescence

And as an added bonus, here's my cadindate for best song EVAR:

Enjoy!

Old School Addictions

It's about time someone put this together: It's a Dual NES/SNES console and it only costs 50 bucks. So if you're having trouble finding an old nintendo console that actually worked (like I did) This is you're chance!

Odd-io

Some of the most weird, yet strangely beautiful things I have ever had the pleasure to listen too:

Freak on a Leash (acoustic) - Korn feat. Amy Lee of Evanescence
System of a Down's Lyrics to the Legend of Zelda Theme
Bluegrass tributes to Just About Anyone.
Anything by Richard Cheese

and most recently...

Seether covering... Careless Whisper by Wham! (?!?!)

Winter is Coming...

No, I'm not referring to the local climate, but the news that George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire has just been greenlit for an HBO miniseries.

I've may have mentioned, if not on this blog then face to face, that I don't have TV service right now, and don't really feel a need or desire for it. Once we get an air date for this, I'm calling up DirecTV for the lowest package that includes HBO.

Unexpected Awesomeness

I was wondering how soon my Tax Refund and Stimulous Package would arrive.

I had forgotten that I opted to have that sent by direct deposit into my checking account. Refund's been there for two weeks, the StimPak there for 3 days. I thought I'd get a post card or an email or something.

Hooray for Refunds!

Proud to be an Alumnus!

During my second year at California University of Pennsylvania, me and a few guys rented a house that was just across the street from the campus. You could spit onto the lawn from the porch, if you could get the angle right. One of the things that annoyed us was that the marching band would practice every day during football season in that field, and made it difficult to sleep off the hangovers concentrate on our studies. We'd sit on the porch and discuss maybe launching water balloons their way, or countering their sound with some big-assed speakers and some heavy metal.

Then just today, I saw a video on YouTube.

To the Marching Band of California University, I'd just like to say, I'm sorry for thinking ill of you. It's you that makes me proud to have gone to such a fine institution as Cal U.

You. Rock. My. World.

EDIT: My sister pointed out one detail that she thinks I overlooked. Look, the World Wide Web is the one place where accuracy just doesn't matter, so I'm not posting the comment here. If you give a damn about Fact Checking, and other BS like that, you can check the comments yourself.