Feeling: Festive

Yeah, I hate crocs too.

Do you see? Do you see? I'm not the only one who is afraid of balloons!

Looking for a fun new web comic? Check out Holy Bibble.

If you missed it when it happened take a look at this interesting project. Two people tried to gain 30 pounds in 30 days by cramming as much fattening food down their throats as possible. If they succeeded they would win $3,000. Watch and be entertained by their gluttonous struggle. On a more humorous note, in the 30 days of the experiment an estimated 750,000 people in the world died of starvation. America--where eating is a game!

I'm off to a Halloween party tonight with my arcade homies. My costume rocks, and no, it's nothing like this one.

Feeling: Happy

Played a couple more hours in Neverwinter Nights last night. It's still keeping my attention, so it's not half bad.

I moved over the font for all the Panzer Dragoon games to the Game Font Database.

I finished re-zipping the old soundtracks in the Videogame Music Preservation Foundation and moved over another composer.

You know what's worse than having a long dull needle pushed under each and everyone of your fingernails? Daytime television.

I'm heading over to East Lansing tonight to visit a friend of mine on campus. That, and I need to pickup some more Magic:TG cards. I should have an enjoyable evening.

Feeling: Okay

I finished reading High Fidelity last night. The book was really amazing and most of the movie is a direct quote from the book, so it was very familiar. I'm now currently reading Coraline. I also picked up a couple of new books over the weekend; the illustrated edition of The Da Vinci Code and Fragile things. Both hard cover--of course.

I started playing the first Neverwinter Nights over the weekend which has so far turned out to be a rather enjoyable game.

A new soundtrack has been added to the Videogame Music Preservation Foundation. You can now listen to the lengthy tunes from Duke Nukem 3D.

I also picked up some winter goggles for skiing. I found a nice cheap pair that should work well for me this coming winter. I'm really looking forward to skiing! It seems like it's been almost a year since I last went.

Feeling: Blah

Remember G.I. Joe? Of course you do. Everyone who was a kid through the 80's remembers G.I. Joe, and moreover everyone who is reading this blog entry is a child of the 80's. If you didn't know that, please try and keep up. Anyway, as we all remember from G.I. Joe, at the end of each episode they would run a short scenario with some kids getting themselves into trouble and a member of the G.I. Joe task force would help them out. Each segment would end with "Now I know." "And knowing is half the battle." Well, let's face it. Those little segments were pretty lame. However, in order to spice them up a bit several people have taken it upon themselves to re-dub the audio to make the segments a lot more interesting and informative. So take a look at the G.I. Joe parody re-dubs part 1 and part 2.

Remember the very first cave you enter in The Legend of Zelda? Well, here's a picture of it.

And since we're on the subject... Everyone has seen the I made you a cookie cat. It's disgustingly cute and it make teenybopper girls wet themselves. However, with a little creativity and a sick mind you can turn it into something that will give you nightmares! As seen here.

Feeling: Cold Sore

Speed Stick introduced a new scent for their line of deodorant and antiperspirants called Alpine Force. I don't know why, but I really like it. Something about the scent makes me think about my childhood circa 1985-1987. If you are in a store, make sure you stop in the male hygiene isle and take a whiff. Tell me what you think. I mean, I don't really care what you think, but I'm wondering why it smells so familiar, even though it's supposedly a new scent.

Did you ever notice how sometimes religious people carry rather contradictory signs?

The smells of autumn makes me happy. I love the smell of rotting leaves. I love the smell of burning leaves. I love the smell of pumpkin flesh. I love the smell of apple cider.

Do you know what I hate about Jeopardy? When people clap when one of the contestants gets a Daily Double. Accidentally stumbling upon something in a game show is not clap worthy.

Check out these 2 minute videos meant to explain the basics of string theory.

Feeling: Cold Sore

Well, House did indeed prove itself to me again once more by ripping on Mormons, psychics, and ghosts. I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as House.

The IRS is annoyingly confusing. They sent me a letter telling me I need to give them a Self-Select PIN for my Easy-file tax return way back in April. However, they already deposited my return into my bank account way back in April. So, if I already have the money, what difference does it make if they have my PIN? I'll be calling them tonight to ask them this very question, but I doubt I'll ever get to a human operator.

Here is a cool page about tricks and bugs from Super Mario Bros.

Feeling: Okay

I saw the teaser for tonight's episode of House and it looks like they're trying to play the "psychics are real" angle. So far, every episode of House, even the ones dealing with the occult, have ultimately resulted in science coming out on top, and I'm really hoping that the writers are going to pull through for me again. I'd hate to see a show that's so popular--and as such, culturally important--sell out to the woo woo crowd by not cracking down hard on the occult. So, pray, knock on wood, cross your fingers, and spread your positive vibes that this episode will be about science.

I have to go and do more adult things this evening. Not the cool adult stuff, like going to bed early and wearing diapers for grown-ups, but the annoying ones like grocery shopping and governmental paperwork.

Feeling: Okay

Saturday consisted of ten fun-filled hours of car repairs. After getting my heap to my parents we found out that the coolant wasn't coming out of a hose, but in fact the radiator itself. That was about six hours of shouting obscenities at the designers of my car. When we got my brakes off we discovered that they were seriously damaged to the point where the pads were ground down to the metal. I took a picture of what brakes are supposed to look like, versus what mine look like. New pads and rotors were obviously required. For added fun, my front tires were bald, and needed to be replaced. So after about $500 worth of repairs and a whole day shot, I now have a fairly nice working vehicle. But I still need to get an oil change. My computer is also acting up now too. I awoke Sunday morning to the power supply fan grinding and the temperature alarm going off. I cleaned every thing out and it appears to be running alright now.

Mechanical failures aside, I did have a little fun last weekend as well. Saturday evening I hung out with Nicole and did a little gaming and we saw her friend's band play in Clarkston and on Sunday Jackie and I got together and got caught up with Grey's Anatomy and gamed a little as well.

I would expect this kind of spelling from Flint stores, but certainly not Grand Blanc!

Some of the more interesting textbook disclaimer stickers.

Check out this compilation of slow motion videos with things gettin' blowed-up!

Feeling: Annoyed

My car is being a dirty bitch. It is in serious need of new brakes (why can't they change themselves?) and today I discovered a hole in the coolant line which covered everything under the hood with leaked coolant as my car overheated. And I need new front tires. And I'm due for an oil change. And it has tons of body damage which makes it look ugly and lowers the resale. Luckily, I'm heading to my parents this weekend to have my step-dad help me fix some of it (read: my step-dad will fix it and I will stand around totally useless because I'm a car maintenance retard). Anyone want to buy a car? Discount rates!

At least I can enjoy the weekend... once my car's working again that is.

Feeling: Happy

I've been noticing that my belly has been growing a little since I've been lazy. In order to help tighten it back up again I jogged around my apartment complex last night. Today my legs are reminding me that I did. That's awfully swell of them.

I did a nice big update to the Videogame Music Preservation Foundation with the soundtrack of the game Blood, and four new composers.

The top 100 reasons why you're still single.

Feeling: Happy

Computer languages are great for shooting yourself in the foot.

Yes, "unnecessary" quotation marks piss me off too.

Somebody should fix this sign.

I've started watching the first season of the X-Files and they're not as good as I remember them being. I think it's because I have a much better understanding of logic and scientific inquiry so things like past-life regression hypno-therapy just seems silly instead of interesting. It's kind of like how Mythbusters has ruined MacGyver. All those cool things that MacGyver did seems just silly once you know it's not possible. Sigh, ignorance is bliss. I didn't even get to watch House last night because of some lame baseball game. Gay. And not the good kind of gay like when you're talking about teenage lesbian sex, but the bad kind of gay like when you're talking about hairy biker orgies.

Feeling: Okay

After a rather long hiatus, I've made the ol' gurus answer a few more questions.

This video is awesome.

This blog makes me happy.

If you're like me, you've been asking the same question for the past nineteen years. Where can I find a site that shows stills from The Simpsons and compares them to the stills from the movies that they are parodying? Well, my friends, that question has now been answered.

Feeling: Okay

Saturday I went to the Grand Valley Renaissance Festival--which seems to steadily decreasing in size. On Sunday I went to Cedar Point, which was a little cold, but it did not rain, so that makes me happy.

I picked up three new books on Saturday as well. Hard cover copies of when Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? and Napalm & Silly Putty (both by George Carlin), and Incubus Dreams (book 12 in the Anita Blake series).

Beware. Sharks eat people.

Even worse: icanhascheezburger.com and lolcat.com.

Feeling: Okay

Margaret Cho was pretty funny. I didn't know much about her act before we saw her, but the large quantity of queens and female bikers walking in the door gave me a pretty good idea (no wonder Jackie wanted to see her so badly). I love a good sex joke as much as any guy, but two hours of sex jokes does tend to run on. Overall, she was funny and entertaining, so I'm glad I went.

Tonight, I'm going out with Jackie again. This time to see the Detroit Derby Girls at a roller derby bout.

Anyone want a free cat?

This weekend I'm heading over to Grand Rapids for the Grand Valley Renaissance Festival. And then on Sunday I'm off to Cedar Point America's Rockin' Roller Coast. No joke, yo!

Feeling: Happy

I love it when people can't tell the difference between an ambulance and a radio station van with orange construction lights on it.

I took a look at the show Reaper, and it's pretty good. It's a little hokey, but overall it's funny and worth watching. Ray Wise makes a wonderful Satan.

Ever wonder what the bible would look like if it were converted into net speak? Take a look the Wiki lolcatbible.com.

I'm off to see Margaret Cho tonight with Jackie. It should be good times.

Feeling: Happy

I dreamed that it was going to snow this morning. Thankfully, dreams don't mean anything. I'm not yet ready for snow. I'd like a little autumn first.

House was wonderful. Of all the doctor shows out there that have felt the urge to embrace woo-woo new age crap (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, etc.), I can always count on House to be grounded and scientific.

Also, last night I finished reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Invisible Monsters". It was my first Palahniuk book, and it was kind of what I expected from him after seeing the movie Fight Club. The continuity was all over the place, there were twists and turns as the story went on, the story was awfully gruesome, and in the end I didn't feel very good about myself. That being said, I really liked the book. My next read is "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby.

All Things Halloween has been updated again.

Feeling: Okay

Sometimes I wonder why I even brush my teeth. I brush and floss every day, but I still get far more cavities than my friends who never floss. Two more fillings, two hundred more dollars. On the plus side, the fillings on my lower teeth are now symmetrical, and that makes me happy. My dentist told me it would cost around $50,000 to have all my teeth removed and replaced with fake teeth. That doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. I mean, that's only the price of about five used cars... If I just drive my current car for about twenty-five more years, I should be able to afford it!

So today at work I had an interesting call. One of our clients called in because their wireless scanner gun was not able to connect to the server. After about twenty minutes I finally figured out the problem. The wireless antenna wasn't even plugged in. Shoot me now.

House is on tonight. He's my favorite cynical, atheist, wise-cracking, piggish, manic, asshole, fake tv-doctor EVER!

Feeling: Happy

Over the weekend I went to the Detroit Zoo with some friends. Good times.

I don't know if I posted this awesome slideshow on atheism before, but here it is.

I fixed several more broken links on my site as well. Many of my old news pages are going to have to be cleaned up though since there is a ton of dead links in them.

Feeling: Frustrated

Okay, most of the broken links are fixed now. I'll no doubt find a few more as time goes on, but the bulk of them have been taken care of. Oh yeah, and case-sensitive file systems are for losers.

The September entries are now in the old news page.

Feeling: Frustrated

I guess one nice thing about being a stickler for consistency is that 99% of the links throughout my Web page are properly written out. The real problem I'm having is for all of the links out there that have been handwritten in a different case than the true URL which work just fine on Microsoft, but not on LINUX. Stupid LINUX. Instead of making a bajillion redirects I've altered my 404 page. It's not half as cool as the previous one, but it's much more useful. Take a look.

Maybe I'll actually have new content next week. For now I'm still stuck trying to cut down on the amount of 404 errors (Over 30,000 so far).

Feeling: Frustrated

My days of being hosting on the Web for free are no more. My work was sponsoring this site for the past five years on their T1. Until last night when the traffic going to my Web site surpassed the traffic of the entire rest of the company. I was slowing the entire T1 to a crawl for several hours a day. Go me! While I'm quite pleased to know that my site has grown so much in popularity I'm disappointed that I'll now have to start actually paying for my Web traffic. Depending on how things go I may have to start putting advertising on my site in order to offset some of the costs. We'll see.

My new host is being run on a *NIX operating system. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, *NIX refers to systems based off of the UNIX model (UNIX, LINUX, etc.). The *NIX model is vastly superior to the Microsoft OS model in nearly every way. Except for one. And it's a big one. *NIX OSs are annoyingly difficult to use. While some pimple-faced geek may disagree, rest assured that any one who goes on a date more than once a year will find *NIX systems more difficult to use than Windows. One of the major problems of the *NIX systems is the fact that the file-systems are case sensitive. What this means is that if you save a file on disk and call it "File.txt" and you try to open the file "file.txt" you won't be able to. Why? Because one has a capital F in the name. As a human we don't really see a difference, but to a computer it's night and day. Well, Microsoft was smart and decided that, instead of making a computer act like a computer, it should act like a human. Thus, if you say "file.txt" and the name is "File.txt" Windows can figure it out where *NIX can't.

I'm telling you this because now that I'm on a *NIX system a great deal of outside links to my site are now broken and are throwing 404 errors. It used to be that if someone linked to "thealmightyguru/index.html" they would get my site. Now, they have to properly (and manually) go to "thealmightyguru/Index.html". This is extremely annoying and all it does is confuse people. Just another reason why the general public continues to use the inferior Windows instead of switching to LINUX. Yes, LINUX is much stronger and safer, but at a cost of constant annoyances like this it's not worth it.

And just to top things off, I had a dentist appointment today.

Feeling: Okay

I'm not the kind of guy to believe in miracles, but sometimes they're just so self-evident even a cynic like me can't dispute them. For example: chocolate bubblegum!

I've been working on my own sticker designs. Here are a few that I've made so far. Thanks to online printing I've even able to turn them into stickers. I'm currently decorating my laptop with them.

Feeling: Okay

For the first time in a long time I actually went to bed at a decent hour each night of the weekend so I'm not all that tired today. I awoke early Sunday morning to a dream about cats. Strange.

I should probably go do something festively Halloweenish soon.

My right foot is sore for some reason.

Anyway, Happy October.