Do Want!
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 21, 2008, 9:26 am
Not sure how I came across this “steak toaster”, but I’ve decided that it’s something I want. It seems to be a great improvement over a George Foreman grill, which has two settings: off and “reduce meat to charcoal in five minutes”.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted a steak or a burger for dinner, but didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of preparing the grill.
Too bad it costs $220.
YANP
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 14, 2008, 1:48 pm
----------
/ \
/ REST \
/ IN \
/ PEACE \
/ \
| nova20 |
| 1900 Au |
| killed by a |
| scorpion |
| |
| |
| 2008 |
*| * * * | *
_________)/\\_//(\/(/\)/\//\/|_)_______
Goodbye nova20 the Wizard...
You died in Gehennom on dungeon level 49 with 2109907 points,
and 1900 pieces of gold, after 51758 moves.
You were level 26 with a maximum of 165 hit points when you died.
1 2109907 nova20-Wiz-Elf-Mal-Cha died in Gehennom on level 49.
Killed by a scorpion.
What did I learn?
- Never, never, NEVER break a wand of cancellation. Ever. Not even on accident. Damnit, I went from an armor class of -22 (untouchable) to an armor class of 0 (sitting duck in Gehennom).
- Always wrest that last charge from a wand of wishing, and if you can’t think of anything else that you need, wish for (another) magic marker. Trust me. Blank scrolls are easy to come by, and you never know when you’re going to need about 30 scrolls of enchant armor.
- Basic math helps when you’re buying protection from a priest. 22 times 600 is 13,200, which is significantly less than 15,000.
- Please remember to bless that scroll of genocide before you read it.
- If you have a wand of enlightenment with any charges left and a blessed luckstone, you have no excuse for angering your god by praying needlessly.
- It really sucks when your blessed bag of holding, which is pretty much packed to the gills with crap you’ve picked up, suddenly becomes cursed. I know it’s tempting to go back through the Dungeons one last time to see if you can get a wish from a Water Demon, but it’s really not worth it.
- It’s really embarrassing to be killed by a scorpion when you’ve killed Rodney 15 times.
- It’s even more embarrassing when you die three steps away from the High Priest of Moloch when you’ve got a wand of death in your inventory.
I almost had it. ALMOST! Maybe next time.
...on Ripping Off Consumers
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 8, 2008, 1:39 pm
While I’m on the subject of electronic equipment, I thought I’d point out this article about digital cables.
I barely notice a difference in quality between using digital cables vs. analog cables anyway, so the ripoff is even worse for me.
...on Digital Music ID Tags
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 8, 2008, 1:10 pm
I love my iPod. I really do. I even got an attachment for my car stereo which allows me to control (and charge) my iPod using the stereo controls, so the iPod itself is hidden away and I barely have to touch it when I’m driving along.
In general, I think the whole shift toward digital music formats is a good thing (even though it spurned the whole DRM problem). I’m OCD with the ID tags. When I rip a soundtrack, I manually change them so that each track has the artist in the actual artist field instead of being stuck in the title field.
Seriously… that whole scheme just gives me the willies, and it’s a hackish way to keep the album together when you sort by artist.
Until yesterday, I had been using “album” mode (on my car stereo) to surf through my music, but I discovered that you can also switch it to “artist” mode. In theory it’s a great idea; it allows you to listen to all the albums by a particular artist without worrying about surfing through all the other stuff you have on there (which is a pain in the ass even with my meager 3GB collection). It also keeps you from following Queens of the Stone Age with Great Big Sea or something equally insane.
My compulsion leads to a rather annoying problem. When I switch to artist mode, my soundtrack for “The Matrix” is all over the place — Rob Zombie, Propellorheads, Marilyn Manson, and all the others have their virtual folder, each containing one track.
…which drives me absolutely nuts. First off, if I want to listen to the soundtrack I have to switch to album mode and surf to the album. Second, while I’m listening in artist mode, I have to surf through each of these one-track “folders” to get to the artist I want to listen to.
I thought of a way around it, but it’s not something I can really do by myself. I’d need to somehow bring it to the attention of the designers of both digital music formats and designers of digital music players. Spread the word, people!
Anyway, here’s my idea. Add another field to the ID3 tag, something like “artist category”. In most cases, this field will be the same as the artist field, but in the case of a soundtrack, you could fill it with something like “Soundtrack for The Matrix”.
That way, I could surf my mp3s using the artist category (which would almost be the same as surfing by artist) and everyone’s happy.
Fight Club...
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 8, 2008, 11:32 am
The only thing I can say about this article is how uncanny it is to see the parallel of what I thought were two different story lines.
Bunnies Suicide
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 4, 2008, 9:52 am
Is it bad that I laughed out loud at this collection of pictures I found on reddit?
Didn’t think so.
I’ve also grown quite fond of the You Suck at Photoshop series on YouTube.
Happy birthday to me!
by Tim Faircloth on Feb 3, 2008, 7:42 pm
28 years, 1 day, and (approximately) 2 hours ago, a geek was born, much to the relief of his mother. Despite the fact that he came out shoulders horizontal (sorry, mom!) and cone-headed from pushing against the birth canal for so long, he turned out to be a fairly swell guy.
So now I’m a year older. What did I get? Socks, a gun case, a copy of “House of Flying Daggers” on DVD, the “Heroes” comic collection, and a copy of “The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”. In short, everything I asked for (and more!).
Also, my self-imposed embargo on buying gifts for myself between mid-November and February 3rd ends. Too bad I don’t have any spare money. What would I buy anyway?
Some people my age look at birthdays as one year closer to death, but I don’t. I may not be in great shape, but I’m still a young strapping lad. I’ve always said there are only a few ages where a man feels old.
When I turned 25, everyone that found out about my birthday felt obliged to inform me that I had been on the earth for a quarter of a century. Thanks, you’re the first person to say that. I was also still working on my Bachelor’s degree, and that birthday changed my status to “non-traditional”… a status which is usually reserved for adults that had dropped out for some reason and decided to come back.
Jack Weinberg once said never to trust anyone over 30. For some reason, that’s the point of no return for most people. Once you’re 30, you are regarded as an adult to pretty much everyone, but if you’re 29 you’re still just a kid.
At 45, suddenly you realize that you’re nine tenths of the way to 50, and you’ve reached that period of your life known as “middle aged”.
But after that, it’s all downhill. At 50 your friends may band together and rent you a wheelchair or something, but for the most part you’ve accepted that you’re old, but it’s not a bad thing.
As my dad says, AHIP — Age Has Its Privileges. Maybe you’ve got a kid that’s finally old enough to appreciate those silly stories from your childhood, but he wouldn’t admit that he re-tells them to all his friends (I still can’t do them justice, dad). Your age becomes a point of humor — “You know you’re old when you look down and notice that you’re shoe is untied… but it’s not the first time you’ve noticed”. Those letters from AARP bugged you when you were middle aged, but maybe when you’re 50 you get one and say “I can get 20% off at hotels? Sweet!”.
60 hits and it’s become a bragging point. Sure, every now and then you stop and think about how you’ve become an old fart and your kids have grown up and gone away, but you look around at everything you’ve accomplished and realize that you’ve spent your life well. Maybe you’ve never been famous, and your life didn’t go quite as you had planned, but you’ve made your impact.
70 and 80 are pretty much the same if you manage to live that long. The three-quarters of a century mark passes with little fanfare.
90 is a special marker, but I’m not sure why. It just seems really old. At 90, you’ll probably get mentioned in your local paper and people will read it and say “Well I’ll be. So-and-so is turning 90”. I was greatly surprised at the number of people that showed up at my grandfather’s 90th birthday, and even more surprised that he pretty much recognized everyone.
I guess I am one year closer to 30 (and officially “old”), but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.