Those of us who work in the computer industry are in the business of dealing with other people’s mistakes. That’s it, really. I spend my days fixing bugs in other people’s software and hardware. Then I get to go home and deal with more of the same.
Today’s fun? I bought a new monitor for my computer, a Samsung SyncMaster 932BW. Why? Because I have the earlier model of the same for my other computer and it worked fine the first time. What happened now? Well, since I have a newer video card it is unable to communicate the default resolution to the monitor. So where my 6800GT works my 7900GS fails. I finally came up with a solution: switching from DVI to VGA cables.
Quality, eh? But then I expect no less from the computer industry, and Nvidia in particular. After all, they still haven’t figured out how to make a driver install program that won’t fuck up your system unless you completely uninstall the previous one, reboot, and then install the new one. Yeah, that’s also a Windows problem but neither of them can manage to get it to work, and they probably never will. Why? Because that would take effort.
1. accumulating obscene wealth
2. polluting the environment
3. genetic engineering
4. drug dealing
5. abortion
6. pedophilia
7. causing social injustice
So let’s see. Given #1 he should give up all of the church’s gold, because if there is an obscene amount of wealth anywhere it is in the Vatican. With #6 does that mean he’s actually going to DO something about it? I can’t even tough #7 in light of the church’s espousal of genocide.
According to the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore they are:
1. Genetic modification
2. Human experimentations
3. Polluting the environment
4. Social injustice
5. Causing poverty
6. Financial gluttony
7. Taking drugs
Wow. This pope sucks. He’s the fucking George W. Bush of popes.
I have a better list they should pay attention to. How about:
1. Protecting the wicked
2. Abusing confidence
3. Promoting the spread of disease
4. Promoting war and hatred
5. The destruction of other cultures
6. Lying to protect your wealth, power, and prestige
7. Actively working to halt the progress of humanity
Oh wait. Those can’t be sins because they’re EVEN MORE GUILTY OF THOSE!
Whenever I try to write something I’m reminded of some various lexical issues my brain has. For instance I have always had an issue with spelling some words that have double letters in them…or sometimes putting double letters where they don’t belong. Just something my brain does from time to time…no biggie overall. The big nuisance (I just tried to spell that as nuissance by way of example) of it is that it is usually the same words over and over. I can’t seem to correct it.
I bring this up because there’s one of these things that really drives me crazy. I know how the word is spelled, but for some reason when I type it my hands inject an extra T. The word? Fantasy. For some reason it usually types out as Fantasty. Fan-tasty. What the fuck is with that?
Come to think of it I think I have an answer: Boris Vallejo, Louis Royo, et al. Their book covers were definitely a case of Fan-Tasty!
One of my favorite blogs is The Secular Outpost, given to us by Taner Edis. In one of his latest entries he put together a Devil’s Dictionary of academic disciplines. I thought it all quite funny, especially this one:
Political science: If “science” appears in the name of a discipline, this is very often because it is not a science.
Is it just me or has KeenSpot been slower than insert-whimsical-southern-simile-here lately? Man alive, nothing wrecks my RSS mojo than having to wait for a site to load. Less loady, more clicky!
In an odd turn, though, the world’s slowest loading comic, Rooster Teeth, came up immediately this morning. My only conclusion is that RT has somehow stolen KeenSpot’s bandwidth.
I know it is only a coincidence, but I still feel a little odd about my post about ironic deaths. Just a couple days later I was watching CNN to find that roofing magnate Ken Hendricks died by falling off of his garage roof.
With the usual holiday hullabaloo over I finally got around to finishing off Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. All said I really enjoyed it. The characters are quite memorable with that nice combination of interesting and realistic, which can be hard to come by in fantasy novels.
The biggest complaint I have comes from my friend John, an avid reader of fantasy and sci-fi who as a physicist spends his days smashing atoms, measuring gravity waves, and searching for invisible clouds high in the stratosphere. One of his particular dislikes in literature is when someone tries to over-explain the science behind something when science doesn’t quite mesh up with the explanation, for instance the lodestone resonators in the HDM trilogy. I didn’t find it such a bother, but we all have things that bug the shit out of us. Hell…anyone who has talked to me long enough knows how much I love to fly off the handle about the endangered status of the adverb, especially in the media.
Beyond that most people view the occasional smack at religion with a grain of salt, especially since the particular comments are true of the Church at various times in its history. I don’t think it should be any more of a turn off than my having to read CS Lewis talking about how rotten little girls become when they grow up in true to life bible-thumper form.
Oh yeah, and as far as the movie for The Golden Compass goes according to WorldwideBoxoffice.com it came in at about #13 for revenue last year and has earned $249.8 million. Since the budget for the movie came in around $200 million, it looks like we’ll get to see the other two made. Funny how many people keep talking about how the movie flopped when the numbers tell a vastly different story. I guess their own agendas are showing.
Hmmm…I wonder if the Atheist Agenda fits in with the Liberal Agenda or the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Bouncing around the net this morning I was wondering what ever happened to Patrick Nagel, the iconic artist who severely damaged lots of us young men with his minimalistic depictions of women that no girlfriend would ever live up to. Back in the early 80’s his work was ubiquitous, but he suddenly disappeared. I always thought that he had simply fallen out of fashion, but it turns out he was a victim of an ironic death.
How so? Well, he apparently participated in a celebrity fund raiser for the American Heart Association called the “Aerobathon” in which he did aerobics for 15 minutes. He was later found dead of a heart attack in his car. Not bad for a 38 year old.
And here I thought nobody could compete with Jim Fixx.
Dev, the little woman, and I haven’t had the chance to go out for movie night in a while so last night was an extra treat for me. I was looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass as it was ever since what’s-his-putz started whining about it, and having started the third book of the His Dark Materials trilogy yesterday I was really set to go see it.
Since I’m not much of a critic I can’t give a whole lot of insight beyond the fact that I really enjoyed the movie and hope it does well. Visually I couldn’t have been more pleased, the acting was solid, and they followed the story pretty well. Yeah, they re-arranged stuff a bit, but you have to do that when you don’t want a three hour long movie. So, yeah, movie great, but as per usual I think the book is better. But that’s OK…the book is always better.
Since I first started playing City of Heroes I thought that the Blasters really needed some love. Why? Well, honestly their base special ability, defiance, sucked all possible ass. As you took more damage you would deal more damage. This sounded like a good idea on paper but it just never worked out. First of all in order to get it to do much of anything you had to be down to about 25% of your health. To have a serious effect you had to be knocking on death’s door. The problem is that blasters don’t have much in the realm of hitpoints so if you got there the next shot killed you. All in all it was something you’d be lucky to ever see do anything.
But all of that has changed! They scrapped the old system and replaced it with something more sensible: a damage bonus for using your attacks in quick succession, which honestly, you do anyway.
What’s more they made it so you can still use a couple of your abilities while you are mezzed, and that takes a bit of care of the other problem. Since blasters have no defense, little to no ability to mitigate damage, and zero mezz protection (that being held, put to sleep, and stunned for those who don’t play it) your biggest problem was standing around during fights holding your head. Now you can at least knock a few shots off.
Oh yeah. Plus the 12.5% overall ranged damage bonus. I think it is about time they realized that scrappers ended up doing a lot more damage overall since range doesn’t really exist in the game as much as you would like. It isn’t like a sniper rifle can shoot half a mile or anything.
So overall they’ve finally fixed something that has been bugging me as long as I’ve played and showed some love for those who have needed it for a LOOOOONG time.
Bouncing around the net this morning I was wondering what ever happened to 
Since I’m not much of a critic I can’t give a whole lot of insight beyond the fact that I really enjoyed the movie and hope it does well. Visually I couldn’t have been more pleased, the acting was solid, and they followed the story pretty well. Yeah, they re-arranged stuff a bit, but you have to do that when you don’t want a three hour long movie. So, yeah, movie great, but as per usual I think the book is better. But that’s OK…the book is always better.