I just realized that next to no one will be reading my blog today because of that Sporting Event^(TM) that’s supposed to be on TV at some point. Actually it was Cranky who reminded me of it when I stopped by his site.

I’m one of those unfortunate guys who was born without the Male Sports Gene. It’s a tragic condition that renders me completely unable to enjoy professional sports of any kind as well as a general lack of appreciation for beer. This condition also results in an unusually large Geek Gland.

Mind you I don’t mind playing sports myself. Though I’ve gotten to an age and physical condition where most of my sports playing is done with a PS2 controller in my hand, but I can’t seem to give a shit if the Pistons are winning the World Series or if the Lions have made it to the World Cup.

Okay, so I actually do know enough about sports to know that the Pistons play basketball and therefor wouldn’t end up in the World Series, which is baseball and the Lions play American football, but would probably have better luck competing in the World Cup. I just wanted to make sports fans groan a bit.

I love the commercials that air during the game today, but there’s just too much sports crap I have to wade through in order to see the commercials and they’ll eventually either air on regular TV or be posted to the web anyway so that removes the one reason I’d have to actually sit through the game.

Meanwhile research continues on various forms of gene therapy to help those of us afflicted with Male Sports Gene Deficiency Syndrome.

I’ve been following the drama that is this year’s Bloggies Awards with a mixture of gawker curiosity and mild amusement. What are the Bloggies? They’re sorta like the Academy Awards in that it’s a form of peer recognition that a lot of people make a big deal out of and that, this year at least, is being accused of being a rigged popularity contest that has been manipulated by the judges involved in it. It has inspired the sort of heated accusations and public sniping that would fit in well on any daytime soap opera or “reality” TV show.

I wasn’t nominated for any of the categories as far as I know, which is fine with me considering all the trouble the folks who were nominated seem to be going through over it. I didn’t expect to be nominated honestly. I have a pissant little blog with a small, but loyal, readership and I’m perfectly happy with that. I gave up worrying about my popularity back in high school. I’ve never been part of the popular crowd mainly because I’ve insisted on thinking for myself and not being afraid to say what I have to say even if it pisses people off at times. My group of friends that I hung out with came from all sorts of backgrounds. Some were from the popular group, some from the jocks, some from the outcasts, etcetera. A whole potpourri if you will. I can talk to anyone and I don’t tend to be easily intimidated by someone’s social status. My lack of respect for social boundaries often turns off particularly snobbish people in particular groups and thus ensures I remain not one of the in-crowd, whatever the in-crowd might happen to be. The title for my blog comes, in part, from the fact that I’ve been called one or more of those things in my time.

It doesn’t bother me. I try to be like a duck and just let it roll off my back as much as I can. Had I pursued a career in acting like I had originally wanted I’d be more Bruce Campbell than Tom Cruise, which I’d be fine with because I love Bruce Campbell and the kind of work he does.

I learned to decide for myself who I am and what I want to be a long time ago so something like being nominated for the Bloggies would be an honor, but it wouldn’t be anything I’d worry about. I especially wouldn’t take it upon myself to try and rig the contest. If I won, I’d be especially flattered, but it wouldn’t change how I run my site or what I say on it. Considering the firestorm of controversy and accusations and just plain mean-spirited back biting it has brought to some of the folks who have been nominated, well… I suppose it might be fun to actually be the center of controversy for once, but it’s probably a headache I don’t really need. I’d just end up pissing people off by having fun with it anyway. I’ve always said that if I ever did become famous I’d take all the fun out of the tabloids by fully admitting in as obviously sarcastic way as I could that everything they ever printed about me was totally true, plus I’d tack on some more totally unbelievable stuff to point out how ridiculous the rumors were.

So I’ll just sit here in my little corner of the web and watch the flame wars fly back and forth and wonder how I might turn it into some form of hugely popular aimed-at-the-lowest-common-denominator book or reality TV series and continue to write my pissant little posts and be pleased that someone actually comes by occasionally and reads them.

So how about that latest worm to hit the Net, eh? Nasty bugger that attacks Microsoft’s SQL server software. Most people weren’t directly affected in the idea that it never touched their actual PC, but because of the flood of network traffic it caused whenever it did infect a server it ended up slowing the Internet in general down to a crawl. It’s also sending folks who work in the IT industry and who have Microsoft SQL server in their company into fits of panic. It’s made me feel like a freakin’ superhero. You can’t help it when your wakened by your pager going off to find a text message saying “NEED YOU AND YOUR TEAM AT ALPHA TO INSTALL SQL PATCH PER INSTRUCTIONS IN EMAIL!” The building I work in is called the Alpha Building, which is probably more info than I should divulge, but it’s kinda essential to this story.

Wow! They need me and my team! Where the hell did I put my Super Geek cape? I hope I remembered to wash my tights! Quick Geek Boy, to the GeekMobile, it’s the ALPHA SIGNAL!

Problem is, I don’t know of any MS SQL servers in our building. We have one or two people who have it installed for testing purposes, but those aren’t supposed to be hooked up as actual live servers. The other problem is that when I used VPN to connect to my work computer I couldn’t find any email with instructions on how to patch the servers against this worm if I could find any servers that actually had to be patched. A phone call to my co-worker revealed that he too had received the ALPHA SIGNAL and had tried to locate said email with no luck. He also tried calling, paging, and emailing both our boss and our boss’s boss and hadn’t received any reply after an hour or two. So I guess I won’t be needing my Geek Tights after all. Still, it was neat to feel like a superhero for a little bit.

Did anyone else see this news item at MSNBC or any of the other news outlets that are undoubtedly carrying it? The one about Jerry Thacker being picked for an AIDS panel?

Jan. 23 — The Bush administration has chosen Jerry Thacker, a Pennsylvania marketing consultant who has characterized AIDS as the “gay plague,” to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.

Can I please get a “What the fuck?!” from my readers? Thank you.

In his speeches and writings on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a “deathstyle” rather than a lifestyle and asserted that “Christ can rescue the homosexual.” After word of his selection spread among gays in recent days, some material disappeared from the Web site. Earlier versions located by The Washington Post that referred to the “gay plague,” for instance, were changed as of yesterday to “plague.”

Administration health officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed Thacker’s appointment. They said he was part of a diverse group that includes a member of the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian advocacy group; an AIDS adviser to the World Bank; and a state public health officer.

Thacker, this official said, “has a very powerful and tragic personal story and an ability to reach out to an audience we couldn’t reach in the process.”

Which audience would that be? The Bigoted Society of Self-Righteous Assholes? Yeah, we really need their input on this matter. I’m sure they’ll provide a balanced and thoughtful viewpoint. Does anyone else find it to be an astonishing coincidence that the moment this tiny-brained prick is nominated for a Presidential Advisory Panel the rhetoric on his website suddenly becomes a tad less harsh? Doesn’t he understand that with just Google’s website caching alone the Internet now has a long memory? Bigoted and stupid, he should fit right in!

Fortunately, later news reports have it that Thacker has opted not to accept the appointment under growing pressure from pissed off people everywhere. Still, this next bit cracks me up:

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, while neither confirming nor denying the withdrawal, issued a stern rebuke of Thacker’s statements.

“The views that he holds are far, far removed from what the president believes,” Fleischer said. “The president has a total opposite view. … The president’s view is that people with AIDS need to be treated with care, compassion.”

Hey readers, can I get another “What the fuck!?!” out of you? Thanks!

So let me get this straight: The President purportedly has “a total opposite view” from those of Jerry Thacker, but it was the White House that decided to appoint him to the panel? This implies to me that The Shrub^(TM) is either exceptionally stupid, an exceptionally bad liar, or not paying attention to what decisions his staff are making on his behalf. Which is stupid.

HIV and AIDS is a growing problem and affects people of all walks of life whether they are gay or straight. Jerry Thacker himself has AIDS which he contracted through his wife who got it through a blood transfusion. His predicament seems to have caused him to go into Holy Super Crusader^(TM) mode and become a leader on the “homosexuality is a choice” anti-gay movement. I love the whole being-gay-can-be-cured-by-Jesus bit. Jesus hasn’t had much luck curing the pedophile priests of their problem and he’s had, by some estimates, a good 40 or 50 years to do it in. That’s the problem with Jesus, he’s just not dependable on the whole “curing” thing.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with gay people. I’ve known quite a few and they’ve always treated me fairly well. One of the only compliments I ever received on my ass came from a gay guy, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. My ass ain’t that great. Still, I may not want to go to the party, but it’s nice to be invited.

Whether or not being “gay” is a lifestyle choice or something you’re born as doesn’t fucking matter. Being Christian is a lifestyle choice too and many folks that choose it are guilty of actions and deeds way more heinous in my mind than simply having sex with someone of the same sex.

HIV and AIDS are a big problem and the disease doesn’t care if you contract it through a bad blood transfusion or through sex of any kind with someone of either gender, it will still kill you stone dead unless we do something about it. Thacker himself should be painfully aware of it’s lack of discrimination. He chooses to put his energies toward the persecution of people with a lifestyle he disapproves of rather than toward contributing toward the eventual eradication of the disease he and his wife are infected with. That doesn’t make him a good choice for an advisory panel in the least. Hell, he’d never have to show up cause you already know what his primary suggestions are going to be. I’m glad he decided he didn’t want to take the heat.

Found over at Rachel’s site, but she doesn’t have trackback turned on. :-)

This is some very clever video editing of The Shrub’s^(TM) State of the Union address, but I sometimes feel it’s closer to the truth that I’d like to admit.

Someone emailed me and suggested I should enroll in the Cuss Control Academy.

Honestly, I don’t need to enroll. I have perfect control over my cussing. In fact, I’ve gotten so good at cussing that I’ve recently been awarded the title of Grand Master Poopy Mouth. Hells Angels cower in the face of my ability to swear and sailors don’t just blush, they faint dead away at the sound of one of my diatribes.

So I have two words for this person who thinks I should enroll in the CCA. Can you guess what they are?

Oops. Looks like someone goofed while setting up a display for President Shrub^(TM) to make a stump speech in front of. The speech was supposed to give The Shrub^(TM) a chance to show how a small Mom and Pop business would save thousands of dollars under his tax relief plan. The backdrop for the speech was lots of boxes with the words MADE IN THE USA stamped all over them, except that a lot of them weren’t:

Next to the banner and stacked around his podium were hundreds of boxes labeled “Made in China” — and Taiwan and Hong Kong. Someone apparently became aware of the mixed message, for white stickers and brown packing tape were mysteriously taped over the true origin of the real boxes that travel through the trucking and warehouse business daily.

Many of the boxes also had handwritten numbers meant to represent routing codes written across them with markers. White House officials traveling with the president today said the tape job came as a complete surprise to them. Deputy press secretary Claire Buchan attributed the cover-up to an overzealous advance office volunteer and said the matter would be taken up through the appropriate channels.

Which basically means that some poor slob is going to lose his or her job because they embarrassed The Shrub^(TM). While I find it amusing, I am surprised at how much media attention it’s gotten and how little has been said about what The Shrub’s^(TM) next tax relief plan is supposed to be. Who cares where the boxes were made? We already know that a lot of crap we use day to day is made in other countries even when the company itself is an American company! We also already know he’s an idiot, we don’t need to be reminded that he’s an idiot, that’s not news.

What is news is how he plans to have even more tax cuts and yet wage a war on Iraq. Last I checked, wars are expensive. Hasn’t anyone told him he can’t have it both ways?

Man, I love The Onion

FAYETTEVILLE, AR — Craig Schaffner, 46, a Fayetteville-area computer consultant, has earned the pity of friends and acquaintances for his tragic reluctance to embrace the unverifiable, sources reported Monday.

“I honestly feel sorry for the guy,” said neighbor Michael Eddy, 54, a born-again Christian. “To live in this world not believing in a higher power, doubting that Christ died for our sins—that’s such a sad, cynical way to live. I don’t know how he gets through his day.”

Coworker Donald Cobb, who spends roughly 20 percent of his annual income on telephone psychics and tarot-card readings, similarly extended his compassion for Schaffner.

“Craig is a really great guy,” Cobb said. “It’s just too bad he’s chosen to cut himself off from the world of the paranormal, restricting himself to the limited universe of what can be seen and heard and verified through empirical evidence.”

And it just keeps getting funnier from there.

Now here’s something I feel is worth spending a little of my rage on. According to an article in the Boston Herald a bishop testifying in one of the many pedophile priest cases underway at the moment said that molestation was a sin, not a crime.

New Hampshire Bishop John B. McCormack said under oath yesterday that he once considered sexual molestation by priests a “sin” but not a “crime,” according to alleged abuse victims who sat in on his deposition in a civil case.

“Bishop McCormack said it was a sin - he didn’t look at it as a crime,” said Bernie McDaid of Lynn, a leader of a group calling itself Survivors of Joseph Birmingham. “He thought it was a sin - just a sin. That just floored me.”

Victims were especially upset that McCormack declined to act, given that he is a licensed social worker.

Larry Sweeney of Chelmsford, an alleged victim of Birmingham, said, “What was a sin was that he did nothing about it.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but laws against child molestation have been on the books for at least the past 50 or 60 years now, haven’t they?

McCormack issued a statement yesterday saying he intends to spend considerable time listening to victims and their families and hopes suits move quickly toward resolution.

“I cannot heal victims myself, but I am confident that I can help them,” he said.

The best way this ass could help the victims is to be brought up on charges as an accessory to the crime and spend the next couple of decades sitting in a prison cell where he belongs. His actions went beyond simply ignoring the problem to the extent that he aided and abetted by deliberately not turning in the priests and continuously moving them from one location to another, in essence giving him a whole new set of potential victims. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, why there isn’t a hue and cry from all American Catholics to remove these Bishops and Cardinals who knowingly allowed this sort of abuse to continue for DECADES from their positions is beyond my comprehension. If these had been teachers and the school administrators had shunted them from school to school to cover up the problem they’d be lucky to avoid a freakin’ lynch mob outside their door.

Didn’t sleep well last night. Not because of the whole rant thing I had yesterday, I’ve gotten over that, but because of other problems in life right now. My wife is going through a period of self-analysis right now and has talked about it on her blog, which is good, but the discussion does leave me feeling a little bad like I haven’t done enough to support her or something. She’s quite emphatic that I’m doing more than my share, but I can’t help but feel bad that she feels like she has to change because Courtney and I seem to be incapable or don’t wish to. People should change because they want to, not because they feel that they have to in order to be with someone they care about. I’ll be spending time reflecting on what I should be doing differently.

I’m at a loss on what to do about Courtney and her habit of ignoring big school projects until it’s a crisis. Anne gets frustrated with her because we’ve been over these things time and again with Court. I don’t get as angry because I’m also ADD and I can see from where I’m standing how I would have probably failed in the same way when I was a kid. Difference being that my parents didn’t know I was ADD and the family as a whole was so busy just making it day-to-day that they didn’t keep up with me on whether or not I was doing my homework the way I try to do with Courtney.

Note: That is in no way a slam on my parents.

I can’t be doing much better because even with trying to keep on her about it she still manages to forget about big projects until two days before they are due. I had dreams all last night where Courtney was doing the teen-aged angst thing and defying me and I kept escalating her punishment until, finally, she was grounded from everything for the next year and a half. How stupid is that?

Anne is talking on her blog about giving up on the idea of having a baby and part of that is my fault. She’s right in that I never wanted to have kids. I grew up being reminded constantly of how irresponsible I am and I realize my own selfish tendencies so I’ve never really thought I was much in the way of father material. My brother would probably tell you outright that I’m not much of a father, but my brother has always taken the tough-love approach of hoping to shape me into a better person. I know Anne wants to have a baby with me and there’s a part of me that really wishes I could say the idea is exciting and something I really want too. The best I can manage right now is that I am willing to take on another child. How self-centered is that? Deep down, no, I don’t want another kid. I can’t seem to get things right with the kid I already have, why the hell would I want to risk screwing up another life? Parenthood for me is scary and confusing. I have a hard enough time not allowing myself turn into a total asshole, let alone any kids I might have.

Anne wants to be a mother as well as a step-mother, though. I want Anne to be happy. I’ve managed not to be a total screwup with Courtney so I figure I should be able to handle another kid without too much trouble and it’s important to Anne. There would be the fact that I would be there at the start and would have more time to get things right. Anne wants me to be excited about the idea, but I just can’t. It’s too scary. I’m willing to do it and I know I would love the child the same way I do Courtney and I would do my best the best way I know how and things would probably be OK.

As much as I didn’t want kids, Courtney is arguably one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Anne would be one of the other best things. If I am at all a better person today than I was just a year ago, let alone 5 or 10 or 20 years ago, a good part of the credit would go to Anne and Courtney. They both make me want to be a better person. I have lost 33 and a half pounds because I need to be healthier so I can stick around and take care of them. I am type-two diabetic because I am too damned fat and I wouldn’t have had a clue had I not gone to the doctor’s for a physical and that wouldn’t have happened if I were still single and Courtney still lived with her mom. I gave up drinking Coca-Cola Classic, the company’s stock fell 20 points on the news alone, because I needed to be healthier for them. For 20 years of my life I swore up and down that I would never be caught DEAD drinking diet cola.

Shit, due to money problems this month, I’m down to one diet cola a day at work with lunch.

Every good change in the last three years has been something I wanted to do because of them, not because I felt I had to, but because I wanted to. So why can’t I be excited about the idea of having another kid? Why can’t I figure out how to best help my daughter get her shit together? That’s why I slept shitty last night. That’s also why I’m going to be late to work this morning.

Oh well, another day, another chance to improve.

Why you ask? Cause I pulled up my email to find yet another person advertising their cyber-begging website in the comments to one of my entries wherein I decried the success of SaveKaryn for being a success. This particular cyber-begger hit a nerve with me because they were begging for funds to fix up their house someplace in France.

I lost my cool. Big time.

I didn’t just respond to the comments, I copied the ad into a new entry and then proceeded to unload with both barrels in what was probably the most sarcastic and profanity laden blog entry I’ve ever done on this site. I also emailed a copy of the entry to the folks who posted the ad in the first place. I was still pissed when I got home from work and found they had responded with what seemed, to me, to be a rather insincere apology. So I replied again pointing out, with fewer swear words this time, just why the hell I was so pissed. Another response back this time with the person in question claiming naiveté and being in tears at my nasty attack on them.

It was pretty nasty too.

My cynical side kept whispering in my ear that this was probably the work of some guy running a dozen such sob-tale cyber-begging sites trying to manipulate my, and everyone else’s who would read our exchange, emotions. I still wanted to be angry and feel like I was justified in my very public and very vociferous outcry, but my conscious got to me and I didn’t like the idea that I was making some lady in France cry because I got pissed about her attempts to cyber-beg no matter how much I hate the attitude most French people tend to have about Americans. I didn’t like the idea that I could be pointed to by said French people as a good example of why they have bad attitudes about Americans.

So I deleted the entry. It’s the first time I have ever deleted anything I had posted on my blog. I’m debating writing another email to offer at least a small apology. I’m still angry to a small degree, but there’s a part of me that knows it doesn’t really make any damned difference whether someone has a legit reason to beg for money on the Internet or not. As much as it is something I can’t bring myself to do, and I could use the money, nor as much as I am appalled that people actually do fork over their cash, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. There are more important things for me to spend my rage on. I should have realized that earlier this afternoon, but I had gotten myself worked into a fevered bout of righteous indignation as fiery as any Evangelical preacher and that bothers me somewhat. I’m a better person than that.

So if you saw my little public tantrum earlier, please excuse me. Maybe I am allowing my emotions to be manipulated, but it was still uncalled for and childish of me. All I can offer in defense is the fact that I am only human with all the failings and frailties that brings with it.

I may be premature, but I believe I have finally found a solution to my tribulations with my video card. What a pain in the ass it was finding it too. I spent the better part of my evening testing out my theories as to which part of my system might be having a hard time with my GeForce 3 with the latest NVidia drivers. Started with the USB devices. Disconnected them all and turned off USB support in the BIOS. 3DMark 2001 still crashed within 10 seconds. Took out the network card as I had heard that some forms of Linksys card could have issues with the VIA chipset, but alas it still crashed. So I tried moving my hard drives over to the Highpoint RAID controller which can be used as just another set of standard IDE controllers if you don’t have decent enough drives to do a RAID array (which I currently don’t). Yeah, a long shot I realize, but I was willing to try anything at this point. Not that it worked, it didn’t, though the drives seem a little faster for a reason I’m not totally certain. Fine, I’ll leave ‘em like that for now.

Next step was combing through webpage after webpage and trying every BIOS tweak I could find that seemed at all related to my issue. Changed the AGP driving force setting, lowered the voltage by a couple of notches, turned off or on Fast Writes, did every freakin’ thing I could find related to the GF3 and the VIA chipset and none of it worked.

However, I was starting to notice on some of the message forums I was visiting that folks with GF4’s and VIA based motherboards seemed to be having exactly the same problems I was. Looked into that a little closer and discovered that this problem was addressed by an older beta version of the VIA 4-in-1 drivers that closes off a particular register in the BIOS.

“It closes the RX55 memory register in the BIOS. The RX55 register’s official name and function is the Memory Write Queue (MWQ) timer. The MWQ timer is actually a timing device included in the memory host controller to prevent write data being held in the memory queue too long. After the data has been in the queue too long it times out. This timed out data is then given a higher write request priority. Now that might sound nice, a bit of extra performance, BUT the procedure fails when overloaded. 3D games and Windows XP put too much load on the memory queuing timer procedure. The new nVidia driver exaggerates the problem even more as the driver enables nVidia cards to use even more memory than previous driver versions.

So, in a nutshell, it’s a memory timing problem that only happens when the RX55 register is opened. Some motherboard manufacturers have already released new BIOS that have the register closed. In other instances, this patch is needed.”

The latest BIOS patch from Abit for my motherboard is from last July and doesn’t, apparently, fix this issue. The article goes on to say that VIA was supposedly going to roll this fix into the next 4-in-1 driver release, but that apparently didn’t happen either. Fortunately the fellow who wrote the article I found included a link to the beta driver that fixes the problem. I downloaded it, installed it, and launched 3D Mark while holding my breath. First benchmark ran just fine, second benchmark ran OK too, third benchmark made it through without a hitch and I started breathing again. Sat back and watched the complete benchmark suite run it’s course and proceeded to feel a massive sense of relief. It’s only taken me the better part of a month since I first discovered the problem to find a fix for it, but at least I found a fix. What a fucking obscure problem it was too! So, now I’m going to go and give it a good workout in Dungeon Siege and see if it stays stable. Just to be on the safe side I’ve already made a backup copy of the dinky little beta VIA driver I had to install that fixed the problem.

According to the BBC News staffers of a British museum of archeology have been using a 2,700 year old statue of an Egyptian king as a bike rack for the last 100 years.

A 2,700-year-old statue of the Egyptian king Taharqa has reportedly been found in the basement of the God’s House Tower archaeological museum in Southampton, after being ignored for a century.

Staff used it to lean their bicycles against - but no-one realized the 27-inch statue’s importance until two Egyptologists came to visit the museum.

Of course the point is the statue wasn’t important until someone decided that it was, which is one of the things I always find amusing about historical artifacts and antique shoppers. Junk is junk until you find someone who’s willing to make a big frickin’ deal out of it and pay you an awful lot of money to take it and place it on display someplace. From what the article says this statue isn’t in particularly good shape, but it is extremely old so that makes it very important, natch. Of course had the two Egyptologists who recognized the statue not happened upon it, it probably would’ve spent another 100 years as a bike rack and would have made a perfectly good one at that. Some might argue it’s more useful as a bike rack than it is as any kind of museum piece.

Wherein I continue my tragic tale of video card woe. I have to give the guys at Hercules a little credit. Even though they have an amazingly stupid warranty policy, their tech support guys do try to keep a dialog going with you in email, however brief those emails may be, until you’ve managed to work out your issues with their products. This problem continues to bug me even after I think I’ve decided to give up on it and move on and that means I keep thinking about it and going over it in my head and I come up with new plans of attack to see if I can’t narrow down where the problem lay just a little bit more.

One thing I hadn’t tried, and I smacked myself in the forehead when I realized this, was putting the card into a different PC and seeing if it still exhibited the same problems with the latest drivers as it was in my box. So this morning I yanked the card before I left for work and brought it with me so I could toss into one of the PCs here at work that aren’t as powerful as what I have at home and see if it still chokes on Direct X applications. If it did then the problem was with the card and if it didn’t then it was a conflict between it and something else in my system. Needless to say, it works perfectly fine in the PC here at work and ran the 3D Mark 2001SE benchmarks that I was using as a test without so much as a hiccup. Multiple times, at different settings, without problem. Dammit.

The good news is that I don’t need to buy a new card even though I’d really like to. The bad news is I don’t know what the hell it is about my system that doesn’t get along with my video card. Right now I’m leaning either toward the IDE controller for the hard drives or the USB devices. It’s also possible that the card just has an inherent incompatibility with my mother board that only came to light with the last few driver releases from NVidia, but even then it’s still cheaper to replace the motherboard with a new one I want than it would be to replace the video card with a new one I want. The VIA chipset in my current board does seem to have an awful lot of little problems that require extra patches, but none of those patches have fixed my issue to date.

So I suppose I need to eat a few of the words I used with regards to Hercules, but they still have a stupid warranty replacement process that needs to be better implemented so they’re not entirely off of my shit list. While I won’t rule them out when considering new cards in the future, the hoops I know I’ll have to jump through to get my card replaced if I do buy another card from them will certainly give me pause to reconsider. Stay tuned, the battle continues.

I’ve talked about the new Penn & Teller’s: Bullshit! show here before and I wanted to put up a reminder to folks that the series will be premiering this Friday at 11PM on Showtime. Which, unfortunately, means I won’t be seeing it unless I can talk someone into taping the show for me.

Still, those of you who DO have Showtime can watch it and I highly encourage you to do so. Particularly, I encourage those of you who actually seem to think that people like John Edward and James Van Praagh can talk to your dead relatives to tune in as the very first episode just happens to cover this very topic.

I’ve been nice and not implied that people who believe such parlor tricks have the brains of trout, but I get the feeling P&T; aren’t going to sugar coat things much. Especially based on the Q&A; listed on their site:

Q: You’ve made many television appearances but this is the first appearance you’ve done on premium cable. Do you think that some of the topics you’ll be covering would have been too sensitive for broadcast TV?

Teller: Fuck, yeah.

Penn: This bullshit is too sensitive for anyone. We’re going to find it’s too sensitive for Showtime — just you wait. “No Limits” — we’re going to find out.

Q: Which subjects do you think are going to generate a large outcry and/or surprise people the most? Is it deserved?

Teller: Even some of our creative staff are angry that we’d question the scientific honesty behind outlawing secondhand smoke as though it’s attempted murder. The show that shocks me personally, though, is the one where we investigate Bottled Water. You need to see the show, but I’ll just say: I now order tap water in restaurants and refill old Dasani bottles from the spigot.

Penn: It changes for everyone. Some people go ape shit that we’re saying people can’t talk to the dead and people that take that in stride get all worked up about bottled water being bullshit, or some environmentalists lying their asses off.

Oh yeah, that’s going to be a fun show. My cynical side tells me that the people who really need to see it are the last ones who’ll watch it, but at least it’s out there for some of these idiots to stumble across. It would be even better if it were on at 9PM on one of the big networks, but they’d end up censoring it too much. Anyway, there’s a trailer for the show up on the official site, but you’ll need to install Realplayer (yecch!) to view it. They also have a message board set up for feedback on the show that’s just starting to get under way. Either way, check it out. It should be good.

Another good one from today’s lunch session with The Gang^(TM):

You know how some people are born with an extra finger on each hand so they have six fingers instead of five? Well, how do they give someone the middle finger when they’re pissed?

I often get asked by friends and coworkers how I come across some of the knowledge I have, particularly with regards to fake virus warnings, whatever the latest scams are and some of the best deals on new products. It’s not hard if you have a handful of essential websites in your favorites or bookmark list. These are sites that I turn to time and time again because they’ve proven to be the best resource at whatever topic they’re covering and are almost always up to date.

I tell people about these sites all the time. Some people I’ve had to tell several times (hi Dad!) because they never write down the URL. So to aid those folks who forget to write them down, or who haven’t heard of them yet, I’ve started a new sidebar on the left that lists of sites I think every person should have in their bookmarks. There’s only 4 sites listed at the moment as that’s all I could think of off top of my head when whipping this up and they’re the 4 sites I use most often. As I come across other websites that I think are just too useful not to check in on I’ll add them to that list. Check them out, use them, love them and then go impress your friends and family with them.

After doing much research, I finally figured out why the “remember me” function of the comments here at SEB was only partially working. It would work fine if you went to the actual individual page created for any entry, but it never remembered you properly if you used the pop-up comments which most folks tend to use. Turns out it has to do with the URL and how the browser works. I had to change the template for the popup comments to user jenkinsonline.net as the HOST name because that’s where that script is stored. One little change and it appears the cookies are working properly regardless of which method you use to post comments. The only drawback is that it makes it so that two cookies are set to do the same job. One if you use the popup comments and one if you go to the actual individual entry page. Once both are set, however, the site should remember you from session to session.

What a pain in the ass figuring that out was.

In case anyone is interested, I’ve updated the mugs at the Stupid Evil Stuff store to match the current site logo. Now you too can confuse and confound your coworkers by walking around drinking out of your very own Stupid Evil Bastard retro-style coffee mug.

UPDATE: I’ve changed the wall clock to match.

Man, I just can’t seem to get away from the Sci Fi Wire today, but this was just too interesting not to mention. I’m a big fan of the original Twilight Zone and, so far, I’ve been pretty disappointed with the TWZ that has been airing on UPN. However, I may have to catch this episode when it comes up:

Producers of UPN’s The Twilight Zone told SCI FI Wire that the show next week will begin shooting a sequel to the classic 1959 episode “It’s a Good Life,” in which a 6-year-old Billy Mumy sent people to the cornfield — with a now-middle-aged Mumy reprising the role of Anthony Fremont and Cloris Leachman again playing his mother. In another twist, Mumy’s real-life daughter, Liliana, will play Fremont’s daughter, who also has paranormal abilities, in the new episode, called “It’s Still a Good Life,” the producers said.

“We just signed Cloris Leachman [to reprise the role] as his mother,” executive producer Ira Steven Behr said in an interview. “We have Bill playing Anthony Fremont, [the] same character. He’s going to be wishing people into the cornfields. And we meet his daughter in real life, Liliana Mumy, who’s an actress who was in The Santa Clause 2. She’s going to be playing his daughter on the show, who is also going to have those Fremont powers. So that’s going to be a really exciting show, and I know the network is really excited about it.” The episode is slated to air in February.

This, of course, has the potential to be really cool or a total screwup. It was one of my favorite episodes, though, so I’ll have to watch and see how well they update it. Word has it they’ll also be updating another one of my favorite episodes called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Maybe I’ll have to give the show another chance.

Continuing with the movie theme of the day, word has it that Gary Oldman is up for the role of the wizard Sirius Black whom escaped from Azkaban. I’ve not heard if it’s official or not, but the folks at IMDB have already listed the film as part of Gary’s filmography. Personally, I think he’s a good choice and I’ll be quite pleased if he does do the part.

Now the question becomes one of whom do you get to play Lupin? For some reason the entire time I was reading that book I kept envisioning Lupin being played by an actor that most folks here have never heard of. Hairboy and Minx will know who I’m speaking of, but the rest of you will probably go “Huh?” My choice to play the role of Lupin would be Sylvester McCoy, probably best known for his role as the seventh Doctor in the old British Sci-Fi series Doctor Who. I think he’d make an excellent Lupin and he’s British so Rowling shouldn’t have any problem with using him. I think I’ll call her up and demand that she suggest McCoy for the role.

According to Ain’t It Cool News, Austin Powers director Jay Roach has decided not to take on turning the late Douglas Adam’s book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy into a movie. Word had been that the project had already been green-lit and Roach was set to direct, but now word has it that it’s almost green-lit and Roach has bowed out. No word on possible alternative directors.

Must be good-book-Monday or something for me. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s funny book about the Apocalypse,
Good Omens, was licensed to be made into a feature film by Terry Gilliam some time back and I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile. Alas, it seems the movie has been having trouble raising the needed financing to actually get made. Seems the folks in Hollywood are having trouble getting their heads around the idea of a comedy about the Apocalypse. According to SciFi Wire, Gilliam still hopes to be able to make the movie if they can find the money to do it and he’s excited to have landed the project.

Gilliam described the story as right up his alley. “Anything that has to do with good and evil, heaven and hell, the Antichrist, angels and devils and the apocalypse I’ve always found interesting,” he said. “On top of that, to have a comic version of all that is great. It’s a wonderful book, incredibly funny and it’s actually full of too much stuff to put onto film. But the basic tale [is filmable].”

The book was pretty good and I hope they’re able to pull it together and get it done as I think Gilliam could really do it justice.

In case you haven’t already heard (and if you haven’t then what rock have you been living under?), the next HP book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is due to hit shelves on June 21st.

The announcement was made on January 15th and just two days later it is already topping best seller lists and it’s not even out yet.

Online book store Amazon.com made J.K. Rowling’s long-awaited sequel available for pre-order almost immediately after the announcement, without listing a price. Two hours later the book was the top seller on the site, Reuters said.

While Amazon.com did not release pre-order numbers, Reuters reported that the first-day figures were 100 times those of the last book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which set a record for the largest book pre-order in history at more than 400,000 orders prior to its release three years ago. — SciFi Wire

Barnes & Noble is also reporting a god-awful number of pre-orders and is already saying their stores will be open until Midnight on June 20th so that fans can purchase the book as early as possible. When was the last time you’ve heard of a bookstore staying open to midnight to please the fans of a new release? And here I was thinking Potter Mania had died down somewhat. J.K. Rowling could probably sneeze into a tissue and make several million dollars off of it at this point.

As you can see, I’ve changed the layout of the page once again. The all-white version was just starting to make my eye’s bleed and it was affecting my desire to visit my own site. Going for a sorta funky retro feel with this one and, as always, I fully intend to get around to modifying all the sub-pages to fit in with this new layout. Note the use of the words “fully intend.”

I’m not entirely happy with this layout either, I wanted to do something a little more fancy with the entry boxes, but it was a strain on my admittedly limited design capabilities to come up with what I have here. The logo at the top took some serious head scratching to get it to work out the way I wanted and, frankly, just trying to come up with a pleasant color scheme was amazingly tough. How some of these folks do it is beyond me. Especially when you start getting into the issue of links and how it looks OK on one background color, but makes you wanna vomit on a different background color and you use both on your site. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I’ve modified the individual entries so they match the main site now. First time I’ve made it to any of the subpages. Now, for the rest of them.