Creative Packaging

When you have PC's mailed to you for repair every day, you get used to seeing some rather creative packaging/padding techniques. From the traditional styrofoam peanuts and wadded newspaper, to more unique methods, such as patient gowns, oxygen masks and even air (nothing in other words...always a bad sign), you never really know what you're going to see when you open the box.

That being said, nothing I had encountered before really prepared me for this:


In case you can't make it out, that's a PC wrapped in adult diapers...Depends. I'm not sure what they were thinking, or how much they thought that would help, but it provided some amusement, even if I didn't exactly want to touch it.

Why I'm Supporting Ron Paul

I've never been an overly political person, largely because I view that stage a few notches below that of car sales and the pharmaceutical industry in terms of honesty and integrity. I vote, but I've always voted by principle and for the person I thought to be the best candidate, not necessarily the candidate with the best odds of winning. I've been reprimanded for that ("Why throw your vote away?"), but I intend to do just that again this year. This time out though, there's a candidate who speaks plainly, truthfully and poignantly. If you consider yourself to be at all "web-savvy" (a term that sounds like something my mother would come up with), then you probably know who I'm referring to (hint, the post title kind of gives it away too):

Ron Paul

I know some will say, "But he's a politician, you can't take what they say at face value!" This is a valid point, but Paul succeeds where others often fail miserably. Why? Because his voting record reflects his presidential platform. All too often you seen candidates flip-flopping on votes they've taken previously, because now that they're running for president, their previous conviction on an issue may no longer be popular. Somehow, seemingly overnight, they "change their mind" and are now wholly committed to what seems to be a contradiction. This just isn't so with Ron Paul. He's stuck to his guns throughout his political career, he's refused to take gifts from lobbyists who would buy his vote, he's never once voted to raise taxes, he's refused special interests and special benefits of the position. In fact, Paul's core principle could be said to be enabling and preserving the rights of the individual as established by the Constitution of these United States of America.

Where Dr. Paul stands on the issues:

Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy - Diplomacy over Warfare
Put the Homefront First (Promote the General Welfare of citizens)
Ending entangling treaties and alliances (WTO, NAFTA, etc.)
The Lowering of Taxes and the end of the Internal Revenue Service
The Protection of Property Rights and the Right of Eminent Domain
Healthcare Freedom - Giving power back to patients, not doctors and corporations
No more corporate welfare (rewarding big-business with tax dollars) and pollution
Protecting the Rights and Civil Liberties of Citizens (this is still a free country...right?)
Educational Choice - Give parents their rights to choose where their children go to school
Cut Foreign Aid (How can we give aid when the United States is in debt?)
Fiscal Responsibility at the Federal Level - If you were the government, you'd be bankrupt.

I've oversimplified a lot of these, and left some off entirely (it's getting late...need to sleep), so go here for more in-depth reading.

Even if you're not usually a voter, listen to what Dr. Paul has to say. His words seem to resonate strongly with those who have been disenchanted by the political system in the past, and this is a good thing. I think it scares those who are used to "politics as usual" because it brings in an unknown element, people like you and me, who don't care for party affiliations and who haven't had much voice in government. If there was a time to take America back from the status-quo, there's really no time like the present.

Vote Ron Paul '08.

This should fix me right up...

Oh yeah. I went to the store to pick up a couple of things to help with my ongoing bout with the flu, and I picked up some of this: Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt. To quote the legend himself:

"I have traveled the world creating this drink; there is none better that I know."

Yeah, I should be better in no time. It's like a kick in the mouth! Of course, plenty have also noted the healing power of music. I wasn't brave enough to try this out though...

Sick as a dog...

Well, it would figure that at the tail end of my not-so-vacation vacation that I'd get sick. Last week my nephew was sick with flu-like symptoms, coughing, aches, fever, you name it. Now it would seem that after lounging around this house for a week, it's finally worn at me enough and I've had the same symptoms since yesterday evening. Fun stuff...

At any rate, I'm doing the usual stuff to ward it off as best I can, herbal teas, aspirin, vitamin C, etc., etc. Not sure how well it's working, but I'm functional for the moment. Say a few words for me during you're prayer time, if you're so-inclined...

Iron Man Trailer

Big Trouble in Little Chairtown GameDev Blog

I found this GameDev Blog looking for more info on the indie game, Mop of Destiny (which combines Castlevania-like gameplay with Out of this World-style visuals). Looks like a pretty good little look into the dev process, and I'll say that the game itself is good (GREAT, and I mean GREAT music, composed by the developer).

Big Trouble in Little Chairtown GameDev BLOG

If you'd like to check out the game itself, click here.

And please, if you have any interest at all, check out the soundtrack...it may be the most impressive aspect of all.

Meaning of Life(?)

Live. Pay taxes. Die.

There has to be more to life than this, right? At this point in life, I'm really starting to wonder...

Red Ring of Death...Take Two

My XBOX 360 has died again...

Wearing down...

Tired.

So tired...

Not sure what's going on with me, but I haven't slept well at all lately, even by my standards. I had been doing a little better, but with all the crap stressing me out at work, not to mention all of the other things my mind tends to overflow with, getting to the point where I'm ready to relax has been just short of impossible lately.

One thing that sucks is that it doesn't look like I'll be able to take a proper vacation this year at all. Between the lack of money, a car that barely runs (see lack of money) and incompatible schedules (sure don't feel like going anywhere alone), I've all but scrapped plans to try to get down to the beach. It's not going to happen. The problem is that I currently have 130 hours of PLT time (vacation, personal leave, call it what you will) and I can only carry 40 of those over past the end of September. Any unused hours past that amount get thrown into the lawyer-inspired 'Emergency Family Leave,' which you can only ever use if you or an immediate family member are ill or dead, and then only after your PLT time is completely depleted. Somewhere in hell I'm sure there's a lawyer being eternally tormented for coming up with that way of stealing time from the overworked.

I'm taking next week off, just to lay around at home, but that doesn't sound like it will give me much needed release, mentally or physically. At best at least I'll catch up on some sleep. I wish I was going somewhere, spending time with certain people, etc. but that's just possible right now. What I really wish is that I'd get some time to disconnect and decompress from the day to day, home included, because right now, I'm tired of being either angry or numb. All I can really do is plan for next year at this point though. Hopefully a little bit of foresight will prevent a repeat.

Iron Man Shown at Comic Con

Well, a rough trailer was shown for Iron Man at the Comic Con just over a week ago. I'd love to be able to link to the footage that was leaked out, but every attempt to post it has been more or less beat-down by Paramount (the distributor of the film). I'm pretty excited about what's been shown so far, and this was the first time where I'm really allowing myself to be optimistic about it. This will not be another Daredevil, Elektra or the Hulk. Thank God...

Replacement 360 XBOX Live Arcade Woes

I hate DRM. I hate hardware that doesn't work. I really hate it when hardware that doesn't work combined with hardware-based DRM, makes for more hardship on what's an already pisspoor situation.

As I posted, my 360 developed the Red Ring of Death (the rather vague general hardware failure in my case) and I sent it off to Microsoft for repair. Well, to make a long story short, M$ sent me a replacement instead of repairing my console, which makes sense, but also a lot of needless bother. As most would know/guess, Live Arcade games are DRM-coded. This DRM basically associates the Live Arcade games with your gamer profile AND the hardware upon which you downloaded them. While this is good in the sense that you can take your games on a memory unit to play on someone else's 360, provided you're logged into Live, well, needless to say, it creates something much less savory when your hardware has been replaced.

Basically, whenever I go to play my Live games, I have to be logged in. No more can I play them without a profile loaded, no more can another profile be loaded. If either of those circumstances are in effect, games appear to be in trial mode, so basically I have to have my Live Profile logged-in. Problem is, I have to actually be logged-in to Live and ONLINE to do it. I basically connect wirelessly through a wireless bridge via an ad-hoc network (no router), so basically this means that my PC has to be on for me to play the full versions of the games I've paid $5-$10 each for. That's 31 downloaded games, only one of which was a freebie. Like I said, I hate DRM.

Needless to say, I'm a little bit miffed. Apparently, since my console was under warranty and sent back to Microsoft, there's a way for me to go about remedying this, but it's rather complicated (basically I have to create a silver Live account, at which point, if everything checks out, they'll credit that account with enough Live Points to download the content again on the new machine, thus registering them with the new hardware). For those people who thought they were being smart by purchasing an extended warranty handled by the retailer (such as Gamestop, Best Buy or EB), they're basically up the creek without a paddle, and will be told as much by Microsoft support. To show a little more about Microsoft's commitment to their customers, apparently so little forethought has been put into this little problem that those who upgrade to the XBOX 360 Elite also have the issue, and like the extended warranty purchasers, they have little recourse other than to just deal with it. I know it might seem like a trivial thing to some (you can of course still play them, you just have to be connected to Live), but what about those gamers who took their 360 over to a friend's house to download those games (how I first started doing it, until I found a way to do the ad-hoc thing with my dial-up connection...yup, you read that right) and can now no longer play them since they have no way of logging-in to Live every single time they play.

Considering the degree of hardware failures users have experienced, I'd say their customer base has been about as loyal and patient as any could be. This is another slap in the face, and Microsoft really needs to come clean and find solutions to these issues, especially those that are a product of their oversight. You hear stories about people being on their 3rd 360. I was skeptical about it at first, but now that I'm a member of the Red Ring Fraternity, I guess it's opened my eyes a bit. Microsoft can still come out on this, but it won't by ignoring their customers and denying hardware issues, especially when it's become the laughingstock that is XBOX 360 hardware reliability & satisfaction.

Sense of dread...

Seems like there's an impending sense of dread surrounding work lately. I've never been the most positive person when it comes to, well, most anything, but this is different. It's almost like being on the verge of losing consciousness while a vulture circles overhead. It just feels like something is about to happen, and that it's not going to be good for most of the people it effects. It's almost as if those running the show (the vultures) are doing their best to try to get the department at large to leave of their own accord so that they don't have to come up with bogus reasons to fire us. They make it pretty obvious that they don't trust us, even though we give them no reason not to. They do their best to create division between certain groups in the department, incorporating a tier-based "caste" system (despite their statements to the contrary) and incorporate "improvements" that manage to accomplish nothing other than complicating once-simple tasks. Probably the most frustrating thing to me is that they apparently never say what they mean, nor mean what they say. They just sit back plotting and scheming, not taking into account that we're doing a hell of a job considering the size and growth of the organization, or that what they're dealing with are the livelihoods of human beings. I'm not really sure what to do, I'm just tired of thinking about it.

First Look: Origin IRON MAN Armor (Movie)

Apparently this is the first look at the movie's version of the original Iron Man armor (the one Tony Stark builds when imprisoned and near-death). Looks good enough to me.

Just to compare, here's the armor as it originally looked in IM's first appearance, Tales of Suspense #39.

Windows Freeware Apps You Need

You know, the internet has a lot to offer, but all too often what it offers are problems for your computer. Virii, spyware and other malware run rampant, and you need something that will help. All of these are 100% free and will help protect your PC better than some commercial applications, and far better than nothing at all.

AntiVirus
Avast - Nice freeware app and one of the better free antivirus programs. The pre-boot Windows scanning agent is especially nice when it comes to ridding your PC of some of the more stubborn virii. You must register (for free) every 14 months.
Avira - The first free antivirus that I ever used is also quite competent. It's not quite as full-featured as Avast and pops up the occasional add for its full version, but it gets the job done for the most part, and isn't as resource-hungry.
AVG Anti-Virus - I've never really used this one, but it's generally the most widely-used of the free apps.

Anti-Malware
Spybot: Search & Destroy - One of the better anti-malware apps available, and it's totally free. This will basically scan your PC for a plethora of spyware (over 60,000 known variants), clean your PC, and in 17,000 cases, actually immunize your PC from infection. Install this, keep it updated, scan often.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware - Another great anti-malware app, Ad-Aware targets a slightly different type of malware than does Spybot, so it's good to use these in tandem. If you're getting lots of random pop-up ads, this one is particularly useful.
Windows Defender - Normally I wouldn't recommend a Microsoft product in a thread about security, but this does the job and it's free (if you have Genuine, aka, NON-PIRATED, Windows). I liked it a lot better when it was Giant Antispyware, but it still meets the criteria and gives some options the others don't.
AVG Anti-Spyware - I tried this one and didn't like it much (doesn't self-update), but I work with folks in IT who swear by it, so I'm including it due to their word alone.
AVG Anti-Rootkit Free - Rootkits are basically nasty little apps the conceal potentially harmful processes running on your PC. These have been pushed out by the usual ne'er-do-wells that usually make life miserable for the average PC user, as well as corporations like Sony in an iron-fisted attempt to enforce DRM. Use this if you need none of that nonsense.

Browsers
Mozilla Firefox - Firefox has basically become the alternative browser of choice for this generation of computer users, and for good reason. It's fast, stable, and not as susceptible to malware as Internet Explorer. In addition, it adds truly user-friendly features like tabbed-browsing (now incorporated by Microsoft in IE7) and extensions, useful, user-created tools that will help you do everything from check the weather to download embedded videos.
Opera - Another great browser (same as found on the Nintendo Wii...heh). This is one of the fastest full-featured browsers for Windows and can scream through pages. It has a nice look to it, and like Firefox (probably even moreso), it's not as susceptible as IE.
Mozilla Seamonkey - Another Mozilla-based browser, Seamonkey is what the Mozilla Suite has become. If you like one program to handle your browsing, e-mail, IRC & HTML-editing needs, this is it. Includes support for extensions as well, and has what I consider to be the single coolest name for a browser.

Other
Mozilla Thunderbird - The only e-mail client you'll ever need. Fast and efficient, with support for extensions, Thunderbird is probably the most configurable e-mail client available.
Open Office - You need access to Word or Excel, but don't want to pay $300+? Open Office is what you need. Free for download, it includes apps that do exactly what Office does, including save to Microsoft's file formats. This will be one of the best chunks of change you ever saved.
Foxit Reader - Adobe Acrobat Reader is slow, clunky, and, when using the browser plugins, crashes both IE & Firefox on occasion. Foxit is fast, small (less than 2MB) and generally much less of a hassle. Foxit also offers a PDF creator, but it will leave a watermark on your created PDF's unless you pony up $99.

This day is neverending...

Some days seem like they're never going to end. The clock just struck 9:00pm and I'm still at work. What was supposed to be a simple reboot has rendered some of the more important systems inoperable (such as the Cisco phone system) and the company didn't have the foresight to have a backline put in place for the IT department in case such an event arose. As such, my crappy little cellphone has been commandeered to get the job done. I'm in for the long haul. Maybe I'll be out by midnight...

Abandonment...

Abandonment. It's something I've had to deal with for years. Sometimes the other person isn't at fault, at other times, it's hard not to find fault, even if you don't really want to. Sometimes it's just the motion of life, people move on, and it's hard to keep in touch. At others, they just decide, for whatever reason, that they've had enough of you, that you're more trouble than you're worth. Either which way, it's hard for me to deal with. It's one of the things that's led to my distrust of more or less the entire human race. Even if they don't mean to be that way, our human bent makes us selfish. All too often all we care about is ourself, and we do things without thinking about the consequences to those around us. Try as I might, and as much as I don't like to admit it, I've done it myself, and it's been done more times to me than I want to think about. It's hard to feel hope when everything you've worked so hard for comes tumbling down.

It's happened again, and once again, the message is loud and clear: You're not worth the trouble. You don't mean enough to me to continue with this. In the case of love, these kind of things are indeed a very bitter pill. This saddens me to no end, makes me bitter, cynical...things that at one point in my life, I used not to be. Life (and people) chew you up, spit you out, then grind you under its cruel heel. Why do I want to keep getting up for this? Why do I want to keep going on? Why do I want to keep fighting when it seems that everything I do is for nought? These are the questions I continue to ask myself.

I know what I'll do. I'll go to work, try to keep busy, and put my head down, continuing to trudge through it all. I'll keep trying, even past the point of total exhaustion. It feels like nothing I ever do will be successful, and all the work and sacrifice I can muster won't change that. I don't know what else to do. It almost feels like being hung, at the end of my rope, but that my neck won't snap. I'm just twisting in the wind, waiting for an end that doesn't come. I just feel lost, no direction, wondering what to do next. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it...