HULK SMA…. why am I not turning green?

Today has been the kind of day where whatever happens I just can’t seem to get mad, these are the days I hate.I was driving down the road and I wanted to get into the the lane on my right but the guy in the white SUV in that lane slowed down as soon as his back bumper was beside mine. I mean, I he was going fast and then slowed down and I couldn’t get over… but for some reason I just couldn’t get mad. Then after getting to class almost 30 minutes early and doing an hour and 15 minutes of classwork I had to go to the Registrar’s Office to get a form signed to take a departmental exam and this kid just walked up to the lady at the desk as soon as I stepped up to her and started asking her about his problem. Not to sound rude or anything but, by the way he talked, he sounded a little … “off” … in the head so I let him get his business done. I don’t know it’s just not normal for me not to be able to get mad but this happens every once in a while, maybe it’s a sign that this long weekend will be a good one.

I finally got to work about 15 minutes ago and I was doing my normal morning routine of checking a few blogs and found (to my excitement!!!) that there is a Woot-Off in progress. So I think, the day isn’t going to be too bad, maybe there will be a Bandolier of Carrots this time and I can finally bag 3 of them, so I checked the item list on BagsofCrap.com and was very happy to see that there had been none yet (YES!!).

I saw a very nice freebie this morning on the Consumerist blog — a free Mr Clean Magic Eraser Duo sample. Having recently bought a white MacBook I’ve see how easily the MacBook gets dirty and it was suggested to me that I use a Mr Clean Magic Eraser to clean it, so I figured this is a great freebie, something I was already planning on getting. Unfortunately, it seems that the page is having problems or I’m having problems: I can’t choose a birth-year! Is anyone else having this problem as well? You can pick a Month, you can pick a Day, but the Year always stays “yyyy”.

To the guy at the end of the row,

Don’t you know that all the seats are connected to this desk? Don’t you know that if you move I will feel it at the other end of the row? Yes I can feel every move you make during class and yes you do move a lot. Can you please, please, PLEASE! get some medicine or something to control your urge to move every 5 seconds!

I know that sometimes it’s hard to sit still for the whole 50 minutes this class lasts, especially when you come in 15 minutes late anyway, but some of us are trying to learn and when you move it annoys the HELL out of us!

Thanks!

Woot!

I wanted to start off with an awesome dealio from Woot.com this morning — Nyko Air Flo EX USB Controller for PC/MAC – 2 Pack for $8.99 + $5 shipping. These controllers were great when I was playing Halo all the time, back in the day, because my hands always got sweaty during the long hours we would play. A USB connector means you can use these guys on your PC or Mac to fight off hordes of alien slime or just destroy the human race.

Keeping with the theme of gaming this morning, the date for the Crysis demo has been release and it seems that EA is not at all worried about another FPS coming out the same day. September 25 is going to be a busy, busy day for gamers but PC gamers rejoice! While all those fanboys are off playing that other FPS you can download Crysis without having to wait forever! (Just read that Crysis won Best of Show – PC Game at Leipzig this year, also BioShock won Best of Show – 360 Game.)

Brief: No Briefs in Brattleboro, VT

Brattleboro, Vermont, population 30,000, total area of 84.0 km, public nudity…. OKAY! That’s right public nudity is just fine in Brattleboro. When I think about a city allowing public nudity for the first second of considering it I smile but immediately after that I remember, well, I remember that not everyone has a body I’d like to look at and I feel a bit sick.

Public nudity was fine until July 2007 when a temporary law was passed that banned “nudity on the main roads and within 250 feet of any school or place of worship, among other places”. Don’t start awww’ing yet because on 22 August 2007 the idea to change the temporary ban into a permanent one was voted down. Starting in September the ban is gone and public nudity will be legal again, so if you’re planning a final summer vacation trip with the family you’ve got 4 days to get to Brattleboro and still feel clean.

Emergency!

My school sent me an email this morning explaining a new emergency text messaging system, here’s the official message:

[We have] established a text messaging system to alert the campus community of emergency situations. In the unlikely event of a serious emergency, participants in this service will receive text messaging containing official instructions from university administration.

Before I go too far, what is a “serious emergency”? Yeah, this is all because of the Va. Tech shooting but what about a fire, is that serious enough? And if it is what about a false emergency?

What I’m envisioning is this –

The day is bright and cool, birds chirp and flit from tree to tree outside of one of the many buildings on our campus. People are milling about both inside and outside the building, talking to one another or sitting by themselves until they have to make their way to their next class. The classrooms are full, as are the labs and student study rooms, full of students and other staff and faculty ready to get the next hour over with so they will be one less hour away from leaving for the day.

Waiting for his next class, Joe Blow leans against the wall in a hallway. It’s early and the party didn’t finish last night until the wee hours this morning, all in all he probably got about 3 hours of sleep and he has a full schedule of classes today. His eyes are slowly closing as a friend talks to him about something boring that happened this weekend and as his mind senses he is starting to slide he reaches up to grab whatever he can on the wall so he won’t slide. His fingers grasp for anything and find purchase they do — with the lever of a fire alarm.

Bells ring, doors close, and lights flash to signal the possibility of a fire in the building. Suddenly, not only does everyone in the building know about the alarm but so do hundreds of other students, faculty, and staff in other buildings on campus and also students, faculty, and staff off campus by way of text message. Students in class are looking out windows to see the fire they are being warned about by beeps, songs, and vibrations during class; staff are leaving desks and offices to see the building that is on fire, and students on the way to class in that building are turning around to go back home.

Does this make sense? I understand the reasoning behind the decision but in the event of a false disaster (or a real disaster) is this really a better alternative than email?

I’m going to sign up for it… just because I sign up for everything… I can’t wait to see what kind of text messages I get from the school about “emergency” situations. I better not get advertisements from the school about upcoming events.

Smelly books… ewwwww

I played through the entire BioShock demo last night and I can’t say enough how great that game looks and plays. Just the amount of things that are interactive and can be used is amazing to me. I remember games in the late-eighties and early- to mid-nineties that didn’t have open games where you could walk up to the wall and shoot it and leave bullet holes, or be able to pick up a trash can and hurl it if it wasn’t one of the few interactive items in the level. Gaming has come so far since the earliest consoles and arcade games and I can’t wait until I will be able to walk down the hall in a game and be able to rip a poster off the wall, ball it up, and throw it at my opponent.

I started this semester’s classes on Monday and I think I will enjoy my change in major (I was Computer Science but I switched to Management Information Systems). The one thing I dread about school is buying the books — having to spend $100+ for each book just doesn’t appeal to me at all, especially when I am already on a limited budget and having to pay other bills. There are e-books (which tend to be around the same price) but I like to hold a book in my hand, this is also the reason I don’t like to buy normal e-books. I must be in a minority though because CafeScribe found that most users that buy e-text-books miss only one thing — the smell of paper books. Fortunately for all you e-book readers the company has decided that they will send every e-book purchaser a scratch-and-sniff sticker to put on their laptop that has an ‘old book’ smell. How much of this is really PR and how much is true devotion to helping customers?

In Apple news, it turns out that the leaked image of the new iPod Nano Gizmodo received last week is the real thing! It looks uglier than an uncleaned pool on a summer day but with the larger screen comes video playback — a first on the Nano line. Last night around 10PM EST Gizmodo received a C&D letter asking for the removal of the copyrighted picture. Now all they have posted is their unofficial mock-up.

I try to bring news that people will want to read here, along with my own take on the items and when I saw that the picture of the Eidos Pony Friends booth at GCDC ‘07 I couldn’t help but put the link here and say something. I just wonder… are these “pony friends” allies, or are they the kind of friends that just stabbed you in the back and now you are getting back at them?

Did anyone watch ABC last night? Did you see the guy who thinks he’s the re-incarnation of Jesus, that Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda? I’m glad there’s a good cult finally, we needed one, but this Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda is really pulling a fast one. His website seems to just be news stories about him and his ministry, all the good pages (like the one titled “Super Race” and “Questions and Answers”) aren’t working yet. I really want to read that one titled “Super Race”, it just seems like that one will be the one were all the GOOD parts of his ministry will be. Reading through an article on AllAboutCults.org about Miranda, it turns out that not only is his brain messed up, so are his teachings. Miranda basically teaches that his followers are a chosen race and they will get into Heaven no matter what they do on Earth; that there is no sin, devil, or Hell, therefore no punishment for doing wrong; prayer is a waste of time (why do you need to pray anyway if you don’t sin?); and the Ten Commandments (along with every other law of God’s) is irrelevant.

Welcome to Rapture!

I finally got to step into Rapture last night and I have to say that BioShock is the MOST immersing game I’ve ever played. The detail to graphics and physics is just amazing, I’ve never seen anything like it … and don’t bring up Oblivion, it has nothing on this game. Since, for now, I only have the demo I decided I’d at least try to make it last for a while until I get the game so I only played for about 30 minutes last night (no, it wasn’t because I was on the edge of my seat waiting for something to jump out in front of me… really!!). Scary games just never were my thing, scary movies I can handle but scary movies not so much. BioShock is definitely a game where you are drawn into the storyline from the beginning and it’s hard to keep yourself from getting scared by the little things that you know the developers put in just because they knew people would get scared by them.

Speaking of BioShock, someone found an Easter Egg already — Pac-Man turns up in Rapture. I’m all for Easter Eggs, but I’m not really sure how much I’d like to see Pac-Man in a game like this. Do Easter Eggs of this sort tend to ruin the gaming experience for me? Typically not, but sometimes I just don’t want to think about other things from the real world. Comments?

In non-BioShock news, Google has added watching the skies to the list of things Google Earth can do now, adding a whole lot of new layers for the fun of stargazers and planets watchers.

It’s… BACN! | BioShock | Soulver

Apparently there’s a new term floating around the interwebs for all that mail you get that’s not spam and not personal mail — bacn (pronounced bay-cun). Everyone gets it, it’s that mail from Facebook or MySpace that says you have a new comment, or a newsletter from your favorite website. But do we really need a new word for this not-quite-spam,-yet-spam mail, and what do you do when you get it? Comments welcome.

So after the announcement two nights past I was waiting to download and play BioShock all day yesterday. All through class I waited, all through work I waited, until 7PM I waited to be able to download this JesusGame that everyone is giving fantastic reviews. Finally, when the gods of gaming pulled back the clouds and smiled down on me, I was able to get in the queue to download from FileShack. To say I was happy was an understatement, here I was about to download THE GAME! I was ready to push the rest of my life to the side for one night and play this wonderful feat of programming and 3D rendering. The queue said I had 100 minutes until I could begin my download, and this was a little after 7PM, so I decided I could take a bath in that time and make a sandwich and by then I should be downloading and be ready to play before I needed to go to bed.

100 minutes lasted 3.5 hours but I was okay with that, it was only 10:30 so I still had 2 hours to download the game and play a little before I needed to sleep so I could get up in time for class this morning. I was merrily watching TV and doing some browsing of the interwebs when I glanced at the download around 11:30, it was at 80% and I, being the optimist, thought it would finish before I needed to get off the computer. Well, apparently the same gods that smiled upon me just 4.5 hours earlier are very fickle and laughed at my optimism, slowing down the download so that it didn’t finish until 12:15. Now I must wait until tonight to play the demo as I will not be able to pick up my reserved copy until later. It’s going to be a late night.

MacApper.com just blogged about Soulver, the calculator based on the English language. It looks like a very interesting app for Mac users who aren’t mathematically inclined (myself included) and don’t like word problems. I did notice that the screenshot on MacApper.com shows the app doing a simple problem — “What is 10% of 45?” — and for some reason it gives the answer “5″. I don’t know why it says it’s five, unless it is auto-rounding up. I’m not sure if this is an option or what, I’ll give more info on this when I get a chance to play around with the app myself.

JesusPhones for less!!!

Gizmodo announced this morning that, like every other Apple product, you can now get refurbished iPhones at the Apple Store online. They are $100 cheaper ($399 and $499 for the 4gb and 8gb, respectively), not too shabby for a JesusPhone. These prices do not include an AT&T contract, and you will have to have some kind of service to get these to work. Having bought refurbs from the Apple Store before I can attest to these items being in working condition, I have a 2 gb Nano that I bought as a refurb about a year ago and it’s still going strong!

Bioshock, the name that every PC and XBox gamer is mumbling in their sleep, is finally getting a demo released for the PC TONIGHT! The game is released tomorrow so that means us PC gamers get ONE night of the demo before our dreams will be realized on the morrow.

Dealio: Sold out deals, price drops, laptop pencils

I meant to post this yesterday but the day got away from me. With school starting soon and trying to get more work and and an apartment it’s been a crazy week, not to mention I’ve been seeing a doctor about high blood pressure lately. Ugh!

On Consumerist this morning there was an awesome backpack listed, a Samsonite Urbanite Laptop Backpack, for $28.99 shipped at Buy.com. If you have already checked (and for those of you who haven’t) you will have found that the item was unavailable already. Apparently the deal was known a lot longer than Consumerist knew about it or there just weren’t many backpacks in stock. Fortunately for all my readers I found the same backpack at another site for just a few dollars more. Provantage.com has the same backpack for $27.99 except that doesn’t include shipping. For shipping to Georgia it was going to cost $10, so if you need a backpack that is laptop ready $38 isn’t too bad a deal but it’s not $28 shipped.

Yesterday, this is the deal I meant to post earlier, Gizmodo announced that SanDisk’s Sansa Connect 4GB is dropping its price from $249 to $149. This is the MP3 player that lets you listen to Yahoo Radio, view Flikr albums and photos, and see what your friends on Yahoo are listening to, all through WiFi. Oh, I just found out that you can get the Connect on Amazon for $119 + shipping.

If you use a laptop a lot and just wish you had a tablet for graphics or just to control the mouse easier than using the trackpad, a company in the UK just announced its newest item — the Digital Pencil. Looks like every artist-on-a-budget’s dream come true, now if only that trackpad was a little bigger. No pricing available as of yet.