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Day: October 27, 2008

What went down for 2008-10-27

Yesterday

twitter (feed #9) 4:24am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Our Pumpkin was smashed overnight… but in a really weak way, just cracked up the middle then placed in our tree box in the yard.
twitter (feed #9) 4:26am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@RevNathan You’re supposed to say “Hesiod, of course” LoL
twitter (feed #9) 4:42am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@almightygod Ummm…. “Morning”??? Far be it from me to argue with the deity, but temporal notions are so meat-driven.
twitter (feed #9) 4:48am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, What goes around comes back around again, Stud Doogie are you with me?
twitter (feed #9) 5:26am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Now What!? DHCP Issues?
twitter (feed #9) 5:37am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

I have completed “Dead Space” There are Nerds on the Internets who have grossly misinterpreted the “Marker” as the source of the evil.
twitter (feed #9) 6:10am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@RevNathan BALKANIZED
twitter (feed #9) 6:26am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@happyguy All Day, I hate the dumpers.
twitter (feed #9) 6:32am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

New Blog Post: Review: Dead Space http://tinyurl.com/55vtw7
twitter (feed #9) 6:51am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

It’s funny to listen to Robyn to rap “hard” lol
twitter (feed #9) 6:59am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Cleaned up tickets, Checked over test laptop, delivered tapes to store, discussed ongoing issues, determined status of External Con. …busy
twitter (feed #9) 7:45am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Having low expectations means that every success, no matter how small, is a great success.
twitter (feed #9) 7:59am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@happyguy I’m not sure what to make of this tweet, ‘removed twitter posts to my blog’?
twitter (feed #9) 8:01am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Cleaned up my blog header… those extra links made it messy…
twitter (feed #9) 8:03am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Moved Rss link to “footer”
twitter (feed #9) 8:08am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

cleaned up “Top Links” Still not happy. Going to have to go back to Design Phase soon… Still too Texty…
twitter (feed #9) 8:30am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@FarandSavage Perhaps you’re going to be transitioned into a new role?
twitter (feed #9) 8:54am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

It’s going to be a long 5 days….. the waiting is the hardest part.
twitter (feed #9) 9:03am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

@happyguy I swapped twitter tools’ more twitter-centric digest to the omnibus “Lifestream” that did a much better job.
twitter (feed #9) 9:36am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Writing a quick hit piece on the “We can’t Hurt or Heal” people…
twitter (feed #9) 9:56am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

New blog post: Project Much? http://tinyurl.com/6a8b28
twitter (feed #9) 10:03am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

New blog post: And How *exactly* will these laws be enforced Sarah? http://tinyurl.com/5agu88
twitter (feed #9) 10:43am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

“It’s hard to read comic books as my time is now restricted.” — Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso
twitter (feed #9) 11:48am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Packing up, I’m not going to get anything else done if it shows up in the next 5-10 minutes anyway
twitter (feed #9) 2:03pm Posted a tweet on Twitter.

GOP Challenge: Make Establishment of Incoming taxes your policy going forward. If you want to win, just say “We’re stopping taxes”
twitter (feed #9) 5:29pm Posted a tweet on Twitter.

OMG: WTH did I think I wrote?
twitter (feed #9) 5:29pm Posted a tweet on Twitter.

Conservatives: Run on a platform of Abolishing Income Taxes, sure fire win.

And How *exactly* will these laws be enforced Sarah?

It would have turned into a boon for trial lawyers. Again, thankfully with the existing laws we have on the books, they better be enforced. We won’t stand for anything but that. We won’t stand for any discrimination in the workplace – that there isn’t any discrimination in America.

Palin: I’m absolutely for equal pay for equal work. The Ledbetter pay act – it was gonna turn into a boon for trial lawyers who, I believe, could have taken advantage of women who were many, many years ago who would allege some kind of discrimination. Thankfully, there are laws on the books, there have been since 1963, that no woman could be discriminated against in the workplace in terms of anything, but especially in terms of pay. So, thankfully we have the laws on the books and they better be enforced.
Couric: The Ledbetter act sort of lengthens the time a woman can sue her company if she’s not getting equal pay for equal work. Why should a fear of lawsuits trump a woman’s ability to do something about the fact that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. And that’s today.

Palin: There should be no fear of a lawsuit prohibiting a woman from making sure that the laws that are on the books today are enforced. I know in a McCain-Palin administration we will not stand for any measure that would result in a woman being paid less than a man for equal work.

Couric: Why shouldn’t the Ledbetter act be in place? You think it would result in lawsuits brought by women years and years ago. Is that your main problem with it?

Palin: It would have turned into a boon for trial lawyers. Again, thankfully with the existing laws we have on the books, they better be enforced. We won’t stand for anything but that. We won’t stand for any discrimination in the workplace – that there isn’t any discrimination in America.

I’m not clear on what she thinks her opinion is here, she believes that discrimination is happening, and that it should be redressed but decries the use of lawyers to do anything about it.  What exactly is she saying; strong belief that it is bad will put an end to it?  Wishing really hard is enough to overcome the problem?  I think that this may be the most self-evident quote from Sarah that puts to light her vacuous nature and over-reliance on “supernatural” solutions over practical ones.  Really, strong belief is not enough to resolve practical problems Sarah.

It’s somewhat clear that she understands the aim of the Ledbetter Act, but believes that it would have made a mint for the hated “Lawyers” but says nothing about what it would do for Women.

Project Much?

The environMENTAL wackos are stooping to tactics of fear yet again, now trying to tell us we’re “too stupid” to understand that they want to screw us over with higher sanitation and energy costs while crippling the economy.

Yes, this is the ultimate goal of the the Scientists who predict envionmental collapse; they want to put their hands in your pockets.  They have a vested interest in taking cash out of your hands and putting it into their pockets.

It is easy to look at someone else’s opinion and just say, well you’re crazy and want to steal my gold, so I don’t have to listen to what you say. Why not?  If you do nothing, then die, what’s the harm?  Even if the Scientists are correct and in 50 years New York is under a couple of meters of water, how does that affect you? It’s not like you’ll care, you’ll just pick up and move, problem solved.

Right?

It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it wasn’t for geologists (working for oil and mineral firms) and economics professors getting in on the action to tell us how foolish those guys are. If there is any justification for the person quoted above to just say it’s all hooey, they’ll take it.  If Ming the Merciless himself spring forth from the pages of Flash Gordon and pronounced that Global Warming is Hooey, you’d have half the pundits telling us how while Merciless, Ming has run a whole Empire and knows something about taking care of planets.   You’d have people fete’ing Ming at Values Voters summits, saying how he’s Right With God because believes in Dominion of Nature.

It’s that very phrase “Right With God” that drives a great deal of denyers to varying degrees.  There is this belief that humanity is so small in the world that there is no way that the Actions of a few billion people who consume gigatons of resources each year could affect the health of the Planet as a whole.  Just as God is so vast you can’t see or understand it; the Planet (as God’s special little playpen) is beyond Human Ken and therefore we can’t do anything to hurt or heal it, right?

Review: Dead Space

Dead Space

A repair crew visits a damaged mining ship in orbit around a planet that has yielded more than just pure mineral goodness; now the repair crew need to fight off the crazed and mutated remains of the mining ship’s personnel and escape back into space and home.

Dead Space plays about the same as every other Over the shoulder third person horror game. Aiming is fairly good, scares are plentiful and the Graphics are above par. Some notable game play mechanics issues that I found annoying, no jump. Fire was not always fire, it was sometimes “flail” at air, requiring you to remember that the right mouse mutton needed to be pressed … OH DAMN I’M BEING EATEN AGAIN!!!!.

Never mind that you can’t run & shoot at the same time. The game just punished you for having the gun out, you walked extra slow if you brandished any weapon larger than the empty gloves, but ran fine if you just “carried” the weapon. I spent the majority of this game cursing or panicking, it was high school all over again. Whether it was running down halls praying that nothing would pop out or frantically trying to get the damn gun to fire (which never seemed to work if I didn’t keep it at “the ready” before a fight. Did I mention that I kept the gun “ready” for more than 5 hours in the game?

I took to launching mines into every room I entered, but that made no difference, as the monsters were often non there until I saw them. Let me state that again, if I couldn’t see the monster, it often wasn’t there. Which means I could shoot a mine into a room, have it explode, then run face first into the monster behind the door that wasn’t there until I saw it.

Perhaps if Issac ran through the whole game with his eyes closed, there would have been no monsters at all!

My rating: 4.5 stars
****1/2

I’m being overly critical, of course.

I played the game in small bursts; letting my heart rate slow to a near attack between firefights and enclosed space battles with small crowds of dessicated infants with serious worm issues.    It wasn’t a “dark” game, which was refreshing, as many horror games hide the monsters in the dark and rely on them jumping out to get you (Doom 3, and so on).  Dead Space scared you by letting you know the monsters were coming well in advance and that there was nothing you would be able to do to stop them, save gird your loins and find a solid wall to stand against or a long open space to run through.

The dismemberment mechanic worked fairly well, but beyond the really touch monsters, I was able to bludgeon or stomp most of them to death with minimal effort; which happened more than I would have liked.  Also, I don’t think I killed a single human in the game.  Which was a crime, as more than one human character needed to be dismembered by my line gun.  C’est La Vie.

I played the Game on my Core Duo, on Windows Xp Sp3 with an Nvidia 8500GT video card and 2 gigs of ram.  I turned off bloom, blur, motion blur, advanced lighting and shadows and played it at 1440×900.  I don’t think I suffered one slowdown or hiccup in game play.  Not one.  It was solidly beautiful and fluid throughout, even without added dressing.

As for the plot, there were some fairly severe inconsistencies introduced; not the least of which was the Marker itself.  I won’t stray into spoiler town, but I will state this, [spoiler] “THE MARKER WAS NOT THE SOURCE OF THE EVIL, IT WAS THE SOLUTION TO IT. “[/spoiler]