Wii have it now

After a few weeks of searching, calling, planning, etc we finally were able to get a Wii. It is awesome. All those years of trying not to move the control while your character jumped have finally been put aside as someone has come to the wisdom that it was a good thing to move. It came with one set of sport games, and we purchased another game that adds things like billiards and such, plus we picked up a Mario game. Oh, we also ordered another game with rabbits just for Maury. (Not really but I know she will find it adorable because of the rabbits.)
I think it will be entertaining for both the adults and Colt. (Although the younger kids may find it fun to watch what we are doing.)

Another Ice Cream Cone

I finished my last class as an undergraduate today. Small victories, but victories none the less.

Still feels good

I know I am not done yet, but tonight I did what will be my last homework as an undergraduate. It felt good. Really good. Since I have so much to do next week for papers and finals, this is my small victory for the week. (Like getting an ice cream cone as a reward.) I can't wait till next Saturday when I take my last final. I am going to do a little dance when I turn it in. If you don't believe me, you just wait and see.

How bad it was

I just downloaded all the pics on my memory card and realized that one of the ones I took while it was damaged was still on there. I thought I would post it so that if any of you have the same problem, you will know what to tell them. (CCD error.)

New Furniture

We bought a new entertainment center the other day, and it was delivered today.
This is our old one:
And this is our new one:

Isn't it lovely? I have to put the knick-knacks in the corner pieces to get some room on our bookshelves, and the hubby is going to set up all the equipment (cause I have homework, not cause I can't figure it out.) The best part is it doesn't creek like it is going to fall down when you walk by it, like the old one did. We still have the old one, it is moved upstairs so that we can refinish the dresser the other TV currently sits on.
I did have to do one thing to this entertainment center before we could use it. The hole in the back for the rear of the TV to stick out wasn't big enough for our model. So I had to cut with a Dremel tool one inch on the sides and bottom of the particle board to get it to fit. It took me awhile because the Dremel ran out of power half way through, but it is done. Now we can close the front of the entertainment center and hide the TV.

Radio Shack

Oh, man, this is just too funny. There's one of these stores near where I work and I ask myself this every time I see it.

The Onion!"

Very Impressed

I received my camera back from Canon today. It works perfectly and it was completely free to get repaired. It only took them a few days to get it back to me as well. I couldn't be happier with their customer service. Especially considering the lack of customer support for every other business I have ever dealt with.
Now I can take pictures of all the things I need to, like stuff for my restoration plan that I am presenting on Friday and graduation in a few weeks. I really didn't expect it done this soon, but I am very happy it is.

AIR

I can't see a way that any movie could be more awesome than this one looks like it is:

Air Guitar Nation

Hurry up and put it on DVD so I can Netflix it!

Spring time

I don't know what it is about this particular time of year, but it seems to me that this is always the really violent time of year. This is when all the big school shootings have happened. This is when many of the bigger attacks on corporate employees happens. Something about this time of year just brings out the psycho and cause them all to go on murderous rampages.
I have also noticed the school children in my neighborhood have been more tempted to try to fight. I have already broken up two fights (both between groups of girls) on my lawn this month. Both times I called the cops to have them come patrol the neighborhood, and it seems to calm things down for about a week.
I have a couple of theories about this:
First, I wonder if it has to do with the end of school, at least for those who go. I remember when I was in high school this was the time when most of the kids really starting getting antsy and trouble was always brewing.
Second, it may also have to do with the fact that the weather gets nice and people have been stuck indoors for so long that they are just restless.
Lastly, I think that people are also getting tired because you have all those breaks during the holiday season, and then suddenly you don't have another break until Memorial Day (unless you happen to get Good Friday off or a Spring Break.) Maybe they should come up with some other holiday that allows people a day off in between. They should call it Day off Day.

Tech-Nine

Okay, since everyone's been talking about Virginia Tech all day, I do have a thing or two to say about this. Actually, I also want to mention that a coworker of mine--a VT alumnus--was wearing his nice VT shirt at work yesterday, which caused me to lol'ed.

Anyway, the articles about foreign governments responding to this thing made me sick. Here's a particularly vile one. Oh, yes, Mr. Howard, tell us how you think our country should be run. Everybody knows that getting rid of guns prevents gun crime. Right? So...Australia is unfit to be lecturing us. Who else?

Ahh, the British press has decided to cry its own crocodile tears. Says Gerard Butler of The Times: "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"

You're right, Mr. Baker; eliminating gun ownership also eliminates gun crime, doesn't it? Yeah, that's the ticket. I didn't even mention England's hilarious knife amnesty program, introduced in response to the surge in knife-based violence in response to their gun ban.

Let's see...oh, then China chips in. The article points out that nobody in China is allowed to own guns. That probably explains why China is such a utopian paradise.

Then Italy comes aboard and chips in their two lire. Gun ownership is restricted in Italy, too, making it impossible to commit any acts of violence.

Clearly, these nations are leading the way in making the world a safer, better place. As I see it, there are two appropriate responses to all this schadenfreude:

1) There will always be crazed people who decide that the best way to deal with their situation is to kill a lot of people. It's unfortunate, and it's scary, but it's unavoidable. These kinds of attacks are the price of a free society. Until our government has the entire populace sedated, or under constant surveillance, there simply is no way to guarantee that this madness won't be repeated. I saw a headline crawl on CNN yesterday that said "ARE ANY OF OUR STUDENTS SAFE??" No joke. And, well, no; there isn't any way to assure that this kind of thing will not happen again. Really, none of us are safe from random acts of senseless violence. But is it sensible to panic and hide in the corner?

2) This simply isn't the time to point fingers and say "I told you so." Mr. Howard, Mr. Baker, et al., please just take your condolences and cram 'em. There will be an appropriate time and place to analyze this event and find ways to mitigate such risks in the future, but can we please wait until these kids and teachers are in the ground before you vultures of opportunity begin to circle?

There is one more point I wish to make, and I hope I don't belabor it too much...but consider what must have gone through this prick shooter kid's mind as he began to plan his attack. Once he secured his weaponry, loaded up all his extra magazines and found a way to secret them around his person, he had to choose a place to go where there would be a lot of people he could attack. He chose his school. One can assume that he wanted to choose a fairly high-profile target, so that he could get his name in the newspapers--the fact that he left a note backs up this assumption. So...why not a police station? Why not drive up to DC and storm any of a number of government targets?

I'd like to suggest that, among other reasons, it's because people in police stations are armed. Government buildings are protected by people who are armed. Carrying a weapon on Virginia Tech campus is illegal...yet imagine how this would have turned out had one or more of his victims had been packing.

Just saying.

Pirate Metal!

I happened to discover today that there exists a pirate-themed death metal band called SWASHBUCKLE. Yes, they perform in costume; the singer even has a stuffed parrot on his shoulder. They've got a Myspace page where you can go listen to some of their songs and read what their buddies have to say for themselves; like all Myspace pages, it's a wasteland of horrible design and eye-pummeling graphics. But, hey, I'll say it again: pirate-themed death metal. This is definitely an idea whose time has come. Maybe they can tour with a Viking-themed death metal band named after a Tolkein reference.

Ahh, I love it. We went out tonight and purchased some nice, expensive furniture to replace our cheap, crappy furniture. It'll be delivered eventually, but it's not here yet, so I am, of course, already impatient for it to be here.

Oh, and I broke my own personal speed record for the crossword I do every day at lunch. So, all in all, it's been a pretty good day. Think I'll go downstairs and eat some Hello Dolly Cookies now.

For M when she has to work

This is for Maury the next time she has to work and is bored:

Go to maps.google.com
Click on Get Directions at top
Type in New York, New York to Paris, France
Read line 23.
Enjoy.

So close now

31 days and 12 hours.

I can hardly wait!

Where did the cold come from?

On our flight home, which was only a little over 3 hours, the pilot announced that the weather in Charlotte was currently 35 degrees. It was warm when we left South Carolina, but not when we returned. This weekend we set new records for lows on both days. It has been kind of nice though because I got to wear the brand new jacket Amy gave me this morning to class. Hopefully it will also kill off the rest of the pollen from the pine trees and give us some relief. It is supposed to rain tomorrow, which could be interesting since it hasn't really rained in over a month. If only I had a working camera to take pictures of the yellow rivers.

Why now?

I went to take a picture today of the glorious yellow river we had to show you all how awful it had gotten with the pollen. When I turned on my camera something wasn't right. It was showing things in double images, with weird blurs, and lines running through it. I did everything I could think of to fix it. Finally I turned to the Internet and after much searching I found out that this is a common problem with my camera. But it turns out that Canon will repair it for free, including shipping and handling. Some people have said they were even given loaners or upgrades for pennies on the dollars. I desperately need my camera the next few weeks too, so it couldn't have come at a worse time with a wedding, the graduations, a huge presentation on my theater, and a trip to the Hunley sub all looming.
It was funny though that this happened just as I was saying that I wish I could get a new camera with a better zoom and pixel rating. But I really don't want to buy a new camera if I can help it, and I certainly didn't want to if it still worked. I promise I didn't do anything to it though!

Wednesday was Cancelled?

Apparently Wednesday of this week has been cancelled. Strange, I don't think I read that anywhere. However, it appears to be the case. I saw this in the five-day forecast on Weather Underground:

More media nonsense

The latest stinking heap of lies and nonsense spewed out by the media to catch my ire is right here. It's a typically overblown, self-congratulatory article written with a strong pro-RIAA/MPAA (or, as I like to call them, the Music And Film Industry Associations of America, or MAFIAA) stance.

The gist of the article is that this clown-shoes moron Florida Representative, who should fail to win reelection for proposing such a scandalously stupid waste of taxpayer money as this, has proposed a law by which universities would be required to take funds provided to them by the government for, y'know, teaching students, and instead use them to track down and punish students who download music and movies illegally. (Run-on sentence!)

Yes. He thinks the money that universities use now to pay for insignificant things like professors, computer labs, and dorms should instead be used to track down broke 19-year-olds downloading Jay-Z albums. This is easily the most powerfully, profoundly stupid thing I've heard in recent memory...but it's not just stupid. The article contains some contradictory statements, raising this to the level of -- dare I say it? -- propaganda. Let's take a look.

Representative Tardface says: "It's just plain wrong to steal billions of dollars in intellectual property from hardworking people whose jobs hang in the balance."

Okay, billions of dollars. Never mind that what he's proposing would also take billions of dollars away from hardworking people whose jobs hang in the balance. Oh, but what's this, from further down in the article?

The problem of campus piracy is a serious one, costing the motion picture and record industries more than $20 million a year. The Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA), the lobbying arm of the major Hollywood studios, estimates that campus piracy accounts for 44 percent of the problem in the U.S.

...Wha? So the MAFIAA loses $20M a year to piracy on college campuses, and that total is 44 percent of the total piracy problem in the US? Let's do a little math...that means they lose, oh, approximately $45 million in the US every year to piracy. Okay. Not sure how they come up with that, since elsewhere, I've seen the RIAA claim that they are entitled to $150,000 damages for each song someone downloads, but that's another post. So $45M a year between the music and movie industries. BUT WAIT! I thought Rep. Idiot McMoron claimed that college campuses are responsible for billions of dollars of damages! He wouldn't be resorting to hyperbole just to make the problem sound worse than it is, would he? Would the MAFIAA really endorse such flagrant lies?

And let's take a look at what, exactly, this law proposes for fighting on-campus piracy: "Under Keller's legislation universities could tap the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) Program under the Department of Education to fund 'innovative on-campus, anti-piracy pilot programs designed to reduce digital piracy.'"

Hmmm, so instead of using this important funding to help people improve themselves through education, it would instead be used to fund further propaganda. I must have missed the day on which all universities everywhere decided that their mission was no longer to educate people, and that it was in fact to become enforcement agencies for large, heartless corporate entitities.

I'm sure that these "anti-piracy pilot programs" will be worth every single penny. Indeed, from my recollections of college life, if there's one thing you can count on college students to do, it's to respect the teachings and recommendations of their government, who, I'm sure, only have the students' best interests in mind! That's a group of people who just loves authority, and submitting to whatever rules they come up with!

Well done, Representative Stupid Turdbag! Anyone with such a short-sighted, callous ability to have his or her opinions so utterly skewed should be kept away from the rest of us. Vote against this idiot in '08, Florida.