After years, I’ve finally hopefully reclaimed my site from possibly being infected by something. We’ll see.

I haven’t used this domain/site as anything other than a placeholder that maintained my email. Mostly, I feel like I’m paying too much for the hosting I’ve had for years now for how little I use this.

Anyway. I need to get off my ass and do something about it.

Link of the Day: Police Spray Water Cannons at World Water Forum Protesters

Spam of the Day: “Serve the Lord, Not debt”

Pic of the Day: Violent Games Reduce Crime

Quote of the Day:  “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” – Ingrid Bergman

Two VERY Wrong Things
I’ve learned of two things today that are just WRONG. Even if id has good, logical, smart reasons . . . it’s just WRONG for Q3Test to be out for the Mac, and not for linux or Windows. *sniff* The second wrong thing is something I saw at sCary’s Shugashack. It’s perversely wrong, and for that, it’s kind of cool . . . ttyquake. If any of the linux devotees that read this site (all uhm, 7 or so of you) try this, please let me know what it’s like, and I’d love to see some screenshots other than the two they have on the ttyquake page.

Mailbag/Response Sort of Dealy: Anime
This in from Dissident (in italics) with my response I e-mailed to him following:

Can you PLEASE fill me in on whats so great about anime? Cause personally, I cant stand it. Its just a cheap version of american animation, and it looks soo bad! The characters look de-formed with their massive eyes/mouths and small noses. Not to mention the cheap sound effects that they probably took from some old NES game.

Like anything, there is good anime, and there is bad anime. There are bad american cartoons as well as good cartoons, good movies and bad movies. From your comments, it sounds like you haven’t been exposed to any of the GOOD Anime. There are several different Anime styles and techniques, including “super-deformed” which admittedly makes things look VERY silly. Another one of the problems with Anime is that a lot of what is widely available, and almost all that is broadcast in the U.S., is dubbed (the original Japanese dialogue is removed and English dialogue is recorded in its place). Dubbing often has two nasty effects of 1) Making the characters sound like hick idiots and 2) Altering the dialogue. In MY opinion, Subbed (subtitled) Anime is the better choice between sub and dub, as the meaning is generally closer to the actual Japanese dialogue than dubs are (and the characters don’t tend to sound like ignorant hicks).

To check out some of what makes me love Anime, try to find and watch something like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Oh! My Goddess, Record of Lodoss Wars, El Hazard, Battle Angel Alita, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, or possibly even Vampire Hunter D or Devil Hunter Yohko. If you’re judging Anime from things like Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Pokemon or the ilk . . . those are crap. Another series/title you might want to look for is Space Battleship Yamato – which was broadcast in America as Star Blazers. At least one or two of the above titles ought to be available at a major video rental store, such as a Blockbuster Video or Hollywood Video, though they’re likely to be dubbed (and in all fairness, some people DO prefer dub . . . I’m not one of those). Larger cities and even mid-sized college towns often have Anime film/fan clubs that sometimes have screenings of different Anime, and often Anime video libraries that members can check out items from or rent, so that might be an option.

I sense that I’m straying from your original question somewhat . . . I’ve always loved cartoons, since I was a kid, and even now as an adult. Anime is a higher art form of cartoons to me, with more interesting and detailed stories and plot lines, and in most cases vastly more detailed animation. Your typical Anime has a really amazing level of attention to detail and background stuff, when they’re not invoking the laws of Anime physics for battle sequences. Oh, and the sound effects . . . it’s more like the old NES games blatantly “borrowed” ideas and sound effects from Anime, rather than Anime ripping off NES games. This is particularly true when you consider that a great deal of NES, SNES, and PSX games are from Japanese makers.

New Pointless Poll Topic
The Web Wars poll has been up long enough, and thanks to the eternal flaming nature of the internet, has sort of been made topical again like every 2 days since everyone seems to be slamming somebody. For the record, I think the entire “Web Wars” bit is a bad thing, though it can be pretty bloody fun to vent on random targets at times. The final results for the last topic (Site/Web Wars: Good idea or bad idea?) can be viewed at the Previous Poll Results page.

The new poll is something I thought up Wednesday night and it just seemed like a fun topic: Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood: Which has the sexier lingerie? As always, vote for the option you feel most strongly about, or amuses you the most. If you have a suggestion for another option, bug me about it and I may add it.

Losers by Jon Bence (Not Bence Jon)
Ahah, I found these comments. It seems Jon Bence has a special little page dedicated to detailing who he thinks are losers. Both I and Frustrated are currently the sole members of this page. Oh, I’m so hurt. Frus has earned a spot on the left hand of my page under the menu bar now, by the way. In response to his reasons of why I’m a loser, I’m going to make some equally cheap cracks. I apologize for this tripe, but I’m really in the mood to vent, and things will return to normal soon (anyone who wants to clue him in to these, feel free).

• If you don’t appreciate Anime, I pity you. What have I posted that equates to “obsessed?”
• In love with the internet? No . . . addicted a bit perhaps, but I’m not alone. Do you always express your frustration about your total lack of success with girls by making absolutely unfounded cheap cracks about your own sexual fantasies? I’ve had 4 lovers in 6 years, which may not be a lot, but I’ve been faithful to every one of them, and two of those relationships lasted years. I’m confident in my sexuality, and I KNOW I can make women scream in pleasure. Have you held hands with that girl yet?
• My Internet Alias: Open your fucking eyes and look around. My name is on the bottom of the page, in the little disclaimer bit. Oh, and it’s also prominently visible on my resume.
• My SiN box: I collect geeky gaming stuff, it’s a hobby. I’ve got autographed box art for StarCraft, I collect beta CDs . . . I could say it’s stupid and pathetic to collect autographs or baseball cards or maybe images of Jennifer Love-Hewitt. If you don’t like my hobby, go back to yours and stop bitching.
• Guess what, I’m writing what I think about YOUR useless loser page now.
• I’m so happy that someone hates me or my site. It tells me I’m doing something right to evoke some sort of response.
• Is that your picture at the top of the page?

Various Opinionated Responses
Seems like tons of newsworthy things happen when I’m in the middle of killing myself and don’t have net access . . . The entire deal with the shootings in Denver, for one. Of course, it’s pretty predictable, and pretty stupid in my opinion, that someone had to come out and say “Oh, this is caused by violent video games.” Not being one to mince words: bullshit. Yeah, sure, so one of the guys made some sort of a Doom mission. Big freaking deal. Another one of the big things going on about all of this is the opinion that it’s caused more by bad parenting (or a lack of adequate parenting, that being bad). This is more likely a thing, in my opinion . . . but someone can have great parents, a great upbringing, and still end up bad, or doing bad things. On a tangent, since this entire thing has become such a huge media thing, and massive coverage, analysis, and so forth has gone into it . . . is anyone other than me disappointed that the two trenchcoat twits shot themselves, rather than putting up a fight or going down in a blaze of gunfire or something dramatic? (Oh, I just KNOW I’m going to get flames for that one).

Next, I saw a post at ERG-MA . . . err, The Dark Side of Nuintari (Dammit Marius, I liked the old name. The new colors are good, very icy-blue, though somewhat reminiscent of Smoke’s theme for his D2 pages. The new name doesn’t fit on one line in the little area under my link bar, though. *mutter*) about this one page where the guy picks on Frustrated, and also puts a price tag (It’s supposed to be a parody of the Visa Commercials) on the Denver killing spree. So, natually, I go to check this page out . . . ooh . . . I’m really in the mood to vent on this, so I’m going to suspend disbelief of reality handily for a bit and unleash ZealotOnAStick’s evil twin, who likes to be called MrStick (read this as: entering opinionated jerk mode).

Ok, first off, the page title is pretty stupid. “It’s not the Bence Jon page, it’s the Jon Bence page.” Does this twit think there’s really going to be some confusion? Read back on one of the old news pages he has, where he talks about Frustrated . . . he says “Frustrated is frustrated cause she can’t have Bence” but at the top of that particular page, he’s extolling the awesomeness about his actually talking to a girl on the phone. OMIGOD! Wow, that’s so earth-shattering. He’s 18, and he’s hoping to actually HOLD HANDS with a girl. Now, I felt sort of insecure and behind the curve when I lost my virginity at 18 (I’m 24 for those of you who’re counting), and this guy has the idiotic AUDACITY to say something so lame as Frus is peeved because she can’t HAVE him? Frus is a single mother, so she’s definitely done quite a bit more than this Jon Bence character has. I’d wager that if Frus “wanted” Jon Bence, she could probably have him at the drop of a hat. If he got the hint, and if he even had a clue what to do with a woman.

On his current news page, someone also e-mails him and he made a comment somewhere about me expressing my views on this page. I don’t know where this happened or where it was posted (if someone can point it out to me, I’d like to see the original comment out of curiosity), but I have two responses to this: 1) Go read my little notice/disclaimer at the bottom of the page, then stuff yourself. 2) I’ve been really trying to avoid any sort of a web-wars or flame exchange sort of thing, particularly after seeing how the Pointless Poll has turned out, but if you’re going to trash pages, try to have a position that you can even dream of being defensible to do so from. Oh, and if it’s not blatently apparent, this guy seems to have totally ripped off the color scheme Shlonglor uses.

Cable Modem, Baby!
We finally gave up trying to mess with all the hassle of trying to set up an old decrepit Pentium 60 machine to run Linux as a router/gateway, and just called RoadRunner and got a second IP setup and I’m in business. Wow, YES! This is so awesome, it just rocks. The bandwidth and throroughput is just staggering (compared to my trudging along on 28.8/v.90 dialup) and thing happen so fast. I can play Quake 2 in the internet and it’s not just hideous. I’M AN LPB NOW! YES! Oh, wait, that means I have to actually redevelop some “skillz.” Damn, there’s always a catch.

Something that’s really cool, too, is that because of the LAN setup here, anytime Dakota serves a game, I can connect to him over the LAN rather than going through the cable modem . . . we played some Q2 earlier, and I had a ping that bounced between about 20 and 30 . . . SWEET.