March 29, 2008

This has all happened before, this will all happen again

Holy shitballs, we've only got ONE WEEK left until the final season of Battlestar Galactica (or Nerdlestar Nerdlactica if you prefer, both are acceptable). I thought I would take today to collect my thoughts on the matter and get amped up for next Friday's premiere. As such, I will debut the BSG HTML tag so as not to upset all you slowpokes and "cool" kids.

<BATTLESTAR>

I've been rewatching season three over the last few days to remind myself where we've left off. Baltar has just been acquitted of his treason charges, Starbuck has mysteriously returned from her freaky existential Leoben adventures and claims to know where Earth is, President Roslin is back on hallucinogens because her cancer has gone into remission, the Adamas aren't on speaking terms, the colonists are surrounded by an enemy fleet that hasn't opened fire yet and Tyrol, Anders, Tory and Tigh learned the hard way that if you get "All Along the Watchtower" stuck in your head, it means you're a cylon. Blimey!

We're in the home stretch now, so it's time to start thinking about the big questions. What is the relationship between Earth and the twelve colonies? What is Kara's "special destiny"? Will Gaius atone for getting everyone into this whole mess (HINT: he looks like Jesus)? How come we've never seen newly-revealed cylons 8 through 11 engaged in cylon tomfoolery with the other cylons? And of course the big one, who is the final cylon?

One of the most amusing things about blogging about mysterious TV is that the written account of all my poorly thought out theories and erroneous assumptions will still exist after all is revealed. We'll all have the hilarious experience of reading this a year from now and going "Damn! You (I) were (was) WAAAAY off!" In the spirit of future comedy, I will proceed with what I think might happen.

What's the deal with Starbuck?
There's clearly something going on. She's been drawing the Eye of Jupiter since she was a little kid, Leoben has developed an obsessive interest in her and the Hybrid from Razor prophesized that she would ultimately be "a harbinger of death." I don't believe she'll be revealed as the twelfth -- that's too much of a cop out. But she obviously represents an important component of cylon mythos, just as Earth does to the colonists. Perhaps she is the thirteenth cylon that for some reason (her penchant for rebelling against authority?) left the group very early on to become her own related, but distinctly unique, entity.

What's going to happen with the cylon fleet the colonists have just encountered?
As I noted before, the cylons haven't actually opened fire yet. It has been suggested that they are comprised entirely of Tyrol, Anders, Tory and Tigh models who have separated themselves from the others. That would explain why we've never seen any of them hanging out with Dean Stockwell and Lucy Lawless on the resurrection ships. Why are they estranged from the rest of the cylons? Perhaps they left in protest over attacking the colonies and decided to find Earth on their own? If that's the case, could an alliance be formed between those with similar goals?

Who's the final cylon?
If watching shows like BSG and LOST has taught me anything, it's that I shouldn't lose too much sleep trying to figure this out. There was no way to predict the four revealed in the season three finale and I don't believe we have the information yet to make an educated guess on the last one. I'm convinced it won't be Baltar -- his character is far more interesting as a human and the show realizes that. It also can't be Helo, since we know his kid with Athena is a halfy. It probably won't be the Adamas, since it'd be hard for one to be and not the other, and there's only one seat left. That still leaves a whole lot of possibilities though. If I had to take a shot in the dark, I'll say Cally, making her kid with Chief Tyrol the first fully cylon baby to be born. Neat twist, huh?

</BATTLESTAR>

I'll be back next week to weasel my way out of these predictions.

March 28, 2008

Maybe 10,000 B.C. wasn't that dumb after all

Devout Bible thumpers and I have had a tenuous past. As the product of a conservative private Catholic high school, my cynicism with religion knows no bounds. As I've gotten older, my initial teenage angst towards matters of faith has mellowed considerably. If believing that God created the universe, Jesus died for your sins and doing good deeds will save you from banishment to a land of fire, torture and Rob Zombie music gets you through your day with a smile on your face, by all means go right ahead. It's cool. Go ahead and pray. I don't mind. I'll be over here doing something else.

I'm choosing my words more carefully in this post then I normally do. Religion? I'm okay with it. Religious people? I decide how I feel about them on a case by case basis. Religious people who are willfully ignorant creationists that force their backwards beliefs upon children too young to realize they're on the receiving end of educational rape? Congratulations, you may be the dumbest motherfuckers in existence.

On the off chance your brain said "Fuck this!" and walked out in protest 45 seconds into that, let's do a quick play-by-play. According to these tour guides:

-The Earth is only 6,000 years old.
-Dinosaurs and man lived together, which was chill because T-Rexes were herbivores.
-Radiocarbon dating isn't accurate enough for science because it relies on circular reasoning.
-Eight generations of 800-year-old people somehow lived in a span of 1,000 years.
-Fossils, or "piles of dead things", are boring and can be thusly ignored.
-The remains of what appears to be a flying Koopa represents "God's judgement against a sinful world."
-Making kids repeat things in chanting unison isn't creepy at all.

Wow. There's not much else to say, they've said it all for me. Towards the end of the segment, one of the curators is asked why the museums allows tours that teach home schooled kids heinously erroneous lessons about science and biology. He responds with, "Presenting diametrically opposed opinions is a pretty American thing to do." Sigh.... Sir, you are a better patriot than I.

March 27, 2008

Kill him, Mr. Bubbles

An event eight months in the making -- I finally beat BioShock. When this game first came out last fall, most reviews treated it like the second coming of Christ. Even the Zero Punctuation guy, who normally tears high-profile video games to shreds, was uncharacteristically kind to it. But is it really the The Godfather of video games? Nah, prob not. It won't give you oral sex or do your taxes, and I feel that Mass Effect's story is more fully realized and Portal is more fun and inventive. That's my $0.02. I shall use it to purchase a Jolly Rancher.

I agree that the production value and plot are more sophisticated than the average zombie romp and the voice acting is absolutely terrific. But run-around-collecting-shit-with-a-BFG-and-avoid-getting-owned-by-the-undead has historically proven to be one of the most tried and true video game genres and considering that most of them either gargle dogballs or look exactly like Silent Hill, I have to wonder if BioShock got some of its accolades because reviewers couldn't tell the rest of them apart. I feel that BioShock's most significant achievement is using a very original story to explain a very conventional, somewhat cliched game. Warping between areas? Sure, just take the bathysphere. A level that must be done quickly because your health is depleting? Yeah, but it's because a hypnotist has told your brain to slowly stop your heart. Mana potions to refill magic for casting spells? No, make that EVE syringes that you inject into your arm to recharge plasmids. Yep, totally revolutionary!

BioShock reminded me a lot of Resident Evil 4 for Gamecube -- both achieved technical perfection and were genuinely freaky when played alone. If I had to make a choice (and since I'm an opinioned nerd on the Internet, I do have to), I would say that RE4 is the superior, since it had a sense of humor about itself that did a good job of offsetting the gruesomeness. BioShock takes its Atlas Shrugged/28 Days Later-inspired self so goddamn seriously that I found playing for more than a few hours at a time to be a dreary, paranoid, tense experience. Even after I stopped, I found myself jittery and on edge for an hour or so, which perhaps explains my five month hiatus halfway through completing it. RE4, on the other hand, was about consuming green plants and hard-boiled eggs while helping a gay Spaniard save the President's daughter from farmer zombies. Now that's a game you can drink some beer to!

For those who are wondering which path I chose, I harvested every little sister. It made the final boss battle easier than I imagine it would have otherwise been since I had enough ADAM to boost nearly every plasmid to its max. As a result, I got the bleak, Dawn of the Dead ending that honestly wasn't very rewarding. Will I go back and beat it again while saving them all? Yeah, probably, but that has more to do with me being an OCD completionist than the game's actual merits. The other ending better be tits, because reaching into a crying little girl's face and pulling out a hideous devil slug a few dozen times was ultimately the most satisfying part of the whole experience.

March 26, 2008

My first applet

So I thought I'd do something a little different today. Earlier this year, I brushed the several-year-thick coat of dust off my old Java books and wrote a couple of simple programs for work. That went over relatively well and now that I have this whole website thing going for me, I figure the next logical step is to try my hand at some web programming. Do I know what I'm doing? Not in the slightest. But what the hell? As zombie Richard Feynman once said, "experimentation is the core of science, everything else is bookkeeping."

Since I already know a smidge of Java, my first venture into writing online apps is an applet. The code behind it is perhaps the second most basic thing possible in programming after printing "Hello, world", but that wasn't really the point. I just wanted to see if I could write something other people could use online without failing. Will I succeed? You are one button click away from finding out.

The program is based on the old game Six Degrees of Separation (occasionally from Kevin Bacon). When you click the button, two random names of celebrities will pop up. To win, connect the two random actors through common movies in fewer than six steps. Example:

Will Smith <= ? => Brad Pitt

Possible solution: Will Smith was in Men In Black with Tommy Lee Jones, who was in The Fugitive with Harrison Ford, who was in The Devil's Own with Brad Pitt. 3 degrees.

That's it. No timer. No arbitrary point system. No online leaderboards. Just see if you can do it or not. Not impressed? STFU and GTFO, you damn hippie!

UPDATE: I forget that not everyone is just rolling with Java Runtime installed on their computer like me. If you're getting a blank white space with the red X in the corner, try downloading this and restarting your browser. It should only take a minute or two.

March 25, 2008

Easter Easter Eggs

During my routine Monday morning dicking around on the Internet, I stumbled upon some random blog that featured a top ten list. It turns out that I will read anything if it's presented in the form of an arbitrary top ten list. Top ten least ergonomic keyboards? Sure! Top ten robot sidekicks in film? Why not? Top ten ubiquitous dorm room posters? Fuck, I own like four of them.

(None of those examples above are fake by the way. And in case you're wondering, the answers are the 1984 IBM PCjr, R2-D2 and Abbey Road, The Rose, Starry Night and Crazy Stairs).

Anyway, this particular morning I was reading about the top ten Easter Eggs found in everyday software. Most of them were pretty silly. For instance, try typing "about:mozilla" into Firefox and hitting Go. Pretty weird, huh? Now try "about kitchensink". What the hell man? Here's another fun one. Open up Notepad and type "Four score and seven years", save the file to your desktop as "gettysburg.txt" and close it. Now open it again. Wha-wha-WHAT?

So those are pretty amusing, but not incredibly helpful. How about one that'll trick little kids out of their lunch money? With this handy little cheat, you'll be the fastest Minesweeper in the West. Just type "xyzzy" during any game and then press Shift + Enter. Now minimize all of your windows except for Minesweeper and mouse over an unmarked tile. Notice that one tiny little pixel in the top left corner of your monitor? If it's white, it's cool. If it's black, it's a mine, fool! You may have to squint really hard if your resolution is set pretty high. Considering how often that game can back you into a corner with an impossible 50/50 chance, it may be the most useful cheat since the Konami Code. (If you don't know what that is, you won't care).

There is one however that is my absolute favorite of the bunch. It has to do with Google Earth and it's the most amusing thing next trying to find giant bugs flying over cities or searching out peeing homeless people in Street View. Open Google Earth 4.2 and hit Ctrl + Alt + A (or Cmd + Opt + A for you filthy Mac users). THE FUCK YOU SAY? Flight simulator? Hells yeah. You can now fly one of two planes around the globe. Be warned, this game is BALLS HARD and has a control scheme that requires an advanced degree in avionic engineering to understand. One you take off, using an unintuitive combination of PageUp and the Down Arrow, you can fly anywhere you want. You can even play chicken with tall buildings! Ooooh, sorry, too soon....**pulls collar**

Happy flying!

March 23, 2008

20 random thoughts...

...and things I've learned so far this weekend:

1) Irish Car Bombs rule.
2) Total Recall is very, very violent.
3) The people I know are universally getting very good at Rock Band.
4) One month till the next LOST. Boo.
5) Two weeks till the next Battlestar Galactica. Hells yes!
6) Fort St. George on 6th and King (I-District) is delicious. Check it out.
7) The new Cha Cha is full of e-tards and popped-collar tools (they are terrible at foosball).
8) Seattle has robot competitions.
9) March Madness is always interesting. No matter what.
10) I continue to be in awe about this year's Sasquatch lineup.
11) Shit, I still need to file my taxes. My $600 shall be spent irresponsibly.
12) Portal is the greatest video game of the modern era.
12) A surprising amount of liquor can exist in an Easter egg jello shot.
13) Playing Carcassonne with my guitar controllers may be the most aggravating thing ever.
14) I still haven't played Quadradius.
15) Atlas is about to have two more kegerators.
16) Random lists take 1/10th the time to write than singular coherent blog entries.
17) My desktop only has 3 GB left of harddrive space. Time to delete some pornold music and TV episodes.
18) Bioshock creeps me out too much to play alone at night.
19) Freeze drying fruit is surprisingly complicated.
20) Sucks to be this guy:

March 21, 2008

Science H. Logic

As you may have noticed, I'm starting to title each of my posts. Now that I have a month's worth of writing, I'd prefer to not to refer back to "the one about Super Mario 2" or "the one about hobo-wine" like they were some kind of lost episodes of Friends. Why I didn't think of this before, I'm not entirely sure.

*** Insert appropriate segue here ***

I'm generally a pro-science guy. I'm pro-stem cell research, pro-decoding the human genome, pro-pnuematic tube technology as a means for transportation. The human brain is wired for curiosity and experimentation, so why not indulge it? But like most things, there is a line, and where there's a line, there's bound to be some asshole standing on the other side reveling, in his or her superior line crossing and being-an-asshole abilities. It is precisely this mentality that has brought us Big Dog.

This ain't right. Engineers should know better. They're giant nerds, haven't they seen The Terminator? Battlestar Galactica? The Matrix? That lame adaptation of I, Robot? How many times do we have to tell you - BUILDING SENTIENT ROBOTS DOESN'T END WELL!! For fuck's sake, knock it off before SkyNet becomes self aware.

Even the way it moves creeps me out. It's like some oversized four-legged demon insect. KILL IT! We need to tie Big Dog to a tree and give it the ol' Old Yeller. At least we know that it's not very graceful on ice. That'll come in handy when the last surviving humans have to trek up to Norway's Doomsday Vault to restart civilization. I think Dennis Quaid should star in that movie.

Big Dog may be the stuff of nightmares, but it doesn't quite approach the same level of "Dear God, WHY??" as this:

Now, scientists, I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for this. I'm not going to cramp your style. Sometimes you gotta sacrafice a few thousand Rhesus monkeys before you can build the next biggest mousetrap -- I get that. I'm not even going to make the obvious Batman and Robin pun here. I just want to know why. WHY? Is it just because it's neat? Does the cow like it? Can you just reach in there and grab a steak? Why must it be called a fistula? Were ALL other names taken? What about "cow hole"? Maybe if it was called a "cow hole", people wouldn't do it because "cow hole" sounds fucked up.

Whatever, I rescend my questions. Please don't email and inform me that cow holes make hamburgers possible. Ignorance is bliss. But if we're suddenly fighting for our lives against killer androids or justifiably angry cattle, let me be the first to say, "Fuck you, science!"

March 20, 2008

Quadradius Revisited

A few weeks ago, I posted about a curious little online game called Quadradius. For those that missed my earlier post, check out the game here. I hadn't played the game before writing about it, and to this day, my only exposure remains what I have overheard from Kevin and Andrew at work. I said some things about it -- that it "appears to be the bastard offspring of a one-night stand between checkers and Battleship while Command and Conquer watched from the corner and awkwardly rubbed one out" and that "overhearing players discuss the strategy of this game is like hearing a lecture in quantum physics delivered in a foreign language." Like Peggle and Cat Bow Golf before it, I assumed it would be an amusing distraction for a fortnight or two, and then descend into whatever black hole oblivion that internet virals end up after they've run their course. (On that note, PLEASE send me an email, oh great creator of Cat Bow Golf, wherever you are!)

But then I checked my email the other night and noticed I had a message from Jimmi, the "QReator" of Quadradius. That's right, the dude that made the game wrote me to say he dug my little QR rantlet. I'm guessing he found it because people were clicking through DDYH to the game. Good work people, the interblags work!

This all puts me in a bit of an awkward position. I originally posted about QR on March 4, and now it's over two weeks later and I still haven't actually played the game. I meant to, but my chill time has been a sparse commodity lately and that which has been allocated for video games has generally been consumed by the Rock Band's new DLC (I could probably spend an entire week doing nothing but drumming "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails). But now I guess I kinda have to. I even mentioned in my post that "I have been tempted to see what all the fuss is about." My bluff has been called, and unlike a certain someone who won't honor a gentleman's wager, I shall cowboy up and play this game. Allow me at this time to remove my blogging pants and replace them with my video game reviewing pants (brb, gotta put on pants).

Well not quite yet. Everyone's looking at me and I'm too nervous to just start up a game willynilly. Ever since my tenuous relationship with Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, I've feared that my own personal Hell will be an army of 12-year-olds schooling me at an unfamiliar video game, then calling me a fag n00b. No, I've got to prep for this before I jump in. I'm gonna need a montage.

So be on the lookout in the near future for my review of Quadradius. Just like Back to the Future and Spiderman before it, DDYH's QR coverage will soon have an unnecessary third installment. And in the meantime, good people of QR, prepare to get owned by my Headhunter + Wyvern army with BloodLust and maxed Thorns Aura....wait, fuck, wrong game. Stay tuned.

March 19, 2008

Can we just elect this guy already?

Barack Obama's speech from earlier today is the type that we had to memorize passages from in AP US History. Eloquent, insightful, a bit long-winded. I've always wondered what the Clintons or Bushes would sound like delivering one of the shit-just-seriously-went-down-but-we-need-to-fight-back rousing speeches penned by fictitious presidents Bill Pullman, Morgan Freeman and Harrison Ford. It just wouldn't work; Dubya simply couldn't sell a line like "Today we celebrate our Independence Day!" or "Get off my plane!" If A More Perfect Union is any indication, Obama would knock that shit out of the park.

Work stress has prevented me from following the news very closely the last few days, so I didn't hear about the supposed Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal until just a few hours ago. The gist seems to be that Obama's critics aren't just pissed off about free speech, but the act of listening to someone else's free speech. Well, I suppose that makes some sense -- I think less of people when I find out they're fans of Carlos Mencia or Dane Cook.

What's astounding about this speech is that, from a political strategy perspective, it didn't need to happen. The only time we normally hear an elected official speak so candidly is when they are resigning over a sex scandal. When our veep Cheney'ed his hunter friend in the face, we didn't even get a half-assed apology for a week, let alone a 40 minute long discussion of gun safety. But here, Obama's mere association with a harborer of racist beliefs prompted an articulate examination of his own observation of institutional racism.

I like his points. I like that instead of speaking in moral absolutes the way Dubya will go ahead and do, he refers to his candidacy as "imperfect" and acknowledges the presence of an undercurrent of racial tension across the board. I'm willing to bet this can be at least partially attributed to growing up in Honolulu -- a city of dozens of minorities and no clear majority. Stereotypes and ill feelings from the injustice of previous generations underscore nearly every interaction, but the obviousness of the melting pot nature of the city forces people to confront the issue more often. Of all the places I've lived, the people of Hawaii have probably the healthiest attitude towards racial divisions. It's not perfect, and the islands do have their fair share of bigoted assholes, but the conversations are had and people are probably smarter because of them.

The acknowledgement that the racial divide in the US cannot be overcome during one presidency speaks to how down to earth Barry is. Many other politicians speak as if their values and convictions will instantly become policy upon their inauguration, so it's surprisingly pragmatic to hear a candidate talk about progress towards a goal without making arbitrary unattainable promises in the process. Towards the end of the speech, he reminds me of (and sounds eerily like) the narrator from the White Stripes track "Little Acorns." You know, the "be like squirrel girl, be like the squirrel" guy. That's what this country needs - to be like the squirrel.

On that note, I shall leave you with a short list of my favorite Barak related song parodies:

Barack the Kasbah
Barackaway Beach
Barack 'n' Roll High School
Barack Lobster
Cherub'arack
Barack You Like a Hurricane

March 18, 2008

Too drunk to blog. Enjoy some shoulder circles.

March 17, 2008

Remember back in elementary school, when you did well on a spelling test or could name all the state capitals, the teacher would give you a gold star? A highly symbolic, but ultimately arbitrary and meaningless gesture, the gold star represented that you had succeeded. Keep up the good work! Hang in there! If it wasn't a gold star, it was something else -- a turnip, a smiling cloud, a dancing monkey, ruby slippers. The lesson learned was success = sticker, mediocrity = no sticker.

But what about the other end of the spectrum? The absence of success. The failure that is so complete and awe-inspiring, it too deserves a sticker. For that, I award the FAIL STAR.

DDYH's first FAIL STAR recepient is my own company's Network Operations Center (NOC), who, over the weekend while running a routine series of scheduled jobs, managed to DELETE AN ENTIRE DATABASE ESSENTIAL FOR ME TO DO MY JOB! Dozens of tables, millions of rows of data. POOF! Into thin air like a joint at a Flaming Lips concert.

Now, I don't know what they were smoking up at the NOC when this happened, but whatever it was, I want some. Indulge me in one of my trademark poor analogies. Imagine a surgeon in the operating room with a patient suffering from appendicitis. He reaches for the scalpel, but due to negligence, accidentally grabs the adjacent welding torch and proceeds to set the patient on fire.

I'm not fucking kidding. The NOC basically removed the "Data" from Data Pass Back and I'm resigned to pass back nothing but tears and false hope. It's been almost two days since this happened and I'm still manually rewriting hundreds of lines of code to reference long-forgotten backup databases, which, continuing on with my appendix flambé metaphor, is the equivalent of scotch taping the charred corpse back together and hoping his family doesn't notice the difference.

So congratulations NOC! Just like John Kerry's presidential campaign, the recent attempts to make films and television shows about cavemen and that kid who died thinking the Wal-Mart Superman cape would let him fly, you have failed so epically and thoroughly that my only response is to award you a gold star for an outstanding acheivement in failure. When the database is back up next week, here is the first SQL query I shall run:

select *
into dbo.YouSuckDonkeyBalls
from dbo.OMGIHateYou
where MyFoot in ('YourAss','YourStupidFace')
order by IWantMyWeekendBack asc;

March 1415, 2008

Happy Pi Day! For those that never graduated middle school, Pi Day is celebrated every March 14th in honor of π (3.14159shutthefuckup), the ratio of algebra divided by calculus. In Europe, it is observed on April 31st, except by those who deny the existance of such a date and instead worship on July 22nd because it's close enough. Little known fact: If you get fucked enough on Pi Day, you can time travel to February 71st and also celebrate Log Day. Stay safe everyone! I shall leave you with some of my best pi related material.

March 14, 2008

You know who can go suck a fuck? Bill O'Reilly. There, I said it.

There are a multitude of very good reasons to loathe this douchebag, and I subscribe to most of them, but one particular habit of his has seriously been irking me lately. He'll invite a guest on with a horrendously (a. racist b. sexist c. homophobic d. stupifyingly uninformed e. all of the above) point of view, also have on a marginally less douchey moderate conservative as the counterpoint opinion and then "fair and balance" it up by taking the middle ground. By staying in between the center and the mindnumbingly extreme right, he appeases all his red state homeboys by spewing neocon gravy all over the place while tricking the dumber viewers (of which there are apparently millions) into thinking he is an actual discerning journalist. I see your game Billy and the charade is up.

Take for example this video below. Be careful to only watch the first minute or so, after that your head will explode.

Ok, so I'm not exactly a Hillary Clinton fan, but what the fuck is this? O'Reilly gets some chuavanistic Cro-Magnon-looking assclown on the air to say "HAHA Woman have PMS and mood swings and can't lead because of emotions. Buy my book, LOLZ!!!1" and then responds "Whoa, now calm down there guy, let's keep this reasonable" like he's some fucking savior of relevant public discourse. SHENANIGANS! The invitation alone of this guy on to your show endorses his opinion as worthwhile. You knew the question you were going to ask beforehand AND his answer -- you're giving airtime to an ideology that you're too spineless to express yourself. It's a pretty awesome tactic for having an opinion without being held accountable for it.

Marc Rudov is just about the most worthless pundit I've seen since Cooper Lawrence attacked Mass Effect for being pornography (That could be a blog post of its very own -- and probably will be). Judging by his book, I guessing this dude knows as much about gender politics as I know about defusing a bomb. At least when I fail at my job, I'm not doing so in front of a live television audience. And +3 dickface points for having a "Republican feminist", a concept I'm failing to comprehend, as the crossfire guest. Someone please explain how her point, which I'm not entirely sure even exists, is any different. A debate on feminist identity politics between two conservative douchenozzles moderated by Bill O'Reilly is like....it's like...uh...no....no there isn't a single analogy that does this justice. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong.

But being an asshat is what Bill O'Reilly is all about and far be it from me to begrudge his chosen profession. I hear he has a new book out:

March 13, 2008

This afternoon, Ruth and I went to lunch at Pike Place Market and found it to be slightly more crowded than usual. But it was an odd kind of crowded; there was an inexplicable traffic jam on Western Ave. and instead of people bustling about, they were all just sort of standing around. As we navigated our way through the sea of destination-less loiterers, I noticed a construction worker looking guy standing on a ladder shouting orders at people. Near him, another dude with a boom mike. Across the street from those guys was a little tent set up over an expensive looking camera, dolly tracks, a couple of guys taking light measurements and another sitting in a director's chair. Wait, I got it -- BUMFIGHT!

I was way off. They were actually shooting a movie of some sort. Cool, but not a big deal. I grew up in Hawaii, where there's a movie or two constantly being filmed. One year in particular, a big deal was made because they were making Jurassic Park 3, Final Fantasy, Pearl Harbor and Lilo & Stitch all at the same time -- too bad only one of those turned out any good (HINT: it's not the one I may have to watch five times). I didn't think too much of it and Ruth and I moved on. We sat down at that park just north of the market and starting eating.

A few minutes later, Ruth noticed they were filming a shot. A hundred or so extras were acting like they were pissed off in traffic while a blonde hipster dude in a suit walked by. We were sitting about 20 yards away from this, so it was hard to make out who it was. I figured that since there was a huge group of onlookers and this production seemed to be pretty high budget, it was probably someone famous. The only guess that came to mind was Seann William Scott. That's odd.

We finished lunch and began to walk back when we saw a sign we had missed the first time. It said they were filming a movie called Traveling and by hanging out in the area, we gave them consent to film us in the background without paying us. Traveling, eh? Through time perhaps? At this point, I'm picturing some bizzarro sci-fi movie starring Stifler and I'm starting to wonder why the hell something like that would get made, let alone why it would be set in Seattle. I get back to work and tell people about what I've seen. Now armed with the internets, we look it up.

First of all, turns out we were looking at Aaron Eckhart, not Seann William Scott. How the hell did I confuse those two?

Holy shit! I was all prepared to call myself a moron, but looking at them side-by-side, I'm now convinced they should play brothers. They could remake Bottle Rocket and make it interesting! (That hissing sound you hear is all the Wes Anderson fans out there making snake noises.)

But yeah, Aaron Eckhart is now my new #1 most random Seattle celebrity spotting (taking the top spot from Dr. McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, who I saw eating at Ibiza about a year ago). It's too bad this movie looks like a steaming pile of poop biscuits. Seriously, read the plot synopsis of this shit. Jennifer Aniston? Kitty Sanchez from Arrested Development? Self-help guru? What happened to Road Trip-meets-Quantum Leap? How come Thomson gets to be in I'm Not There and I'm stuck in some coming-to-terms-with-love-and-loss-with-Friends chick flick? It's not fair.

On the off chance any of you end up seeing this, keep an eye out for me. I'll be in this scene:

March 12, 2008

I normally keep my work woes to myself, but now that I have this awesome forum for complaining, prepare to be ranted at.

For those who don't know, my job basically boils down to shuffling around log records that let advertisers know how well their online campaigns are doing. I write scripts that put these records into various databases where I can do my thing and then send it off. I've always felt this scene from Office Space sums it up best:

Most of the time, it's pretty laid back, but we have this one client that's kind of a douche. I'm sorry, they have "special needs". I'm sure I could get in trouble if I mentioned who they were, so I'll make up a fake name to protect them from bad publicity. Let's call them "Big Giant Douchebag".

Big Giant Douchebag has a tendency to request absurd amounts of data from us. How much is absurd? Well, most recently they've asked for a report that contains 2 billion rows of data. No, I didn't just make that up and I'm not exaggerating. 2 billion.

How big is 2 billion you ask? In our current age of technology, where even the tiniest USB flash drives can contain 8 GB of storage, we tend to forget that a billion is a huge ass number. Count to a billion right now. I'll wait.

Took awhile, didn't it? And 2 billion is twice that! Let's put it further into perspective -- 2 billion is roughly:

Twice the total population of India (Source: Wikipedia)
2 to the 31st power (Source: Math)
The most conservative estimate of the number of stars in the universe (Source: Carl Sagan)

Futhermore:

2 billion seconds = 62 years (Source: Wikipedia)
2 billion inches = 30,000 miles (Source: Wikipedia)
2 billion nanobots = a smoke monster (Source: My ass)

Yep, 2 billion. Let's do some fuzzy math to figure out how much space that will take up on our servers. 2 billion rows of the type of data that we provide would take up 325 GB of storage space. It sounds like I just made that up, but believe me, that is the absolute smallest size that amount of data could possibly be (also, I just made it up). Do you have 325 GB of free space on your computer? A season of LOST -- that is, 24 hour-long episodes of high definition television -- takes up about 8 GB. 325 GB would be over 40 seasons, 960 hours of HD television. That's how much data they want in one table and suddenly I'm the asshole for questioning the logistics of it all. I hate you Big Giant Douchebag!

Note 1: If anyone points out inaccuracies in my math, you've missed the point.
Note 2: I was this close (**makes thumb and index finger one inch apart gesture**) to revealing Big Giant Douchebag's real name.
Note 3: Yeah, I know punctuation is supposed to go inside quotes, but I still think it looks wrong and makes no sense.

March 11, 2008

I rarely call out specific people on DDYH. It's not really fair to single someone out and bring a private conversation into the realm of the public arena. It could create unneccesary drama, it could be potentially embarassing and I don't seek to put myself in the awkward position of talking about someone online only to run into them the next day. 99% of the time, I won't do it.

There are, however, exceptions to every rule.

Today's subject needs a bit of context. Many of you know a swell fellow by the name of Kevin. I shall omit his last name to protect his anonymity. This certain person passionately abhors the late night Adult Swim programs Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab. This hatred is so deepseated, that a mere 11 minute episode of either show provokes vocal complaints and protest.

Now, don't get me wrong; neither show represents the pinnacle of modern humor and both can often be downright obnoxious ("Bizzarro! I love you!"). Additionally, the random = funny formula for absurdist humor has just about run its course with Family Guy and its ilk, and ATHF and Sealab are far from the freshest comedy to be found on television these days. I wouldn't even say they're the best on Adult Swim, but like most things, they do have a time and place. Sometimes it's nice to watch something and only have to make an 11 minute commitment. Sometimes it's relaxing to watch a show that doesn't require intimate knowledge of every previous episode to enjoy (Cough...LOST...cough...Battlestar....excuse me). Similarly, it's convenient to be able to write about a show and not worry about spoiling people who aren't caught up. It's safe to say at this point that if you're not into ATHF or Sealab, those ships have probably sailed.

Back to my point. In the final half hour of work on Monday, Kevin and I were engaged in some online chat over Gmail. We were discussing some mundane work stuff that you wouldn't give two shits about when, seemingly out of nowhere, an interesting proposition presented itself. Below is a screenshot of our conversation -- the yellow highlights represent the relevant portions of our discussion, red is the REALLY important part.

I can assure you with ever fiber of my being that this has not been altered in any way (other than the highlighting). I will go one step further -- Kevin, if you can find any discrepancy between what I have posted above and the chat records in your Gmail account, I will concede this wager and STILL watch Pearl Harbor five times.

Now that the terms of the wager have been established, the next step is clarifying the ground rules. I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage as Kevin's challenge stipulates that I must watch Pearl Harbor five times in a row while his subsequent viewings of every episode of Sealab are not bound by such constraints. Kevin, in the spirit of good natured competition, I ask that you agree to the following terms:

1) Pearl Harbor is, according to IMDB, 183 minutes long. Five viewings would total 15 hours. I request the ability to pause the film for bathroom and food breaks.
2) As long as I'm in a room in which Pearl Harbor is playing with audible volume, it shall be considered "watching" the film.
3) The same definition of "watching" shall be applied to your viewing of Sealab.
4) I shall watch the theatrical version of Pearl Harbor, not any sort of unrated extended edition director's cut that's longer.
5) You do not specify an end date for when all of Sealab will be watched. I propose the following addendum to your part of the deal: Until such time as you have viewed all currently existing episodes of Sealab, I, and only I, can request that you watch an unseen episode at any time, provided that the means for doing so are readily available.
6) Previous viewings of any particular episode do not count.
7) Once the terms of the wager have been agreed upon by both parties in the presence of witnesses, any renegging on behalf of either party shall be penalized by the concession of this wager AND the treating of the victor to a full free night of drinking at the location of the victor's choosing.
8) You may submit additional stipulations, which if I agree to, I will post on my guest rant page.
9) Any creative interpretations of the stakes not specifically prohibited by these rules are allowed.

So what's it gonna be homes? You danced, I danced back. Now IT'S ON!

March 10, 2008

D'oh, missed yesterday. As the novelty of writing essentially a two- to four-page paper each day begins to lose its exciting newness, I can only predict this will be the first of many weekend no-shows for DDYH. It's nothing personal, I just had more exciting things to do than hang out with you.

An early idea I kicked around for this site was keeping a log of all the movies I've watched and what I thought about them at the time. Not terribly interesting to read I imagine, but that won't prevent me from doing it every now and then. I'll kick off the tradition today with three movies that I've seen recently: Michael Clayton, The Bank Job and 10,000 B.C..

I just caught Michael Clayton on On Demand a few days ago and I've got to say, it's pretty damn tight. I didn't really know too much about the story going in, except that George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson are both shady lawyers and the latter is going insane. It's a very tautly paced, slow-burner suspense film featuring far fewer conventional court room scenes then I would have expected. T. Wilk's performance is one of the best I've ever seen -- the kind of role that would be absolutely ridiculous in the hands of pretty much anyone else. Even greats like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino would probably have ruined it in the name of some gimmicky bullshit. As for Clooney, well he's just sort of Clooney. A little sadder than Danny Ocean, but still Clooney. He's really only got the one character, but I like it. Some Hollywood producer probably makes an obscene amount a money reading scripts and saying "This is pretty good, but it needs some Clooney." Hey, it worked for Intolerable Cruelty. I give Michael Clayton 3 ½ out of 4 Clooneys.

Next is The Bank Job, which I saw on Saturday. This film tells the allegedly true story of a 1971 London bank heist wherein a crew of amateur theives broke into a safety deposit box vault, blackmailed the Scotland Yard and got away with it. A larger plot of corruption and intrigue descends upon the ragtag theives when they discover scandolous photos of one of the members of the royal family amongst their loot. Jason Statham could probably exhibit a bit more quality control with his projects -- he makes about 40 movies a year, and maybe two of them are good. This is one of the exceptions; easily his most fun since The Italian Job. The '70s aesthetic goes a long way towards establishing the cool factor surrounding the robbery, so much so that I was expecting them to bump into Michael Caine at some point in the midst of stealing something entirely unrelated. The plan itself is much simpler compared to other recent heists -- no pnuematic house-raising stilts, no imposter mentally retarded janitors, no Clive Owen living in a wall. It all wraps up a little too neatly, but is pretty fucking fun anyway. I award it 3 out of 4 Handsome Robs.

Finally, there's 10,000 B.C. which I saw just a few hours ago. Wow. Just, wow. A couple of days ago, while watching television with some friends, I predicted that 10,000 B.C. would be this year's 300 -- polished and pretty to look at, but clichéd and moronic. I was so very, very wrong. It makes 300 look like The Godfather having sex with Citizen Kane. It's some weird amalgamation of Clan of the Cave Bear, Lord of the Rings and every movie Roland Emmerich has ever made. Set 12,008 years ago in a magical land containing snowy mountain peaks, lucious rainforests and a huge sprawling desert all within a few days walk of one another, it tells the tale of a prehistoric hunter who must learn to take down a mammoth from the great warrior Tik Tik, rescue his suspiciously modern looking hottie girlfriend and befriend a saber-toothed tiger. Little is known of this era of history, when humans have not only discovered fire and domesticated animals, but also invented Corsairs, paper, bows and arrows, astronomical navigation, toothpaste and the English language.

The plot is cobbled together from the highlight reel of every other epic quest film that ever existed. Let's do a little roll call to make sure they got everything:

1) Multiple ancient prophecies that must be fulfilled? Check.
2) Elderly, wise warrior that trains the young hotshot in both combat and life? Check.
2a) Played by Liam Neeson? No.
3) Villain characters portrayed by actors much uglier than the heroes so that we know that they're evil? Check.
4) "The One" who is destined to unite the tribes with a rousing speech before battle? Check.
5) Prehistoric equivalent of the slow clap following said rousing speech? Check.
6) Large scale seige of a heavily barracaded city involving an intricate plan that is executed perfectly? Check.
7) Someone who appears dead but then opens their eyes when the score changes to a major key? Check.
8) Orcs? No.
9) Adolescent boy determined to prove himself a worthy warrior by avenging a dead parent? Check.
10) Plentiful man nipples? Check and then some.

8.5 out of 10 -- nothing to scoff at. There's even a creepy old witch thing that telepathically accompanies our heroes on their journery, disgusting dinosaur pigeons and a subtle allusion to one of the tribes being from Atlantis. I shit you not. My only regret is that the final moments did not involve James Spader walking out of a Stargate. Seriously though, this movie was retarded. I award it one poop stick and three-quarters of Gerard Butler.

March 8, 2008

Oops...this update is a bit late. I blame a ridiculous day that begin with me visiting aQuantive's Cerebro-like server warehouse, continued on with absurd amounts of Manny's and Mac and Jack's at King's Hardware and The Sloop in Ballard, and concluded with one of the drunkest Rock Band sessions I've ever been involved with. Apologies to Vitas for the Charlie Chaplin moustache (that I neither drew nor prevented the drawing of), to Kevin for throwing coasters in his beer, to Bryan for passing out in his living room and to Rush for absolutely butchering the vocals on "Tom Sawyer."

On to business. Another Saturday, another post about LOST.

<LOST>

Second Treatise on John Locke: Supervillain or just an asshole?

As a few of you already know, I am a proponent of rather controversial LOST theory -- that our very own crisis-of-faith-having, Boone-killing, Miles-torturing, kidney-missing, hatch-destroying, amenable-to-coersion and miraculously-not-crippled-anymore John Locke will ultimately be revealed as the show's primary antagonist. I've just used the word "antagonist" because several of you disliked my usage of the term "villain". Allow me to clarify. I don't mean villain like a cartoony pinstriped-suit wearing bad guy who's just in it for the fun of being evil. He's not the Joker, he's not Big Boy Caprice from Dick Tracy. Hurley and Vincent aren't going to reveal Locke by pulling a mask off the smoke monster Scooby-Doo-style (although Hurley does have a mystery van).

Rather, I believe he is the more interesting type of bad guy -- well intentioned. He's the kind of guy who is constantly doing wrong in the name of doing what's best for everyone else. With the noblest of intentions, he's leading the Losties astray, ushering in a new era of Lord of the Flies-esque factioning and war. He's Lex Luther. He's Magneto. He's a German propagandist during the Third Reich. His leitmotif should be the Ladytron song "Destroy Everything You Touch."

I shall provide some evidence to my claim. Since day one, he has sabatoged EVERY attempt to get off the island or establish communication with the outside world. He's worse than Gilligan. In Season One, he knocks Sayid out just as he's attempting to locate the source of Rousseau's distress call and then tries to pin it on Sawyer. Soon after, Claire has a nightmare starring an evil Locke with stones for eyes. In Season Two, he locks Mr. Eko and Charlie out of The Swan while he destroys it. Some have pointed to his final line, "I was wrong," as a vindication for his second season assholery, but has he learned from his mistake? In Season Three, he blows up both The Flame (Mikhail's Dharma outpost that could ostensibly communicate off the island) and Ben's submarine. Would he have destroyed Michael and Walt's boat had he been around then too?

So far this season, we have witnessed Locke's struggle with power and leadership. His "this is a free society, everyone is welcome to accompany me on a mission, even Nicki and Paulo" ways of not very long ago have been replaced by frustration and paranoia. He banished Kate from Eggtown for disobedience. He refuses to let anyone else talk with Miles even though he himself is HORRIBLE at interrogation. He has described his reign as "not a democracy." And now, with Sawyer and Hurley's very appropriate WTF response upon seeing a freed Ben living amongst them, it's becoming increasing likely that Locke will soon have an insurrection on his hands.

"But Locke can't be evil! His backstory is so heartbreaking," you might say. Indeed it is. It is the backstory of a supervillain. After being repeatedly conned by his father and undercover cops, Locke is longing for redemption and purpose. He so desperately wants to connect with the island so that he can know his place in the world. Forgive me for referencing a mediocre M. Night Shyamalan film, but he's like Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable, constantly searching for something that makes him speical; something that justifies his tragic past. For the first time in his life he doesn't have to listen to people telling him what he can't do. Not Jack, not his former boss Randy, not Anthony Cooper. Power corrupts, and his incompetance at maintaining a free society, combined with Ben's playing him like a concert grand piano, can only lead to an imminent turning point -- a moment when in a staggering display of ends-justifying-the-means, he commits the atrocity that sends Hurley running back to become one of the rescued Oceanic Six. "I'm so sorry I went with Locke," he will later confess to Jack on the basketball court of his mental institution.

I believe that Ben is savvy enough to recognize where Locke is headed. Locke is the new Benjamin Linus, Ben has known it all along and the last few seasons have been a test to see if Locke is a worthy successor. Ben told him that the Swan button did nothing and he shouldn't push it. Ben challenged Locke to kill his father in the name of vengeance, just as he had. Ben took Locke to Jacob's cabin to see if he really could communicate with Jacob. Both have experienced miraculous recoveries from illness and injury. Both lead a group of followers by way of deception and controlled information. Both have taken hostages. Both have killed in the name of what they believe is right. And just the other night, Ben has confided in Locke perhaps the one kernel of information keeping him alive: the freighties are bankrolled by none other than Penny's dad, Charles Widmore.

Murky ethics have been a cornerstone of the show since day one. The early scene of Locke teaching Walt backgammon illustrates the important role that duality plays in his future. Locke's recent escapades remind me of Ben's uber-creepy delivery of the line "We're the good guys, Michael" in the closing moments of Season Two. Maybe Locke does have a plan. Maybe all of his actions will be justified in the end. But even if that's the case, did he need to stab Noami in the back like a bitch? Was stuffing a live grenade in Miles' mouth entirely necessary? To quote one of the great philosophers of our time, The Dude, "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole."

</LOST>

March 7, 2008

Gadzooks, another one! This time it's Graham's Concrete Ghost. We may need to call an exterminator soon, these tubes are clogged with blogs (guh, i didn't mean to type that so cutesy, but fuck it, it's staying in). And unlike koala bears, it's not the cutest infestation ever.

For the last several weeks, I have undertaken a project of a different sort; beating Super Mario Bros. 2. I can hear you now. "Really? That's your project? I beat that when I was like six." No, you didn't. "Yeah, I totally did...that's the one with the vegetables and the red potions that turn into doors and you can play as Toad and Peach. Dude, I destroyed that game!" No, you didn't.

What you actually did was beat an unrelated Japanese game, orginally known as Doki Doki Panic!, that was released in the U.S. after Nintendo of America determined that the real Super Mario Bros. 2 was just too hard for American kids. Avoiding the potential fallout from releasing a highly frustrating game to the ADD children of 'Merica, Nintendo just copied and pasted a few Mario skins into a game that had nothing to do with it and we were none the wiser. Does anyone else find that a little insulting? We apparently need our video game entertainment dumbed down because we're not as advanced or capable as the Japanese? I'm rarely patriotic, but FUCK THAT! I'm beating Super Mario Bros. 2 for the good ol' red, white and blue. And if I fail, not only do the terrorists win, but history will be rewritten so that we lost World War 2 as well.

At first glance SMB2 looks a little familiar:

It is built entirely on the same engine as Super Mario Bros. 1 (known as "The Great Super Mario Bros." before there was a second). Same graphics, same physics, even the levels sort of mirror each other. But do you remember this?

Yes, you're seeing that correctly: Sky Bloopers. No longer relegated to just the swimming levels, Blooper is now oot and aboot in just about every level, including those that require you to land a screen-and-a-half wide jump onto a single flying Koopa shell and then bounce onto a one-brick wide platform all the while dodging Bullet Bills and compensating for random gusts of wind that wreak havoc with the tried-and-true jump timing we all grew up with. Oh, and every level seems to have at least one of these:

Those fucking springboards are the bane of my existence. Two out of three times, I hesitate on the rebound and bumble about five pixels forward into the water. SMB1 didn't quite have its physics down with this item; SMB2 is no different.

Also making their Nintendo debut are bad mushrooms that kill you instead of embiggening you (embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word) and red Petey Pirahnas that pop up out of pipes whether you're standing on them or not. Additionally, as you can see in the screenshots above, this is actually the game that first established the "Luigi can jump twice as high, but stumbles around like a drunk monkey wearing rollerskates on ice" principle that has since become Mario canon. You can choose him right from the beginning and play until about level 3-2, at which point the game simply doesn't allow you to continue.

Extra lives? Yeah, there's maybe four of them in the entire game. Good luck trying to collect a hundred coins; each level averages about six. The one point of mercy is that, by exploiting the save state functionality of the Wii's Virtual Console, you can infinitely continue at the first level of each world. That is to say, if you're on World 5-4 and you die, it's back to 5-1 with your sorry plumber ass. At the time of this writing, I have just gotten to World 6. I assumed that meant I was a mere 12 levels from rescuing the princess, but then I read this on IGN: "While you do save Princess Toadstool upon finishing a runthrough of World 8-4, Super Mario Bros. 2 has a further 20 more stages to play through beyond that. The hidden World 9 can be accessed by completing the first eight worlds without using a Warp Zone, and the letter world A through D are earned after you conquer the main quest eight times over."

THE FUCK YOU SAY? 8 times over? What do you think I am, Japanese? **sigh**

I shall perservere. SMB1 for the 8-bit NES, along with Duck Hunt, was the first video game I ever owned and the first I ever saw the end of. I was only a wee toddler of four years old when I accomplished that feat. Now, two decades later, the princess is still in another castle, Bowser is still standing on a precarious drawbridge for no good reason and I still haven't fully figured out the timing for running under Hammer Bros. unscathed. This is literally the event I've been training for my whole life. It is the closest I will ever come to experiencing what it's like to be an olympic athlete at the starting gate -- adrenaline flowing, the world watching, about to do their country proud. And when they hand out the gold medal, I'll be damned if they're playing the Japanese anthem. God bless America!

March 6, 2008

UPDATE: It has recently come to my attention that this site was the victim of some funky formatting when viewed on a 4:3 monitor with Internet Explorer. I have taken steps to rectify this. The major problem of the right margin encroaching on half the text has been fixed, I think. That being said, IE still insists on center justifying all of my text and thus far, I am powerless to stop it. While I do recommend viewing this site in 16:9 with Firefox (after all, my setup is the correct one), I will continue trying to figure out why IE isn't playing nice with DDYH. Thank you Kim for letting me know!

I'm a trendsetter. The pastime of blogging, or diary-ing as Kevin has recently termed it (derived from the word diary, I hope), has swept through our little friend circle like it was 2004 all over again. MattWeirdBeard has recently begun Rants and Giggles, which he describes as "A series of events, news items, and personal experiences that you probably don't care about." Check it out and learn about British Sea Power and fixed gear bicycles.

All of these recent projects have got me thinking a lot lately about what the internet actually is. We live in strange times -- people decry the PATRIOT Act and are wary of the tabs Big Telecom keeps on us, but will then go ahead and post a picture of themselves doing a kegstand while smoking a giant blunt on MySpace. Exhibitionism combined with the illusion of anonymity is an appealing concept to many and the internet removes the awkward middle step of actively being present when one's antics are revealed to the world at large.

For example, if you had a picture of yourself shitfaced drunk giving the camera the finger, would you keep it in your wallet and show it to people? Would you put it in an old-timey photo album for your future grandchildren to see? "Look little Timmy, this one was from 2002, when I get so housed, I fell down my stairs, punched a cop and pissed in my refridgerator. What a glorious evening that was!" Sounds ridiculous, yeah? But millions of those very same pictures litter Flickr, Blogspot, MySpace and Facebook. If you don't actually have to look someone in the eye when you reveal to the world that you're a drunk asshole (or a slut or racist or just incredibly stupid), doing so suddenly seems like a much better idea.

I've certainly noticed this phenomenon. When I update my page, all I do is type up a little HTML script, drop it into my magic FTP directory and BLAM! -- I'm done. I don't go up to each of you and start talking about Girl Television. I don't walk around with a sandwich board over my shoulders proclaiming "I'm a giant LOST dweeb", although perhaps I should. I can do it all from my living room without ever speaking a word. The next day I may even see you in person -- maybe you've read what I wrote, maybe you fervently disagree with it, but you don't say anything. Life goes on as if it never happened.

Social networking sites are going to make it very easy for cultural anthropologists a few hundred years from now to find out what our deal was. Even after we're long dead, the ghost town of early 21st century MySpace will still be floating around somewhere. What will future generations think? "The first internet pioneers worshipped deities known by the names 'Office Space' and 'Dave Matthews Band'. Everyone was friends with a man named Tom. He must have been their leader."

I will admit to having bought into the Facebook trend. It came in to prominence at Whitman right when my senioritis was at its peak. It allowed me to completely define my personality in terms of the music I like, the places I've visited and the other friends I have. I think I'm still known around those parts as "that guy who liked the White Stripes and Donnie Darko." Perhaps not. After neglecting to update my Facebook account for the better part of a year, I recently dusted it off to investigate some of the new apps all the kids are talking about these days. The undisputed champion of these new programlets is Scrabulous.

Holy shit, have I lost some productivity to this little guy. On online Scrabble app that can be spread out over days, accepts proper nouns and has dictionary.com functionality built in? Hell yes! The above image is taken from a game currently in progress between Ruth and I. I have smudge-tooled my tiles because I'm sneaky like that. But seriously, challenge me to Scrabulous. C'mon!

March 5, 2008

The more I post online, the more I feel the world learns about me. Well, these here interwebs are a two-way street, so the more you visit me here, the more I learn about you. That's right, I can see you right now. Don't bother minimizing that porn or pausing that bittorrent, I already have enough evidence to make you do some hard time.

Not really.

But the web hosting service I use for this site has provided me with a number of interesting site analytics tools. The other day when I probably should have been working, I started fiddling with them to learn a bit about my readers. Call it a professional curiosity, but I actually find this fascinating. I'm sorry if you do not.

First up is an hourly summary of my traffic:

This tells me what time of day most people come here. I'm not very surprised by this -- most people click here either late at night (right after I post at around 11pm PST) or early the next morning, presumably shortly after getting to work. The times are spread out a little bit since people check from different time zones. I find it interesting that almost nobody comes in the middle of the afternoon. You probably have better things to do; perhaps I do too.

Next is a page requests report by day:

This is really interesting to me as it shows what days the most people stopped by. Now, this probably has a lot more to do with my advertising of the site -- if I've just hyped DDYH to someone who then forwards it to their friends or I post the link in my Gmail status message, I'm going to get a lot more hits then if I don't. But I like to pretend that it's a much more direct response to what I've posted. My most popular day, by a huge margin, was yesterday. I'll just jump to the conclusion that y'all liked my cheap booze post. February 28th also fared pretty well; that was when I bitched about Nader. I'm glad we're on the same page with that.

But what about the days that didn't do so well? Early on didn't count, since I wasn't pimping out DDYH as much, but why'd you ditch me on Sunday? Did you go outside? Do you not care about my guitar playing woes? I'll keep that in mind in the future before posting more emo bullshit.

Then there's my browser summary:

86.2% of you use Firefox. That's what I like to see; open source FTW! In a distant second is Internet Explorer with 12.1%. Also makes sense. What I'm wondering is who's the chode using Netscape? Netscape only holds like .001% of the market share for browsers AND it got discontinued a few days ago. I have a hard time believing multiple people are to blame, it's probably just one dude (or dudette) hitting "Refresh" and accounting for 1% of my traffic. WTF is your deal? HEY, I'm talking to you! Don't walk away....hey, get back here!

These are just a handful of the metric gathering resources I have at my fingertips. I also know that 78% of you use Windows and 21% have a Mac (1% is listed as "Unknown operating system" -- I'm looking in your direction, Netscape Douche). I know that some of you like to click on my pictures, which is silly since they don't usually link anywhere. I know that my movies page has only gotten 30 hits, which is 1/20th of the traffic of my main page. Guess I have to hype it more. Movies! And finally, I have all of your IP addresses. Don't worry, I can't find out who you are or hack your computer with them. But I could find out, within a few mile radius, where you live. And who your ISP is. And whether you have DSL, cable or dial-up. And once I know that, I'm cashing in and moving to Mexico. So long suckers!

March 4, 2008

Joke of the day: Who do World of Warcraft players worship? (Answer at the bottom of today's post)

And now for a complete shocker: I like video games, television, movies, politics and computer nerd-dom. Even if you've only read one day's worth of this site, this should be painfully obvious. I write about these topics because they are the ones I have the most to say about and the number one rule of writing is write what you know (number two being "i" before "e" except after "c").

Today, however, I'm gonna switch it up and write about something I know absolutely nothing about: Quadradius.

"What the hell is that?" I imagine 95% of you are asking yourselves right now. The other 5%, and you know EXACTLY who you are, are probably now wondering what I could possibly say about a Flash game I've never played. Certainly nothing factual if I can help it. Despite only doing this for two weeks, I've already strayed from my original inspiration for DDYH: making shit up on the fly. Well, today the prodigal son shall return.

Quadradius, to the untrained eye, appears to be the bastard offspring of a one-night stand between checkers and Battleship while Command and Conquer watched from the corner and awkwardly rubbed one out. It came into popularity last week after getting a shout out from Gabe and Tycho at Penny Arcade. The board consists of a grid of spaces that can be raised or lowered and little backgammon-esque discs which move about, acquire skills and perform tactical and offensive moves. Randomly scattered power-ups litter the land and the goal of the game, I think, is to destroy all of your oppenents discs. The game is apparently turn-based and can take quite a long a time, although there is a move timer which creates the hilarious situation of people in the midst of a game not being able to go to the bathroom or actually do any work.

Overhearing players discuss the strategy of this game is like hearing a lecture in quantum physics delivered in a foreign language. I'm not sure what to make of "oh man, i was gonna pwn him with my Pilfer Radial AND Grow Quadradius, but right before I could, he used his Tripwire and then all I had left was Flat to Sphere," but it sure sounds impressive. Attempts have been made to get me up to speed with the game's lingo, but without context, it has been about as successful as teaching long division to a dog. What's amazing about this is that it seems to only take about 15 minutes before a complete newbie is conversing entirely in this bizzare dialect. Each time it happens, I'm reminded of this episode of South Park:

It would be deliciously ironic if more people started playing Quadradius based on my plugging of it. In all honesty, even I have been tempted to see what all the fuss is about. Until that fateful day, I will continue having to cock my head the side confusedly like a terrier whenever someone "casts Mass Teach and moves to a hot spot just before ending it all with Destroy Row. OMG THAT WAS INSANE!"

A: R P Jesus (thank you, Ruth)

March 3, 2008

About a week ago, my friend Andrew sent me this article. For those that aren't from around here, Seattle has some arbitrary regulations on the sale of certain alcoholic beverages; you can't buy cheap malt liquor or fortified wine in densely populated "problem" neighborhoods, such as Pioneer Square and Belltown. The alleged purpose is to curb the drunk and disorderly behavior of homeless people by pricing them out of cheap liquor. If it seems classist, it's because it is.

Is it working? Looking around at my fellow passengers on the number 4 I'm currently riding, I'm gonna go ahead and say "no." I shit you not, as I'm typing these very words, an unseemly fellow is getting kicked off the bus for being a drunk asshole. Some days it seems that the exception is when there ISN'T a drunk asshole on the bus. Keeping booze out of the hands of the destitute is like keeping porn out of the hands of a horny 13 year old. I'm reminded of Ian Malcolm's prophecy in Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way."

This is a classic case of treating the symptoms but not the disease. It's not a problem with homeless drinking, it's a problem with homelessness; kicking sketchy people off of one street corner just moves them to another. The article gives Seattle a big pat on the back for cleaning up the meth and crack on 3rd and Bell by putting in a dog park. That's all well and good, but you can now buy crack a few blocks south outside the McDonalds on Pine. I mean, so I'm told... Drugs are bad, m'kay.

What about the law itself? When it was originally drafted, an attempt was made to establish a formula, based on price, volume and alcoholic content, for determining whether or not a product could be legally sold. However, as the article points out, this was ultimately a dead end as it proved impossible to restrict 40s and bum wine without also banning high percentage import beers in the process. The solution was to just compile a blacklist of specific products that couldn't be sold: MD 20/20, Night Train, Olde English, etc. The hilarious side-effect is that the same drinks, released under different names, are still legal.

The problem with this alcohol control law is the assumption that only downtrodden vagrants drink this crap, but let us not forget the college-educated, employed, twentysomething, wanting-to-get-wasted-for-about-a-five-spot demographic. I appreciate a $9 Belgian ale as much as the next person, but just as often the evening calls for a premium malt beverage or two (or three). While I can't claim to be an afficianado, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried these soon-to-be-on-the-chopping-block products:

Bootlegger is actually not half bad (Note: I didn't say "good"). It's about 12% alcohol, is available in three or four flavors, and comes in a glass bottle featuring a stylish gangster on the label. Stay classy.

Joose, on the other hand, is absolutely horrid. I was first introduced to this beverage while playing Beirut with clear plastic keg cups. In addition to being an unholy shade of neon blue, it tasted like somebody mixed a CapriSun with Robitussin, peed in it and then it let sit out in the sun for several days. I won the Beirut game, but having drank several of the cups, it was a Pyrrhic victory at best. I won't be too sad to see this one go.

At the end of the day, I don't know where I stand on this. Yeah, it sucks for people living in Capitol Hill who have to mop vomit off their sidewalk each Sunday morning and Seattle does have a drunk asshole problem. Conversely, since I both live and work in neighborhoods affected by the ban, I have to get in my car and drive to Wallingford if I want a 40, which is absolutely retarded. When all is said and done, people who want to get fucked up will get fucked up and even if the law did work, next year we'll be right back where we are now when the third generation of these drinks comes out.

One last thing. If you have an extra 5 minutes at work that you don't know what to do with, search Flickr for "Bootlegger" and "Joose". HILARIOUS!

March 2, 2008

As you may have gathered, this site is about 5% for your amusement and 95% a therapeutic release for me. I've never kept any sort of journal before in my life, so I'm only now discovering how calming it can be to just write for the sake of writing. Cutting through the random clusterfuck of disassociated ideas in my head and transforming them into a coherent article is something I'm still learning how to do effectively. As I round out my first week doing this in earnest, I have yet to approach my writing the same way twice. I've written on the bus, at work, at home. Sometimes I'm finished by noon, other times I'm typing things minutes before I post them.

I have a life-long tendency to get OK at something only to become frustrated and bored. Some people are incredibly talented at a few things and devote their lives to them. I'm not that way; I'll get a new project, toy with it for a couple of months or years, lose interest and move on.

Example: I started playing the guitar when I was in 8th grade. That was 1996 -- 12 years ago! If I had even halfway applied myself, I could've been Slash by now. Instead, my desire to practice comes and goes, I don't play for months at a time and here I am, a decade and a quarter later, and I'm still mostly relegated to power chords and drop-D tunings (I can play the SHIT out of Green Day and Weezer songs!)

Ironically, over the course of the last year, I've become exponentially better at playing the fake plastic equivalent (is that what that Radiohead song is about?). I'm the poster child for people who play entirely too much Guitar Hero and Rock Band and after five-starring Sweet Child o' Mine or Cliffs of Dover on Expert for the fortieth time or so, I start to wonder, "Shouldn't I be able to do this for real by now?"

*** pauses writing for a few minutes and picks up guitar ***

Apparently the answer is still "No"

Playing guitar isn't an isolated occurence of this pattern. I've been playing piano even longer than guitar and the only thing I can bust out these days is Für Elise and the theme from Home Alone. I was pretty serious about filmmaking for most of my college days, and even though I'm fond of what I made (like how I keep plugging that?), I haven't shot a goddamn thing since graduation -- I don't even own a video camera. I know enough about computer programming to impress people who don't know anything about it, but put me in a room of actual software developers and I'll be completely lost faster than one of them can snarkily scoff, "Wait, you only know Java? N00b!"

I suppose my latest test is this very website you're reading. If all goes according to plan, I'll make it to about May 20th or so and then never post again. Unless of course Harmonix decides to release Blog Hero for Xbox360 with a little plastic laptop. Then I'll school all y'all!

March 1, 2008

I'm unclear on how much updating I'm going to end up doing on the weekends. I've got some stuff on my mind for today, but I imagine there will be some Saturdays down the line where I'll just post a lolcat and call it a day. Besides, I should probably save my A material for when I'm willing to spend more time on it (i.e. when I'm at work).

I'm sure this is gonna piss off a few of you, but I can't help it. It's time to bust out this bad boy:

Thoughts on Season 4 Episode 5: The Constant

The nature of Desmond's time skipping is much more nuanced than many other accounts of time travel. There appear to be at least two tangible Desmonds, a past one in 1996 and a present one in 2004. Rather than physically transporting himself to each new time Back to the Future-style, it's merely his consciousness that makes the leap, using the body that already exists in each time as a vessel. We saw last night how slipping between the two (or more?) times can ultimately be fatally disorienting unless a common anchor is established between them: the constant. But how exactly does this play into his psychic tendencies of Season 3? Is there a third Desmond, a "future Desmond" if you will, that has already done this all before? Perhaps he is like Eloise, the mouse that could run perfectly through a maze before being taught how to do it. What if he's just the test subject of some larger force's experiment? UPDATE: I wrote most of this on Friday morning, and then later checked the Onion AV Club blog, which theorizes almost the exact same thing. Boy do I feel smug!

So what does that all mean? Since Faraday apparently has amnesia, there are any number of things that could have happened with him that the show doesn't need to reveal just yet. But let's look at the clues thus far: He was inexplicably crying when he saw footage of the 815 wreckage, he had that odd throwaway line a few weeks back about "the light hitting the island oddly" and the final reveal last night, his journal message to himself, "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant." What could this all be setting up? Since Faraday doesn't appear to remember back-in-the-day Desmond despite having written about him in the notebook, what else could he have forgotten? Being on the island before?

The show hasn't really done much with the character of Charlotte yet, but there still some things to consider. We were first introduced to her as she examined a Dharma-tagged polar bear skeleton in Tunisia. She seemed more satisfied than startled at this revelation, as if it somehow proved a theory she was working on. Her reluctance to let Faraday spill the beans on the space/time tomfoolery also suggests she knows more about it then she's volunteering. Last night, we learned that the captain's journal from the Black Rock was discovered on Madagascar by Papa Hanso. So, in addition to the distortion of time that we've all suspected for awhile now, there's apparently some bending of physical space going on as well. Objects seem to exist in two different places at the same time. Is that why the 815 fuselage is on the bed of the Indian Ocean AND the center of the island? Is that why Walt keeps showing up in random places and is aging expotentially faster than the other Losties? Was Jacob the captain of the Black Rock? Was Richard? What's his deal? How come he doesn't age? Can he exploit the time rift for financial gain? Can Ben? Where are my pants? I DEMAND ANSWERS!

Clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about and seeing as how we are only 5 episodes deep in a 13 episode story arc, we're going to be stuck in "what the fuck?" limbo for awhile still. I don't imagine we'll be getting back to the time paradox plotline for awhile, but I'm equally eager to see what Hurley, Ben, Sawyer and Kate are up to -- some major players got benched in that episode. And poor Miles still has a grenade in his mouth. Was that necessary Locke? Seemed kinda mean.

My apologies to the uninitiated and LOST haters out there. This is for you: