Cardinal Visit

Had a regal visitor in the area outside my office window today.

It's been a chilly few days following the nice 70° weather we had last week. I vowed that I would not turn my furnace back on until next fall/winter, so its been rather cool in my apartment. Cricket has been snuggling up with me to keep warm at night. Last night I even laid down early to watch some movies in bed so she could cuddle up with me.

She seemed to enjoy that.

Drunk Animals

38th

We had a good line of thunder storms move through the area last night, which also happened to be my 38th birthday. Stayed home and had some brats for dinner and connected a different computer to my TV.

This is one I scraped together from spare parts from work. The screen doesn't look half bad, but it's running on a AMD Duron which isn't a very fast processor, and there's only two RAM slots which currently hold two 128M (PC133) ram sticks, and frankly I don't know if buying two bigger RAM sticks into it would help much. It also doesn't like booting up with a USB keyboard connected, which is a bummer. Actually it may just be the keyboard. I'm thinking I might have to try the keyboard (Logitech Classic 200) from work since I had it hooked up to this computer via a USB KVM switch.

Caffeine Cure

Here I was trying to cut caffeine out of my daily routine, but after watching this I wonder if that was a wise decision. Maybe I can work a little caffeine back into my diet.

Something Significant Happened in Spokane

Found posted on dalypaul.com:

...it became increasingly apparent that what I was witnessing was something far more significant than what I expected. This was no ordinary, pre-ordained, rubber-stamp-the-party-line-and-get-out-before-lunch kind of an affair.

Read the full article here:
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/46535

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

I bought "The 11th Hour" on DVD two weeks back and watched last Saturday. It's quite a kick to the gut when you realize how fine a line we are walking to keep our civilization afloat. There are a lot of times I wish it would just collapse in on itself, but humanity is too tenacious to let that happen easily. Still, it will happen if the population keeps increasing the way it has been. It's inevitable.

On the brighter side of things, it hit 70°+ yesterday! I opened the windows and let the cat out, it was such a nice day. However, a thunderstorm rolled in around 8pm to put a damper on things. Still, it was a nice day.

I've hooked my laptop up to my LCD TV and it looks pretty good. I can view it in stretched Wide Screen or, for a better view, in 1:1 or Aspect (looks the same). I initially had my old Win 98 PC hooked up to the TV, but both the on-board video processor and the one I bought back in 2000 (which actually handled my TVs resolution) decided to stop working after I tried to hook up my external hard drive (USB to IDE). Not sure why that happened, but I do think it's time to consider buying a new tower PC so I can play some of those games I've bought, to play on Mike's PC, at home.

Tim Robins Speach at NAB

"We are at an abyss as an industry and as a country," Robbins said.
Full Speech
or
Best 6 Minutes

LMAO Funny Japanese Core Duo Commercial

Chosen Space

Being a pirate is all well and good for a laugh, but I'd like to get a little more out of a game.

Today I decided to check some of the game voting boards for a space based game and found Chosen Space. It's one of the few browser based games that doesn't reset every few months, nor are their any victory conditions. It's play at your own pace and do what you want.

I've decided to try to become a miner. It's a hard life without glitz and glory, but the rewards should make me rich with some hard work.

Oh yeah, I was Pirate of the Hour on Rule the Seas from 1 to 2 pm. Not sure how that works, but it's still nice.

Bad Day To Be A Pirate

Mike talked me into joining a game called, "Rule The Seas". It's a browser based Pirate game. Very cheesy. Unfortunately, they have been under attack by hackers (cyber-pirates) and have had to roll back the game twice in the last week.

It's a lot less intensive than Travian was, or at least so far.

New Baby Sized Burritos at Wal-Mart

Rise and Fall of the Empire

New Scientist wrote:

"Most people think that our civilisation is of such a scale and complex level of innovation that we are immune to collapse. However, a growing number of researchers are coming to the conclusion that our society is becoming ever more vulnerable. In this special report, New Scientist looks at two possibilities. Could a pandemic be devastating enough to wipe out our entire civilisation - and does the very nature of our civilisation means that ours, like every other civilisation in history, is destined to collapse...."

I've been saying this for years. With all the technology we insist on using to prop up our society, it is inevitable that we will become more and more reliant on it to take the "burden" of everyday work off our shoulders until we forget how to do things without them. Then when the technology breaks down, society will most likely break down since so few people will know how to getthigs to work.

I don't think that would be a bad thing... :P

Flip Flop Weather

Yesterday it was dark, dreary, and raining. Later in the afternoon it started to change over to ice pellets.

Last night it turned to snow which continued until this morning.

Now it's early afternoon and most of the snow has melted away.

Gotta love Minnesota