"Ax me a question"

I can't believe it's already been a week since my last post. Last Tuesday I did indeed go to work at a nearby office and helped replace at least a hundred HDDs. I usually take longer than everyone else to learn stuff but once I do learn it I know it really well.

For the next part of the job I was supposed to go to Livermore, California for the next step in HDD replacement. I have relatives nearby so I arrived at their house Wednesday afternoon to get ready for the job that was supposed to start at 3:00pm. I left early to find the place and had some lunch since I wouldn't be eating for 7 hours. Then I ended up with an hour to kill so I chilled walking around a Wal-Mart. Finally I called the project lead around 2:45 to see where we were going to meet and I was told everyone was attempting to contact me to tell me the project had been cancelled for the day and possibly the next day (but not for sure). So I went back to the relative's house.

I spent the night once more and after waiting for what seemed like quite a while Thursday I finally recieved the call saying "cancelled for today" so fine, I worked one whole day last week. Better than nothin' I guess. Seems like employment feels a lot like unemployment.

For projects I still have the "Super VCR Mod" and my theoretical new bootable 98 project. I'm going to set up yet another subdomain for this one. This time instead of "merely" booting 98 from a CD using the method I learned and covered in this blog I will extract the \windows and \program files directories to a USB device thumb drive.

This will allow me to make changes to the system and hardware detection. When that's all done I can use the installed software on the system to make a new ISO image and burn it to CD. Kind of a convoluted way to make a customized Win98 CD for a new computer, theoretically without the need of a HDD in the system.

That's basically it, I'll save the rest for the new sub domain.

Of course there's my first sub-domain, "Mystery Short Story". I haven't worked on that in at least two months but I still think about it constantly. That's kind of the way it works with me, I do more work just infinately looping things in my head than I do actually working on the thing. I do plan on working on it more. I even got as far as reading the whole thing once to catch up on it and start it back up but I never got there.

Also lately after work on the weekends I've been going to this local famous flea market/swap meet to see what I could find. I don't know why I would find such a thing so much fun. It had been a few years since I had gone to this particular flea market and was struck by how much it had apparently changed. It seemed like 5 to 7 years ago when I went it was pretty much all yard sale type people selling stuff. But any more it's more like vendors who are businesses trying to make a living and hard-selling. In a way it's lot like the transition EBay went through, from individuals doing yard sale type stuff to groups or individuals making a living and the whole thing getting commercialized. But there are still a few yard sale types left.

The other thing that struck was the number of old video games for sale. Whether NES, SNES or Genesis those games and systems were EVERYWHERE. May as well replace cash as the currency of that place. I also found PS1 games, Gameboys and some really off-the-wall stuff like Tiger's Game.com and some special "web computer" that must have gone away 4 or 5 years ago. And of course the cult favorite, the Sega Dreamcast. I bought one, albeit without TV hook ups, an AC adapter or game controllers. So have no idea if it would even turn out. I did talk him down from $15 to $10, which I think is probably too much anyway but I thought "why not?". I'm sure I could use it for something.

Also I have officially taken up a new albeit expensive new hobby. Actually it's pretty cheap as hobbies go but I should be saving money not spending so it's expensive: I'm collecting Atari 2600 games. So far I have 7. Have to start somewhere right? Related to this I found an Atari web site, Atari Age, which has everything you could possibly want to know about the 2600 and all the other Atari systems including a list of all known games and how rare each is on a scale from 1 (very common) to 10 (impossible). Now I know I could just download all the ROMs and play them on an emulator, but that's not really the point. I don't even want to play them, I just want to collect them. As a hobby.

I was searching the flea market for a system and couldn't find one. Finally it was about the end of the day and I saw one last lot set up seperated from the rest. I was about to skip him but looked anyway and holey crap he had a bunch of video game crap. A dreamcast (with hookups), an SNES, NES, N64, and under a bunch of stuff an actual 2600 with hookups, controllers and AC adapter along with 14 games. I asked how much, he said something like $35 or $40. I asked him to go lower, he didn't really budge. He didn't speak very good English but I finally got through that I wanted the system without games and how much he finally said $20. So then I though I may as well have some games so asked how much would $25 get me and he said 7 so I took it. Knowing full well the system may not work. I was willing to take the gamble.

When I got it home I realized the thing only had one wire coming out of it and it looked like a famous "RCA" jack. But that couldn't be right because you need at least two for those to work (one video and at least one audio) and besides that this system was too ancient to be RCA-only. So I looked it up and found out that I had to buy an extra little converter to make it work (another $4). So I went and purchased that, got it home and found I couldn't get it to work still. So I apparently spent $25 for 7 games and a fancy paper weight. Unless I'm missing something. But it's all the adventure anyway, right?

I do have work tomorrow at the same place as last tuesday but this time at 7:30 in the morning. It's now 9:30pm, which means I have to get up in 9 hours. That means end of entry :).


  ¶ 11:26 PM 0 Comments

 

Astray no more

Now I have a whole bunch of things to talk about. For one thing I was about to work at an infamous large computer retailer, Fry's Electonics, as a summer job and to help fund the "Super VCR Mod". But instead a recruiter called me on Friday and asked me to take part in a big HDD replacement project that was going on. So of course I took it! So that starts tomorrow for me, an entire day after the final I happen to have for the class I've been taking for only 9 weeks. Lucky it worked out that way. Were it fiction it would be "too convenient".

Tomorrow I will work at an office in my city, Wed. and thursday a few hundred miles away in Livermore. Fortunately I have relatives in the area so I won't have to go all the way down there and back two days in a row. Not to mention work starts at 3pm so I would be driving home at midnight which wouldn't be that fun.

Also I did in fact take the first of the two A+ courses, and passed. Didn't pass by as much and I had hoped, but I passed. I didn't learn a lot of the newer stuff was the main problem. And who knows how many pins are on an AMD Athlon anyway? Now I just have to take the second test which was much easier for me in all the practice tests I took.

In addition to all that I bought an SDIO WiFi card for my PocketPC I've been neglecting for the past 18 months. A friend of mine just gave me his LinkSys router so I finally had a reason to get it out and use it. I daisy-chained it with my exisitng switch via "WAN port" (no cross-over cables to buy) and it actually works. And this helped a little with the A+ test actually, it had a couple WiFi questions.

I also finally came into the year 2000 when I recieved a cell phone as a good-you-have-a-job-present from a parent. Now I just have to figure out how to turn it on and make it work and I'll be all set. Now the only is can I make the cell phone into a modem for my PocketPC? He-heh.

Also I turned on the server the other day and it blue-screened. That doesn't do too much good so I reset and the stupid BIOS didn't even find the HDD. So all the documents and back-ups are now in that computer that is unbootable. On a seperate apparently function HDD though, so for now they are safe. I do have a feeling I should figure how to ghost that HDD so I don't lose all that stuff entirely.

I'm thinking up a new project now. One to extend that bootable Win98 project I've been working on. Actually it's a two-level project: The first part would be to use a free USB DOS driver to make my thumb drive work in DOS, which I have yet to test and see if it even works, and use this in place of the RAM drive used in the last solution. The second would be to do the same thing to boot a Windows installation with all the hardware deleted from the hardware manager so Windows detects all the hardware and when all that is done create an ISO of this cutomized Windows 98 installation which can then be burned to a CD. Thus, albeit with a few steps, a customized Win98 bootable CD can be created with for computer without the need for an existing Windows installation on a HDD. It's Live Linux CD or Bart's PE but it should work.

I've even thought of a reason to use this rather ambitious method over Bart's PE: completely configurable and changable. Simply install and configure all programs as normal which will be untouched no matter which computer you go to (with subsequent hardware detect). Then settings can be maintained, display properties adjusted and a normal interface preserved. And dial-up networking won't be any different.

That's all assuming the DOS USB driver works with a thumb drive. Which it might, I don't know. But I'm going to find out.

  ¶ 12:10 PM 0 Comments

 

LED Astray

So I finally did a couple I've been meaning to do for a while: firstly I moved my old site from two years ago, litestep log, from my old free ISP web space to a subdomain, which means no more come.to pop-ups and I have the option of puting up some ads now.

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, I set up a seperate blog just for the VCR mod project I have undertaken. I just got done adding a counter to the thing. I have entitled it Super VCR Mod and thrown some images up. I want to have it done by the 31st of August, giving me roughly 3 1/2 months to complete.

The actual installation of a mobo, power supply and components should be the relatively easy part of the process. The hard part should be figuring out how to make the different LEDs on the front of the VCR assign to the power and HDD access LEDs and possibly tieing the old tape Eject button to the CD-ROM eject, which I also have to figure out a place to mount. fortunatly for me this case is extremely large which give me an unusual amount of flexibility for what I can do. I think this will be a fun project.

At the moment I'm seriously leaning toward a mini-ITX mobo, although I could do some serious surgery on the case and fit a mini or flex-atx mobo in there. In theory I could even fit two mini-ITX mobos into this case. At the very least the mini-ITX has a CPU already soddered into place so I wouldn't have to fret about which CPU to get.

Also on the plate is figuring out how and which buttons on the VCR to assign to "power" and "reset". But I digress. After all I have a whole blog for this stuff, right?

On other fronts I have officially set up and paid for my first A+ test, the Core one. Although it said it linear instead of adaptive for some reason so I don't understand that. So I'll finally be getting my certification. Then I'll get the N+ and take some Microsoft ones and I should be in the job market "for real". I could of done all this a year ago but I'll try not to let that get me down.

To be even more un-interesting I haven't played any games in over a week. I took out my old ghost of my Windows XP installation and restored it, after of course backing up my 30+ gigs of programs, games and related media/crap. I then wiped all partitions and restored the Ghost image. I found that much easier than re-installing XP which would have taken a while but getting all my settings straight would have taken a month at least. So I never started playing the games again and haven't for a whole week. Perhaps once I get a job I will start again. I know I'll start again, just not sure when.

I just learned both Tribes and Tribes 2 have be re-released as free downloads. Haven't played much of either but it's so tempting to install both of them and spend a lot of time playing. Free games!

  ¶ 1:42 PM 0 Comments

 

"The VCR one"

Only thing new to report would be that I'm actually still working on the VCR mod. And now I really am planning to make a seperate blog just for it. Now that I got the whole VCR gutted I need to re-design the innards to fit minor details like the PSU. That should probably be the minimal requirement, right?

In trying to inspire myself to continue in with this project I have found several other clever PC mods. For instance I found this other VCR mod on the net. This guy used a normal modern sized VCR but the images and instructions are still helpful.

I also found the guy with too much time and love for a portable Commodore 64 called the Commodore SX-64, which he gutted and stuck a mini-ITX mobo in a long with tiny 5 inch CRT monitor. But not only that: he also made a circuit board that interfaced with a C64 emulator to get authentic sounds from games and other programs.

I may have found someone with more tanacity than even me. Is that possible?

I am kinda starting to get discouraged though. I tore apart a non-working old PC (well it's non-working now anyway) chasis, removing the mobo and PSU to test for size. Of course the mobo was an old AT so it wasn't much use anyway but I did learn a lot from the PSU, which I'm fairly certain is standard size. Namely the PSU doesn't come close to fitting so I'll have to break out a hack saw and/or dremel and do some remodeling. Even then not sure I'll ever get it to fit.

Tomorrow if I have time I will setup a sub-domain and start blogging the progress; the main feature of which will be the included pics up until this point. I've got before pics, half gutted pics and completely/totally gutted pics, which is where I am now. Where to from here I'm not sure, just have to do a lot of planning and figure out what I want and how to do it. Good thing I have 3 1/2 months to finish it.

____  ¶ 11:35 PM 0 Comments

 

"The ambitious one"

(15th May 2004)
Ok so nothing's happened since the last post, except I decided I'm building a new PC. But this time I will install the mobo into something other than a standard case. I'm currently trying to decide between an 8-bit NES, as lots of people have done. In fact such hobby (so far as I know) started at Junk Machine and has since perpetuated thanks in no small part to TechTV and Junk Machine's Forums. It looks really hard, which is the way a long term project/hobby is supposed to be.

On the other hand I could decide to do something slightly original: for some unknown reason my Dad has our original VCR from literally more than 20 years ago. It's the old kind that has a robotic-looking ejected arm to hold the tape that pops up. You youngins most likely don't know what I mean by this. You see the first VCRs were VERY, VERY large; very, very heavy; and were NOT front loading like virtually all VCRs and DVD players these days are. The old ones had a mechanism that actually popped up above the rest of the VCR, you loaded the tape in and pushed the mechanism back down. I'm sure you still don't know what I mean so I'll try to post some pics.

So the choice is an old NES or this old VCR that must weigh at least 40 pounds currently(edit: I actually weighed it: it's exactly 20 lbs.). I was thinking of making the old button that ejected the mechanism instead eject the CD ROM. If I were more creative I would figure something to do with that mechanism that pops up. Maybe a WiFi antenna that retracts and extracts? The button connects and disconnects it from a USB connection?

So the advantages/disadvantages of each:

For NES:
Advantages:

• Smaller mobos most likely cheaper.
  
• MiniITX types have CPUs built-in so I wouldn't have to worry about that.
  

Disadvantages:

• Near impossible to fit everything in
  
• Large dependance on laptop "slimline" parts (HDD and cd-rom) so I'd have to buy them seperate.
  
• Ruin many NES's and possibly mobos in the construction process
  
• Risk life and/or limb installing PSU with out the outer casing. What am I, nuts?
  

For old VCR:
Advantages:

• REALLY big, I can use a normal sized mobo and standard parts
  
• No need to worry about air flow
  
• Don't have to buy it, already have it at home here
  

Disadvantages:

• If my Dad still has it after 20+ years (keeping in mind it hasn't been functioning for at least 10 of those years) I'm guessing he has some sort of emotional attachment to it or something :)
  
• I'll have to convince my Dad to give it up (see above)
  
• So big and heavy it'll have a rather large amount of guts to take apart. Will there be anything left after removing it? Doubtful!
  
• Hopefully no life/limb risk because I can leave the casing on the PSU.
  

So this old VCR thing is sounding better the more I think about it. Still dunno if I can figure something creative with the robotic arm.

Update:

(17th May 2004)
I Obviously picked the VCR becase I have already ripped it apart. My Dad said OK with no argument what so ever. I proceeded to take a few before pictures with this extremely cheap digital camera. At least some of the images will turn out though.

I effectively completely gutted the entire VCR, and let me tell ya those things were expensive when new for a reason. Between the amount of metal, the rubber, the circuit boards, the unnecessary moving parts and pullys, I mean damn. Looked like the thing was hacked together by some kid in his garage or somethin'.

But finally The case is gutted and laying in several dozen pieces in my garage. Turns out there's actually two seperate compartments and one is slightly above the other. One side looks like it could fit about any mobo out there, the other is a little smaller. There's a few good places for a power supply albeit a fairly small one.

My first idea was to buy some particle board or cork board or something to that effect and mount it into the case then use one of my dummy mobos to line up where the screws should go with a marker and that's where I put in the brass stand-offs. Then just screw the mobo in to those stand offs. Course I have more work to do before then. Not to mention figuring out a cool way to make cuts for the all the stuff in the back along with a few mini chasis fans for proper air flow.

In fact I could put the mobo on one side and put all the stuff like a HDD, CDROM etc. on the other. I have lots of room. I could fit an entire seperate VCR on side if I really wanted.

I was commenting to some body how comical all the mechanical buttons and dials actually were (it had a remote but the remote had a wire instead of IR), looking like something out of the first Star Trek or a 1930s SciFi movie. The innards only drove such a point home.

As for cost: well so far I haven't spent anything what-so-ever. Just collected the screws and various parts as I tore it apart.

I was thinking of the following however (as crazy as it probably is): use "extension cables" to go from the actual connectors on the mobo to the outside peice where the parts actually hook up (keyboard/mouse, monitor, USB, serial/parallel if necessary). I've never heard of anyone trying such a thing nor do I know if it would work though I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't.

That brings me to a couple more points: this old VCR actually has its RCA ports in the front for some reason. Now I could cut apart the circuit board with those ports on it and mount it to the right place OR I could replace those connectors with couplers that hook up to the video card's (or mobo's if I get that kind of mobo) RCA outputs and/or inputs so they can actually be used.

The othe point was to figure out if I could some how bury a small LCD monitor into the top of the thing and assign one of the many buttons on the front the task of flipping it up. Originally I wanted to figure out how to assign "eject" to this task but I think it makes more sense to make that eject the CDROM tray.

Now I just have to figure where to put the CDROM so it looks natural up until it ejects. Too bad I can't put it in the old tape holder/robotic arm. That wouldn't be likely.

Ok the next idea is to have a LCD display with the CPU temp and various other information in place of the LCD clock. That'd be sweet.

So if I tried to make a list, not including the actual mobo and related CPU/RAM, I'd need something like:

• Various peripheral extension cables and/or couplers
  
• Some brass stand-offs/matching screws
  
• Eventually a new Dremel :)
  
• Some good glue/epoxy
  
• cork/particle board
  
• Seperate power supply
  
• LCD monitor (optional)
  
• Display LCD for various system info
  

So for sure I need something to make a mobo shelf out of and a power supply. The rest I have and/or is really cheap.

So this looks like a project that may be shaping up! Now all I need is money to fund it! I may even start a new subdomain to keep track of the progress. My goal should be/may be to finish it by the end of the summer: August 31st. But I think it's certainly doable. Rather ambitious but I think doable.

  ¶ 11:09 PM 0 Comments

 

"Breath as fresh as a summer ham"

For this entry I want to think out a few different things. Just seems like there's so many people these days totally and completely lacking in logic while at the same time no one else on TV willing to point out said lack of logic.

For instance to discourage tobacco consumption a draconian tax was imposed on its sale. This was partially rationalized and sold to the public thanks to several for-the-children government programs funded with part of the funds (which out to be not very much, big surprise). Of course, as desired this high draconian sales tax DID discourage the use of tobacco resulting in lots of people quitting smoking and a lesser number of new smokers. But wait, what about the children? With fewer smokers the children have less money. So you're stuck in a contradiction: discourage tobacco use, but not so much it hurts the children. Make sense? Good.

Now, something else has come up: funds from the sales tax on gas. You see it only seems fair if you use up more gas you pay more and if you use the highway system more than others you put in a proportionally larger amount of money to help pay for the upkeep (as much as said upkeep may or may not exist). So what does this do? In at least a way encourage people to buy more gas efficient cars, like hybrids. But wait! That will result in lesser gas. Which is what I thought the enviro-nazis wanted but I guess not. So when gas sales start to go down tax revenue goes down. So what does the government do? Figure out a new tax scheme for gas that results in encouraging the sale of less efficient vehicles. Aren't the enviro-nazis anti-SUV etc.?

You see Oregon is researching a new revenue scheme approach that tracks all the cars wirelessly and calculates how the sales tax on gas based on that. Thus if you have an inefficient vehicle like an SUV you'll go lesser miles before you have to fill up, right? So you'll pay less. And these are Democrats that want to use this scheme. Idiots, all of them.

Lastly, there's John Kerry. What can I say about him? What's left to say? He's stupid, he's crazy, he's totally and completely lacking in any actual reasoning abilities what so ever. I guess that's what I expected from. How can you expect anything less?

For instance he'll go on and on, as is typical, about how Bush has forsaken the children, not created any new jobs, undone all the environmental policies and "moved backwards" in the forestry policies. And of course the VERY typical comment about "40 million people without health insurance".

I'd just like to ask him some minor details: what bill has Bush signed that has so forsaken the poor children? What SPECIFICALLY has he done to damage the environment? Ted Kennedy wrote the whole education bill so WHAT SPECICALLY has Bush done or signed to hurt education? WHAT bill about forestry has gone through been signed by Bush that Kerry finds so objectionable exactly? Or executive order more likely? And for the love of God, just say "we need socialized medicine", stop with this "40 million people with no health insurance" bullshit. JUST SAY IT STUPID MOTHERFUCKER. That's what you want, socialized medicine, so why can't you just say so?

Why is this too much to ask? Just tell me the executive order hurting the educational system. Tell me the executive order that is currently so hurting the environment. Tell me the executive order that's apparently making so many people poor and preventing them from getting jobs. Why can't you be specific?

You see George W. Bush has yet, in 3 1/2 years, to veto a single bill. Any bill passed must be voted positively on by quite a few Dems in the Senate and House to pass. Therefore anything Kerry says about Bush regarding health care or education was voted on in the favorable by a large number of Dems. Otherwise Kerry refers to specific executive orders signed by Bush. In which case NAME THE EXECUTIVE ORDER. But this does not exist. So Kerry is full of bullshit.

You see "Bush light on education" is Kerry's code for "vote for me teacher unions, I'll give you more money!" and "40 million people with no health insurance" translates to "vote for me and I'll make sure socialized medicine in imposed on an unsuspecting populace while "Bush is destroying the environment" translates to "Bush is not with the program so far as the socialist agenda goes, therefore vote for me".

He (Kerry) really drives me crazy. Can't he say what he means even once? Why all the code speak? Is he ashamed of what he is and what he stands for? Is he really embaraced of what he is? Is that who you want for President, the guy who can't even stand up and say what he is?!

At least I'm provided with some free entertainment. Kerry doing all he possibly can to lose the election even though it wouldn't be hard to win. He's just too stupid. But I don't care. Who the hell cares who's president? Doesn't make a difference.  ¶ 10:48 PM 0 Comments

 

"Not this one: he spent all his money on instant lotto"

Ok So it's been a while since I last posted. Enough time blogger has once more changed around the format of the whole site.

And why have I once more been neglecting good old blog? Well nothing's happened for one thing. I was a little depressed after the failed apple thing. Actually I'm depressed as usual these days, I was just especially so after the failed Apple interview. I think I'm just about over it though. Some days I wonder if I'll ever find a real job. Not like I don't have some good skills or something.

So what have I been doing? Well I'm still going to a class, ethical hacking. On weekends I work 8 hours attempting to sell soil. And in between? Nurse my apparent PC game addiction which is quickly becoming some kind of psychological crutch. Not that I'm some kind of self-analyzing, pop-psychology jerk or somethin'.

This new layout is really freakin' me out here. On other front the computer still reboots after a specified period of playing a game. The game is still Empire Earth. The CPU is still quite cool. Currently I don't really have any projects going on.

Though I did do a search on one thing: how to over clock my particular processor (AMD 2500+). I don't know why I should do such a thing. Am I really going to order a replacement if I fry my CPU? Do I really want to risk making an already apparently unstable system even more so? What am I, crazy? Of course I only incremented it by the smallest amount possible, so I shouldn't notice a real difference. I was going to make it go up as slowly as possible.

Today, of course, the house was getting new windows installed so I couldn't do anything on the computer or watch TV. So I drove up to my home town to return a movie then went to Fry's to look at what they had and tempt myself with the resident crutch. I didn't buy anything though. I did buy a special wrist straightening wearable brace however. And it feels nice.

And one more thing: I found this what I would guess little-known show called This Just In. One of the things that make it so unique is the apparent right-wing bent to it not to mention patriotic themes. I would theorize it would either be a "sleeper hit" or slowly fade into obscurity, never to be mentioned or seen by anyone. For some reason I doubt it will continue as it is now. I don't know why.

  ¶ 11:13 PM 0 Comments

 

"CPU'd"

On the Smoothwall front I now have it working. I was using a HDD from a computer a yard sale gave me for me. Unfortunately it was hosed after only a few days of use in the firewall. So I have a hosed HDD and I'm using one of my other HDDs for the firewall and it's once again working. I've now even ghosted it in hopes that would help if I ever had problems again. I also put some of the yard sale computer's RAM into the Smoothwall computer to help it out a bit.

On other fronts my main computer's CPU was up to and including 60 degrees Celsius, which is bad. I mean I'm no expert but I'm assuming that's not a good temperature. But despite a thresh-hold setting the computer did not auto-reboot. At least I assume that's what that thresh-hold is supposed to do. This is important, ya see, because I finally went and bought some name brand thermal compound to help cool it off. After taking entirely too long to apply the damned stuff. I also dusted out my heat sink, took it apart and further dusted it out, I mean I really dusted the thing out. It's only been 10 months :).

Anyway, as in the first time I put on thermal grease 10 months ago if I play a game for too long the computer will auto-magically reboot. No I should also mention it's probably not because the CPU is too hot because the CPU is reporting back a chilly 44 degrees Celsius. That's at least 15 degrees cooler and the 'puter was NOT rebooting when it was up to and including 65 degrees during game play. So why is it rebooting?! And if I forgot to mention it I left the computer on idle all night and it didn't reboot, so obviously the problem has to do with extensive CPU usage for extended periods.

Well I do have other thresh-holds. I have thresh-holds for voltages, the temperature of the mobo, and any number of other variables. I suppose it could be one of those. But the fact remains the only variable is the new grease. I know it can take up to 100 hours of use for the CPU to "accept" the new grease and all but this is rather bad. Why is it rebooting? I bought yet another new game, Empire Earth, and the computer now loves to reboot at crucial points in the game play. It's really annoying (as I mentioned).

Speaking of which, Empire Earth is turning out to be at least a semi-decent game to play. Supposed to be the third installment from the Age of Empires people. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this isn't quite it actually. I think I definitely have a problem when it comes to computer games, and I need help. Of some sort. I really shouldn't be buying this number of games this often. Those cheap $10 a piece games aren't so cheap when you buy large groups of them or 3 in a week. Ya know?

So I did see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 last week. As expected it was much, much different from the first one. Hardly any blood at all. Even some cool humorous type stuff ("nah, I'm just fuckin' with ya"). I thought it was extremely well acted and seeing Vol. 1 would not have been absolutely necessary. I would definitely give it a high rating if so prompted to give a rating.

I'd like to mention The Shield for a moment. Outside of something subtler in the '70s I don't think too many shows have tried to cover the sexual assault of a male. No show I've ever seen anyway, but then I don't watch a whole lot of "edgy" or "gritty" cop shows or other dramas. The Shield now is covering such an issue and its managing to point out some rather obvious double-standards. The victim exhibiting symptoms that are ignored by peers and co-workers, unsympathetic spouses, feelings of guilt and shame on the part of the victim. Only no one looks for it because the victim is male. This really is a unique sort of show isn't? I'm also surprised it's still on the air, with or without the "TV-MA" rating.

Now I suppose I could talk about politics, if I felt like it. For instance when it seemed Bush really needed to attack back, back in 2000, he really didn't do any attacking what so ever. However when he doesn't need to do it so much, now for instance, he does run attack ads. Which isn't a bad thing. Kerry is an extremely open and obvious target. Honestly, what the fuck's his problem? I would suggest sit back and don't say shit but he even managed to fuck that up.

_____  ¶ 11:27 PM 0 Comments