New Toy

My wife and I went to The Windmill - a sort of flea-market/craft fair by Keuka Lake - with my mother and her roommate. I was patient and allowed everyone to look at their craft stuff all day long, so I got to buy myself a new toy.

Vista slow to unzip files

Another "feature" of Windows Vista: It's slow as hell extracting files from a Zip archive. I mean really slow. A 2.05 GB zip file said it was going to take 2 days to unzip. I tried rebooting, nada.

Basically it seems like all the necessary functions they built in work like shit. Zip functionality, defrag, security, it's all so bad it's almost broken.

For zip files, right now I am using 7zip. It's free, it's small, it works, and it's a hell of a lot faster than the built in POS Vista has.

New tattoo!

And for some of you: It's a Gryphon!

GRYPHON

Eye Surgery

I finally got up the courage to call the doctors and set up an appointment to get my pre-surgery consultation for Lasik surgery. I'm sick and tired of glasses, they slip off my face while I'm drumming or installing a toilet, they get all scratched up, or fog up, or just get dirty, and make it pain in the ass to try to see anything. I think I'm ready to be able to wake up and see the clock in the morning.

Of course, my appointment is on Friday the 13th.

Serenity

No, not the movie, although that was great.

This is an awesome prog-metal band out of Austria. They sound like a mix of Dream Theater and Sonata Arctica - two of my all time favorite bands. So, naturally I think they kick ass.

SERENITY

Thunderstone

Another fantastic Finnish band that I found while browsing LaserCD.com.
They sound similar to Masterplan, one of my favorite bands.

http://www.thunderstone.org/

Crysis Site Live

OFFICIAL CRYSIS WEBSITE

I'm excited about this game. Way back when Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were being hyped beyond reality, a small company named Crytek beat them to market with a game called Far Cry. Far Cry had a little hype, but the actual game exceeded my expectations. By the time Doom 3 came out months later, I was of the opinion that Far Cry was a far better game. Half-Life 2 wasn't even better, in my book.

I think they best thing about Far Cry was that you had a goal for the level, but it was up to you to decide how to achieve it. It was far more open ended than the completely linear Doom 3. You could take a glider down to the beach, jump over the falls, or run down the mountain path to get where you were going, or completely go around the other side of the island to come up behind the enemy. And you could see for miles.

So now Crytek is set to release a game that blows away any other FPS game on the market with incredible graphics and gameplay. Yeah, I'm excited.

Nice try

You might want to learn English before you start telling other people to speak it.

I'm all for making people learn English. I wouldn't move to China and expect them to have English translators for every business just so I could get around, so I don't think people should move here and expect to have their native language spoken to them. But, if you're going to criticize people for not using English, you should probably make sure that you can use it first.

Xbox live funnies

There is almost nothing funnier in this world than a 12 year old kid on Xbox live. Hysterical. I was in tears for an hour listening to this kid and the rest of the servers' reaction to him.

Where can I even begin?

For starters, his name was Nickroxmoms or something very similar. Of course, the only mom he ever rocked was his own as he was being born. No clue about sex, but man did he try hard to convince everyone that he was the expert.

Put the junk in the trunk - he was convinced this was a euphemism for vaginal sex.

Not allowed to have sex until you're 18. Nobody. It's illegal.

Cannot believe they can show vaginas on film. (To which I replied "Kid, there's a whole industry who's business is just showing vaginas on screen.")

And other such fallacies. The best part was, almost everyone else was older and knows better, yet this kid thought he was convincing us his word was the way it was. Priceless.

And to the parents of this kid: WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR 12 YEAR OLD SON DOING PLAYING XBOX AT 1AM AND CURSING LIKE A SAILOR?

Roswell 2007

Apparently the Lt. who issued the press releases on Roswell in 1947 died last year. He left behind a sealed confession. Interesting stuff.

STORY

Sunshine

This movie looks fantastic. I can't wait to see it. Granted, I will probably miss it in theaters, but the theater to DVD conversion is pretty fast these days...

SUNSHINE