Holy Christ, the rapture!

Let me start out by saying that while I believe in God, I despise organized religion. Belief is great. Religion is about controlling people.

Having said that, I think that if you are going to follow a religion, perhaps you should be aware of the basic tenets of your faith. I know, I'm wasting my breath. Christians are one of the most bigoted groups in the world, and they also tend to not believe even their own faith. God is all powerful. Yet they fear Satan may take over. Well, which is it? You either believe God is all powerful, in which case nobody is taking over because ALL POWERFUL means that if Satan looks at him crosseyed ZAP! God snaps his fingers and Satan disappears in a poof of sulfuric ash, or you don't believe it and pray every night that the boogie man won't get you.

Anyway, if you believe in Christianity, God, and the bible, how in the everloving fuck can you believe the world is going to end tomorrow based on same crazy-ass radio DJ's prediction? Let's go to the bible and check it out:
Matthew 24:36 (whichever version you have, it translates to roughly) But of that day and hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

OK, so crazy religious nuts, here's your checklist:

1: Is this radio DJ God? - No.
2: Is this radio DJ a man? - Yes.
3: Is he some crazy ass dipshit flying Wacky Motherfucker Airlines? You betcha.

He's not God, he is a man, and he is crazy. Since only the Father (God) knows when the return is, I guess it isn't happening tomorrow.

So there you have it. The only people that are going to meet God tomorrow are the loony-tunes that show up on my front porch claiming the rapture is happening, or the ones that follow claiming the rapture passed them over and so they're going to loot my house. Those people are going to earn themselves a face-full of 00 buckshot, for Jesus!

RIFT

To start with, I really, really need to never open my mouth and say I don't want to buy something, because every time I do that (Playstation 3, my Jeep, etc...) I end up buying whatever I said I didn't want to buy. I said that I didn't want to buy Rift because I beta tested the game, and it really felt just like World of Warcraft with better graphics. I was playing World of Warcraft with my friends, so paying to play another game just like it seemed silly.

And then Alienware started a contest to win a new laptop by trying the 7 day Rift trial and leveling a character past level 5. I entered the contest and wound up at the level limit of the trial (15). Then I ran out the next day and bought the collectors edition.

You see, Rift is not really just like WoW. It's close enough to feel comfortable, but it adds elements from Everquest 2, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and dozens of other past MMOs. So it feels like an old flame dressed in a hot new outfit. You already know what she is like in a relationship, but damned if you don't have a couple of drinks and wind up in the sack with her anyway.

I've also made the self discovery that I don't like the endgame of most MMOs. I love leveling up and discovering the story and exploring the new areas as they come, but once I hit the level cap and work through most of the content, I don't want to keep doing it over and over forever just to get new gear. I wind up leaving until an expansion or sequel comes out. I've done it with WoW every time I finish an expansion, and I've done it with a bunch of other games. I left WoW recently because I think Blizzard made a mistake and this newest expansion was too short. I finished it, did all of the dungeons a few times, and even raided a bit. Then I burned out. I'm sure Rift is headed to the same fate, but... Oh well. I'll enjoy the ride until then!

Tattoo Designs 2

Tattoo Designs 1

So, I've been coming up with designs for my next tattoo, and I've decided to post some of the designs I rejected on my blog. You know, because they are cool. And stuff.

Right. Here is my first one.

My Alienware Experience - Part 3

So, I've had my new Alienware Aurora R3 for a whole weekend now. I wish I could say that I played the crap out of some games, but the reality is that I spent a good deal of time transferring data from my old PC, loading in programs that I use, loading drivers, and just generally setting things up. I did get to play for a decent amount of time, just not enough to form a solid opinion yet.

My impression so far is that it is a fast system, and it has been very stable. It's fairly quiet. There's always the low humming of a fan, but it's not very noticeable until the GeForce 590 gets hot, and then it can be fairly loud. I play with surround sound speakers on, however, so it's not really an issue except in very quiet moments, and really the only time I have heard the 590 heat up at all is in GTA IV. It has yet to kick in the fan on Fallout: NV, Borderlands, WoW, or COD: Black Ops. We'll see tomorrow whether or not Brink heats it up.

I really like the case and the lighting, but I wish there were more USB ports. That's not Alienware's issue though, as even if they had 50 I would want more. Mouse, keyboard, printer, back up external hard drive, UPS, XBox controller, hey, where did all my rear ports go?

I'll keep pushing it this week and we'll see how it fairs. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm a pessimist, however, so the fact that it worked right out of the box means it has already surpassed my expectations.

Alienware - Pictures

 Man, that's some cool packaging. I can't help but wonder how much they could shave off the cost by using generic boxes, though.

 Inside the Alienware Aurora R3. I like the little alien head on the liquid CPU cooling block.

All hooked up to my 27" Dell Ultrasharp. Notice the lack of bloatware on the desktop.

Alienware - Grand Theft Auto IV

This is a game I picked up a couple of weeks ago when it was on sale on Steam. I was bored, it was cheap, I figured what the hell, at the worst I'll get a few hours of enjoyment out of it while I am waiting for other games to release.
Yeah, I really should have checked into it before buying it.

GTA4 runs like crap on the PC. No matter what settings I chose, the game jerked so bad when I was driving that it literally made me dizzy. I gave up after an hour of trying to fix it because I was about to throw up. It turns out, lots of people have complained about how bad this runs on the PC.

Well, tonight I thought I would try it out again on the new Alienware and see if it was any better.

Holy. Shit.

I can actually play this game now. It looks good, it is completely smooth, and the graphic settings are turned all the way up. Color me impressed. As long as this system doesn't crap out on me during the magic money-back window, I'm sold.