Caltrops - Deleted Posts





	[quote name="Fussbett"]JUNK II I overheard the two 30-ish women in front of me in the cashier lineup talking. One of them remarked that she didn't know who it was or who told her, but someone named their baby "Nevaeh" which is heaven spelled backwards. As a (rage-filled) watcher of MTV Cribs, I knew that this was the singer in sports metal God band P.O.D. who named his baby backwards heaven. I then began to yawn (in my head) and chastize them for having such a routine and dated conversation. Wow, celebrities name their babies weird things. Didn't they get the memo that the world is now reeling about Apple and Coco? And why is no one constantly laughing at Jayson Williams' son "Wizdom"? I mean that shit is hilarious. Oh yeah, fear of being murdered. The woman ended her thought: "<b>Neveah... That's so beautiful. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right though.</b>" Well that blew my mind like so much windmills. I had to quickly switch my initial eyerolling to and entirely new brand of wider eyerolling (and in a different direction). That's so beautiful. It's fucking backwards. My (totally superior) mind didn't even touch on the fact that spelling a word backwards clearly implies it's the opposite meaning now. My spam count is now at over 300 a day easily. American Chopper is potentially a great TV show, absolutely marred by the scripted voice overs, scripted interviews and manufactured situations. JUST LET THEM TALK AND EDIT IT. A tasteless family making custom choppers is inherently interesting. The youngest fuckup son put an airbrushed Ween Boognish on the gastank of his custom bike. I upgraded to 3D Studio Max 6 and during a visit to a tech forum in search of an answer for a problem, I was horrified to see how far out of the loop I am on the new rendering systems. Mental Ray is an entire language of it's own. Shaders, HDRI maps, caustics, final gather, and apparently some of the variables are measured in photons. "Set the global illumination to 10000 photons". Scary. Speaking of upgrading, the answer to my IE problems turned out to be the dreaded Windows 2000 re-install. My problems wouldn't go away, and I eventually noticed that the brief hangs were rooted not in IE but in Windows Explorer itself. Displaying a drive's contents would sometimes hang for 3 seconds. My re-installs are dreaded because unlike everyone else I can't re-install Windows 2000/XP and this was no exception. I got a BSoD in the same spot, preventing progress in any way, and forcing me to a new C: drive altogether. The first week after a fresh install is brutal. "I'll just burn a CD real quick. Oh, no software installed." It's not like I'm switching to NetBSD like a CRAZY PERSON, but the extra 10 minutes each task requires is annoying as fuck. I had a weird near-choking experience today. The piece of Peppercorn New Yorker steak was lodged in my throat -- BUT -- below my windpipe. So this meant that I could breathe and speak, but I was indescribably uncomfortable, I couldn't continue eating, and taking a sip of Pepsi made me almost puke, almost choke. I had dinner companions, and I tried to look cool for a while "Oh yeah, just resting for a bit", but soon had to come out with the truth "I think I've gotta go vomit". I paced the washroom for a minute and felt a "pop" in my throat as the food "cleared" the narrow portion and I felt instantly better. I was mostly relieved not of living, but that I didn't have to make a scene, what with the Heimliching and "I'm a doctor!" and general panic and attention. This weak ending to the tale is why it ends up buried in the middle of "Junk II". I found my old Polaroid One Step camera in perfect condition in my Dad's basement. I decided to sell it on eBay. That's what people do, right? So it sat in my backseat for a week, and then on my desk for another. Then I looked up Polaroid One Step in eBay and pushed the thing right into the trashcan. I read the Sandman trade "A Game of You" and I liked it. Then I read "Seasons of Mist" and I liked it more. What's the next Sandman I should get? I also read The Forever War are liked most of it except for one HORRIBLE detail at the ending. Or should I say "lack of detail". HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILER: <font color="#000000">Clone to clone communication facilitates the talks with the Taurans which thus ends the war. Our protagonist asks for elaboration. "...he said I couldn't understand it. There were no words for it, and my brain wouldn't be able to accomodate the concepts even if there were words." What a fucking cop out. A thousand year, 215 page war, and it ends with the author dancing out of a sufficient ending to the conflict by telling us we wouldn't understand the ending. RIP OFF.</font> In a way I wish Clive Barker wrote this novel so that it would be 800 pages and truly feel Forever. A pro and con of the novel is that for a Forever War, it sure zips along. I'm always shocked at how often I discover Aliens being inspired by some old sci-fi novel, and I'm also shocked with how often sci-fi writers think the CLOSE future will be unrecognizable. Written in 1974, the book has humans almost putting an end to war, and exploring new galaxies by 1991. Here's my prediction of 20 years from now: still war, no flying cars, better graphics, more spam. Speaking of war, some good Iraq analogies by the end, even though the book is really anti-Vietnam. Dvorak comes out against the Xbox: <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1608007,00.asp">http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1608007,00.asp</a> [quote]The 3DO machine was the first 32-bit console; there were great games for it and it had powerful underpinnings. Its $700 price tag was probably the main thing that killed it, but it also suffered from the same problem that the Microsoft Xbox has suffered from: high-expectation syndrome. This is the killer problem, and I think it can be argued that high-expectation syndrome was partially responsible for the deaths of both the 3DO machine and Sega. It definitely plays into the Xbox story. A year before the Xbox was released, the buzz had begun. People were extolling the virtues of the thing sight unseen.[/quote] ...which didn't happen with the PS2. Or any console ever (Jaguar excluded). [quote]Compare this rollout to the original Sony PlayStation 1's debut. There was little hoopla surrounding the Sony device.[/quote] ...to YOU, John Dvorak, who surely kept tabs on the console industry back then. Sega hastily adding 3D chips to their Saturn late in the dev cycle out of FEAR = no hoopla. [quote]Pulling the plug on the platform would be a huge blow to the company. So I expect to see one more round of fighting. We will see an Xbox II. Whether it fulfills Microsoft's dream or becomes a collector's item remains to be seen. [/quote] Wow. Dvorak predicting the Xbox II, already acknowledged as the "Xbox Next" for which developers are already creating games RIGHT NOW anticipating a 2005 or 2006 release. What a sage.[/quote]