Because I Rant

I am trying to post more

2009-01-24T20:15:00.001-05:00

I made a goal a few months ago to try and resurrect my blog but currently I am failing mainly because I am focused on my grad school application which have taken up the majority of my free time. Check back over then next few weeks, I should be back to posting more frequently.

Santa and Me

2008-12-17T23:27:00.001-05:00

So I am not a father yet but, my Wife and I have been discussing having kids over the last few months. So this time of year got me thinking about what I will tell my kids about Santa. I am an Atheist and my wife is a little more on the fence when it comes to religion and god. With all our talk about having kids I was thinking the other day what will I tell them about Santa Claus and the story of Christmas. I can't ignore the holiday it is just to much a part of society and my family, to not deal with it. I have a few ideas as to how I want to handle Christmas, but it would not be just my kids effected by my decisions. All the kids they know at school would also be subject to my opinions and actions through my kids, and the last thing I would want is to piss off an evangelical mother (done it before, don't want to do it again).

This is such a touchy subject as a atheist living in America. Many people view us as a horrible group who have nothing better to do then get mad over the smallest mention of god. So I am looking for input from other as to how to handle this situation.

Now lying to my kids I have issues with. However, at the same time, I don’t want my kid tell all the other pre-school kids or their kindergarten class that Santa is not real and ending up with a bunch of angry phone calls. So I am not sure how to handle this part yet. I think I will deal with this by leaving the interpretation of the reality of Santa up to them. Leaving the story ambiguous enough for them to try and draw their own conclusions and let the little imagination take control. I know by second grade though I was 90% sure Santa was not real and I had folks who use to ring bells in the middle of the night to make us think he was in the house unpacking gifts. So this is something that I will not have to deal with for too long.

Next would be the story of Christmas. Now the Santa story is free enough from the Jesus birth story that I can easily separate the two explaining to my kids that Santa is/was a man that gives/gave presents to good children and we celebrate this on December 25th. And later when they are older and more able to understand explain the Jesus story and why it is tied to Christmas, and where I stand on organized religion.

My biggest goal in all of this is to allow my kids to live a normal life without sacrificing my beliefs or their childhood in the process. I don’t want my kids when they are older to feel like I took something from them growing up.

Centro CNY

2008-12-08T23:27:00.001-05:00

Well since pownce.com is closing down on the 15th I think I will resurrect this blog. I also believe I am going to revamp the blog and get away from the whole bitch and moan direction this started out in and maybe make it a credible blog that contributes to the web in some way. Perhaps even post on a regular schedule or at lease more frequently then once every few months or once a year.

But before I do that one more rant. Then I promise to clean up my ways. This is a good one I promise. So Thursday I was going to take a Centro bus into work early because I had a timed experiment that I needed to be ready to work on at 7am so I go outside to catch the 6:11 Bus from by my house to work. Well 6:20 roles around and no bus. Thinking I got the time wrong I walk back to my house to check the website to make sure I was right. Well I was but I also checked and saw the next bus comes at 6:35 so afraid I was late getting to the bus stop I go back outside again to try and catch the new bus at 6:27. By 6:50 I still have not seen a bus and now worried that I will ruin my experiment I go to my car and drive in and pay for parking at the garage $20 for the day. I was also 20minutes late to get started, but the experiment works so I was happy about that. Now I chalked this up to a bad day maybe the bus was just running behind or something, I really thought nothing of it till today.

Again I was going to take the Bus into work. My carpool was either on vacation or just not working today so I figured I would take the bus. So I again check the website this morning for the bus times and find one at 7:39 that picks up by my house and still not sure if the bus was early or late on Thursday I went out at 7:25. Now it was 6 degrees this morning. And waiting at the stop I was freezing. But I stood there till 7:50 waiting for the bus but nothing. When I finally gave up because I could no longer feel my ears I had to scramble to find a ride in.

Once at work I called Centro concerned that the bus was no longer passing by my house in the morning and the website had not been updated yet. What I was told however was that the bus was still running and that it is usually running 10 to 15 minutes late. Now this is an express bus and I am trying to pick it up at the second stop so I can only imagine how bad it must be at later stops. What gets me the most about this though is if they know the bus is regularly behind 10 to 15 minutes why do they not just fix the schedule to reflect that so that I am not stuck outside for 25minutes wondering where the bus I was trying to catch was. Or am I just crazy.

Black Friday Eve

2007-11-22T20:44:00.001-05:00

So everyone has their Thanksgiving traditions. One my fiancee and myself have started over the past few years is to go out after dinner for a drive and look at all the lines of people outside stores for the sales on Friday. Now if we live in Syracuse,NY so it is not like California or Florida where people could hangout outside stores in a sweatshirt and be fine overnight. No it is 30 degrees out and snowing yet there are still lines at 7pm all over town for the deals tomorrow. However looking at the deals online I really don't see anything that would make me want to stand in line for 12hours in the Syracuse cold to buy a tv, or any other product that they might be selling. But that does not mean I will not drive by the people willing to do that and laugh. If there is a hell I am sure I am going there.

Ways Apple keeps pissing me off

2007-11-12T23:40:00.001-05:00

So my fiancee has an iPod, and it seems like every other week dam itunes wants to upgrade. which would not be so bad except that when it upgrades apple feels that it does not want to follow the original installation which made it so it would only appear on her desktop and in her start menu but rather it upgrades and installs across both of our desktops. So I keep having to delete icons off my desktop and I gave up on removing it from my start menu round about the third week in a row it upgraded. I mean I got better things to do with my time then deal with apple's inability to fix a simple little program the first time. But if that is not bad enough apple also force installs QuickTime with itunes, which is a whole other issue, because now I need to go and turn off all the god dam QuickTime junk after every upgrade which as I mentioned earlier is almost every week.

F the RIAA

2007-10-06T00:22:00.001-04:00

So today the first of 26,000 court cases involving the RIAA and individuals who the RIAA has in someway found out are "sharing music" had its verdict handed out after only 5hours of deliberation. The first victim was a single mother of 2 who shared a grand total of 24 songs online was found guilty of copyright infringement. Yes 24 songs, she did this using Kazza. Apparently she had more songs on her computer most of which she had ripped form her own cd's so they were not in the same shared folder as the Kazza songs. Which for her was a good thing since it was decide that she would have to pay more then $9,000 a song. You can find more here. Yah forget about the giant counterfeit rings over in China and such, this women with her 24 songs is the real evil one.

And with all that is going on now with the Media Defenders and Pirate Bay through the leaked e-mails, show how MD was trying to gather information on people who we illegally downloading movies on-line by setting up their own site. It is discussing what these companies think they can do. I would not be surprised if this is how the RIAA got most of the people on its list.

I use to buy lots of CD's I got my first job so I could go out and buy CD's. But now I just can not bring my self to purchase a CD. Because beyond the fact that the artist might only get $0.01 of the $13+ dollars I would have spent on that CD. I know the majority of the money will go to fuel the RIAA war machine. And I just can not bring myself to do that, so I am now into the indy music scene and smaller independent record labels that are not affiliated with the RIAA.

The other day I heard about this. While I am not a fan of Radiohead, I am going to buy their new album in hopes that it inspires more bands to do the same and help bring about the downfall of the music industry, because they need to be stopped. Here is a link to where you can buy the album and fight the RIAA and show all the other bands out there that they do not need to be apart of a record industry to be successful.

I hate the X-Box 360

2007-10-03T22:53:00.001-04:00

There are allot of things in the world that I dislike, the Boston Redsox, Tom Brady, Tony Romo, UConn and G-Town (Go Orange!!) But there are only a few things I truly hate. And right now one of the tops on my list is the X-Box 360.

I have never like the 360 or the original x-box for that matter. The whole pay for on-line play is always a big sticking point with me. But the 360 has gone farther, with its pay for content you already purchased,to the general level of gamers who play the 360 on-line. I mean you can go into any online game and the combined IQ of all the players is less than 100. Truly now the system was aimed at frat boys and 12 year olds. And all the games reflect that. There is not one decent game for the system. FPS do not count, they are all to short, and all the same. And they are the only games that ever come out for the 360.

Now we have Halo 3. And truly this whole 360's out selling Wii's because of Halo 3 bull shit is pissing me off. The only reason they are outselling the Wii is because all the 360's bricked this week and so all the frat boys need to go out and spend their daddies money to get a new one so that they can play Halo. And then what gets me is all the rave reviews of Halo 3 has been getting even though everyone agrees that the single player sucks. So on top of the $60 you need to shell out for the game you now need to go ahead and spend an extra $20 a month to play the multi-player version of the game, which is supposedly the better part of the game; But knowing the level of the intellect of the kids who play on-line. I can't see how listening to a bunch of 12 year olds scream into their head sets about how they are all having sex with each others moms and how all the others are gay could make a game amazing.

I do love Zero Punctuation's review of the game.

Cuse Win!!! Cuse Win!!!

2007-09-27T23:18:00.001-04:00

What a win, It was incredible. Syracuse 38 L'ville 35. We were 36.5 point underdogs and we had the lead 21-7 at the half and at one point we were up 38-21 with 8min to go in the 4th quarter. I am so glad I got to see the 2nd half. I can not wait to see them play West Virginia in the Dome on 10/6. I hope we can fill the loud House for that game.

The Code

2007-05-01T21:23:00.001-04:00

So today I have been chasing one story around the web. (insert standard someone is gay joke here) Yesterday someone hacked the HD-DVD hexadecimal unlocking code and began to spread it all over the web. And today the DMCA has spent the majority of its day serving websites and people notices to take down the code. All this has done is make more and more people jump to the cause of spreading the code posting it to sites like Digg.com or creating blogs for the sole purpose of sharing the code. I have not been able to go anywhere on the net today (other then here) without hearing about this story and getting request to help spread the code. Then tonight I came across this story: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/05/01/hd-dvd-key-fiasco-is-an-example-of-21st-century-digital-revolt/
talking about the whole situation and the response from the anti-DRM crowed. one of my favorite things done was this: http://www.cafepress.com/09f9 where they are selling items with the code on them.

Now I am sure most if not everyone here knows my stance on the whole DRM issue to begin with. That is not why I am posting this here. I have posted this to get other opinions on how this whole situation has been handled by both sides involved. While I understand the implication the leaking of this code has on the industry. I do think that they were setting themselves up for this by implementing the code in the first place, and this is the backlash that they will receive every time they create and release a new HD-DVD lock code. I personally think the best way to deal with this would be to let it stay in the dark corners of the web where it was being spread originally. The majority of the net had no clue this code had been hacked till people started to spread the code to get ahead of the DMCA.

My two cats

2007-04-23T13:57:00.000-04:00

Well they are really my fiancees cats, but since we are getting married here they will soon be my as well. Last night I went to bed around 12pm. At first I could not fall asleep, but it only got worse as I could here the two cats running around our apartment scratching things and doing stuff I know they shouldn't. I tried to ignore this and just go to sleep but those two little shits just kept making noise, and pounding around the apartment. Finally around 1am I got up because I could here one of them doing something and I knew it could not be good. There in the kitchen I found Fay standing on top of her litter box and paws stretched out to the garbage can trying to get at something inside. When she saw me she got scared, knocked over the garbage can and ran out of the room where she knocked over a light in the living room. I was not thrilled and was up till about 1:30 cleaning up after her. When I finally tried to go back to bed I found that in my absence my fiancee had moved into the middle of the bed and I had no where to sleep. Not wanting to wake her up I grabbed my pillow and went out to the coach where I was going to sleep. However both cats chose this as the moment when they wanted me to pet and play with them. Not the last 16 hours I have been up, but rather 2am and I had the two of them climbing on me and licking me and crying at me. Finally I just ignored them covered my head with a blanket and finally got to sleep some time after 2am. So today I am exhausted and if we have a repeat of last night again I will drive the two of them far far away and leave them there.

Lets all blame video games

2007-04-18T11:36:00.000-04:00

So Monday around 9am a shooter killed 32 people at Virgina Tech. Also on Monday around 10am people came out and blamed video games for this travesty. WE DID NOT EVEN KNOW WHO THE SHOOTER WAS YET and people said it was video games fault. Fuck you Dr. Phil! Now it is easy to blame video games for this travesty, there are numerous studies out there stating that video game violence is linked to real violence. Now I think this is a load of crap while my fiancee believes these studies. So as with any subject that we are divided on we spent a good hour or so last night debating this issue. Now she is a psychologist, so I am already at a disadvantage in the argument because we were on her home turf and I am fighting an up hill battle. I mean all she needs to do is bring up one of these studies and I lose. Not one to lose gracefully Today I have spent the better part of an hour looking up these studies to see what they actually say, and how they are preformed. While reading this paper "Video games and real-life aggression: review of the literature." I was shocked to see all the information that we are not told about these experiments.

Allot of the papers that are commonly cited by people as showing that video games violence can cause real violence; here use the testers observations as the means of determining the effects of video game violence on the subjects. And people are never bias.....never.

The age ranges that are used for allot of the papers that show any consistent correlation are that of kids between the ages of 4-7 now I don't need to tell anyone who has a kid or has worked with kids in this age range that they don't need anything to help them become "aggressive". One study had kids play either a karate game or a jungle vine swinging game. Then they were put in a room with jungle toys and a bobo punching toy that was dressed in a karate suit. Its findings showed that the kids who played the jungle vine game played with the jungle toys while the kids who played the karate game played "aggressively" as the put it with the doll dress in the karate outfit. To me all this says is these kids remembered what game they just played.

Adults studied appeared to have no real definitive relationship between violent games and violent acts. The only group that they could make real claims about was that known delinquents had a preference for violent games.

Another article reported that kids showed less empathy towards video game violence then real violence and movie violence. And they believed this was a problem...........So kids know that video game violence is not real..............i am missing the problem.

All I am saying is that people should not blindly blame video games for the violence in school. I guess the real problem here is that people need something to blame, since Demons,TV, and Music have all ruled out as a possibility the next logical step would be video games; Not society.

Porn Blogs

2007-04-17T10:17:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I have been using blogspot now for a little less then a week. For the most part I do enjoy the service, it is relatively easy to use and it allows me to do what I want to do. Now one thing I do enjoy doing on here is clicking the next blog button on the top of the page and just looking at other peoples blogs. What I don't like is clicking the next blog button and getting porn. I am not saying porn is bad. Like most people I to have looked at porn, I have no problem with it. My real problem with it is that when I hit that next blog button and I get a porn site while at here at work. I could care less if people want to post porn on their blogs I just want to make sure it does not come up in my random browsing of the bloggasphear while I am at work. And the most annoying part is that I never get those sites at home while browsing the blogs; It is only here at work where I truly do mind if one appears on the computer and it seems like every other blog that comes up is a pron blog. I just get tired of having to be ready to slam the back button all the time.
Now recently legislation was brought forward to create a .xxx domain for porn and to have all porn sites moved to the is domain. However, and this is the crazy part, the religious groups in America are trying to stop this because they feel (and this is what I have been told) "it will give legitimacy to the porn industry" I am sorry they are talking about and industry that rivals most major film companies, I don't think they are really that underground anymore. And I applaud the adult film industry for wanting to take these steps. By doing this parents will be able to better monitor and control what their children are exposed to on the internet. Now I don't believe this is the end all be all for regulating porn on the internet but I think it is a big step and it just baffles the mind why anyone is against this idea. But then again their are allot of uptight idiots in America who don't believe porn should be allowed on the internet at all.

My Computer

2007-04-16T11:10:00.000-04:00

So last Thursday the fan on my CPU started to make a grinding noise. I got figured it was due to dust buildup in the case so I opened it up got out a can of compressed air and blew the dust out. I restarted the machine to only find that the sound was still there. So I turned it off again and this time pulled the fan entirely off the processor to clean it separate from the rest of the machine. After I felt I had cleaned the fan out sufficiently I replaced it again only to find that it still sounded like a I had a meat grinder in my tower.
Now my computer is the Frankenstein's Monster of computers. I got the original tower when I went off to college as a graduation gift from my parents and grandparents. My mom who bought me the computer was lied to and swindled by the company she bought it from. Now I went to college in 2001. The computer I got had windows 95 on it, a no name processor, 64mb or ram, and no modem or LAN card. oh and a 5gig hard drive. My mother told me she paid over $1,000 for it. So over the years since I was a college student with no money I have been "fixing" this computer whenever I can get my hands on old parts from friends and co-workers who happen to have a computer that they no longer want. I have been able to switch cases once before about 2 years ago and I have picked up 2 new hard drives, I have purchase and acquired new RAM as well as video cards and network cards. But now with this fan starting to fail I am thinking it is time now for me to lay this beast to rest.
I would like to finally have a machine that is not 5 years behind the latest technology. However if I have gotten one thing out of working on my Frankenstein machine it is this; I can build my own computer. So now the dilemma I have is purchase a tower and build a PC from scratch for around $350 for the tower and then add vista $150 and Update Word for another $100 making my build my own machine cost me $600 or just go out and buy one from Best Buy for like $900 with a monitor. Now while either machine would do what I want I think I am leaning to building my own, because beyond the starting cost of buying the parts I need the software could be picked up over time.

Super Paper Mario!

2007-04-13T10:20:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have been playing this game since Tuesday and I have to say it is great. The controls are simple and easy to use. The story line is funny and immersing. They have lots of little jokes tossed in all throughout the game. I love the mix of both 2D and 3D elements in the game, along with the new story line. I mean I love beating Bowser but after a while the same story line gets old so the new baddy to fight is fun. One of the cool things too is the flash back to the old school Mario games. with the old Mario when you get a star to old level design elements (the whole world 1-2 is in the game.)

If you have a wii and have not picked up this game you should it is a blast.

Open letter to Al Sharpton

2007-04-12T09:48:00.000-04:00

Al:

Please GROW A PAIR! I mean is your only joy in life ruining other peoples. The only time I ever hear your name come up is when your bitching about someone else mistake. Now Imus made a bad call using the word nappy when he described the Rutgers basketball team. And he has apologized for that and they have accepted that apology from my understanding. But you had to go ahead and throw yourself into the story and bitch and moan about how horrible and disrespectful Imus is being towards black women. He made a comment about the Rutgers basketball team, not about you. You have no business getting involved in the conversation. I believe you are just looking for another 15minutes of fame, I mean for once Al I would like to see you on the news doing something other then whining about another person or group. I think Al you yourself our one of the biggest embarrassments of the black community. So in closing Al either grow a pair or shut the fuck up.

My Neighbor

2007-04-11T12:01:00.000-04:00

So I live in a apartment building. Now I share a wall with another apartment, and my problem is ever since Christmas my neighbor has been playing music rather loudly at all hours, I have tried to resolve this peacefully by going over and knocking on their door but they will not answer. I have knocked on the wall. Finally after one night of this asshole playing his music till 1AM I went and spoke with the apartment complex they supposed sent him a letter and the music did stop for a short while. But then Sunday morning at 8AM I was greeted with this fuckers sub-woofer. Now I can not really hear the words from his stereo so much as watch the base shake my wall. So I have called the apartment complex again and have reported him again. I truly do not understand what would posses this guy to think he can turn his sub woofer up in an apartment complex and not be heard in the surrounding apartments. Then again this same guy lit his deck on fire with a candle he forgot to blow out on night. So I am not dealing with all that smart an individual I guess.

Nobody will read this!

2007-04-10T11:21:00.000-04:00

So I have just created a blog. I have no need for one, my life really is not that interesting. The point of this is more so that I can rant to somebody (really nobody) about all the happenings in my life at home or work. So today's rant is more about why I both need and don't need this. I am a 23 year old male engaged to be married, when, we have not set a date partially because we are paying for it ourselves and do not have the money to afford a wedding right now (go college loans). Also because my beautiful wife to be can not make up her mind on where she wants to have the wedding. On top of that I work in a research lab with small but fun group of students and post docs. I swear some days this lab could be a TV series the way things go around here. My mom has had to breast cancer twice and is currently being treated for thyroid cancer. She is one of the greatest inspirations to me. She ran a marathon while receiving chemo for her second round of breast Cancer; so I can never say anything is to hard. I am a geek with the standard geek hobbies video games, searching the Internet for the most useless stuff it can provide. oh and I play warhammer 40,000, it is a table top miniatures game allot of fun. But my fiance does not seem to share my enthusiasm for this hobby and it causes allot of arguments. My faience is both my biggest stress and stress relief. That is why I started this to give me some where else to turn when She is pissing me off. So if you (really nobody) want a good laugh every now and then please just check it out from time to time. Like I had said earlier I really do not need this for the same reasons I think allot of people have blogs this is more or less I place for me to vent and others to get a good laugh because well sometimes other peoples problems are just funny.