So, today's fun tidbit seems to be that my address is being spoofed by someone phishing with a fake UK lottery email, with the result that i'm getting about 2-3 failed delivery messages per second on my Gmail. Thanks to auto-filtering they're all going directly to trash, but still rather annoying.

This is both hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/9/105322/6744

WTF?

Really, words fail me. I have relatives in Kentucky, but thankfully they're not stupid enough to fall for this sort of insanity.

In other news, my Pokemon (Diamond) collection proceeds well, i'm up to 258 seen now. Time to start putting together my team(s) for when Pokemon Battle Revolution comes out with more online play next month. So far it's Ninetales, Flygon, Jolteon, Ninjask, Scyther, and one yet to be determined.

Every RPG should have a midget who, upon being granted access to magic, immediately starts referring to all the other characters and NPCs as his personal slaves :) Hopefully i'm not the only one who played the whole game just sorta murdering everything with the Sprite and almost ignoring the other two.

My Wii number is 1671 8220 7331 8347 - go forth and send me things, random people :)

                                             IM ON UR TABLE STEALIN UR SOUL

So, i'm still trying to get a Wii (just the basic console box, not a huge bundle) at the moment - 

If any of you kind souls reading this happens to be able to acquire one and would be willing to sell it, let me know. I'll pay you the retail cost, plus shipping, plus gas money or money to get a pizza or whatever.

As the subject says, i've been inspired to fool around with some ramen recipies lately, and I tried something for lunch today -


1 brick of cooked and drained ramen noodles (leave out the flavor packet)

mixed with

1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon salted natural peanut butter
1 teaspoon sugar (Splenda, in my case)
sprinkling of dry crushed red pepper flakes
a dash of "Rooster Sauce"



Came out with a very edible Thai-peanut sauce-like flavor, though not as spicy as I would have liked. The original recipe I was loosely following also called for a tablespoon of chicken broth and regular soy sauce instead of reduced-sodium, so i'm not sure how that would turn out. Just need to use a slightly more intense hot sauce/oil, but not with enough flavor to overwhelm the peanut taste...And I could definately see making this again.

Not much going on lately. Noticed one of my car's headlights is burned out for the umpteenth time this morning, so off to Autozone this weekend before we have to drive to New York for Christmas. Also, Twlight Princess comes out for the Gamecube next week, so that will be spiffy.

Anyway, here are a couple cute pictures of our cats to pass some time with:

 

Well, i'm probably several years late compared to everyone else, but I just started downloading and watching episodes of Stargate SG-1 with ceribabe, and I find them to be very well done so far (about halfway through the first season).

Of course, just as I get into it, I find out they're not making new episodes (yet) after this season, but oh well. In a few weeks i'll have DVD rips of all 9 seasons and half of the 10th downloaded, and that'll provide entertainment for quite a while....To say nothing of Stargate Atlantis, which I reserve judgement on so far, having only seen one episode.

You must pre-order this immediately. One of the few 80's era anime's I can actually stand watching....Even though i'm old enough to recognize the cheese now, there's just enough seriousness to balance it out and make it very palatable. Now if I could only hunt down the 3-foot metal Voltron I used to have....

In other news, the neighbors a couple floors up have been tossing used cigarettes over their balcony for the last week....They and the owner they're renting from have been un-responsive to say the least, but i've gotten the condo association to promise to send $50 fines to the owner everytime I report an incident and provide a picture *hugs digital camera*. 

Should get the owner's attention real fast once those start mounting up - the lady tried to claim that her son/daughter and their friends smoke, but always use an ashtray....That didn't hold up long considering i've taken about 25 photos showing the mess before the management contacted them. In my opinion they're getting off way too easy, as I could technically try to have them nailed with a misdemeanor conviction and a minimum $250 fine under the state litter control laws.

So, we're finally (mostly) finished moving, and the cats aren't being too mean to eachother, so things are pretty good aside from needing more sleep. The new place is bigger, with nicer neighbors, and a better location, not to mention no employees of a sprawling corrupt management company to deal with.

In other news, I finally got Disgaea 2 back on last Tuesday after hunting through 4 different stores, and it's excellent so far. I'm in chapter 11 at the moment, which is likely close to the end of the game, but being the series it is, i've barely scratched the surface - I still haven't finished quite everything in the previous Disgaea, for that matter. 

I also picked up a used copy of Radiata Stories at the same time on a whim, but i've only played that about an hour or so while I waited for pizza delivery to come - so far the combat system seems like a stripped-down version of Star Ocean 3, and it's rather bland during the beginning as seems typical with other games based in a medieval-kingdom-military setting like SaGa Frontier. 

Also, Sherry and I have been trying out City of Heroes lately, thanks to a free trial from sharnjilraedan. It's the first time i've really played a graphical multiplayer RPG, and it's been a pretty good time, but I think we'll be giving Guild Wars a try in a week or two instead of subscribing...Besides the fee itself, CoH is a bit stripped-down for my tastes as far as skills and such go, and doesn't (at least without a lot more leveling up) seem to offer much more than "find bad guys, use attacks, wait for recharge, attack, repeat till dead" or missions along the lines of "find building X in zone Y, kill anything that moves inside, return to contact for piddly reward". At least with Guild Wars (and Aardwolf, for that matter) there's a bigger variety of skills, along with equipment to use and a slightly easier time leveling - and if it's boring, at least we're not paying a fee every month :)

Finally got to order components for a new system last night:






Pentium 4-775 barebones system from MonarchComputer.com -

Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet case w/450W power supply
Intel D945GNTLKR motherboard
Intel Celeron D 351 3.20GHz 533 FSB 256K
Thermaltake 120mm extra case fan

and

ASUS Geforce 7600GS 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
Crucial RAM 2 GB dual-channel kit, DDR2 667
Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
SAMSUNG 16X DVD±R DVD Burner
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS sound card
SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive



Yeah, the CPU is cheap, but it's still about a bajillion times faster than my old P3 667MHz. Additions in the future will probably include another 2GB dual-channel kit of RAM, a fan for the graphics card slot, and another hard drive or two...More RAM and a better video card in
ceribabe's system will probably come first though.

It's almost 10 PM, and it's still 90 degrees with a heat index of 98. WTF.

Today's Moment of Zen, brought to you by Edgar:









And before someone asks, yep, I am playing through it again :) The below was right before I got the new airship in the WoR, and the above after I immediately flew to Narshe to get Mog back: