booster182

SUP

2007-12-14T12:58:34Z

spaaaaaaaaaaam

2007-08-13T13:34:40Z

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.

!

2007-06-13T19:38:45Z

......

2007-06-10T12:56:50Z

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

booster182 @ 2007-06-10T00:07:00

2007-06-10T04:19:37Z

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.

meeeeeeeeeep

2007-05-18T02:26:15Z

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.

Wiiiiiii

2007-02-28T11:54:26Z

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

OMG

2007-02-15T17:07:00Z

IM ON UR TABLE STEALIN UR SOUL

Meeeeeeeep

2007-02-14T21:12:19Z

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.

Experiments with Ramen

2007-01-15T22:39:41Z

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.

Bloody hell....

2006-12-12T13:47:37Z

So, I get to work this morning and check on the pre-order I placed over a month ago for the GC version of Twilight Princess, which will be delivered in...February?! Apparently Amazon has a little problem with math, since I put the order in BEFORE they stopped taking them due to supply issues.

And really, Nintendo, I know you all want people to buy the Wii now, but how hard is it to press a decent supply of just one more freaking GC game?

Thankfully, I managed to find a copy at a Best Buy in downtown DC today (12/15), so yay me :)

Meh

2006-12-06T14:10:37Z

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:

Bitch! Zombie's comin' up the hell right now!

2006-10-30T13:24:44Z

Argh

2006-09-21T02:13:37Z

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.

Joy!

2006-09-13T13:08:54Z

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.

sleeeeeeeeep

2006-09-05T15:11:57Z

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 :)

Squee!

2006-08-02T13:18:58Z

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.

booster182 @ 2006-08-01T21:54:00

2006-08-02T01:55:48Z

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

OMG Vodak!!111

2006-07-28T23:57:41Z

Yarr!

2006-07-22T23:39:36Z

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:

Colds suck

2006-07-06T12:47:41Z

Much as in this picture of my cat, I am not amused today. Thankfully I can at least function at work after taking 5 or 6 different medicines.

More adventures in mail-order

2006-06-29T12:55:38Z

So, after my last post on how Futurama is coming back, I decide to finally go ahead and order the DVD box set of seasons 1-4. Wanting to save a little, I hop on Amazon and see a seller (A1Books) in New Jersey with one for $20 less than direct from Amazon, so I go for it. BIG MISTAKE.

I place the order on 6/23. The order status on their site now says it is "Processing". I figure it's no big deal, I ordered it on a Friday morning, surely it'll go out on Monday.

I check Monday - still processing

I check Tuesday - still processing

I check yesterday - still processing. I am now a bit miffed, and start looking into the website a bit more.

First, there is no public phone number whatsoever to contact them. Then, turns out that the DVDs will take 5 business days to "process" and ship, not the 1-2 that was clearly on their Amazon listing. I find my order status, where there is a message saying that the order was (suprise) delayed slightly, and that I can cancel it and get a full refund - the button to cancel does nothing, and just returns me back to the order status screen with no changes. Another part of the status section says I cannot cancel the order, and a third part presents a second non-working button to cancel the order.

I write emails both to the seller and Amazon.

Amazon comes back saying that (if the item doesn't show up) basically i'm stuck waiting 3 weeks before I can get my money back.

The seller sends back a detail-free message (obviously from a customer service drone in India) at 2:08 AM this morning, copy & pasting text from the order screen saying that my item is in some kind of nebulous fulfillment process from which it is impossible to get a cancellation or refund. So....At this point, I have no firm idea whatsoever whether my DVDs are shipped, not shipped, not even pulled yet. etc.

Moral of this story: AVOID A1BOOKS.COM LIKE THE PLAGUE.

They seem to have no problem taking your money immediately, but so far seem to have no concept of fast service or customer service at all.

Good news, everyone!

2006-06-23T12:27:29Z

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/06/22/new-episodes-of-futurama-coming-to-comedy-central-for-real/

W00t W00t W00t

Found while wandering the Internet

2006-06-21T13:55:52Z

For some reason this morning I was searching for info on an old candy I remembered from about 10 years ago, named Warheads

Came across a rather funny review of Mega Warheads -

Of course you're thinking, as I thought, "This is all hype." It isn't. Not your advanced reasoning skills, not your snide semi-maturity, not even your Valium prescription or a handful of Prozac can ameliorate the waves of soul-searing existential agony that will wrack your body if you're stupid enough (as I was) to put one of these motherfuckers in your mouth. You will thrash on the floor wailing your despair unto creation like William Shatner on four lines of cocaine. For those 50 seconds, you will hate life.

Having a Mega Warhead on your tongue is like eating a heaping spoonful of fresh monkey vomit pureed in a Cuisinart with a cup and a half of sulfuric acid, a squirt of tear gas and a healthy dose of Uranium 235. When I was eating a Mega Warhead, my hair literally stood on end (I didn't even know it could really do that). It was all I could do not to scream and weep and babble incoherently -- well, not any more than usual, anyway.

The 50-second mark is significant because that's about the point at which the enriched Uranium coating of the candy is gone, and you get an agreeable rush of sweet taste that seems like the most wonderful thing on the planet. In fact, eating a Mega Warhead is a useful tool because from that point on, everything else you experience in your entire life -- bone cancer, say, or getting thrown through the windshield of an Acura while being devoured by the flesh-eating bacteria and suffering a bleed-out from the late stages of Ebola Zaire -- will seem great by comparison.

I swear I can remember having a grape hot flavor as well, along with the lemon and apple sours, but they don't seem to sell that particular flavor anymore. Probably what boosted my tolerance for hot sauces - I can remember being sure they had to be dangerous somehow, they were just so strong.

WTF?

2006-06-16T15:20:14Z

How can someone be this mind-bendingly stupid, yet still manage to get elected to public office?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/06/15.html#a8728

Stephen Colbert: You have not introduced a single piece of legislation since you entered Congress.

Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA): That's correct.

Colbert: This has been called a do nothing Congress. Is it safe to say you're the do nothingest?

Westmoreland: I, I, ..Well there's one other do nothiner. I don't know who that is, but they're a Democrat.

Colbert: What can we get rid of to balance the budget?

Westmoreland: The Dept. of Education.

Colbert: What are the Ten Commandments?

Westmoreland: You mean all of them?--Um... Don't murder. Don't lie. Don't steal Um... I can't name them all.

Note that this waste of oxygen co-sponsored a bill that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in the Senate chamber and hall of the House of Representatives.