CNN.com – Georgia bride-to-be fabricated abduction story – Apr 30, 2005

We’ve got a couple of montiors tuned to various news channels at work. This story has been on them, of course.

I make note of it only because of how frequently I overheard people say “The fiance definitely killed her.” The guy was convicted in the court of public opinion before he was even charged with anything!

(And I don’t mean to come off sounding holier-than-though…the thought crossed my mind, too. And I had something even meaner to say about the whole situation based on her pop-eyes…)

Every so often something happens to restore your faith in mankind…

Yesterday my S.O. managed to lose her laptop. She’d had it at her mom’s house, where she and the kids were visiting, and somehow it never got home. Much frantic searching ensued. Her mom searched her house, my S.O. searched hers. Nothing.

Where could it have gone? No one had a clue.

And then she got an email. Turns out a letter-carrier had found it in the street. SO had dropped the kids off at their dad’s on the way home and I guess in the chaos of transition, 2 kids AND 1 laptop tumbled out of the car. And no one noticed.

Said letter carrier took the laptop home with her, turned it on, find SO’s email address and emailed her with a phone number. And this morning the laptop was returned safe and sound.

Now how cool is that? It would’ve been such an easy thing to sell on eBay. Or the letter carrier could’ve just taken it back to the post office and left it in lost and found. But instead she went the extra step and found the rightful owner and returned it. Very cool indeed.

I make a decent wage, but back in my youth I was just really, really stupid. At one point I was carrying around close to $40K in credit card debt. I should’ve just declared bankruptcy back when that was so easy to do, but my mom’s dirt-farmer/fisherfolk work ethic was too deeply ingrained in me (ironic since like 123 of my 289 cousins have declared bankruptcy at some point).
Continue reading “Crawling out of the credit hole”

A new theme, called, in fact, Almost Spring, and provided to WordPress users by the talented and generous Becca Wei. What do ya think?

Hello, faithful readers! *waits for the shouts back, frowns at the silence and continues*

I just wanted to note a few changes to the blog. First, I’ve cleaned up my book list. I’m no longer listing everything that happens to be laying on my bedside table. Just the stuff that I’m actually reading.

Second, I won’t be talking much about games here anymore, since I’m starting a new site for that. The Games Roundtable is a place that, I hope, myself and some old friends will talk about games, post reviews and news, and that kind of thing. There’s a forum there too. So in a way, The Games Roundtable combines the games-related posts from here, and the discussion board from Jaded’s Pub, which after, what? eight years? I’m finally closing down.

Since a LOT of the content here was games-focused, it means I’m either going to have to think more, or post less. 🙂 Let’s hope the former turns out to be true, since I can hardly post less than I have been lately.

So for some reason I was over at 1UP.COM and I decided to read some of their message boards. I’m digging my PSP like nobody’s business so that was the section I made a beeline for.

The very first thread on the board was: ATTN: Trolls, Flamers, Fantards, Et Al.

Now I’m not in public relations, but is that really the right way to welcome new users to your site? This was posted by the kid (please god let it be a kid) that moderates that section. Beyond the tone, the term Fantard seems awfully…ick, to me. But maybe its just me. I guesss we’re moving away from “gay” being the ultimate put-down and moving on to “retarded.” I dunno, maybe its a good thing. The folks who’re mentally handicapped are probably less likely to be spending their time on gaming boards than folks who’re attracted to people of their own gender…

Anyway, for grins I clicked on the “report abuse” link in the message. No doubt the kid who moderates the board will just call me a fucktard and move on…

After several nights, two operating systems and $125 I finally burned a DVD that will play in a DVD player. What a pain!

It all started when I found a website that hosted fan-subtitled episodes of a Xenosaga anime that isn’t available in the US or for Region 1 DVD players. As a fan of Xenosaga I really wanted to watch them, but wasn’t interested in doing so on my PC.
Continue reading “I am a l33t v1d30 pir8”

WORLD EXCLUSIVE! FIRST LOOK AT iTUNES PHONE

Thanks to Vidgamer for pointing this out.

Kai is free software that lets you play ‘system link’ Xbox, Gamecube, PS2 or PSP games over the internet. It runs on Windows. Mac OS X users will also need Amaryllis (and an Airport Extreme for PSP gaming). Amaryllis is also free but they do request a small donation.

I haven’t tested this yet, but plan to do so this weekend. Hopefully my Airport Express will do the job (I assume they say “Airport Extreme” meaning 802.11g, which the Express is.) But we’ll see.