Printer Problems - Cat Support

This is very similar to some troubleshooting that I had to do this week.

Recipe for Viral Advertising

1. Set up a premise where an idiot is filming something stupid on a shitty camera phone.

2. Have the idiot do something even more stupid than you would expect.

3. Have something unexpectedly stupid happen. (Add some really horrible CGI-digital effects. Because the video quality is so awful, no one can tell that you hired some student on Craigslist with the old "we can't pay you, but this will look good on your rèsumè" routine.)

5. Don't mention your company anywhere in the video.

6. Profit.

Twitter

There's a website on the internet that's called Twitter and it's pretty amazing.

You can twit anything on Twitter.

The possibilities are almost as open as Zombo.com.

MSNBC Digs Deep

I caught some MSNBC political coverage during my lunch break and I believed they showed Obama's terrorist fist jab about 40 times in slow motion while some very intelligent people dished out some amazingly insightful analysis of the candidate. This is the kind of information that the American public needs to have before they can go to the polls. MSNCBC is the only source that I can depend on for difficult to understand news events.

Also, I'm starting to suspect that the science of Face Off is here and Cheney is Travolta and McCain is Edward Norton. I haven't seen Face Off, but I think I have just violated the first and second rule of Face Off. I hope the third rule of Face Off is "it's not that big a deal if you do end up talking about Face Off, it's just discouraged."

I'm going to write a children's book called: Everybody Loves Politics!

What's The Point of Pickle Slices?

I'm not a fan of cows, but bovine-free burgers are something that I enjoy to eat provided I have plenty of condiments. In fact, I'm starting to suspect that I see bread and meat as a vehicle for condiments rather than condiments as being an accessory.

One of my favorite things on food at restaurants is pickles. I love pickles. I can't get enough. French fries taste much better to me when wrapped in a pickle slice.

So when I was at the grocery store I decided that I would get a jar of pickle slices to add some zazz to my at-home meals. Unfortunately, I don't know much about at-home pickles. I could buy a jar of pickles, but I don't really like eating a whole pickle and I don't want to spend an afternoon chopping up pickles for sandwich use. What I need is a jar of pickle slices.

Pickle slices are strange things to buy in jars! None of the jars of pickle slices said "I'm a jar of pickle slices. Buy me, Ryan Niemi!" In fact, they had all kinds of confusing labels. What's the point? Are they trying to entice non-pickle enthusiasts?

There was a bunch of jars that said "Bread and Butter Pickles" and then the jar was full of slices of pickles. The contents of the jar appear to be what I require, but what's the point of 'bread and butter?' There are at least three ways I could take that. One way is that these are the types of pickles commonly eaten with bread and butter. I've never been so hungry that I slapped some butter on a slice of bread and then covered it with pickles, so I am unable to comprehend that possibility.

Another way to take it is that the pickle slices have bread and butter flavor. This is the first thing that pops in my head when I see these labels. Why would anyone want to eat bread and butter flavored anything? The next thing you know, there will be a bread and butter flavored sports drink. Their slogan can be "punish your taste buds into shape!"

The other way they could be going with their strange name is to use "bread and butter" in the way that implies 'money maker'. Like these pickle slices are the "bread and butter" of the food industry. That makes sense to me because I like condiments more than the meat, but I imagine that the majority of burger enthusiasts believe that beef is the bread and butter of the food industry.

I read the ingredients on one of these jars and it said nothing about natural or artificial bread and butter flavoring, so I just bough a jar of regular pickles and some stationary scissors so I can get that authentic pickle slice shape.

What's the point? Seriously.

Up Yours, Butters

I've been on a South Park kick lately. I regret getting rid of my South Park collection, but I'm glad that all the episodes are available for watching at SouthParkStudios.com.

There's been lots of great shows that I've missed. I recently enjoyed Canada on Strike where in Canada goes on strike and demands some of that Internet money.

I just downloaded this sample to my phone from this web site. I really want to play it on my phone's (excellent) speakers in a public bathroom when someone is fumigating for humans.



Also, here's some downloadable South Park commentary tracks for some reason.

Nothing That You Didn't Already Know

(I must preface this with an apology to my friends who work at Micorsoft.)

Sometimes I wonder:
"Why do I dislike Microsoft? It makes good things. Windows XP is usable. The Xbox360 has at least one or two decent games. The Microsoft mouse and keyboard released in 2000 were pretty nice. I'm actually starting to like Office 2007 a little bit. Is Microsoft really all that bad?"

Then I remembered why I hate this company:
Excel = $192.99
Outlook = $87.99
Word = $196.99
Vista Ultimate = $179.99

Total price = $657.96

Does it really need to be priced that high? I understand that they need to pay their workers, invest in R&D and also make a profit, but is a text editor really worth $200?

All they're really doing is taking advantage of the fact that very few corporations are able to avoid Microsoft. It's the same pricing scheme as Adobe and other high priced software vendors. It makes me mad because I'd like to buy that stuff if it was reasonably priced. With Adobe, I don't have any choice. I don't know how many professional graphic artists use GIMP.

Also, Microsoft is incredibly stupid.

I was listening to TWiT 154 the other day and they were talking about the Mojave experiment which is Microsoft's Pepsi Challenge with Vista. The host, Leo Laporte, brings up an amazing point on why Microsoft shareholders should be terrified.

The average Internet user spends 30 seconds on a web page. To see how clueless Microsoft is: Go to MojaveExperiment.com and wait for 30 seconds after the video starts to play. Then close the website. What does Microsoft want the average user to take away from this PR campaign? "Zero"

Watchmen

The trailer for the movie Watchmen looks very good.

Fisting Obama

Watch The Daily Show's response to the recent New Yorker Magazine cover. Sometimes I worry that there is a shocking lack of realists in the world.

Hemispheres

Here is an interesting TED talk give been by Jill Bolte Taylor about how the two hemispheres of the brain work with and against each other.

Thirteens, Seventeens and Eighteens

I drank a lot of Millington Eighteens last night. I also had two Seventeens, which were my favorite, and part of a Thirteen. The Thirteen tastes like liquid potpourri, but all the other beers were delicious. The beer went amazingly well with Chen's Chinese food. I don't think I've ever had Chinese food as tasty as Chen's. They got my order wrong, but the food was so damn good that I am unable to complain. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat regular food again.

The Dresden Dolls @ Sunshine Saturday 2008-05-24

I just found out that one of my favorite bands, The Dresden Dolls, is playing in Albuquerque next weekend. Fucking awesome. I'm really excited to see The Dresden Dolls' drummer rock out in person. I love bands with awesome drummers. That's why I love my band so much.


Backstabber is my favorite Dresden Dolls song, mainly, because of the drums.

It looks like Death Cab For Cutie isn't supporting them this far west. That's too bad, because I don't like Death Cab, but I could have talked Natalie into going with me if they were opening. A band called Smoosh, is opening instead. Because I have dyslexia, I was under the impression that Smoosh is Smosh. If Smosh was opening, it would be hilarious or god awful... or both... It's a mystery.

For Great Justice

Today was a good day. I finally got a little bit of that great justice, that I've heard so much about.

You know what you doing. Take off every Zig.

Thunderbird

Today, I stood about 30 feet away from Thunderbird, the world's sixth fastest supercomputer in 1996.

The Reason I Want a Mac

I've been a Mac user for a long time, but skipped the iMac and went to PC for gaming. I missed Apples, but dealing with the ridiculous problems in Windows 98 and above has definitely increased my technical proficiency, so I don't regret my Apple abandonment.

One thing that I've always loved about the Mac OS is speech. Windows has never and will probably never match the quality voice control that you can get with a Mac. A great thing to do when using a Mac is to set a keyboard shortcut for speech. While playing video games or working, you can select the text of a lengthy article and press Apple+Ctrl+Alt+S and read with your ears. Windows does not seem to provide this feature without expensive software. What's the point?

Cheap and Effective Organizer

I was looking at using a small expandable mini-file for shopping card organization after reading this article at lifehacker.com. I really didn't feel like going out to a store and spending money on something that I could easily replicate on the cheap. After a couple minutes of searching, I found a great way to keep gift cards: Cheap CD/DVD sleeves of which I have hundreds.



Just spread them out so each one is visible and pop them into a cheap CD Sleeve. The clear plastic window allows you to quickly see the contents. Keep one for membership cards, one for gift cards and coupons, or whatever else you could think of. Perhaps this could be used for business cards or coupons as well. Toss them in your glove box or laptop bag and you'll be ready to use them whenever the need arises.

Getting The Most Out of Gift Cards

I always forget how much money is left on gift cards that I've used. I've tried using a pen to write on the back, but it's very hard to write and read with a normal pen. Then today, I realized that using a sharpie to write on the front of the cards is much easier to write with and very easy to quickly see what your balance is. Just another reason to always carry a sharpie.


That's the actual card number. If you can use that money before me, You win.

Earth Day

Hate, hell, war, hate, love, love, hate, love, hate... Destruction!

Juno

If you've made the horrible mistake of watching the movie Juno, then you should read this.

Update:
I had to respond to Milkman Dan's comments in this post because I really want to embed this hilarious video that he linked.



Juno is worth watching if you're a Michael Cera fan, but he doesn't have a huge role in the film. I would guess that he is in the movie only fifteen percent of the time, but he provides more than fifty percent of the funny. That math doesn't lie.

The problem with Juno is that the dialogue is so pretentious that it's distracting. The main character has all these contrivances that she makes an effort to display, yet act casual about. A good example is the famous hamburger phone scene, where she casually brings up the fact that she's using a novelty phone while scheduling an abortion. How wacky! It's not that my belief is suspended, because I'm sure there are more pretentious people than her in existence, but it's god damn annoying. I wouldn't want to spend more than an hour watching them without Michael Nelson providing commentary.

The deciding factor on how many stars to give this movie was the terrible music. This movie suffers from the same problem as The Darjeeling Unlimited. It unrelentingly assaults the viewer with horrible music. The movie plays multiple, full-track songs from horrible indie bands and edits the scenes to be longer so as to torture impress the audience with how indie it is. When you watch this movie, you're going to want a mute button handy.

In The Dark

There was an hour long power outage tonight. I think it's a bit exciting whenever the power goes out at night. It takes away all modern forms of entertainment and forces you back into reality. No TV, no Internet, no Virtual Mario Tennis. When the lights go out, you're forced to do real things.

I was at my father-in-law's house when the power went out and, after we lit some candles, he pulled out and acoustic guitar and started playing. He didn't even have to plug it in to anything! It was more enjoyable than talking over the background noise of the television.

I can't recall a time when I was happy about the end of a blackout. There is something exciting about the anticipation for electricity to resume. It makes you wonder what you would do if the power doesn't return. When it does, it's as if the moment of real is sucked away by the humming of electric machines.

--
Stop motion video of man trapped in elevator for 40 hours.

Chemical Memories

By the grace of all that is good about science: Science Badges.

I claim a few of these badges, but I wish I could claim the shower badge. Those showers in chem lab always freaked me out. I remember watching the lab safety video in high school and noticing two things:

1. Male student A spills mystery chemical on himself and immediately runs to the shower and starts stripping. Male student B idly stands by and watches with no expression on his face. If he expressed fear or concern, it would be less disturbing, but his lack of expression was, to me, his suppressed joy of a deadly strip tease. After viewing that, my love of chemistry was dwarfed by my fear of spilling mystery chemical on myself and having some creepy guy stare at me excitedly as the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music starts to play.



2. Rubber gloved hands break a glass rod and shove the glass through the palm of the other (obviously fake, yet still bleeding) hand and keeps shoving way past the point where one would react to the pain. It was almost like the person just gave up on life after the accident and just decided to commit suicide via hand stabbing.



Are all safety videos made to be funny? Maybe it's a method to make them more memorable. This German forklift safety video is pretty well known classic.

Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtle Madness

Today was turtle-rific! Dinsaur Comics' T-Rex recently talked about the lyrics to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme song. He was discussing whether Splinter taught them to be ninja teens or ninja teams. T-Rex said, "You don't have to be taught how to be a ninja TEEN. If you're a ninja and you're a teen, then you're already being a ninja teen!"

John from Sinosplice translated the Chinese version of the lyrics to English and solved the mystery. The Chinese version of the lyrics are very interesting. It turns out that, in the Chinese version of the show, Raphael was only a bit crude and Splinter is a rat brimming with passion.

In other parts of the web, Darwin's Natural Selections had pictures and videos of strange teenage mutant ninja toys. In fact, the fake commercial is so humorous, that it I found it necessary to embed the video below for all the lazies who don't like clicking on links, but will click on play buttons of videos which are embedded in amazingly content-rich blogs such as this one.



It's a green day in hell.

Future Theater of Scientific Mysteries

One of my favorite shows in the history of the televisual universe is Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you are also a huge nerd, then you will be pleasantly surprised to find that even after Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo returned to earth many years ago, they are still subjecting themselves to audio/visual torment (spiritually, at least).

The most exciting of these new projects is RiffTrax. RiffTrax features Michael J. Nelson, the head writer of MST3K, as well as many different guests who join Nelson in creating entertaining commentary tracks for some new DVD releases. All you have to do is download the mp3 and use your own home stereo (or with the RiffTrax Player) to Sync the audio with the movie, much like watching The Dark Side of Oz.

Raise your hand if you've already checked out some sweet RiffTrax action and, if so, what was your favorite episode? My favorite, so far, was Roadhouse. Nat and I have also watched Transformers, The Lord of the Rings, The Fifth Element, Firewall, Casino Royale, Point Break, Fantastic Four and Mike Willey's Chocolate Factory. All of them were equally funny. We fell asleep while watching Star Trek V and 300, so I am unable recommend them. We are currently set to watch Glitter, Triple Ex, The Mattress, and Night of the Living Dead when we find the time.

Another MST3K spin-off project is Cinematic Titanic. Cinematic Titanic features five former MST3K veterans. They have their first movie available to download as of today, but I haven't watched it yet. I have high expectations.

The Film Krew is another way to get some Mystery Science action. I think I've only watched one Film Krew movie from start to finish. It was Hollywood After Dark and it features a stripper from The Golden Girls. Hot!

Mike Nelson also recorded commentary tracks for some old movies released on DVD such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, House on Haunted Hill, Night of the Living Dead, and Carnival of Souls. My favorite of these is the colorized Reefer Madness, which is funny even without the commentary track.

While I'm at it, I might as well add that Mike Nelson has also written several books. I have them all, but I have only read the picture books: Happy Kitty Bunny Pony, Love Sick and Goth-Icky. Nat has read his two novels Mike Nelson's Mind over Matters, Mike Nelson's Death Rat! as well as Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese.

All of this comedy greatness has inspired me to create my own commentaries for some of my favorite bad movies. I'll let you know when the project is complete. Of course, it will be free to download and enjoy via the magic of the Interwebs and it will be the cherry on top of my extensive comedy portfolio (which exists only in my mind). If you're reading this, Michael J. Nelson, I look forward to working with you soon I have told you nothing that you didn't already know.

from left to right: Crow T. Robot, Bill Corbett, Michael J. Nelson, Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy

April Fools' Gold

April 1st is one of the biggest Internet holidays celebrated world wide. Even I partook in the fun of digital trickery long ago in Internet past, but when I saw the trailer for The Legend of Zelda movie, it was I who became an April fool.

The Mists!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hide from silly Steven King monsters in a grocery store? If so, then you may not enjoy The Mist a little more than I didn't. If not, then you may want to stick to Garth Marenghi novels.

From The Book Of Jason

And Jason Spoketh:

I went to an Easter party yesterday, dressed as the Easter Bunny, of course. My Unicorn Power shirt makes a good undershirt, since it is also pink, so I wore it. At one point, I started to get hot, so I pulled the bunny suit open, revealing the shirt, and 10 seconds later a guy runs up to me, fake-punches me in the gut, and says "Nice shirt, gay wad!"

What's The Point?

My biological father offered to get me glasses from Coscto because "they have such great deals." Obviously, he doesn't read Wikapedia!!! Wrong, Dad!

So then, apparently, the eye "doctor" thought that I should get some contacts, but my dad did not agree. In the end, I have a 10 year supply of contact lenses. What's the point?

So, then he made me pick out the glasses, but it's not as easy as that. To get into Coscto you have to have a lifetime membership, but they just don't just hand those out to just anybody! Nope. So I had to wear this fake mustache and smoke a pipe just to match my Dad's Coscto card id photo. Plus I had to provde a mustache hair sample for DNA evidence. Luckily, my dad keeps his mustache trimmings in the car and with a Coscto 24 pack of Supergloo, and I was able to infiltrate the secret underground layer of the Coscto empire.

So then, I waited for my dad to sneak in through the airvents, and after 2 hours we were able to approach the eye glass display when the attendant went to the lady room.

So then, I really wanted to get some big fat rimmed emo glasses like all the cool kids wear, but nope, can't do that at Coscto. Every single pair of eye glasses has some sort of bling on them. "What's bling?" you ask? Bling is shiny things that make cheap stuff magically more expensive. On one of the eye glasses I counted twelve whole pieces of bling. What's The Point?

So, then, I had to get the cheapest pair of blinged eye glasses, but they only had them in half packs. But you can only buy the half packs in crates of seven. Great! Now I have 3.5 glasses. At least when everyone inexplicitedly dies and I am alone in a tv shoppe, I can watch television without having to cry "It's not fair." Get it? Twilight Zone reference? Look it up on the Internet.

So then after we get all that crap, my dad needs to get another forklift because he wants to get food for dinner. I guess my dad has never heard of a little place called Ethiopia. How greedy! What's The Point?

So then, while eating our 17 course meal, my Dad starts to question my lack of thanks for buying me all that stupid stuff. Well, Internet, it was the hardest acting of my life, but I was able to pretend to appeciate the gesture. Good thing that he doesn't know what an Internet cafe is or else I would never be able to vent my wonderfully insightful opinions to millions of daily Internet visitors. My dad's the type of guy who still subscribes to email through the post office. What's The Point?

See you in Cyber Space!

Horrible People

Horrible People is another great show from MyDamnChannel.com. It's a comedy soap opera featuring actors, writing, and music that you would see in a normal day time drama.



It's written by A.D. Miles (Crystal Shyps) and features many funny comedians and a couple of actors as well. It seems like there must be a decent budget for these comedy shows. Well, maybe not because the first season seems like it is going to be about an hour long total. I hope there is a large enough market for this that they can keep making these types of shows. I still can't get any funding for my show. Please help get The Ryan Niemi Show off the ground by donating through paypal. Click here.

Concert Review

I just saw Clutch, one of my favorite bands, put on an amazing show. Despite playing at a venue which is renown for having the worst sound in town, the sound was pretty damn amazing. I don't know if it was the sound guy or just Niel Fallon's booming voice, but somehow everything worked out well; everything, except for the audience.

I've come to expect horrible people at certain concerts; especially at Tool concerts, where some of the world's dumbest humans go to find mates. I was really surprised, though, to find that the homoretardus genus also used Clutch's music to perform their mating dance of running into a crowd of people who have their backs turned because they're trying to enjoy a show that they paid good money to see, god damnit.

Elza claimed to have witnessed three fights and he is a man of his word. What the fuck? There were tons of tiny angry men at this show. The kind of tiny angry men that are as wide as they are tall. The kind of tiny men that stare at the mirror in an orgasmic trance as they do reps at the gym. Not that there is anything wrong with that, tiny angry man who stumbled on this blog by accident. Everyone is really impressed at your ability to knock people over when you come up from behind them like a tiny battering ram. This is the yahoo search result you were looking for. Thanks for stopping by.

So, besides the fact that idiots exist, I am very satisfied with my musical entertainment of the evening.

Wainy Days

I am a huge fan of The State and Stella, so I was very happy when I stumbled on Wainy Days, an internet show starring David Wain.



Also, I just watched The Ten, a movie directed by David Wain and it is pretty damn great. I couldn't understand why it only has a 3 star rating on Netflix, until I saw the very end of the movie. It's a perfect example of how not to end a movie. Now the ending of Wet Hot American Summer is how you end a movie.

Darkplace

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is one of the best shows ever made.

There is a rumor that Darkplace is being adapted into a film version. One can only hope.

Make Your Firefox Rock: Add-ons

Today, I'm gonna tell you about Firefox extensions, Internet.

Information courtesy of the Infolister add-on. There are only a few that I highly recommend, so I will put a "(I highly recommend this one)" next to the ones that I highly recommend.

* Aardvark 2.0
* About This Site 1.1
* Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.1.3
* Adblock Plus 0.7.5.3 (I highly recommend this one)
* All-in-One Sidebar 0.7.3 (I highly recommend this one)
* Always Remember Password 0.6
* Autocomplete Manager 2.2
* Autohide 1.1.5 [disabled]
* AutoSlideshow 0.3.1
* Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics 1.1 [disabled]
* Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.6.3 (I highly recommend this one)
* BugMeNot 1.3 (I highly recommend this one)
* CookieSafe 2.0.6
* CookieSwap 0.5.0
* CustomizeGoogle 0.70 (I highly recommend this one)
* Digg Firefox Extension 0.4 [disabled]
* Download Statusbar 0.9.6
* DownloadHelper 3.0.2 (I highly recommend this one)
* DownThemAll! 1.0 (I highly recommend this one)
* FEBE 5.3.1 [disabled]
* FishEyeTabs 0.14.4 [disabled]
* Flashblock 1.5.5 [disabled]
* Flat Bookmark Editing 0.8.1
* Forecastfox Enhanced 0.9.5.2 [disabled]
* Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.0.43 [disabled]
* Greasemonkey 0.7.20080121.0
* IE View Lite 1.3.2
* iMacros for Firefox 6.0.3.1 [disabled]
* InfoLister 0.9f.2
* Leak Monitor 0.3.6
* Locate in Bookmark Folders 0.2.5 (I highly recommend this one)
* McAfee SiteAdvisor 26.5 [disabled]
* Menu Editor 1.2.3.3
* MinimizeToTray 0.0.1.2006102615+
* Mouse Gestures 1.5.2 [disabled]
* NoScript 1.4.9.5 (I highly recommend this one)
* Password Exporter 1.1
* PDF Download 1.0.1.1
* Personas for Firefox 0.9.2
* ProfileSwitcher 0.3.3
* RenameTabs 0.2 [disabled]
* StumbleUpon 3.16 [disabled]
* Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6 (I highly recommend this one)
* Temporary Inbox 2.1 [disabled]
* Uppity 1.4.14 (I highly recommend this one)

You Suck It Photoshop

But that's OK because Donnie is here to help you.



The entire series is available at MyDamnChannel.com.

Gettin' Some Emails

Steve Writes:

You were telling me about how Thunderbird rocks. How do I set it?

Yes, Steve. I was telling you about how it's possible to get email on Internet.

Here's how!:

STEP 1. Doanload the Internet
Step 2. grab some files and put them in your computer
step 2 part a maek sure you have files
step 2 prt b look at all instructions on the interwebs for help
step 2 part c finish up all the lose ends

You're welcome steve.

Send all your questions to niemsta@gmail.com

Interface Is Key

I enjoy watching the Angry Video Game Nerd, but I was tired of the constant age verification at Gametrailers.com, so I decided that I could easily register an account on their website, let Firefox remember the password so I can quickly sign in and not have to worry about verifying my birth date every time I watch a new video.

Unfortunately, even when I created an account, logged in, and entered my birth date in my profile, they still ask me to verify my age every single time I want to watch a new video. Even if I just watched a video five minutes ago. What is the purpose of that?

They have an option for continuous play, but it won't work if you don't verify your age at the start of every new video. So, If I want to continue watching AVGN, I need to keep click on the month that I was born and scroll down to December, then after that all that, I have to select the day and year. Really? I need to do this every 5-10 minutes? What was the purpose of you asking for my birth date in the first place, Gametrailers.com?

There is a way to fix Gametrailer.com's broken age verification system by using Firefox, installing the Greasemonkey addon with this Greasemonkey script. You also need to change your profile so that Quicktime is the default video player instead the industry standard.

So already, they have alienated a large percentage of possible viewers. Most people are going to rightfully tell Gametrailers.com to fuck right off and they will not return. Less than half will stick around and continue watching a couple more videos. A small percentage of die hard fans will subject themselves to undeserved punishment and an even smaller percentage will find a way around it. Great job, Gametrailers.com!

These instructions are available on the Gametrailers.com forums and they have yet to be removed. I'd like to think that Gametrailers.com is aware of this pathetic interface problem and is working on a change. The whole situation is so pathetic, that it deserves to be addressed by the Angry Video Game Nerd, himself.

So I emailed Gametrailers.com and let them know how I feel and I got this response:

Sorry, but it's a liability issue. We're required by the ESRB to
provide an age gate in front of all mature rated content that you must
bypass manually. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Fair enough. I can't begin to explain my hatred of the ESRB. It just really cheeses my goat that people are punished for the safety of precious children. I think it's about time we start making parents responsible for their children. I know that's a wild and crazy idea, but sometimes I'm two wild and crazy guys.

The Donkey Kong Challenge

Mike Willey, founder of the Ape Liberation Front, has issued a challenge to me to defeat Donkey Kong. It seems that Mr. Willey has watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and thinks that the task is impossible.

Ha! I beat Donkey Kongs for breakfast.

I accepted and completed the challenge a little while ago. It took longer than I thought, but it was no where near as challenging as portrayed in The King of Kong. I believe they made the game appear more difficult as to pad out the film. 79 minutes is far too long to spend on something that can be reviewed by the Angry Video Game Nerd in 5 minutes.

I now present you with video evidence of Donkey Kong's defeat:

I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghosts I - IV

I never expected to hear about the brand new Nine Inch Nails album through an online comic strip, but that's what happened when I was checking Bunny Comics via Google Reader and tried to figure out the meaning of this:


At first, I was confused because I haven't heard of anything new about Mr. Reznor except that he is no longer chained to a major music label. So, I checked out his Interweb official home page and found out that he quietly released a 4 disc instrumental album. The best part is that he released it under a creative commons license. Disc 1 is officially available through thePirateBay for zero dollars money. The album is currently available as a download for five dollars money as well as other options for serious collectors. They sold the entire 2500 copies of the $300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition Package within hours. I'm really interested to find out how much money Trent makes now that he controls the middle men.

I tried to buy the album post haste, but as the Bunny-Comic shows, the servers were hit hard and I was not able to give Trent my digital dollars. I grabbed the free Ghosts I torrent and was able to buy the album after patiently waiting for Mr. Reznor's internets to get turned back on.

I am currently listening to Ghosts I while the flac version of Ghosts I-IV is coming down the pipe. I'm getting blazing fast 13kbps internet-type download speeds on my 605.14mb download. It looks like I'll have to wait for a while before I can enjoy the entire piece.

Memento Mori

Sunday night is the most depressing time for me. There is something about the end of the weekend and the impending Mondays that just kills my Garfields.

So, here I am, reading through Google Reader, when I stumble on this article on Kotaku:
Portal vs Passage

The article isn't very interesting, but it made me want to play Passage since it is grouped in the Portal category. Unfortunately Passage doesn't really relate to Portal in anyway at all. The article just seems to be a clever ploy in which to draw Portal attention towards Passage.

I recommend that you take 2 minutes to download Passage and then spend 5 minutes playing it before reading further.

Passage fits into the Games as Art category. It's only a game in the sense that the best way to convey it's message is where the user has some control.

So after playing it once, I had to try it again. I didn't know that it was possible to move up and down. The second play through I went through the maze with the life partner. The maze is brutal. You can get stuck in some rut and by the time you finally escape, you've wasted a good portion of your life on nothing.

The artist's explanation of the game is worth a read.

Spoiler alert: You're going to die alone.

Video Games and Digital Nostalgia

I was watching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace with Charles and the conversation turned from cheesy 1980s television to cheesy 1980s video games.

We talked about the horrible games that get reviewed by the Angry Video Game Nerd like Ghostbusters and Jaws. Ghostbusters was one of the first games we rented when we begain our Nintendo adventure as children. Ghostbusters is also one of the most disappointing games that I ever played (I never owned an Atari, so I never played E.T.). I've never gotten past the part where you need to drive to the store to buy ghost busting equipment. Watching the Angry Video Game Nerd review the game, was painfully nostalgic for me. Especially because he actually found a part of the game that involved busting ghosts. Something that I have never seen.



The world of 8-bit Nintendo games was very dangerous for a child. When your parents took you to rent a video game, it was important that you study the box art carefully or else you could spend the next 3-5 days with Ghostbusters. A game where you drive to a store. You also needed to pay attention to friends and video game magazines because a game like Duck Tales may sound like a horrible game, but it was actually quite fun.

More entertaining Angry Video Game Nerd reviews are available at Gametrailers.com.

Digsby

Digsby has replaced Pidgin as my favorite IM client (on Windows, at least). It does a lot of things right. Each update seems to bring some useful improvements. Apparently, I can put a widget on this blog, as well as my FaceSpace, and any Internet user can start typing at me in seconds. Wow! Thanks Internet!

One of my favorite features of Digsby is the pop up notifications that you can type in.


That's right. You can type inside the pop up notification to respond to a new IM and then it fades away and you can continue doing what you're doing without any complicated clicking and mashing.

The Garfield Situation

In case you're not aware, the Garfield Meme is growing out of control.

First there was the Garfield Randomizer, then Garfield without Garfield, then Realfield, then Garfield Minus Garfield and now there is Lasagna Cat.

Jake says that Realfield reminds him of Scrawncho's cat and Garfield Minus Garfield reminds him of himself. I agree.

This one is close to my heart:

XKCD Ball Pit

I saw this on a friend's shared items on Google Reader:
http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/

The links to Last.fm's ball pit make me glad that I use their service:
http://blog.last.fm/2007/12/21/blogging-from-the-ballpit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastfm/sets/72157603521984435/

I am really enjoying Google Reader. Especially the keyboard commands. I press "?" every time I need to learn more shortcuts. I need more shared items to read, so start using it and share your feeds with me.

Social Sea Shells By The Sea Shore

I signed up for a bunch of online social services, so I thought I'd just make a list of ways that you can find me on the web and you can contact me if you want to befriend me in other virtual spaces.

I started using Flock as my browser for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and all things social. Flock seems like a good browser for what it's made to do, but it could never replace Firefox as my browser of choice. Anyway, here are some services that you can interact with me on:

Google Reader
This is a really good RSS reader. It recently replaced WizzRSS as my way of navigating feeds. It has many cool features, such as simple keyboard shortcuts to navigate through your feeds (Just type "?" while using it to see them). Also, anyone that you have chatted with through Google Chat can see items that you "share." There's a really good overview of what you can do with Google Reader on episode 217 of DL.TV at 6 minutes into the video.

Last.fm
Keeps track of what I listen to. Really useful when my music hard drive died so I know what is my highest priority of recovery.

Xbox Live
Digg.com
Flickr.com

Things that I don't use as much:

Del.icio.us
Pownce.com
Twitter.com
YouTube.com
Facebook.com
Friendster.com
MySpace.com

Instant Messaging:
Google Chat
AIM
Skype
Yahoo, MSN, ICQ (I barely ever use these three)

Anyway, if you use any of the above, send me an email and I'll give you all my contact info. If you don't use any of the above, why not try them?

BLAAGH!

--
Niem

Currently listening : Make Sure They See My Face By Kenna Release date: 16 October, 2007

Fear and Loathing in Hyrule

from Boing Boing TV

Sinbad

Sinbad is awesome. Here is a video of him talking about VMWare on the Mac. VMWare could't buy that kind of publicity. It would be awesome if Sinbad was a software spokesman.

Also, for the 11th straight year, Arnold failed to win an Oscar for his work in Jingle All The Way. This madness has got to stop.

Shifting Through Parallel Universes

Shift is awesome little flash game. If you loved Portal, than you owe it to yourself to check this out and if you ever played Super Mario World on the SNES, then you may want to keep reading.

Apparently, a Japanese genius used some tools to rearrange the levels of Super Mario World to make it the most evil and difficult game to ever exist. There is a series of videos on YouTube called "Asshole Mario," which is shorter than the actual Japanese translation of: "Making my Friend Play Through My Own Mario Hack"

I've tried to provide a link to all the videos in order. For the sake of time, you only need to view about 1-2 minutes of one of the videos to get the idea. It really is best to watch these in full with another person in the room. I have yet to watch them all, but I went through the trouble of linking them all so I can easily watch them some day in the future. Even with friends, we were only able to watch the first 3 before it was just too much to handle.

Asshole Mario
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Stage 6
Stage 7
Stage 8
Stage 9
Stage 10
Stage 11
Stage 12
Stage End

Asshole Mario Returns
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Stage 6
Stage 7
Stage 8
Stage 9
Stage 10
Stage End

It was especially entertaining to watch this with a group of friends while consuming alcohol. The girls at the party weren't interested in the video, but they did find it amusing that, every 30 seconds or so, all the guys would make loud exclamations of pain, disbelief and laughter.

So here is where it gets good. Some guy recorded 134 playthroughs and merged them together as one.

Watch:


There is detailed explanation of what is going on available here, which also includes a really awesome philosophical description of physics.

And after reading the description of quantum physics, you can browse through the fail blog to get an idea of the massive amount of failures existing in potential universes.

--
**END TRANSMISSION**

Tim and Eric Super Tuesday

As everyone knows, you can watch Tim and Eric Nite Live every Tuesday, but what you didn't know was that yesterday's episode was super.

That's right, it was a Super Tuesday spectacular. They provided in depth coverage of the candidates that you won't see on cable news. Who wins the big debate? Is it Bob Bop Perono or Bill Clinton? To find out, you have to spend 15 minutes of your precious time watching the full episode linked below this sentence.
http://qu.to/3z8

Also, episode 7 features some awesome HD technology.
http://qu.to/3z9

Salamé,
Niem

Not quiet so daily....

or so it would seem! I just discovered that I've been typing into a word document for all these years instead of on the internet. Woops.

I will spend some time in the next couple months retro-blogging. Stay tuned to the past.

Friends Don't Let Friends Buy Ipods

Everyone has a friend who owns an Ipod. Unfortunately, some people seem to think that a click wheel is the best interface for music. You really can't do much to convince these people that there are much better ways to enjoy portable media; ways that don't involve proprietary software.

Sometimes it seems like it's better to let people enjoy their white earphoned DRM players, but would you believe that the Ipod is a dangerous device that could explode in your pocket, armband, underwear or where ever else people put them when they go jogging? Well, Natalie's Ipod nano suddenly swelled up in the middle and put so much pressure on the click wheel that it stopped working.

I consulted Internet with this shocking phenomenon and found that Ipod Nanos are renown for the battery swelling for no apparent reason. I don't know if anyone had battery acid bust in their pants pocket yet, but with the recent problem with laptop battery explosions, it seems like these Ipods could be just as dangerous.

If you or someone you love owns an Ipod, it may be time to get rid of that time bomb and buy a better media player.

The Cake Is A Lie

I finally played and beat Portal. It is easily the most humorous and entertaining game I have ever played. If you are able to navigate in a FPS world, then you must do whatever it takes to play this game. I may even let you play it at my house. It only takes a couple hours to beat.

If you have played it and need to listen to the end credits song over and over, it might still be available here.

--
Where are you?
I will find you.

Battery Hacks

You may have heard of the many battery hacks on the internet. Basically, you can save money by opening a 9volt to get cheap AAA batteries or cracking open your dead laptop battery to bring it back to life.

Well now, there's the insane car battery hack:



Friendly hack!