I'll admit it- I love technology. I do. There's all sorts of cool shit out now, and being a self-professed geek, I find I have a sort of obligation to keep up on what's going on. Even so, I get overwhelmed by everything. I can't help but find myself longing for the days we all didn't have mobile phones, and we used cassettes and cd's instead of ipods. Of course, I'm someone who is absolutely addicted to my blackberry and I completely adore my ipod, and I "blog" and I use twitter and facebook, which has opened my world to many awesome new people and allowed me to reconnect with some old friends...but still...sometimes I hate being so accessible.

It's weird to see how easily my kids adapt to new technology without batting an eye. My 4 yr old figured out how to use my ipod before I did. And my 10 year old keeps me up to date on the obscure goings on in the world, thanks to the internet. Several weeks ago, we were in a restaurant waiting to pay the check and they noticed the pay phone on the way. You'd think it was the most interesting object in the world if you saw how fascinated they were with it. "Really, it's a phone you pay to use? Why wouldn't you use your own phone?" Meanwhile, I'm recoiling in germ-fear that they're touching a public phone. To a certain degree, I've become my own parents. My kids complain about being bored and I find myself saying "Back in MY day, we didn't have all these video games and computers. We rode our bikes. We PLAYED." And then I realize how parental I'm sounding and I scream and hide.

I guess I miss a certain degree of simplicity. Being able to get any amount of information with overwhelming ease has its definite drawbacks. Specifically, oversaturation. We're living in an era where "reality" tv is thriving thanks to society's desire for fame and self-importance. The internet has just further propelled the ease of oversaturation for people. As much as I hated AOL, at least it was simple. Mind-numbingly, dumbed-down simple, but simple. Although, they did used to have the Insomnia Lounge or something that I absolutely loved..there was some funny shit on there. I do miss that. And there were maybe 10 pages on the internet back then, it seemed. Back in 95 or 96, I had a book that was the internet yellow pages or some shit. It basically listed all these sites according to category. I'm not making this up - you can buy it off amazon still here. I may have to buy it again just to see how many of the sites are still in existence. It could be another one of those distracting projects I like to take on. (Distracting in that they prevent me from doing stuff I ACTUALLY need to do.)

Anyway, my point is...I miss simplicity in my life.

As a followup to my crazy friend mentioned in the moon landing post, I came across a National Geographic page showing some pictures from the landing, the conspiracy theorist reasoning, and the logical explanation of the theories. Browse the pics (and the theories) here - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/photogalleries/apollo-moon-landing-hoax-pictures/index.html

Since the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is coming up, I figure it's well worth a mention that there's a site that allows visitors to experience it as it happened 40 years ago. It's quite worth the look - http://wechoosethemoon.org

They're missing the monkey, though.

Much thanks to Scooooot, I had the opportunity to go to HorrorHound Weekend this past Friday. If you're not in the horror/nerd circuit, this is a nice little convention with a good list of actors and other folks in the movie biz and a lot o' vendors. Scoot won some passes courtesy of the fine folks at the Night Of The Living Podcast and of course he had to take me cause I kick all the asses in the world. That's right.
I had big plans for HorrorHound. I was going to meet Tom Savini and get his autograph and maybe meet all these other people. I was excited. I was ready to go.
Then I got there. And saw Mr. Tom Savini sitting there at his table. And you know what? I could merely tiptoe in an awkward dance around his presence. I seriously got so nervous, I couldn't make eye contact, let alone speak with him. It occurred to me 'What could I, a mere lowly mortal, possibly have to say to the likes of Tom Savini?' There was nothing I could come up with that wouldn't reek of lameness, not even "omg, I am such a big fan of your work" cause I'm sure that was coming out of everyone's mouth. I approached his table several times, but just couldn't get my nerve up enough to say anything.
Then there was Dante...er...Brian O'Halloran. Just sitting there...hanging out. Scoot finally got me to go up there and very nicely spoke up for my chicken self, thus resulting in a pic of me and Brian. Good stuff. While we were waiting for our turn, Scoot nudges me and says "It's Danny Trejo!" I scoffed, knowing full well Danny Trejo was not scheduled until Satur...omg it's Danny f***ing Trejo! Scoot insisted on walking up to get his picture taken with Danny, despite my desperate pleas of "Don't do it! I've seen him in movies! He can totally kick your ass!" I'm happy to say Scoot got his picture and did not get an ass kicking.
I will never live down the fact that I was scared to talk to people who purposely showed up to a convention for autographs and fan pictures, but hey, it's just one of the many things that make me the nutcase that I am.

I did get a sweet pic of Bill Mosley, Danny Trejo, and Tom Savini:

Booya!

Recently, I downloaded the Opera browser to take it for a spin. This was following my disappointment in the Safari for Windows trial a week or so ago (sadly not impressed at all). There are a few things I like about Opera, and a few things I'm missing from Firefox (mainly add ons), but a strong feature I've grown fondly of in Opera are the little widgets. There's useful stuff like a weather widget, and completely non-useful-but-pretty widgets like the lava lamp. The one I really really like is the Sim Aquarium. It's a little tank that you have to 'care for' - feed the fish, watch the water pollution, give the fish meds if they get ill. The other night, I had a moment with my Sim Aquarium that reminded me of a traumatic childhood experience. You see, I had always had fish growing up. I'm not sure what the attraction was there, but I just loved having pet fish. However, my luck with fish was just non-existent. With the first fish I got, I knelt down in my bedroom, staring at my new pet with amazement and glee. Around that very second, my youngest brother, who was in his toddler years, came walking up and managed to trip over my feet. This sent him flying forward where he subsequently cracked his head on the corner of my wooden dresser. Panicked, I ran to tell my mom what happened. After shouting up the stairs to her, I turned back around to see my brother walking up behind me, his hand smearing the massive amount of blood pouring from the gash on his forehead. That image was burned in my skull forever. Up till that point, I had no idea that head wounds bled so profusely.
But I digress from the truly traumatic fish experience I've recreated with the Sim Aquarium. At one point in my childhood, I had gotten a rather nice aquarium. I went to pick out some fish and settled on some orange and black type. The clerk asked me if I wanted 2 boys and 2 girls. This seemed like a logical set-up to me, as I was clearly not thinking of the consequences of such an action. A few weeks passed until one day, as I was peering into the aquarium, I noticed teeny tiny living things in the aquarium with my four fish. I peered closer, initially thinking it was some kind of disgusting issue that I would need to clean out the tank for. I quickly realized that what I was looking at were baby fish. It was really cool at first, but soon there were more babies, and more babies, and my 10 gallon tank was suddenly home to about 40 fish. Let me tell you, the impact 40 fish has on a simple task of cleaning the fish tank is really quite tremendous. Around this time, our family vacation began to sneak up on us. Being responsible fish owners, my mom purchased an automatic feeder for the aquarium to assure that the massive army of fish living in my bedroom were well taken care of for that week and some days of our absence. Everything was hooked up, and I was feeling confident. We left for our vacation and I didn't give it another thought. Then at some point, one of my parents decided to joke- "Wouldn't it be funny if we came home and all the fish were dead?" I'm not sure why this would be funny in retrospect, but this was no doubt what literary folks would term "dramatic irony". You see, as we returned from the trip and walked inside the house, we were met with a very sickening smell. I approached my room with a sense of dread, already knowing what I would find. Sure enough, there was an aquarium full of dead fish. At some point in the trip, the feeder had malfunctioned. The water became increasingly polluted and there was no food coming in. If you've never smelled a large vat of polluted fish water with 40 fish corpses floating about in it, consider yourself lucky. It is a vomit-inducing stench, no doubt. To this day, I still blame it on my parents for cracking the joke and dooming my fish.
And back to the Sim Aquarium. I have this horrible tendency to forget I have it running. The first night I used it, I got distracted doing other things. By the time I clicked back to the screen, my two fish had multiplied into twenty. Once again, I forgot about the program. I clicked back over in time to see that the water was polluted and my fish were dying off. I didn't learn my lesson, and forgot again. All in all, I managed to kill off a couple hundred simulated fish last night alone. As I was speaking to my mom, I mentioned 'Remember that time you guys laughed about my fish being dead and then when we came back they were? This is JUST LIKE THAT."
I am clearly not meant to own any sort of fish, real or simulated.

Acorn MP3 Player
It stores 1 gig worth of data.
Even more important, it would be a good source of lame puns:
"What's that?" "Nuttin'"
"What are you listening to?" "Nuttin'"

Yeah, lame puns. But worth it all.

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

Sure, I was able to kick out a few PHP pages the other day without knowing what the hell I was doing. And I was able to debug those pages with no problem. But that doesn't make up for the offense I just committed.

I was attempted to charge up my blackberry via USB cable. Without looking, I plug it into my laptop. Suddenly I notice I'm getting a "Cable has been disconnected" warning. I fiddle with the cable at both ends and nothing. That leaves me to go back to IT for help. The IT dude comes in, fiddles with the cables a bit, and the connection seems wacky. I say to him "All of this happened right as I plugged in my USB cable", so I unplug it. Like magic, my connection works. IT guy then says "Plug your USB back in". I do, and the connection goes. IT dude lets out a sigh. He walks over and says "I want to show you something. THESE are your USB ports." Apparently, I was plugging into my Ethernet port...and surprisingly, the cable fit into it. I apologized profusely for wasting his time and assured him that I do actually know what a USB port is, I was just not looking. I still can't believe I did that. I've done some dumbass things in my time, but this was by far one of the the dumbest in terms of computer-related.

Stumble is perhaps one of my favorite Firefox add-ons ever. And I've only been using it for a few hours. It's a kick ass tool in which you fill out your interests and it finds websites that you may enjoy. I've been discovering all sorts of cool new things, which doesn't help my already hyper-active bookmarking habit. But my problem has always been that I get bored and distracted easily, so this helps me find new things to hold my attention for a bit.

Check out more here:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Unless you've been completely shut off from the world...or possibly playing too many video games... you've heard of Apple's new iPhone.

I won't lie. This is, indeed, a pretty object. But I have way too many issues to ever pay that amount of money for a phone. For starters, I like the whole touch screen in theory, but for me it would be a disaster. That's why I got a flip phone.I would constantly call people without knowing it on a regular phone. I got tired of having to lock/unlock it every time I had to transport it.
Second, I drop my my mobile phone ALL the damn time. And actually, I just dropped my iPod this morning. It still works thankfully, else I would have had a whole tantrum/depression thing going on. I'm already irked that I will have to send it back for the whole battery issue (it's a good ol' pink mini iPod with one of those shit batteries). If I dropped a $600 phone, I would cry and lock myself up in a room for a week.
Third, I have a toddler. My last phone was temperamental because of his ninja skills in finding it. This is also why I won't get even a RAZR. Sure, they're pretty. Not so pretty after a 2 year dipped it in applesauce, now is it? I cringe to think what would happen if he managed to get his hands on this.
Finally, I don't actually talk to people on the phone. Maybe a few times. I like to text message. But I don't particularly like talking on the phone.
If they came out with a $50 version, I may consider getting one. But for the time being, I'm happy with my very limited-function Samsung phone.

Prior to a few weeks ago, I had never heard of "World of Warcraft". Then, it was everywhere. Isn't that how it happens though? Maybe I just became more aware. Anyway, Scoot convinced me to try it out.

Turns out, the damn game is addicting as hell. I get to be a zombie. And kill things. And sneak around. And kill things.
That's pretty much my requirements for any video game.Must involve one or more of the following: sneaking around, killing things, zombies. Occasionally, I'll make the exception and allow a Disney character or something.

I've been playing for hours at a time. Last night, I got turned into some whorish Christmas elf for about 30 mins. I was not happy. How am I supposed to be taken seriously as a bad guy when I'm looking like a child pageant reject? (This is what I'm talking about. If I wasn't a nerd, I wouldn't have been upset about it.)

I'm on a 10 day free trial period, but I just may end up buying some prepaid gaming cards. I hate being a trendy nerd, but this is the first online game that I've really enjoyed in a long time. (I miss the days of Majestic.)

Archie McPhee may be my new favorite site in the whole world, but this especially makes me feel all giddy inside.

I also need the Ninja Attack and a tub of ninjas to go with it. I'd be firing that baby all damn day. It'd be a hell of a lot easier than my quasi-passive aggressive tendencies I have now. Oh, you want to take this time in the break room to fill up your cooler like you're about to hike through the desert? Ninja yo ass. Can't drive for shit? Buenos dias, El Ninja. Refuse to get your goddamn water pump fixed so you don't wake my kids up in the middle of the night? Sprechen Sie Ninja. Moody ass Christmas hater? NINJITSU, fool. (I don't know where the last one came from, but I would imagine it would be as good a reason as any to catapult a ninja in someone's general direction.)

Others on my wishlist:
-Cold War Unicorn Playset
- Cap'n Danger Stunt Monkey
-Monkey Shower Curtain
-Monkey Rug
-Anne Bonny Action Figure
-Edgar Allen Poe Nodder
-And, of course, Marie Antoinette Action Figure with "Ejector Head Action"

I'm a big fan of Firefox since I made the switch several months ago. I love the tabbed browsing and overall, just feel better using it. I know, some hell of a technical analysis. I guess what I mean is IE always seemed buggy to me. It is too often hijacked and the pop ups are ridiculous. Fuck, sometimes I would get pop ups even if I wasn't browsing the internet but my connection was active.
Around that time, I gave a hearty "Fuck a bunch of this shit" to the thought of depending on IE and downloaded Firefox. (I've used the IE 7 recently, but it just looks suck. And I don't like the GUI.)

I'm not sure what the differences are with the recently released 2.0 (I'll admit it, I skim release notes. Unless it says "THIS DOES SOME KICK ASS SHIT!" in big red letters, I won't notice.) But this does some kick ass shit. I'm really jazzed about the built-in spell checker. As I'm typing this entry, a dotted red line shows up whenever I misspell or make up a word- which happens quite often, actually. It's not a MT thing either, cause I've seen it in bulletin posting, etc. You know what this means? There really is NO excuse to misspell anymore.

I love it.

USB Missle Launcher

Oh...the fun I could have. The justice that would be served. It would be awesome.

This new format is making me feel mature. I'm hoping I don't end up writing about more mature things. You know, other than the two posts mentioning poop.
I'm still tweaking and getting used to this whole format. Despite being in Italian, formatting the old code was pretty easy. But I felt no control over it. Shit would go wrong and I couldn't debug. And I sure the hell couldn't get technical support. This is a good change. Now if I could figure out how to get the quotes back up, I would be happy. I considered getting my old posts up, but I'd have to figure out the whole Access/mySQL thing, and I really don't want to do that. Maybe just the movie reviews. We'll see.