ssurgul | Recent Entries

So, I got Bitdefender based on a MaximumPC review saying it was one of the best AV solutions. And because of that, I'm on their emailing list. So, this morning, Bitdefender sent me one touting their 'new, innovative' Internet storage/sync solution called "Safebox". Um, innovative? Dropbox has been doing this for over a year now. It's not exactly innovative to be lagging so far behind someone doing the same solution. Oh, and Dropbox gives 2GB free, too, but gives a huge breadth of options to get some additional free storage. Come on computer software firms. It's definitely time to grow up and accept that you're far from innovative any longer. Sure you might be making something 'better', but it's not innovative to add one single feature somewhere that's hardly used while copying 99.99% of the existing software solutions already used.

Again, just something to track:

Bissell 9200 T floor cleaner part list. The little latch plastic bit broke, and now it's $20 to replace the entire assembly. Not too bad really, assuming the stupid thing can't be plastic-glued back together.

http://www.bissell.com/parts/?id=9143&sc=product&productid=2786&fp=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmlRK8Da6GE&feature=related

I was watching the Up w/ Chris Hayes from last Saturday, finally. They were talking about the scariness of the social media avalanche of outrage that hit over the Komen Foundation and the Blunt Amendment and such. Chris made the statement that this might be overstating the realities of political 'will' based on the novelty/newness of this new type of activism and information being sent around. But I have to disagree with him, actually. It has been well-documented for decades that people are incredibly short-sighted, that we have such short attention spans regarding actual political changes and such. And one of the things cited, the ERA, took such a MASSIVE awareness campaign to alert people. And yet, now, we still don't have the ERA.

I think social media provides a more immediate solution to a lot of the enduring problems with the political infrastructure with this country. Shows such as Chris' and Rachel's and Ed's and Lawrence's also contribute to the 'reality' awareness in the field. It all helps to pull back the covers on various bills in Congress, exposing the truths about their titles that are actually exactly the opposite when you get into the nuts and bolts of the legislation.

At least now, with social media intervention we can get a decent amount of awareness out there BEFORE nightmare bits of legislation like the vaginal probe prior to any abortion bullshit happens. The OH/IN games played highlighted that there is already passed legislation like this in TX. No idea about that for just about anyone, prior to the social media driven awareness of the current push to get these things passed with the majorities won 2 years ago.

This is what ALEC is afraid of. This is where the Founders, in my mind, really envisioned us as being. With broader information and understanding, even if it's not necessarily 100% factual, of our current political situation and the antics of at least one party that LOVES to overreach and then eat their own dead, we can all truly start making informed decisions about how we'd like to be governed in this country.

When considering taking apart a trackball to clean it thoroughly to try and get more life out of it, don't bother. At the very least wear disposable coveralls, rubber gloves, and a gas mask. Christ those things get DISGUSTING!

Seems that the FBI and DOJ seizure of MegaUpload and other such sites have sparked many other, ancillary sites to close down. One of my long-term favorites is dead now, not because of the MU stuff directly, but at least because the owner and coder of it was in touch with some of those folk. And now, those emails may well be in the hands of the Feds. Thank you media companies for cracking down on sites that host 'illegal' downloads of movies that you don't have available at all anymore. Yet again, you're stunning vision and corporate business practices leave us all flabbergasted at your acumen and quality.

You can run but you can't hide BluRay disc pack. I WILL find you again and very soon. Just because I bought SSN2 and 3 on DVD doesn't mean I love you any less. Quite the opposite since you have that wonderful BTS series with the werewolf. Just stop hiding. This is getting tedious.

So I finally got off my ass and watched this movie. First, it's exceedingly fucked up, so I liked it a lot. ;) Second, I was stunned to see the killer (not revealed here for those that haven't yet seen it) give the little talk he did about kindness. It REALLY reminded me of the Retardican higher-ups. Just one small act of humanity, and a small hope kindles that they'll treat you with mercy and kindness, when they really do just want to filet and skin you and watch you die.

It really is how I view their actions against their 'base' of lower income and lower middle income Americans.

Current Mood: Disturbed

Robocopy: an actually useful *gasp* tool built into Windows Vista/7 for copying/mirroring files and/or directories. With the /dcopy:T flag used, it copies the files with the original date/time stamps as well. http://superuser.com/questions/146125/how-to-preserve-file-attributes-when-one-copies-files-in-windows and http://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

Creating a RAMDisk to hold various temp/cache files. (Not as useful as when I finally get the mega-computer together of a Core i7 on the 2011 platform, with up to 64GB of RAM, but even at 16GB a 4GB RAMDrive will help somewhat.)

Create: http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/19205-how-make-ram-drive-win7-64-a.html

Recreate at bootup: http://reboot.pro/7789/

Moving Firefox Temporary Internet files: http://www.infohole.com/blog/computing/firefox-cache-location/

Finding the hard drive slaughtering process. How to determine which process(es) are filling up your hard drive queue with requests and operations and such.

http://tweaks.com/windows/39199/how-to-detect-what-process-is-thrashing-your-hard-drive/

It's now fully official. I'm ancient. I just applied the new Icy Hot Naturals to my knees and my knuckles, and suddenly all my pain went away for a while. At least this version of Icy Hot covers the stench of menthol with other fragrant oils.

seem to be pretty damn important indeed.

So, I'd been having more and more problems with my machine. I thought it had more to do with the BitDefender install I put in over the top of the AVG install. However, there had been some odd, flaky problems that had arisen from time to time, too, that just seemed very curious. Anyway, as part of an effort to test and verify some of the modular power supplies for implementation into the computers in client offices to avoid the delightful problems of hardware failure courtesy of shitty power supplies, I plugged in an OCZ 850 80+ Gold unit into the computer (finally) and got it hooked up fully and such (finally).

I had nothing but blue screens and other issues, not the least curious of which was that the system 'magically' re-recognized every drive and every USB device on my system. All this, after I had connected the power supply up. Seems that the other one, which wasn't all 'that' old to start with, had something going on in the background that was making it unhappy and taking the system with it.

Rebuilt the computer, and now I can OC my CPU to 3.7GHz fully stably and everything seems to be zipping right along. Definitely need to move forward with using modular, 80+ cert. power supplies in the future. I think we'd save ourselves a LOT of headaches and sustainability issues.

I just realized there are a heap of 2's today. Quite interesting.

So, I was watching The Ed Show from 2012/02/17 much like I do all the time. DVR's are so very handy that way. Anwyay, I saw the below image and was shocked. It seems that the 30+ year campaign of direct disinformation and lies and games has a notable effect on moronic Americans. It's shocking how blinded people allow themselves to be, and they continue to vote against their own interests because of it.

Come on America. WAKE UP!!!

From Scott Thompson (of Kids in the Hall fame) on IMDB:

"What? I won the lymphoma? I had no idea I was even nominated. There are so many other people that are more deserving."

Oddly, I can think of dozens and dozens right off hand. ;)

Wow. I have to pray, at my darkest, deepest core that the original series was not even 1% as atrocious as this series is. I'm not even 9 minutes into the first episode, and already it's beyond stupid.

Ok, so it's not 'that' simple, but making the bread is nice. Anyway, to this point, I've been having issues with the loaves coming up .... uneven in the pans. It was put in unevenly dense on one side, because the dough can't be 'worked' in a traditional sense. (Without gluten, bread becomes a much different experience, unfortunately.) Consequently, even with shaking and spatula attempts to correct it, it's almost always coming out Leaning Tower of Pisa like. Until today.

Today I used the paddle attachment (yes, yes, snicker-snicker from the Peanut Gallery, I know) and it was a much smoother mix. Then, after pouring the bread into the pan, I used a second pan, with a non-stick spray coated layer of plastic wrap to press the bread more evenly into the loaf pan. It is coming up substantially more evenly this time. It's an extra step, and all, but it seems to be much, much better this way.

Rather fun. And the Lycans improved in this one too. No, not the CGI ones. They still can't do those for crap. I mean the guy in suit ones. Very intriguing and tasty. Too bad there weren't more of them. :) Overall an entertaining Underworld flick. Definitely without the plot of the first one, or the 'surprises' of the second one, but amusing nonetheless.

So I've been amusing myself, in my spare moments, with tagging my tens of thousands of pictures. My collection has grown to the point where even the rigorous folder structure I use has become a detriment in many cases. So, I know that most photo formats support tagging, and Windows and other search tools support searching against the tags as well, so it makes sense. If I want to see some Brian Steele pics, I'd rather they were aggregated for me from the various suits I have pics of him in. ;)

However, one of the only handy ways I've found to tag multiple pics at once has been WLPG. And for a basic, free program, it's actually pretty good. It has some facial recognition built in, and so forth; pretty handy all around. Except when it's dealing with 10's of thousands of pics. It seems to be decidedly not-happy in that circumstance. And I'm quite sure I'm making it even less happy with things like my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pics. I've been doing facial recognition tagging on the various turtle heads. Yes, I'm doing it 'accurately', but I have to wonder if my antics are causing the gallery to break more often. After all, those suits look amazingly similar facially. Yes, yes, I know the suits were made individually and have slight variations and whatnot. But I somehow doubt that simplistic facial recognition tools will handle that correctly, and having 4 faces that look quite similar but are all tagged differently probably gives the software a minor stroke every time it gets to those directories. ;)

So.

For weeks now, for whatever reason, MC7 has opted to fuck up my HD signal feeds on the Guide. (That, for those not in the know, is the listing for channels and what is on when.) It had duplicates for SyFyHD, ComedyCentralHD and various other channels. No idea what happened; they just appeared. And apparently, when they appeared, they also entirely decoupled the feed for Comcast, Digital, West Coast for those stations. Meaning, whenever the Guide data did its update magicks, it didn't actually download the data for those stations any longer. Hooray for no recordings for those stations, since the system rightly interpreted 'No Data Available' as NOT being The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, etc.

Courtesy of http://www.hack7mc.com , a terrific website that gives all kinds of nifty tricks and add-ins and such for Media Center, I found the GuideTool. http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool This allows you to find all the relevant possible 'feeds' for each channel, as well as mark up the guide settings for which channels to show or not show. With it, I was able to relink the channels with the right info. Why Win7 doesn't have such a tool by itself, I'll never know. Anyway, if anyone else has a HTPC, and needs such info, I highly recommend both sites.

Current Mood: accomplished

http://marvel.com/videos/watch/2200/the_amazing_spider-man_movie_trailer_2?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Pulse332&utm_term=Link2&utm_content=TopStories2WatchAmazingSpiderManTrailer&utm_campaign=Pulse332Newsletter02072012

Oh, hellz yeah!! July 3, I can't wait!

It's so distressing that my 500GB, 750GB and even some of my 1TB drives are being back-benched to being only used for backup drives. And yet, these were top of the heap just a few years ago. How far we've come.

But then, on a tech note, I was having a snack and drink at Moon and Six Pence (a cute little English Pub down in Portlandia) and a very, very interesting option struck me for Yelp. Walking tours, built on demand, and based on entertainment types. So, you can hit up Yelp, based on your current location, and then you select the entertainment type, the number of reviews, the percentage of 4 or 5 star reviews, and the average cost, and then Yelp spits out a map with 5-15 stops along a mile or two route in any downtown area. Just like that.

And just like that I realized that technology really has come far too far. That convenience now outweighs any level of rationality associated with that much convenience. :)

So, I have been giving more thought to that idea of weaker alternate universes based on the validity/possibility of the choices breakouts. Don't ask why; questions are burden to others, answers a prison for oneself.

I thought about one universe breaking through to another (yes, this was inspired by Fringe again). If there are a near-infinite number of universes breaking apart with each decision point, each one could be rated with a relative rating of, say, 1 to 1000. The higher up the scale, the more set and firm the universe is. So, an experiment with tossing cows off a cliff scores a 1000 for universes that split off based on blood spatter patterns from the cows hitting the ground. The same experiment scores a 1 based on universes that split off for cows sprouting wings spontaneously and flying to safety.

Now, given how fragile and 'weak' a lower number universe is, I hypothesize that if a higher validity universe tries to break into a weaker one, that weaker universe just ... collapses. The imposition of order from the bleed-over is just more than the weaker universe can handle. The same with a weaker attempting to break over into a stronger. The collapse simply .... 'recycles' the matter and energy into the same void-pool that the universes spawn from. Thus, any universe will simply plow through any weaker universes until it finds a suitable one to connect to logistically, and stands a better than even chance of just blinking out for breaking the barriers. After all, each universe is likely to be unaware of any breakage of 'set' physical law; in that universe it would simply 'be' that way.

So, I'm definitely going to see it. This reboot is amazingly good, to my mind.

BUT!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/fullcredits#cast

Wow. There are far more 'uncredited' actors on the IMDB page than credited ones. Seems like a good many folk are pinning more of their hopes on the movie doing especially well. :)

My ghods, I've become one. I looked through Steam's cheap games again today, and I realized I dismissed out of hand the side scroller, and a mystery game of the same genre as Leisure Suit Larry, with those types of graphics. Both these games are MUCH more recent, but yet.... If it's not an FPS or an RTS with a decent engine and graphics system, or a somewhat captivating turn-based game, I seem to have zero time for it all. How sad a realization that is. I used to love so many types of games, and now..... Ah well. Games evolve, and I guess I still like the eye and brain candy more than I do 'just' a decent story wrapped in a crapola system.

I genuinely hate it when I'm sleeping, and the alarm goes off beside me, and then in my dreams I incorporate it somehow, so I just think it's part of the dream. Take for instance this morning. I heard it going off. In my dream, I cursed profusely, and I and my partner (who was only a dream-figment and now has faded as to who it was 'supposed to be') went on a house-hunt to find it, and disable it, but it wouldn't STFU. Consequently, it took an extra hour to realize that I was supposed to wake up. Stupid imagination.

Just a little thought, for a possible plot idea.

Quantum mechanics 'tells' us that for every choice that is made, parallel universes split off at each decision point that constitute the 'what-if' of the other choice being made. But there was another little example I read about wherein that wasn't quite what was said regarding QM. QM 'actually' says that if there are test results being taken, and they are essentially a 50/50 shot, then the universe splits because if one is equally valid to the other, there MUST be universe where that option is the result. That, to me, seems to indicate that much like Occam's Razor, the choices have to be equally weighted. Like whether to wear the green, blue, red, purple or black tie. With a white shirt and a black suit, they're equally weighted. With a coral shirt, and a tan suit, a couple of these ties are FAR less likely to be chosen.

Now, what if there ARE universes that break off from each other, based on the choices, as the pop culture indicated. But instead of them being equal, they, like the choices, are ... weighted. In some the reality of that universe is substantially lighter. The rules aren't as fixed. Reality is different in subtle and major ways, but because there's not nearly the amount of ..... ummmmm 'reality' invested in it, it can also implode when pushed too far.

So, apparently, AHS offered this signup where folks could get a 'visit' from the rubberman in their very own home for a scare.

http://www.americanhorrorstoryhousecall.com/

Yeah.

So.

I'm pretty sure that I'd freak out for a moment just because there was someone in the house with me without my knowledge, and then..... Well, I just hope their suitactor is very malleable in general because he'd be in for a whole other sort of 'experience' with me. ;)

Ok, so, I'm watching the show because Target had a pretty kick ass sale/solution on getting caught up on the series. But, I realized before I dropped all the cashola on it, I should download it and see, so the vids are still returnable because of being entirely originally shrink wrapped. Anyway.

I'm very spoiled with 'actual' dialog and plot. The show is sort of like Supernatural meets X-Files. Sort of. It's ok, I guess. Somewhat interesting in plot and motivation and the like.

BUT! I'm VERY intrigued by it from a Mage: The Ascension perspective. The old Dr. is a true Son of Ether, and it's great inspiration for anyone even pondering playing a M:tA campaign again. :)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386703/

Total Recall is remade and rereleased this year?? Give me a break.

Mark, Mark, Mark..... You know, after Lo-Mai in The Island of Dr. Moreau, I totally and wholly fell in love with you. But this movie is definitely taking away some of that love. Sure, I don't mind seeing you shirtless and 'sweaty', but wow is this a bad one. And no signs of any more suitacting in your future even from this. Le sigh.

And Billy Zane, I'm afraid you're in the same boat. I fell so hard for you in The Phantom and Demon Knight. But wow is this a steaming pile.

I realize work is work is work, but come on guys. Please. PLEASE. Find an agent and some scripts with at least some quality. And Mark Dacascas, I'd be thrilled to see you in more suit work. ;)

I've come to realize I definitely shouldn't be watching these, or any of the future ones. At all. The amount of warmongering, lies, deception, hypocrisy, and worse that floods these people's lives and minds is amazing. And it's definitely not helping me get any rest right now. In 4 months, we should start seeing more legitimate debates on real, meaningful topics, when the Retardicans aren't posing for the Tea Party, which is even more absurd than anything to me. Hopefully this will be over before it starts, and someone like Perry or Santorum really will run away with the nomination, leading to a resounding pounding for the Retardicans in '12, and maybe (fingers triple crossed) even breaking up the Retardican Party all the more and leaving them even more barren.

Until that happy day, though, I'll leave it to others to swim through this neck-deep pit of liquified bullshit.

Ok, so, clearly I need to reiterate this point courtesy of absolute and obnoxious stupidity on the part of these Retardican Party nominee crazies.

The vast majority of the gays that I know that WANT to be married, want it as a means of sealing and assuring the relationship they have with their partner. They have zero interest in the religious aspects of the union. They only want the civic aspects. So. It's clearly time to disentangle the magical merger of the religious with the civic.

The only reasonable, real solution is to build a 'second system' of civil union. This civil union will be identical to the current marriage rights for all contract and civil and criminal aspects. Period. Marriage will henceforth be a term applied solely to the religious ceremonies. Consequently, if a couple pick up a marriage license, it will by itself also serve as the civil union documentation. And beyond that the civil union license will be available for anyone else that wants it, gay, straight, and in between. And yes, this will be between two consenting adults of contract signing age, as marriage is now.

It's time to grow up. It's time to get over it. And it's high time to recognize that an expansion of 'rights' occurred over and around a religious symbol of property ownership and transfer. And let's not pretend here. The notion that marriage was about anything other than taking literal ownership of a daughter, with a bribe from the bride's family (dowry), and then kicking out as many children as possible. Love wasn't part of it. It was only about political alliance, money for the groom's family, and many things that these people just don't attribute, at all.

Oh, yes, this will also allow them to continue to pursue an exclusionary status to their precious 'marriage' without actually denying fundamental rights to everyone. This is critical to this discussion since this is clearly the main point of their argument, when their 'supporting statements' for it are things like allowing two men or two women to get married will lead inexorably to forcing the country to accept marriage to a canine, or a lamp, or something equally absurd.

Current Mood: Leftist

Well, that was more than mildly entertaining, but I do have to say..... 21GB just about equals 20 hours of playtime? It's insanely pretty, but I'd have expected Bethesda to take a much higher hand on this and get me like 80-120 hours of playable time. Like most of their other games do.

But at least the Authority studs were amazingly tasty in that armor. ;)

A rather intriguing look at the MPAA, from 2005. And it's insanely disturbing.

Yeah, it's high time Anonymous focused another movement. This time, one to get all the pirates out in the field, every one of them (or most of them) to one month, this year or next, to just NOT buy any new media. At all. Period. No movies (recorded or in theaters), no songs (CD/HDCD or iTunes/esources), no software (console and/or PC) and no print media (paper or ebooks). Let them really demonstrate that sometimes there ARE reasons a pirate does what they do. Let them really understand that this little assault has gone on FAR long enough. And that bullshit like what they're shoving down our throats with BluRay has to stop as well with this BDLive bullshit that allows them to shove more and more previews at us, without the option of just skipping past them. It's my fucking movie you douchebags, if I want to watch the previews (and yes, sometimes I do), I will watch them.

{eom}

So I've played it a bit this morning. I didn't realize it's another Bethesda title. Yeah, so.... It's just an amazing game so far, OF COURSE. Stupid game studio, making Teh Awesome games. Now I REALLY can't wait to see something like Fallout 4 using the RAGE engine. RAGE is sooooooooooooo pretty, and so smooth. MMMmmmmm..... Definitely can't wait. :)

So, a certain friendly Tacolope got me RAGE for Xmas. I just sincerely hope there was a huge sale for it. :) Anyway, I'm stunned at how huge the install is: 21GB of space. That's absurd! But then I saw one of the achievements and all was forgiven. "Open Minded: Get 10 Headshot kills with the sniper rifle." I LOVE it! ;)

Current Mood: amused

I started watching Archer Season 1 again, very, very late. Now I'm laughing so hard I literally feel like I've been running for a good 20 minutes. Going to be up for another 45 minutes or so as my body cools down. ;)

EDIT: OMFG! I just discovered that Peter Newman plays Maj. Nikolai Jackov. So, this is meaningful to me because Peter Newman actually played Tygra/Wilykat/Monkian/Bengali in the original Thundercats delightful animation. ;) Not that Maj. is a huge part or anything, but Christ this show collects all these hilarious/great icons from my past both recent and ancient. ;)

Just checking out Dreamwidth.org based on a link from an LJ source that is supposed to allow for LJ archiving as well. A feature I'm desperate for now since the wonderful tool ljArchive doesn't seem to work any longer.

[Error: unknown template qotd]

Pick one. Go for it! ;)

It strikes me as odd. We as humans seem to thrive on tragedy. The train wreck, the bus crash, the multi-car pile-up, the sports figure getting horrifically injured (again and again and again on the instant replay). We watch them with a grim determination and fascination. Psychologists have known about this for decades; humans have known about it for millennia. But then an odd similarity struck me. We, as humans, ALSO require a blood sacrifice of some sort for any sort of significant, meaningful, lasting change to our culture and our ways of life.

Could it be that at least part of the fascination we have is not 'just' to thrive on the idea that we're still alive, and that their blood isn't ours? Could it also be that we thrive on this, we watch it so closely, to try and potentially be a part of the Next Big Change that sweeps through us all? One never can tell as it happens that Yes, *THIS* thing is the 'Big One'. It's only in the aftermath that the change is visible. Some little trigger in the subconscious knowing that they 'should' bear witness because who can say what might come of this.

Just a thought.

"Oh, no. Jarjar's been killed."

Why couldn't it have been real in the first movie, or even in the series of Clone Wars. Why, ohwhy, ohWHY couldn't it be real.... *cry*

So after watching the first disc of Season 1, I have come to one inexorable conclusion. I can just "feel" Lucas' fingers all over this. Whereas the show might have been entertaining and awesome, it's awful. Whereas the scripts might have stood on their own, I can just feel him forcibly inserting his own bullshit garbage from the 6 movies. It's too bad, too. The clones are still so hawt in that armor. But I don't really see much 'hope' for this show, even though it has already ended. I'm shocked it made it to three seasons with this type of 'scripting'.

So I'm finally watching this series courtesy of Netflix. And yes, part of the reason is the clone troops and their delicious armor. ;)

But I do have a serious question here. Is any of this meant to be canon in the SW universe? Seriously. Because I'm remembering in A New Hope where Kenobi said that he couldn't remember owning a droid, and yet, he's INSANELY chummy with both 3PO and R2 in all these episodes. And given everything that's happening, one REALLY has to wonder how a Jedi Master could forget such things.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope this coming week is nicely relaxing for everyone and that next year is smoother and better for all concerned. And unconcerned too, so there! ;)

"Dangerous at both ends and .... crafty in the middle!"

I'm 9 years old again, I know.

But you've got to admit this has to be the most homosexual name, pretty much anywhere.

http://i.imgur.com/R2zOh.png

Why the fuck do I watch this show??????/

Zachary Quinto (Skyler, from Heroes, and Spock from the new Star Trek reboot) is now going toe-to-toe with Jessica Lange as Pure Fucking Evil character..... He looks sooooooo amazingly good in that rubber catsuit but Christ he's turning to pure malice.

Wow this is SUCH a good show.... as it turns my brain into an even more broken, warped mangled shell of its former self.