GGoG

This stands for Gigantic Gathering of Geeks. In other words, a Gaming Convention. Click on the link on my blog page entitled "Dans Discourse" for three posts worth of humorous and well written description of this past weekends Kublacon event. Warning: don't take a big swallow of coffee while reading; it may just come out of your nose.

Three for the price of one....

So my favorite TV Critic Tim Goodman over at SFGate.com listed his "final" grades for the Network TV season. In alpha order I will give you mine.

ABC: Sorry I don't watch this network much, if at all. It basically has some of the stupidest shows on. "Ugly Betty" gets raves from the critics, but it just doesn't interest me. I was spoiled I guess growing up with Sitcoms like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Chico and the Man, Sanford and Son, just to name a few. Those shows were funny, the majority of the stuff on TV now just isn't. I always thought Friends was stupid and I've never found an episode of Seinfeld all that funny. ABC also has Lost.......I just couldn't get into it. It makes no sense whatsoever. The plane crashes on a deserted tropical island. The plane cracks perfectly in half with the front half going to one side of the island and the tail going to the other. So instead of a scripted "Survivor" we get the wheel of random sci fi like crap. A Polar Bear?!?!?!?!? A hatch that leads to a secret underground facility with computers?????? They have technology, but can't seem to find a way off of the island. Sounds like The Professor on Gilligan's Island. He could build a radio out of two coconuts, but seemed incapable of building a damn raft!!!! Now ABC is airing the National Spelling Bee....WTF????? They are also bringing you Bingo. Yep.....Bingo. They will be bringing you a Sitcom based on the characters from the Geico Cavemen ads. Those things are funny for 30 seconds. Not sure if they will be able to pull off 30 minutes, every week. We have Desperate Housewives. A show that just helps the divorce rate climb if you ask me. Yep, if you are bored, rich and married, apparently it's okay to screw everything that moves. Nice huh? Then we have Grey's Anatomy. A soap opera disguised as a medical show. They actually really tried making it a medical drama at one time but the ratings got better the more Doctors they had having sex in empty hospital beds. Yeah right, Doctors on duty in an ER with time to have sex with each other...oh and don't forget all those empty beds in the hospital. Whatever!! F is the grade I give ABC.

CBS: The network most watched in my house. Even the local CBS news we watch. They did mess some things up this year though. I was liking the show Smith but it got killed after 3 episodes. The story telling was a bit disjointed at times, and I think that's what may have killed it. Jericho just pissed me off. Started off great but slowly frustrated the crap out of me with the inane scripts every week and the fact it started turning into a huge soap opera. Gahhhh. The Unit better get better next season, or it will be gone. I understand having storylines with the wives, great actresses and all, but after awhile it gets to be a bit much. Too much wives, not enough dudes with BDU's and guns keeping us safe from some terrorist or whatever. Starting to approach the Jumped the Shark borderline. Speaking of sharks, Shark is great. James Woods is one of those scene chewing actors who paces and gestures and generally approaches a scene like a fat man a sandwich. MMMM ham on rye anyone....? The Amazing Race is always a treat. I used to avoid Reality Shows like the plague, but this one is really fun. If I ever tried out for a Reality Show it would be this one. I can see Cath and I racing around the world trying to win 1 Million bucks. Survivor has run it's course I believe. It was fairly good this year, but it's gotten to be old hat now. CSI: The Original is the best of the bunch. The Miami one is a cop show, not a show about crime scene folks. The NY one is kind of the same. Just can't get into those. Without a Trace is a meh with me. If I miss it, I don't cry. Numbers is lots of fun. Really great characters and I have yet to see a bad episode. Ghost Whisperer or should I say Hi My name is Jennifer Love Boobit....look at my Ta Tas........can just go away. It's really lame. I'm not really sure why they cancelled Close to Home. A really good show but they canned it. CBS gets a B from me

NBC: All of a sudden I'm watching NBC again. Why? One word: "Heroes". Yes I know, I've said it before and I'll say it again (as many times as the Discourser has said it); Heroes is the best show on TV. Period. It's pretty much the only show I will watch on NBC. They get an A from me.


Fox and CW.....who cares????? American Idol is crap and it has made the programming folks at Fox too lazy to come up with anything else. All they depend on is that lame ass show. The CW(for those that don't know...lame ass UPN and WB merged into one really super lame ass network) just crap. UPN when it first started was fairly good. They had Star Trek the Next Generation and show's like Pig Sty and Platypus Man. Love those shows. Then they dumped all that, started Star Trek Voyager (honestly one of the lamest Star Trek shows yet) and made all of their sitcoms geared towards African Americans. Nothing wrong with that, just doesn't interest me.....not my culture, and frankly none of them were the least bit funny. They finally did it when they aired Enterprise. The Prequel to the Kirk Star Trek years. Problem is, the original Enterprise had better tech than the old and every week became a let's see just how big Jolen Blacloks breasts really are. It didn't help that the story lines were lamer and lamer as the show went on. When something becomes a chore to watch, I stop watching. Now the WB part of the CW used to have Buffy and Angel. I like Joss Whedon for bringing us Firefly, but could never get into Buffy or Angel. Remember Fox way back when? 21 Jump Street, Married with Children, Werewolf (loved that show), the Simpsons.........yeah I know the Simpsons is still on, but it's like the only thing on Fox worth watching. Now all they have is American Idol oh and 24, which has gone in the crapper this season. Remember when UPN had some cool shows too, besides Star Trek? Nowhere Man comes to mind. Loved that show too. Neither network deserves a grade....Hell an F is too good for them. Go away so we can get the massive reruns of Mash we used to have years ago.

Random Musing

Passing by the smaller, older strip mall up the road from the house tonight I finally noticed the place titled "Laser Tag" was finally closed. When we first moved here I wanted to check it out, but was told that the Laser Tag part of it had closed down years ago and it was just an arcade now. Made me think of this placed called "Q-Zar" we used to go to. It was a Laser Tag place where you wore a vest that had a gun attached to it. The vest was a target and if you got hit 3 or 4 times, you were out and you had to go to a recharge station and recharge. It was a lot of fun, until the cheaters started showing up. Yep it wasn't long after the advent of cheating bastards, usually younger Teens, that all of the Q-Zar's started shutting down. I think there's one still open in Concord, Ca (probably closed by now, but last time I was there it was still open.). These Kids would cheat by hiding in the corner near the recharge station and shooting you out again after you recharged. Basically keeping you from playing the game because you constantly had to go and recharge. So you basically paid 20 bucks for 15 minutes of play to have some punk ass 14 year old ruin your fun. Can you see why they closed down? Apparently these little punks have migrated to the online gaming world. In Gamer Speak they are called "Spawn Campers"....... they basically sit in the section of the game where they know your character is going to "respawn" (basically come back to life after being killed) with the sole purpose of killing you again, and again and again.......now this gets them a high "kill" count, but doesn't achieve anything as far as the game is concerned. Say it's a military game. Your team has to achieve an objective; ie destroy the enemy fuel dump....their team has the same objective. You get big points for achieving this objective in a timely fashion. These "campers" aren't doing their team any good whatsoever. They are also the same little shits that are real brave and mouthy when they are sitting at home in their bedrooms at Mommy and Daddy's house. In real life they are scared of their own shadow, but because of the wonderous anonymity of the internet, they get to be rude, inconsiderate bastards. Kind of why I don't play online multi player games. These same cheating schmucks sometimes ruin a day of Airsoft for me....not anymore though as I have been given Field Marshall status at the Bad Karma field and can remove them from the game if I see them cheating. Ah....bliss.......I love having the power to tell these little punks to get the f**k off the field. Feels good. I know, a random musing but really a minor rant.

Ciao for now.

Movie Reviews

A couple of them this time around. 300...Wow!!!! What a great movie. Yes I have a copy of it at home.....that's all I'm saying about that..... The movie's message about soldiers and warfare and the honor of doing one's duty can be applied to our Soldiers in Iraq. The Persians are depicted as out there and very strange, but then you have to realize the story is being told by one of the Spartans who was there so it's his perception. Just like in Frank Miller's "Sin City" the filmakers took the atmosphere of the graphic novel and translated it to the screen perfectly. Sepia tones and dark moody storms....awesome to behold on the screen. The fight scenes....my God how awesome they are. The Spartans were the Special Forces of the Greek Army....like the Samurai they were the elite of soldiers. On the lighter side we have "Night at the Museum". A suprisingly funny movie through out. Cath and I couldn't stop laughing. I say surpisingly because I find most Ben Stiller movies not so funny. "Meet the Parents" and a few like that are fairly funny but one's like "Zoolander" and "Starsky and Hutch" (why that movie was a comedy I'm not sure...) were just unfunny. Even Owen Wilson was funny as a cowboy in a diorama who comes to life at night and has an unending feud with Octavius the leader of the Roman diorama next to his. Robin Williams plays a statue of Teddy Roosevelt that comes to life at night as well.

Irresponsibility

I've mentioned a certain Airsoft Retail establishment before and how they seem to be a bunch of kids who are constantly trying to one up each other. Mind you the store is owned by Twenty/Thirtysomethings so you'd think they wise up. Nope. This store, NA is the initials I will use.....is responsible for bringing people into the sport of Airsoft. Now everywhere else safety safety safety is encouraged and stressed over anything else. Most fields and organizations nationwide have done studies, etc and feel that an airsoft gun shooting at 400-425 Feet Per Second is hard enough and safe for folks to play with. Anything higher and you run the risk of serious injury especially if you don't have engagement distances. Mickey, an employee of Airsoft Extreme one of the best retailers out there, has a sniper rifle that shoots 600 fps. Mickey always engages from 200 feet away...that's it. He may go farther back, but he never gets closer than 200 feet. Why? His gun's velocity when it reaches the end of it's 200 foot range slows down to a safe level. If he was too close, you'd have puncture marks and heavy bruising. NA introduces people to the "mine is bigger than yours" mentality when it comes to airsoft. Instead of encouraging people to upgrade a gun from stock speeds (225-250) to medium range (300-400) they encourage upgrades to "let's see how hard we can make this thing shoot". Insane!!! They put on their own games at the Bad Karma Field and have their own waiver because they refuse to abide by the Bad Karma rules. The owner of the Field is fine with this as long as they have particpants sign the NA waiver. These games are games I refuse to go to. Many others that I know feel the same. Just this past Sunday a new guy with tons of cash to spend on Airsoft had a game at the field. His gun shoots 645 fps....I shit you not. These guys regularly play with high fps guns and use no engagement distances what so ever. I remember someone that went to their games giving someone crap for going off after he was hit point blank in the back of the neck with a gun shooting 612 fps. Ummm you hit me with a plastic BB at point blank range with something that almost has the same kick as a .22....then yeah I'm going off on you. I'm dropping my gun and kicking the crap out of you until you feel the same pain as I'm feeling. The irresponsible actions of these schmucks are going to get us some bad press and may even get our sport banned. I hope not for their sake.

Busy weekend.....Serious Crap going down.

Remember my "Paranoid" post? I was right. Little one figured out what the DGM is all about. She has become so scared of him that she refused to go with him this weekend. Wow....is all I can say. That's one brave little girl. Updates to come.

The View: Trying to take the place of the Springer show????

Yep, according to Barbara Wah Wah all of Rosie's idiotic antics on the show have given it the best ratings in a long time.  In other words folks want to see a Burly Mountain Woman argue with other Hens.......Well I guess you have to do something...I mean Rosie's standup was never funny and her show was supposed to be a talk show but it was always "Ooooo Look at me I'm Rosie O'Donnel, I'm so witty...he c'mon it's all about me don't you know that???"  So I guess Barbara Wah Wah is going to get some Ultra Religious Woman and a Former Porn Star next so the viewing public will get to see chairs thrown and hair pulling......ooo aaahhhh!!  What happened to you Barbara????  You used to be a respected Journalist, now you've turned into a hack Sensationalist.......is this how you want to be remembered???? 

Paranoid

It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid
I'm just stoned

Paranoid by Green Day

 

Yep that sums it up perfectly.  The DGM (Donor of Genetic Material) is a paranoid, stoner, alky.  He gets his Daughter a cell phone (against her Mother's wishes, he does shit like this all the time) so he can talk to her in private because he "knows" that Cathy listens in and tape records his calls......WTF?????  Okay looney boy......get over yourself, we don't give a shit what you say to her nor do we care to listen in or tape record your stupid conversations.  Cath got his ass good today.  He's making his Daughter as paranoid as he is and it's pissing us off.  Cath told her today that the cell phone is being taken away until the secretive crap stops.  She told the DGM that if he wants to pick her up for his visitation, then he needs to call Cath and let Cath know what time and not Liv.  He normally ignores the phone when he knows it's Cath, so she blocked the caller id from Liv's Cell and called him.  Miraculously he answered.  What an ass.  This guy works for a month, then is off for a month.  Does he call his Daughter at all?  Hell no!  He only calls the day before it's his time to come get her and he always comes late.  If this was my Daughter and I was off, I'd call her every day and come as early as I could to pick her up.  Oh wait, that's right I care about someone other than myself....right.....  With this prick it's all about him.  Never does he take the Child anyplace she wants to go, it's always to the lake so he can play with his boats.  Boring if you go all the time.  I think Liv is slowly figuring his shit out.  He thought he won when the Courts denied Cath the right to move out of State, all he did was get me in the same vicinity as himself.  Stupid, stupid Monkey.......

Rant Coming!!!

3-2-1.....Rant!

So now I know why the term Customer Service is a joke now a days. My Wife works at Ross. She has worked there since November. In that time she has gotten Employee of the Month twice. Do you think they would give her more hours and not treat her like a red-headed step child???? Hell no! She's the one that gets shat upon. My folks were in town last week. Cathy just needed Friday through Sunday off and was willing to work Monday. What did they do? they gave her Wednesday through Saturday off and wanted her to work Sunday. WTF???? What part of "my Sister In-Law is leaving Sunday" don't they understand???? Cat called in sick on Sunday, and now she is being treated like a P.O.S. Two young guys work there. One has an arm full of tatoos. Company policy says he has to cover that up. The sorry excuse for management at this store (and this is where the real problem lies) tells this kid he has to wear long sleeves. He does, but rolls the sleeves up when he gets in the door; at whatever flipping time he feels like!!! Does he get reprimanded???? Hell no. Even when a customer complained about it, and Cat went and told her "manager" the "manager" said "I said it was okay for him to wear short sleeves." Excuse me??? You were the one who told him he had to wear long sleeves and cover it up!!!! Freaking weak willed pain in the ass. His other male buddy and he go out and party until all hours....then come in late, slack off, etc. How are they reprimanded??? They get 30 hours next week. My Wife who has called in sick twice and never been late, has always been there when they needed her gets rewarded with 15 hours!!! Ummmmm Hello? So I guess mediocrity again is being rewarded. Got to love this Country sometime. This one chick doesn't call in or anything for weeks. Then she comes back begging for her job. I'd have told her to bad so sad. This weak willed morons give her the job back and give her a Monday through Friday schedule with set hours. Huh??????? Apparently it must take alot to get fired now a days. Now I know why shopping at a retail establishment is a crappy experience most of the time. The management sucks and they hang on to losers and drive all the good workers away. Thus the reason Cath is putting in an application at another store while studying for her Real Estate License test.

Cat Update

Well Panther is finally fixed, so hopefully no more bladder infections.....this also means we can start letting Pumpkin in the house now. Poor little guy, he sits at the back door and meows to come in. It's like he's saying "Dude I used to live here...why can't I come in?" Cathy is really cracking down on her studying for her Real Estate License test. She's planning on taking it sometime next week. I wish her luck.

Couple of Changes

Woo hoo....blogger has added new page elements. I've added a pic of my favorite Skyline at the bottom of the blog and also added the Pic of the Week box. If this weeks pic offends you; too bad. It's a joke get over yourself. I've also added links to 3 online comics about gaming and gamers that are pretty funny. Penny Arcade and PvP are about gamers and gaming geeks and general geekness. Looking for Group is a comic about your typical RPG party and their misadventures (you will love Richard the Warlock...). Click on the links and give them a try.

Everyone's Moving

I remember alot of my friends as well as Myself saying we'd "never move out of the Bay Area". It's hard to do actually. If you weren't raised there, you won't get it. Say what you want about San Francisco, but beneath the facade of "bleeding heart liberals" and "raging homosexuals" is a rather beautiful city with lots of history and some really cool crap to discover. I was born there, and we lived there until I was 2. We then moved to the Peninsula (San Mateo County) where I've lived in various cities until about 2 years ago. How can you not want to live there? In San Francisco you have the SF 49ers and the SF Giants. Across the Bay in Oakland you have the A's and the Raiders and the Warriors. Down South in San Jose you have the Sharks and the Sabercats and the minor league San Jose Giants baseball team. There are at least half a dozen or more venues to see live concerts in. There is mass transit that will give you a break from driving to work if it happens to be close to where you work. You've got the Golden Gate Bride; easily one of the most recognized landmarks in the world. The cons: it's extremely expensive to live there. Brian was the first. He was tired of the rat race (then again he lives in San Jose which has 1 million people and is a large metropolitan city......I'd want to move too) and he and Chrissy and their adopted daughter Kailyn moved to Kauai. They lived there for a couple of years, but now are back in San Jose. They didn't like it too much out there. Being a white, blond person in Hawaii tends to make one a target for discrimination. Funny huh? You know my story by now, I moved to Tennessee about 2 years ago. I miss my friends and family being close by, and I miss the tolerant attitudes and diversity of the Bay Area. I also miss the drivers, believe it or not. At least people in the Bay Area know how to drive on a freeway! Things are a bit cheaper out here. Cathy and I get by on a lot less than we would out in California. The one thing I still won't get used to out here (and it still bothers me) is that religion seems to be everywhere, in everything; basically shoved down your throat, and everyone accepts it!! Schools have prayer meetings before school hours around flag poles, I thought we had a separation of Church and State in this country?

Back on topic. So Brian sends me an email the other day asking which one of these places is close to me????? In it was a list of Hospitals where he was looking to do his internship when he finishes his Doctorate in Psychology that he is currently working on. One of them was Vanderbilt University in Nashville (a top medical school). So it looks like Brian may be moving out here in a year or two! Next I find out the Perfect Line was interviewing in the LA area (Orange County actually; Irvine I believe). A few years ago he quit his job that he had been working at since he was 17! He's 33 now and has been working in IT since the age of 17. He lucked out and was in the right place at the right time. He has no degree, just certifications and had been making 6 figures for 10 years or so. He bought a house in San Mateo, decided it wasn't what he wanted and sold it. He then moved in with a friend in SF and has been living there for a few years now. I guess he's been retired long enough now and wants to get back into working. He has also been entertaining a change of location. He talked New York, even Toronto, but has settled on So Cal. So to save money on travel and to make it easier to interview, he's announced he is moving down there in June sometime. He's having a big going away party....wish I could make it. Mom and Dad surprised me when they were out here. They really liked the new houses and it sounded like they were seriously considering moving out here. That would be nice. Considering the fact that they paid cash for their house in Elk Grove (200,000 at the time) with the money Dad got from splitting up of Grandpa and Grandma's Estate and it's doubled in price since; Dad says it's worth 400,000 now! Heck they can buy a new house out here with multiple bedrooms and 3.5 baths for 240,000 and be a few blocks away from me. Time will tell.

Ciao for now.

Heroes: Nicely wrapped up but leaving you wanting more.

Spoiler alert for those that haven't seen the last episode on Monday night.


So Heroes (the best show on TV) has ended the first Volume of it's Graphic Novel for TV essentially. It all came down to this: The bad guy gets killed by a True Hero finding the nerve to do what needs to be done no matter the cost. Another Hero makes the same sacrifice but to save an entire city (the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few or the One.....). Questions about who is really who and who is coming back. Oh yeah, and who really is that Masked Samurai? Here's my Theories:

Linderman, Mr. Petrelli, Mother Petrelli, George Takei and Simone's Father were all part of a 70's Super Hero group that somehow got disbanded and the individual purposes of the team bumped heads with the groups purpose. Mother Petrelli is pure manipulative Evil. She really was insisting the bomb go off in New York and that Nathan become the City's Messiah. The little girl Molly says there is a person she can track, but doesn't want to because when she sees that person in her mind he "sees her back!!" I think Mother Petrelli is really the one pulling the strings and it wasn't Linderman who was the head Villan. She is in control of the Agency that was tracking down the Heroes that Noah Bennet worked for. I also think that her "power" is that she isn't human. Hiro's father always told him a tale about Kensei and the Dragon....I think Mother Petrelli is the Dragon. In Asian mythos Dragons would often take the form of a Female Human to fool mortal Samurai. Just as I predicted, Nathan took the moral high ground and rescued his brother from blowing up and destroying New York by flying him to basically outer space (or the line between space and the ozone layer). Nathan has shown supersonic flight capability before and he sacrificed himself to save New York. My friend Brian suggests that Nathan may not have been vaporised as a result of being a ground zero of a nuclear blast. I'm not sure if Peter has enough control to extend his regeneration powers to others. Claire can't so I'm assuming Peter can't. Therefore Nathan is blowing in the wind (actually floating is space as little bits of dust) and Peter is stuck floating in orbit regenerating.......they may have him end up on the international space station.......somehow Peter is coming back. Parkman took four to the chest courtesy of Sylar but I think he will be okay. Hell DL sat around with a gut wound for a bit and he's good. Nikki and Jessica have merged into one and she's now She Hulk. Micah is the machine man....what a cool power. Missing are the Haitian and Invisible Boy. Hiro proved he had the guts to do what needed to be done as he ran Sylar through with a Samurai Sword. He gets thrown by Sylar as an after thought and teleports randomly to Feudal Japan. After all is said and done, Sylar's body was missing. There is a big, bloody drag mark (not crawl mark, Sylar was definitely dragged) leading to the sewers....then a roach emerges....was that symbolic or just a way to creep folks out? I think symbolic but I don't know how yet. Who dragged Sylar down to CHUD world??? I think it was Invisi Boy. I think he's still fighting the bad fight. Now for Hiro. He drops onto the ground with a Samurai Army advancing on him on one side, and what appears to be Kensei on the other. One good look at Kensei's eyes behind his mask and I swear it's George Takei. Which makes sense. All those stories of Kensei Hiro's Dad told him as a boy were basically about himself. Hiro's Dad is Kensei and he's immortal or slow aging at the least. Volume 2 has already started well and I hope it proceeds to be just as good as Volume One.

God I love this show!!!

Ciao for now.

It's been awhile

No not that overplayed Stained song, it's been awhile since I've posted here. The Folks are in town as is my Sis. It's their second time to Tenn and it's Sisters first. Sis left yesterday, the Folks are leaving tomorrow. She had a good time and they always enjoy being here. We rode the General Jackson PaddleWheel boat for the first time Saturday night. It was a bit cold but we handled it just fine. Cathy and I have decided to go back just the two of us.....possibly on our Anniversary in January. We will go for the dinner and show cruise which means you are inside...thank God!! Sunday we went Downtown so my Sis could get a view of Downtown Nashville.......yeah it's just like San Fran or any other City.......then we went to the Hermitage. This is the home of Andrew Jackson, Seventh President of the US. It's in the City of Hermitage which is right next door to our City of Mount Juliet. Basically I live next door to Andrew Jackson.....not bad eh? The grounds are beautiful as is the Mansion itself. This guy owned 1,100 acres!!!! I got a half an acre and I complain about maintaining it!!! We went shopping with the Folks today. My parents are very typical Italian. Generous to a fault. I had to politely refuse to let my Mother buy us a 400 dollar patio set, she's insisting on the 250 one......I will let her because there is no arguing (I could say no, and she'd buy it anyway......). They are great and I love them to death. They really like Cath....(they weren't really fond of PITA, but then again who was????) I knew they would. She's a wonderful Woman and everyone that meets her can see what I see in her. Anyhoo, time to rest then spend some more time with the folks tomorrow then send them off home again. I will wait to blog about the Heroes Finale (the GoG haven't watched it yet....soon.....). Speaking of the GoG...it looks like the Perfect Line is moving to LA.......trying to find out if it's for work/pleasure or both....... the rest of the GOG will be gathering at KublaCon this coming weekend. This is the second one I'm missing........there are no game cons out here (this sucks honestly it does......) some folks that came to our Yard Sale were talking to Cath about gaming and wanted me to call them. I got a chance to see these folks......AHHHHHHH!!!!! Sorry, not the GoG....not by a long shot. These are folks the Discourser will be blogging about soon.

Ciao for now.

TV Nirvana.....or something....

Heroes has been renewed for a second season!!! Next year during the summer break they are going to be airing a companion show called Heroes: Origins. Each week they will introduce a new Hero and the audience gets to vote to see if that character ends up in the series or not. Pretty cool. Jericho has been cancelled; no big surprise there. I stopped watching it about 6 or so episodes ago because it started becomming a soap opera and the people in the show didn't act like people would after seeing a nuke go off in the distance. The writers drove me crazy with their inane drivel they call scripts. Close to Home has been cancelled, and I'm not sure why? It was a decent show. I hear ABC is going to make a Sitcom called Cavemen with the Geico Cavemen in it. Not sure how funny that's going to be and for how long. I predict it getting old fast.

Animal Update

The Vet says Panther is doing good. It was a bladder infection and her being in heat caused it to become worse than it should have been. He's going to give us some antibiotics and possibly suggest we change her diet (Cath will have to talk to him today). Pumpkin decided to venture into the house last night. Cathy left the door open to see if he would. He wondered in and started sniffing around then headed straight for our room and under out bed. The bed in our room and the matching bedroom Suite came with the house. The couple bought it, and basically slept on it for a month or so before they decided to move. So we got a house plus a brand new King Size bed and really nice bedroom Suite. Pumpkin must have recognized the bed because he stayed under there a bit. He was definitely familiar with the house.

Animal Emergency

Panther, our little black, bobtail cat wasn't feeling good yesterday. She was in obvious pain somewhere and Cath took her off to the Vet. Finds out the poor thing has a bladder obstruction and can't pee. She's got a catheter in her now and if she has to have surgery it will be about 200 bucks (not bad actually). Poor Liv is very upset so I put a call in to my Sister who used to be a registered emergency vet tech for alot of years to ask about the cat's condition. Laura called and I had her talk to Liv. Auntie Laura must have said some good things because Liv was feeling a little less down about the situation. Whew!!! Not sure of Panther's status, we will find out. Recently (about 2 months ago) we were adopted by another cat. A long haired, white with orange spots and an orange tail Tom Cat. Cut little guy, still a young cat (I guessitmate his age at about 2 years old). He's very friendly and playful and seems to not mind Panther and she doesn't seem to mind him. When we get her fixed we are thinking of letting this other cat in the house. His name is Pumpkin (Liv named him) because the first time he came around was in October. He the disappeared for a bit, and about 2 months ago he just showed up and hasn't left. Now that we are feeding him, etc he definitely isn't leaving. Found out an interesting thing about Pumpkin last night. We were talking to my neighbor Paul (I was bbqing burgers and he commented that it smelled good and was there one for him) and he saw Pumpkin and he told us that he looked alot like the cat that the previous owners of our house had. Hmmm......I always wondered why the house came with a pet door but no signs of a pet. Makes sense though, I mean why would a cat pick our house out of all the others to take up residence in? My neighbors across the street have about 5 cats and you'd think the cat would go there. Somehow and for some reason he is very comfortable at our house like he's been there before. It's a shame really, that people can just abandon an animal like that. The lady that lived there before us was a single Mom for the longest time. She got together with her son's father years (like a decade or so) after that "one" night and they got married. They lived in the house for awhile but decided to sell it and take an RV across Country. Would explain why they ditched the cat. There is an animal shelter in Wilson County, they could have dropped the little guy off there, but no...all evidence points to abandonment. Yeah I know, it's just a cat, but it was somebody's pet....a beloved member of the family and he got tossed aside like a used paper cup.

Still Busy and OMG Heroes...Nuff Said.

Getting the house ready for my Folks and Sis' visit on Thursday (they are staying until the 22nd). Looking forward to it. I haven't seen my "kid" Sis in a bit (she's 4.5 years younger than I).

Heroes, Heroes, Heroes....what can I say. My Friend Brian just mentioned to me that this is the first show in a long time that has gotten us really talking about it and anticipating the next episode. Tim Kring (the creator) has done an excellent job. The GoG and I keep in touch electronically alot via a Yahoo Group that we created. It was mostly created to see when we wanted to game and what gaming conventions we were going to attend. Lately we have been bouncing around many theories about Heroes. Honestly it gets better each and every episode. Babylon 5 and Farscape used to be that way as well. Sadly they are off the air, but it was time for them to wrap up. Much like The Sopranos on HBO, the story needs to come to an end. I've also heard that Battlestar Galactica is wrapping up next season as well. It needs to. I was none too impressed with Season 3. I guess missing the first two seasons made me not get so excited about it like alot of folks I talk to. Ah well.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Whew!!! Been a busy few weeks around here. We've been having nice, sometimes humid, weather around here so that means lot's o' Spring Cleaning inside and out. Cathy, Liv and I tend to be clutterers. When we get home from work/school we tend to want to just plop down wherever and veg. Whether it's in front of the tube or computer or back in the craft room we just like to relax and do our thing. This leads to shoes being taken off and left where they lie, mail piling up on the table, you get the idea. Typical everyday life. My folks and Sis are coming to visit next Thursday from the Bay Area and the house is officially a disaster! Need to clean it up. Also have to finish the outside stuff we've been working on. We a "moat" of flower beds surrounding our house. It's about a foot high, walled off by those red wedge shaped bricks you can get at Lowes. It looks nice, but the previous owner had too much stuff all crammed together. Lot's of ground cover plants, some with flowers, some with nice leaves. Some decorative grasses (really nice ones, and then some that look like crap). Liv has three big juniper bushes in front of her room that need trimming (Thank God for the electric hedge trimmer) and there is another row of them to the right of the front steps near the front door. Ask the Perfect Line about junipers.....they can be spider colonies. He used to have an entire front section of his house in SM covered in junipers. They were cut in an interesting wave pattern which looked pretty darn good. Cath has been clearing out the crap, and keeping the good. The beds are looking really open now. We also have a "pre-rusted" metal Victorian Bicycle planter stand (you know the bike where the front wheel was ginormous) which holds three potted plants. It looks real good in the flower beds and we have some purple pansies and some blue butterfly flowers as well as some little reddish flowers. It looks nice. We also had this tall, scraggly bush that had those red berries on it that you were always told as a kid were poisonous if you ate. It's gone now and the space it occupied is so opened up it makes our house look bigger!!!! It's not that it wasn't a bad looking bush, it was the only one of it's kind and looked really out of place. That's the one thing Cath and I noticed, the previous owner had this knack for putting anything, anywhere. There seemed to be no ryhme nor reason to her vegetation placement. We still have the rest of one of the tree/bushes to hack up, then to get rid of the other tree bush that is right near our house. Now the funny thing about the bed it sits in is the previous owner planted a crapload of Day Lillies. In the winter they all die out and go into germination mode (they are bulb plants). When they come alive again they have huge expanses of leaves and one thin stalk that grows out of the middle with a really nice looking flower (ours are a deep orange color). The problem is the previous owner planted them all so close together it's like a dozen headed Hydra!!! A floral one that could easily be killed with a machete.....sorry about the Geek moment there. Next we need to straighten out the carport. We have boxes full of clothes that didn't sell at the yard sale and need to be carted off to the Goodwill Trailer out the City Dump about a half mile away or so. I like that we have a City Dump that is free!!! One visit a day and you have to be a resident of Wilson County (that's the County I live in). They have four ginormous debris bins and several bins that say "metal only" "Newspaper/paper recycle", "plastic recycle" "lawn debris" and "household garbage". One of the reasons Cath and I want to purchase a truck. You can fill up the back of the truck with kitchen garbage (bagged of course) and haul it off to the dumps and dump it for free!! How cool is that? No garbage day to worry about, no garbage company to pay. We pay for garbage pickup now. It's 60 bucks every quarter which isn't bad. I'm not about to haul nasty, bagged food garbage in the back of my car or Cath's car for that matter. The Ginormous debris bins are kind of cool. They are so tall that they had to build a paved hill between them. You drive up this hill, and you are right over the tops of the bins. You take your debris and toss it over then drive off. I remember back home in Cali where it was like 20 bucks a carload to go to the dumps!!! Outside the gates of the dump is the aforementioned Goodwill trailer. Boy are they going to hit the jackpot donation wise!

I've been reading about the Super Goober's car woes. Man P I pity you bro. He will just get the Perfect Line and probably Tim to help him out. The Perfect Line loves working on high end sports cars and P has an Audi S4. Sweet car. Hope all goes well man.

The Discourser has been hugely busy with school crap. Wow, he's the Safety Coordinator for his school district. That's pretty damn impressive, and he's the best guy for the job. He's a smart cookie and knows his crap.

Ntt is working hard at good ol' EA still. Getting ready for Alpha he says. From what I gather that's when the current game project is pretty much finished and they go into lockdown mode to get all the pieces working cohesively so they can start printing up the games and sending them out to stores. From what he says this means 7 day weeks!!!! Holy Crap!! But he does get lot's of comp time and often takes a month or two off paid. From the complexity of video games nowadays, he deserves it man.

See, I'm not the only one busy, busy busy...........

Ciao for now.

Capital Punishment

At 1 am this morning a man who was involved in a shootout 25 years ago and has been on death row since is finally dead. Finally after 25 years of bickering and arguing the punishment of death that was handed down for the act of killing a police officer in Memphis has been meted out. Why do we do this? If we have the death penalty, why does it take so long to put someone to death? We have a bunch of Doctors now saying they will no longer participate because they "cure people not kill people". Fine, who needs 'em. Oh it will hurt the convicted man if the chemicals are not mixed right. Your point is??? Scott Peterson is awaiting death. Currently he has his own cell, three squares a day, cable tv, internet, books galore, Hell he can even attend college if he really wanted to. What did he do to deserve all this? He brutally murdered his Wife and unborn Son then dumped them in SF Bay like they were trash. Why are we giving this man all this luxury. Sure he is in a cell until they execute him, but until then (which with all of the appeals he's bound to file plus the long line of folks that need to die ahead of him will probably be 20 years from now) he gets all this great crap. Some punishment. I believe you should be allowed 2 appeals, than that's it. If the Docs don't want attend the execution, screw 'em. Have the condemened kneel and put one in the back of his head. You won't need a doctor then to tell you if he's alive or not.

The Vehicular Cold War

Above is a picture of the car I am currently driving. There are many people out there who call it a "death wagon" because I could "be crushed by some idiot in an SUV." Yep, I am aware of this. I am also aware that the car has two airbags for driver and passenger and it is designed to absorb most, if not all of the kinetic energy of a collision. In other words, if I get in a wreck in that car all that will be left is me sitting on my driver's seat with an airbag in my face wondering what the heck happened. The car will be totaled and I won't be. Some people don't believe that, and it's this attitude that has cause the current Vehicular Cold War we have now.

Remember the Cold War? The Russians had nukes, we had nukes. The Russians built bigger nukes, we built bigger nukes. They added 10 more to their arsenal, we added 100 more to ours. It got so bad that both sides had enough nuclear (or nucaler if you're W) weapons to destroy the planet 10 times over.

This same attitude has run through our society when it comes to vehicles. People will buy an SUV as a deterent to the other "idiots" driving SUV's who will "kill them with their gargantuan vehicles." Huh??? So let me understand this? You bought a car you didn't want so you can survive an accident with other people in cars they bought that they didn't want?????? There are those that want the ginormous vehicle. They like them. Then there's the epitomy of ridiculousness that I saw one day; the stereotypical "Soccer Mom" in one of the original Humvee's (you know the one's that are as big as an aircraft carrier?). She was 5 foot nothing, could barely see over the wheel, and had two kids in the extreme backseat (they were in another zip code from their Mom). WTF!?!?!?! Why didn't this woman get a Minivan????? The kids would be just as safe, the seats are higher and the visibility is better and it gets better mileage than the military transport vehicle she's driving. Or the other idiot that almost backed into my Sister's car at a mall parking lot. The only reason she knew we were behind her is that I was banging on her back door!!!!! Her excuse "Sorry I can't really see out of this thing...." Huh?!?!?!? Why the Hell did you buy it then???? Better yet, why did you let your idiot husband talk you into buying it????? This happens to older couples alot. Hubby wants the macho car and wifey let's him talk her into it. She gets stuck with a behemoth of a vehicle that she can barely handle and his excuse is "I want her to survive an accident when those other idiots hit her". Hello????? She will be the "idiot" causing the accident because she can't handle the vehicle. I don't own one because I have no need for one. I also don't like ginormous vehicles. For a short dude like me, they are hard to see out of, judge distances in (try being 5-5 and backing an Escalade out of a parking space without hitting anything....pretty freaking hard) cost as much as a decent down payment on a house out here and the insurance....fuggedaboutit.... I'm not comfortable driving large vehicles. I remember my Dad had a 68 Plymouth Fury III....basically a large tank-like rectangle with an 8-cylinder engine that was like driving a cruise ship down the narrow ass street we lived on in SB. I hated driving that car.

Now it looks like the Cold War is ending. Gas is so expensive (and again with no real good reason other than "they can") that folks are ditching their SUV's. We've heard the term "crossover" alot lately. Basically these car companies aren't giving up entirely on their SUV's just making them smaller and calling them "crossover" vehicles. How pathetic are we that we as a people need to be "weened" off of our ginormous vehicles????? That is pathetic. Have we become that easily manipulated that we can't just say "no, I don't need that gas guzzling, unsafe vehicle. I am going to buy a Prius or a Honda Hybrid that gets 50 mpg." I bought the car I did because it is made by Toyota and it gets 35 mpg. It was also cheap to insure and has a sporty look. I didn't buy it with the thought "oh God!! If someone hits me in this I'm a dead man". A good driver avoids accidents. In my car I can swerve around danger in the road without fear of flipping it over!!! When everyone slams on the brakes all of a sudden, my car will stop long before Mr. SUV. I can also swerve to the side of the road and avoid a rear end collision faster and easier than Mr. SUV. When will we learn.....

Home Ownership: Does it ever end????

My Wife Cathy and I were commenting last night about why Mortgages are 30 years long; you need that much time to get the house looking like you want it. Even if you buy a brand new house, there are still things that you don't like, or want to do to it to make it uniquely yours. Our house is 30+ years old. It isn't the typical Tennessee "Ranch" style house (basically a big wide rectangle.....boring). It has interesting lines, and you can see which parts were add ons and where the original parts were. In our attic for instance is a TV Aerial antena, it is mounted to the attic floor as if that were part of the original roof. You can also see the frame of what once was the outside wall...it's now our living room. That would explain the vaulted ceilings. The house has siding on it except for Olivia's room; that's brick. So far we have gotten rid of as much of the hideous wallpaper we could (wallpaper that when it was put up, didn't have the old paper taken down first. They just papered over the old crap.) and discovered that there is about 5 layers of old crap underneath it!!! Still have to paint the kitchen, but we've finished the dining room and living room. The master bath has been retiled, but we still need to put in our new sink (we need to get some dry wall to cover a square hole that was cut into the wall when the old vanity was in there...........) it's a pedastool sink and we've just got a new faucet for it, so very soon it will be in. I will let you know how many runs to Lowes I had to do because we forgot something. Eventually we are going to rip up the carpet and put down hardwood floors (or the pergo type stuff.....) because we both hate carpet and think hardwood is nicer. We may tile the entire hallway and blend it into the tile we use in Liv's bathroom. We will probably keep carpets in the bedrooms for now (although I'd like to put hardwood in them too.) Sheesh!!! It never ends huh? Last night when I got home from work began the assault on the offending trees; thank God Mount Juliet has a City run Chipper Service that comes by every now and again and hauls off your branches for nothing. One day those offending trees will become mulch for the park or hamster bedding. As you can tell, I got to use my new chainsaw yesterday. Me like the chainsaw!!!!! Having never used one before, we started off on the small trees before tackling the evil Crabapple tree of Doom (cue scary music). The two trees we killed last night were the ones in our backyard that drive us nuts. These things are actually bushes that were allowed to grow as tall as they could. Instead of one trunk, you have a dozen all weaving about each other looking like some gnarly tree from the area around Yoda's house on Dagobah. Holy crap but we have two huge piles of branches for the chipper guy. Our across the street neighbor Bobby (older retired guy) noticed and chuckled a bit. He commented on just how busy we were and we were discussing home ownership. He said "You've got to do what you've got to do. Those things will take over and they are just a nuissance.". Then he commented on the joys of Home Ownership and how you never seem to be done doing stuff to the house; and he's lived in his for 32 years!!!! All in all though, I don't mind because I can say "it's my house and I'll do what I want to it", and that's a good feeling.

Heroes: Just Gets Better and Better

Spoiler Alert!!!! For my friends who haven't watched last nights episode yet.


You've been warned. Oh my Lord, this is easily the best show on Network TV right now. Essentially it looks like each season of this show is going to be one big Graphic Novel. This last episode was very similar to the X-Men Comic "Days of Future Past" where a future is depicted that shows Mutants put in internment camps and branded as such. Not allowed to breed, watched night and day, basically treated like the perceived "threat" that they are. Last nights episode of Heroes finds Hiro Nakamura and his pal Ando teleported 5 years into the future. The bomb that destroys most of New York that the painter Issac (he who can paint the future) predicted hasn't been stopped after all. In one of the earlier episodes we meet Hiro's Future Self, a bad ass, katana wearing warrior who tells Peter Petrelli "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World". Peter ends up doing so, but apparently it still doesn't stop the bomb. In this future world, Sylar (Super Villan extraordanaire) is blamed for being the bomb (yes there is a man named Ted who's super power is to explode......he doesn't blow up himself, he can just create nuclear explosions.....) when in reality it is Peter Petrelli (who, like Sylar, can absorb others powers....Peter does it by empathy whereas Sylar does it by killing the individual and examining their brain before injesting it). Nathan (the flying guy) is President, and apparently he's turned evil and wants to exterminate the competition (we find out Nathan is Sylar masquerading as Nathan...Holy Crap didn't see that one coming either....) The future looks bleak for our Heroes, and it's up to Hiro to change it......God I love this show........if you aren't on board, go to NBC.com and watch some episodes. You will be hooked.