Archive for July, 2006

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The World According To Darfh

By Pooch on July 29th, 2006 at 6:07 pm

Filed under Randomness ··· 4 Comments

The last few days have been quite hellish in these parts (heck, the entire summer has been hellish), so I’ve been pretty much cooped up inside my air conditioned house for the past week or so. Getting tired of the same old, same old, today I decided to trek out to the EB Games closest to my house (note: this EB Games is also a stone’s throw from two or three GameSpots as well). While I was there I remembered that I was getting pretty low on Memory Card space, so I decided to pick up another card. Since it was a bit cheaper, I ended up buying a “pre-owned” memory card.

Yeah, I know.

The first thing I notice upon getting home: this is a Japanese PS/2 memory unit — the katakana script on the card is a dead giveaway. Okay, no problem, though: I can still use it. Upon inserting the PS/2 and checking the contents of the card, I got quite a laugh. Seems that the previous owner of this memory card — Scott, according to one of his game save profiles — didn’t feel like clearing off his savegames before pawning off the unit. Ah, mirth and merriment abound.

First off…what’s this? 007: Nightfire? Ah, I see you were suckered into buying that piece of crap too, eh, Scott? I remember plunking down $50 for that wonderful game back in the day — now you can get it for $0.99 (I’m not joking). Scott’s not off to a good start with his game library.

Next…NBA Street Vol. 2? You mean someone bought that game? Yikes.

But wait, there’s more! Blitz: The League…Harry Potter Quiddich World Cup…and just about every single Grand Theft Auto known to man (okay, the GTAs aren’t bad). But the biggest head scratcher came from the dude’s Star Wars: Battlefront 2 save game. You see, according to the savegame files, Scott decided to give his ingame profile the name of…Darfh-Jew. Yes, “Darfh-Jew”. Ignoring the fact he apparently misspelled “Darth”, what exactly is a “Darfh-Jew”? Is it a kosher Sith Lord? One that does bar-mitzvahs? (I’m sure the Force Choke bit goes over really well) I’m just trying to wonder what exactly possessed “Scott” to come up with the name “Darfh-Jew”.

The world…may never know.

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Seeing Double: A Pair of Black Goats

By Chief Oddball on July 29th, 2006 at 3:42 pm

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Attempting to honor my “I’ve gotta get out more” remarks of a few weeks ago, today I got together with Mike, a fellow 2006 GTO owner and member of the LS1GTO message boards who came across me quite by accident. He was looking at the pictures of my cars that I’ve got online when he realized that my garage looked familiar. Turns out he lives in a development right down the road, built by the same builder that constructed our community, and in the same model house, to boot.

My car was still dirty from the rain I’ve been driving in, so last night — with still more storms threatening — I washed it and applied tire dressing foam, then this morning I vacuumed and dusted the interior. With a fresh coat of Zaino Z2 still giving off its characteristic mirror shine, I headed out into the Florida sun and met Mike for lunch at Beef O’Brady’s. We spent a good amount of time just checking out each other’s cars and shooting the breeze. Mike’s car is the virtual doppelganger to mine, with two exceptions — a black interior, and aside from the silver grilles, no Sport Appearance Package. He also has an entirely custom exhaust system that sounds awesome while still retaining the stock round exhaust tips.

I had a great time. We mostly talked cars, but also miscellaneous stuff. What I found refreshing about Mike was that he wasn’t living every minute of his life with his car. A lot of car buffs are so hardcore, unless you’re into it headfirst as your major (or only) hobby, you can’t compete on their level, even in conversation. By contrast, Mike seems to take the same approach as me — and he also is kept pretty busy with work most of the time — so the fact that I didn’t have twenty coats of Zaino and $6,000 worth of mods on my car didn’t make me look like a poser.

Being a complete oaf, I took a camera but forgot to use it, so I have no pictures to display. We only hung around for a couple hours, but next time we get together I’ll remember to take some pictures of the two goats together. (Oh — and I also finally have someone to share horror stories with about the Pontiac dealer downtown…what a freakin’ disaster area.) On the way home I got caught under a cloudburst for a few minutes, but by the time I had raced back to my garage, the car was almost completely dry. Gotta love fresh polish. I couldn’t even put a towel on the hood because it kept sliding off.

Today’s outing was great, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to have some fun with the car. And we’re both definitely up for a repeat performance.

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Netflix Queue Reordering: Film at 11

By Chief Oddball on July 28th, 2006 at 10:37 am

Filed under Rants ··· 3 Comments

If you have Netflix, beware: Last-minute decisions to reorder your queue most likely will be ignored.

Last night, Apple and I watched our nightly episode of 24, season two, disc two. The cliffhanger ending was so good, we decided to go ahead and watch another one. Afterwards it was almost 1:00 a.m., and since we’d just been through half the disc, we decided to fire up a computer and put disc three of 24 at the top of our queue. The next day, Netflix was going to be receiving a movie I returned, so the next 24 would ship out right away. While I was there, I also put disc four in the queue’s second slot.

This morning, I get up and what do I see? Netflix has not shipped disc three of 24, which I put at the top of the queue last night. Nor has Netflix even shipped disc four, which was right beneath it. Instead, they’ve picked the movie that used to be at the top of the queue. This movie was in third place after my reordering, and both discs of 24 show “Availability: Now,” so Netflix can’t have skipped over them because no copies were available.

Worse, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me lately — it’s more like the third or fourth time. Once, I even reordered the queue at 9:00 p.m. the night before Netflix was to ship my next film, and they ignored that, too.

The only thing I can assume is that you need to reorder your queue at least 12 hours in advance of Netflix taking action on it, possibly more. This seems idiotic to me. Don’t most people watch movies in the evenings, after getting home from work? What if, after you watch a film, you change your mind about something in your Netflix queue? What if you really liked the movie and want to get the disc of bonus materials, or watch the sequel? Or if the movie sucked, maybe you want to take the sequel off your list? Whatever the case, you better do it fast, or chances are you’re going to see Netflix act upon your queue as it used to be, not as it is.

I don’t know if this logic applies to every Netflix account, or if this is yet another way for them to punish us because we rent and return things quickly. I can tell you this, though: I’m starting to get sick of being made to feel bad for using a service I pay for.

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The Malevolent Management Moppet

By Chief Oddball on July 26th, 2006 at 5:49 pm

Filed under Rants ··· 5 Comments

WHOA! I’M POSTING SOMETHING! …But seriously. The latest developments in the ongoing drama at Apple’s workplace have proven fascinating, so I thought I would clue you in.

Herein, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll introduce you to to the concept of the Malevolent Management Moppet, or “Connie” as I have nicknamed her, who plays at running the restaurant where Apple works. To say nothing of her professional ability, Connie is the worst type of person — socially — that you could ever dream of meeting. A classic, drama-infused, backstabbing bitch of the highest order, she can be satisfied with nothing less than total superiority, which she often gets by belittling each and everyone around her to prop up her own incompetence.

In recent weeks, the drumbeat of disdain at the restaurant has reached a fever pitch. According to reports, there is now not a single employee left who harbors any modicum of respect for Connie, and many of them are actively avoiding her altogether — including the restuarant owner. On a typical day, this owner can be found working at another branch of his business, but he calls the restaurant often to check in on things. Normally he asks for Connie, but lately, he’s been asking to speak to other employees instead, suggesting he no longer trusts anything that comes out of Connie’s mouth. Longtime employees note that this precedented behavior is a telltale sign that the owner has reached his last straw with the manager.

And it’s not hard to see why.

Continue Reading…

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“Splurge” Review AND MORE!

By Pooch on July 25th, 2006 at 11:08 am

Filed under Reviews ··· 6 Comments

You knew this was coming, right?

Since I posted my thoughts of the Puffy concert in Detroit last week, I figured I’d post my thoughts on the album that spawned said tour – Splurge, due out today in the U.S. on Tofu Records. You cannot escape the Puffy machine…at least when I’m posting, that is (which seems to be all the time lately). That said, I fully expect Chief Oddball to revoke my posting privileges very shortly because he’s probably sick of my constant posting (for the record, I’ve had posting privileges for nearly two years, yet before this past week I’d posted all of two times).

Anyway, the album. Well, I’m a big Puffy fan, so it’s hard for me to objectively rate these things. The fact that I know nothing about music is another hindrance. That said, this is one outstanding album. It rocks in all the right places, shifts gears here and there for some tremendous ballads, and even gives us a solo track apiece for Yumi (“Rakuda no Kuni”) and Ami (“Security Blanket”) once again (something that hasn’t happened since 2002′s The Hit Parade). That in particular is a welcome treat – in fact, Ami’s “Security Blanket” may very well be the best track on the entire album.

Continue Reading…

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“Wanna Buy a Spockie Boo Bib?”

By Pooch on July 23rd, 2006 at 10:21 pm ··· 5 Comments

First teaser poster for the upcoming Star Trek 11 film released.

I’m of two minds about this. First, why make it about Kirk and Spock’s early years, as has been reported? Why not just make a movie that takes place during the TOS timeline? And two: no matter what, this certainly can’t be as bad as Enterprise (or, if you want a movie equivalent, Star Trek V, a.k.a. Shatner’s wank-fest). I dunno. I’ll reserve further judgment until more information comes out.


No Shit.

By Pooch on July 22nd, 2006 at 8:22 am ··· 2 Comments

Front page headline of today’s Detroit Free Press: “How Plans Went Sour For Ford’s Turnaround: Gas Prices Dent Truck Sales”. Am I the only one smacking my head against the wall after reading this? My friends and I (and most anyone else with half a brain) have been saying for years now that, eventually, Ford’s over-reliance on SUVs and large-scale pickups would be a disaster, especially in the wake of high gas prices over the past several years. But, once again, Ford couldn’t see past the fat profits SUV and large truck sales gave them, and continued to turn a blind eye — so now they’re stuck with a whole bunch of mammoth vehicles no one wants, and hardly any cars that anyone wants. How is it those clowns in Dearborn can’t see what even I — someone with very little knowledge in the field of automobiles — can plainly see?

This is the Way Forward for Ford, all right — the Way Forward to Bankruptcy.


We Hope You Like ATI!

By Chief Oddball on July 22nd, 2006 at 1:56 am ··· 2 Comments

According to headlines, CPU manufacturer AMD may be about to announce an outright purchase of graphics chip maker ATI. That’s right, the very kings of kludgy drivers themselves. As I don’t have much nice to say about ATI, I can only hope this doesn’t end in favoratist moves that make building an AMD + nVidia system a big pain in the ass.


Puffy on YouTube

By Pooch on July 21st, 2006 at 9:15 am

Filed under Randomness ··· 8 Comments

Since yesterday’s post was warmly received by all two people who read it, and because I’m so “ubseased” (as ARCHORRobin2 would say back in the old Sailor Moon Room Chat — how’s that for an old school reference?), I decided to post some of my favorite Puffy clips currently available on YouTube.

YouTube is, of course, a godsend if — like me — plunking down $50 per Puffy DVD is a little cost prohibitive (and that’s not even counting the fact that all currently available Puffy DVDs are Region 2). Sure, the quality isn’t always great, but it’s better than the alternative, which is nothing. Anyway, here we go.

Continue Reading…

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Knee-Deep In 12-Year Olds…

By Pooch on July 20th, 2006 at 11:52 am

Filed under Reviews ··· 9 Comments

Okay, there’s too much doom-and-gloom ’round these here parts lately. It’s time to FUNK. IT. UP!

I’m not a regular concert-goer; since attending my first real concert in 1993 (not counting the time my dad took a friend and I to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when they were a “rock band” around 1990 or so), I’ve only been to a handful of shows – around 11, according to my count. But I like to think that I make good decisions on what shows I do see. By my count, these are the rock shows I’ve seen:

1993: Paul McCartney
1994: The Rolling Stones (the Spin Doctors opened for this show…I never knew the Pontiac Silverdome – with tens of thousands of people packed inside – could be so quiet as when those clowns played)
2000: Kiss w/ Ted Nugent and SKID ROW!
2000 or 2001: Steve Howe (lead guitarist for Yes)
2001: Tori Amos
2002: Paul McCartney again
2004: Neil Innes (a.k.a. Ron Nasty from The Rutles)
2005: Tori Amos again, Ted Nugent again, Tori Amos yet again (the latter two shows occuring within three days of each other)

Puffy - Yumi (left) and Ami (right)So I’ve definitely seen some heavy hitters. But it’s very possible – even likely – that the loudest, most energetic concert I’ve seen was the one I saw this past Tuesday: Puffy (or, as they’re known in the U.S., Puffy AmiYumi), a “Rock Show From Tokyo, Japan”, as the stage backdrop informed us. At the very least, Puffy certainly gave me the most bang for my buck – at just over $20 a ticket (including Ticketmaster’s silly service charge), I got a more outstanding show than I may have otherwise expected. Compare that to $50+ tickets for the Nugent and Tori Amos shows, and the $90+ tickets for the second Paul McCartney show, and Puffy’s a downright bargain.

(You know what else was a bargain at the Puffy show? The merchandise. When I saw Kiss and Nugent in 2000, I picked up two shirts for around $80 total; at the Puffy show I got a CD – autographed! – two shirts, and two paper fans for the grand total of $64. The shirts were only $20 apiece and the CD was $18, a far cry from the usual insane prices for concert merchandise.)

Continue Reading…

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