http://oddballupdate.com The personal weblog of a twenty-something web designer, muscle car fanatic, and somewhat odd chap. Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:48:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This morning, the first roofing contractor I'd called arrived to draw up a free estimate. He tromped around on the roof for a bit, then basically attempted to explain the whole thing by saying that whoever built our roof did a shit job (immediately shooting his credibility into the ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/07/18/the-roof-gods-are-apparently-very-angry/ Yesterday, we finally received our "government stimulus check" in the mail -- a cool $1,200. In retrospect, I should have realized then that something bad was about to happen. It always does, you see, whenever we come into some large sum of money. So today, naturally, we got our ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/07/15/the-roof-gods-are-angry/ With gas costing a lot of money these days, we're constantly regaled with the media's so-called "brilliant ideas" about how we can all save money on gas. Their ideas, unfortunately, go directly against every safe driving practice in the book. You know how people talk about how we're ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/07/11/fuel-saving-nutbars-are-going-to-kill-us-all/ As a web designer, I should be all over this new media stuff -- the integration of rich content like audio and video into websites -- right? Well, like any other media, even text or static images, there is an appropriate place and time for this stuff. Simply ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/07/09/pet-peeve-video-on-news-websites/ It was a couple weeks ago when I first realized that this June marks the ten-year anniversary of my graduation from high school. My high school days were tumultuous to say the least, with my entire four-year stint representing little more than one miserable experience after another -- with ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/07/03/the-long-summer-10-years-hence/ Headline on CNN just now: "What if a hurricane hits... gas skyrockets to $10 a gallon and everything collapses? CNN investigates tonight, 8 ET." I dunno...I'll shoot myself? The media in this country is enough to inspire suicide as it is. http://oddballupdate.com/2008/06/22/hows-this-for-scare-tactics/ OK, so the PlayStation 3's raison d'être -- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots -- has finally been released, bringing the legendary Metal Gear franchise to a close. As I started to read the reviews of the latest installment, I remembered way back in 1998 when I ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/06/17/metal-gear-mania/ I complained about their mishandling of my TiVo's CableCARDs, but I can't fault them for this. In fact, I can only thank them -- profusely. Comcast has upgraded all broadband customers to 1 megabit upload (if you were on the 6/384 tier, like me), or 2 megabits (if ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/06/14/comcast-does-a-nice-thing/ Thanks to my mom, a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 was already waiting for me on my desk chair when Apple and I returned from Thailand. Although I've ramped up my side work to near epic proportions since coming home, I've carved out some ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/06/12/liberty-city-stories/ During my last trip out in the GTO, I realized that it's been months since I actually changed the CDs in the car's 6-disc changer deck. As if to prove the point, when I cycled through the discs to see what was what, I found half of the catalog ... http://oddballupdate.com/2008/06/12/invisible-touch-the-2007-remaster/