Long live the weblog
This is just a story about the ever-growing use of the weblog. It looks like a lot of peeps out there are reading weblogs (I refuse to use the term "blog." Not only does it sound dumb, it's a term coined by Blogger as an indirect form of free advertising. There are other Blogger-like programs out there...) instead of news sites to find the "good" stories out there.

To me, it seems like a lot of weblogs out there can be considered either filtered news sites or online diaries. Mine seems to be a mix of both. ph34r. I should probably stick with either just news or just my personal experiences, huh? Most news out there sucks and isn't worth posting because you can access those news stories everywhere. And my typical day here at RPI isn't fascinating enough to post about. Damn. Stupid dilemas. Or perhaps I should move this site elsewhere (like the thesevoices.com server?) and it can be used as a template for a news site collaboration project (this linked site is the first weblog I found that I actually like). I don't really have enough to post on my own in a day to generate what I want: an audience.

Your typical web surfer hates you
... assuming you're one of these people whose web sites are not designed with your visitor in mind. In case you haven't figured it out yet, people hate MIDI's and other sounds playing upon entering a site, and stupid animations that are slow to load and... well... stupid. That's what this article claims.

I think it's all too easy to assume that your typical site visitor will have computer specs similar to your own. If you're one of those who can get 100 frames per second in Quake 3, this is defintely the case. Close to 60% of the surfers out there are still using 16-bit color or worse. Nearly 60% of your potential visitors will be using an 800 x 600 resolution or even 640 x 480(!). And about 88% of the net users out there are still using the cursed modem at speeds of 56k or slower. Ick.

So, in short: keep it simple, Stupid. :) While most of the people out there are using resolutions that, if they were using my monitor, were designed for the blind, be nice to them when making a web site. And don't piss off the modem users with dumb crap like broken links, java applets, pop-up windows, sounds, etc. They didn't wait 2 minutes to load your web page for jack and shit.

Thanksgiving revenge
"Drink Bud Ice, but beware of the turkeys."

3D printing
Got roughly $500k to burn and the urge to make a 3D model of your head? All you need to do is make like a CAD drawing of it and put it in one of these new fangled doohickie thingies. Voila! You're a proud owner of a spare head.

Supposedly the never-to-be-finished space station has one of these for when a part breaks. They get a blueprint from NASA faxed to them or something, push some buttons, wait 30 minutes, and bam! Replacement part. Pretty damn cool.

The Jesus Christ Superstore
Who wouldn't want the Almighty God action figure, complete with a Kingdom-Come Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle and hallowed cloak of invulnerability? Or perhaps the Pope with his 'Meek and Mild' Walther PPK handgun and blood red Vatican Assault uniform? And this place is even open on Sundays! Check out the price tags, too.

You might want the URL though, huh? Here you go.

Sports salary caps
While reading a bunch of news articles about how a bunch of really good football players getting cut from their team because they cost too much given the salary cap restriction, I found this one that not only mentioned why the Vikings are pretty well reamed, it also mentioned what the caps are in the four major sports:

* The 51 football (NFL) players on a team's roster must not be being paid more than $67.4 million.
* Baseball (MLB) does not have a salary cap. The Yankees paid over $100 million for their line-up of 25 or 40 (probably 25), and Alex Rodriguez got $252 million for a ten year contract.
* Hockey (NHL) has a rookie salary cap and a weird free agency system. The average team payroll this year is $33.4 million. A roster is made up of 23 players.
* Basketball (NBA) has what is described as a "soft'' salary cap; the average payroll this season is $34.5 million. Keep in mind a team roster consists of 12 players.

This is fucking insane. I'm not sure how else to comment on this.

I thought football players were way overpaid, but then again, they really aren't compared to the other major sports. Well, actually, maybe they are. In that first article I mentioned, the Vikings had 5 players that took up more than 50% of their salary cap space.

Baseball is just out of control. Some of the less fortunate teams have already lost the season before it has even started. So much for parity. And the guy who owns the Rangers paid $250 million for them. Rodriguez now plays for the Rangers. Think about that.

Hockey 0wnz j00! And it looks like the NHL is on par with the NFL. I wonder if Mario Lemieux has to pay himself, since he is both the team owner and a player for the Penguins. Hmmm...

The ratio of roster size to salary cap is pretty Amish is the NBA. Almost $3 million per player on average... sheesh.

God damn.

Changed some stuff
Since I had other things interjecting my plan of this past weekend, I haven't really had the chance and the will to update until now. There's some more links to the left, I took out some dead links, I've edited other links, nothing fancy.

I have an Adbuster link to the left as well as on another page. If you're pissed off at the recent ICQ banner parade that AOL has been conducting, you may want to check them out and learn how to get around the New! ICQ SMS! bullshit as well as other things. I wish I knew about this a few weeks ago when I got my desktop computer working again. I'd still have my 17,000 message archive (not bad for 6 months, eh?) AND I'd be able to skin ICQ! Oh well. Woe is me.

And according to that above article, it looks like there's more ICQ users than AIM users. Suck it, AIM Nazis! So much for the "much larger" user base.

This week's incident
Monday, February 19: Colvin Circle: Criminal Trespass: Resident reported that while gone for the weekend someone had trespassed within apartment and vomited on floor. Unknown if apartment door was locked at the time. Nothing taken.

That's funny as hell. I can imagine if it was my apartment floor was the one that became.. um.. "tainted." I just get back from a trip home for the weekend, the drive took about three-and-a-half hours because I had to follow some old guy through half the state of Vermont, I'm kinda tired and hungry, I unlock my door, and I see this wonderful gift. Nice. Good thing I didn't vomit, so I don't have to clean it up! Oh wait... no one knows who did it. Damn. I'm screwed. Oh, this is gross. I don't feel so good anymore...

Isn't it common sense to lock doors when you're going away? That and don't leave your laptop and/or wallet out in the open unguarded, but people lose these every week. Fools.

Anybody hungry?
You probably won't be after reading this. *shudder* I wish I knew about this sooner.

Studies show that Martians live in rock
You know why we haven't found life on Mars? Because they live in the center of the planet! Or maybe some Martian bacteria happened to like being jetisoned into space and landing in Antartica using rocks as a mode of travel.

Read about it here.

Zzzzz...
I'm pretty tired today. I'm not sure why. I was tired yesterday as well, but not as much as I am right now, and it's just after 6:30. Bah. I'm such a wuss when it comes to not having enough sleep. Getting multiple nights of 7 or less hours of sleep ruins me. One would assume that as a college student, I should be fine going to bed at 4 in the morning and waking up at 8:00. Not the case with me. I guess that might explain why I have never pulled an all-nighter nor do I drink coffee or Mountain Dew.

Had a job interview this morning. I don't think it went too well, but who knows. The interview didn't follow the typical template of my other job interviews to date. Usually my interviews consist of questions like "what did you do on this project?" and "how much experience do you have with item X," followed by comments about my lack of relevant work experience. Then I get to ask questions. That wasn't the case this morning. I only got to talk about one of my course projects, then they were actually interested in my irrelevant work experience, and then I got to talk with someone else about Microsoft Access and Perl. It was different, and because I haven't had to talk about Perl or Access much in previous interviews, I got hung up on some of my thoughts. I paused a lot and I sometimes repeated myself. It sucked. I guess I should now wait for the infamous rejection letter.

A question I always get asked at the start of every interview is "What do you want to do at our company?" I hate this question, because I never have an answer for it. If you take a look at my resumé, you will notice that my "objective" is really broad. That's because I don't really care what I do. I have some ideas of what I don't want to do. And regardless of what I want to be doing, chances are it won't be the same as what I will be doing. Typically, the first couple years of any IT group is working on projects and/or coding. I accept this as my fate; I have no problem with it. I don't plan for what I want to be doing five years down the road. I barely know what I want to do for Spring Break! But anyways, about what I want to do at a job: I'm not picky. IT is a broad field and I keep my mind open enough to compensate for it. And since I don't have any real IT work experience, I don't really know what I like to do in the IT field and what I think sucks about working in the IT field. All I know is from what I have worked on in some of my core IT curriculum projects and some web design languages I have taught myself. In summary, let me work with databases or somethin' for a while, then I'll tell you if there looks like a more "fun" job I'd like to do in the same company.

Time to not sleep some more.

Some Internet news and some random comments
I'd rather eat my chicken parmesan sub than go into my very in-depth look at the issues that have an effect on you (yes, you!) and all other fellow Americans, so here are some topics and some links:

Next on the hit list: Napster clones. After all, if the music industry can shut down the biggest and most popular mp3 swapping service, they will be able to take out every single itty bitty one, too, right? I'm kinda curious as to how they will take out my most used mp3 "site:" Network Neighborhood. :p That would be a feat and a half.

Prepare for more types of instant messaging spam. Information is the world's new form of currency, and several companies want to know how you and I tick.

Speaking of spam, would you like some while you are pumping gas? I don't think I need any friggin' coupons after filling up my tank, but the diagnostic testing feature is pretty awesome.

Chris Carter (you know, the guy responsible for The X-Files?) is going to get his ass kicked by me! Last night, the first of two episodes about the return of Mulder was aired, but guess when part 2 will be aired? APRIL 1! Great. I get to be left hanging there for four weeks. I'm sure the X-Files fan base really likes the idea of watching reruns and episodes of The Lone Gunmen instead of the conclusion of a previous episode.

Playing online games drunk is more fun than when playing them sober. :) I don't know if this would work in more complex games like MMORPG's, but simple 2D shooters (*cough* Subspace *cough*) and Quake-like games can be quite amusing in a different state of mind. :)

Enough typing from me for now. My sub is getting cold.

Gore lost Florida
Remember a few months back when we had no idea which loser was going to run the country, and then it came down to whoever won the voting-inept state of Florida would be the president for the next four years? And then remember how Floridians in the Palm Beach area and in other counties bitched and complained about not knowing how to read well enough to choose the candidate they wanted to vote for? Well, the votes are in. It looks like even after all of the recounts and taking all of the uncounted votes into consideration, Gore would have had a net gain of 49 more votes than Bush; not quite the 538 votes he needed to win the state.

And it took them until today to sort this mess out. Impressive.

OJ to start a career in pornography
This came from a tabloid, and we all know that tabloids are 100% accurate... or was it -45%?

Read the story here.

Test message
Blogger hasn't been working all day, and I actually had some stuff I wanted to post. Does it work now?

I guess that will be determined if this post goes through.

Yup, it is. Yay.