Analog-Theater 2.0

At 5:03 this morning at a Wal-mart in Valley Stream New York a store employee was trampled to death when a throng of shoppers broke down the door.  Three other people were injured including a pregnant 28 year old woman.

You can read the full article here.

Robert talks about his curse.  When he likes an author that authors life expectancy suddenly drops.  This apparently happened with Douglas Adams, Robert Jordan, and Terry Pratchett.  However Michael Crichton was not his fault.  Right now we’re both waiting for Steven Erikson to announce his new incurable illness.

I think I might be curse, too.  Anything I like get canceled.  My favorite TV shows include John Doe, Threshhold, Crow: Stairway to Heavan, and Firefly.  “His Dark Materials” is one of my favorite series of books and I really enjoyed the first movie “The Golden Compass, so naturally they didn’t make any more. I like the manga series Pilgram Jager and Cross, both of which ended after only a couple volumes.  Planescape and Spelljammer were my two favorite campaign settings in 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, neither of which were every reprinted fully in later editions.

Now, to top all of this off, my favorite MMO is Tabula Rasa.  Last week they announced that they are going to shutting it down in February of 2009 due to poor sales.   What I have hear in game (thought I can’t find any confirmation the net) is that there are currently only 27,000 subscribers and NCSoft wants at least 100,000 to keep their servers going.  So, I encourage everyone to go out and buy this awesome game quickly so that the developers don’t lose there jobs and I don’t have to find something else while I wait for Guild Wars 2.

Assuming that we will be unable to save Tabula Rasa by getting more subscribers, I have another suggestions.  I am thinking about organizing an LLC or other type of corperation and selling a lot of stock to people who want to save the game.  Then, using that money, approach NCSoft (or Starcom since Robert said he saw an article that they are thinking about buying the game, though I can’t find the article anywhere) and offering to collaberate with them or even buy out the game completely.  I like the second idea myself, assuming they will sell the game (though if you have something sitting on the shelf not generating any revenue and someone offers you $10 million for it…), then hire our own developers to fix it up and put in all the things that never got added, like more end game content, and maybe and the Earth and missions to retake it.  Also, one thing I would like to see is customizable clan bases.

I considered petitioning NCSoft to keep the game, but I seriously doubt they would listen to people who say that we want the game to stay, but we’re not going to buy it/subscribe to it.  In this case, I think that money really does talk.

I have started a thread in the Forums about what we can do to save the game.  If you have any comments or suggestions, please post them here.

Also, while it lasts, I have organized a clan in the game, Fighters for Peace. Feel free to join. Just send me a message in game. I am Demoneyes.

The last few days I have had some free time surf the net and find some vaguely interesting stuff. First, in the news recently a 74 year old blind Massachusetts woman received a notice that she was going to get a lien on her home because of a 1 cent balance for an overdue water and sewer bill. Antonio Viveiros wrote a check for the penny to settle her debt to the city and expressed his disappointment that the government will help bail out big businesses, but won’t help the senior citizens. You can find the entire article here.

In other news, some guy in Maine was so eager to join the Marines that the lost 140 pounds to do it. I can think of a lot better motivation then joining to Marines to lose weight and better things to do if I did lose 140 pounds. Click here for the article.

Aside from reading odd news, I also came across a new singer I like. I found a music video for Kerli. After a little more searching, I listened to a few songs of hers and then ordered her album Love Is Dead. The title song is okay, but the second track, Walking on Air, is better.

I also found a few movies that I had not included in my upcoming movie list.

November 26, 2008 Jason Statham returns as Frank Martin, the ex-Special Forces operative who specializes in high-risk deliveries in Transporter 3. Fransois Berleand will also return as Tarconi.

March 13, 2009: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is starring in Race to Witch Mountain, a remake of the 1975 film Escape to Witch Mountain.

The world is going to end (again) on July 10, 2009 in the movie 2012. Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, Chin Han, Morgan Lily, and Beatrice Rosen.

On November 20, 2009 we get to see Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in action as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes.

In 2012 Johnny Deep will be back as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Geoffrey Rush has expressed interest in returning as Barbossa, but has not signed on yet and Director Gore Verbinski will not sign on without a complete script.

Since Thanksgiving is coming up, I was looking up stuff on Thanksgiving menus and came across some interesting info on turkeys. The first turkey was served for Thanksgiving dinner at Plymouth in 1621; however it was not called Thanksgiving back then. It was just the harvest festival. Thanksgiving started in 1623 for the Pilgrims as irregular church observances after favorable events. It wasn’t until 1680 when the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay Colony started holding annual Thanksgiving celebrations. President Alexander Hamilton in the 1790’s proclaimed that no citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day; however turkey did not become the traditional fare until around 1857. Then in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln nationalized the holiday and we have enjoyed turkey dinners ever since. Bet you didn’t know all that.

I was going to go on another tangent, but I think this post is getting long enough.

So, I was reading this article about people not having enough to eat, and the invention of a peanut butter super food bar called Plumpy-Nut and I had to ask, what happened to all the food.  Well, it turns out that there isn’t any.  A combination of devistating drought or the reverse, way, way too much rain, is wreaking havoc everywhere.  Those of us lucky enough to live here in the U.S. don’t notice this too much because they don’ t talk about these depressing matters on Fox News.  I’ll bet you didn’t know that the folks living in the Maldives are looking to buy a new Homeland.  Yeah, rising sea levels are forcing them to move.  Yeah, we sank their country, but don’t worry, we only have a few years before rising sea levels hit us too.

Back to the subject at hand though.  So, like, what is the deal?  Why is it that folks in, well, lets all face the facts here, most the rest of the world, and down the street, can’t get enough to eat.  I mean, I can go to McDonalds and order a McChicken and small Fries for like $2.09, so if they can produce a processed (formed and chuncked) chicken sandwich and french fry thingie for a price low enough to make a profit off that, why can’t we feed people?

Well, one theory I was reading suggests that this is a direct result of consolidation of the food industry.

This consolidation issue led me to look at who made what, and here is what I found.

If you like Peter Pan, Blue Bonnet, Hebrew National, Egg Beaters, Healthy Choice, Hunts, Marie Calenders, Banquet, Pam, Orville Redenbachers’s,Chef Boyardee, Act II, Parkay, Swiss Miss, Van Camps, Reddi Whip, Andy Capp (those little corn sticks), or Wesson, then you are using Con Agra.  Oh, and they also make Manwhich, Guldens (Mustard), Fleischman’s, and Fiddle Faddle.

Now, if you like A1, Breakstones, Capri Sun, Cheese Whiz, Chips Ahoy, Cool Whip, California Pizza, Cracker Barrel, Crystal Light, DiGiorno, anything by General Foods (International Coffee), Honey Maid, Jello, Kool Aide, Maxwell House, Miracle Whip, Nabisco, Newtons, Nila Waffers, Oscar Meyer, Planters, Pollio, Premium (Crackers), Philadelphia (cream cheese), Ritz, Royal, South Beach, Stove top, Velveeta, and Wheat Thins, well then you are eating Kraft Foods.  They also make Oreo’s, Kraft Singles, and the gods know what else.

Nestle is another one, but you can go here to look at their multi-page list of brands.  Interestingly enough, they also make pet foods.

A few others you may be interested in.  I had no idea so many made Pet Food as well, but it makes sense.  I’m still ticked about Red Dye 40 being in my little guys Pup-Peroni..I guess I’ll have to yell at Del Monty.

The listing:

General Mills - Owns Betty Crocker

Cargill -  Are a major food produce, and manufacturer.

Coke - A really interesting read.  I didn’t know they owned Odwalla

Unilever - Skippy and Vasaline all in one house.

I am sure you can find a few others, but every brand I know except Heiz (who own Ore-ida and make Classico and Weight Watchers brand foods) lead back to these.  You can have a lot of fun looking for the information.  Punch in the brand, visit the site, look for a copywrite or investors page.  You can then start climbing the ladder.

I had a lot more to say, but a friend of mine just got laid off here at work and I’m kind of down.

Back in the 80’s, there was this series called Knight Rider.  In this show, there was a man named Michael Knight who had a talking Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Together the two of them fought crime for four years.  A few years ago, they tried to bring the show back, but with more cars and a pair of motorcycles that combined to become a car.  This show was called Team Knight Rider.  This show was thankfully canceled after one season.  However, they have once again tried to bring it back with just one car again, but this time it’s a Mustang.

Justin Bruening plays Mike Tracer, who at the end of the first episode changes his name to Michael Knight when they declare Mike Tracer dead.  Val Kilmer is the voice of KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand). 

The new KITT differs greatly from the original (and I’m not sure it’s for the best).  The original KITT was bullet proof, fire proof, and could even withstand explosions.  The new KITT has a bunch of nanobots that reinforce its body and instantly repairs any damage.  Though it can morph into attack mode, which makes it indestructable.  The one thing that I don’t understand, if you can make an indestructible mode for the car, why not just make the whole car indestructible?  And speaking about the morphing, KITT can change into a variety of shapes, including a Crown Vic police cruiser, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, a Ford E-150 van, and a F-22 Raptor (actually they haven’t, but they probably will do it later).  Robert and I were discussing how that could even be possible since the van and the pickup both have significantly more mass then a mustang.  The only thing we could come up with was nanobots.  Somehow nanobots create and get rid of the mass.  The new KITT also has some very interesting abilities.  It has a solar hybrid engine that gets 167 miles to the gallon and can reach speeds of over 300 miles per hour (in attack mode), it can access military satellites, it has a pair of rocket launchers and a laser, it has a 3D object generator (nanobots can build objects out of nothing), the windshield is also a touch screen heads up display, the hood of the car is also a touch screen display, KITT can analyze and synthesize blood and pharmaceuticals, and it has ground sensing radar.  And that’s all just in the first six episodes.  All thanks to the power of nanobots.  I’m thinking that the writers just use nanobots to solve any problem with physics and common sense.

To make things even more interesting, for some reason Michael doesn’t have KITT transform until its too late.  For instance, KITT’s ground sensing radar detected that the road ahead of them was mined.  They wait until halfway through the mines before morphing into the indestructible attack mode.  Of course, they hit a mine in midtranformation and knocks KITT out of commission.

Did I mention that Mike Tracer is actually the son of the original Michael Knight?  And he is former Special Forces who served in Irag and has a large gap in his memory from his tour of duty.  Oh, and they no longer has the tracter trailer mobile garage that KITT drives into, they now use a cargo plane.

The show does, in my expert nanobot opinion, have one redeeming factor.  The character of Zoe Chae (played by Smith Cho), the sassy, attractive, asian linguist who works at Knight Industries.

However, these nanobots appear to be unable to help Doctor Who.  David Tennet was not available to film season 5 because of his commitment with the Royal Shakespeare Company.  He did film 4 one hour specials that will air during the course of 2009.  I heard mention of Easter and Christmas specials.  Doctor Who will return in 2010, but without David Tennet and without Russel T. Davis, the executive producer and writer.  They have not announced who will be replacing David Tennet as the Doctor, but Steven Moffat will take over as the executive producer.

During season 4, the Doctor meet Professor River Song, who knew the Doctor from his future.  She even recognized his incarnation (the tenth doctor) and after looking at him closely, said he was early in his incarnation, suggesting that she meet him later during that incarnation.  However, if he is going to be replaced soon, then she couldn’t meet him (unless they bring her back during one of the specials).

For more about David Tennet and why he is leaving Doctor Who, click here.

So, how is everyone doing?  It has been awhile since I put anything up here, so, I figured I had better do so, or I might as well give my little brother the keys and sign over the domain.

But, like wow, hasn’t a lot happened since my last post…I mean, where do I start?

Well, we can start with what I know.  I am now King of the Lab at my day job, as opposed to the former incumbent who called himself the “Queen of the Lab” and who wanted to be the Queen of Summertime as well.  Currently we all hope he is now getting to know Bubba really well.  On a side note, it would appear that being King of the Lab means a lot more work, a lot of the same work, and only $0.10 an hour more then your underlings who have a lot less to worry over.  But hey, I now have Awesome powers according to boss.

On the technology front, we have Intel releasing the Core I7 architecture this week, and they will finally have all the same features as AMD.  Of course they where already faster, so this is more of a nail in the coffin release.  Speaking of AMD, we should see the release of Bobcat this week or next.  Bobcat is an 8 watt processor designed to take on the Intel Atom.  Atom for those of you who don’t know is the 4 watt processor which is used in most of the new Netbooks you are going to be seeing pop up everywhere.  I am currently typing this on my Aspire One, and believe me it isn’t easy.    It would probably help is I wasn’t on an excersize bike at the same time.

Now, you are all thinking 4watts is clearly better then 8, and you are wrong.  What?  I know, I know, math right.  Well the thing is that the Bobcat will be a classic AMD processor and have a lot of toys on the chip that Intel puts on the motherboard, and that means those toys (onboard memory controler, etc…) have to counted as part of the processor when reporting power consumption.

What I really want to see them drop though is Deneb, the new quadcore processor due out this quarter.  Currently I have an Athlon X2 6000+, which is only a dual core, but is still a lot faster then most quad for what I do.

In operating system news, we can be happy that Microsoft is trying to fix the mistake they made when they released Vista at us, and will be dropping Windows 7 in the next year or so.  It will be based on Vista, but should tighten up a lot of the problems.  OpenSuSE 11.1 will be upon us shortly, and I look forward to that, I’ve been using 11 for awhile now and have been very happy.  Ubuntu has gone 8.10 and as I am using that right now, I can’t say much bad about it.  I tried it on my play machine in the office and couldn’t figure out how to fix the screen resolution as even the fancy .conf file I wanted to edit, no longer managed the settings.  I am using KDE 4.1.2for those who are even remotly interested.   I will post a fancy screen shot later.

Apple has also released a bunch of fancy new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops which look interesting, but all have nasty reflective glossy screens that ruin them for much real use.  But for the bargain hunters out there, last generation MacBooks can now be had for around $850 + tax.  Also, for those of you with Netflix, the online movie viewer, now functions in both Firefox and Safari.

Now, we have gotten all that out of the way, how about that economy!  600 point drop in three days, who is in charge of this mess and why are all these idiots selling their stock?  Prices in the toilet means you don’t sell because you will take a bath in excriment.  AIG wants $150 Billion of your dollarsto fund further vactions for their executive staff, who are only footing $20 to $30,000 of the $500,000 retreats.  They need these trips to inform their sales folk of what to sell. If they are $150 Billion in the whole, sales folk don’t need executive retreats, they need to be fired or worse.

Ford, GM, and the other one all want money too, largely because they thought that selling SUV’s while gas continued to get more expensive was a good idea.  I say bail them out, but ensure all the upper management are barred from ever running a company again.  But then I think that about all the companies the goverment bails out.  Charge them criminal neglegance and then if they have a felony, which they should, they are no longer allowed to run a public company.  Problem solved.

Politics I will save so I have something real to talk with everyone about later.

Before I start my scathing review, you might have noticed that I added another story on the fiction page, a cross over with Guild Wars (a mmo that I play alot).  It came out as a whim on my guild’s message board.  I’m not working very hard on it.  I might put up a second chapter some time (since I’m actually half way through the second chapter).

I watched 100 Million BC recently and instantly decided to include it as a lame movie.  100 Million BC stars Michael Gross as Frank Reno, a scientist working for the US Navy on project Rainbow, a time travel device.  Sixty years before the movie, they tested the device by sending twenty-one people back eighty million years, because by sending the people that far back into the past, they can’t change history and cause a paradox.  The only problem with that, is that the further back you go, the more you can change history.  By going that far back, first you could kill a random rodent and prevent the evolution of the human race (if you believe in evolution).  Second, the viruses and bacteria that any of them are carrying will have eighty million years to evolve into something that could destroy all life on the planet.  If they decide to procreate, they could cause the human race to appear eons earlier and completely change the history of the planet.  If you want to avoid a paradox, then they really need to go back to a more recent time (like a week or two).

Well, the team they sent into the past never comes back.  But, some people rock climbing find a cave with some cave paintings.  The navy becomes interested because among the paints there is some writing.  One of the messages says “Frank, it was not your fault”.  They carbon date the writing to the time period they sent the team to.  The Navy decides to send a team of Navy SEALs through the time machine to rescue the first team.  Frank Reno goes back with them.

One by one, the SEALs get killed off by the dinosaurs, including a hungry T. Rex named Big Red that is bullet proof (they shoot him with an M-60, but it doesn’t hurt him) before they finally find the survivors of the first team.  Out of the twenty-one, only four remain.  The four survivors, two remaining SEALs, and Frank make their way back to the time travel device to go back to the present.   However, Frank reveals that someone has to stay behind to shut off the device after the others go through (because there was apperently no way to install a remote or an automatic shut off).  Frank decides to stay so that the others can go through.  Before Frank can shut off the device, Big Red attacks him and goes through the time machine. 

The T. Rex appears in the Navy facility in Los Angeles and immediately eats a scientist and then one of the SEALs.  Then Big Red gets loose and starts terrorizing downtown LA where it eats several people to satisfy his unsatiable appetite.  The Navy officer, the last SEAL, and the four members of the first team all pile into a Seahawk and follow the dinosaur.  For some reason, they decide not to buckle in nor close either of the back doors.  A police helicopter joins the search.  During the search, they mention that the dino is cold blooded even though the current theory is that they were warm blooded (and the movie came out last year).  Big Red catches the police helocopter in its mouth and the helocopter explodes.  Even though the Seahawk is next to the explosion, no one falls out.  And even though the helocopter explodes in Big Red’s mouth, he’s unharmed.  The Seahawk then does a straffing run at Big Red that only succeeds in making him mad.

After a long drawn out chase in LA, a young Frank Reno appears (having just time traveled to the present from sixty years ago, where the old Frank appeared after being attacked by Big Red) with a World War 2 tank.  The tank goes off in chase down the dino and gets destroyed.  Frank throws a portable time travel device into Big Red’s mouth and send him back to his proper time.  Then he uses a second device to take him and the survivors of the first team to their time (because that won’t cause a paradox, either, apparently).  However, someone still needs to stay behind to shut off the machine, because they still rely on a manual shut off.  Instead of asking anyone from the present to do it, two of the survivors stay behind.

Okay, aside from bad science and plot holes big enough for the 60 foot, bullet proof, red dinosaur to walk through, the special effects were bad.  The T. Rex was CGI, but it didn’t look much better then Sid Meyer’s claymation dinosaurs in the original Land of the Lost.  And when Big Red opened its mouth to eat someone, it looked like a funnel, a round textureless opening. 

I’m giving this movie -1 bananas because it had nothing going for it.  Bad plot, bad special effects, bad science, and mediocre acting.

I just read that Michael Crichton passed away yesterday.

http://www.etonline.com/news/2008/11/67369/

http://www.altarsofscience.com

If you can’t figure out what it is just by seeing the video, it’s a bomb that is hidden under the Vatican, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to look at.  It’s a viral ad for the upcoming movie Angels and Demons which is based on the best selling author Dan Brown’s book by the same name.  It is coming out May 15th, 2009 and is starring Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Pierfrancesco Favino, and August Fredrik.

Also, Director Sam Raimi and actor Tobey Maguire have agreed to do Spiderman 4 and 5.  David Lindsay-Abaire, a pulitzer prize winning playwright is writing the screenplay.

Since it has been a long time since I last posted the list of movies coming out, here they are.

November 7th, 2008 Daniel Craig returns as James Bond in 007 Quantom of Solace and is on the run from MI-6.

December 12: The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Kenue Reeves.

The Spirit wishes everyone a Merry Christmas on December 25th.  Based on a 40’s and 50’s comic strip and directed by Frank Miller, this movie stars Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, and a lot of other women.  There are a lot of women in this film.

January 23rd, 2009: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans starring Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, Rhona Mitra, Kevin Grevioux

February 27th, 2009, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Lee, starring Kristin Kreuk, Michael Clarke Duncan, Neal McDonough, Taboo, Chris Klein, Moon Bloodgood, Edmund Chen, Cheng Pei Pei, Josie Ho, Robin Shou.

March 9, 2009: Watchmen, based on a best selling graphic novel.

April 3, 2009: Benicio Del Toro is the Wolfman in the remake of the Wolfman.  Also starring Anthony Hostkins, Hugo Weaving, and Emily Blunt.

Dragonball returns to torture the world on April 10th, 2009.  This will be the live action version of the painful anime.  You have been warned.

May 1st, 2009: X-men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in a prequel to the X-men movies.

May 15th, 2009: Angels and Demons, based on the novel by Dan Brown, starring Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Pierfrancesco Favino, and August Fredrik.

The future begins on May 22, 2009 with Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins starring Christian Bale as John Connor, Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese, and Sam Worthington in the newest installment of the Terminator franchise.  No Arnold in this one.

June 5th, 2009: Land of the Lost starring Will Ferrell, Danny Mcbride, Anna Friel, and Jorma Taccone.

On July 17, 2009 Harry Potter returns to the big screen in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint reprising their respective roles.

June 26th, 2009: Transformers 2, starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Isabel Lucas, Rainn Wilson, Jennifer Alden

March 5th, 2010: Tim Burton’s vision of Alice in Wonderland hits the big screen starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Sheen, Mia Wasikowska, Matt Lucas, Crispin Glover, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman.  This might be interesting.

April 30, 2010: Iron Man 2.  With Thor making a cameo.

June 4, 2010: Thor

May 6, 2011: Captain America: The First Avenger which will be set entirely in World War 2.

July 15, 2011: Avengers with Robert Downy, Jr., Edward Norton, Samuel L. Jackson, and whoever plays Captain America and Thor.

Sometime in 2011: Spiderman 4

First things first, I would like to congratulate Barack Obama on winning the election.  Now, make sure you don’t screw up the country.

Now that the elections are done with, I’m going to working more on my campaign.  I plan on filing all the paperwork by January.  If you wish to contribute to my campaign, make your checks payable to Pixley for Virginia.  If you need my address, contact me privately and I’ll supply it to you.

I have been thinking recently about whether I should run indepentent or if I should join a third party, specifically the Reform Party.  Robert seems to think that I will hurt my chances by siding with a third party.  But by joining a party, I might get money from the party to pay for the campaign.

 On a different note, I have posted the rewritten chapters in the fiction section.