Analog Coast

That title is referring to this absolutely hilarious story from many moons ago. Then San Diego Chargers defensive end Chris Mims attacked a man with a belt, then stole his tacos because he was hungry. The fact he took a guy’s fast food makes me giggle to this day. Sadly, Chris died a couple of weeks ago, but I shall always remember him as the player too cheap to purchase a damn taco, but willing to commit a felony for one.

So, week 9 finds the Horde at 7-1 and STILL in first place. I’m facing the 1-7 Bay Area Knightmares this week, the team I swung the big trade with a week ago. Well, Boldin looked pretty fucking healthy in his first game for them, taking 2 of his 9 catches in to the end zone. However, I fully intend to have the Horde crush his still healing head in to the turf…he probably won’t have any food on him out there, but they can eat whatever he might be holding.

QB - Rivers is off this week, so it’s the Big Ben show. He really struggled last week against a Giants defense that beats quarterbacks for fun (well, and millions of dollars per man). This week he’s against a tough Washington D, but they aren’t known for their constant crushing of passer’s very souls, so I’m hoping for a solid comeback game from him. The Knightmares are putting out Garcia, who is facing the godawful, sub-Pop Warner Kansas City Chiefs this week, which makes him a possibility for about 6000 yards and 37 touchdowns. Definite advantage Knightmares here.

RB - Portis is banged up and facing a tough Pittsburgh run D…he’s also the league’s leading rusher, and has at least 120 yards in 5 straight games. LenWhale also sticks in, since Green Bay is surprisingly bad at stopping the run. At this point, it appears that Joseph Addai WILL be back, so I’m putting him in at the W/R spot. He’ll probably he splitting the carries, but should make up for it with quite a few catches. I would consider Jackson if he improves, but it isn’t looking good at the moment for him to play this week. Knightmares answer with Seattle’s Julius Jones against a tough Philly defense, and Oakland rookie Darren McFadden, who is pretty much a lock to be out this week. As of now, the only other back he has is on a Bye this week. Barring a pick up (and there isn’t much on the waiver wire), he’s down a guy, which is obviously advantage me.

Receiver - Marshall steps back in for Santana Moss, who at this point is a game time decision. That means both Steve Breaston and Antonio Bryant will be staying in the lineup, since Bomber Mo is on a bye, as is Vincent Jackson. Bryant’s been solid (and faces that same ghastly KC D), and with the amount Arizona is throwing this year, Breaston’s still good for decent numbers out of the slot. If Moss looks more likely to play, he could also replace Addai in the W/R spot. Kellen Winslow sees his first action for me at TE, and should make some catches, since he’s also known as ‘The Cleveland Browns Only Reliable Receiver This Year’.

The Bay Area comes back with Boldin, Pittsburgh’s Hines Ward, Colts slot guy Anthony Gonzalez and Oakland’s Johnie Lee Higgins at wideout, with Pitt’s Heath Miller at TE. Boldin’s good, Ward’s good, and Gonzo could do well against a Patriots defense that really can’t cover anyone. Higgins is only a threat on returns. Miller is a bizarre move at this point…when I tried to get his OTHER TE, Chicago’s Greg Olsen, he wouldn’t deal him, saying he had nothing else. Yet, for now, he sits, despite the Bears facing the putrid Detroit Lions, who would be hard pressed to maintain pass coverage on a recliner this year. I expect to see Olsen enter this game.

Still, even WITH him, I still think I have a bit of an advantage.

K - It’s still the Rian Lindell show for me, and he’s good. My opponent has Dallas’ Nick Folk. Dallas is awful right now, and their backup QB, Brad Johnson, is less effective moving them down field on scoring drives than I would be. Meanwhile, he has a BACKUP KICKER (are we starting to see why this guy is 1-7? Has no running backs, but he still trades one to me instead of one of 2 tight ends, and he carries 2 kickers all year???) in Arizona’s Neil Rackers, who faces the pathetic Rams D. Unless he makes a switch, advantage me.

D - Chris Hope joins Bell and Rhodes as me DBs. Joey Porter steps in for the vacationing Thomas Davis, and should get some sack chances versus Denver. DJ Williams is back and steps in for Tatupu, who is playing hurt and questionable (and was noticeably slow last week). Tatupu’s real life teammate, Leroy Hill, stays in, and has been a tackle monster all year, as does Posluzny the Polish Wrecking Machine.

Oh look, it’s castoff Gerald Hayes! Actually, his group of DL isn’t bad at all, but his DBs…again, one of them isn’t playing this week (and his backup isn’t either), and another, Green Bay’s Charles Woodson, is playing hurt. Overall, advantage me, even if he does sub someone in for the off guy.

I’m currently favored to win by 122 points. If the Horde doesn’t win this game, I will immediately commence brutally raping the loved ones of my players (why is it always described as BRUTAL rape, anyway? Is there ever a case of GENTLE rape?).

This has to be one of the cutest thing I've ever seen!

From My Nephew

From My Nephew

My buddy Jay out in Vancouver is part of this pretty awesome local band there. Bridges and Breakdowns is a fairly new band however has a great sound of a seasoned band. I highly suggest you check out their site. http://www.bridgesandbreakdowns.com

Check out Jay's bio and some of his solo acoustic songs.

silicapathways posted a photo:

silicapathways posted a photo:

Fuck you political correctness. Fuck you in the ass with a flaming Christmas tree.

I think we are truly blessed in Canada. We live in a place where you can be who you want to be, do what you want to do and believe what you want to believe without fear of persecution. Having said that, I'm going to put on my redneck hat.

Living in a place that extends such openness and tolerance to people of every race and creed, you think that people that desire to move here to partake in the freedom, they could give a little bit of that tolerance back. I'm not Christian. I'm not religious at all. Even so, I celebrate fucking Christmas. I might not personally partake, but I won't begrudge all the kids (and adults) that enjoy Hallowe'en. Yeah. Hallowe'en. Not Black & Orange Day like the fucking fuckers over at the Toronto School Board would like to call it.

I am so tired of this PC bullshit. This year at work I (and many of my coworkers) almost missed the invitation to our company CHRISTMAS PARTY because the geniuses in the social committee were getting all cute and creative and called it a "Snowflake Social". They didn't even put the word "party" in the title. Seriously...

IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO ATTEND THE CHRISTMAS PARTY, CALL IT A FUCKING CHRISTMAS PARTY.

The people that get all bent out of shape about this or that holiday need to give their heads a shake. They cry about how they're being discriminated against or are being left out... come on. You're being left out of something that you don't want to participate in in the first place!

Argh!

Woohoo! Now we’ve entered a realm where basically repeating title elements is okay! Truly, I am growing as a writer…

Anyway, this won’t be another long, long preamble about SecuROM, I promise…it will be a short one. More of an addendum, really, to my previous post. It seems that my earlier point about Bethesda being more ‘on board’ with the needs of their customers was perhaps a tad hasty. Oh, they’ve produced a workaround for people that are unable to play (or in some cases, install) what they’ve paid for because SecuROM won’t let them. Let’s take a look at this ‘workaround’.

1. Remove every media player program that isn’t Windows Media Player.

2. Remove any burner/emulation software, including stuff that often comes packaged with your DVD-ROM drive when you buy it (and is therefore 100% legit), like Roxio or Nero.

3. Hey, what could be more fun than fucking around with your System BIOS settings? Surely EVERYONE is comfortable doing this for the sake of playing a game!

Wow. Just fucking wow. Would you like my soul and perhaps my first born as well? So, people are expected to jump through all these hoops to PLAY WHAT THEY BOUGHT FROM YOU?! And you don’t see a PROBLEM with all this? One person made a one line post on their forums that I think sums things up quite nicely…treat customers like customers and you’ll make more money…treat customers like pirates and you’ll make more pirates.

Also found the website Reclaim Your Game through the Bethesda forums. Basically, these are the guys who are collecting information and handing it off to the lawyers who are launching the class action lawsuits against game companies. These lawyers, by the way, are the same guys who hammered Ubisoft over Starforce, and who launched the original DRM lawsuit, which was against rootkit software Sony was putting on their DVDs and music CDs (Sony, by the way, owns SecuROM, so…yeah…way to not learn any lesson at all, jackasses). Anyway, if you really wanna read about what this shit actually does, check their site out. They also list the existing lawsuits (Hell, you can read the legal papers if you really want to, they have them all linked to .pdf versions of the briefs themselves)…there are currently FOUR suits against EA working their way through the court system. Now, one of these in particular caught my attention. A guy downloads the limited, freeware version of the Spore Creature Creator. He installs it, messes with it, uninstalls it. Then he notices SecuROM is now on his computer. He’s puzzled…he tends to avoid software that uses it. Where did it come from? The freeware Spore Creature Creator. Yes, high end DRM ON GODDAMN FREE SOFTWARE! You felt the need to ‘protect’ FREE software, EA? How does that make any goddamn sense? Well, perhaps here we see. Head on over to the SecuROM website and you may find THIS little page…yes, SecuROM, when it’s going online is acting as a fucking data mine service, one of those delightful little things that starts customizing the spam you’re hit with, and suggesting web sites you might like and such, based on what you’re buying. Well, isn’t THAT just the damn cherry on top. Lovely.

Actually, the SecuROM is a pretty amazing little site. Their ‘advice’ for customers having problems is staggering. Our software is reading your legit DVD-Rom drive as a Virtual Drive program? Why, simply disable the drive! Of course, I’ll just TURN OFF hardware to run a game (and, by the way, how exactly does this make sense…I thought the point of SecuROM was insisting a disc be in the drive to insure it’s a legit copy. It can’t exactly DO that if I TURN OFF THE DAMN DRIVE, can it!?). No, no, don’t fix your software or anything, no…I’ll just systematically dismantle my computer instead, that’s a MUCH better way to go about things.

Anyway, yeah, I’ve reached a point where it’s time to walk the walk. I’ve been issuing screed after rant after…uhhh…something else apoplectic…about this garbage. Well, it’s time to back up the words with the wallet. So, I shall not be at any point buying the new Brothers in Arms game, Endwar, NHL 09, Fallout 3, or any other of this shit that comes with these lovely ‘bonus features’ as part of my experience. I am about to begin the long and ridiculously laborious process of removing SecuROM from my system. Should I decide to reinstall and play, say, World in Conflict, I will burn a goddamn image of the disc, install it THAT way, and use a Cracked .exe file to run it, rather than deal with this garbage again. I have no problems with reasonable levels of DRM. You want to use a keygen program, fine. You want to have something that simply requires the disc be in the drive, fine. I take no issue with stuff like that. But I’m no longer financially supporting this fucked up business model of ‘Let’s just assume every customer we’ll ever have is a criminal.’ No. Fuck you. I sincerely hope enough people follow this idea that every douchebag cunt who thinks crap like that is a GOOD idea is left destitute and homeless and sucking dick on the streets for enough money to eat.

Oh, and speaking of beating drums to bloody death (hey hey, remember that title? Look at me recycle!), I will also, when finally buying one of those ‘be a band’ games for my 360, be picking up Rockband 2. What swayed me in that direction? Activision, makers of Guitar Hero World Tour, have had serious issues with bad instruments that are breaking very quickly after purchase, or coming broken. Now, okay, the same thing happened with Rock Band, so it isn’t the end of the world. However, Neversoft was smart enough to say “Okay, our bad, ship it to us and we’ll fix it, and we’ll charge you nothing.” Activision on the other hand has taken the path of “Okay, our bad, ship it to us at your expense and we’ll fix it and ship it back to you…at your expense.” Wow. Nice. How ‘generous’ of you to offer to let me pay to get this crap you didn’t make sturdy enough to you so you van do me the immense favor of making sure it works and will then charge me to get back what I paid for. Truly epic. Eat a diseased dick and die of venereal disease. Seriously, what the Hell? Fine, you wanna act like I should pay for YOUR manufacturing screwup? Okay, I simply won’t pay in to your fuckup in the first place. Rot.

Yes, it’s the new Cliff…he’s a geektacular as ever before, only now he’s actually backing up his shit. Woohoo!

Addendum : I have removed SecuROM. It took a good…oh…15 minutes, and several specific program downloads to get software that would delete some of this crap, because IT WON’T NORMALLY LET YOU. Yes, this is what happens when software installs on your Kernel in Ring 0, and therefore has higher power to mess with your system than you do. What a complete pile of shit. NEVER…AGAIN.

This just in, EGG NOG is in stores now!

AWESOME!

silicapathways posted a photo:

My boyfriend & myself. :)

Credit goes to Mariebee for the lens flare addition, as I never get to take photographs when there's sun available thanks to office life :). Thank you for the free layer!

silicapathways posted a photo:

The newest in my collaboration with Lissa; My photo is on the left and is meant to represent "solidity" and Lissa's photo is on the right and represents "frailty". Next week, we switch!

Full view please!

On my photo, a credit goes to Mariebee for the lens flare addition, as I never get to take photographs when there's sun available thanks to office life :). Thank you for the free layer!