I understand that I live in a northern climate, and cold weather is part of the deal. Really, I do. I just wish the forecast people would give realistic estimates. See if you can tell what’s wrong with this little forecast widget’s forecast:
I realize I am the exact demographic that should play video games like crazy. When the Blizzard company’s board meets — they probably use pictures of me when they discuss ways to better market their product to computer geeks. I should be every game-producing company’s ideal target.
As it turns out, I’m just not a big gamer. Bear in mind it’s not because I don’t WANT to enjoy gaming. I just can’t seem to get into it. The closest I get is the occasional First Person Shooter game that I can play for 10 minutes and quit.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that I can’t get into computer games. In fact, it’s probably very good. It just seems like I SHOULD be into it, ya know? How about you? Do you game?
(BTW — I do actually enjoy vintage gaming. Arcade games, NES, and even some SNES games. It’s just the new complex games that lose my interest quickly. Is that strange?)
A friend of mine suggested I try hosting with www.nearlyfreespeech.net — because instead of a set monthly rate, they charge you based on usage. Low traffic sites (like mine) would cost very little to maintain. About that time, I was starting a private website, so I gave it a go. As it turns out, I’m quite happy.
Don’t get me wrong, about the same time I signed up, Nearly Free Speech had some MAJOR routing and DNS issues. My site was offline or horribly slow for over a week. Then, they had a major MySQL crash, and my site was offline for another half a day. Since that time, several months ago, it’s been great. I’m OK with a company having problems as long as they fix it, and communicate the problem with their clients. NFS did both.
Plus, they’re DIRT CHEAP!!! I started the account with about $10 in the “bank”, and only today did I feel a need to add more money. Not because it was low, but because I am adding another website to the account and I want to make sure it’s “spike proof”. See, if a website gets Dugg or Slashdotted, their servers happily scale for you — but you pay for the bandwidth such a spike generates. It seems very fair to me.
So if you’ve been looking for a really inexpensive way to reliably host a website, especially if it doesn’t get much traffic or store much data — Nearly Free Speech might be a good choice. I’m happy with it. When my hosting package is done here at GoDaddy, I’ll be switching this site over too.
Look, you have a new 16×9 high definition television. I get it. So do I. There is something in us that WANTS to have every single, beautiful pixel filled with entertainment awesomeness. But here’s the deal — your 4×3 footage was never meant to be displayed like that. It’s just wrong. Picard did not have a head that fat.
I’ve had this discussion in real life, and people say they are annoyed by the black bars on the side of the television if they watch it in the native aspect ratio. These are (ironically) the same people that bought “fullscreen” DVDs because they didn’t like the black bars on the top and bottom of their old 4×3 televisions. Fullscreen DVDs are wrong. Stretched 4×3 video is even wronger. Just don’t do it, you make big screen TV people everywhere look bad.
Now go rent Star Trek the Next Generation, and watch it like it’s supposed to look. You won’t be sorry. 🙂
UPDATE: OMG, I see THIS on Engadget today. Can you imagine the insanity?!?!?!
Most bloggers are pumped when famous people visit their websites. Me? This friend stops by, and I’m all a twitter. 😉
I posted a comment over at John Scalzi’s website that piqued my curiosity enough to ask the question to everyone:
* Do you love/hate/not_care_about anti-lock brakes on your vehicle?
* Also, where do you currently live, and where did you live when you started driving?
I ask, because I live in northern Michigan, and we have icy roads all winter. Anti-lock brakes tend to annoy the crap out of me. Not because I’m a crazy driver that feels the need to lock up my tires and slide around like an idiot (although, I admit at times that’s kinda fun). I learned to drive with regular old brakes, and I tend to perform best when I have a “feel” for the road conditions, and can apply the stopping force that is appropriate.
I find that anti-lock brakes assume I’m an idiot, and go PBPBPBPBPPBPBPBPBBPBBPPBPPPBPBB, stealing any actual braking skills from me and forcing me to hope the van knows what it’s doing in time to stop. I’ve had this discussion with people that assure me it’s physically impossible for a human being to stop better than anti-lock brakes can. Well, I say pshaw.
How about you? Do you love anti-lock brakes on icy roads? Am I just and idjit?
UPDATE: Interestingly, this post just received a visitor from a computer user at daimlerchrysler.com. Welcome. 🙂
Recent events have revealed that indeed, the UCF, an organization I belong to, is in fact a secret group of Navel enforcers. The timing for discovery isn’t ideal, but nonetheless here’s my reveal video:
HP sent me one of their Mini-Note’s to review, even after the video I put up 2 weeks ago. I was impressed with how they handled themselves, and I was equally impressed with the laptop. Check it out:
