The Sims

Looking for something funny to see this weekend? Check out Meet The Parents. This was one of the funniest comedies I've seen in a while, and it's not nearly as raunchy as There's Something About Mary. The on-screen chemistry and comedic timing between Robert DeNiro and Ben Stiller is great, there are a few scenes where I simply couldn't stop laughing, the first night at the dinner table is a classic... My copy of The Sims came last night. I got it for free from the PepsiStuff promotion. What an original and addictive game! It's like nothing I've ever played before, I wasted two and half hours last night, just teaching my Sims some skills, so they could get better jobs, and buy more furniture. I get the impression that I haven't even scratched the surface of this game, much less all of the content that comes in the add-on pack. My only gripe is that the game isn't really set up for multiple players without that add-on pack. Otherwise, if you want to let a friend play, they wind up messing up your characters that you've worked on. Time to go to Software, Etc...

Duron Mini-Review

I watched the debate last night, and while I enjoyed most of it, George W. Bush said one sentence which really pissed me off. Here it is, the emphasis is mine:

"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turned dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."

So being on the Internet is going to turn someone's heart dark? "Slashdot" picked up on it too, and they're running a story claiming that murders committed by those under the age of 18 have decreased since the rise of the Internet. I'm not really concerned about the statistics, I just think it shows that George W. Bush doesn't really understand the Internet, if he thinks that exposure to it will somehow turn a child into a mass-murderer.

I compare the Internet to a library, full of information, but not some place you necessarily want to let a child roam unchecked. Just think about that for a minute, realize that there are thousands of books and magazines in a well-stocked library that aren't suitable for children to read, they're filled with materials deemed "obscene", hate, violence, and mis-information. Yet we don't see our politicians decrying libraries on TV...

That said, I thought the debate was reasonable, and almost too polite. The first 30 minutes yielded no significant differences between the candidates. I agreed with Bush on the hate-crimes laws, we don't need laws which prosecute someone differently for the crime of murder if the person they murdered was of a minority group. However, I thought that Bush looked like a ghoul when he sat there gloating (incorrectly) that the three men involved in the killing of Byrd in Texas would be put to death.

Update: Brent weighed in with some comments (Welcome!) and I posted a response.

I've had my AMD Duron 600 system for a couple of weeks now, and I've played with it quite a bit. I like it, and it's a fast CPU for the price. Last night, I finally got around to trying to overclock it as fast as I could. I got it to boot and run at 678 mhz, but it locked up after it got into Windows. I could probably run it higher if I used a better fan and heat sink, but I'm not going to that much effort. I can stably run it at 660 mhz for days, and a 10% speed boost is nothing to sneeze at, especially from a CPU that sells for $64 over at JNCS. I did have some strange problems trying to play Unreal Tournament the other night. If I tried to use the onboard sound, the game locked up. If I used an Aureal Vortex2, the game played, but the sound didn't work. I finally wound up putting my Sound Blaster Live! in the machine, which worked fine, and I just put my Vortex2 back in the Dell. Other than that, which may be due to shoddy Aureal Win2000 drivers, I've had no problems. In fact, the Gigabyte Motherboard I used was extremely easy to install, despite the fact that it came with the incorrect manual. Thank god I could download the .pdf version from the web...

Gore

A Colorado man has confessed to killing a few of his wives, as well as some of his children. The catch? He's about to die of natural causes. He's been arrested, and is being held without bail. Yeah, that'll teach him... My second issue of Yahoo! Internet Life came yesterday. It contains a great interview with Al Gore, in which it becomes very clear that he understands technology issues. It's refreshing to see a politician who uses technology terms correctly, and who really understands how things work. I'm so used to pointy-haired bosses who need help formatting disks, I'll vote for him based on his technical knowledge alone! Here's an excerpt:

Y-Life: Let's begin with a geek equipment check. Are you a PC or a Mac guy?

Gore: [Resignedly] Aw, PC. I was a long-time holdout for the Mac. I wish sometimes I hadn't given in, but so much software was available earlier for the PC, I finally switched over. But I still feel badly about it. [Laughs] I'm so happy the Mac's making a comeback. That's really cool. And [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs - well, I'm rooting for Steve.

Y-Life: You figure you have the Mac vote anyway?

Gore: Listen, it wasn't a political choice. Sheer necessity!

Y-Life: So you work in Windows. And your computer is...?

Gore: An IBM ThinkPad. I carry it everywhere with me, pull it out of the trunk every night when I'm traveling.

Y-Life: So the Vice President of the United States jacks in his laptop in a hotel room every night, just like the rest of us?

Gore: [Smiling] No, I have a secure connection. I'm on the National Security Agency, and I communicate regularly on national security matters. But now I long on - hey, I dial up from a hotel room, too, if that's all there is.

Y-Life: Surely you have good wireless from Air Force Two.

Gore: It's tough on Air Force Two. Military technology is behind the curve. I got 'em to put commercial in there, but it's still primitive. Everyone's still primitive communicating up in the air.

You know, I'm really a device guy. I'm hungry for the transition from the PC to devices to happen.

Y-Life: You mean like the Palm. Which we suspect you have.

Gore: Hey, I was a beta tester for the Palm VII! Tipper helped arrange it for me as a birthday present two years ago. it's fun, but suddently I realized that I was using most to show people I had it! [Laughs]

Actually, I just bought a couple of [Handspring] Visors for the kids. They love them. And hey, that digicam you slide onto the Visor - really cool! Of course, Palm is coming back at them with a $149 model. So we'll see.

Worms

Al has joined the wireless world. I helped him get his Airport talking to his AT&T Cable Modem, as well as his desktop machines. The 802.11 technology is very cool, and I'm happy to see that more people are starting to adopt it, as that means the price will come down. It's not outrageously prices now, but the average joe is still looking at $500 to outfit his house with wireless technology, compared to $100 for a basic wired home network. It's been hectic here at work the last couple of days. We had a few faculty members contract a couple of those nasty Visual Basic Script worms. We've now disabled the Windows Scripting Host on all of the computers in the college, as well as updating a lot of antivirus software. Today, I'm looking into purchasing the Enterprise Edition of Norton AntiVirus, with which we can force virus definition updates from the server-side. These were particulary nasty, as they attacked all the .jpg files in our public server space, and destroyed them all, meaning we had to go to the tape and retrieve backups, only to have another infected faculty member wipe them out again...

Patriots

Al gave me a nice little write-up over on his site today. I don't really know him personally, but I found his site via "John" and I've come to enjoy reading it daily. Let me return the compliment by saying that I really appreciate the difficulties of the job he does, I worked in a hospital for a summer, right after I graduated from high school, as a trained backup monkey in the MIS department. I know what a difficult job nurses have, especially on the graveyard shift where I worked, hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer horror, when a patient codes. I worked on the same floor as the ICU and the CCU, and that remains the only time I've seem someone die... The dream was alive, for three long quarters, at Jack Trice Stadium today. The Cyclones hung with the Nebraska Cornhuskers as long as they could, certainly long enough to prove they were contenders, but came up short in the end. The Cyclones need to win two more games to be eligible for a bowl game, which "Jeremy" and I have vowed to attend, regardless of location. Do they have a chance? Let's take a look at who's left to play:

Oklahoma State

Texas A&M

Missouri

Kansas State

Colorado

Kansas

How many of these can ISU win? All of them, if they play like they did for the first three quarters today. Realistically, I expect them to definitely beat Kansas. Colorado could fall very easily, and Missouri and Oklahoma State are certainly within the realm of possibility. Kansas State looks to be unbeatable, especially at Manhattan, and Texas A&M always seem to beat the Cyclones. If ISU can beat Kansas and Colorado, they've got a shot at a bowl berth. If they beat Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri or Oklahoma, they're bowl-bound, and so are "Jeremy" and I. Iowa State hasn't been to a bowl game since 1978 (we were two years old), so if they go this year, so are we.

I might be getting ahead of myself, but as I look over the list of bowl games, I find myself hoping that if ISU gets a bid, it's somewhere close and/or cheap to go to. The Aloha Bowl is probably outside our budget. It looks like there's a good chance we'd be going South, as three Big 12 berths are in Texas, one is in Louisiana, and another in Phoenix. For at-large berths, it'd be nice if they played in the Motor City bowl, or even the Las Vegas Bowl, it's cheap to fly to Vegas. Only time will tell...

It's snowing! It's a balmy 37 degrees outside, and the snow is starting to come down. I turned on the furnace for the first time last night, when I got home from work, it was 60 degrees in my apartment. It's a good day to stay inside, watch football, and do laundry.

I woke up early this morning, and decided to finish off Patriots, by David Drake. Drake writes excellent military sci-fi, but this book is more of a parallel of the American Revolution, set in outer space. This book certainly wasn't boring, but it wasn't exactly a page-turner, and the material was a little juvenile. Still, it was entertaining, and a good way to spend a Saturday morning when you're feeling lousy with a cold.