hawesome.mov (video/quicktime Object)

I always wondered where Wil Wheaton got the phrase "hawesome." I guess I should have clicked the link. I finally did and it revealed this vlog post. It's rather funny, especially when the guy talks about the contents of the average blog.

Shoganai - Gaming Goodness for the geek in all of us!

Holy crap, the pictures speak for themselves. I want to live in Japan now.

Last Thursday Kelly and I went to New Mexico to visit and show Kelly where I spent 8-12 grades.

We arrived in Santa Fe on Thursday afternoon after I gave Kelly a tour of Glorieta, where I worked during the summers of 1999 and 2000. My good friend Erin, with whom we were staying in Santa Fe, took us for bowling and karaoke in the evening. With my bum knee, I got last place out of 7 people. I tried to summon the mystic bowling prowess of Kirksville legend Berl Scrivens by taking the name for myself, but to no avail - I rolled a 64. But, Kelly rocked with a 119 and was even in the running to win. Her name was Fern Gully. We were also roped into serenading an inebriated group of middle aged adults with Summer Lovin' from Grease.

On Friday Kelly and I walked around the plaza in Santa Fe. We toured the Loretto Chapel, the "oldest house in America," the Palace of the Governors, and the capitol building. That night we went to dinner at a sort of pricey restaurant, but Kelly and I spent much less than everyone else because we don't drink much. We're not familiar much with the booze, and we don't care to spend $8 on a glass of wine when the chances are that we won't like it. That didn't stop others. Individually, the rest of our party spent more than Kelly and I combined. Eventually we returned to Erin's and slept, but about 2 a.m. Kelly and I were dragged into an episode of COPS when the neighbors began having a screamfest. We heard "Put down the knife and get out!" wafting in from an open window. One of the neighbors called the police before us, and they questioned the male and made him sleep somewhere else. After about an hour, the rest of the night was quiet.

Saturday, Erin was going orienteering. We didn't go because rough terrain = my knee crying for mercy. Anyway, it was a good opportunity to take Kelly to Albuquerque, where I went to high school. We toured my old neighborhood, school, and a couple restaurants. We also got tired and went to see Pirates of the Carribean II. By the way, the theater was cash only, which totally blows. We rarely have more the 4 singles on us at any time, and rely heavily on the plastic. So, we had to get money from the ATM, which popped us with a $2 fee. Even more, I think the theater owns the ATM and gets that money. I was mad. Mad enough to write a letter.

Sunday we came back to Denver. We had a good time in New Mexico, but you know what? No matter where you've been, there's nothing that beats sleeping in your own bed again.

Here in Denver, we are still under the Netflix spell. I saw Top Gun for the first time on Monday. It was ok, but I hate when movies add a love story as an afterthought to the plot. It is obvious and boring to watch. Scrubs and Curb Your Enthusiasm are still not boring.

A few weeks ago I was a little careless with my iPod and I cracked the LCD screen. Because Apple’s warranty doesn’t cover acts of negligent stupidity, I basically had to choose between buying a new iPod or finding an unofficial service to fix it.

The company I settled on was iPodResQ. I chose them because 1) they offered the cheapest price of any I found, and 2) they have a great shipping system. I was a little nervous about sending my iPod in the mail, but iPodResQ takes are of all the shipping, including a box with padding specifically designed to fit the iPod. The best part is that all of this is included in the flat repair fee.

After placing my order on the company’s website, I received a box via DHL the very next day. I followed the directions included, placed my iPod inside, and arranged for pick-up from my house the same day. iPodResQ received it and fixed it the next day, then shipped it back to me overnight. The whole process took three business days, and I got my iPod back as good as new.

Saddam Hussein is a terrible person, he is a threat to his own people. I think his people would be better off with a different leader, but there is this sort of romantic notion that if Saddam Hussein got hit by a bus tomorrow, some Jeffersonian democrat is waiting in the wings to hold popular elections. You're going to get -- guess what -- probably another Saddam Hussein. It will take a little while for them to paint the pictures all over the walls again, but there should be no illusions about the nature of that country or its society. And the American people and all of the people who second-guess us now would have been outraged if we had gone on to Baghdad and we found ourselves in Baghdad with American soldiers patrolling the streets two years later still looking for Jefferson.

-- Colin Powell, 1992

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs,” Bush and Scowcroft wrote. “We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.

-- George H.W. Bush, 1998

The emphasis above is mine.

"Mission creep" is exactly what happened in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The original rationale was that Saddam was an imminent threat because of his nuclear program and WMD. When those didn't turn up, the mission was changed to liberating Iraqis and establishing a democracy.

If only George Bush had paid more attention to what his father and his Secretary of State had said on this issue, then maybe the world and the US would be better prepared to handle the scary situations we're facing in the Middle East and North Korea right now.

Joel Siegel walked about of a screening for Clerks II and made a ruckus on the way out.

"Getting a bad review from Siegel is like a badge of honor. This is the guy who stole his mustachioed-critic shtick from Gene Shalit years ago, and still refuses to give it back. This is a guy who seemingly prides himself on his own nyuk-nyuk wordplay. For 'Pirates 2,' he made us all titter with 'Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Fun' . . . He made us squeal with delight when he wrote, 'Wheelie Good Time for "Cars." ' I mean, Fozzy [bleeping] Bear laughs at this guy."

I don't need Joel Siegel to [bleep] my [bleep] the way he apparently [bleeps] M. Night Shyamalan's, gushing over his flick ['The Lady in the Water'] before he's even seen it, but [bleep] man, man - how about a little common [bleeping] courtesy? You never, never disrupt a movie, simply because you don't like it. Cardinal rule of moviegoing: Shut your [bleeping] mouth while the movie's playing.

I don't come down to your job and slap the taste out of your mouth for coming up with a line like, ' "Shark Tale" Is a Halibut Good Time' - so don't [bleep] with my stuff while it's still screening . . . What are you, a 12-year-old boy cutting loose with your pals at a Friday night screening of 'Scary Movie' 4' while your parents are in a theater down the hall watching 'The Devil Wears Prada'? Leave the diva-like behavior and drama-queen antics to the movie stars, not the movie reviewer, ya' rude-ass [bleep]."

Kevin Smith

Tomorrow is World Jump Day, an event that aims to get 600 million people to jump on one side of the earth simultaneously in order to alter the planet's orbit and reduce global warming.

What can you do to help? Just jump. Go to the website and enter your location to find out when your time is.