Mmm, tasty Bioshock.

Finished my second playthrough tonight. Did both endings. Medium is much more challenging than Easy. (Who knew?) Escort mission SUCKS BUTT.

All in all? Bioshock rocks a thousand ways to Sunday. You owe it to yourself.

Riiiight.

I have no problem with the suspension of disbelief. It's a prerequisite for enjoying a movie. But sometimes the writer, director, whomever pushes it too far. Thus was the case for me with Disturbia.

Aside from the fact that the first half of the movie was dreadfully boring, they just took me on one too many stupid ride-alongs for me to be able to appreciate the movie. Where to begin. First, the creepy antagonist climbs into the girl's car, removes the keys, and locks her doors and begins talking to her. She took it surprisingly well. I don't know any girls that would just sit there instead of screaming bloody murder and getting out of the car.

Oh, but wait, he locked the doors, didn't he? And since he had her keys, she couldn't get out. Because in modern cars, you can't unlock the doors from the driver's side of the car. I forgot about that little detail.

But pretending that we're dumb enough to believe that, let's continue. Unfortunately, as the movie wears on, I got more and more detached from it as they kept pretending we're dumb enough to believe more and more crap. Of note:

Instead of looking for his kidnapped mom in normal places, the protagonist starts looking behind furniture and in air ducts. Keeping in mind that his mom was kidnapped like 2 minutes ago, I don't think the first place I'd look would be in the air ducts.

Police dispatch gives a call to an off duty officer who doesn't respond timely.
Office enters a house that has had glass broken out without notifying dispatch first.
He also does that without his gun drawn.
Meanwhile, kid finds secret room, and pauses his search for his mother (whose life is in immediate danger) and starts looking through personal effects of another woman gone missing. Slowly and methodically, just like in real life.

You know what? I'm not going to even keep going. I understand they have to do certain things to make things more dramatic, but come on, Hollywood. It can't be that hard to have something suspenseful while still maintaining some sense of realism. Emotion shouldn't be pulled from a person being pissed that the character is doing something stupid that nobody would actually do. Rely on the damned story. Keep the actions realistic, at least.

Bah. Movies just suck ass. I don't even know why I watch them any more. I guess it's for those rare ones that are actually good. Either they keep it real(istic) or they are so far fetched that you don't NEED to know that a person would actually do those things or not. It's when they start blurring the lines that things go to crap. Disturbia sure did.

Waterbed.

I used to have a waterbed. My brother was getting rid of his. A queen "waveless" waterbed, complete with headboard - the works. Somehow it got offered to me. I'd always wanted one, so I didn't turn him down. The only requirement was that I come pick it up. Now I understand why he was willing to give it to me.

Moving it was a giant hassle. First, we didn't have the means to totally empty it. No shop vac or anything. I don't even recall how we got most of the water out. Must have had something to do with buckets and lots of patience. Even when we got out as much as we could, that thing must have still weighed a couple hundred pounds.

Getting it down the stairs wasn't hard. Literally just piled up the water bag and just dumped it down the stairs. Unfortunately, I'd later go on to realize that this meant the anti-wav material inside would get all bunched and tangled up, and wouldn't ever really go back to the way it originally was. Once loaded into the car, it was a 20 minute drive and another flight of stairs back up to reach the final destination.

One frame assembly and a ton of hose time later, the bed was mine. My parents had had a waterbed, I had always been jealous. Now I finally had one. Complete with a giant lump in the middle where the wave material was all jumbled up. Still. It was a waterbed.

They see j00 when you're sleeping...

Maybe not when you're sleeping, exactly, but if you spend any time online, odds are that Google knows about it.

The prospect of a consolidated Web History interests me. There is some appeal to the idea that I can go back and search my previously visited websites for that elusive site that I just... can't... quite... remember... the... address... of... If you use Google Toolbar, odds are that you know that service is available to you. You don't know that? Then read on.

I've been using the Google Toolbar for some time now, Mr. Anderson. Sometimes I use it to alert me to new Gmail waiting, but most of the time I use it because I like having my bookmarks accessible from anywhere. It's really quite handy. I recently noticed that my current web history was limited only to my search history, so I went to looking into it being turned back on for the whole gamut. Then I decided to read Google's privacy policy. It was an interesting read.

In a nutshell, one of the things I discovered was how much Google remembers about you - even if you don't have your web history enabled. For starters, there's the everlasting cookie. (Willy Wonka, eat your heart out.) That's right, Google cookies are set to expire in 2038. Wow, I wonder what kind of relic my computer will be by then. Anyway, every time you use Google, they record your search term, your unique cookie ID, your IP address, the date and time, and what browser you were using. That's quite a bit of info they've got stored away there. Now, I could hypothesize that they routinely delete their logs, but have you checked out the MB counter on your Gmail box lately? Storage isn't an issue any more - Google knows this.

Now, most web servers automatically record data through an access log - this isn't news to most people. The thing that's awesome (?) about Google is their unique cookie. IP address be damned, they know which physical computer was accessing their pages and doing searches. (They know I'm typing this right now.) Yep, that's your computer's fingerprint they've got right there. I hope you weren't searching for something like the Anarchist's Cookbook or something similar.

So I got to thinking... Google has grown just phenomenally. I, myself, have even made statements about how Google is going to rule the world in another decade. It made me start to think about who actually runs Google's backbone. Financing? Check. Seemingly unlimited resources? Check. Access to millions of user's personal email? Check. Having a front row at the "What People Are Doing on the Internet" concert? Yes, they've got that too. Seems like something Uncle Sam would just love to have going for them.

Could Google actually be a
Government Owned / Operated Global Listening Engine?
Hmm. Makes you wonder. Take a look at this article for some interesting reading.

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

Well that sucks.

I've taken some good pictures in my life. Some really nice ones, if I do say so myself. I think I realized tonight, though, that I've not taken any truly great pictures. I think this because I found myself growing frustrated whilst trying to find some of my own pictures to frame and hang on my walls.

See, Ikea puts ideas in your head. Design ideas. And I have to say that I hate how boring my apartment is. Got a great couch, a great rug, and BIG, WHITE, UGLY walls. They aren't even white. But they're not cream. They're... blahite. Blight. That's what we'll call them, because they are a blight.

See, I saw something a Flickr contact had done with a few of their photos that really was a great idea. It adds some great color, and it's their own stuff. Brilliant. I wanted to do the same thing. Even found some good frames (but didn't buy any) at Ikea that'd work great for doing some triptychs or something. But, after flipping through my own Flickr stuff, I can't really find anything that fits the bill. And that's sad, sad, sad.

Even if it kills me...

Well work on the Bandit is about done. No, I guess that's not really accurate. My work on the Bandit is about done. Last night I put some Sea Foam through the carbs, and changed the spark plugs. Today I'll get a few gallons of gas and fill the tank and add the rest of the Sea Foam to it. Then, hopefully it'll have degunked enough of the carbs to call it good. I'm really not relishing the idea of having to remove the carbs and taken them down and hand-clean them. In fact, I'm avoiding it at all costs. Still, I have the mats, and I have the tools, so if it comes to it...

I noticed this morning that my "lucky" bamboo took a turn for the worst in the past couple days. I'm rather surprised by this, as it's been doing positively stellar the past couple weeks. Noticeable growth. I'm thinking that's what's hurting it. It's choking itself out on the root level. I've moved it to a (temporary) new container, but will have to take a jaunt down to Lowe's today and get some new potting soil, as well as a new permanent home. I question it's enough to save the bamboo, as one of the stalks has already turned yellow itself. Which is crazy, because I only just noticed that the leaves had even begun to droop. I guess when it happens, it happens fast. Hang in there, little guy!

Urgh. Still need to take the DR650 in to the dealer for it's first service. Bums me out not being able to ride it. Just haven't coordinated getting someone to pick me up. Thought about doing the dumb service myself, but I don't want them giving me any flack if there are warranty issues.

Shenanigans

I'm pretty sure that motorcycles have to be viewed as disposable.

I have a 2001 bike that I was planning on selling. I guess I technically still am. But before I sell it, I wanted to get it back to fully running. Yeah. Not such a good idea.

My bike was bought, new, for about $6,000 before taxes. Now I'm looking at AT LEAST $750 to get it back up to par. And that's barring any any unforeseen expenses. So I'm looking at almost 1/6th of the bikes original cost to get it running again. That's absurd. It's not like anything is horribly wrong with it, either. The carbs need to be cleaned, it needs a new set of tires, a new chain, and the fork seals replaced. It's times like this that I wish I had pursued mechanics instead of programming.

My local store charges $70/hr for labor. The best I've been paid is $38/hr. It just sucks.

Honestly?

It scares the crap out of me having a blog. I suppose I did have a livejournal account for some time. But this is somehow different. Perhaps it's that so many people do it now that it seems rather trite. Too conjured. Too... something.

In any case, here we go again. I really don't expect to keep this up for long. But, I've started dinking around with photography again, so this is as good a place as any for it. Plus, some photo sites want me to make blog posts and then... I dunno, blah blah.

Hello world.

Eat my shorts, world.