An Army of 1 in 10

First some background: back in late ‘84 or early ‘85, my father bought a Commodore 64 while we were stationed in Germany. This started my love affair with computers.

When we PCS’d from Germany, my parents bought me this game: Buck Rogers and the Planet of Zoom for my 10th birthday. This was the first time I had seen a game cartridge.

Understand, this was back in the day when we still used a tape deck to load programs onto the computer — it took about 30 minutes to load a single program. We hadn’t gotten a disk drive yet (the venerable 1541). You would type LOAD “PROGRAM NAME”,1 to load from the tape (LOAD “PROGRAM NAME”,8 for the disk drive).

After my presents were unwrapped and we were done celebrating my birthday, I obtained permission to play my new game. Oh I was so excited. A Buck Rogers game! I couldn’t wait to play it! So, I turned the computer on and plugged the game cartridge into the slot on the back.

The game did not appear on the TV (black & white) that the computer was connected to. In fact, there was a whole lot of nothing on it. I turned the computer off and back on again. The game still didn’t work. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had destroyed the game before I ever had a chance to play it by plugging it in while the computer was turned on. I did not get to play the awesome Buck Rogers game. Young Anonymous Soldier was a sad little boy.

Fast forward to today. I’m over on Macupdate.com to see if there’s any software I want to try out. I spot a Commodore 64 emulator. This isn’t the first time I’ve had an emulator for the 64, but it is the first one I’ve used on the Mac. So I’m playing around with it and poking around an FTP site for old games that I remember playing, when I FIND BUCK ROGERS!

Of course, I had to try it out! I wasn’t able to play it when I first got it twenty-two and a half years ago, but I sure as hell was going to play it now! Anonymous Soldier became a happy man! I launch the emulator. I load the cartridge file. The game starts! I begin playing! Yay!

Then I very quickly realize that I would have enjoyed this game much more twenty-two years ago than I do today. The graphics and game play are horribly simple — even for the standards of 1985. Jumpman and Lode Runner (the next two games I’m going to download!) had better graphics and game play than Buck Rogers did.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disappointed. I knew that it wouldn’t compare to what we have today. After all, this was back in 1985, and it’s now 2008.

But I played Buck Rogers

Okay, I admit it… I’m a Harry Potter fan; I’ve enjoyed the series ever since I heard the first audio book in a friend’s car one day and asked for a copy.  I’ve just finished reading the latest book this evening, and I am quite pleased with how Rowling has decided to end the tale of The Boy Who Lived.

No, I won’t post any spoilers here, because I would like to be able to live long enough to deploy to Iraq.  I will however, say that the book is very good and is a fitting end to the story.  The tale of Harry Potter, in my opinion, is more than a children’s story; it may have started out as one, but Rowling has nursed it into one which transcends the generations.

In this, the final chapter of the saga, people do die — characters who have been around since the beginning (and not just human characters…) as well as those who were introduced later in the series.  As for whether or not Harry Potter dies, all I will say is that Voldemort uses avada kedavra against him.  Draw your own conclusions or read the book.

I need some help. Since we got word of our upcoming deployment, I’ve reformatted my Linux laptop to run Windows Vista Ultimate and have been configuring it for military use so that I won’t run into any problems downrange. I don’t plan on taking my Mac laptop because that one costs more (this laptop was only $750.00) and I don’t want it ruined by the sand and dust. One thing I’m having trouble finding, is a decent webcomic viewer.

Here’s what I need:

• a stand-alone program capable of running on Vista
• easily configurable to add comics
• has the ability to download past comics
• maintains an archive of comics
• small, doesn’t suck up resources
• free

I’m taking suggestions and recommendations, so please post them here.

Okay, I’m sure that all you guys who grew up in the ’80s (like me!) are either a) aware of the new Transformers movie or b) are eagerly anticipating it.  Either way, there’s a new trailer which shows more of the movie than previous trailers… and it’s gosh-darned-tootingly awesome!

Bumblebee…
Optimus Prime (yay!)…
Starscream…
Soundwave (?)…
Megatron (?)
and a new one!

Check it out and  remember your childhood!  Remember the first Transformers movie?  How many of you cried when Megatron killed Optimus?  I know I sure did.  I was worried when I found out that Michael Bay was directing it, but the trailer looks great… and besides, it’s the TRANSFORMERS!

The movie opens July 4th.  I haven’t been this excited about a movie since Transformers:  The Movie was released back in 1986 and I can’t wait to see this one (sequels? pleeeeeease let there be sequels!) in a few weeks.  I just hope Optimus doesn’t die in this one.

The newest trailer for the Simpsons movie is available for download on the iTunes Store; and after watching it, I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be somewhat controversial… at least this scene will be:

This video by Kenny Chesney is too powerful for words to express. Download it and watch: Who You’d Be Today (iTunes and iTunes Store account required)

Self-proclaimed Jedis Umada and Yunyun, better known as John Wilkinson and Charlotte Law … are calling for the UN to acknowlegde what has become Britain’s fourth largest ‘religion’ with 390,000 followers. Read more… (Daily Mail

One of my favorite things to do online is to read web comics. I’ve been a huge fan of them for nearly a decade and every time I find a new one I like, I add it to my bookmarks for my daily reading. As you can imagine, this gets to be rather unwieldy when a lot of comics have found their way into my bookmarks. Thankfully, Firefox allows you to open all of the bookmarks in a folder in tabs.

However, even this becomes cumbersome and slow. I’ve recently discovered a nifty little application that has made reading my daily comics no more difficult than using a feed reader (I refuse to call them “newsreaders” because that term applies to apps which access usenet). This program is for OS X, and is called “Comictastic“. It is shareware, and at $15.00 for registration, not too bad. Registration isn’t required in order to enjoy all its functionality however — if you can put up with a nag screen at start up, you don’t have to pay. Unfortunately, it’s no longer supported by the developers, but they still make it available for download. I haven’t noticed any nag screens yet, so perhaps that’s been disabled due to the cessation of active development on it.

Here are some of its features:

• Easy wizard-based subscription system to your favorite comics
• Support for 10 comics already included
• View multiple comics at a time
• Archive the comics for reading later
• Downloading of comic archives

Now, as I’ve already stated, this program is only for OS X (Macintosh). There is no release for Windows, so if you’re intrigued by this program, I’m sorry. I don’t know of any Windows equivalents, although I’m certain there must be some good software out there that you can use. If you do find something, post a comment here so that other people will benefit.

Download: Comictastic v2.3.2 (.dmg/2.6MB)

“I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. From my point of view, I would ban religion completely.” Read more… (Fox News)

This week’s BotW is one of my personal favorite blogs — BlameBush!

The man behind this site is Liberal Larry who writes to warn the world of the many evils of King George II. In fact, the site’s tag line is, “Because Bush is to Blame for Everything,” and he certainly does blame Bush for everything.

As you can read on his “about” page, he majored in Greco-Roman Sexual Positions and Interpretive Clog Dancing at UC Berkeley and obtained his Masters in Gender Studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington where he ganized the school’s first Free Mumia March to a nearby Starbuck’s. He’s been teaching Midget Studies and the Kama Sutra 101 since early last year, and he takes special care to ensure that his students are not ignorant of the dangers of the Vast Right-Wing conspiracy.

He’s recently spoken out in defense of John Kerry in this riveting and enlightening post:

“You know education,” Sen. John Kerry warned students at Pasadena City College, “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

In the blink of his stately eye, Kerry’s words were picked up by the digital pajama brigade and repeated ad nauseum by their stooges in the right-wing media, angering military families and veterans groups who are apparently too stupid to comprehend the subtle nuances of his brilliant oratory.

Thrice wounded on the battlefields of Vietnam, Sen. John Kerry would never dream of insulting the intelligence of our babykilling, genital-shocking, cattle razing, women-and-children-terrorizing troops. If they had any brains, they’d know that. Rather, he was simply mocking and ridiculing their Commander-in-Chief in a time of war. As someone who never obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree or played for the Yale Lacrosse team, Bush is completely incapable of leading troops into battle. The miserable quagmire that the illegal and immoral war has become is proof of that.

Read entire post

Of course, this blog is complete satire and hysterically funny. Liberal Larry doesn’t state what his true political beliefs are (are they even relevant for a humor site?), but he does a great job of acting like a left-wing lunatic who’s lost touch with reality. Regardless of whatever his personal beliefs may be, BlameBush! is a great read and is a frequent stop of mine.

BlameBush! wins this week’s Blog of the Week designation and my complete endorsement. Go forth and read this blog and laugh.