Devastation

I keep watching the news on the Hurricane that hit New Orleans and surrounding areas. Not good stuff at all. Seems this is going to be a massive disaster. New Orleans is now defunct as a city and they calling for a complete evacuation. They are emptying the city. Think about that for a second, that is a huge catastrophe. Initial reports, from the mayor of New Orleans no less, are putting the death toll into the thousands.

As if things were not bad enough, they had to pull 1500 police officers off of search and rescue operations to stop looters! Looters! For God's sake you fucking barbarians, what good do you think a television or DVD player is going to do you at the moment?! I don't think you can look down on anyone simply trying to get food and water when there are none readily available. But if you are out there grabbing "items".. electronics and shit like that, you are a fucking thief and should be shot on sight.

The one thing I am waiting to see is who is going to step up to the plate and give us a helping hand with this. Since we, the United States, are ALWAYS coming to the aid and throwing cash and resources at other countries when they have natural disasters. I think this will be an interesting time to see who tries to give us a hand. I mean, it's a disaster, just because we are the all powerful America, does not mean extra food, or supplies, or manpower is not needed. Who will step forward? I think this will be most interesting indeed.

Rain, Wind, and Warcraft

Looks like Hurricane Katrina has kicked this shit out of New Orleans. Tough stuff there. Not only is that area below sea level, but then to get hit with a cat 5 hurricane. Yikes. One of the more interesting things I have read about it so far today are all the people that have taken up refuge in the Superdome! Apparently, the Superdome is designed to withstand up to 200mph winds. Seems to have withstood the onslaught with just a few tears in the roof.

The other thing, semi-related to the Hurricane, is gas prices! Christ! Can the damn price go any higher? Folks, better go gas up tonight. Word is the price of gas could go up another .75 per gallon by late tomorrow. Yuck to that. Time to go solar for God's sake.

Had a blast yesterday. The woman and I finally had a day off together. After getting the usual errands and house hold crap out of the way, we sat down for a good gaming run in World of Warcraft. Super fun stuff. Not only am I have a blast, but she is too. Which is just beyond fun to watch her get all excited as she plays this game. That's how well made this thing is. It is really immersive. Here are a couple more screenshots:

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

Family Feud

Well, for those of you lucky enough to catch my post from yesterday, well, this will all make sense! If not, just bear with me.

It seems there has already been unexpected fallout from my post yesterday. Amazing what such opinions can end up causing. As through mysteries of mysteries, some family members have acquired my blog site and the cannoli has hit the fan.

Now, I have removed the offending post as a courtesy. A courtesy, I might add, primarily to my folks. Simply so that they don't have to hear anymore shit from certain family members. They don't need the grief.

So, lets keep one thing straight here, this is MY WEBSITE and these are MY THOUGHTS and MY OPINIONS. So, if you want to go bitch at someone, I am right here. But lets keep in mind, if you want to start some bitching rounds you had really better have the ability to back up everything stated as fact on that website.

I am sure this matter will cause some irreparable rifts with certain family members. However, if everyone wants to calm down now, hopefully we can move past this issue and consider it done as of now.

Is it vacation time yet?

Alright, so, work has been grating on me a bit lately. Not too much, though, mind you. Just enough where I think I need a few days in a row off to break the monotony. Have another big wig visit next week. So hopefully sometime after that. I am trying to coincide it with my woman's mini vacation coming up next month. Would be cool to have a few days off together. As long as the store is still there upon my return

Beyond that, the woman and I are having blast playing World of Warcraft. This game just rocks so, so, so hard. I am and old gamer and well experienced at keeping gaming addiction at bay. You know, you don't call out from work or leave early, make sure you eat and drink, and get the usual life stuff done first! But damn, I can not wait to come sit, relax, and play at the end of a long day. I know my woman has been trying to addict her friends and her sister by showing them the game at every chance.

Why buy retail?

Ah, another Sunday off! Yay!

Suppose to be going to the woman's folks later today for dinner. Her sister and childling are in town this week, so we are doing the visit thing. I'm all about the food though. :-)

Anyways, since it is Sunday, my woman always gets the Sunday paper for her coupons (which she does extremely well at by the way.) I always look through the ads - Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc - for deals on computer gear and what not. Not sure why I even bother anymore! Even these retailers "deals" are no where near the deals you can get online.

For example, this week Best Buy is advertising an ATI Radeon 9550 video card for $99.99. You can get the same card on Newegg.com for $59.99!! I just don't get why people still bother to purchase items through retail.

Time, time, where does the time go

So, my woman complained to me today that I don't post as often as I normally do lately. Everyone wants an update! Sorry folks, been a little preoccupied between work and fixing computer rigs lately. Hopefully things will calm down a bit soon. But heck, five days between posts isn't that bad!

With both myself and the woman playing World of Warcraft lately, I mentioned to her in conversation that online gaming is just absolutely huge in Korea and China. The next day I saw this story. I had read about such things in the past, but the timing was pretty funny. But DAMN, you have to be doing some hardcore gaming to go down that road.

The dumbass award of the week goes to this kid, who jumped from the top section of the stands during a baseball game. Lucky for heavy duty netting I suppose. I am not sure what is funnier though, looking at the picture and seeing the look on his face or looking at the woman in the background taking a picture him.

WoW

Well, it's been a busy week.. again.. as usual.. yadda yadda.

I walked into a CompUSA this past week to pick up a basic computer case for a cheapy system build. A friend donated an old Pentium II 300mhz system to me. It was fine except the case was used in a business environment and was just all trashed and yellowed. I figured I just throw the guts into a new case, rebuild and reinstall it, and throw it into storage for something down the road.

Anyways, I was sorta shocked at the crew at CompUSA. I guess they don't have any grooming regulations at Comp, as the first kid to walk up to me looked like a fucking Sasquatch! This guy had such thick, moppy hair, plus full beard and the like, that all i saw beyond the hair were this dudes eyes! I was like "Whoa!". Scared me there son, thought I was going to have to find the nearest tree to run up.

I proceed to the checkout where I am helped by another high quality employee. This one, again with a massive mop of thick hair. This one, however, did not need a beard, as his hair completely came down to the middle of his nose completely covering everything above that, including his eyes. I kid you not, as hard as I looked, I could not see this kids eyes! How he was able to see was a total mystery!

So, c'mon CompUSA. I know most of the work force these days are teenagers, but at least try to enforce some grooming standards in the workplace.

Beyond that, the rest of my time, though no where near enough has been spent getting into World of Warcraft. WoW for short. As some of you know, I have been a die hard "massive multiplayer online gamer" for a long time now. I have played Ultima Online for like 7 years now! Alas though, as great a game as Ultima is, the operators - Electronic Arts - have failed to update the game properly. They continue to add stupid, devaluing content and have failed to update the outdated 2D sprite engine. Who the hell wants to play a game when the graphics are outdated by 10 years!? There has been rumors about a 3D engine upgrade over the past two years. Finally, after Electronic Arts released it's past two expansions without any sign of an engine upgrade - folks have started to jump ship in droves - and I'm gonna be one of them. That's a hard thing to do though, I'll tell ya.

So, with Ultima being one of the most popular massive online games in history - with its 250,000 subscribers, this past year has seen something incredibly new - World of Warcraft. WoW came out over the holidays and currently has over 3 million players. THREE MILLION! Well shit, 3 million folks can't all be wrong! So I grabbed the game and started playing the other night! So far, it's fantastic! The graphics alone are eye candy enough that I have just found myself staring at the landscape. Wandering around like I am on vacation just to see the sights! My woman has even jumped on board! That will be so fun to play with my honey. Those that game together stay together! hehe.

Here are some screen shots. Nifty....

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4