Seriously guys... WTF happened to us?

Short post here but seriously guys.... WTF happened to us?

When did so many of us become such wimps?
How many of us wear more than 1 piece of jewelry?
Who among us likes to go clothes shopping?
Why do some of us get manicures?
How many of you don't know how to change your own damn oil?
How many of you can't drive a nail without bending it?

Stop it!!!!  All of you stop it.  Learn how to do these things and what you don't friggin do.
Become MEN!

Space Elves and Space Dwarves and Abhumans

Occasionally genres may clash in Star wars but I do have to hand it to George Lucas, he never included any Space Elves and Space Dwarves.  That's a big thing with me.  I love Dwarves and I love Elves but let's face it, they're fantasy races.  Sci-fi is a different genre entirely.  Elves and Dwarves as a sci-fi race makes about as much sense as pigs in space.


So why do I bring this up?  Warpath is about to be released and Space Dwarves are a central part of the game's theme.  Yea the models are cool looking and yes the sculpts appear to be very high quality but the fact remains that Dwarves in space are silly as all hell.

One of the things I can also compliment GW for is the Tau.  Yes I hate them but only because they shoot my nids to little bits.  In truth I find them the most refreshing sci-fi race in wargaming.  In theme they borrow almost nothing from Fantasy.  Sure they may be a very subtle parody of Asian cultures written by people who know very little about them but at least they are the most original thing in sci-fi wargaming background I've seen in years.
I also give them credit for killing off their Space Dwarves and not having any real plans to bring them back.  Now if only they can do the same to their Space Elves.  Any race that's been dying for thousands of years but still isn't dead isn't really dying.  They're just being moody.

GW's Space Ogres and Hobbits are different (but not by much).  They have taken the line that these are actually humans who have evolved into nearly a different race.  I call this 90% silly and absurd but 10% scientific accurate.  According to the GW fluff timeline humans first left Terra and traveled to the stars 30,000 years prior to the current timeline.  It may have been an accident of GW fluff writers but that's almost as much time separating some Northern Europeans from their African ancestors.  

Evolution is a bit more complicated than that simple generalization but not by much.  If 45,000 years and a geographic change was all it took to turn a black African into a blond blue-eyed Swede then I can see 30,000 years and severe environmental change being enough time and stress to change "Terra" humans into "abhuman" Ogryn and Ratlings.  

George Lucas just destroyed another piece of my childhood

Stop it George.  Can't you leave a perfectly good movie alone.
I understand your desire to fix an effect that didn't work back then like making the Ewoks blink but adding in a new line to the movie decades after it was filmed is simply wrong.  Darth Vader is the strong silent type.  Do you know what the strong silent type does?  Kick butt.  Do you know what he doesn't do?  Get emotional and yell, "Noooooooo!".

Blasphemy or pretty damn funny?

What do I do at 2 am when i just can't sleep?  I find stuff like this;

How can something be soo damn funny and yet a little bit blasphemous at the same time?  I don't know and I really don't care.  Mario as Jesus Christ and Princess Peach as Mary has a bit of comedy that you just can't ignore.

Come on guys, you have to love this.  It's friggin funny as hell.

At the very minimum you have to appreciate the artists imagination.  While some people may look at a piece of toast and see Jesus this guy looked at a huge block of foam and made his own Jesus.  Not just that, he turned Jesus into Mario Jesus.  

While my admiration for this guy and his bold imagination to turn a tragic event in the Christian faith into something we can laugh it I do draw the line somewhere.

No, this wasn't it.

Nope, still isn't it.

Closer but a crucified Optimus Prime is not it.

This douche bag on the other hand is where I draw my line.  

For those of you who don't know who this jag off is then follow this link to the wikipedia page on him;

Fred Phelps 

He is a hateful evil person who is in a hell of how own making. 

What would you do with $50 billion?

And now for reason #610 for me to hate all things rumor and speculation.  A Macworld editor has decided that he was going to start a rumor about Apple buying Facebook.  The reason for his wild speculation; Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg had lunch and Apple is sitting on 50 billion dollars with no place to spend it.

http://www.macworld.com/article/154995/2010/10/appleearnigns.html

While a wild rumor and speculation like this is nothing new for the internet what bothers me is it's lack of imagination.  Seriously people, Apple is buying Facebook?????  It's an obvious attempt to smash 2 big names into one editorial to bump up a google search.  This editor apparently forgot that Apple is a hardware company.  They leave the internet entrepreneurship to others.  Whenever Apple has gone into "non-hardware" business it's always been to support a hardware product of theirs (itunes was started to support the ipods).

But the concept of Apple sitting on $50 billion and no idea where to spend it did fascinate me.  I'm sure Apple has plenty of good ideas what they can do with that money but in case they don't let me offer up a couple of serious suggestions that relate to your hardware product line.

1. Can you guys buy Hulu.com and work it into Apple TV.  Connecting the Internet to the TV is a great idea and Apple TV is a good piece of hardware to do it but it's lacking good content to draw upon.  Much of the content it can draw from is utter crap (admit it, 95% of all youtube is crap) or subscription based (Netflix and iTunes).  What it needs is real TV content that hulu.com can offer.
2. Buy Skype and integrate it fully to the iPhone.  People are already doing it by unlocking their iPhones so you might as well make it official and make it work.  At the minimum you'd be able to get the iPhone out from under AT&T.
3. Spend it on more R&D.  Apple is always on the leading edge of the tech industry and needs to stay there.  I've always said that if PC uses want to know what they will be using in 2 years they should look at what Mac users are doing now.  I'd love to see all Macs (desktop and laptop) come with touch-screens, get rid of the spinning hard drives and go all solid state flash drives, and a wireless connection between the car stereo and the iPod would be friggin awesome.

I must be the odd one because....

                After watching the news and reading commentators I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion about myself;  I’m a weirdo.  That’s right, I’m apparently the only person in the world who’s been raised Catholic who has never been molested by a priest, I’m not wracked with crushing religious guilt, I’m not bitter about some aspect of my childhood religious experience, I don’t endlessly preach to everyone I meet, and I don’t agree with everything I’m told like some mindless robotic voter.  Apparently it’s true, I’m the weirdo.

                I’m not sure what’s made me such an oddball.  Turn on the TV, read a blog, read the newspaper, listen to the talk radio.  All I hear is that every Catholic in the world has had a horrible childhood religious experience.  They can’t enjoy life today because their fragile little minds have been warped by evil men who prey on vulnerable children.  O’h and let’s not forget how the Catholic church is trying to take over the world in some corrupt new world order under a single government run by a secret society.  Yup, no secret there, the Catholic Church is a horribly guilty guilty guilty organization.

                I wonder why I’m so weird.  Is there some hope for me to join the ranks of the eternally guilty and miserable self loathing Catholics?  I hope not, I kind of like being the odd one.  I’m a very well adjusted person who’s happy and content with life.  I actually enjoy going to church every week.  I’ve volunteered for church activities.  I find the time to pray and be thankful for what god’s world has provided for me.  My childhood religious experience, while apparently odd and unprecedented, can only be described as rewarding and enjoyable. 

                I missed out.  Thank you god, I prefer it this way.  You don’t have to send anyone down here to fix the situation that apparently makes me so weird.  I’m quite happy the way I am. 

Oh the irony, I went on-line to get ready for the great outdoors.

You can kind of say that  the first sign of spring is when Dan starts getting anxious to get back outside and into the great outdoors.  So while haunting a website I occasionally visit I found this article; 

http://www.duckhuntingchat.com/gaining-landowner-permission-is-a-real-job.php

Where do I begin.  Oh yea, bullshit!!!!!!

Sorry about the cussing but I call shenanigans on them.  One of the habits I’ve carried from my hunting and fishing hobby to my gaming hobby is the use of a notebook.  In it I write down little notes and idea’s that come up before, during and after the hunt (or game).  While I’m not as regular with it as I used to be the old notebook is still there and giving lessons back years later.  One of them is that farmers are hypocrites.  

I’ve spent plenty of time in the country with old timers who will bore you to death with stories of the old days on how pheasants used to live where the Walmart now stands and how kids these days don’t appreciate the way their parents used to live and love the land.  I remember these people while flipping through my notebook and count the number of farmers who will in one sentence lament the loss of the country way of life and in the other tell you to get the hell of their land.  The irony of course is entirely lost on them.  Yes it’s their land so I agree that it’s their right.  I don’t own thousands of productive acres to hunt and fish on.  I have to crowd into the public land and bump into the idiots who have no idea what gun safety is or go ask the people who do own land.  

Shall I now count the no’s I’ve received from the hypocrites?  10, 20, 30, 50, 86 landowners of all sorts have said no while only 1 has said yes.  That 1 yes wanted $1,500 per hunter and big restrictions on what, when and where we hunted.  No, he didn’t get any of my money.

I’ve heard the excuses; 

You’ll shoot yourself and sue me.  No I can’t.  The law protects you.

You’ll drive your ATV all over the place and dig ruts in the land.  No I won’t, I don’t own an ATV.

You’ll shoot the trophy deer I’m trying to hunt.  Actually I’m hunting to fill up my freezer full of meat.  It’s the young doe’s and ducks I’m after.

You’re not from around here.  True but that doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me any more than something being wrong with you if the geographic situation were reversed.  

Now I’m willing to pay for access.  Before I became a father I, my brother in law and a friend leased access from a farmer.  This is a capitalist society and land is how they makes a living.  I just wished that they'd keep in mind that if I can’t afford to buy my own land then I probably can't afford to pay him 1,500K for lousy access.  Of couse we don’t actually live in a pure capitalist society do we?  Farmer Bob here may own the land but I and 300 million other people own the game animals on it.  And we also pay him numerous subsidies that he couldn't own the land without.  

So this summer I'll be at it again, knocking on doors asking for permission to hunt on their property.  In the fall I'll probably be back on public land again.  The difference is this time when I hear a farmer say how kids these days don't appreciate the land and how city folk don't understand I'll pull out a mirror and introduce him to the one responsible.  

Nobody will appreciate what they don't understand and they can't understand it until they experience it.

Seriously folks

Seriously folks, the sky isn't falling.  Let's all calm down and think for a moment here.
Yes the health care bill got passed,  no this isn't the health care reform that I would've asked for, and yes we are all going to survive.

Today was a pretty f-ed up day on facebook.  The debate was carried out of the cable news networks (where it didn't belong) and on-line among people that are actually going to be effected by this bill (where it did belong).  At first I was actually happy to see people finally talking about it until I saw what they were saying.
"All because our elected officials can't manage our money and now they're going to raise our taxes to manage healthcare. Of course I want the uncovered to have coverage but I'd like to see people back to work and leave my taxes alone."
"You must all enjoy paying more taxes."
"What if we have to pay more for insurance now?"
That was some of the more tame examples of stupid comments I've seen today.  I wish some of these people actually read what's in that bill and actually got their info from more than a single source with questionable objectivity.  
Taxes, if your taxes go up because of this bill then you're making 250K a year and can afford it.  That's right, if you make 250K a year you can afford to pay back to the society that gave you the opportunity to be very prosperous.  If that tax increase is going to make your life suffer then maybe you need a reality check on what real suffering is all about.
I admit, maybe my opinion is a bit jaded because I hate insurance companies.  You see in my experience they are all a bunch of soul sucking daemon leeches.  That isn't opinion, it's a fact.  Twice I've had insurance policies cancelled because I dared to put in a claim.  Right now I have to pay for a dental procedure for my 5 year old because my insurance company found away to weasel out of paying for it.  I guess my child's pain and my 12 years of on time premium payments mean nothing compared to saving $150 for their bottom line.  


So those people who know me will call a foul and say that this rant doesn't match my political belief.  You see, I'm a Libertarian.  Libertarians believe in personal responsibility and a free market.  In a perfect world personal responsibility and a free market would be more than enough to fix the health care problem.  Of course we don't live in a perfect world do we.  We live in a corrupt world where personal responsibility gets taken advantage of and a free market is corrupted.  That's where I withhold my Libertarian principals and accept a dose of reality.  The health care and insurance industry need a bit of regulation.  Weather you like it or not the strong arm of big government is going to act like a parent and restrain the rotten brat that the health care and insurance industry have become.  
With luck they will be restrained enough or at least be coerced into restrain themselves into doing the right thing. 


So I applaud President Obama for passing the biggest health care reform in my lifetime.  Full credit to him for having the balls to do something about the problem.  No this bill isn't perfect, it might not work, it may even hurt some people but it's going to be far better than the alternative of doing nothing.  


I may not agree with many of his policies but I do agree with his intentions.