Apple, Just Stuff

Star Wars: Battlefront

Aspyr announced yesterday that they will be porting Star Wars: Battlefront to the Mac, with an estimated release of June of 2005. The game looks good, you get to fight in pretty much every major battle that has happened in the SW films so far. And you can pick which side to be on, from choosing to be an Ewok throwing rocks at Stormtroopers, to battle droids slaughtering Jedi at Geonosis. I’m thrilled its coming out, and if I remember the release date of the Playstation/PC versions its only taking like 8 months to port it to the Mac…which isn’t as good as a simultaneous release, but its better then never being ported..

Now..if they would just announce that they are already working on the port for Knights of the Old Republic 2… so that it can be a close to simultaneous release with the PC version……

Tech

Comcast DVR take 2

From looking at the referral logs, I know a lot of people end up here by looking for info on Comcast’s cable box/DVR unit. I’ve requested Comcast get me one, and they’re sending a tech out later this week with it (apparently, it requires top secret, special cable guy training to plug in and turn on their DVR) since they don’t allow people to go into any of their locations and pick one up themselves. After I have a chance to play with it, I’ll post a review, and compare it to my TiVo.

Just Stuff

Worst TV Show ever?

Apparently, the title of Worst TV Show ever belongs, surprisingly, not to one of the stupid Fox “when cars attack”. It was actually a CBS show (no..not Survivor Vanuatu..that’s apparently only a close second) but it was their most recent series debut “The Will” which is so bad we don’t even get to find out if the rich rancher guy dies before the end of the season (apparently, if he does it will be from embarrassment at having allowed CBS to talk him into doing the show)

So, if you’ve got an idea for a stupid mid-season replacement, CBS has room in their lineup, so send ’em an email..after all..its not like you can do any worse then “The Will”

Current Events

Life isn’t fair

So, how come I never get assaulted by a Playmate? I mean, shouldn’t this have gone onto Pay Per View, instead of to court? Two women, name calling and a dance pole sounds to me like a porn movie plot then something that deserves 24 hours of community service…

Unless of course… the community service is re-staging the ‘fight’ for a camera crew =)

Tech

New Year, New Blog

Back on the first of the year, when I renewed our domains, I made the decision to switch to hosting them with Godaddy instead of just having them redirected to my .Mac space. So, I registered for hosting, spent a week trying to get Movable Type to run properly on GoDaddy’s servers (not as easy as it was to get it running locally). Gave up on trying to import all the iBlog stuff (I’m going to be manually re-typing all the old posts). And now, I’ve got the first post on a new Blog, running on New servers… I also set Janice up with her own blog, so make sure you pop over there every once in awhile to see what she has to say. Look for a post a little later detailing how I got MT to run on Godaddy, since from looking around while I was trying to get it running, there are quite a few people who ran into some of the same problems I did.

Current Events, Tech

Microsoft Punished

Since the United States Department of Justice and our Current administration wimped out on punishing Microsoft for being an illegal monopoly (and abusing it)

Its nice to see that at least one Justice system in the world is willing to stand up to Microsoft. You remember waaay back in March when the European Union found Microsoft guilty of abusing its monopoly power to stifle competition right? And unlike the US, they actually delivered a sentence that comes closer to being real punishment! At the time, they were told to open up some of the Windows Server protocols so that other companies software would run on Windows Server, and they were told to release Windows without Windows Media Player installed (do you think they could have been forced to release a version of windows that doesn’t suck instead?)

Microsoft, of course, appealed the decision and hasn’t complied with the sentence yet. Yesterday. a EU court informed Microsoft that they must comply with the decision, even if they are appealing it. So, it looks like some lucky (well…as lucky as you can be if your a windows user) European Windows users will be able to get a slightly less sucky version of windows for Christmas!

Current Events

Another Stupid Lawsuit

I saw this on CNN yesterday, and no matter how many times I see articles about stupid people suing because they (or their family) did something stupid…it never stops pissing me off

I mean… come on! The daughter committed suicide.. it is NOT Walmart’s fault, the gun maker’s fault or anyone else’s fault except the daughters. Period. I can’t belive this woman is dumb enough to think that walmart (or any reseller) should

A: Break federal HIPPA (Health Information Privacy Protection Act) laws by going through the pharmacy records to see if anyone has a prescription. News flash… I’d be willing to bet that if Walmart did break the law and go through pharmacy records this lady would be suing them for violating her daughter’s privacy!

B: Ask why someone is buying something? C’mon your daughter LIED on the background check form.. which means she comitted PERJURY… Besides, have you ever actually shopped at Walmart lady? It takes for ever to get through the checkout lanes anyway, can you imagine how much longer it would take if they had to ask why people were buying things?

Walmart Cashier: “Nice bottle of bleach, why are you buying it?”

Customer: “To brighten my whites”

Cashier: “Oh, this is a nice set of steak knives, what are you going to use them for?”

Customer: “Ummm… to cut steak with.”

Repeat 50 times for the other items in the cart.

So, I hope that whatever judge hears this case, has got enough common sense to just throw it out, and hopefully, Walmart will counter sue for the lady for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Current Events

Car Shopping

Janice and I need to replace the mini-van in the next year.. so we’ve started doing some research and window shopping

With the gas prices going the way they are (further and further up) I’m seriously considering getting a Hybrid this time around… my big concern with that is, I remember reading somewhere that the EPA estimates for MPG are not accurate for hybrids.. and that most people don’t get that kind of mileage… but, then again, I don’t know that many people who get near the EPA estimates for mileage on their ‘normal’ cars either..

Because it does occasionally snow here in Colorado, we also need something that will do well in most any weather condition (Guess that means we won’t be picking up a Ferrari). I’m interested in Ford’s new Escape Hybrid which looks like a decent compromise between fuel efficiency and power. I tried to go through Ford’s ‘build your Ford’ thingie…but it won’t let me build and price an Escape Hybrid, just a ‘regular’ Escape, so its really not that big of a help. From what I’ve seen online, it looks like the Hybrid is running about $3,000-$5,000 more then a similar ‘normal’ Escape. Not sure if I can justify the extra $$ right now… granted, if someone wanted to give us an Escape Hybrid, we wouldn’t turn it down. But, since we have to pay for it…I don’t think we’ll end up with the Hybrid this time around..

I’m interested in hearing from anyone that owns a Hybrid as to what their experience has been, was it worth the extra $$?

Apple, Site Stuff

.Mac Affiliate Program

So a little while ago, Apple introduced a .Mac affiliate program, similar to the iTunes affiliate program I’m a member of (Click on the iTunes graphic, or one of the songs on the right to buy from iTunes Music Store and help me earn a little commission)

And I figured since the list of ‘requirements’ to join the .Mac affiliate program were similar to the ones for the iTMS program, I’d go ahead and join up…. The other day I get an email back from the .Mac Affiliate Program.

Telling me that I have not been accepted into the affiliate program. The email goes on to state “The reason for this decision may be as follows:

* inability to access web site

* Web site not yet live

* traffic levels to low

* inappropriate material on site”

So..since the top reason they listed was inability to access web site…. how would they know if there was inappropriate material on the website (I wonder what material they thought was inappropriate?) And since the page is hosted on .Mac (I didn’t register it under either theteppers.net or kaelkicksass.com) wouldn’t the .Mac affiliate program people have known if there was some kind of systems issue preventing access to the .Mac servers…and then tried again later?

Oh well… overall..no big deal, it’s not like I’m raking in the dough from the iTMS affiliate, so I don’t think the .Mac program would have made that much of a difference.