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Going to California
Sheri and I are driving down to Dulles this morning to catch a flight out to southern California to visit my family. It’s been far too long since I’ve been home. We will be out there for a week.
We are flying on jetBlue. I’ve never flown them, but I’ve heard nice things about them. They have a TV built into the back of each seat. Not only do they show movies, they offer Direct TV along with XM satellite radio. An added plus is that they fly into Burbank Bob Hope airport and not Los Angeles International (LAX). Read the full article »
WordPress sucks with the intensity of 1,000 suns
Not that I really know how intense 1,000 suns are, but I can imagine. I’m just getting tired of dicking with WordPress.
Yesterday I had a problem that resulted with nothing but the header image loading. I ended up fixing it be reloading WordPress 2.5. So far, so good. I would like to upgrade to the latest build of WordPress, version 2.5.1, but when I do just that, the RSS feed to my blog dies. Why? Who knows. I’ve read on the WordPress forums about other people having the same problem, but I haven’t read anything that solves the problem. It’s just another one of those WordPress “mysteries”.
What’s going on in South Africa?
Because I follow English Premiere League (EPL) football (soccer), I read BBC News quite a bit. They have been covering the news coming out of South Africa. At least 42 people have been killed and 15,000 have sought shelter from the South African mobs, who blame foreigners for high crime and unemployment. The foreigners come from neighboring Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Nigeria.
South Africa has approximately 49 million people with a staggering 30% unemployment rate. The foreigners coming into South Africa are better educated and more skilled then many of the South African population. These people coming into the country from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Nigeria are taking jobs from South Africans. Jobs that were already hard to come by.
The violence has been staggering. Not only have roving gangs of South Africans murdered foreigners, some were killed by dousing them with fuel and lighting them on fire.
Update: I’ve had MSNBC on most of the morning, and I still haven’t heard a word of the carnage going on in South Africa. I have heard about Denise Richards supposedly sending an email to the girlfriend of ex-husband Charlie Sheen and asking to borrow a cup of Charlie’s sperm.
Hagerstown bar selling crack cocaine may lose liquor license
Who knew selling crack might result in the loss of your liquor license? From the Herald-Mail:
The Waterin’ Hole Tavern at 15 E. Baltimore St. in Hagerstown faces a $2,500 fine and the revocation of its liquor license after the owner and several patrons were charged recently for selling crack cocaine.
Therisa Lamp, owner of The Waterin’ Hole, appeared at a hearing Wednesday before the Board of License Commissioners for Washington County, also known as the liquor board, to answer the charges.
Board chairman Robert L. Everhart said a decision would be made within 30 days.
What’s to decide? It seems like a no-brainer.
Why are delegates more important then people?
It should be no surprise to anyone at this point that it’s delegates — not votes — that decide each political party’s nominee for President.
What is a delegate?
Each state or territory is allotted a certain amount of pledged delegates. Currently there are 3,253 pledged delegates. Large states have a lot of pledged delegates. Small states have fewer delegates. How many voters does each pledged delegates represent?
That depends. Take a state like California. It has the most Democratic pledged delegates at 370. A total of 4,794,846 Democrats voted in the California Primary. That means that each California pledged delegate represents 12,959.04 California Democratic voters.
On the other end of the spectrum is Wyoming. It has a total of 12 Democratic pledged delegates. A total of 8,689 Democrats cast their votes in March for the Presidential nominee. That means that each Wyoming pledged delegate represents 724.08 Wyoming Democratic voters.
Why are the Democrats in Wyoming more important then Democrats in California?
They aren’t more important. We just have a really stupid and archaic method of choosing our President. In 2000 we elected a President that received less votes then his opponent. Now we Democrats are about to select a nominee for President that received less votes then his opponent. Why doesn’t this fact bother anyone?
HALO: Uprising #3, where is it?
The first issue came out August 22 and the second issue came out three months later on November 21. If the rest of the miniseries followed the same 3-month release pattern, the third issue should have come out in February.
It didn’t.
Marvel Comics has a real problem with following through with releasing subsequent issues in some miniseries comics. How many years has it been since issue #2 came out for Ultimate Hulk Versus Wolverine?
What’s so hard about releasing the third issue of a series? When they are releasing the first issue, they have to know they have nothing after the second issue. How does this kind of stuff happen?
I liked this series. At least I think so. It’s been so long, I don’t really remember. This is just another reason why people wait for the trades.
Best Buy lies in an attempt to get my personal information
I decided to make the switch from XM Satellite Radio to Sirius Satellite Radio. My reasons are many. I looked around and decided to buy the Sportster 5. It retails at $169 no matter what retailer you purchase it from. I stopped in at the Hagerstown Best Buy, found the unit on the sales floor, and took one up the the register at the front of the store.
The employee at the register started to go through the motions of selling me the radio unit when she asked me for my phone number. I gave her the standard fake phone number I usually give out in situations where a retailer asks for it. She typed it into the computer and told me that I wasn’t in the system. She asked for my name and address. I asked her why she wanted that information. She told me that she needed it to process the sale. I told her that I didn’t want to give out my personal information. I just wanted to buy a Sirius radio. She went on to tell me that she had to enter my personal information because it needed to be assigned to the radio. That way no one else but me could activate my radio.
This sounded like a load of crap. I never had to go through this when I bough my XM radio. I told her thanks, but no thanks. I would just activate it on my own without their help.
I was told that they could not sell me the Sirius radio without taking my personal information. It was a requirement from Sirius. This too sounded like crap. Since they were refusing to sell me the radio without giving them my personal information, I left without getting the radio.
When I got home, I called customer service at Sirius. I told them what I just went through and I asked them if there was any shred of truth to what I was told at Best Buy. They assured me that there was not. They do not require a customer’s personal information to be taken by the retailer when making a sale. In fact, they had no clue what Best Buy was talking about.
I went to Circuit City. I bought the same radio at the same price without having to give out any of my personal information. Imagine that.
I hate when I am lied to. I understand that a company like Best Buy would like to have my personal information. That doesn’t mean they have any right to it. What does it say about a company’s integrity if they will stoop to lying to get hold of your personal information?
It says nothing good.
Why Bush does not play golf
If you’ve been out on the links and haven’t seen George W. Bush whacking the ball, it’s not because you and him always have different tee times. It’s because he has decided to acknowledge the sacrifice made by U.S. service members in Iraq by not playing golf anymore.
From Politico:
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.
“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”
What I find interesting is that he didn’t decide to stop playing golf because of the death of an American service member, but because of the death of a United Nations official. Curious.
I wonder, has he ever thought of acknowledging their sacrifice by stop sending them to Iraq?
I stopped playing golf years ago. Not because I wanted to acknowledge anyone’s sacrifice. I quit because I realized golf really sucks.
Upgrading WordPress to 2.51 broke my feed
I upgraded WordPress this past weekend to the latest and greatest version, WordPress 2.51. I thought everything went OK. I then noticed this morning that my RSS feed was broken. It wasn’t working. It was completely dead.
Why am I not surprised?
I tried to fix it. I combed the WordPress forums and read the posts written by other people with the same problem, along with the advice people were providing to fix the problem. Some of these people actually sounded as though they knew what they were talking about. Some of them.
I tried doing the things mentioned in the WordPress forums. Nothing worked.
- I deactived all plugins.
- I changed my theme to the default generic WordPress theme.
- I looked for blank lines outside of the PHP enclosures in the various feed related files.
I finally downloaded WordPress 2.5 and installed it in place of WordPress 2.51. Once I reverted back to WordPress 2.5, my blog’s feed was magically repaired.
I started a blog not to dick around with PHP, but to blog about the dumb stuff I find interesting. Sometimes it is hard to remember that. Don’t ever upgrade WordPress. Once you have a working version, hang on to it for dear life.
Woman pregnant with 18th child
This is a photo of Michelle Duggar and her family. She’s 41-year old and she is currently pregnant with her 18th child.
That’s right. She has given birth to 17 children and that is not enough. She must have at least one more. I read the whole article over on Yahoo, but I didn’t really need to. As soon as I heard there was a woman pregnant with her 18th child, I already assumed certain facts to be true. These facts include:
- She lives in Arkansas.
- She and her husband have named every child with a name starting with the letter “J”. To be honest, I wasn’t certain what the actual letter was, but I knew the names all started with the same letter.
- All of the children are home schooled.
- They are Republicans.
- They plan on continuing to have children as long as “God wills it”.
- They are supporters of former Republican Presidential nominee Mike Huckabee.
To put this into context, I know people who haven’t even had sex 18 times.
I can’t imagine the pain someone must feel that desperately wants to have a child, but for whatever reason, cannot become pregnant. It must be very similar to what someone who is starving to death feels when they have to watch someone at an all-you-can-eat Chinese food buffet go up and get 18 plates of snow crab legs.
And of course they have a reality TV show. I don’t watch reality TV shows that revolve around a single family unless that family includes midgets.
Little People, Big World rocks!
Michael George murder case to appear on Friday’s Dateline NBC [UPDATE]
I remember reading during the Michael George murder trial that producers for Dateline NBC were in court getting footage for an upcoming show. Word on the street is that the comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George case will be featured on tomorrow night’s episode of Dateline NBC. And when I say “word on the street”, I of course am referring to what a woman at work told me. She said that she saw a promo for tomorrow nights program and “that comic book guy that killed his wife” was going to be on. Michael George used to own the comic book shop located in the mall next to where we all work.
I checked out the official Dateline NBC website, and it says squat about tomorrow night’s show. I checked out tomorrow night’s TV listings on Yahoo and it showed the Dateline NBC will appear on NBC from 9pm to 11pm. It doesn’t list anything about the stories that will appear.
I’m planning on watching it. Even if they don’t show the Michael George murder trial episode, they might show Chris Hanson bust some online perverts. I love when he offers them a cookie. There’s nothing more entertaining on prime time TV than catching child sex predictors.
[UPDATE] It’s been confirmed that the Michael George segment will indeed appear on tomorrow’s Dateline NBC.
Free Comic Book Day 2008
This year’s Free Comic Book Day has now come and gone. I only visited one comic book shop, Comics World in the Chambersburg Mall in Scotland, Pennsylvania. Not only were they giving away the comics every other participating comic book retailer was giving away, they had some good sales taking place.
- Statues and Busts – 35% Off
- Trade Paperbacks – 50% Off
- Back Issues – 50% Off
- Action Figures – 50% Off
I probably should have showed up when the mall opened for business. I was able to pick up a trade paperback of Joss Whedon’s Fray along with the trade paperback of Tales of the New Gods. I also purchased a NM/M copy of Watchmen #1 for eleven bucks. I’ve got the fancy Absolute edition of the series, but I don’t own any of the single comics.
The event looked to be a big hit. They set tables in front of the store with all of the various free comics available for the taking. This allowed people who may not have ever stepped foot into a comic book shop to pick up some books without any pressure. I witnessed quite a few people picking up books. Many of them looked as though they may have never read a comic book before. I couldn’t help but think that if they had to go into the store to pick out some free comics, they may not have bothered.
CNN’s Glen Beck thinks Grand Theft Auto IV is for children
What a wingnut. I’ll admit that the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise isn’t for me, but even I know it’s not intended for children. How do I know this?
Because I can read.
The game is for adults. It states so right on the game. It is labeled with the ESRB rating of MATURE. What does that mean? From the ESRB website:
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
The game is clearly not intended for kids. Why is Glen Beck saying that it is?
Not only does Beck rant against Grand Theft Auto IV, he delves into the topic of military history, focusing on how soldiers have been trained to fire their weapons over the years. He claims that during World War One, American solders couldn’t shoot the enemy because they weren’t killers. Killing another human being was not a natural act. They had to be trained to kill other human beings.
If Glen Beck actually believes that, I’ve got a couple local Civil War battlefields, Antietam and Gettysburg, that I’d like to show him.
Video games aren’t just for kids. Like any form of entertainment, some video games are intended for children. Grand Theft Auto IV is not one of those.
BookScan’s top-20 graphic novels for the month of April
ICv2 has posted the BookScan numbers for April. Unlike those top-300 lists that ICV2 also posts that show how many comic books “sold” in any given month, the BookScan numbers actually show what consumers are buying. The top-300 lists only show what comic book retailers order weeks or months before the books are released.
Here is the top-20 graphic novels for April:
- NARUTO VOL. 28
- VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOL. 4
- FRUITS BASKET VOL. 19
- BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE
- HANA-KIMI VOL. 23
- DEATH NOTE VOL. 1
- VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOL. 1
- FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST VOL. 16
- DEATH NOTE HOW TO READ VOL. 13
- NARUTO VOL. 27 W/ STICKER
- DEATH NOTE VOL. 2
- NARUTO VOL. 26
- WATCHMEN
- VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOL. 3
- FAIRY TAIL VOL. 1
- VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOL. 2
- NARUTO VOL. 1
- I.O.N
- THE BEST OF POKEMON ADVENTURES: RED
- TAIL OF THE MOON VOL. 10
All but two of these books are Japanese Manga. From the ICv2 article:
The biggest “new” American title on the list was Batman: The Killing Joke, a new hardcover edition of the Alan Moore and Brian Bolland story.
I’m not so sure I would describe either one of these as being “American”. Both books are from English writer Alan Moore and two English artists; one (Watchmen) being Dave Gibbons and the other (Batman: The Killing Joke) by an English artist who’s name I will not mention on this blog ever again.
I guess you could argue that since Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke are published by DC Comics and DC Comics is headquartered in the United States, both books technically are American. The only problem with that logic is the Viz Media — the publisher that published 16 out of the 20 books on this list — is headquartered in San Fransisco. It is not a Japanese company.
On a side note, I actually contributed to this list. Last month I bought my first ever Manga book, Death Note Vol. 1. I haven’t read it yet. I had one of those 25% off coupons from Borders and I didn’t want it to go to waste. I didn’t see anything in the comic book section that looked interesting, so I decided to buy a Manga book. I then promptly forgot all about it. I didn’t remember buying it until I read this list.
Marvin Harrison shoots at a guy with a fancy Belgian handgun he keeps in a bucket at a car wash
Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Marvin Harrison is under investigation in his hometown of Philadelphia in a shooting that took place earlier this week. From ESPN:
The source said the alleged victim came into the bar, Playmakers, around 5 p.m. and engaged in an argument with Harrison, who was at the bar. The victim then left the bar, heading to his car, with Harrison following. Gunfire broke out, the victim was hit in the hand, and a young girl was slightly injured by flying glass from a car that apparently was hit by a bullet.
Police came to scene, but the victim did not identify a shooter. On Wednesday, according to the source, ballistic tests showed that the gun that had fired the shots was a custom-made Belgian weapon, and police determined that Harrison owned such a gun. A source told ESPN.com’s John Clayton that the gun is registered.
Police then went to a Philadelphia car wash owned by Harrison to question him about the gun. Harrison admitted owning such a weapon, but claimed it never left his suburban Philadelphia home.
However, the source said the gun was discovered in a bucket at the car wash, and tests showed that it had fired seven bullets that matched those found at the scene.
What an idiot. I don’t know what’s more dumb – shooting a guy with lots and lots of people around to witness the event or shooting a guy with an expensive and exotic handgun that almost nobody else other then a spoiled professional athlete could afford.
Why does he even feel the need to shoot somebody? Hasn’t he read coach Tony Dungy’s book, “Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life.” I haven’t gotten around to reading it myself, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t recommend shooting people with your custom-made Belgian handgun.
Then again, maybe it does.
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