“Now there really is no reason to go on living.”

You know a really great comedian has died when your first comments upon hearing about their death makes everyone laugh. Yup, he really was that good.

via TVsquad

According to Microsoft if you purchase a new motherboard you are creating a “new” computer, even if the rest of the components remain the same.

Might not sound like a big deal until you remember that Microsoft Windows licenses only apply to a single computer at a time.

So to all you dedicated Windows users out there I have two suggestions:

1. Switch to Linux and never worry about these silly problems again. Check out Ubuntu.

2. Don’t ever, EVER upgrade your motherboard.

via Metafilter

- Big John

I know, I’m shocked too.

A D.H.S. official has suggested, after the recent Sony BMG CD rootkit crapola, that rootkit software be outlawed.

C-Net News link

If I were a government geek I’d buy that official a drink. Cheers!

I love the Bomberman series. It’s one of those games I grew up with and have thoroughly enjoyed on every platform I’ve ever played it on. Decades before Pokemon started the cute n’ violent trend this little bugger was destroying massive amounts of blocks and enemies in a game that mixed puzzle and action with simple game play that anyone could appreciate.

If you share the same love of this series you might want to sit down before you scroll down.

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Then again, I don’t know many people who read web pages standing up…

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This is Bomberman as he will appear in the freshly announced Bomberman: Act Zero for the Xbox360.

The original Bomberman is survived by his loving wife and two children, Bomberbaby and Bombertoddler. Memorial gifts of fireball power-ups can be directed to the great binary sprite memory dump in the sky.

via Press The Buttons

I managed to catch the last few minutes on video just because I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Not sure exactly why this happened…

You can view this video at the YouTube site here.

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Update: Uh-oh. I sent this to a few local news e-mail tip lines that I knew of and I got a couple bites. According to the Lansing State Journal the L.P.D. were responding to reports of stolen school property and the while they were chasing the kid down he punched an officer.

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Update 2: I bid a warm welcome to all the new readers from the Michigan state government, Ingham County Schools, and other “officially” interested parties that I’m seeing in my server logs.

For the record: I am completely unaware of having done anything wrong here, and so far nobody has tried to tell me that I have. This was not intended as a shot against the L.P.D., the student involved, or the Grand River Elementary Magnet School. If there is any fault to be seen here it lies with the kid for allegedly punching an officer.

While the link to this page has been removed from the current version on the LSJ site, you can still find the original at the LSJ link below.

My grandparents told me about times without widespread cars, life without computers, and growing up during the depression.

Someday I’ll be able to tell my grandkids “I remember back when Amazon sold books and only books.”

Anybody else notice how the Internet has caused a drastic shift in the way we view a successful business? Companies that do enough business online to be considered “very successful” are almost always diversified, offering a plethora of goods and services while their only truly unique claim to fame is their site layout or a web design trick or two.

Does anybody actually see this as a sustainable market or a way to do business? With the Internet full of aspiring Amazons, Googles, and budding Microsofts it seems like all-out corporate war is the only way a select few will come out on top.

Or they can continue buying up every little threat to their established customer base.

THAT’s the new American Geek Dream: Come up with a piece of software that threatens Google or Microsoft so they’ll buy you out rather than compete with you.

It’s funny… after almost two months off work the concept of “free time” has really ceased to exist for me. I still read a lot and game a lot, but without any kind of real work going on it all seems so… pointless. You know you’re bored when watching reruns of ER and Star Trek is a highlight of your day.

This might sound like a complete 180 after reading the previous paragraph, but believe it or not I am not one of the many people who define themselves through their job. I’ll admit that during my last job I was very concerned that I was doing exactly that, and that if I lost it I’d feel… lost or something along those lines. Spending four years with one company at the age of twenty-five is a little unusual.

I’ve used a lot of this time to get things done around the house. I don’t have any kids so this is NOT an opportunity for a “Mr. Mom” joke I semi-winterized our house, cleaned up our DVD and game storage, alphabetized and indexed my comic book collection into a database, cleaned up my old cameras, fought a pitched battle with excess phosphates in our fish tank (still ongoing), and taught myself the basics of Linux (Ubuntu Linux rocks). Please note this list isn’t a complete one, just the basic crap I can remember filling time with over the last two months.

And now I am bored with this post.

Now there is proof. A recent study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that even though people thought they had correctly interpreted the tone of a message 90% of the time they were only correct 50% of the time.

This is why I never get involved in flame wars.

While emptying my spam folder I discovered this little gem from yesterday:

Here’s the first part:

Sounds cool. Let’s see it!

What the hell?

Here’s what they’re advertising:

If I ever ran into that wolf-thing I’d hope for the “Goes wide” part.

Crazy marketing people…