My Life

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I have been watching Star Trek The Next Generation.  One of, if not the all time greatest show.

I have managed to get past the first season, which was a okay season, but doesn’t even begin to compare to the rest of the series, and now am in the second season.

I wanted to make entries about certain episodes, but none really seemed deserving up until now of being singled out.

Episode 8 “A Matter of Honor” from season 2 is the first one that deserves attention.  This episode deals directly with William Riker who happens to be my favorite character.  This episode highlights the reasons why I love his character so much.

In this episode Riker is involved in a officer exchange program with the Klingons.  He takes great pride in this role learning as much as he can before he is beamed over to the Klingon ship.

From the onset he has problems with his Klingon second officer questioning his authority.  He quickly deals with this issue though as he quickly throws his second officer into a panel - As protocol demands under the circumstances.  Not only does this display his ability to think quick on his feet, but his ability to defend himself even against tough opponents.

Later on Riker is able to impress the Klingons at dinner, but this isn’t to last long as the Klingons discover something eating away at this ship, and believe the Enterprise attacked them.  Riker isn’t able to convince them otherwise, and the Klingon ship prepares to go into battle with the Enterprise despite Riker’s protests.

Through quick thinking, and some indirect help from Worf, Riker is able to diffuse the situation, while keeping the respect of the Klingons.

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So I’m looking to buy a new phone after about 4 years with my current phone.  When I bought the phone I have it was about the 2nd best phone on the market as far as I was concerned, but now not so much.  Especially with a broken front display.

To be honest something that has always driven me nuts about my phone was the camera.  Even for it’s time it was a piece of garbage.  Kinda scary since Cnet at the time said:

Though it’s only VGA quality, the VX7000’s camera is one of the most powerful we’ve seen in a phone.

So I have been looking for a new phone.  On various carriers (since I don’t have a contract).  The brand that keeps popping up is HTC.  They just seem to always have what I want in a phone no matter what carrier I’m looking for.  Even on Verizion where they only have one phone.

Then I came across the Samsung Omnia.  I quickly passed over it.  Why?  Because it has a 5 megapixel camera.  Who in their right mind needs a 5 megapixel camera on their phone?  Isn’t that a huge waste of money?  A cell phone can’t possibly carry the features of a dedicated camera, and if your sporting a 5 megapixel camera it pretty much should be the camera you are shooting with day to day right?

Well I have come back to the Omnia, and have started looking at video reviews.  I like video reviews because they often happen to show you things that no one (including the video) talks about, but you see it.  Case in point?  The features of the camera.  Now I’m not a camera person.  I won’t pretend that I am, but this phone has so many features on it - And seemingly smartly placed…  That I can’t even imagine ever using them all.  I mean it even has a “fireworks” mode.  Fireworks for crying out loud.  It also have a pamaromic mode which I find very interesting.  You take a bunch of pictures real quick moving the camera around, and it puts it together into one picture…  AND IT WORKS!  Okay I’m pretty much sold on this phone, and I think I’m going to get it today.  Freaking awesome.

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:sigh:

Steve Gibson is right now talking about sandboxing programs.  This is something I learned about like 6 months ago.  I’m so used to learning new things from him, but not right now.

For anyone that doesn’t know pretty much what happens when you sandbox a program in windows it works like normal, but once you exit the program it’s like it never was ran.

It’s a great way to use programs that you don’t trust - Or to install trial software and not have it leave things over.

It’s a great concept.  I just already knew about it.

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So every once in a while I decide that I just want to really make the cops mad in GTA.

So today I baricaded myself in the hospital and started blowing some heads off.

And then I saw it…  A missing section of chairs.  I had always known the chairs there were a great way to shield myself.  I just couldn’t figure out how to best use them.  But a missing section?  Perfect!

So I croutched up to the back of the other row of chairs where the chairs were missing and starting shooting.  It was perfect.  I honestly don’t think I have ever got a 6 star wanted level so fast in this game (other then going to a island I’m not allowed on).  My longest previous “chase” was 13 some odd minutes (I’m sure I have been on longer chases but I don’t save much).  Longest now?  27+ minutes.  Ya…  I’m not done yet…

Oh how did I pull this off?  Well it is really quite easy…  Sitting the way I am with the chairs helps a ton.  But that isn’t even the real secret.  The real secret?  The vending machine in the hospital.  Things looking grim?  Just grab a soda.

Some odd things and/or notes…  At about 21 minutes Packie gave me a thumbs down.  Why?  I have no idea…  He didn’t call and get hung up on…  At 25 minutes I nearly got myself killed trying to get health.  I’m pretty sure a bullet from a pistol would have done me in.

At 32:38 I thought I screwed myself when I accidentally shot the vending machine trying to get the last 2 bullets out of my assault rifle so it wouldn’t waste space while I switch weapons.

At 33 minutes something weird happened.  Some large object rolled past the front doors.  Looked like a heavy duty assault vehicle, but I’m pretty sure it must have been a helicopter that dropped from the sky for no apparent reason.

At 34:39 a swat guy nearly got me as I went for health.  He had snuck in and went around the left corner.  I thought I had got him when he showed his head, but apparently not.

At around 36 minutes I decided that with no machine gun ammo and fighting a losing battle with the shotgun I would try to go find a better place to defend myself.  Well I took a wrong turn at found no hall way.  Quickly after that I got swarmed with a half dozen cops in the building.  Where they all came from is beyond me because that many never got in so quickly up to this point - Well I don’t think so anyways…  So I start blasting away with my shotgun.  At this point I know my only chance is to get back to the vending machine so I move down using the dividers as cover.  I get to just about the end of them where I get rushed by cops, so I try to shoot my way out of it.  I knew at this point I had little hope even if I made it to the vending machine surely the time it takes to drink the soda would get me killed.  Well despite a good showing by me I die…  36 minutes and 31 seconds in…

At one point a assault rifle glitched and kinda jumped.  I decided I had to go into the danger zone to get it.  Oddly enough it wasn’t very eventful.

Every once in a while I would lob a grenade at the door.  No so much to kill people as to clear the door so it would shut.  I shot a few RPGs.  They have the nice side effect of causing fire…  And if the fire is caused in front of the door the cops walk right through the fire…..  To their doom!

About 210 cops died in this stand off.  I can proudly say this is the first time I didn’t try to run from a 6 star wanted level.  More so (clearly) this was the longest time I have lived with a 6 star wanted level.  I would (estimate) I took 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes to get the full 6 stars.

Sadly this will go down as a save with a 3 cheats used in the stats window.  But I did not cheat to achieve anything involved with this feat - Infact the only cheat I have ever used is the FIB car.

Oh…  And I never used a single bit of body armor to achieve this….  I’m quite proud of this feat.

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Why is it half the time that I want to make a entry to my blog I should be sleeping instead?  Strange huh?

I don’t know what to write about so I’ll just talk about random things since my blog has been abused with no entries recently.

Went to Might Taco with my friend Rich Tuesday.  I don’t know what his fetish with that place is, but if he wants to spend both the gas money and pay for my meal who am I to say no?  Amazing how food tastes better when you don’t pay for it huh?

Got a new computer.  Not sure if I talked about that.

If I didn’t talk about the computer I didn’t talk about the new car either which is awesome in just about every possible way.

I hate ESL - Actually I love them for giving me a car loan…  But I hate how they always seem to be either creating problems, or seemingly putting things in place to cause problems.  The latest in the stupid debit card.  The debit card stopped working so I ordered a new one.  A week later do you think it came?  Of course not.

Now the other thing.  When I called and told them the old address wasn’t the right one the damn teller took a tone with me because I didn’t call to change my address.  Uh…  Are you serious?  She is like “And you didn’t call to tell us of your new address” (heavy tone).  I’m like “Uh no….” (heavy tough shit tone).  Ugh…

The tellers are either real nice at ESL or very rude.  Another time before this the person refused to believe me when I told her the sig bar was wearing off and you could see the word “void” under it.  Why anyone would make up such a story is beyond me.

Gas.  You got to love gas prices of late.  Blame it on the poor economy?  Oh well.  I’ll take it.  I don’t own stock, and even if I did stocks always bounce back eventually when they fall as a group.

So Julia Nunes is about to and/or has sent out her second CD.  I did buy it from her so that should be interesting.  To be honest for the most part I’m not so much a fan of her original stuff so much as her covers of songs.  Despite this I decided to buy the CD in order to support her.  Both because I think she is awesome, and I in general like to support all things Rochester.

Oh and I don’t think I have ever mentioned this guy Adam that almost always makes a video response to Julia’s videos.  I’m not sure which I love more.  Her music or his commentary - Even if it doesn’t involve her music.  I especially like his stalking video.  Funny stuff.

As far as the NFL goes.  Congrats to Favre on getting a record 6 TDs in one game, and congrats to the Jets on both winning the latest 2 games but also having both men current/former Jets that own that record (fragmented sentence much?).

I hope Trent Edwards is really healthy on Sunday and not just playing because the Bills need him.  One more loss would be much better then lossing him for the entire season.

Oh and is it just me or are the Jets extremely good at stripping the ball from QBs?

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So a while ago - At least a year ago by any account, and really much longer I found this cool site.  It is FutureMe.org.  The concept is you write a email, and then set it to be delivered to yourself how ever many days/months/years/decades later you would like.

It would seem that most people use it to remind them of the kind of people they used to be, and perhaps figure out if they have accomplished goals and such.  Or more simply silly stuff like reminding themselfs to do something.

That’s what I used it for the first time.  It was silly and I won’t even talk about it.

So I got that email like a week ago, and I decided to go visit the site again.

Previously while being on the site I noticed they had a book of public emails people had sent to themselfs.  I thought that was cool and wanted to buy the book, but at the time I didn’t have the money to waste on something of that sort, and then I forgot about it.

Well I ordered the book, and I got it.  It actually is pretty cool.  If I could relate it to any other type of book/genur I guess I would have to say quote books.

The book is actually quite interesting, and while I wouldn’t suggest it to everyone, or perhaps even most people there are a select few people I would suggest it to, and even more people I’m sure (read most) that would be curious if I showed them the book, but would never actually outright buy it.

So if you like that type of stuff you really should check it out.

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It’s sad, but it’s true.  I’m addicted to YouTube (even though the last video I wanted to record got so messed up I never posted it).

Sometimes I forget just how much fun it is to start on one video that somehow sparks my interest, and then just click on vidoes that are related to that one and so on and so forth.  Of course after like the 2nd video the new videos have nothing to do with the original, but their still fun.  Which is cool.

Of course that’s what I would love to be doing but I have two problems.

A. I want to make another post about something diffrent
B. I want to go to bed
C. I want to make another post about something diffrent
D. I NEED to go to bed
E. I’m wasting precious minutes
F. That wasn’t two problems, and half of these are not problems anyways

Why doesn’t Firefox know that “wasn’t” is a word?

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So a couple of years ago Wegmans came up with a “new” logo.  To be honest it wasn’t really a new logo at all.  It was the old one with some new elements to it, and really to be even more honest Wegmans never had the intention of getting rid of the more simple one because the new one was to big for some uses.

Anyways.  It seems the logo has had 3 changes to it over the years after the major change.  None of them serious changes, but changes none the less.  The typeface for the word “Wegmans” seems to keep changing.

First it was the old typeface, and then there was a minor change I don’t even remember at this point, and now all of a sudden it is has a very scriptish look to it.

Of course no one will see the new logo until the 22nd when the company rolls out its new uniform.

Which brings me a differnet topic.  Wegmans is installing new self checkout lanes on that date.  Coincidence?  Although I believe this is exclusive to my store as they test it.

Funny since Wegmans has always had a “no self checkouts” stance for the longest time.  I always thought it was a stupid stance.  Give the customers what they want after all.  Of course their excuss was each customer should have the service of a cashier.  Now their stance has apparently changed to give the customer what they want.  Both good view points, but clearly sometimes you can’t have it both ways.

It should be noted that the self checkout lanes are not replacing the normal lanes.  In our store the registers where the self checkouts will go will shift to the end of the line.  Don’t quote me on this but I believe the exact policy is to open another lane when ever there is more then 2 customers in each lane.  Of course you can’t do much after you have opended each lane which often happens during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season.

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So today I decided to try Napster.  Why?  Because I’m a bit tired of the entire downloading from LimeWire thing for a lot of different reasons ranging from the legal implications to the bad or downright wrong copies to the wrong ID3 information to the lack of CD covers (which wouldn’t be so bad if the ID3 data was right) to the bad/lacking genre information.

To be honest I didn’t even think/realize that Napster would fix some of these issues (like the genre information).  Another nice thing is the speed.  While sometimes LimeWire offers a faster speed I would much rather have a pretty fast connection everytime then a super fast connection some of the time with downright slow connections some of the time.

So right now for multiple reasons I am getting rid of all my old music and replacing it with music from Napster.  Oh.  The other nice thing.  Napster actually knows who a song is by and what the title is and…  Well all their information is correct.  Sometimes it just doesn’t matter - You would think that at least one person would have music with the right artist name, but sometimes that just isn’t true.

Now some people might ask “Why would you spend money on music when you can get it for free?”.  And my answer is first of all this way is legal (and while I’m not afraid I would be caught I’d rather not take the chance in the first place).  Also for the above reasons I just mentioned.  Also because if I can afford to pay for music there is zero reason for me to not.  Also being a happy customer of Netflix I happen to think that $20 for unlimited music is a better deal then unlimited DVDs (Just to note I love Netflix).  Plus unlike Netflix when I decide I want something I’m no more then a few minutes away.  With Netflix?  I’m at least (in the best possible case) 24 hours away.  Oh and I love my music much more then I love my movies.

And at 6+ million songs I would say in my experience it has 19 out of 20 songs I want.  Quite possibly a even higher ratio.

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Every time I see this play it just looks better and better.

http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d80ab84b7