Smallwoody's Blog - 2old2play

Yes, I'm still around...

Playing PC games mostly but power housing my way through Mass Effect when I can get one of the kids to take my place as a heater in our bed at night. mommy snores though so it's a hard sell.

Read this in the Aspen Times of all places and thought I'd share.. kinda long but a good read! Good Gaming folks!

In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man

Gary Hubbell

February 9, 2008

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

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Pandora

Sorry... I know I already posted today but I've been listening to something on-line for a while that has evolved into something I really get a lot of value and enjoyment out of. It's Pandora Internet Radio.

Pandora allows you to create stations either based on song titles or artist names and will play music based on that selection. What's awesome is the organic growth of your station based on input from you as well as other users. Music is quantified by a long list of metrics ranging from "Minor Key Tonality", "heavy lead vocals", "slight rhythmic syncopation", etc. I mean, they get really detailed. Your input is a simple thumbs up or down on a song suggested which drives whatever complex algorithm they use to come up with the next song.

I enjoy listening to music at work but this has really taken it to the next level of being interested in music. Links are available through the web interface detailing information about artists, the song and album it came from, other artists with similar qualities, etc. You can even link straight to Amazon to purchase music you hear... something I haven't done in a long time but info on the artist provided by the site actually drove me to not look for 'alternative' methods of securing the piece.

It's probably blocked for a lot of people at work, and it starts out kind of slow since it involved user feedback but I've personally used it over 2 years now and have at least 15 channels of music spanning all the 'genres' I might want to listen to from Punk/ska to 'Iron Maiden' to 'Tom Petty Radio'. The only other drawback is the complete lack of classical music though the demand for that probably doesn't create enough drive to go through the effort of providing it.

I'll skip posting tomorrow... I promise... unless of course I give notice at my job!

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Yay For Me!

Except for the knock down, drag out argument with the wife this morning, today is going to be great! Whoo hoo! I finally spoke to the hiring manager for the Aerospace company up in CT and he gave me a number, to which I responded "Hell Yeah!" So more than likely, after the first of the year I will be working from my home. Since I know what I'm doing with my job (for the most part) I actually have a lot of down time that it utilized screwing around. I'm pretty paranoid about being productive enough that people notice so it'll probably be a little harder while working from home. Who knows... this will be a new adventure.

We also went last week and looked at a 100 year old farm house on 10 acres of land near my wife's work. House was great and while I was there I saw 4 turkey and 3 deer right outside the house. Fence for horses, pecan tree and poll barn in back yard, and it backs up to a creek and 500 ft hill (which looked pretty big).

I also reinstalled StarCraft last night... took me 10 minutes to install, patch and everything. UT3 last week took me 3 hours to download and 30 minutes to install. Amazing how much stuff the cram on a disk now-a-days.

Edit: well, got a call from the wife and they don't have a spot for our daughter up at the school he's at since she's in "pre-K" so looks like the move is off for now. Thing is though... I can work from anywhere now! WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

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Why the hell is a dog on the field!?

I watched this Saturday and though to myself at the time, "What value does having a K-9 unit at the end zone bring to security of the game?" I mean, come on!? Are they gonna let them loose on someone on live TV in order to subdue them? And why two of them. The reason is obvious: They were farting around watching the game and probably getting paid $30/hr - $40/hr overtime by the University to do it. To top it off, the look on the cop's face after the dude pulled his hand out of his dog's mouth was one of disgust for the player rather than concern he wasn't controlling his animal! I think he figured it out when he departed the premises soon after. /asshat

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Conversation with my wife last night

wife: "I can't believe that he (Peter Parker) is ignoring her like that! Did you see the way he blew her off! I'd be so out of there!"

me: "He's got an alien symbiotic organism attached to him that came down from outer space!"

wife: "So...."

I spent the next 5 minutes laughing. Sure as hell hope I never get infected.

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I'm this close!!!

Completed GHIII in a weekend on medium and half way though hard. Not as fulfilling as the first one but it's still fun. Aces 6 is as fun as it is beautiful. CoD4 is captivating on single player but haven't got a chance to MP with folks yet.... though it looks like most of you are playing it.

New job working from the house for some money I make now very very close... of course I just jinxed it. I'll so the same stuff I do now for a major Aerospace contractor, just out of my house. I'll need to figure out how to separate my VPN work traffic from my... uh.. other activities. I have a Cable modem in the house now. Anyone have any experience running more than one of these or if I'd even need to?

UT3 Pre-purchase should be on the hard drive when I get home and Mass Effect next week. Great time to be a gamer.

-sw

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No, I'm not dead... but close.

We found out a couple weeks ago that the prime on the contractor I work on was letting one of their major subs go (big company) along with all of their subs (my company) but would work to rehire all the folks under the prime's flag... so it's been a stressful couple weeks and we still don't know what's going on.

I am still playing though. My current is Hellgate: London which is just sublime. Me and a buddy have gotten on nightly since its release and have had a blast with the customizable weapons and different character classes. It's the first game I've ever played that feels like an FPS and a RPG. Where you fire actually is where the bullet goes or sword swings. Amazing difference from a random number generated "hit" or "miss".

Hope everyone is well. I have two hits at "work from home" which would be awesome. Wish me luck.

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Most Awesome Grenade Throw Ever

Just amazing. I saw it yesterday and forgot to throw it up. Apologies if someone else already got to it...

-sw

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World in Conflict

I picked up this game about 2 weeks ago before the Halo 3 release and I can't get enough of it. Imagine the pacing of an FPS, two 8 man teams trying to move to take points or push back the enemy. Then add in the complexity of mixed forces such as Apache and Cobra gun ships to take out the heavy tanks then having the heavies roll in to take out light mechanized and AA then suddenly they retaliate with their own air and a team member moves up the AA and repair tanks while covering with heavy arty. This is in the first 1 minute of the match. There is no pesky resource management… you get points to pick units that replenish over time regardless of what you hold on the map.

On top of this you earn points for accomplishing different tasks and these points can be used to change the tide of battle. From calling in airborne troops and tanks, napalming enemy infantry in trees to poison gas drops, A-10 runs, carpet bombing to MOABS and even a tactical Nuke. You can donate these points to each other pooling them for a large strike or can use them to reinforce your own position.

Anyway, it's been a really long time since a game made me all jumpy to sit down at night and play. In game voice comms are great, team work is essential and Timmies quickly leave when swamped by a competent team that works together. It ain’t no twitch RTS. My collector’s edition even came with a piece of the Berlin Wall! (The story line is that it is 1989 and instead of the wall coming down the Russian's attack... right up the ally of any Clancy fans out there!)

it's a great time to be a gamer!

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MIT 'Hack'

I thought this was awesome. MIT has a history of pranking Harvard as well as other schools. In honor of the release of Halo 3, they did this to the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard. I know it's up on a couple other sites but I thought it was frikkin Epic!

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Obligatory

Played Tiger Woods online last night and had a blast. Hope to get on tonight and do it again. 8 days 'til Halo!

R!
-sw

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Yay! an update

Wow.. almost 3 weeks since the last update. Let's see, I finished Bioshock, got the good ending and almost cried (just don't tell my wife). I played Stuntman and hated it... run track, mess up, reset, rinse, repeat. It was just stupid and a knockoff bastard spawn of Burnout and PGR. Stranghold is playing pretty good but I got pretty drunk about 2 hours into it and got bored.

What has my full attention right now is Tiger Woods '08. This a perfect representation of that f*cking game called golf on a computer. the swing mechanics are flawless and will drive you crazy, the game is has a lot of replay-ability with 12 different game modes, a huge career mode and actually difficult achievements to earn. The game also paces well with how you're doing during a tournament... doing poorly and it'll reduce the field a bit, playing good and it throws putting robots at you. I've played non-stop for over a week now and my personal "dude" is only up to 32% of his potential... and I won my first tournament yesterday! I actually jumped up and down. It's frustrating and rewarding... just like golf. Thumbs up EA. Now if I could figure out how to play on-line with people developing their own players instead of picking Tiger Woods for every match...

Anyone else play? (Yes, I'll check the forums)

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Eclipse tonight...

And thanks to my wife's new job I'll be up at 5:30 am to see it!

Key to Eclipse Visibility Map
P1    Penumbral eclipse begins (not visible to the eye)
U1    Partial eclipse begins
U2    Total eclipse begins
U3    Total eclipse ends
U4    Partial eclipse ends
P4    Penumbral eclipse ends (not visible to the eye)

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Timed is just right!

I sent back Darkness after finishing it last week. Since the mail has to travel the width of a continent back to their shipping center, I tried to send it back exactly 3 days prior to the release of BioShock. It worked! It arrived yesterday and they shipped out Bioshock within an hour.... to now travel 3.5 days back to my house. The thought of missing almost 25% of my month to have 2 games out at once is keeping me from running out to GameStop right now and taking the rest of the day off.

Went to the Doctor with the oldest this morning. They removed the cast to look at his heel and took off the tape covering the wound. Large chunks of skin came with is which the doctor didn't seem to mind... said it was "like being in the pool too long". He's suppose to wear this boot thing now for 2 weeks then gets to start putting weight on it again. He was shaking like a leaf the poor little guy he was so nervous. He also wanted a Southern Miss colored cast for the game we're going to on September 1st! But now he gets a clunky boot thing. But in the immortal words of my little brother, "Chicks dig scars."

-sw

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I feel the urge...

I almost broke down a couple seconds ago and made my way over to Rhino games... must... resist! So I came in here to bitch about my fading resolve. [b]I will not purchase Madden '08 until it drops below $39 used!!![/b] That should be in like 2 months. I can do it!

Almost done with Darkness as I'm on the final mission. I don't know what's more exciting... finishing the game or returning the game to GameFly. I have 6 Netflix movies out at any one time and the next usually shows up 2 days after I send in a return. The first return for GameFly it had to go all the way back to Cali from my home state of Alabama and then my queue sat for 2 days until #6 on the list was sent to me. I did send one back last week though and they got some sort of pre-notification I guess cause #4 on my list was sent out even before they received it. GRAW2 should be here today!

I'm not real thrilled with them bypassing up to 5 games on my queue in order to send one out else waiting as many as 4 days to send out your next game if you don't have more than one in your Queue. $21.99 / month seems a little steep for that but I'll give it a chance to develop. You'd think that the PA distribution center would be closer to me down here than Cali but it only serves New England to Chi town.

I will not buy Madden.... I will not buy Madden...

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