Sudafed

Work is a waste today. I’m not feeling well because my son brought home another illness from daycare to share with my wife and me. I swear, infants are like disease sponges. Anyway, I’m taking Sudafed and basically zoning at work. Eyes glossy. Mind numb. Screen blurry.

Posted by biorod @ 12:50 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

First Father’s Day

So yesterday was my first Father’s Day as a father. My wife’s parents and her aunt and uncle visited us this weekend, and we ate a tremendous amount of food and put away about a case and a half of beer, so that was fun. We grilled a bunch of stuff like speedies, bratwursts, and hotdogs and had some Caesar salad, baked beans, chips, and deviled eggs. In addition, her dad and uncle helped me do some stuff around the house.

Earlier this year, birds decided to nest in one of our vent outputs (not sure what to call them) on the back of the house. So we got a two-story ladder, some aluminum screening, plastic ties, and a drill and covered four vent covers with them. The flaps can still open, but birds can no longer get in there. One of the vents was up above my two story bedroom windows. I didn’t think it’d bother me to go up that high, but it did (my yard slopes, so it seemed more like 3 stories than 2)! The ladder was only a 250 lbs aluminum one and it wobbled a little bit, so it was a bit unnerving. Nevertheless, we got them all covered. Glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore. We also ran a cable line from the foyer closet, into the crawl space underneath the house, and back up to the wall just behind the television. Ever since we bought the house, we had been running it across the living room right in front of the fireplace. My wife’s been on me to fix that for some time now and since Noah’s moving about the house more and more, we don’t want him to get a hold of it. We did a lot of stuff Saturday, so it was nice to get some things done.

When my wife asked me what I wanted for Father’s Day, I said I wanted to sleep in until I woke up naturally. I didn’t want to wake up to a crying baby or to a phone call or to her saying I needed to get up and start doing stuff, I just wanted to wake up. You know, like you do before you have kids! Since we were up early on Sunday so her family could get to mass and eat before hitting the road, I fully expect payment next week. This’ll involve a tremendous amount of Halo the night before.

Posted by biorod @ 12:41 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Working On a Montage

So I’m working on another montage. The last one I made was about a year ago just before my son was born. It sucked. I rushed through it because I knew that once we had a newborn in the house, the last thing I’d have time to do was sit at my PC and work on a video. I also had an antiquated capture card and used Adobe Premiere, which has a nice interface but takes up a tremendous amount of room and is painfully slow and inconvenient, sort of like the line at the post office.

I don’t especially like montages. My wife reminded me of this when I told her I was making one. It occurred to me that I look at them like children...you love yours but everyone else’s is just annoying. Personally, it’s a lot of fun to edit video, plus I wind up watching dozens of my videos again and that helps me improve my game play. It’s even more fun now that I have a quality cap card and have learned to use Sony Vegas.

Let me just say that Vegas is AWESOME! Once I chose my song, I had a vision of how the clips should appear. I wanted them to make the viewer somewhat uncomfortable, to be edgy. Vegas has allowed me to do that better than I could’ve hoped. It’s taking me about 8 hours so far to make the intro and first few clips (amounting to about 20 seconds of video). However, a lot of the time I’ve spent has been scanning videos for footage and learning to do more advanced editing with Vegas. I’ll hopefully finish it up mid July sometime and have it for anyone. My tage will definitely have more of a focus on artistic content and originality than on highlighting skills, but there will definitely be some good footage in it.

If you use Vegas, they have some nice forums with tutorials and Q&A at the GFXUnderground. Bioslayer pointed me there and it is indeed valuable.

Posted by biorod @ 1:42 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

MLG 4v4, Saturday, June 10th, 2006

MLG 4v4, Saturday, June 10th, 2006

This was my second 4v4 tournament with the 2Old2Play folks. Caesar and Royal couldnt make it in time to start, but fortunately, I was able to get on a makeshift team with Darth Vader, Malinko, and ComputerGeek.

We got rolling around 10:45 PM against our first opponents, Moesley, Darth Chibius, Budman, and Fiery. I probably enjoyed this series the most despite losing, well, all three games. They were more coordinated than us, moved in teams, and communicated very well. Also, the games were fairly close which usually makes them infinitely more interesting than blowouts. Here are the links with stats:

We lost slayer on Beaver Creek 42-50
We lost CTF on Sanctuary 1-3
We lost oddball on Midship 3:47 to 4:24

They did an excellent job of keeping rockets on BC and guarding the portal. They got a sizable early lead, which we later tied (I think), and then they just pulled away with the win at the end.

I about died laughing on the Midship game as Moesley chased me with the shotgun yelling, "Why wont you die??!!!!" Oh man, I wish I had been capping voice, too!

We played Lithium, Neo Oblivion, Red Sooner, and Laud Trevlin in our next match. We won all three of these games simply by out-slaying them, I think. We didnt excercise a tremendous amont of teamwork or anything, but it felt good to win our first games of the night.

We won slayer on Beaver Creek 50-34
We won CTF on Sanctuary 3-1
We won oddball on Midship 4:52-3:07

The oddball game on Midship looks like more of a solid win than it was...we got a lead that was about a minute and change to start the game, and it seemed to dwindle as the game went on. Id say that in the second half they gained over a minute on us as we kept running in vain to retake the ball. We got the ball toward the end and extended our lead, but it was definitely a good game. I had one of the highest assist numbers Ive ever had in a game with 20, so I was very pleased with that. I had 31 assists in the series.

Our last series was against eksessiv, neks0ne, midnighter, and smoke. We lost each game in the series by a lot. At the start of the BC game, I ran out of red base heading toward OS and started nading the other side of the creek...by the time I got just outside of the door, neks0ne already had OS and was on our doorstep. It was downhill from there. Theyre certainly a tough team, as Im sure everyone knows. They got in advantageous positions, doubled up on us, set up well, controlled the weapons, and were difficult to reach. Good job to them! I enjoyed these games the least because we were so outmatched. It was total teamwork and strategy vs. a makeshift team. However, Id definitely enjoy playing them more with a team I was comfortable with. The one highlight I got was a killtacular in the oddball Midship game. Aside from that, it was total frustration. Thats what you hope to instill in the other team.

We lost slayer on Beaver Creek 25-50
We lost oddball on Midship 2:24-5:00
We lost CTF on Sanctuary 0-3

Thanks to my teammates for the good games. I definitely enjoyed the tournament and got some more folks on my FL. Im not sure how frequently Ill be able to participate, though...my wife is less than pleased at my coming to bed at 2AM. I also normally get up with our son first and he gets up around 6:30am, so thats incredibly inconvenient. However, as long as its fun Ill make the attempt.

Jared

Posted by biorod @ 10:11 am EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

We Should Be Mad

As the elections this year approach, we should all be mad as hell.  All it takes is juxtaposing the world’s problems and what candidates wish to discuss.  I do this probably more than I ought to, as my wife would tell you, and I feel like the Earth is the universe’s largest insane asylum.  Let’s look at our problems:

*  Energy costs are rising and will only continue to rise.  As we approach the world’s peak oil production, fossil fuels, the cheapest most abundant source of energy that mankind has ever known, will be at a premium.  Wars are being waged over control of oil and more are going to be fought.  We’re not making technological advances quickly enough to mitigate the impact of the shrinking oil supply and increased world demand.  Instead, we’re driving SUVs and occupying the Middle East while Brazil has become practically energy independent...after 20 years and billions and billions of dollars to do so. 

*  Healthcare in the U.S. is the most expensive in the world yet rates last in quality among health care in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.  The U.S. has the second worst newborn death rate in the modern world.  Those are just some recent articles.  Currently, about 44 million Americans lack healthcare insurance.  Many that are insured still do not seek medical attention for illness for inability to meet deductibles, copays, etc.  Healthcare access is in limbo between right and privilege and can and should do better.

*  Education:  The fate of empires depends on the education of youth." - Aristotle.  For the 2007 federal budget, President Bush requested $54.4 billion for the Department of Education and about $440 billion for the Department of Defense.  Think about that.  The federal government will spend about 8 times more money on defense than on education.  I’m not anti-military, far from it.  As a veteran, I understand the importance of the military and the vital role it serves, but I have to admit that I’m concerned about the disparity.  Education needs to be a priority, not a sound bite, not a campaign promise, but a real-honest-to-God priority.  We have a shrinking middle class.  Only about 1 out of every 4 Americans 25 or older has at least a bachelor’s degree.  According to the 2004 Census, the median income of a high school graduate is about $26k/year and the median income of a person with a bachelor’s degree is over $47k/year.  Think of a two-income household where both parents have bachelor’s degrees (as is often the case as I see it since college students meet and marry other college students) and bring in an average of $94k/year versus two parents with high school diplomas that bring in $52k/year, and you can see how they might lead different lives (see healthcare and energy costs, above).  Aside from that, a CNN.com article recently stated that nearly 2/3 of Americans aged 18 to 24 could not find Iraq on a map and 1/3 could not point out Louisiana on a U.S. map!  Laugh at that.  Laugh that the same study also showed that 1/2 could not identify New York or Ohio, and tell me we spend enough on education. 

*  The War in Iraq.  FYI: The U.S. hasn’t known 20 consecutive years of peace since before WWII (and that’s just barely with WWI ending in 1918 and U.S. involvement in WWII beginning roughly in 1939).  Iraq is costing us about $6 billion per month and has already taken the lives of around 2,000 U.S. soldiers and countless civilians.  We invaded Iraq on the premise that they had WMDs and would soon have the capability of using them on U.S. soil.  Well, that sort of wasn’t true, and damn if we aren’t in a heap of shit now.  We probably did irreparable damage to the integrity of U.S intelligence when we sent Secretary Powell before the United Nations with maps, slides, pictures and a very convincing argument that we were right.  We’ve turned Iraq into a cause and a breeding ground for terrorists, not only with the invasion itself initiated by lies but with incidents like Abu Gharib and the recent Marine murders of civilians in Haditha and the suspected intentional slaying of an unarmed Iraqi man in Hamdaniya by Marines.

* The NSA Phone Call Database.  Regardless of your stance on this issue, it’s one that needs to be discussed out in the open and not clandestinely in government chambers by people who are not held accountable to the American Public.  You may have heard that the FCC and the Justice Department began an inquiry into the NSA’s phone call surveillance program.  The result?  They were deemed unable to review the program because they lacked the government clearance necessary to review the goings-on of the NSA.  This should scare you.  We have a government entity that can conduct operations and surveillance on the U.S. public without warrant and without any accountability to the Justice Department, one of three branches of our government intended to serve as a check and balance for the other two.  The very nature of the design of our government is that no entity goes unchecked.  We have three branches for a reason, and now the design has been compromised.

Now let’s look at what the politicians want to discuss:

* Gay Marriage
* Immigration
* Energy to some extent, although they’re debating off-coast drilling as close as 3 miles rather than seeking alternatives

That just pisses me off.  Gay marriage?  The President wants to talk about a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage??  Are you kidding me?  The people that are fooled by such an obvious act of prestidigitation intended to deflect attention from more serious issues to one that may (note, MAY) affect 2% of the population should be shot.  I’m monumentally hard-pressed to think of a current issue that’s less important to me right now than gay marriage.  Truly.  I don’t give a rat’s ass if I’m completely surrounded by gay neighbors who’ve wallpapered their houses with copies of their marriage certificate.  We have serious issues and need serious people to address them.  I can see immigration being an issue worthy of discussion at some point, but surely it doesn’t merit discussion ahead of and actually in lieu of the ones I’ve discussed. 

Please don’t think I believe the democrats have all of the answers or anything.  They’re just as idiotic because they’ll allow the Republicans to decide the issues.  They’ll be dumb enough not only to discuss crap like gay marriage but also to take the unfavorable side of the issue with regard to the average American.  Instead of saying, "We have more important issues to discuss...", they’ll try to protect gays and lesbians and let the issue decide the occupants of countless offices.

So if you’re as mad as I am, write your representatives.  Go to the Senate’s web site, find your senators, and write them.  Tell them what’s on your mind and that you vote.  Unless, of course, you want to talk about gay marriage.

Posted by biorod @ 2:53 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments