So, I had this ex gf from 1995 who out of nowhere friends a highschool buddy of mine. O_o ORLY? Some of the epic shit that went down in that relationship is still the stuff of “Tales O’ Legend” that come up when I get together with people who knew me then. Let’s just call it deeply dysfunctional, and I was a gullible retard.

Anyway – this chick surfaces in the deep end of my “friend pool” and I can’t not start reading, right?

I have to preface this with “a lot of the dysfunction was drug sponsored.” I’d never seen a whole gallon ziplock bag stuffed with weed before I met this girl. Never again since either. Strange times. Then one day suddenly she stole about $600 from me and my mom’s house, and disappeared to Wisconsin. Later she called me about bail money, due to some jail time and forged checks. Sorry that I couldn’t be of much help

Apparently she’s no longer on parole or probation or whatever it was that made it so that she couldn’t leave the state borders of Wisconsin. I like to look up her public record and read the rap sheet from time to time, when the old scars start to itch.

Here’s the EPIC FACEBOOK CONTENT. Some shit never changes:

SK: going to amsterdam in 10 days will be gone 3 weeks woot woot – Jan 6th

SK: gonna leave for amsterdam sunday and im never coming back lol – Jan 15th

SK: less than 12 hours before amsterdam and now im not going cuz my fiance is a dickbag and a liar rather stay here – Jan 16th

SK: going to amsterdam i guess im going to try to get lost while im there so i dont have to hang out with my fiance mught not come back…. – Jan 17th

SK: left for amsterdam will try to post pics while im there see ya feb 1st.. – Jan 17th

SK: i love big hairy juicy cocks in the blue light district…. johnny ur my boy….. ps never leave ur facebook left of in amsterdam!!!!!!!!! – Jan 18th

SK: lol too many coffee shops that is so funny – Jan 19th
sitting around in the hotel in amsterdam while my boyfriend sleeps..so much fun im having…not – Jan 19th

SK: im going with some girls from england to red light district to see some hookers,,lol i have hash brownies in the rooom plus had hash milkshakes earlier..lol – Jan 20th

SK: while my boyfriend sleeps in amsterdam i cann ot go anywhere cuz he wont give me any money since my bank wont let me pull money off my atm from another country ..i am having such a great time …..not.  They said its like a 70 dollar fee to get 250 bucks – Jan 21st

SK: my boyfriend just informed me i should move out when we get home and im unemployed guess i better find a couch to rent – Jan 22nd

SK: i was just alerted my boyfriend wants to fuck other people here in amsterdam..hmmm – Jan 22nd

SK: now he said he owed me to date me cuz i took care of him during his ms relapse like he did me a favor..lol – Jan 26th

So yeah…  Amsterdam is for <3 er’s

Dave Long had a really strong comment in the “Death of Crispygamer.com” thread over at QT3:

My son asked me just this past weekend why I don’t review games anymore while we were at Barnes & Noble. “That was so awesome when you were still doing that, Dad. Why can’t you do it anymore?”

I walked him over to the magazines and showed him how the size of the videogame magazine section used to go from “here to here” and now it’s “just these right in here and as you can see it’s being crowded out by magazines about dogs and cats. Worse, only this one, this one and these two are written and published in the United States. All the others come from the UK.”

“On top of that, all the web sites only want kids or people who will write for next to no money at all. It takes too much time for me to still be doing it when I’d get $50 or $100 for what I used to get $300. So unfortunately, I think that’s it Calvin. I’m never going to be doing that again.”

It sucks. The writing is mostly awful all over the web and the only places left to do print that aren’t Official magazines come from overseas.

Aaaaaaand that sums it right up.  Be amazed, but my first article paid like 50 cent a word.  That was in 1996.  By 2001 I was writing 1500 words for like $200 and considered fairly compensated.  Hard to maintain motivation about an article under those conditions.

This is the episode I’ve been waiting for… seriously.

HD Nation tackles the set-top streaming box lineup.

http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality#fullprogram

Dan Suarez has some pretty interesting observations here.

Making human-complexity AI is too hard.  We have excelled in making billions of tiny script-bots that are as smart as a microbe or beetle though.  The little single-task critters of the internet are now pushing more data around than humans.

You can write an army of bots to make trivial decisions for people, and put the data in front of human eyes for the bigger decisions.  This evolution in AI has been pretty quiet, and is very high impact to all of us.  It’s how our credit score gets counted, how our bank statement is processed, how we’re selected for a job.

Another thing he talks about is 3rd parties farming data from other bots and turning it to their purposes.  Case in point – your car wirelessly transmits tire pressure data to the processor in the car.  Since that’s wifi, the tires transmit a unique ID to tell them from tires on other cars nearby.  A 3rd party with roadside antennas can read the serial numbers of your tires and know where you are driving, and use that to track you, beam targetted advertising into your car, etc.  Nobody needs to decrypt the content of the message, just look at the ID of the sender which is always going to be public.

Who can track all that information that is sucked up from bots?  More bots.  His argument is that we’re already in, and will increasingly be more submerged in a sea of narrow-AI bot interactions.

I observed this first-hand last night at a restaurant.  The servers all wore a watch that talked wirelessly with a box on the table.  Every time they’d come by to see if we needed anything, the box and watch would record the event.  If we needed anything, we could page the server by touching the box, which would make his watch vibrate.  I had some immediate concerns for the deeper impact of a system like this – which could be a stress reducer on both customer and service provider, or could be a major stress inducer in the server if that watch-box becomes what they’re trying to keep happy instead of their customer.

I don’t know how I stumbled in here, but I saw this “Lady Gaga makeup tutorial” thing and watched it. The girl doing it – Michelle Phan – is pretty fun, so I looked at some other stuff she’s done. I’m really impressed with how pro of a vidcast she’s doing. It’s also pretty shocking to see how she starts out with her normal face and then ends up in some variety of glamor hottie.

Since Joan is selling Mary Kay I figured I’d pass this around, and show it to her. I’ve got a little more respect for the amount of time invested in girls putting their look on. Didn’t realize that you could spend 10 min just putting on various layers of eye shadow. Glad I’m a dude, because I’m from bed to shower to car in 10 min or less.

Michelle Phan’s Youtube channel.

I am the biggest tom boy you will ever meet! I love video games (I plan on working on a few titles in the future), comic books (I plan on doing a few comic book covers), I collect swords and I own all the gaming consoles and some of my favorite games are Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter,Resident Evil, Gears of War, WoW, Call of Duty and the list goes on…I may be a huge nerd but it does not mean I have to look like one. Here to represent fashionable nerds!

I discovered this website dedicated to helicopter appearances in movies.  Rotaryaction.com

Now I thought that was awesome/odd enough.  Then I started looking at some of the movie’s descriptions.  Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 is about some modern military stuff that gets flung through a time-warp into feudal japan or something.  ORLY?  Well, I’m putting that right on the bad movie night list.

The IT crowd went and took in Avatar last night at the Raleigh IMAX theatre.  For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, the Dolby 3D stuff with the Blues Bros shades was a much better 3D experience for me than the IMAX version.  It just wasn’t as strong of an experience.  Josh had a theory that it’s because the screen is so large that you focus on small areas instead of letting your eyes take in the full panorama.  For me though, IMAX no longer holds an argument of being a wildly better theatre experience – for 3D stuff at least.

Two days ago, while hovering at the impromptu bagel-o-rama in the office break area I twisted my ankle, felt it pop and then no big deal.  Woke up yesterday, it was a big deal.  Walking wasn’t great, but I could put weight on it.  On the way to the movie it was cold as shit.  It was like arctic cold.  Tried to walk to fast on it.  This morning, I paid the piper for that. 

After the movie, Randy took us out to Poole’s Diner.  I think that paying $12 for a side of beets, or $15 for a cup of mac and cheese – even though it may be the best mac and cheese in a 100 mile radius – it’s a little too much to make it a regular experience.  So, he bought a couple bottles of wine, and I had like 3 small glasses of The Prisoner.  Woke up with my head in a knot.  I thought that was just my hangover-prone self, but then Josh and his dad also tossed up tweets about having post-wine head thumping.

Looked at my email.  App server disk space check failed.  Hrm…  ping check failing causes an SMS alarm to wake me up, so it’s pinging just fine.  Can’t remote into it.  Can’t query any WMI or SNMP stuff.  Box is a zombie.  Gotta drive in.  Oh wait, that means pants and shoes.  Woohoo!  Here comes the fun!  Putting on a shoe sounds like this…  “uh… oooh… OH HOLY FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUaaaaaaaaargh… ooh damn, wow.” 

Server luckily just needed a boot to the head.  Joan put an ace bandage on my ankle.  Sitting here waiting on Kahar to show up so we can nerd out with some work boxes he needs to fix0r.