Archive for July 2006

July 31, 2006

Quick Thoughts of Summer

4:34 pm | Thoughts | Comments: 6

Mel Gibson: A drunken, anti-Semitic tirade? The only way The Giblet’s evening could have been worse was if it had all happened while he was being arrested for D.U.I. Oh wait, it did. A great quote from Gibson indicated that he “owned Malibu”. Not any more, Mel.

97 Degrees Farenheit: Today’s temperature is simply absurd.

The International Community: Befuddled as to why Israel didn’t honor its 48-hour airborne cease-fire. Let’s sit and think for a moment, folks. Why would a country currently at war be unwilling to ground its air force for a full two days? Because it’s a stupid thing to do. Israel is making some pretty sly moves; it throws a bone to the U.N. with the announced cease-fire, then continues operations against Hezbollah as usual. The confused and panicky questions thrown at the Israeli official this morning on the BBC News Hour were priceless.

College: Today I turned in the final assignments of my undergraduate career. To quote a local brogging legend, “The long, dark winter of work awaits me.”

July 28, 2006

Glory Days Gone By

2:28 pm | Culture | News | Comments: 6

Today we all read the news about Kazaa paying $150 million to settle a piracy lawsuit. I think we can all officially agree that the days of downloading our favorite songs for free are over. In the past downloading music was new, fun, and its illegality was shrouded by uncertainty and easily dismissed. Not so these days, as music file-sharers have been sued left and right resulting in billions of dollars in settlements. Downloading music for free is illegal, no question about it.

Some misdirected individuals say that it’s not illegal because you’re not downloading music, you’re downloading data. That doesn’t matter, because we’re not talking about what it is that you’re downloading, we’re talking about who owns what you’re downloading. Whether it’s “music” or just data, it is the intellectual property of the artists that recorded it and record labels that published it and therefore when you download it off a peer-to-peer filesharing service for free you’re stealing it.

It’s the same with acquiring any other software for free. You know that copy of Office you’re running that your buddy slipped you on those blank CDs scribbled with sharpie? You might as well have walked into a BestBuy and shoplifted it. Same with that Michael Buble (dumbest name ever) album on your hard drive that you managed to get off BearShare. Save yourself some trouble next time and just lift it from your local Sam Goody. Don’t, actually. Because it’s wrong to do such things.

Those of you that know me know that I have downloaded lots of songs over the years since the glory days of Napster. I mention this to turn aside the inevitable wave of “you do it too” accusations. The point is that if we look at the facts, downloading music for free is stealing. So I’ll let you all make your own decision on how to approach it.

July 24, 2006

The 2006 SIO Top-10™

11:06 pm | Weblogging | Comments: 13

Yes folks, it’s that time again. SIO’s expert team of analysts has compiled the definitive ranking of community webroggers. Much has happened in the local webrogosphere since 2005, and this year’s list has plenty of names that you all know and love, as well as a several newcomers. Let’s get started.

1. Set It Off - Simply the best.

2. Gimme Back My Bullets - Mark earned major points with his layout change, securing his 2nd place spot for the second year running.

3. In God We Trust - If the only criterion was sheer volume of written material, Steve would be #1 with no trouble. NotLiberal still has the most boring layout ever, though, and is also plagued by grammatical and typographical errors as well as being commented by a host of mush-brained trolls.

4. Presbyterian Thoughts - Visual beauty and subtle humor combine with consistently solid theology to garner a solid 4th place finish for 1-year veteran blogger Nate.

5. Wendler Cottage - A recent and worthy addition the Lanning Dynasty of brogs, Mrs. Pickering writes about her new and growing family with a captivating style, including plenty of food for the eyes as well. She has a shady past in webrogging, having initially run several not-on-the-up-and-up webrogs writing under the name “Cramp Bottom”.

6. The Jurries Dynasty - The rest of the list could literally be filled with Jurries blogs. The Jurries Dynasty, begun days after SIO itself by loyal sidekick Mark, has sprawled to include an estimated 6 webrogs, which in addition to #2 on this list are: Penultimate Grooviness, The Random Potatos Present Blogapalooza, The Delta Institute, The Epsilon Institute, and Ace’s Place. While the minority of these brogs could make it into the list on their own merit, the combined force of the Jurries Dynasty must be reckoned with.

7. On the Fringe - Another newcomer over the past year, Deacon Jeff introduced us to the modern-day Engrish influence and keeps us all up to date on kook-fringe happenings around the globe.

8. Yes, I Have No Bananas - In addition to gaining ground by being the only community brogger to do her own illustrations, “Eva Lemmon” has actually made a few valid points in her typically zany and farfetchual posts.

9. Exhale - Not only a gifted and emotive writer, Stephenie is also a killer snowboarder.

10. A Poor Man’s Blog - Making an appearance on the SIO Top-10™ in its inaugural year of operation, B consistently gives our minds something solid to chew on. B is also alleged to have operated several more happy-go-lucky brogs in the past.

Membership in the SIO Top-10™ is contingent upon actually knowing me in person so that the inevitable Kung Fu battle can take place within a reasonable timeframe. Please note that the SIO Top-10™ is subject to change for any reason and without notice. SIO would like to thank our sponsors The-BoB.org and Blogger.com for making possible the SIO Top-10™. Please note that due to sanctions against Xanga.com, no Xanga webrogs are allowed in the SIO Top-10™.

The 2005 SIO Top-10™ Review

11:03 pm | Weblogging | Comments: 1

In the wake of the announcement of the latest SIO Top-10™, let’s do a little review of the brogs and broggers featured in 2005’s SIO Top-10™:

1. Set It Off - SIO continues to rock, rock on, having weathered spam storms (which eventually claimed the life of the grand and glorious RandomChat™) and several other crises. Always innovating, pulling order from chaos and sense from blithering nonsense, SIO continues to dominate the universe with its sheer monopoly of hip.

2. Gimme Back My Bullets - Not only is my loyal sidekick Mark still going strong, he’s actually changed his layout.

3. Presbyterian Thoughts - Nate’s brog has been rock solid for over a full year now.

4. In God We Trust - Still perhaps the most prolific of the community webroggers, and certainly the most verbose.

5. The Delta Institute - Still around, and procreating as well.

6. Farmer Buie - No clue what happened to Buie. Word is he ran off to rake muck in Oklahoma (in case you read this, Bryan, we love you and want you to come back).

7. JWS - Now here’s a sad story. John gave up on a very promising webrog career to persue his interests in collecting belly-button lint, then sunk so low as to start a Xanga which he also quit.

8. Don’t Write Yourself Off Yet - Gone with the wind, though Maggie still operates a Xanga.

9. Penultimate Grooviness - Though rarely updated these days, Janna’s concise posts still garner piles of spam comments.

10. Yes, I Have No Bananas - Still really strange, and now with custom illustrations!

July 21, 2006

Searching

9:11 am | Poetry | Comments: 5

I ever wander through this world
in search, True Love, for thee.
Art thou on the hilltop,
Where the sunbeam chases me?
Or by the flowing river
Shaded by the willow tree?
Indeed, where e’er thou art,
Thou art most difficult to see.

Perhaps ’tis not with mortal eyes
upon thy face to look.
The words of Love that matter most
are written in the Book;
With eyes of faith I search the Book
until by grace I see
That everlasting Love is found
In Jesus’ death
on Calvary.

July 20, 2006

Undead

1:29 am | My Life | Comments: 5

From the ashes of a shattered past has risen what once was thought dead, but is now alive. Thanks to an idiot Geek Squad representative that stimulated a renewed burst of critical thinking, I have been able to recover the data from my old, dead hard drive. Veteran SIO readers will recall that last August my hard drive (almost) completely died, taking with it nearly three years of un-backed up files - documents, pictures, but perhaps most importantly my treasured music collection. Today, it has all been resurrected by a little internet research and a sweet program called Stellar Phoenix. Doesn’t boot? No problem. No partition information? No problem. Not formatted? No problem! Stellar’s Phoenix tool is amazing and performed flawlessly (needless to say for $99, I expected no less). I’m completely stoked about all of this, and considering the purchase of a nice, fat mp3 player to carry my reborn music library on. My only regret is that I will not get the opportunity to carry it around on campus and look super cool.

July 17, 2006

Finish the Race

7:33 pm | Weblogging | Comments: 5

I could talk about life, I could talk about love, I could talk about the love of life, a life of love… all those things. Currently I’m not talking about any of those things. Right now I’m talking about one of the more difficult aspects of weblogging, which is constancy. In weblogging, as with just about any form of print media I imagine, you often come up short for something to write about. This is not because there’s nothing to write about; it’s because you can’t think of anything to write about. Such inability of cognition stems from laziness, sleep deprivation, and/or being just plain stupid.

After more than two years, I often will begin weblog posts only to decide that the subject is something I’ve written about before or too many other people are writing about it now, or it just isn’t interesting to me and thus I scrap the post altogether. It’s an ongoing struggle, one which a majority of would-be webloggers are unable to overcome, opting instead of make an “I Quit” post. You’ll notice that most “I Quit” posts are followed up by a renewed attempt at weblogging, rather than a real cessation thereof. It’s normal for people to get bored with something and stop doing it, only to come back to it later (dog returning to its vomit? you decide). I always recommend that webloggers periodically take some time off, or just relax the pace a little bit. This point has been stressed on SIO many times in the past, but I keep running afoul of people who think they’re too good for weblogging.

“I Quit” posts always come off as whiny and cheap; a weblog is cruising along, and suddenly you get a very terse and stubborn-sounding post explaining how life is far too important to spend time weblogging, and people who spend time weblogging aren’t redeeming their time, and how they, the now-ex blogger, are moving on to much greater and redemptive persuits, blah blah blah. It’s a total crock. Let me tell you something: you’re either lazy, or you made too many people mad, or you’re put off that you don’t get enough comments. But time is not a factor. Many great weblogs are run on one post a week; that’s 10 minutes per week that such people “waste” in order to express themselves, organize their thoughts, and maybe even help some poor soul along the old road of life. Sometimes, it’s nice to check up on a weblog you haven’t read in a long time, just to see how one of your pals is doing. An “I Quit” post from 8 months ago isn’t going to be of any help at that juncture.

July 15, 2006

Not Getting the Message

6:13 pm | War | Comments: 7

There’s one thing I really like about terrorists. The vast majority of terrorists are complete morons. This applies most especially to your average, run-of-the-mill Islamic terrorists. Technically, I consider all moslems to be terrorists based on what the religion itself teaches. However, a certain portion of the Islamic world has more access to jeeps, AK-47s, and rocket-propelled grenades than the others and this is the group that I’m talking about today.

War in the Middle East has never really stopped since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. There’s either been more or less shooting, but nonetheless a constant state of war over the past 60ish years. Israel has cleaned up her opponents over the years; completely destroyed them. Egypt was a world power before 1967 saw the Arab-Israeli war (also known as the Six Day war, in reference to how long it took Israel to win). Their enemy wasn’t just Egypt; it was Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Nobody has heard from three of these four countries since then, although Iraq managed to get back into the news. None of this historical data, or any other ominous warning from the past, matters to a bunch of freak wacko maniac terrorists (a.k.a. moslems with guns) who think that kidnapping 2 Israeli soldiers and killing a few civilians is going to really accomplish something. It has accomplished something; the letting loose of the wrath of Israel. What a bunch of Einsteins.

July 13, 2006

Honestly

12:54 am | Relationships | Comments: 17

Here’s a good question. This one is for all you smart people out there. Why do people tell you they’ll do something, then don’t do it? Such behavioral inconsistency has bothered me for many years. Let’s just get the whole “yea James but you’re not perfect either” routine out of the way right now, because I know that I am not perfect. But I try to be honest with people. Disconnect between words and actions is a really bad sign when you’re interacting with people (thank you, Captain Obvious). I came up with this awesome quote the other day, I think it will catch on. It goes like this: actions speak louder than words. That’s right people, if you’re having a hard time believing what people are telling you, evaluate what they’re doing and quite often you can come to an appropriate conclusion about what is actually going on in their head. It’s like the woman that gets beaten by her dead-beat husband. He says he loves you, but he’s beating you. She says she wants to talk to you, but she won’t call you back. See where this is going? Reminds me of another great quote I thought up all by myself. An action is worth a thousand words.

July 9, 2006

Your First Mistake is Your Last

1:41 am | My Life | Comments: 3

It’s taken me about 15 years, but I finally have figured out how to play Minesweeper. Now Minesweeper is lots of fun, but it can be a real dog sometimes. Click one bomb and you’re done. You might have spent the last fifteen minutes clearing 90 of the 99 bombs on Expert, but you just click one wrong square - even if by accident - and that fifteen minutes is gone. Gone! Gone because you are; your digital self, projected onto the minefield, has been torn apart by a pixelated explosive device. Wipe that stupid frown off your face! I don’t care if it’s a sympathetic frown, I just got blasted into small pieces and all the game comes up with is a frowny face? Please. This is serious business. There needs to be more than a mother beautiful frowny face.