Wretched hive of scum and villany's Drunken Confessions

Reasons:	Grand Theft Auto IV
Time:	8:16 am.

Hooray, it's nearly upon us!

Some reviews are in as well and apparently the ps3 version is a bit better, with less load times, less pop-ins, and better anti-aliasing. (I am having a lot of problems with pop-ins with Mass Effect on the 360 for instance.)

So, there's a multiplayer function. Does anyone else even have a xbox 360 or ps3 besides kam? I need to know who would help me explore!

Two more days, dammit!

Update: The DLC is a fair point, I guess, but I'm expecting downloadable content on the PS3 version as well. The problem is that many people are tied to one version or the other because of their fanboyness, so it's hard to find an unbiased review really. I know one person who has an xbox 360, and he's a douchebag and won't give me his gamer code. (Oh, he gave me his friend's gamer code for some stupid reason.) He pirated the game anyway. So, I'm stuck with kam on the PS3.

Take one down, pass it around, 2 bottles of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	Futurama
Time:	8:07 am.

So, Jess and I have been watching a lot of Futurama. In fact, we watched Bender's Big Score off of Comedy Central last night. First, a joke from the movie:

A man loses his head in a terrible accident. A friendly alien species finds him, and reattaches his head. But upon standing up, the guy looks down and realizes his own naked ass is in the front now.
He cries: "You idiot! Its on backwards!"
They respond: "Well if you don't like it, why is your tail wagging?"

I came to the realization that I can map Futurama to my life, to a degree. Kam is Fry, cause everyone likes him and is obviously one of the main characters. I'm Bender, cause I'm kind of an asshole at times, even though I don't commit the cool crime of robbery, or smoke, or drink as much. And more appropriately, the Fry character likes me dispite these obvious shortcomings I have. heh Chuckie could be Zapf Brannigan or Kif, because obviously Laina is Amy. Matt, being the oldest, is most likely The Professor. I'm not sure who Jess is, as I suppose Louise has to be Leela.

So, which character are ya?

Take one down, pass it around, 13 bottles of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	Kaba Modern and Jabbawockeez are related
Time:	9:21 am.

So, Jess has been watching this show called America's Best Dance Crew. I'm going to avoid linking to corporate entities that don't need my support in this entry, if possible. Except for myspace, where it's more research than promotion. heh I'm sure I have some kind of virus after touching so much myspace. I'm good at research. There is more here, but my brain is hurting from bad myspace pages. (Only horrible one linked here is the 'fan site' one, which has MTV's fingerprints really.)

There are two teams in there, Kaba Modern and Jabbawockeez, that Jess and I picked out to be the best early on. (I have been watching the show, sadly.) BTW, she also liked BreakSk8, but they have several crews, and this just is their best, but jess can show her research if she wants.

I started poking around, and it seems they are both offshoots of Kababayan, which is a Filipino club at University of California, Irvine (UCI). Kaba Modern is a direct offshoot it appears, at least according to their Myspace FAQ. Which is kind of funny because none of them are actually Filipino.

Anyway, it seems that JWZ (their shorthand for Jabbawockeez) is also related. Apparently, the guy who runs the JWZ website also has links to this club, and to several of it's members. And Kevin Brewer's myspace also has links to the other members of the real, non-corporate JWZ myspace page, versus the very overstylized corporate JWZ fan site. (The real is set private, while the corporate one is public of course.) Others are out there, like Ben Chung, aka B-Tek and some others, of course set private due to the fame.

However, I found something else on YouTube where Boogiezone , which seems to be an organization with a TON of history per page, helped me piece it together, as best I understand it anyway. You can find individual videos of Ben Chung aka B-Tek Solo and then links to other ones like a Kevin Brewer's solo. There are tons of details on these pages, which lead to me pictures on myspace helping solidify the history of JWZ before they were JWZ.

It seems to me that there was originally just the university club, it had a dance off shoot. In fact, these guys might have been involved with the Kaba Modern group, at least some of them, and Ben Chung even choreographed for Kaba Modern at one point. Apparently people were involved in it, and liked dancing, so they kept dancing out of school. This community class might have been the start of it. They formed into a collective known as Family Royale. They took some of the members of that and made JWZ. Then they took the best of those, which were limited to between five and seven members, and they started dancing in competitions like America's Got Talent and America's Best Dance Crew. However, these guys are all older, in the 26-31 range, while the Kaba Modern crew is in the 20-24 range.

Hence, I say that Jabbawockeez is the graduate class of the undergrad version of Kaba Modern. No disrespect for either crew, I think they're great, I just think it's funny that what I think of the top two crews have such a shared history.

Take one down, pass it around, 1 bottle of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	New NIN album
Time:	11:09 am.
Music:	NIN - Ghosts.

So, I didn't even buy the last NIN album. I was kinda 'eh' about it. But, Gonzo, you have NIN in your nickname? Yeah, I wasn't happy with the overproduced nature of NIN music at the time.

Anyway, he has a new album out, after escaping his RIAA supported masters last year. It's 4 discs called Ghosts I-IV.
- Free for Ghosts I, 9 songs download available in 320 Kbps mp3 format, from his website or this fast torrent. (He pre-seeded some torrent sites)
- $5 for Ghosts I thru IV, all 36 songs they dide, in 320 Kbps mp3 from the NIN ghost website
- $10 for pre-order of the double cd made version, with immediate access to all 36 song download.
- $75 for pre-order double cd version, plus wav files of individual components for garagebanding and such, plus a blue ray version, and some other stu ff.
- $300 for pre-order of a crazy package of vinyl and weird packaging, signed, etc. only 2500 of them, but I'm not that dumb. really.

I'm gonna go with the double cd version I suppose. I've listened to about 6 songs so far. They were all made in 10 weeks with him and a small group. The songs don't have names, they have numbers. They don't seem to have any lyrics, which I miss already. Right now, they seem more in line with some of his Quake songs he made, some are rather sparse. But they're kinda all over the place. I just wish he had done a normal full cd release on the free side cause I hate burning short cd's.

Now, the question, if he's free of his music overlords, will his songs get airplay? Most likely nothing on this record, that I've heard so far.

Take one down, pass it around, 3 bottles of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	I'm always hatin'
Time:	7:17 pm.

I am hating on New York even more now.

This weekend, we were going there with friends. At least, at 5 am we were. At about 7:30 am, our 8 am flight was canceled. In fact, all New York flights were canceled. It seems that 4 inches of snow is too much for them. Oh wah wah wah... I was originally going to hate on New York, but I guess I can hate on it from afar. `8r) Luckily, I think we got full refunds for everything we had planned.

So, we've been on 'vacation' in the western burbs now. heh We spent a couple hours at Woodfield Mall, which is dangerous cause we spent money. Well, I didn't, but other people did. `8r)

So, what should be we do tomorrow? I think another 6 hour shift at the airport wouldn't be fun.

PS. Do not take a trip with this great video in your head.

Take one down, pass it around, 4 bottles of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	I think I just blew my own mind!
Time:	11:02 am.

So,

sunqist posted a video on dimensions which I think you should watch. And maybe the other two videos I posted below. And then I want you to answer these questions. (In the interest of full disclosure, please note that I do have a goatee.)

Poll #1139513 Dimensions
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Am I the good or evil Gonzo?

View Answers

Good
4 (57.1%)

Evil
3 (42.9%)

Are you the good or evil version of yourself?

View Answers

Good
2 (28.6%)

Evil
2 (28.6%)

You are insane
3 (42.9%)

What do you think of the implications of the video?

View Answers

If you think there are only three dimensions, what if one were displayed differently? What if there were more dimensions, like maybe 10 (Warning: science)?

This stuff plugs into string theory, which I like thinking about. Even though I'm almost an anti-physics person now, I still miss it somedays. heh

Take one down.

Reasons:	Friday ennui
Time:	10:03 am.

I am not feeling motivated today. I have a headache, my stomach is unhappy, I'm guessing because of a poor choice in food last night, and I just generally feel like crap. My back is acting up again, of course, because it's been like 6 months since I got the back shots. Yay for falling apart body! This is how you know you're old, you complain about your health than bragging about the concerts you are going to.

For the record, I have not been to a concert in some time, and do not foresee going to one anytime in the long future. Plus, I talk more about politics than I do about bands. Being old is boring.

On the plus side, New York trip is planned. Should be interesting. The differences in sleep schedule will be funny though, I'm pretty sure two people will be up early, and dragging ass at night, while me and another person will be up all night but refusing to get up in the morning. heh That should be amusing. `8r) Going to see the Internet is for Porn guys, and Eddie Izzard. yay

Blind competition rage obviously has it's own show now... And every time I think American culture can't go lower, they do. I mean, granted, I like bad TV. I like The Girls Next Door, I like the Hitler channel, I like Family Guy. And somewhere, all of these are 'bad' on someone's list. But seriously, the reality game shows have to stop. Why not just go straight to 'I Can Screw More People Than You' or 'I'm a Douche Bag to People'. Get the worst of the human experience up there! People will watch it like a train wreck.

Gaming wise, I'm bored. I'm playing Rappelz (free MMO, one of the better of the free ones, korean style like linage), WoW (just doing dailies now, I'm not raiding tonight), Eve (only inventing stuff), Hellgate London (it no longer crashes my machine!), and that's about it. I'm waiting patiently for Dynasty Warriors 6 that is coming out in like 2 weeks, cause I like the series. It would be fun when I have someone over and we can kick ass together. Even if no one wants to come play with me. On the plus side, Jess and I beat Mario Galaxies together, so this is the first game we ever beat together. (We had played gauntlet: dark legacy together at some point.)

In the spirit of doing things together, Jess has finally decided to play WoW. I need to build her a new machine though because her video card overheats otherwise. So, she's getting my old one, and I'm getting a pixel shader 3.0 card. I suppose I could start that build process right now, but see the first line in this post, and you'd understand. heh Things have dropped in price a little since my last 'plan' to build a computer, but it's the reinstalls that i'm worried about. Just too much data to move around. I dug out some old pictures though, which was amusing. Funny who I have kept pictures of, and who I don't have pictures of anymore.

That's about it. How you guys doing?

Take one down, pass it around, 7 bottles of beer on the wall.

Time:

10:23 am.

I Am A: Chaotic Good Human Wizard/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-13

Constitution-19

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-13

Charisma-10

Alignment:
Chaotic Good A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. However, chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment because it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus</a></b> (e-mail)

I was close to a halfing, but they didn't have tinker gnome. If I didn't take my height into consideration, that is where I'd be. Or Kender. heh Not sure why on Sorcerer considering I put nothing in charisma, and it really should have below 10 charisma really. heh But they don't show the graph of your stats, I guess. Going to go game the system and try to roll a fighter. Yep, got a half-orc fighter. `8r)

Take one down.

Reasons:	SUMMARY: Unable to install SUNWmdr and SUNWmdu on jumpstart
Time:	11:52 pm.

So, I've been battling Jumpstart. It's Solaris' method of installing a mass group of clients. I found out the low level problem, and I'm sure there's a high level solution, but here is my low level solution. I'll update it if someone can give me a better solution rather than hacking the packages themselves. Sorry if I go into technical detail here, Google do your magic and help some other poor soul.

Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) aka Solstice Disk Suite wasn't getting installed right. It was relatively easy to fix, sure, but goddamn is it annoying to have your machine's default boot state to be 'Enter your root password:' to fsck the disk instead of coming up right. So you had to connect a console to fix it, every jumpstart. So I wanted it fixed, permanently. I had problems with other things in it, like it going interactive, which is annoying and ended up removing /sbin/suninstall to fix (DON'T ASK!). Also, I thought it was the noaccess user screwing me over (pkgadd runs as that), but that was a red herring that took me 4 some hours to figure out. Then I found out the real problem.

Anyway, it turns out that for some reason, in my version of Jumpstart and JET (my jumpstart assist tool), with Solaris 9 9/05, << wasn't working right. Normally, that's the pipe character to say 'until you see the next word, add all this text to whatever program.' So, you'd see:

cat >$1 <<THEEND
CLASS="${CLASS}"
SOLARIS="${ANNOYING}"
THEEND

Which can easily be done instead as: (This is what I actually pasted in instead of the << crap)

echo "CLASSES=\"${CLASSES}\"">$1
echo "IS_AN_UPGRADE=\"${IS_AN_UPGRADE}\"">>$1
echo "RELEASE=\"${RELEASE}\"">>$1
echo "COPY_CONFIG=\"${COPY_CONFIG}\"">>$1

When you try to install SUNWmdr and SUNWmdu, the SVM packages, it would bomb out with messages like:
/tmp/installuRa4Dw/checkinstallwRa4Dw: /tmp/sh115060: cannot create
pkgadd: ERROR: checkinstall script did not complete successfully

This was because the << above was causing the 'cannot create' when it ran. After 3 fucking days of fighting jumpstart, I finally find the real problems. This is new to 9 9/05 as well, cause it worked fine in our old 9/04 (I think that was our version). All cause I got a new server that is a different architecture.

Anyway, Solutions! That's what I'm all about. Here was the final plan:

[ gonzo@machine ] $ cd  /jumpstart/OS/Sol9/Solaris_9/Product/SUNWmdr
[ gonzo@machine ] $ sudo vi  install/checkinstall
# Find the << lines and change it to the above format, with echo's instead.  The one above is the SUNWmdr one.
[ gonzo@machine ] $ wc -c install/checkinstall ; sum install/checkinstall
# Use the character count (first line) and the sum line (second line, first number)   This is my SUNWmdr one, post-hacking.
    2680 install/checkinstall
16216 6 install/checkinstall
[ gonzo@machine ] $ sudo vi pkgmap
# replace the numbers in pkgmap for checkinstall so the package is still valid.
[ gonzo@machine ] $ cd  /jumpstart/OS/Sol9/Solaris_9/Product/SUNWmdu
# Same thing all over again, with the single line of 'CLASS' instead. goddamnit.

I didn't sleep last night. It's 11:52 pm. 20-30 some jumpstarts later. I'm going to fucking bed as soon as jumpstart finishes, which takes about an hour and a half every cycle, so you can imagine how painful this was to fix. So fuck jumpstart, right the ear. And in fact, the package went in successfully, so I'm going to goddamn bed. heh Update1: It worked, the machine is up, and now I just need to get a storage device that I've never used before to work. By tonig.. oh wait. doh. `8r/

Take one down, pass it around, 6 bottles of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	The Doctor is in!
Time:	9:35 pm.

Yep, you know you got problems when your bad dreams consist of someone hijacking your email. heh

Anyway, what's going on with Dr. Gonzo? Not much really. How many people do you know that don't have college degrees and are directors at work? heh Well, bump that number up by one. We've had some major upheaval at work, so they promoted me, sorta. It's still interim because I turned them down at first. Now, there's a chance I have to do it based on who we hire for the remaining spots. I really just want to focus on my own stuff. And they've been actually keeping me somewhat busy, since like July or so as well. So it's an odd change.

So that leads to gaming! I've been playing wow somewhat, just like a quest here, a quest there. I still don't have any friends on my server who will play with me but eh. Not that I blame them, night elf marks hunters are usual douchebags. I've actually gotten a few dungeons done, and people have even remarked on the fact in the PUG that I'm not the one screwing up. heh I did a brand new dungeon, and only died once because no one told me about a new boss we were fighting, and we finished it anyway. The daily's give me something to do, and at least I can ask people if there's anything going on that they need my help on. I say that, but I just now started playing a bit, and ran someone though gnomer. We pulled half of it, and i lived. `8r) Then I fished for an hour and ... I am just covering ground I've already gone through.

In Eve Online news, I joined a new alliance and we moved up north. However, there was a pos mishap and all my pvp ships went boom. I didn't even get any insurance from them. hooray for buggy pos's! anyway, i'm not broke anymore though cause i went to jita and sold a bunch so i'ts not all bad.

I'm also playing in a beta for a pirate game, playing lego star wars on the wii (up to 92% done), ratchet and clank on the ps3, and hellgate london on the pc. oh and puzzle quest is out for the pc, so that too. funfunfun.

We had thanksgiving this year as well at my house. It was good. The food was excellent. My dad saw a bowl with small brown crunchy things, ate one, said 'these arn't cornuts, are they' and finished eating his catfood. heh it was funny. he realized it as soon as he put it in his mouth and finished it! heh

And that's about it. i wasted the day doing stupid stuff in wow. bleh.

Take one down, pass it around, 7 bottles of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	Blade Runner: Final Cut
Time:	8:29 pm.

So, thanks to the tip from the sleazy men in my life, I caught Blade Runner way the hell out in Barrington the other day. We were like two of twelve people in the theater. We were running really late too, and I was majorly speeding. However, it only took us half an hour to get there, so no complaints. The theater was dead quiet, except for my pretzel wrapper. heh

Anyway, Blade Runner: Final Cut is good. Even if the nice subtle messages of the original are lost, and replaced with obvious HEY GUESS WHAT signs instead, it's good. Ridley Scott cleaned up a most of the obvious flaws, and it is a much more cohesive pic overall. It's good for the people who have never seen it before. `8r) Plus, I saw some details on this version that I had missed before, and I had even seen it on the big screen before like 10 years ago. I don't think it was worth a complete new re-release but hey, if it gets more people to see it, awesome. Jess said it felt like she didn't see this picture before because it's so different on the big screen.

However, I still like the original, with voice over, so I'm masochist I guess. I'm going to pick it up for bluray so I can see the Workprint, which I hear great things about, and of course includes the original version as well. so yay Blade Runner! Now, I need a Blade Runner icon... hrm...

Take one down, pass it around, 1 bottle of beer on the wall.

Reasons:	Politics: Republicans, consider Ron Paul
Time:	9:52 am.

So, I consider myself an independent. Voting for the lesser evil and all that. I believe that the parties themselves are not all that different in their end goals, and I believe it harms the independence of the US overall by having just two parties. (Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!) I cannot volunteer in my local government without declaring myself one or the other, for instance. However, I accept the fact that there are two parties. I think I would describe myself as a fiscal conservative, but very liberal socially, maybe even going so far as calling myself a libertarian. But I end up voting for a mix of candidates for a variety of reasons.

I really like what Ron Paul has to say, for instance, so I'm hoping that any republicans out there would at least listen to what he has to say. Here's an interview he had on Jay Leno. If the Republicans ran this guy, I might vote for him. If they don't, I might be forced to vote for the democrats, whoever they run, because of the personal freedoms involved. And there are some I don't agree with at all! Yeah, I might vote against Hillary because of her video game stance. But more telling might be who she accepts money from, which I don't like even more. heh Anyway, it's a complicated issue.

If you're a republican, consider Ron Paul for the nomination. Who cares if you don't think he can win the nomination, why not throw your vote away and vote for someone who might do some good, rather than just being the lesser evil. Not that Illinois matters as a nomination state, but hey, whatever. He's the most popular candidate this series of tubes, and there's a reason. Just take time to listen for a bit.

Take one down, pass it around, 3 bottles of beer on the wall.

"Man drink like that, and don't eat, he is going to die!" -Sherrif Bart. So don't drink. And drive. and root. and go to meetings... in fact, don't listen to anything on here. including that statement. recurse.