Alias

Anyone see the last Alias?
Is anyone else worried like I am that it's going to suck this season? It seems that the writers have taken the show and made it episodic. Every episode has the whole thing wrapped up in a nice little package and resolves by the end of the episode. There is not much right now in the way of story arc. That kinda makes me mad. I mean they did that with Andromeda and the show sucked and crashed. I know they think that we as Americans can't watch an entire season... but with shows coming out on DVD every week, it would seem that people desire to watch that arc over and over again.
Again Hollywood does our thinking for us.

The only shows that can get away with episodes is sitcoms. They are designed that way. They present us with a problem... they fix it by the end. Science fiction shows are designed to show us a part of a larger story and have them fix the smaller problems along the way. People are into that, they want to see that. Why do you think people started to watch Farscape in the last 2 seasons? It's because of the story arc. Why do you think people loved to watch Babylon 5... the story arc. What is the best season(s) of Deepspace 9? The last ones when there was a story arc. People love this stuff. It's what keeps people coming back week after week. If you make it episodic, then people will show up and watch if they choose to.
I missed 2 entire seasons of Friends. When I came back, nothing much had changed... some friends were in different beds, but other than that I could just sit and watch and not be confused. That was a sitcom... if I missed 2 episodes of B5, then I would be SOL for about 3 more shows as I tried to figure out what I missed. Often times I would have to ask a friend or hop on the web to get the low down.
Reality TV is almost a good story arc illustration. That's "life" right there and you can see that people watch that stuff all the time. Why? Well part of it is our voyeuristic nature... the other part is the story arc. We want to see what happens next to the characters that we have started to like or hate.
Lost. There's another example of a good story arc. People come back week after week to see what happens to people on an island. There's even a larger being or something that looms over all of them that keeps us all in the story and makes us feel like a part of the cast. I mean if we knew why they were there, we would be less interested because we know something they don't know. As long as we are a part of the journey of the characters we feel like we need to know more and are glued to our chairs every week to find out.

Anyway... enough about TV.. got TIVO? If you get one, drop me a comment I'll give you my e-mail address so that

Links of the Day 2/11/05

Xbox 2 for Christmas this year - Great... now I need to make more room in my entertainment center.
That's no moon
Woman auctions off bump - One idiot does it...
Today's Dilbert

Jesus is cool! - What's with tackling the son of God?
Demon Be Gone!

Random thoughts and moments

Girl was locked in a room for 15 months
I hear a story like this and it makes me wonder why it seems to only happen to one child in the situation. I've seen other stories where 2 kids out of 5 were the ones they locked in a room and didn't feed them. Why not all of them, why only some? I'm sure it's a mental condition that causes this to happen and because it's in the brain, we can't figure out why it happened. This particular article says that they don't identify the man and woman, yet they put up their pictures... which is pretty close to identifying them.
The inevitable question comes up... What do you do with these people? I mean is death a good solution? Is putting them away for life good? Some feel that they need to be tortured, or killed in a painful method such as crucifixion or pulling their intestines out slowly and have them watch the whole thing as they die. Now I'm sure what's the right answer. However I do know that they shouldn't be allowed in public ever again. Hell, they shouldn't be allowed near children ever again. So I guess the next question is... is life in prison worth the cost? Or is Death the only way out? It's too bad we don't have a planet that we can drop these people off to. Let them have sex with each other for all I care...

On a completely different note. I love the Internet and they way that people like to hide themselves from being known. To a certain degree it's necessary because of all the sick bastards (kinda like the one in the news story) who prey on that kind of information. However when that anonymity is used to call other's out on their Bullshit but doesn't allow that person to know who their accuser is... it's kinda like the Wizard of OZ... the whole man behind the curtain thing... it's just not cool. If you want to call someone out... call them out... let the firing begin at noon on the street... at least then everyone knows who they are dealing with. Did you ever see that stupid show with the masked magician where he called all the other magicians out by showing their tricks to the world... did you see any of the other news stories that showed the other magicians reactions to the masked dude? anyway...

Anyone see the premier of American Dad it was pretty stupid... hopefully they will have better writting on the next couple of shows... because right now it sucks... Although I do like the Goldfish...

Okay, who didn't see the fact that Charlie was going to shoot that guy?

I love this series of Foxtrot
02/01/05
02/02/05
02/03/05
02/04/05
02/05/05

Budding Jordan cyber love ends in divorce - HAHAHAH! "'You are divorced, divorced, divorced' -- the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam. "
Oldest tree in Versailles pulled down after 324 years - That sucks...
Alex S. Maclean - Some pretty cool photographs
Buff Break Dancer - Damn he's strong... now was that Break Dancing or a body building routine?
NASCAR Dale Earnhardt LiveTiger Oscar Fish - You want how much?!?
SCI FI Renews Galactica - WOOT!
Man Finds Myster Nail in his neck - No idea how it got there?!?

Happy Chinese New Year

Welcome to 4702
Cocks are in.... monkeys are out.
Today celebrates the chinese New Year. So have fun with your bad self.... as I hear that the year of the rooster is a sign of bad times. It's also the age of Aquarius, so watch out for strange and new revelations about the holy grail.
Last night we went to the ex-roomate's new place. She then proceeded to poison me. You see I'm allergic to mushrooms... she knows this... I've stated it before... never the less there was mushrooms in the pasta. So I spent the night in pain as my stomach filled with gases. Let me just say that after my painful night, I rang in the new year with a blast. Oh, and I woke up with a migraine today...

Links of the day
Anti Crime Roadster - na na na na na na na na Batman
A Panoramic View of the moon - Fake that shit
Follow-up to cookie girls - WTF? Has to move out of town now?!?!!!
Mohawk-Wearing Team Survives Scalping WTF?!?!
Burglars get unwanted Valentine's day card - I can see a follow-up to this one with them sueing them for harrasment. Of course this isn't the US.
Food Sculptures - Damn... you can do that with butter?
Cult of Mac Blog - You know when you have too much time when.

Why does Linux make it so hard?

I've been at this new job for 9 months now and I've gotten to know a little more about Linux. I've played with Fedora and Slackware and I've touched Solaris. Each of these are difficult in its own right. I have to say that Slackware is the worst of these. Especially for a windows guy such as myself.
Now before you start bashing the shit out of me for being a "windows" guy. Let me put it to you this way. I can install and play a game on the day it comes out and be up and running within a couple of minutes to a half hour (depending on the install time). That to me is the best thing since I can get to playing. On Linux I have to install 47 other things and many times have to compile the source code so that it matches my kernel. This to me is not easy. Not to mention changes up the wazoo that has to be made in obscure files. For me... Windows just works. Sure, if you have substandard hardware and flakey software installed, along with tons of "protective" programs installed, you're going to run into problems. Somtimes you might even get the dreaded BSOD. However, if you are running a very vanilla OS, you will have little to no problems.
Linux users tout that they don't get bsod... sure they don't... and the program they have just won't run and you have to spend 6 hours trying to find out that you have one line messed up in some file that won't let you run it. Oh and I've BSOD (B=Black) a Linux box... it wasn't pretty.

I just spent 2 days installing Fedora Core 3 and a new ticketing system called OTRS. The company that makes it is german so the documentation is written for those that are familar with the operating system. Since I am pretty new to Linux, the setup took far too long for me to get just e-mail to work. Last week I was installing RT which never worked properly and to install that took 3 days before I gave up. I also tried installing it on Slackware. While it had tools I was more familar with (pine, pico) it was a complete bitch to install the thing and you had to break our your secret decoder ring to partition the tables. The local Slackware guy just shook his head and wouldn't help me out because he didn't like the mod_perl module that had to be loaded by this program. So I wasted an entire week installing a program that I couldn't get to work on an OS that I totally didn't get or like. After I reinstalled RT to Fedora, that's when the boss said that I should try OTRS. That installed quicker... but I still don't like Linux any more today than I did yesterday.
If they are going to make it in this business... it needs to work and work easy. You know... when I install a program I should just type "setup" or "install" and it just installs or asks a few questions and then installs. None of this hacking 47 setup files manually.... looking up on 15 websites to find 15 more files to edit and then finally building and installing the program.

Links of the Day Feb 8th

Clean-your-screen-for-free-now.com - Thanks Mine was dirty
Super Bowl Special! - The best and worst ads this year - That's his opinion anyway
Man Fined $600 for Hurling Egg McMuffin - Damn, that's alot for some eggs
Raging Bull - It really does give you wings if you die from it
Why North Americans ain't got rhythm. - Well at least now I have an excuse
Adding Violence to Non-violent Games on Something Awful - Too much time on their hands

How I spent my weekend

Let's see.
Friday Night:
Jessica1 and Dave1 decided not to go out with Sean & Patti, so we had the night to ourselves... how did we spend it... sitting and doing not much.
Saturday:
Spent the day playing on my computer and wiring up the entertainment center properly along with running a cable along the walls and ceiling to my computer desk so that I can have the cable modem and router at my desk and I can hook up my ATI All In Wonder card so I can watch some tv on my pc if I choose. Unpacked some boxes. My wife came home and was sort of impressed, but I discovered that she was annoyed that I didn't touch the kitchen. You see I chose to put away things that I knew pretty much where they went. Now in my defense I didn't touch the kitchen for several reasons:
1) Not all the hardware for the shelving is there.
2) I know that I would have put something somewhere that she wouldn't like
3) I would have put something in the right place, but the wrong way.
4) I would have put something in the right place, the right way, but not cleaned properly.
5) I would have done something wrong somehow that I can't even come up with....

So you see, in order to avoid all 5 of those reasons I choose to stay out of the kitchen. Later on that night, I could tell that she was annoyed that I put away movies and CDs because she asked for something that was packed away and I told her I don't have a clue as to where that would be and she said "that's because it's not in an Entertainment center box". Turns out I also put away VHS tapes and CDs in the wrong place. Guess I can't win for trying. But at least 5 more boxes were unpacked. Where the shit goes is a problem for another day. I just want these stupid boxes out of the house so that we can properly put things away. Oh and if the above seems like I'm complaining... I'm not. I love my wife with all my heart.

Sunday:
Spent most of the day at my parents house installing XP on their machine along with Office 2003. Like all good parents they went out and got the memory I told them to get. Which is great. Like all good upgrades, another part had to be bought and that was a DVD drive since the CD drive that they had wouldn't read cdrs for some odd reason. You'd think that a 52x drive would be able to read any disc out there... guess I was wrong. At least they wont' need a DVD drive later in life. Then I went home and watched commercial... oh and a game in between... but mostly I just watch the commercials...
Wife and I went to Red Lobster for dinner and to sort of celebrate our anniversaries of when we met and when I proposed to her. Which isn't till this weekend... but the opportunity presented itself in the fact that she actually picked a place to eat.

Links of Day - Feb 7th

Links of the day

If Dogs Ruled the world - Along the lines of the Apes one before
The funniest Oedipus Paper you'll ever read - Dre got most of his stuff from oedipus
3 millon missing nickels found - Oh yeah, and some pot too
Bear & Cat - Zuma only different

Playing games on buildings - Tetris on a large scale!
Girls sued for delivering cookies - Oh my gawd... WTF? And the woman didn't go out the front door? Or even look?!? $900?!?!!! Learned their lesson?!?! I mean... ung, I mean... WTF?!?
Jail Cam - Got nothing else to do? Then watch the waiting room in a jail
Chevettes on Ice - What do Canadians do when there is no hockey?
Dorks Gone Wild - For those that watched the Simpsons last night after the superbowl
4-year-old Mich. Boy Drives Mother's Car - It's 1:30AM do you know where you children are?
Superbowl ads - For those that missed them yesterday