Author: RagManX

Carl’s truck

carls-truck.jpgI’ve been spending time lately trying to learn how to use the open source image editing tool GIMP. Since I don’t have a lot of pictures I want to work with, I decided to check out the Library of Congress photo stream on Flickr. These photos are professionally captured images done by government workers, which make them public domain and usable by peons like me. Browsing the 1940s color photos stream, I saw this and couldn’t help but view it as some mid-south good-ol’ boy working on a prized auto.

Now in reality, I’m pretty sure that’s someone working on a plane’s landing gear. But I saw it and thought Satisfied with his new lifters, Carl decides he’ll take the monster truck Saturday for his date with Bobby Sue. And having known a few folks when I was younger that did drive trucks with 3-4 feet clearance or more, it just seemed like some of them would approve of Carl’s plans.

So I know that’s stupid, but wanted to share.

[tags]Library of Congress, Flickr, Carl, Monster Truck, Bobby Sue[/tags]

Rush could be indicted for behavoir regarding Ohio primary?

Well, if you listen to Rush, you might have heard him recommending his Ohio (and Pennsylvania and other states with looming primaries) conservative listeners to vote for Hillary in the Democratic primaries.  Apparently, the intention is to keep the Democrats fighting between the Barrack and Hillary camps long enough to make uniting the party difficult, thereby giving McCain the upper-hand in November.  Rush is also telling his listeners that he could be indicted for doing this.  That’s true, but it’s unlikely.  Don’t believe me? Well, see what the Ohio Attorney General has to say about Rush’s claims:

“We have no intention of prosecuting Rush Limbaugh because lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime,” said Leo Jennings, a spokesman for Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann.

Lucky for Rush stupidity isn’t a crime, I guess.  On the other hand, he’d be off the air if it were.  But then, most of us would be indicted, too, at some point in our lives.

[tags]Rush, Stupidity, Being stupid isn’t a crime, Election, Primaries[/tags]

Satellite kill debriefing

Some of you may remember the falling satellite that some of our excellent members of the US military were able to shoot down recently. There is plenty of news coverage about the event, both pre-shooting and after the successful shot. There is video, such as this ABC clip from the raw footage captured during the shooting:

Beyond all that, there is a very interesting report on the event from the Stanford Group, apparently prepared by retired General David E. Baker. This has some of the best information I’ve seen on the shooting, and covers what happened and who was pleased or displeased by our doing this. I received this from a friend, so can’t speak to where he got it, but wanted to share it because it’s an interesting and brief read.

Hitting a bullet with a bullet: Last Wednesday a federal notice was released warning all ships and
planes to avoid a restricted zone just west of Hawaii for 2½ hours beginning at 7:30 Pacific time. Soon
after, USS Lake Erie’s commander, Capt. Randy Hendrickson received orders from the U.S. Secretary of
Defense to “release the weapon”. Tactical officer Lt. Cmdr. Drew Bates pushed a button and a crippled
U.S. spy satellite known, as USA 193 was history.

You can grab the full PDF version of the report from me, which I’ll keep up as long as my bandwidth allows.

[tags]Satellite, Military muscle, Satellite shootdown, Stanford Group[/tags]

Disappointing game launches

The all time 5 worst game launches? Honestly, that’s a list that has to be tough to narrow down to just 5.  Still, 1Up has managed to highlight the worst offenders.  One managed to recover quite nicely and become one of the highest rated games of all time, but the delivery and verification process at release was insanely bad.

2. Steam/Half-Life 2

Yes, yes, we all love Steam now. It’s the model of digital distribution and community management in PC gaming right now, utterly shaming Microsoft’s embarrassingly inept Games for Windows Live initiative. But back in the day, we were even harsher on Valve than we now are on Microsoft — because the official launch of Steam on November 16, 2004, which coincided with the launch of Half-Life 2, was an utter nightmare.

Wall-of-text warning on the original article, though.  Seems the web-layout folks might want to educate the writers on the importance of more paragraphs and other visual breaks.

[tags]1Up, Half-Life, Worst game launches, Gaming[/tags]