Year: 2008

What A Dick

March 19, 2008

Rants

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WOW:

At least 3,990 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in 2003. It has cost taxpayers about $500 billion and estimates of the final tab run far higher. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglizt and Harvard University public finance expert Linda Bilmes have estimated the eventual cost at $3 trillion when all the expenses, including long-term care for veterans, are calculated.

– Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

K-Rock March Bracket Brawl

March 11, 2008

Music

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I present to you (with great difficulty), my brackets. By the way, this will never win, because I can just tell it’s not what people think. Click the image for full size.

 

Now here were the problems:

  1. Led Zeppelin vs. Pink Floyd – hard to choose for me. Both great in their own unique ways.
  2. Stone Temple Pilots vs Pearl Jam. Yikes! I went with STP because the only Pearl Jam album that was awesome was Ten (everything else was just ok).
  3. Foo Fighters vs. Audioslave – Hmm… I’m going with Foo Fighters because the category was 90s, and they had better stuff in the 90s. The good Audioslave wasn’t until 2002 or so.
  4. And the winner? Metallica? Yes, it’s what I picked. I’ve been a Metallica person for the longest time, especially their 80s and 90s works. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd are legendary, but I didn’t grow up on that. Once again they all cannot really be compared. It’s semi unfair.

Check out the picks of Keith Connor’s, dignitary at the Mirror office.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

March 6, 2008

Computer/ Tech Related, Rants

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Whaaaaa? Microsuck just released IE7 and you mean to tell me there already is a public beta for 8? Yep, and I have the “privilege” (rolls eyes) of ruining my computer by testing it. I will give you a full review of it below. Warning: while I try to post in plain English, I may use some terms unfamiliar to you non-techies such as CSS, XHTML, Acid2 etc. Use Google and learn something.

What’s the deal with IE 8? Let’s start with the graphical interface. Microsoft did not really do anything with it. Everything looks just like IE7. the only thing I noticed is that it looks like they finally got favicon support right. Also, i. There is also a bug where there is no text select cursor and you only get an arrow. For a complete listing of features according to these morons, go here.

And here is the part where I simply slap my head in shame. IE8 was claimed to be released to pass the Acid2 test and be standards compliant. Yes, IE8 does pass Acid2, but that is not the point. What good is passing a stupid CSS test, if it renders many other pages WORSE than IE6 does. That’s right folks, they broke it big time. Let me put it nicely. The developers pissed, shit and puked on the page rendering engine before slapping it in a browser and hastily releasing it to the public. Portfolioso.com’s main page (not the blog) is XHTML strict and renders properly in Firefox (1,1.5,2,3), Safari, Opera, IE6 (kind of – no transparent PNG support), IE7 and probably other browsers – yet looks like ass in IE8. Once again, Microsoft added support for web standards, and we have a website using valid CSS and valid XHTML Strict, still displaying improperly. “Oh but cut them some slack, it’s just a beta.” NO! They don’t get any slack. This is a rich company that has been working on this for months. They should do a half decent job before releasing it to the public.

I have a couple of screenshots of how poorly webpages look in IE8.

  • Portfolioso.com Home – Look how badly the menu is spaced. This is CSS and XHTML Strict Compliant
  • EVAC Website (HTML 4 Transitional) – No idea what happened here. IE8 wrecks it. Take a look at EVAC’s site in your current browser and then look at that screenshot… Also note that this site is HTML 4.0 Transitional and follows W3 standards, displays the same in all browsers, but not IE8

The quick and dirty: This is a very poor release and Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves. Ever with the exception of Windows XP, every product released after that is pure garbage, and IE8 is living up to those standards. I’m assuming these rendering problems will be fixed in future IE8 beta releases, but we shall see. Firefox 3 (I test betas of that, too) is kicking serious ass. Firefox 3 is amazing – I cannot say enough about it. When it is finally released, everyone NEEDS to get it for many reasons (another post). The only thing Firefox 3 lacks that IE7 has is a thumbnail view of all tabs. But that’s just eye candy. When it comes down to solid performance, Firefox wins.

Cheese Nips

February 24, 2008

Rants

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The contents of this post are under review, but what I was trying to say was that Cheese Nips are gross and Cheese Its are the real deal. I’ll fix the post later.

Edit – Actually I won’t update this because I don’t care at this point. But when I wrote it, I really seemed to care.

Ludaaaaaaaaa

February 18, 2008

Music, Rants

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Updated 2/22/08! You should reread it because I added a lot of things and corrected my 5AM lack of grammar.

On Friday, Ludacris came to my school for a concert and I only went because the school paid for me to stand around and do nothing work with security, otherwise I absolutely would not have spent a dime on this trash. (Actually, I expect to be paid back with a usurious amount of interest on that $30 – if you haven’t noticed, the economy has gone to shit and I need money, and FUSA has a habit of not paying concert workers back until around May). In economics terms, the opportunity cost would be forgoing my usual Friday night activities for a free ticket (Mineskies would be so proud that I used EC11 material on my blog). Well let me tell you, it pretty much spoiled my night. Not only did Luda show up excessively late (yes, I understand concerts are usually not on time – that’s normal, but this was extreme), his performance lasted a whopping 55 minutes to an hour. You know what else is crap? The school paid $85,000 out of their $33,000 concert budget to pay for an asshole to throw the microphone down after less than an hour, insult the audience (many of whom enjoyed it and cheered) and run out to go to the NBA all star game. I wasn’t even paying attention to the concert that much because it was so much more entertaining to watch drunk, scantily-clad freshmen trip down the bleachers and puke in garbage cans. All of a sudden, I looked up and wondered why people were storming towards the exits. Someone from Bridgeport did not pull out an automatic and shot the place up, as we all assumed, but Luda ended the concert so nonchalantly, I did not notice. Compare that to the pyrotechnic finale at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert… JEEEEZ.

The concert was one of the most pointless, stupidest things I have ever seen in my life. Ludacris used like 4 words/ phrases the entire time. All he did was call all of the girls there hos (many of whom probably are, but that’s beside the point). The fact that the whole place was screaming every time he called them hos was sickening. Some key phrases of the night included: “You’s a ho” and “Where all my weed smokers at,” “hold up yo lighters,” “fuck dat side,” and “when I move you move.” Let me tell you something? I don’t give a shit when you move, I’ll move when I damn well please, not when you tell me to. Okay, maybe I’m being just a bit too harsh – it’s only a song spoken, DJ’d talentless piece of crap.

This guy is so full of shit it’s not even funny. First he asks the crowd who is broke, and most people (being college students in need of money) scream. A few minutes later, he continues on with some lyrics “If you ain’t got no money take your broke ass home.” Well, everyone should have just walked out, because that was just pointless. But apparently, in order to get anywhere in this society, you need status and money. It’s so awful. This is why there are very few good people left because of this trash.