Might Snatch Ya Necklace

Before I begin, I'd like to say that this stuff... is the best freakin' ramen on the planet. Go get a few boxes from your local Oriental marketplace, today! I'm not kidding.

OK, so I used the headset two nights ago and the clarity on it was awesome. I really did like it. My friend and I tried it out on his SoF2 server that was running TeamSpeak. The problem with that was his server is in Oregon, and I'm in Michigan. His voice came across OK, but mine was apparently very choppy. I guess my upstream can't handle that distance.

I suggested that we try out Skype, since it was supposed to have excellent clarity even over great distances (because of the nature of it's P2P model). Immediately, we could tell the difference between the two. Skype required no tweaking or set-up and was immediately functional. The sound quality was incredible and didn't bog down either of our connections. It's like a TeamSpeaker's dream come true. Now, we don't have to clog the server's bandwidth and we can still speak to each other. Plus, it will work with any game, because it's a completely independent program. It's meant to be used for general VoIP chat.

Sorry if I'm coming across as a Skype evangelist, but we really do love it. I hope it never gets bogged down with spyware/adware/malware like KaZaa did (Skype is made by the makers of KaZaa [but not the same people who bought KaZaa out, changed the EULA, and inserted all of the spyware]). If not, I could see myself using it forever. Even though, when my wife woke up and saw me on the computer, she said I looked like a dork and a telemarketer. I tend to disagree. Either way, we talked over Skype for about 3:50.

So, that makes my two, new best electronic friends Skype and Gmail. I love both, equally. Screw Hotmail. Before Google announced their free gig, Hotmail's "extra storage" accounts (of which, I am a member) only carried 10MB, it still had several large, annoying ads on each page, and we were paying $15 a year for that!

I started moving all of my old e-mails over to Gmail from Hotmail so I can cancel my account. They sent me a notice about the upgrades they plan on doing. According to that e-mail, my current account will be upgraded to 2GB of storage, plus the ability to send 20MB attachments.

Oh yeah? Where was all this hospitality before April 1st? IIRC, Hotmail, you were increasing my costs and keeping my storage the same at the beginning of this year. If the last two years of "extra storage" has taught me anything, it's that Microsoft refuses to innovate unless they are financially threatened. Even still, with all of MS's funding, they still are only handing out 250MB for free accounts. For a company who loves to claim that in a few years, hardware will be free, they sure hate to part with their own. I for one welcome our new gigabyte overlords.

What did we learn?

Here's a tip: don't wear two items of clothing with a button fly at the same time.

I never thought I would need to coordinate my underwear fly with my pants fly, but when I go to the bathroom it takes like a thousand hours to undo.

I am looking to get a gaming headset since my Unreal Tournament 2004: Special Edition DVD from Best Buy deal fell through a few months ago. So, I'm looking at the Plantronics DSP-500 and I see that they released a special Counterstrike Edition with different colors. It's also substantially less expensive than the normal one and is listed as an OEM product. It sounds good, but I don't know if I like the bright colors.
Do you think it's too bright?



It's hard for me to tell if it's going to be cool bright or I-didn't-think-you-could-look-like-more-of-an-idiot-than-you-already-do-wearing-a-headset-but-boy-you-managed-to-pull-that-off bright.

Comments? Opinions? Questions? Lapdances?

It Don't Get No Righter

So, what have I been up to?

Well, I just got married, so what do you think? Oh yeah, that's right... lots and lots of computer games.

I'm trying to change jobs, too, which is always scary for me... I like change for most things, but I hate the process of getting a job. It's all so subjective and unsure. There's 80 million things that you're supposed to do and I forget to do all of them.

I want to get a good portfolio built up so that I can show it off to my potential employers. But, I haven't had much time to work on my web site code. Believe it or not, I want to be a web site programmer and, right now, that site looks like crap. Angelfire doesn't work with fully working XHTML of any type. The advertisement at the top of the page goes away and leaves the following in its place:

 "); //--> "); //-->

You figure that out... How can someone write code that poorly? I've tried making the DOCTYPE less strict, but it still messes up... I need to switch to a better page provider. Angelfire is too screwed up for me.

I also want to showcase the other web site projects I've worked on over the years, but I will either have to compromise to screenshots or to a simulation of the ASPs that I made, because it's tough to reproduce the entire web site and still be proud of it. Don't get me wrong, I wrote some great code, but on collaborative projects, much of the final result is sub-par for me. I'd have to sort of restrict it to only pages I wrote. I also don't want to be taking credit for others' work, because some of them did decent jobs.

Today, my wife called me and said that someone in our church might be interested in hiring web site developers because they need more for contracts they have. I'm all about that, if it's legit.

After moving to Michigan, I've been confronted probably 3 times by college-age people who will just walk up to you and start talking to you about how you look familiar and ask you where you're from and tell an anecdote about how they relate to you... then they awkwardly switch gears and start asking you if you're an adventurous person or if you consider yourself open-minded. Why don't they just say, "Do you want to give me lots of money?" like the people in DC do? I guess I'm used to a more up front type of hustler. Firstly, I hate preppy guys. Secondly, I hate outgoing people. Thirdly, I hate scams. Fourthly, I like money. Those four reasons are what allow me to just laugh while they were so happy that they had smoothly made it all the way up to "the pitch." If I ever resort to offering "business opportunities" like that, shoot me dead.

First Post!

I am so happy to be in America!
More on me @ http://www.livejournal.com/users/seinjunkie/

Sites you should have already seen

I just thought about some sites that I've enjoyed over the past 7 years or so that I become so stingy with, that sometimes I forget to share things with you. Forgive me? OK... Enjoy the crap out of these:
Jamming a Pair of Scissors Repeatedly Into Your Crotch
Bonsai Kitten
Lime Cat is not pleased
The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

There's probably more that I can't think of right now... what other entertaining sites should be in this list?

I Now Present to You... Mr. and Mrs. SeinJunkie

Wow! It's been more than 2 weeks since I've been married. I still like it, but then, anyone will like marriage with the right person. The only thing that grooms-to-be need to consider is the weight of the wedding band

when typing/playing games. I had considered it when looking at rings, but in the end, I didn't want my hands to look feminine just so I could have a lighter ring finger. So, I just pop it off when I'm playing, which is handy.

I totally have to upload some of my wedding/honeymoon pictures here soon. We went to the Riviera Maya in Mexico. It's about 40 minutes south of Cancun. I didn't want to go to Cancun itself, because it's such a teenager/college town. I had been recommended to go to Aventura Spa Palace by a friend over IRC (there's also a site here confusingly). The great thing about Aventura Spa was that it was 18+ only. It also had a nice spa there and the reviews it received was very positive. ASP looked awesome and I was really psyched about it, but after talking with some travel agents, I wasn't positive about the price.

The last travel agent I spoke with recommended Secrets Capri as an alternative to ASP. It too was adults only, and it had just opened last fall. They were also having a deal at the time that made Secrets cost substantially less than ASP (I have been told since then, that Secrets is more expensive sometimes). At any rate, Secrets Capri was tons of fun. To begin talking about it is almost pointless. It was just awesome. We completely relaxed the whole time. You couldn't find stress there if you were looking for it. I have a feeling that even my mother-in-law wouldn't stress out there (Okay, that's pushing it). Everything really was great, though. I would easily recommend it to anybody. The staff was friendly, the place was beautiful, the drinks were free, the meals were orgasmic (and didn't require reservations like the other resorts in that area). To put it mildly, this was the definition of "holiday."

Anyway, gotta go. Like I said, I'll have to post more pictures later.