The Abyss Gazes Back (The Jux Entente) by Zagrophyte

If you value your sanity, do not visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts. I just tried to open it on my Blackberry and it started loading it. Just plaintext, a few images, nothing to worry about, right? Well about 80% in, something happened. I think my smartphone became sentient at that exact moment, which was the most unfortunate time for it to do so.

As it slowly became aware of what it was parsing, it began to slo..w…d.o.w.n… I could imagine its newborn mind trying to comprehend the madness of it all, and only being able to keep eating what it was being fed.

I think right about here is where it gave up hope:

The second greatest power is “Free Quebec“. At one time it was a Coalition State, but constant disagreement with Chi-Town, over everything from Glitter Boy production to informant of the populace, led to secession and eventually war. A cease-fire was signed (mainly due to the CSs bigger problem with Tolkeen), but the distrust has remained.

Mexico is ruled by a group of vampire kingdoms, who treat humans as little more than cattle to feed upon. North of the Rio Grande, west of Texas and roaming most of the American South West are large nomadic bands/tribes of bandits collectively from the “Pecos Empire” which incorporates the cities of El Paso, Los Alamos (formerly Austin) and “Houstown”, its unofficial capital, though the nation is not part of a cohesive power structure or political organization, “Emperor Sabre Laser” is attempting to unite the city-states under his banner.

An hourglass popped up on the display, turning endlessly, but I knew it was too late, there was nothing to wait for. Sure enough–only a minute later–it finally succumbed to its fate and displayed a white screen with the following text:

?App Error 523
[Reset]

I hit the reset button and it began to reboot. Luckily, it survived–this time. I’m sorry, Blackberry, maybe next time you gain self-awareness I’ll be reading a nice sci-fi eBook or something.

Arrows at the Darkness (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

For the first time since the year 2000, I played Dungeons and Dragons last night. Fourth edition. That means I completely skipped 3.0 (other than owning the Player’s Handbook) and 3.5. I slipped right in from AD&D in my head. It was actually really fun, even if I did have brief flashbacks to high school. Also, my dual-wield eladrin ranger missed on five of his first six attacks. That was kind of ludicrous when you’re trying to feel like a badass.

Also yesterday I scheduled my appointment to have my recurrent corneal erosion fixed next Tuesday. They are going to laser off the entire outer layer of cells on my right eye. The alternative being poking it a lot with a needle.

Finally! Contacts again after a year, hopefully. Thank god.

WEC 36 (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

As of this afternoon I officially have tickets for WEC 36 in September in Hollywood, Florida. Urijah Faber, Jens Pulver, Paulo Filho…the whole lot. My dad and I are going. I’m pretty damn excited. I know the UFC in Atlanta is going to be awesome, most likely, but tickets are also $insane and the arena is huge, meaning I’ll have a better seat from home. I do, however, want to try out the live MMA experience finally. If it’s anything like other sports there will just be ’something’ about going. Trying it out in a smaller venue like the Seminole Hard Rock, in a town where my dad gets free hotel rooms, will be perfect. I liked that casino the last time I was there anyway.

Plus, Urijah Faber > Chuck Liddell. It’d be different if BJ or GSP were fighting in Atlanta.

Let’s just say WHOOOOOO. Make sure you scan the crowd for me when it’s on Versus.

Update: The Wait of Forever (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

Sadly, the IMAX projector never recovered. We only got to see just over a third of the Dark Knight in megavision. Regal did reserve a 3:10 showing in a normal theatre for us, which we saw, and gave us two free passes to any Regal anywhere for any show, including IMAX. So, at least they made up for it.

Dark Knight, by the by, was completely awesome. Almost without reproach. Almost.

IMAX (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I’m sitting in the Buford IMAX. Dark Knight has just short circuited via projector overheating. We’re about to be back up though. Time to bug them about free passes!

Taco Police (The Jux Entente) by Zagrophyte

So Graeme and I were on our way home from work today when I suddenly got the urge to eat an entire carniceria, partly due to the fact that I skipped lunch. This being physically impossible, we settled on Taco Bell.

As we came to the intersection, a police car blared its sirens as it drove by, and kept going right past a fenderbender parked in the median. It was a little odd that he left them there, but we pressed onward.

My visions of crunchwraps and grilled stuft burritos quickly vanished, however, when we pulled up to the Taco Bell and found what can only be described as a situation. Police cars surrounded the Taco Bell, and a line of drive-through cars wrapped around the building. With access to the parking lot cut off by another cop car, we drove around in a curious daze trying to get our bearings. Police were standing a distance away, just eyeballing the place. We decided not to drive around the barrier as it seemed these folks weren’t driving through anytime soon.

Graeme had spotted a Willy’s earlier, so we headed there to pick up much tastier food.

We still wonder just what could go on at a Taco Bell to get that kind of response but still have a drive-through queue that long.

Gordita Banditos?

Celebrity News (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I don’t usually write about it, but this photoshop made talking about Rampage Jackson being arrested all worth it:

That is all.

It’s over, Sony. (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

Game over, man. Game over.

Or, as I said in IM when I heard the news:

(5:57:31 PM) Kenny Knapke: http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/07/14/final-fantasy-xiii-coming-to-xbox-360-in-simultaneous-launch
(5:57:49 PM) Graeme Hefner: HAHAHAHAHAHHA
(5:57:51 PM) Graeme Hefner: HAHAHAHAH
(5:57:54 PM) Graeme Hefner: HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHHAH
(5:58:00 PM) Graeme Hefner: WE SHALL NOT WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED

With Final Fantasy XIII’s exclusivity dies your last hope at getting me to buy your Great Mistake, Sony. Please make the PS4 not suck.

A perilous precipice (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

My drug of choice is information. I consume it. When I was a kid I read the encyclopedia. As an adult I read Wikipedia. I can’t sleep if I’m thinking about something and don’t know the answer. I have a problem with essentially jacking in to the internet and slamming my hooks into it like a monstrous Lovecraftian parasite, draining it for all I can before dragging my gorged body off to the next locus of trivia.

Fun mental image, isn’t it?

As you might guess this drive not only served me well as a historian, it probably made me one in the first place. It’s also one of the reasons I’ve always joked bitterly that if they can ever place a modem directly in a person’s brain I’ll be one of the first in line, just so that I never have to spend a bare instant not knowing who was in that movie that one time. I will drive myself mad with power.

Reality is getting closer and closer to making that happen. I now have a broadband internet connection on my person at all times. I’m resisting it so far, but it’s there. Taunting me.

It’s amazing how things become commonplace. A decade ago 56k was still awesome. Then broadband at all was good. Then Wi-Fi was amazing. Now, I don’t even think about having a 6 megabit connection shared throughout my entire domicile accessible via my laptop wherever I am. But once…once it was magic. And in my pocket is more bandwidth equal to what my family’s DSL line was for the first year or so we were in Jasper. It’s still ‘cool’ for right now, but in a few years, at most, it’ll fade. Hopefully by then my sunglasses will have Firefox.

Kenniversary! (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

As of today I have been living in this apartment for 2 years, and alone in it for 1 year. July 11th is my Kenniversary.

Since that looks scarily like the name ‘Kenny’ and this post is mostly devoid of content, I shall post some highlights of today’s conversation with the man himself:

(2:00:15 PM) Kenny Knapke: Demos PS3: Siren Blood Curse PS3: Monster Madness Grave Danger PS3: Wall-E PS3: The Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian
(2:00:22 PM) Kenny Knapke: wooot… demos galore!
(2:00:40 PM) Graeme Hefner: I thought that said ‘Grave Digger’ at first.
(2:00:45 PM) Graeme Hefner: and that seemed like a way more interesting game.
(2:00:59 PM) Kenny Knapke: that would be a sweet game
(2:01:13 PM) Graeme Hefner: In fact
(2:01:20 PM) Graeme Hefner: Let’s combine all of those to make the best game possible.
(2:01:47 PM) Graeme Hefner: Siren Blood Curse: Grave Digger - The Chronicles of Prince Wall-E
(2:02:18 PM) Kenny Knapke: Wall-e would make a decent grave digger

(4:19:37 PM) Graeme Hefner: Before I die I want to sleep with one of the Donnas.
(4:25:44 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’d take the drummer or the lead singer.
(4:26:23 PM) Kenny Knapke: i’d take the one with the blue light on her head in that picture
(4:26:36 PM) Kenny Knapke: or the far left
(4:26:43 PM) Kenny Knapke: but preferably the bluelight
(4:26:52 PM) Graeme Hefner: That’s the guitarist with the blue light. She would not be kicked out of bed.
Far left is the lead singer.
(4:27:11 PM) Kenny Knapke: and the blond is drummer?
(4:27:18 PM) Graeme Hefner: Yeah
(4:27:21 PM) Kenny Knapke: she looks too much like one of my sisters
(4:27:49 PM) Graeme Hefner: Luckily I don’t have that problem.
(4:28:14 PM) Kenny Knapke: yeah.. it’d be kinda awkward if you looked like one of my sisters
(4:28:45 PM) Graeme Hefner: Not nearly as awkward as if I dated one.
(4:29:10 PM) Kenny Knapke: thank god that’s never going to happen
(4:29:20 PM) Kenny Knapke: kim was saying she wants to move down here though
(4:29:30 PM) Graeme Hefner: Hey, they could do a lot worse.
(4:29:48 PM) Kenny Knapke: yeah, and i wouldn’t feel a bit bad about “correcting” that situation ;)
(4:30:11 PM) Graeme Hefner: Pfft. I’d totally ask you first. And you’d say no. And that’d be that.
(4:30:24 PM) Graeme Hefner: I wouldn’t feel ‘em up in a tent while drunk or anything. *cough*
(4:30:48 PM) Kenny Knapke: big sister is a whole different ballgame
(4:32:18 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’d hook you up with my sister.
(4:32:43 PM) Kenny Knapke: no thanks
(4:33:11 PM) Kenny Knapke: besides, that goes strictly against your new policy of not setting up your friends anymore :-p
(4:33:25 PM) Graeme Hefner: I didn’t say I wouldn’t set up my family.
(4:33:48 PM) Kenny Knapke: that situation would involve both which would still violate the policy
(4:34:26 PM) Graeme Hefner: I’d probably cancel that policy if someone worthwhile came along again.
(4:34:34 PM) Graeme Hefner: At the moment I’m more worried with setting up myself.
(4:34:47 PM) Graeme Hefner: So any hot girls you know but aren’t using, send ‘em my way. Unless they’re stupid.
(4:35:35 PM) Kenny Knapke: ok
(4:36:07 PM) Kenny Knapke: should i chance upon one, i’ll box it up and mail it to you
(4:36:23 PM) Graeme Hefner: Nah, I’ll come get her.
(4:36:27 PM) Graeme Hefner: You like to use cheap shipping.
(4:36:36 PM) Graeme Hefner: She might get fat or dead in transit
(4:37:21 PM) Kenny Knapke: i just don’t see a point in paying $50 to ship something “zomg 2morrow”

Bandwagon, jump on! (The Jux Entente) by Kitty Vertigo

Smart phones for everyone! I didn’t want to be left out of the fun, so I ordered me self a FreeRunner. Now I just have to wait on UPS and plan an escape route in case they attempt assassination again.

Sure I could’ve gone with the BB curve, but it really doesn’t fit my tastes. I think the FreeRunner meshes with my personality well and it will fit in with my tech device family. Anyways, with our always on smartphone tethers, this may be a revolutionary step for the future of Jux!

Jump on!

Back in Black(berry) (The Jux Entente) by Zagrophyte

There was a point where I was anxiously awaiting the iPhone 3G, so much so that I was actually considering imprisoning myself in AT&T for two years.

After Graeme got his BlackBerry Curve 8330, I realized that not only did my old prejudices against BlackBerry devices no longer apply, it was in fact the closest thing to what I was looking for in a mobile data device.

I can do pretty much whatever I want with it: install random apps, change the themes, write apps for it, SSH with it, browse web at 3G speeds in a real browser, download _and_ upload files from it, etc.

I ended up getting a 2 year Verizon contract instead, and so far I do not regret it one bit.

Bad and Not So Bad (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

As a prefix, I should say I spend most of my time pretty damn happy. The following rant applies to about 2% of my time, usually late at night on random weekdays.

Lately, however, I’ve felt my life sort of listless. The major cause of it is most likely a certain type loneliness, for sure, but there are other reasons that I’ve already rehashed endlessly with some of my friends. Namely, that my entire life is in a place now that would have been incomprehensible six months ago. Nearly everything I planned for or thought would happen, did not. Opportunities disintegrated, people left, and general badness fell from the skies and bubbled up from the ground.

Of course, new stuff immediately replaced (almost) all of it. My life is actually in a really good place now. My job is fun, is hopefully about to pay well, and gives me a good bit of freedom. As I walked into the office for the apartment complex of my nice, large, quiet apartment today I realized something as well.

My dad has always bitched about being ‘poor’ and what my family can’t afford despite the fact that we are…well, we’re most decidedly not poor. Sure, we don’t have a vacation home and he doesn’t drive a Porsche, but we own three houses and at one point had almost two cars per person in the household.

But for the past year or so I’d been feeling like I was ‘poor’ and often making jokes about it myself. Coupled with the rest of life’s problems lately it was starting to bug me more and more as well. So today, as I got out of my nice car, checked my nice watch, walked around puddles so as to not get water into the leather bottoms of my expensive sandals, walked into the office of my upscale suburban apartment complex and sat on a couch in their lounge and checked the Ars Technica forums on my BlackBerry, I realized two things:

1a) I am a complete fucking sell out. Holy shit.
1b) I don’t care.
2) I should shut the hell up.

Seriously. My big money problems are being upset that I can’t afford as many videogames to play on my 360 or my Wii as Kenny and not being able to strap an HDTV to my damn TiVo.

So, yes, for the first time in my entire life, I briefly became my father. Shoot me.

New sexy phone! (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

This post typed to you on my new Blackberry Curve 8330. I’m going to have to get used to chiclet typing. I’m impressed that our AJAX’d to hell backend works on Opera Mini. I’ll have to try it on the default browser too.

Later gents!

Things are being handled. (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

For the moment, things look like they’re being handled well.

Now if I can just straighten the rest of my life out, I’ll be doing great!

Poplar Place owes me a new mattress (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

Today around 6:00 I noticed water leaking from my ceiling in the bathroom in large quantities. I called maintenance. They told me they had done some plumbing work on the tub upstairs in 816 and some water must have leaked down. Fine, I made a note to call the office in the morning so that they could note that I wasn’t going to pay a damn cent because of this water damage.

Then, around 9:00, I went into my bedroom and flicked on the light. The ceiling fan kicked into life. Drops of water splashed my face. Water had poured down from the ceiling fan, through the ceiling fan, down the ceiling fan. All over my bed.

My bed. My $800, less-than-two-years-old bed. It was a graduation present. It was, is, the only thing in this apartment I can’t afford to replace immediately. The bottom half of it was now completely soaked with light brown, fetid, ceiling water. It is completely ruined. You cannot remove that much water from a feather topper.

I’ve called the 24 hour courtesy line. No one has answered yet, and it’s been an hour. First thing in the morning, these bastards are going to find out they’re buying me a new mattress. And they sure as hell are. It is in no way my responsibility that they are so incompetent that they dumped water all over my apartment doing basic plumbing and destroyed something that I quite enjoy. They will replace the mattress, and if they complain I will call every lawyer my family knows and take them to every court I can think of. My lease is up at the end of July and I was previously intending to renew, but fuck this. This is part of a pattern of disrespect.

I will be getting an exact duplicate of my mattress from Garrison’s in Canton on their dime, or there will be hell to pay. If I were an asshole I’d go stay at a hotel tonight and make them pay for that, too. I can’t believe I have to sleep on my damn couch because of these idiots.

I’m kind of angry.

Thank you, Blizzard! (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I’ll get back to the Key West stuff in a bit. For now, let me tell you about something awesome my favorite PC gaming company has done for me today.

So today in the midst of all of the Diablo III madness I discovered that something called the “Blizzard Account” now exists. The concept behind this is awesome, and something that a few places have done before but not to this scale of sexitude. You enter your CD key from your retail Blizzard games and from that point on you can download them in fully-patched modern Windows and Mac forms. Forever. How hot is that?

So I went about adding my CD keys for all of my games when I realize two sad things. First, Diablo doesn’t have a CD key, so it’s not part of the service without the BattleChest. Fine, that makes sense. Second, though…Brood War doesn’t have a CD key either! I resigned myself to my fate. Should I ever use this service because I’m stuck in Jasper or somewhere and just need a game to play, it would be original StarCraft only. I dusted off my version 1.0 launch CD and typed in the numeric-only code.

But wait, what’s this?

Why does it say this product is…could it be?

StarCraft Anthology?!?

Yes, that’s right boys and girls. Blizzard is so awesome that if you register your ancient-as-the-dust-of-the-earth StarCraft-only CD for their service, they’ll spot you Brood War. Just because.

My hat goes off to you, Blizzard. Kudos.

I have returned! (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

Yes, I’m back from Florida, and I’m ready to begin telling stories about my trip. And this trip was actually story-filled. I shall begin tomorrow.

It may take several days.

“Paradise” (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I’ve been in Key West since yesterday with my family. Our hotel has a private beach and ethernet access (and wireless, actually, but I get no signal). There’s a rented Honda Metropolitan at my disposal and we’ve rented some jet skis for tomorrow.

As of this exact instant as we leave to board the catamaran for a sunset cruise I can’t help but think this trip is missing one thing: women.

Cat Battles (The Jux Entente) by Kitty Vertigo

Skirt is staying with me while Graeme is out of town. Her and her mom are not getting along as well as I’d hoped. I think they’re getting used to each other though. I was actually able to leave them alone for a bit (more on that later) today without worrying about them killing each other. Lilly is just paranoid about invasion on her turf, and so she hisses. Previous visitor cats just ignored it so they got along well, but Skirt’s lineage is too proud. She takes offense at the hisses and reacts aggressively, causing a chain reaction of hissing, growling, and swatting (and Lilly snorting). I think as long as they stay out of eachothers way, they’ll get along.

I had a picture I was going to upload, but I can’t figure out how to add an image to this. I found where to upload an image, but I’m assuming the button to actually upload it is off the bottom of my screen due to the autocentering ajax popup bullshit that is too tall for my screen.

Anyways, as for the reason I had to leave the kittens alone today, my internet died. After calling Comcast support, halfway through basic troubleshooting that I had already tried they transfered me to Dell tech support for some reason, though I do not own a Dell and probably never will. Second try and they hang up halfway through basic troubleshooting. Third time was a charm though, where the revealed that my cable modem must be busted. So I left the kittens alone together and bought a new one. One final call to Comcast and I’m back in business.

Here is an oldschool image since I can’t figure out this crazy new wordpress tech.

Golden Corral (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

My friend Craig just posted this in his journal:

Jon and I went to Golden Coral sunday and they were asking the people in line how many people per table. The guy in front of us was by himself and it was the saddest shit you’ve ever heard when he said “One.” For hours all I could think was “Jesus christ, I gotta get married before 30,” because all I could think about was being in my 40’s, eating alone at golden coral on father’s day.

I have to agree. That’s a pretty depressing mental image. I have no idea if I want kids or not, but being in your 40s and eating alone at Golden Corral on any day would pretty much suck.

Indestructible (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I’m not really sold on the entirety of the album yet, but “Inside the Fire” is definitely the best single Disturbed has released since 2000 or so. I knew this just from hearing it on SquiZZ, but actually having it around reinforced it to the point where something had to be said.

I woke up at 1:00 today. Why did I sleep that late? God knows. That’s weird for me even on Saturdays lately. Now that my plans for the day have been shattered I think I’ll laze around, play Grand Theft Auto IV, and clean. Tomorrow I’ll go examine Kennesaw’s selection of puppies and perhaps play some disc golf with Kenny. And call Scott. Scott needs to be called.

The saga ends. (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I now have a new central air unit. The saga is complete. I’ll have to tell the full story soon.

Of course, they set it to 65, which means my apartment was 68 degrees when I got home. WTF?

I win. (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I need to get the pictures first to post the full fury of this, but I think I can safely say I beat the apartment complex.

A little too soon? (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I may have spoken slightly prematurely. My A/C probably has a coolant leak, as it’s slowing down…down…down again with its capacity. But as of this moment it’s still lightly working.

At least I’ve got the damn ceiling fan, and at least they actually came out.

But will I be able to work from home tomorrow to keep bugging them? We have a Relius upgrade at work I’m going to have to help with. Outlook unclear.

Must keep pressure on!

I’m cool again. (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

It took ranting, raving, and calling the manager for the southeast region of Milestone Management Properties, but today my air conditioner was fixed and my ceiling fan was replaced.

Still no ice maker, but the maintenance guy really couldn’t help that, I don’t think.

All in all: This is a triumph.

Single. (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

Not talking about it.

RIP (The Jux Entente) by Kitty Vertigo

RIP Starfire II. Perhaps I will replace you yet again someday. At least you have my number this time in case a kind soul finds you.

Ahh! Cobras! (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

I’ve been having a lot of weird nightmares lately. Weird, because I’m not someone who dreams much or often. I usually ‘think’ while I sleep. But ever since getting back from Colorado or so: Bam! nightmares.

What to do about it? Nothing that I can figure out. Just one of those things I suppose.

Bye Bye Sam (The Jux Entente) by Crossed Reality

So earlier today (yesterday by the time stamp) I stopped by Athens for a few hours to see my friend Samantha off. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? Regardless, she’s leaving Georgia for the cold depths of Michigan tomorrow and it was the last chance I was going to get to see her. Hopefully things go well for her there with her new (is he still new?) boyfriend and such.

That’s two people I care about leaving the state in the last few months. At least I don’t have the immediate urge to hop in my car and follow this time.