Kurtis beat me to the punch, but here’s my take.
Some games you quickly play through and get tired of. The Diablo series has not been one of those games. Diablo was one of the first RPGs I played on the PC. Diablo II saw many, many, many hours spent playing with friends on Battle.net, probably more than Starcraft and Warcraft combined.
Blizzard just announced Diablo III, go watch the gameplay video and start drooling.
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/
Tagged with: blizzard, diablo 3, rpg
Posted under: Gaming Stuff
The close 5-4 ruling in DC vs Heller goes to show how important judges are. The 4 left-wing judges on the court wanted to repeal the individual right to own a firearm without connection to a militia. The current election could help determine the composition of the Supreme Court considering the older justices on the bench:
Judge Stevens - 88, Ginsburg - 75, Kennedy - 72, Scalia - 72 and Breyer - 70
There’s a good chance the next president will be nominating replacements for 1 or 2 of them. Any of McCain’s nominees would be far superior to anyone Obama would put up. You might not like everyone about the McCain, but he sure looks good next to the alternative.
Read the entire dissent, starting on page 68, written by Stevens in DC vs Heller to be thoroughly disgusted. Here’s just a quick tidbit:
As used in the Second Amendment, the words “the people” do not enlarge the right to keep and bear arms to encompass use or ownership of weapons outside the context of service in a well regulated militia.
That’s right, 45% of the Supreme Court doesn’t think you should be able defend yourself in your home with a handgun. Suzanna Hubb is a perfect example of what happens when law abiding citizens aren’t able to protect themselves. If you haven’t heard her story you must listen to her tell it:
Tagged with: constitution, election, guns, second amendment
Posted under: Political Stuff
Tagged with: snapshot
Posted under: Photo Stuff
SCOTUSblog » Court: A constitutional right to a gun
The Supreme Court ruled on Heller vs DC today and pretty much said that an individual has the right to own a gun. From the opinion:
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
The decision doesn’t invalidate regulations like registration requirements, but it certainly opens the door for legal action against laws that limit the use of firearms by law abiding citizens. I’m not a gun nut but this how I feel about the whole situation:
Criminals don’t obey gun laws, they just leave their victims defenseless. I’m glad I have the ability to defend myself in my home because I don’t want to be at the mercy of some criminal threatening my life and property. If that moment ever comes the police won’t be able to help. When seconds matter, the police are minutes away.
Tagged with: constitution, guns, life, second amendment
Posted under: Political Stuff
How Much Could You Have if Social Security Was YOUR Money?
AllFinancialMatters has an interesting post up about what kind of money you could accumulate if you were able to take the money coming out of your paycheck and invest it yourself. He’s using an optimistic 10%, but he also forgot to include the employer’s portion of the tax so the numbers are actually understated.
Tagged with: investing, retirement, social security
Posted under: Money Stuff
Two big problems have developed in my life: gas prices suck and I haven’t had any significant exercise in about 5 years. The former makes my wallet lighter and the latter has made me heavier. The solution to both of these problems is a good old fashioned bicycle. We went over to Pat’s 605 Cyclery to pick out a beach cruiser for Sarah and I asked about what would work for starting a bike commute. I was pointed towards the Trek “hybrid” bikes that where close to my budget.
I had done some research on bikes and knew the major differences between road bikes and mountain bikes, but didn’t know a whole lot about hybrids. Hybrid bikes are just that, a hybrid of the two that combine the skinnier, smooth tires and gearing of a road bike with the frame and seating position of a mountain bike.
I grew up riding fairly generic street bikes and rode mountain bikes a couple times up in Mammoth, but besides that my bike experience was pretty limited. I was looking at the Trek 7.2 FX and went in for a spin around the parking lot and I was sold almost immediately. I’m pretty out of shape and it was fun just riding around in circles.
Sarah’s beach cruiser was ready to go home and I couldn’t let her ride alone so I went ahead and bought it right there. Good thing I did because the next bike they would have ordered was going to cost $70 more because of price increases for rubber and all the components getting passed to the consumer. At $480 after tax it wasn’t cheap, but I see it as an investment that will reduce my gas bill and help me get into shape. Instead of driving Saturday morning, we road 8.5 miles around town so the savings have already began.
I’ll post more on all of this, but this will definitely bring some big changes in my life.
Quick specs
- 20″ aluminum frame
- Shimano shifting components, 18 speeds
- 700cc x 35mm wheels
And Sarah’s beach cruiser
Tagged with: bikes, commute, exercise
Posted under: Life Stuff
Politicians must think that if they don’t pass a new law every two days then they aren’t doing their job. The hands-free cell phone law is a great example of this need to pass legislation that is supported by absolutely zero reasonable thought.
At politician school you learn two things: find a legitimate problem and then create a dumb solution that doesn’t address the actual problem. Firearm laws are a great example of this.
The new hands-free cell phone law is also a perfect example. There’s two components to talking on a hand held cell phone: holding the phone to the side of your face and carrying out a conversation. The politician looks at this situation and sees two possibilities: make it illegal to hold a phone in your hand while driving or make it illegal to have conversations while driving. If I put my stupid politician hat on I immediately realize that holding a phone to your head drastically increases the risk of an accident and for the sake of public safety it must be stopped.
Removing the stupid politician hat I understand that my knee jerk reaction might not be valid and requires further investigation. Maybe scientists have done research into this problem area?
Hmmm how about that? It is quite possible that holding a conversation makes up most of the increase of collision risk.
When I look at the situation and use common sense I come to the conclusion that to have any noticeable effect on collisions all activities that distract a driver have to be made illegal, not just using a hand held cell phone. Here’s a short list:
- Participating in any conversation
- Listening to the radio/music/talk radio
- Looking at billboards, bumper stickers, license plate frames or any other advertisements
- Consuming food or beverages
- Applying makeup
- Driving with one hand (manual transmission drivers would have a 3 second period between shifts to place both hands back on the wheel)
- Driving while holding any object
- Sneezing/Coughing/Yawning/Sleeping/Farting/Barfing/Laughing/Stretching/Waving/Smiling/Thinking
Okay I’m just kidding. Kind of. To spite the new law I might just drive around with a banana held up to my head blaring “Ring ring ring, banana phone” over my stereo. If it is illegal to talk on a phone in your hand surely I would get pulled over for doing the same with a piece of fresh fruit.
Tagged with: cell phone, driving, hands free, law, sarcasm
Posted under: Political Stuff
Just realized you don’t have to subscribe to a feed in Google Reader to share something you find on the Internet. Under “Your Stuff” they added “Notes” a while back. On that page there’s a bookmark you can drag to the bookmark toolbar, click it, add a note and share the note in your Shared items. Highlight text on the page and it will prepopulate the description field with it. If you can’t see my shared items, send me a chat invitation in Gmail; pretty sure that’s the only way to become “friends” in Google Reader. Added a test note of a chart from Ross Perot’s perotcharts.com.
Tagged with: gmail, google reader, internet, rss
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Firefox 2 added spell checking in text areas, but I just found a little tweak that extends spell checking to inline text boxes. Big help for keeping blog titles and such spelled correctly. Here’s how:
- Type about:config in the address bar, hit enter
- Filter on spellcheckDefault
- Double click the entry and change the value to 2
Also if you haven’t upgraded to Firefox 3 go grab it right now. Lots of memory leaks have been fixed and overall things are much more responsive.
Tagged with: firefox, internet, software
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Got some new pictures up in my image gallery: Turlock from earlier this year (The Blarg had high def video posted, I’ll stick to pics) and My Righteous Indignation’s graduation/hooding/party. Enjoy.
And just a side note on the pics. I processed the heck out of the Turlock pics in Photoshop with a painfully manual workflow. The graduation pics were processed with the Adobe Lightroom beta and are pretty much straight from the camera except for a little cropping and white balance adjustment. I’m going to be using Lightroom some more and write up my impressions. The one thing I’m really liking is non-destructive edits; no more exporting to TIFF so I don’t have to worry about saving JPEGs more than once.
Tagged with: family, gallery, graduation, lightroom, travel, turlock
Posted under: Photo Stuff
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