July 2002

+ Wednesday - July 31, 2002

Ugly Kids mystery solved. Cool idea, but for a friggin morning radio show? Man, that payoff sucked.

+ Saturday - July 27, 2002

Ok, I need to figure this one out, it's now bugging me. What the hell is up w/ all the "Ugly Kids" billboards around here? A few of my friends told me about them, but I hadn't actually seen them until last night. I saw one near the intersection of 394 and 494 southbound. Then this morning I see one on Excelsior in St. Louis Park.

For those that don't know, these billboards have a picture of two kids, one boy and one girl. The boy is on the left and is wearing a blue striped shirt and the girl is on the right wearing a pink shirt. Both look like they need some dental work as well. Between them are the words "Ugly Kids", underlined in red, and that's it, nothing else. No phone number, no address, and the text is definitely not a logo (unless it's a *really* bad one), so it's not like it's advertising of any kind.

Of course I figured I'd hit up the tome of eternal knowledge that is Google and look it up on there. Nothing. WTF? Not even Google knows? This is strange. All I can think it could be is one of those billboards that's not taken, and is a sort of "advertisement" for the billboard company, like those billboards you see w/ the big words "Available" and then a phone number, or "Made You Look", and then the billboard company's name. But this has no phone number, nor any advertising company name associated with it. Everyone I've talked to about this is dumbfounded.

All I know is that if this *is* some advertising ploy by a company, it's genious, since a lot of people are talking about it, which is a rarity in a world that pushes so many adverts at people that they all just end up being noise that people cheerfully ignore. So if anyone has any clues, or has seen these in other cities besides Minneapolis, let me know, I'm dying to find out what's up with this.

+ Tuesday - July 23, 2002

I've come to the conclusion from some of my friends in the MacMAME community that upgrading my G3 for my arcade cabinet is a good idea. This will allow me to get a boost in speed for minimal price. The first upgrade would be to bump my 350mhz G3 to an Encore/ZIF G3 500Mhz CPU. The second is to install an ATI Radeon 7000 video card.

The CPU upgrade obviously speeds things up and surprisingly so does the video card (since MacMAME takes advantage of OpenGL). Another added benefit to the video card is that it has TV out, something I'll need eventually anyway. Total upgrade price: $300. Not bad. After this I should be able to play almost all of the Neo-Geo and CPS2 games at close to full speed.

+ Friday - July 19, 2002

Yes, I am jealous. One of these days I'm just going to move to Japan and be done with it.

+ Wednesday - July 17, 2002

After several days of hard work, I finally finished the computer desk that I've been working on. I think it turned out pretty well for a do-it-yourself project (especially since it only cost me $130 in materials). This thing is a lot nicer (an bigger) than my old desk, and so far I'm loving it. The only real problem is that my computer chair (which I love) doesn't have a height adjustment and my new desk is an inch or two taller than before. I guess I just need to get used to it (or find someone who wants to donate a chair to me ;).

+ Tuesday - July 16, 2002

Microcenter has got to be one of the best stores ever. Normally I just like looking at the geeky computer stuff they have, but I decided to check out their book section today. Even though it's a little disorganized, I must say it's the most impressive tech book section I've ever seen in my life. They have everything, even a copy of my Modern Operating Systems book from school (which is a really good book if you're into basic logic and theory of OS's).

Two gaming books they also had that I have been meaning to check out were Supercade and High Score. Supercade is the perfect book for game and design geeks alike. The book has the feel of a design book with huge pictures on every page. While the pictures most likely come from MAME, this book will pretty much fit right inbetween your Eboy and Designer Shock books. High Score on the other hand isn't designed very well, however its redeeming quality is that it has both a lot of text and images, and the images it has are mostly video game advertising, boxes, systems, etc. It has its fair share of game screen shots, but the amount of gaming memorabilia in the book is outstanding. Needless to say, both these books have been added to my wishlist.

+ Monday - July 15, 2002

It's time for 4.0 browsers to go (both IE and Netscape). I've been saying this for a long time (in fact I haven't coded for anything that isn't 5.0 and above in a year and a half), but I think it's high time everyone followed suit. The percentages of 4.0 users on my sites is amazingly low (1.93% for Netsscape and 1.88% for IE on vitaflo, and 2.34% for Netscape and 0.51% for IE on assembler last month). Consider that Assembler had 1.39% of its users using Netscape 3.0, a browser that won't even allow you to navigate that site and I think that puts a lot into perspective.

However these are my sites and don't neccesarily translate everywhere. What I think does however (and the reason for this post) is Google's new browser statistics graph for the month of June. Netscape 4 has almost fallen off the radar screen. What this means for everyone is, I suppose, up to them. To me it means that sites like Assembler are now moot [Contrary to popular belief I didn't make it to be an experimental cutting edge design site, but rather just prove, to myself mostly, that you could do somewhat complex DHTML in all browsers and platforms. With 5.0+ browsers, this is a hell of a lot easier], and that companies that still decide to put time and effort into supporting 4.0 browsers are just blowing their own profit margins. I think it's high time for everyone to put these 5 year old fossils to rest.

+ Saturday - July 13, 2002

I just found out that the Red Dwarf Series I DVD won't be coming out in America until February 25, 2003 due to NTSC conversion issues. And here I was hoping I'd get it on November 4th like everyone else. I guess I've waited long enough for these DVD's to come out, I can wait a little longer. It should make a good birthday present for myself in any case.

+ Friday - July 12, 2002

I spent all day yesterday organizing, cleaning, and taking inventory and pictures of all my game systems and games. It was quite the task, but I finally have it all done and everything actually fits in my closet somehow. Anyway, I've put a list of every game item I own on the Game Console Collection page, and there are pictures of each in there for you to look at as well. Enjoy.

+ Wednesday - July 10, 2002

Going through some of the old stuff on my computer I found this nice little sound clip of my friend Tony calling into WIXX's "Three Words Or Less" with the precursor name to this site (circa '93). What can I say, he was a visionary.

+ Tuesday - July 9, 2002

Two days back from vacation and I'm already going crazy. I called in for my unemployment check but there was a mix up with my severance pay so now they need to re-evaluate my application. Great, just what I need. Work on my portfolio is going crappy because I can't decide on anything I like, and sitting at home all day and night without talking to anyone is giving me a bad case of cabin fever. Add on to that the fact that I have not been able to find a single promissing job outlook at all and, well, lets just say life was more fun when I was in Wisconsin.

Thankfully B-Swing was nice enough to give me some of my unused vacation as extra pay, even if it was only 3 days. Hey, I'll take whatever I can get at this point. I also noticed they finally got the B-Swing redesign up. I like it a lot, though I sorta liked some of the other itterations that were worked on better.

+ Monday - July 8, 2002

GameFaqs is having a Game Character Battle. Sorta like the NCAA tourney but with video game characters that people vote for each day. My bracket (if I had one) would pit Chop Chop Master Onion vs Sephiroth in the finals, with the CCMO going over. "Kick, punch, it's all in the mind..."

+ Sunday - July 7, 2002

Just got back from my vacation to Wisconsin. Janet's wedding went well, and it was obvious a LOT of money was spent on it (which I could tell by the emboidered napkins we used, the fillet mignon we had for dinner and a shrimp bowl that was as big as the back of a pickup truck). As always it was good to see the SNC kids again. There was much discussion about who would be next to get married. I think the concensus was that we'll be waiting a while whoever it is.

While I was happy to be home finally, it also threw me back into real world mode, which, these days, isn't all the exciting. Thankfully I have some new (old) games to take my mind off of things. I'm planning on getting pictures of everything and putting it on the console page sometime soon.

Yet another twist in the old apartment complex fine story. I got mail today stating that the payment of my fines (all 67 cents worth) were being mailed back to me because my account has been shown as paid in full. I got my unused check back, complete with the "Nice Bill Jackass" memo I wrote on it. So in the end, my old apartment complex spent 68 cents for a 67 cent check they never cashed. For some reason, this to me is beyond amusing.

+ Thursday - July 4, 2002

It's nice to be away from the cities for a while. Right now I'm at my parents house in Wisconsin, getting ready to head up to our cabin for a couple days. Annette and I have had a really great couple of days. It's been really relaxing which I think both of us need right now.

Last night I also went through all my old video game stuff, and got it all ready to take with me back to Minnesota. I didn't really realize how much stuff I actually had. I have two grocery bags full of nothing but games. There's also about 10 boxes of various game systems and parts. It'll probably take up the entire trunk of my car. At least I'll have stuff to play with while I search for a new job.