Orignally posted 2006-02-11 on an old Livejournal account, Dave reminded me of this as he mentioned The Olympics in passing.

Not new content, but hey, content is content!

There are few things I like less than the Winter Olympics. Muppets come to mind, but that’s not the point. So much of “the games” are not sports. Subjectivity only goes so far, so why waste your life on a cheap piece of metal? Sure you get the respect of your peers, but on the whole, nobody really cares. But I digress; I now present to you my Not a Sport Extravaganza – Winter Olympics 2006 Edition!

• Biathalon – aka “Ski and Shoot”
  Not a sport. Yes, it has roots in survival, but shooting targets and moving to another location to shoot more targets is not a sport. It’s called target practice on a mountain in snow. The name biathalon is also the most undescriptive name for an event – I’m sorry, two events. It could really be anything. If the IOC made Fuck and Suck a sport for the games, it’d be called the biathalon too. People would show up with a gun and skis ready to go. They probably wouldn’t be turned away due to bonus points in “artistic interpretation.” Fuck the biathalon.
  Score: 2/10 (Extra points for having guns. Firearms are cool.)
• Bobsleigh – aka “Bobsled“ Fuckin’ Euros
  Not a sport. Going down an ice slide in cock-shaped fiberglass and lexan dildo for four is not a sport. Granted, it takes skill and teamwork to complete the course in record time, but so does group sex. I can go to a regulation bobsled course right now, put on some teflon coated scuba gear, and complete the run without any trouble. Bobsled is not a sport; it’s an amusement park ride. Fuck the Bobsled.
  Score: 0/10
• Curling
  Not a sport. Actually, wait… yes. It is a sport. The rules are fucked up because 500 years ago, poor Scottish people made them up when they should have been inside, making themselves busy not dying from the cold. I attribute hypothermia induced madness to this sport. A better sport though would be ice basketball. Imagine top-heavy basketball stars slipping all over the court. There would be all time low scoring games of 0-0 that would never end. Knowing Olympic-types though, Greenland would field dwarves and midgets and win all three medals by scoring any points at all against the other teams. Anyway, the ruling still stands: Fuck Curling.
  Score: 1/10 (It made me think of ice-basketball)
• Hockey
  A sport. Hockey Rules. Fuck you.
  Score: 9/10 (USA doesn’t win every time, but it’s still awesome)
• Luge
  Not a sport. In all its variations, from skeleton to two man luge – the manliest, I’m sorry… faggiest of all luges – it’s just the same as bobsled, except this time, the risk of serious injury goes up. It’s like someone stole the chassis from the teams’ bobsled and the judges were like, “fuck it, push ‘em down!” Better event: Standing Luge. Riders stand on their luge sled and must remain standing throughout the course. You win by standing the whole time – none of this kneeling shit – and staying alive. Skeleton Luge is suicidal. In regular luge, the rider looks down over his body, but in skeleton luge, the rider’s neck cranes upward. I’m just waiting to hear of a skeleton luge accident in which the descriptor “pez-dispenser” is used. Fuck the Luge.
  Score: 3/10 (Bloody decapitation can be entertaining – just ask the French! Also, Pez is yummy)
• Skating
  Not a sport. Anything where you can score more points for being artistic is a load of bullshit. From singles to doubles, it’s all about who can do more lutzs or axels in increasing difficulty. I can appreciate the technical aspects of skating; I certainly will never be able, or want to for that matter, to do the things these atheletes are capabale of doing. They are atheletes. It takes immense dicipline to perform with such precision and stamina, but for what? Just so Germany can give you a 9.4 instead of a 9.3? What if Germany’s judge having a bad day? He could totally screw Poland or France by invading their – wait… whatever. Fuck skating.
  Score: -5/10 (Bullshittery enhanced due to annoying whiners and 2002’s multiple medals. Negative score)
• Skiiing
  Two pieces of plastic + snow + mountain = fun. But not a sport. I have few words for this event, but imagine if you will an activity that will destroy your knees before your 40^th birthday: The moguls. How about one where you try to jump as far as possible down a mountain, risking shattered ankles and a smashed face? If that’s not to your taste, try the one that’s most like ice-skating: freestlye snowboarding. What the fuck? Who allowed snowboarding into the Olympics? Seriously, Halfpipe Snowboarding is an Olympic Event! Complete with Indy Nosebones and Tailgrabs! I expect a written apology on my desk, IOC. Fuck Skiing (and now apparently Snowboarding)
  Score: 2/10 (Serious injury can also be entertaining. If snowboarding’s in, I’m waiting for half-pipe skateboarding)

It’s fun to reminisce! Especially if it’s bitchy!

The online customer Printer I use for my artwork has decided to stop offering short-run print services. They have now instated a 25 copy minimum for any print run. I thought maybe I was missing something on their website, but I called their customer service department and they confirmed it.

What’s frustrating is they are still very affordable even with the minimum requirements. I need to make a choice whether to use them at all even when I have a need to print 25 or more of anything. The other frustrating bit is I have been framing my art in software at 11″x17″, the size their printers output. Granted, I have always worked within 11″x14″ because that is a standard Wal-Mart sized frame. If I find another affordable vendor, I don’t want to lose image quality because of it.

This is a very valuable lesson though: Don’t trust a vendor to offering the same product or service indefinitely. I could have learned that from just about anywhere in the last 25 years of my life by looking around and simply watching, but I have never personally been burned by this phenomenon.

The Husk; that just rolled off the fingers like it was nothing. The Husk is the leftover remains of the planet after a global catastrophe. What is that catastrophe? Plague? Nuclear War? Zombies? It doesn’t matter. What matters is there’s not much left and you need to protect yourself from what’s out there. What fun does The Husk have in store for us survivors? Marauders, wild animals with little to eat themselves, whathaveyou.

Protect yourself! My choice of armor would be a simple almagamation of a bullet-proof vest and full motorcycle riding gear: jacket, padded leggings, pads, boots, the whole nine yards. Even better if I could snag a suit of SWAT gear, but I doubt that is easily procured.

Or, if I could buy or commission something from the Bear Suit Guy himself, Troy Hurtubis, that would be even better. I’ve mentioned him before I believe. He’s a talented guy with a knack for suits of armor that actually work! It’s surprising to me he is as unsuccessful as he is when his home-made suit of Space Marine -inspired armor effectively nullifies small-arms fire. It seems the people who matter are aware of his well-publicized doings, but aren’t doing anything. I can only speculate at this point.

The point is, get some armor and you’ll survive that much better that much longer. Fear The Husk! Long live The Husk!

…or something

Ame’s computer is done and I have my own machine back to myself again!

From Saturday Morning, Schmatterday Morning, I discovered the northbridge (is that even the right name for it?) heatsink/fan combo had fallen off the board and had been dangling for who knows how long and the chip now has a nice little scorch mark. Zap. Fried. This was a part I had replaced myself before because the original assembly had developed this annoying grinding noise and a thorn in my paw for that board for a long time.  Come to think of it, the part probably came off from our recent move – unfortunately, there was no performance degradation until the thing simply wouldn’t power up anymore.

The board was dead. A replacement is the most logical step, right? Too bad it was an Intel Socket 478 board and the only one that was readily available anywhere didn’t support AGP for the old nVidia 6800 currently in the machine. Ugh. So that means you have to replace the board, the card, and of course the CPU. At this point, we could just salvage what we could like, well… it turns out nothing, but I’ll get to that.

Ame was keen to learn how to build a computer from parts, so I supervised. There was some excitement with the motherboard installation and the silver thermal paste, but it was mostly a smooth install with no malfunctions. I’ve never gone AMD before, but it was pretty painless and things work great so far.

Some gripes:

1. The motherboard is short for an ATX board. I’m used to installing out to the edge of the range of the mounting screws, using about 8. This one is shorter and doesn’t extend that far. The problem comes in when you want to plug the 24-pin power supply connector. You have to make sure that connection is solid, but doing so has the potential to bend the board! Do not want!
2. Another problem with the motherboard; there’s only one IDE connector. That sure was a surprise when we tried to hook up her existing hard drives and the optical drive. Ame ended up ordering a SATA drive as a workaround.
3. The Windows Vista install disc is a DVD! The optical drive she had before was a CDRW drive. We used a salvaged DVDROM drive from another unused computer to pull this duty.
4. Steam needs SP2 to work and Vista’s auto-updater didn’t detect SP2 as an installable update so I had to get it manually.

Other things were a breeze though, like the front-panel audio connection. I love my Antec case, but the front-panel-audio squid is horribly labelled and I have no earthly clue how to plug it in. Ame’s case has a dumb-proof connector that looks like an internal USB plug and it just hooks in. Sigh. Jealously really. Otherwise my own case is supar teh-awesome.

Saturday morning was horrible, horrible, horrible.

It all started at 4:30 a.m. when Ame dropped by to say hello to me while I slept. This wasn’t odd at all though as she likes to stay up late and play video games sometimes. The little tickle in my throat from the night before had blossomed quite a bit so I was feeling a little bad. Ame went to get me some water and cold & flu remedy, and, on her trip out to the kitchen for the glass of water, she discovered her computer was unexpectedly off and wouldn’t turn on again. Enter: Steve, the home sysadmin.

After doing the simple stuff, like checking the power cables and discharging the capacitors with no resolution, it was time to open it up. Oh, lovely, the only point of failure I’ve ever experienced on that particular board had failed again - I call it the northbridge fan, but who knows what it’s called. The problem was, there’s evidence this was not a new issue. I called it as a red herring at the moment and looked for something else, but I couldn’t find it so I shelved it and resolved to look at it later after more rest.

By then the dog was going nuts because we were both up and that’s the signal to go outside and potty. Remember, I’m still under the weather at this point, and for extra bonus points also hungover – we had Bobby over for dinner the night before and I had “some” wine. Ame was understandably upset her computer was toast, so after taking care of Snickers’ urinary needs, she wanted to toast up some Eggo waffles to chill out.

She popped in a couple frozen waffles into the toaster, and placed the remaining waffles back in the freezer. The act of closing the door caused a bottle of hazelnut booze to fall and smash on the floor. We were both in the kitchen, and one of the great things about owning a small dog, is they are your ever-vigilant shadow. The bottle smashed right next to him, simultaneously scaring the shit out of him and soaking him in hazelnut flavored alcohol.

He jets off, we’re all freaking out, I checked him for wounds, ask if Ame’s okay – thankfully they both are. It’s time for an emergency dog bath and a cleanup in aisle one. We wrestled the dog into the tub and I started cleaning up the mess – not without some difficulty though: I cut my hand on some broken glass, and had neglected to put a mop pad on the swiffer so that wasn’t so effective until Ame corrected me.

It’s 6 a.m. at this point and guess what? The animals were hungry! I was pretty rocked at this point, but this went off without any problem, and after taking Snickers down and up again with no incident – he even pooped as per his bowel schedule, all great. Ame, The Unlucky Beast, was ready to try again with waffles upon my return. We’re nervous that something else was going to happen. Things went fine, she had her waffles and we went to sleep.

That’s the account of the whirlwind of that accursed Saturday morning. Ugh.