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!

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.

This is a week late, but I don’t care. I can’t stand April Fools bullshit in my information resources. Yes, we all know it’s hilarious to make jokes, Hah-hah, but when I tune into the news (print, radio, TV, Internet, etc), I should not have to run shit through my April 1st filter.

Just stop it!

Starting about November of last year, I got this painful, itchy rash on the knuckles of my hands. I blamed the new dry and cold weather for it, and left it at that. I would put cream on them every now and then, and that seemed to help a little, but it was still there.

After much nagging from Ame, I went to a dermatologist last month to get my hands looked at. As it turns out, I have these markers in my DNA that express themselves as a rash when I get too much stress. Eczema. Woo.

Oh hey, and guess what started in November? My new job. Training started late October, so I’ve officially been at this new job for a year, and this is the cause of my newly expressed eczema. I guess this skin condition really speaks to how much this job stresses me out.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I got this eczema from my dad. Besides this itchy, painful rash, I’ve always had a very mild strange skin thing on my arms and legs. It doesn’t cause any discomfort in the least, it’s just a little weird. My dad also has this stuff in the same spots on his body. Also, when I was growing up, I had strep throat infections a lot. One of the extra bonuses to having the markers for eczema is if you catch strep throat, there is a small chance of expressing a form of psoriasis. It didn’t happen every time, but again, I did catch that damn bug an awful lot as a kid, and those damned white dots appeared every now and then.

Thanks for the skin, Dad.