Today in Fat (2003/06/08)

Posted on June 8 2003 by Mickey
(From an AP story on AOL)
    Next stop: Tankah, Mexico.
    A new Mexico resort, opening June 15, may be the vacation spot of choice for heavy people sensitive about their weight and appearance. The resort, Freedom Paradise, located about 85 miles south of Cancun, claims, according to this USA Today story, “to be the world’s first ‘size-friendly, all inclusive beach resort.’” Their motto is “Live Large, Live Free.”
    Says Jurinaan Klink, commercial director of the resort, “There are a lot of people who put off vacations, saying ‘I’ll buy that bikini when I lose 15 pounds.’ We say, why wait to lose weight, when you can enjoy life now.
    “There’s a lot of pressure about the health advantages of losing weight,” Klink adds. “But what about mental health? Isn’t it just as important to be happy?”
    Since the whole point of a vacation is to enjoy oneself, we at the SFG site think a resort like this is an excellent idea. It could be a great boon to people who are too self-conscious to ever spend time at a beach and might otherwise never get to experience the beautiful Caribbean.
    And, holey moley, they even have fat people on their website! They must be serious!
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Blog Within a Blog: My New Computer 3.1

Posted on June 7 2003 by Mickey
    Although I ordered them at various times, all my packages showed up yesterday. My enthusiasm was tempered though once I started checking the equipment out.
    It figures. I try and plot everything out to make my pimp rig the best computer I can, but now that I’m trying to put all the pieces together everything has to be spoiled by tiny real-world details. The power supply mod I got from Case-Mod.com fits awkwardly, and the fan hole doesn’t match; the screws that came with my LED fans are too short to go though the case wall and the fan frames (the fan in back and the blowhole fan are gong to be a tight fit too); and the face plate on the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 keeps the audio panel from fitting far enough in to allow me to screw it in place.
    ARRRRRGHH!
Posted in Gadgets, New Computer, Tech | Leave a comment

Brush with Greatness

Posted on June 6 2003 by Mickey
    It’s amazing the celebrities one can meet. For instance, Frolixo, a frequent commentor on this site and administrator of his own Super Evil forum, also has a starring role in the Harry Potter series of movies, playing the character of Harry’s friend Ron Weasley.
 

    It’s also come to my attention that another user of the Super Evil forum, Slick Wombat, is in fact the man who shot President Kennedy: Lee Harvey Oswald.
 

    Admittedly, there are many who claim Slick Wombat did not shoot Kennedy, and that he was in fact framed. They cite this famous photo, for instance; which, now that I look at it, does look doctored.

    If you look closely, you can see the shadow on his face doesn’t match the shadows in the background — like they are two separate images, photographically blended together!
    Interesting.
    But anyway, although he’s not a movie star like Frolixo he’s still pretty famous too.
Posted in Personal, Photos | Leave a comment

Dead to the World

Posted on June 5 2003 by Mickey
    Not only am I feeling under the weather, my site was ailing as well. Access to the MySQL database was cut off, so my blog was just a hollow shell all last night and some of today. It just so happened I was doing work on my database last night (moving it from there to here, in fact), so for a while I was thinking I’d killed my site again; but I heard that there was work being done on the servers today. Whether it caused the outage or was because of the outage, I don’t know; but at least my blog returned late in the afternoon.
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Mirror, Mirror

Posted on June 5 2003 by Mickey
    There. I just finished moving all of my original pMachine database to this one. I was missing one entry and a few comments, but that’s been corrected. I also noticed a couple entries were out of order, but a close side-by-side comparison has corrected that as well. So, apart from the entry you’re reading right now, the old SFG blog and this new one are fully mirrored.
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That’s It, I’m Out of Here

Posted on June 3 2003 by Mickey
    Or, to quote another cartoon character, “I’ve had all I can stands. I can’t stands no more!”
    It’s true how momentous changes are quite often brought about by little things. In this case it was the letter “I”. This morning I wanted to add the letter “I” to the latest update about my new computer. I’d noticed it was missing and I wanted to log back into my blog and correct it; but I could not get the page to load. I kept trying and trying for close to thirty minutes. My SFG page has been very slow — embarrasingly slow — for quite a while; and there seemed little I could do to alleviate that. And, this morning, I finally had enough. I spent the afternoon shopping for a new host and I signed up with a new host in the evening. I’ll spend the next few days rebuilding the site here (on this new server) and then will transfer the DNS information later on (presumably when my current three-month contract expires).
    Normally it should be easy to move the MySQL database over. But I’m so anal retentive that I have to do things the hard way. Having removed all my movie reviews, the numbering on my blog entries is all off, with many gaps. For instance, the entries number in the seven hundreds, while this blog really only has around four hundred. So I plan on recreating all the blog’s posts, in sequential order, just for my own personal satisfaction. This should also allow me a chance to proofread the entries again — and will also explain why all the comments will have the same date [June 4 and 5, in fact].
    Funny how I just went through all the entries, assigning categories to them. And now I’m going to be going through them all over again.
    Oh well.
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Blog Within a Blog: My New Computer 3.0

Posted on June 3 2003 by Mickey
    Let the building begin. I got my case last night. Even though all the computer parts haven’t arrived (or even been ordered, in some cases), I started connecting stuff together, just to have something to do. Here’s what it looks like so far…

(The cables and bags on the bottom are just temporary storage.)

    The case looks pretty cool…until I got fingerprints all over it. The power supply appears heavy enough to weight down the top of the case, so screwing the side panel can sometimes be awkward. — And is its fan supposed to be at the top?
    I also put the motherboard in so quickly I forgot to put the back panel on (so I had to put the motherboard on again). The DPS2 is in, the RAM is in, one hard drive is in, and I also hooked up USB, IEEE1394, and the LED and buttons on the front of the case.
    Estimated time of completion is still early July, since I’ll probably need two more paychecks to fund the remaining ingredients.
Posted in Gadgets, New Computer, Personal, Photos, Tech | Leave a comment

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

Posted on June 2 2003 by Mickey
    Thanks to BVTMattyC, a new Easter egg was uncovered at the Homestar Runner site. Look what’s “Coming Soon” to the H*R Store!

H*R Gang inaction figures!

    (Yes, despite all the admonitions in their Legal Stuff, I stole an image from them anyway.)
Posted in Homestar | 2 Comments

Blog Within a Blog: My New Computer 2.1

Posted on June 1 2003 by Mickey
    More charges to my credit card. I ordered the rest of my fans yesterday; and today I ordered a CD recorder and a sound card. Instead of looking for a video capture card, I took the advice at DVDR Help and also ordered the Canopus ADVC-100 to turn my new puter into a media creation monster.
    These will have to be the last purchases for a couple weeks. I need to wait for another paycheck to come in before I go for the expensive stuff, like the processor and graphics card and monitor.
    P.S. A Pirate Looks at 40
    Happy Birthday to Mike. A frequent contributor to the DVD Reviews section, Mike celebrated his 40th birthday yesterday.

Mike blows
Posted in Gadgets, New Computer, Personal, Photos, Tech | Leave a comment

Blog Within a Blog: My New Computer 2.0

Posted on May 29 2003 by Mickey
    Got my motherboard and power supply yesterday. My case still has not shown up, sadly. I contacted the company and they said it should appear soon. They are running behind because of “Holiday overload”.
    Tonight, after work, I’m off to Best Buy to get a hard drive and a floppy drive. I probably won’t make the floppy drive permanent, but I’ll want one for flashing BIOS’s and such. I was originally planning on getting Serial ATA hard drives, but it looks like they’re difficult to set up. So I’ll probably get a normal IDE drive and add S-ATA later. (The C3 case has room for four hard drives. My motherboard can handle ten!)   [10:12 AM]
    Revision 2.0.1: Best Buy is charging twenty-five bucks for a floppy drive! I simply can’t bring myself to pay that much for a crappy old floppy drive, so I’m just going to order it online (where I can get it around ten or fifteen bucks cheaper). I did get a hard drive though. Just a video card, sound card, water cooler kit, three more fans, CD drive, monitor, processor, network hub, additional S-ATA drives, and cathodes and/or LEDs to go!
    P.S. My C3 case is scheduled to arrive Monday, June 2.
Posted in Gadgets, New Computer, Personal, Tech | 2 Comments