General

Metroid Prime rocks.

After playing for an hour-ish each day, I’ve gotten to the third boss, Thardus. He throws rocks at you, freezes you, and occasionally turns into an invincible ball and tries to squash you. After he painted the room with my greasy entrails the first time, I discovered that he was, indeed, easy to beat. The very simple trick is to jump up onto one of the ledges on the sides of the room, stay fairly still, and shoot the hell out of him. He’ll continue to occasionally turn into a huge ball and squash you, but at most he’ll only take off a hundred points. The ledge keeps you out of the way of his freezing attack. Also, it’s a lot easier to keep a target lock on him while you’re standing still.

In response to Nyx‘s fine post:

I disagree.In the history of humanity, knowledge has always been the most expensive. Education should never be ‘free’. To consider it such devalues the knowledge gained.

I am highly suspicious of anything ‘free’ [[TAANSTAFL][3]]. I am especially cautious of ‘free’ education. It is, more often than not, less education and more indoctrination.

Consider the American education system: how to cheaply and effectively rule a population of millions? It is far less costly to rule a people with words, rather than with force. However, they must first be taught to read.

Just in case you’re interested in travelling to Hell by way of the UK, this nice website provides a handy catalog of entrances to the underworld.

Sam has started his Jedi training, and snapped a few photos of himself posing with his new lightsaber: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Robert: It just seems like there’s a lot of interesting things happening lately. Like, I read this article about a vaccine that will completely cure a certain form of cancer.

Robert: Doesn’t do me much good, of course, because you have to be a girl to have a cervix.

Me: Well, uh.. actually, I should tell you that I have a cervix.

Me: It’s in the fridge, behind the mayo. Don’t knock it over.

Neat OS X utility: iPulse.

iPulse is a great little graphical system statistics indicator. It shows CPU load, network load, memory usage, disk usage, and has a clock — and all in one easy-to-use interface.

While helping Daniel move, we uncovered a box of lightsabers.

Me: I wanna merkin. I can use it as an eyepatch.

Laura: Hopefully not a used one.

Me: Sure, it’d look like i had a furry labia on my eye.

Me: But I think it’d be a fashion statement.

Laura: “Gee, there’s something fishy about this eye patch…”

Me: *winces*

Last night, as I was leaving the Marietta Diner, I saw the coolest car ever: a 1980 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow II. It was gloss black and shiny chrome, packed full of geeks (it’s hard to miss the Mozilla ‘Hack’ t-shirt), and had a “LINUX” license plate on the front.

Even better? Laura said she’d buy me one for Christmas. YEE!!

More holiday gift ideas: Possum-fur Nipple Warmers.