This week on Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days, 33 year old David Stacy, a die-hard Christian, moved from his home in West Virgina to Dearborn, MI to live as a Muslim. To give you an idea of his starting point, Morgan asks him what does he think of when he thinks of Muslims, his response is “A guy with an AK-47.” Oh goody.

As one can expect, this plays out as a morality tale of learning to love thy neighbor, no matter what the differences are. It did have some nice primer information about the religion of Islam (explaining how Muslims do recognize Jesus as a prophet, and that they feel they come from the same religious tree as Judaism and Christianity)

As part of the “experiment” (I use the term lightly), David moved in with a Muslim family in Michigan, the Haque family. Shamael is a first year resident, and his wife, Sadia, is going to law school and they have a two year old daughter, Hanaan. Shamael and Sadia are both of Pakistani descent, but were born here in the United States. Overall he got along with the family, and we only saw one instance of him having an argument over terroism with them. It did get heated, but not horribly so.

David is hard pressed to accept all the aspects of the Islamic life, especially the praying. He feels that to do so, would go agianst his God. Up until the very last day, he avoids praying, which is difficult to do since Muslims pray five times a day, the first time each day being at 5:30 AM. When he does finally pray at a large Mosque, he can be seen holding a cross in his right hand, at last he has found a compromise between the two.

There were a lot of things though that David was still having trouble with, and a lot of things that went unexplained. I can only remember seeing him read from the Qur’an (the Islamic holy book) once. Did he read it fully? Did he even try? He did take lessons in Arabic to better understand the praying, but he didn’t begin those lessons until he was two weeks into the process. I was happy to see him go to a Halaal butcher to better understand their diet, and the way their food must be prepared.

The biggest gap though comes at the end of the episode. David is asked to go out and get signatures on a petition to stop the racial profiling of Muslims. He goes out in full Islamic dress, and attempts to collect signatures. We see rejection after rejection, and the inevitable accusations of Muslims being terrorists. He defends the Islamic faith, and says that every religion has their radicals, and that the boming of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is an example of that. How did David suddnely become a defender of Muslims? Why did he have this seeming change of heart? The episode never showed any “revelation” type moment where he suddenly understand the Muslim faith any better, so why did he feel a sudden need to defend them?

Like I said after the first episode though, this series is facing the problem of being predictible. Did anyone really expect David to walk away from this experiance hating Muslims? I doubt it. There is even an article online now from someone who was approached to represent the Muslims in the episode. The article quotes information that came from Morgan Spurlock’s production company:

“This process aims to deconstruct common misconceptions and stereotypes. . . . Our character will learn firsthand about Islam and the daily issues that . . . Muslims in America face today. The viewers will witness our character emerge from the immersion situation with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the Muslim-American experience. . . . The potential is great for this program to enlighten a national television audience about the Muslim American experience and increase their compassion, understanding and support.”

This episode suffered the worst yet from the 1-hour format. There were so many more things I would have liked to have seen. Don’t get me wrong, the episode probably did it’s job, and if it got through to even one person, fantastic, but I doubt it did. I just didn’t feel anything was explained in enough depth. To much time was spent on “Muslims are terrorists!” “No they’re not!” as opposed to just saying flat out that Qur’an teaches non-violence. Really, it’s that simple, it could have been summed up in a few easy sentances.

It is already well known that I am a reality TV addict, but even the die-hards have their guilty pleasures. Yes folks, there is a reality show that even other reality fanatics look down their nose’s at, and that show is….Big Brother.

Yes, it is true, I am a Big Brother watcher. I was beyond hooked for the first season. The live feeds kept me up well beyond dawn a few times. I skipped Big Brother 2 because I didn’t like the format change, but I cam back for #3, and haven’t left since. While I may think Julie Chen is about the worst host in reality TV history, I’m still there, episode after episode. I watch live feeds…I read live updates at JokersUpdates.com…I am a junky, and I admit it.

So why do I bother posting this? Well, the new season starts next week, the houseguests were announced today, and I just wanted to give everyone fair warning that this was going to be a big part of my blog for awhile.

The Morning after eviction always means a new task to determine a winner for a reward. This week it was learning to make pasta since the service the next night was going to be all pasta dishes. The team to make the most usable pasta, determined by weight, in 20 minutes would win. After the 20 minutes, Gordon went through the pasta, tossed some and weighed some. In a decesion od 2.41 pounds vs 2.45 pounds, the red team won.

While the red team got to leave the kitchen for a gondola ride, with some wine drinking, the blues had to stay in the kitchen to make pasta noodles for the next nights dinner. No surprise, the blues were a bit upset, and a bit whiny about it I must say. You lost, be gracious, don’t whine about it. Weird side note for this section, it seems Michael goes out to the backyard every night and talks to himself outloud. Very odd.

As they prepare for the service, Gordon tells the teams that there will be two service this night. While one team cooks, the other will serve, and during the second service they will reverse. Each service will last two hours, and they are to serve as many tables as possible in that time. Gordon then tells the reds that they get to choose which they will do first, they opt to cook for the first setting of customers.

The reds get a lot of their food out, but as is to be expected, they make a lot of mistakes also. The blues service was ok, though I was bit shocked by Jessica just randomly giving out entrees towards the end of their service.

When the blues took over the kitchen, Michael got the idea to pay attention to what the blues were low on in their prep, and try to get as many people as possible to order that. Lasagana suddenly became a very popular dish in Hell’s Kitchen. Jimmy made a lot of mistakes in serving, and served the wrong table entrees for another table, causing a re-do to happen. Gordon was less than thrilled.

When all was said and done, the reds got more of their orders out, but got worse marks for their food and made numerous mistakes in the serving. Gordon named Michael the banishment namer, and he put up Elsie and Chris. In the end, Chris was sent home.

As a side note, Chris was very proud of the fact he is an executive chef, and he seemed to think this made him and Gordon understand each other. From watching Gordon’s shows in England, Gordon hates executive chefs, and finds them to be useless. For those who don’t know what an EC does….Gordon is correct. They don’t actually cook, they just sit around and tell people what to do, they are management, nothing more.

In a surprising turn of events, Dennis Rader (AKA the BTK Killer) pleaded guilty to 10 counts of murder today. No insanity defense…no blaming his parents…nothing. You can read all the details in this news story.

My opinion? His defense lawyer probably told him he would not take the stand. Dennis obviouslly feeds on attention, hence the letters he wrote while he was killing, and this was the best way to get all eyes on himself. Shock everyone, get to tell your side of the story and get mentioned on every news program and in every printed form of media. And yes, I understand I am feeding his sickness by talking about him, but I am so shocked by this, I couldn’t fight the urge.

So…yeah…Tom Cruise. Just a word of advice on your career Tom, when promoting a major Summer blockbuster film, like War Of The Worlds, it is typically a good idea to act…oh…I don’t know….SANE!!!!

Typically I don’t like getting involved in the going-ons in an actor’s life, like anyone, they are entitled to a private life. More power to them. However, when it gets to the point I can’t turn on the TV without someone discussing your…bizarre….actions, I tend to get a bit annoyed. When you go on a morning news/talk show like Today, arguing with the host, in this case Matt Lauer, is usually not a good way to endear yourself to the movie going public. If you haven’t read the transcript, or better yet, watched the video of Tom’s apperance, you should. You can find both of them here. How about some highlights though?

In discussion about Tom Cruise’s recent comments about Brooke Shields, and how she souldn’t take any medication for her postpartum depression:

Cruise: No, you see. Here’s the problem. You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.

Lauer: So, postpartum depression to you is kind of a little psychological gobbledygook ?

Wow..no such thing as a chemical imbalance huh? Yep…all those years of research mean nothing. Tom Cruise…actor and medical expert.

Lauer: But a little bit of what you’re saying Tom is, you say you want people to do well. But you want them do to well by taking the road that you approve of, as opposed to a road that may work for them.

Cruise: I disagree with it. And I think that there’s a higher and better quality of life. And I think that, promoting ? for me personally, see, you’re saying what, I can’t discuss what I wanna discuss?

You can discuss anything you want Tom, but let’s just hope it make some sort of sense. However, where do you get off publically attacking Brooke Shields for something she felt she needed? How would you feel if some other actor came out attacking you for your need to have Scientology in your life? I imagine you probably wouldn’t be too happy about it. (Please note, if you read the Scientology site, you should also really read clambake.org/, which will give you a another view of Scientology. (just trying to be balanced)

Lauer: No. You absolutely can.

Cruise: Matt. Matt, Matt, you don’t even ? you’re glib. You don’t even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That’s what I’ve done. Then you go and you say where’s the medical test? Where’s the blood test that says how much Ritalin you’re supposed to get?

Um….maybe in the scientific data that you claim to have read? I don’t know, call me silly if you must, but that’s where I would look first.

You really should just go read the whole thing, it’s amazing. (Plus, if I post much more, I will be going beyond the “fair use” law.)

So what is my point to all this? Lots. I think that our celebrities are growing more and more wildly out of control. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pretty much are the current poster children for this. Celebrities have gotten to a point where they feel they can go around saying anything they want without any sort of ramifications.

There a lot of reasons why certain opinions should be kept to yourself if you are in the public eye at all. I am a business owner, and I know some customers might not shop with me if I publically said what political party I belong to. So, to make sure I don’t annoy my customers, I keep my mouth shut about politics. Before Tom goes shooting his mouth off about psychology, he should perhaps ponder what this might do to his career. I, for one, will not be seeing his new film, or any of his future films because he has annoyed me to such an extent. There are also lots of rumors circulating that Katie Holmes probably won’t be invivted back for the Batman Begins follow-up due to her recent actions.

It’s up to each person to decide if this bothers them. Every person in this country has a right to their own opinions and has the right to express them. Each person should also realize though, sometimes it is best to not go on a highly rated morning talk show and essentially call the host a moron. And to attack another celebrity for seeking medical help that you don’t believe in? Or for that matter, basically saying that anyone on these meds is in the wrong? Just not a smart move in my not-so-humble opinion.

(For added fun, read Al Roker’s take on this at his blog, scroll down to June 24th)

Back on June 12th, I made a post about how there seems to be a bias in the media over what sort of missing person stories they focus on. Natalee Holloway is still missing, and we still seem to get hourly updates on her. It seems no one else has gone missing in all this time, except for the three boys in New Jersey, who have now been found, sadly dead of accidental suffication.

So now though, this concept is getting so wildly out of control, even parts of the media are starting to finally pay attention. It’s about time! This article in the Chicago Sun-Times, by Erin Texeira, addresses this very subject. Her first paragraph makes the very point I was trying to make:

“Most of the missing adults tracked by the FBI are men. More than one in five of those abducted or kidnapped are black.”

And how many of those people do we hear about? Pretty much none. Later on, she sites:

Of the nearly 47,600 active adult cases tracked by the FBI as of the beginning of May, 53 percent were men and 29 percent black.

Well golly gee Wally, I must not be watching the news very often since I haven’t heard about any of those.

Do I take a look at the article for a lot more interesting insights, but it is nice to see someone in the media bringing this up!

So, Tuesday night I was running way late, and threw a Marie Callender Chicken Pot Pie in the oven, after of course preheating to 400 degrees. 45 minutes later my chickeny goodness was ready. I noticed it had broken open in the oven, but, not big deal.

So grabbing said pot pie, I headed for my usual chair to watch TV and eat. Honestly, I can’t remember what exactly caused me to drop the pie, but I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

I am just linking to the picture of the resulting 2nd degree burn. Not horrible, but nor pretty either. Didn’t want to just spring it on anyone. The picture is here, you have been warned.

Like I said, it’s not the most horrible burn ever by any means, but it’s not exactly painless either. Right now it is mostly stiff. I keep covering it in Neosporin, and I guess we will just have to see how it heals up. I think the worst part though is explaining to folks that the horrible burn on your lower leg came from, of all things, a pot pie.

Last week I mentioned that Morgan Spurlock’s new series, 30 Days, might run the risk of being predictible. This weeks episode, Anti-Aging, was predictible only in the sense I was sure the man using the steroids would have some negative side-effects, but I could have never predicted how severe they would be.

This was the first episode to not feature Mr. Spurlock as the test subject, instead we are introduced to Scott Bridges, 35, married father of 3. Mr. Bridges used to be a high school and college athelete, and was in great shape. With his age quickly catching up with him, and not being in any form of shape, he wants to fight back against the mid-life realities. He agrees to go on a program of hormones, testosterone and a daily dose of some 21 odd pills (at one point they also say 40 pills…not sure which is correct). He also begins weight training and cardio workouts with professional trainers and radically changes his diet.

Things go well at first. He starts to feel more energetic, people are telling him he looks more youthful and it seems like it may be working. Some of the first hurdles to pop up though are things like, oh…HIS LIFE? Look back at everything I said he was doing, then remember, he has a full time job and 3 kids! Sure, everyone should lead a healthier life, but at what cost to those around you? This does become a sore spot between Scott and his wife, and eventually between his wife and the cardio trainer. The cardio trainer essentially tells Scott’s wife that nothing besides the cardio matters and tries to tell the wife how things will be. Look, the wife was no angel, she seemed a bit snippy to me through the whole episode, but the cardio trainer had no right talking to her like that.

It was after this though that the whole experiment started to fall apart. Scott’s liver started acting abnormally. He started getting angrier with people (a known side effect of testosterone, as it is a steroid). One of the biggest shocks of all though, was he had his semen tested before he started to watch for sterility. At the time this started, he had an excellent sperm count of 80 million per CC, normal is 60 million per CC. After taking all these drugs, within weeks, his count was 1 million per CC, and 100% of those were dead. In general, all these “helpful” drugs, were having some very negative effects.

As an aside, the funniest moment of the entire episode had to be when he took all his pills with him to talk to his weight trainer, a hulking professional body builder. Even he was shocked at the number of supplements Scott was taking, and said that even he didn’t take this many. You have to see it to get the humor, but it was highly amusing.

To Scott’s credit, he dropped out of the experiment at 21 days, and we were informed with title cards that his liver function returned to normal, his sperm count went back up and through all of this, he lost 15 pounds.

The one aspect I am very happy with the show is that even though Spurlock isn’t doing all the experiments himself, he does appear through out the episode doing like little side notes that enhance the overall point. Nice to see him doing that as his commentaries really do spruce up his projects.

Next week, a Christian spends 30 days as a Muslim. Oh this should be interesting.

As with any list, some I agree with, some I don’t.

1. ?Frankly, my dear, I don?t give a damn,? ?Gone With the Wind,? 1939.
2. ?I?m going to make him an offer he can?t refuse,? ?The Godfather,? 1972.
3. ?You don?t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could?ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am,? ?On the Waterfront,? 1954.
4. ?Toto, I?ve got a feeling we?re not in Kansas anymore,? ?The Wizard of Oz,? 1939.
5. ?Here?s looking at you, kid,? ?Casablanca,? 1942.
6. ?Go ahead, make my day,? ?Sudden Impact,? 1983.
7. ?All right, Mr. DeMille, I?m ready for my close-up,? ?Sunset Blvd.,? 1950.
8. ?May the Force be with you,? ?Star Wars,? 1977.
9. ?Fasten your seatbelts. It?s going to be a bumpy night,? ?All About Eve,? 1950.
10. ?You talking to me?? ?Taxi Driver,? 1976.
11. ?What we?ve got here is failure to communicate,? ?Cool Hand Luke,? 1967.
12. ?I love the smell of napalm in the morning,? ?Apocalypse Now,? 1979.
13. ?Love means never having to say you?re sorry,? ?Love Story,? 1970.
14. ?The stuff that dreams are made of,? ?The Maltese Falcon,? 1941.
15. ?E.T. phone home,? ?E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,? 1982.
16. ?They call me Mister Tibbs!?, ?In the Heat of the Night,? 1967.
17. ?Rosebud,? ?Citizen Kane,? 1941.
18. ?Made it, Ma! Top of the world!?, ?White Heat,? 1949.
19. ?I?m as mad as hell, and I?m not going to take this anymore!?, ?Network,? 1976.
20. ?Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,? ?Casablanca,? 1942.
21. ?A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti,? ?The Silence of the Lambs,? 1991.
22. ?Bond. James Bond,? ?Dr. No,? 1962.
23. ?There?s no place like home,? ?The Wizard of Oz,? 1939.
24. ?I am big! It?s the pictures that got small,? ?Sunset Blvd.,? 1950.
25. ?Show me the money!?, ?Jerry Maguire,? 1996.
26. ?Why don?t you come up sometime and see me??, ?She Done Him Wrong,? 1933.
27. ?I?m walking here! I?m walking here!?, ?Midnight Cowboy,? 1969.
28. ?Play it, Sam. Play ?As Time Goes By,?? ?Casablanca,? 1942.
29. ?You can?t handle the truth!?, ?A Few Good Men,? 1992.
30. ?I want to be alone,? ?Grand Hotel,? 1932.
31. ?After all, tomorrow is another day!?, ?Gone With the Wind,? 1939.
32. ?Round up the usual suspects,? ?Casablanca,? 1942.
33. ?I?ll have what she?s having,? ?When Harry Met Sally…,? 1989.
34. ?You know how to whistle, don?t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow,? ?To Have and Have Not,? 1944.
35. ?You?re gonna need a bigger boat,? ?Jaws,? 1975.
36. ?Badges? We ain?t got no badges! We don?t need no badges! I don?t have to show you any stinking badges!?, ?The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,? 1948.
37. ?I?ll be back,? ?The Terminator,? 1984.
38. ?Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth,? ?The Pride of the Yankees,? 1942.
39. ?If you build it, he will come,? ?Field of Dreams,? 1989.
40. ?Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you?re gonna get,? ?Forrest Gump,? 1994.
41. ?We rob banks,? ?Bonnie and Clyde,? 1967.
42. ?Plastics,? ?The Graduate,? 1967.
43. ?We?ll always have Paris,? ?Casablanca,? 1942.
44. ?I see dead people,? ?The Sixth Sense,? 1999.
45. ?Stella! Hey, Stella!?, ?A Streetcar Named Desire,? 1951.
46. ?Oh, Jerry, don?t let?s ask for the moon. We have the stars,? ?Now, Voyager,? 1942.
47. ?Shane. Shane. Come back!?, ?Shane,? 1953.
48. ?Well, nobody?s perfect,? ?Some Like It Hot,? 1959.
49. ?It?s alive! It?s alive!?, ?Frankenstein,? 1931.
50. ?Houston, we have a problem,? ?Apollo 13,? 1995.
51. ?You?ve got to ask yourself one question: ?Do I feel lucky?? Well, do ya, punk??, ?Dirty Harry,? 1971.
52. ?You had me at ?hello,?? ?Jerry Maguire,? 1996.
53. ?One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don?t know,? ?Animal Crackers,? 1930.
54. ?There?s no crying in baseball!?, ?A League of Their Own,? 1992.
55. ?La-dee-da, la-dee-da,? ?Annie Hall,? 1977.
56. ?A boy?s best friend is his mother,? ?Psycho,? 1960.
57. ?Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,? ?Wall Street,? 1987.
58. ?Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,? ?The Godfather Part II,? 1974.
59. ?As God is my witness, I?ll never be hungry again,? ?Gone With the Wind,? 1939.
60. ?Well, here?s another nice mess you?ve gotten me into!?, ?Sons of the Desert,? 1933.
61. ?Say ?hello? to my little friend!?, ?Scarface,? 1983.
62. ?What a dump,? ?Beyond the Forest,? 1949.
63. ?Mrs. Robinson, you?re trying to seduce me. Aren?t you??, ?The Graduate,? 1967.
64. ?Gentlemen, you can?t fight in here! This is the War Room!?, ?Dr. Strangelove,? 1964.
65. ?Elementary, my dear Watson,? ?The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,? 1929.
66. ?Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape,? ?Planet of the Apes,? 1968.
67. ?Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,? ?Casablanca,? 1942.
68. ?Here?s Johnny!?, ?The Shining,? 1980.
69. ?They?re here!?, ?Poltergeist,? 1982.
70. ?Is it safe??, ?Marathon Man,? 1976.
71. ?Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain?t heard nothin? yet!?, ?The Jazz Singer,? 1927.
72. ?No wire hangers, ever!?, ?Mommie Dearest,? 1981.
73. ?Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico??, ?Little Caesar,? 1930.
74. ?Forget it, Jake, it?s Chinatown,? ?Chinatown,? 1974.
75. ?I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,? ?A Streetcar Named Desire,? 1951.
76. ?Hasta la vista, baby,? ?Terminator 2: Judgment Day,? 1991.
77. ?Soylent Green is people!?, ?Soylent Green,? 1973.
78. ?Open the pod bay doors, HAL,? ?2001: A Space Odyssey,? 1968.
79. Striker: ?Surely you can?t be serious.? Rumack: ?I am serious … and don?t call me Shirley,? ?Airplane!?, 1980.
80. ?Yo, Adrian!?, ?Rocky,? 1976.
81. ?Hello, gorgeous,? ?Funny Girl,? 1968.
82. ?Toga! Toga!?, ?National Lampoon?s Animal House,? 1978.
83. ?Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make,? ?Dracula,? 1931.
84. ?Oh, no, it wasn?t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast,? ?King Kong,? 1933.
85. ?My precious,? ?The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,? 2002.
86. ?Attica! Attica!?, ?Dog Day Afternoon,? 1975.
87. ?Sawyer, you?re going out a youngster, but you?ve got to come back a star!?, ?42nd Street,? 1933.
88. ?Listen to me, mister. You?re my knight in shining armor. Don?t you forget it. You?re going to get back on that horse, and I?m going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we?re gonna go, go, go!?, ?On Golden Pond,? 1981.
89. ?Tell ?em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper,? ?Knute Rockne, All American,? 1940.
90. ?A martini. Shaken, not stirred,? ?Goldfinger,? 1964
91. ?Who?s on first,? ?The Naughty Nineties,? 1945.
92. ?Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac … It?s in the hole! It?s in the hole! It?s in the hole!?, ?Caddyshack,? 1980.
93. ?Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!?, ?Auntie Mame,? 1958.
94. ?I feel the need ? the need for speed!?, ?Top Gun,? 1986.
95. ?Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary,? ?Dead Poets Society,? 1989.
96. ?Snap out of it!?, ?Moonstruck,? 1987.
97. ?My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you,? ?Yankee Doodle Dandy,? 1942.
98. ?Nobody puts Baby in a corner,? ?Dirty Dancing,? 1987.
99. ?I?ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!?, ?The Wizard of Oz,? 1939.
100. ?I?m king of the world!?, ?Titanic,? 1997.

My birthday is coming up on July 20th. Boy, my Amazon Wishlist sure is getting out of control in size. *whistles innocently*

I stumbled on this picture over at engadget.com today.

Yes boys and girls, this is a Commodore 64, this is what my very first computer looked like. It consisted of a keyboard only at first. The os (operating system), if you can really call it that, was hard wired into it. You would then plug it into either a Commodore moniter (pictured here) or a special tv/moniter set that were pretty expensive at the time. If you wanted to get really fancy, you would add on a 5.25″ floppy drive…the big honking thing to the side there, that, I swear, weighed 10 lbs all on it’s own.

This was cutting edge technology in the 1980’s folks. The 64 stood for 64 kilobytes of RAM (Random Access Memory). You read that right…64 kilobytes. Compared to a computer’s minimum now of 256 megabytes, that means a standard computer today is running 262,144 kilobytes. (thank you onlineconversion.com!) Don’t even try to ponder what computers with 1 - 4 gigabytes of RAM have in comparison!

The fun thing about the C64 (as most of us called it), was that anyone could write a program in BASIC (a computer language) with it. You could do simple programs, or rather lengthy complex ones. I think everyone who ever owned a C64 though did this one:

10 PRINT “Hello”
20 Goto 10

You would enter “RUN” and the screen would print out Hello over and over again until you stopped it. Hours of fun I tell ya! Of course, if you didn’t have the behemoth floppy drive to save it to, you lost the program you had written once you turned it off, but oh well. Not a big problem if you were just doing small things like the one I just showed you, but if you wanted to write a big long program, you really needed the floppy drive. (something I did not have for a year or two after I got the C64….can you tell I was bitter?)

The C64 was also the first time I entered the online world. Armed with a mighty 9600 baud modem, I called up CompuServe for the first time in September 1986. (id# 71211,2513 just in case you were wondering! ) I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was then I started playing with the internet, and have obviouslly, never looked back.

This memory kick-start couldn’t have come at a more intriguing time though. My new computer shipped to me today and I got my laptop back from the repair shop yesterday. I have computers on the brain, so it’s kind of fun to walk down memory lane and remember where most of us got our start. Wikipedia (one of the greatest resources on the web I tell ya!) has a lengthy, and fascinating entry on the C64 that you can read here if you want to know more. One thing that entry mentions that I had forgotten, when the C64 first came out, the price was…$595.

As the episode begun this week, Gordon felt it was time to shake things up again, and so it’s back to waking the teams up with rattling pots and pans. They were ordered to the kitchen on the double, once there, they were instructed to go to the dining room for resturant operations lessons from the Maitre’d, Jean Phillipe. To say he has too mellow of a voice for that hour of the morning would be an understatement.

He gave them a lengthy lesson in how to best set a table for an upper class dining experiance like Gordon provides. How to arrange the silver ware….how to place the plates….how to handle the glasses….how to fold the napkins…..how to….*snore* Huh? What? Oh he’s done talking? Phew!

Gordon comes out and asks the team if they have that all in their heads now. They respond that they do, all chipper and confident. Gordon tells them good, and tears the table cloth off the table, destroying the example they had been looking at. They are then told that each team must set a table for 6 guests, and copy the setup exactly. OOPS! Guess they should have been paying more attention!

The teams race through, and in the end, red team has more mistakes and most clean all the dishes, glasses and settings for the next nights service. The blue team got to be treated to massages and pedicures. Sucks to be the red team.

The next day the teams are trained to prepare frogs legs and pigeons for that nights dinner. Gordon explains how food doesn’t show up, ready to go, you have to be willing to prep the food yourself. As the day wore on, Gordon informed the teams that the team to serve all their tables first would win, and not face losing a member. He then dropped another bombshell that the reds would be setting up the entire dining room as further punishment from the loss the day before. This meant they didn’t get to setup their stations for dinner, possibly slowing them down from getting all their tables out.

The dining room setup, the resturant open for the night the competition began. Blue team started off getting the most tables out, and with Andrew actually behaving himself for once. As the night wore on though, Mary Ellen started slowing down the blue team with bad starters, and Andrew was messing up the sides. These combined allowed the red team to catch up and finally surpassing the blues to win.

Gordon named Jessica as the best of the worst, allowing her to name the two for possible evictions. She put up Andrew and Mary Ellen, both for slowing down the team. Gordon booted Mary Ellen in the end.

According to this news story, Jennifer Wilbanks, aka the “Runaway Bride”, is selling her….”story”….to TV execs to be made into a made-for-TV movie. It appears a company named ReganMedia is devoloping the project, and according to the above linked story:

“ReganMedia did not reveal the amount of the deal, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said it was thought to be around half a million dollars.”

So let me get this straight…she ran away, lied to authorities, cost $10,000’s of dollars in hunting for her. Her punishment? Two years probation, 120 hours of community service and ordered to repay $15,500 to her city for the search. Her reward? A rumored $500,000 deal for her story.

Would someone like to marry me? Don’t worry, you don’t have to actually do it, you can runaway and we’ll split the payday at the end.

This is some of the biggest news to hit the internet in awhile. It seems Google may be trying to lauch their own online payment system to rival Ebay’s Pay Pal service.

There have been a few to try this before (Western Union’s Bid Pay, Storm Pay and a few others come to mind), but this is the first one I think might actually pose a rather serious threat to the Goliath that is the Ebay/Pay Pal monster.

Without knowing any of the details yet, I know that is a rather bold statement, but let’s face facts, as long as their prices are resonable, have any of the payment system entered our language like Google has? (”Oh yeah, I Googled him yesterday.”) The name recognition alone gives them a leg up.

Also, hopefully, Google will not have some of the insane policies that Pay Pal has. (You can sell pornography on Ebay, but you can’t pay or accept payments for it with Pay Pal???) The big key though will be how easily you can integrate it with existing auctions and online stores. Will they add debit cards like Pay Pal has? (One of my personal favorite features of Pay Pal)

And from the earlier linked news story:

“PayPal accounted for $233.1 million, or 23 percent, of eBay’s revenue during the first quarter.”

With those types of numbers at stake, this could be a very serious battle brewing. I, for one, can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth bringing up again…why are online gamers, for the most part, jerks? It’s a game, it’s meant to be fun, it is not a life or death situation.

The occurances of idiots on Halo 2 seems to be getting worse and worse, especially since the recent rank resets. The new tendancy, since everyone is working on new ranks anyway, if you don’t like the map you are on, or the gametype on the map, to just leave the game, deserting your team and possibly leaving them vastly outnumbered.

Last night I ended up in a game of Assault on Headlong in Halo 2 where my team ended up being outnumbered 8-to-3. Ok, fine, Blue team was going to win, but they couldn’t be sporting about it. No, they had to come racing over and started spawn camping us. To me, this is just poor sportsmanship. You know your going to win, just let the players at least try. There is no reason to just constantly pound on them.

Of course, I’m not to happy with the team members who quit either. To me, joining a game is like a social contract. You are agreeing to play this game with this group of people. Leaving by choice is just bad manners in my opinion.

You know, as much as I complain about online gaming, it is amazing I still enjoy it.

Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days” premiered last night on the FX Network. For those of you unfamiliar with Morgan, he was the gentleman who did “Super Size Me“, the documentry that literally changed how I view fast food. He ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days, and he allowed ud to see what it did to his body.

In this new series, each week someone will face a challange they must do for 30 days, the first week was Morgan and his fiancee had to live on minimum wage for a month. (Morgan is only the test subject in this episode, from here on out it will be new people each week) As I am sure you can guess, it did not go smoothly for them. They had to get an apartment, get jobs and live within their budget. None of it went well, and the conclusion was, it’s not easy to do.

I am thrilled with this series being done, but there are two problems I see.

1)An hour just isn’t long enough. I have a feeling this will be great on DVD with extras, but on TV with 15 minutes of commercials? Just not enough.

2)I think the outcome of each episode is going to be fairly predictable.

I will give it a few more chances, but I’m afraid this may be doomed just by the format, not the subject matter.

Well, my laptop hard drive is dead, but to my surprise, it is still under warrenty! A new hard drive is on it’s way, but more than likely all the data is lost, and everything will need to be reinstalled. Such is life, I really don’t keep primary files on it, so the data being gone is no big loss. Thinking I may just get a new one though and give the old one to my parents to use on their business trips.

Add this to the desktop at work having problems, my dad’s computer is slowly dying….this has not been a good week for the computers in my life.

To top it all off, my allergies are killing me. The pollen was so bad here today, I could taste it in my mouth. Oh joy. Add in the extremely high mold count we have going on, my allergies are not having a good time at all.

Well, after all the stressing of last week about if I should buy a new desktop or not, and after I just ordered said new desktop…it appears my laptop just died. The laptop is three years old, but still. Oh well, I will call the tech guy in the morning and spend yet another $90 on a service call. I swear.

And to top it all off, I’m not feeling that good!

Highly amusing week on Hell’s Kitchen. The first event we were treated to was Jeff passing a kidney stone, and then showing it to everyone to prove he was not a liar. Lovely. Great television that.

The first significant event of the episode though, was the moving of Michael from the blue team to the red team as they were now outnumbered them 6-to-4. With the teams now evened up, Gordon gave both the teams the task of preparing a 5 course meal for a VIP in only 1 hour. The VIP was of course, Gordon. The added pressure was they had to go buy all their ingrediants at a grocery store, and once in the store they only had 10 minutes, and $100 to get everything they needed.

Once the groceries are bought (with some time wasting video of the “race” around the store), the teams head back to the kitchen and cook their meals. Each member is responsible for one course and then will present that course to Gordon during the judging. Surprise, surprise, Gordon likes 3 of the 5 dishes on each side, so he makes a subjective judgement. He says the red team better balanced the entire meal, and declares them the winners. The prize is a night out at an English type pub with him. The blues must clean the dorms.

Let me interject here, never had I heard whining like blue team did while cleaning. Suck it up! You loss, get over it!

Now comes the time for the third night of being open, and as you can guess, it is a disaster. There are some famous food critics in the resturant, and the teams have no idea which meals are theirs, so everything must be cooked like it is going to a critic. Of course, one disaster after another happens…a woman throws up from her appetizer…dishes are sent back…and Jeff acts like a moron and gets chewed out multiple times. When he has finally had enough, he calls Ramsey a name and storms out. Ramsey informs the teams he will not be returning. Aw, so sad…not.

So, after shutting the kitchen down for the third time in three services, and with not enough entree’s going out to make a judgement, he relied on what the critics said. The blue team lost and Ralph was named the picker for who would go. He chose Wendy and Andrew because…well…for being Wendy and Andrew. Neither of them should be allowed near a kitchen ever again. In the end, Gordon told Wendy she was no longer needed. So in one episode, each team lost a member. So long Jeff and Wendy.

In a comment, I really think this may be down to Michael and Ralph already, but we shall see.