ThinkingSkull.com

I love Diablo. Diablo has always been like Guantlet but takes itself way more seriously. It’s a personal dungeon crawl filled with undead things in an immersive atmosphere.

I’ve tried World of Warcraft, but the game play flexibility and options just don’t seem as important with so many non-linear, time-filling… well, bullsh*t quests. Seriously, I have to fight a pig? No, wait, kill twelve spider monkeys? Like any good adventurer, I want to start where it’s dangerous and deadly, not tromping through mud because “the local guard” needs help when they’re not watching a bridge. Don’t get me started on the auctions.

Now Blizzard has announced Diablo III is officially in the pipeline. The official site already has what I want to see and a twenty-minute featurette with sample intended game play. Like anything Blizzard does, there’s no street date yet, but if they’ve got this much going on already, we should be within a year undead-stomping, demon-slaying, cinematic-reward happiness.

Wow. From “Witchblade” to “Fathom” to “Tomb Raider” and a host of other stories and artwork, I actually own signed and framed pieces of art by his guy. If this doesn’t inspire would-be creators to do what it is they’ve always wanted to do, take heed: your birth certificate has an expiration date and for a few it isn’t very far off. Gonna miss Turner’s stuff.

… and I can’t think of anything to say about that, except maybe…

“Ratsh*t, batsh*t, dirty little tw*t,
96 a$$holes tied in a knot,
Yay! Lizardsh*t! F*ck!”

Give my regards to Sam Kinison (if you meet him hell). And Dean Winchester.
You will be missed, sir.

Yep. Sure did. Nice and quiet so far, but if Al Gore doesn’t stop talking about it, bad things may happen.

Imagine if you could only log onto the Internet using your real name, communicate with only one email address, and be charged with a felony for every time you didn’t? What if anonymity online became a criminal act? It could happen… and sooner than you think.

In an article entitled The Girl Who Will Change the Internet?, G4’s TheFeed laments the decision by their overlords to discontinue using “screen names” or any form of anonymous logons other than their own names for any posts. This is a preemptive compliance with something that could become very real because there have already been attempts to make it happen.

The article describes 13-year old Megan Meiers, a girl with a history of diagnosed mental problems who was duped into believing the fake “Josh Evans” was a real person and eventually committed suicide over what she perceived to be a good and trusted friend turning on her. Worse yet, the fictional boyfriend was actually the mother of a childhood friend who was using the account and fake identity to monitor her own daughter’s well being. With nothing in the real world to actually charge the woman with other than being mean and irresponsible as an adult, pressure on law makers have forced them to come up with “one count of Conspiracy and 3 counts of Accessing Protected Computers Without Authorization,” essentially described as lying to the MySpace servers.

Anyone who knows me at all knows I’m signed up all over the ‘Net as “Grim D. Reaper.” The character is a fictionalization used to promote my movie website and, frankly, it has met with positive response. Before that I was “The Crystal Lich,” which is a little harder to visualize conceptually and hence the reason for the change when I started making promotional YouTube videos. But am I committing a crime, a felony no less, by representing myself as a character?

A friend of mine suggested the following: if a blanket rule of non-anonymity were criminalized throughout US history, would Samuel Clemens have been thrown in jail for publishing his works under the pseudonym Mark Twain? How about Stephen King for using Richard Bachman? Vampire author Anne Rice as erotic writer Anne Rampling? Pen names and screen names are ways of creating identity and often self-marketing to avoid “brand” confusion, and just because you’re not a multi-media conglomerate business shouldn’t mean that you’re not allowed to use the freedom and freebies of the Internet to accomplish the same thing.

While what happened to Megan Meiers is a tragedy, the fact was that she was doing things that should have been monitored and that her own parents have a certain degree of responsibility as well, creating any blanket rule criminalizing anonymity would be too ambiguous. The same rules that already apply to discussing sex to a known minor online being illegal (and damn well should be) could be extended to include suggesting tasks harmful to the minor.

One of the key words here is “known,” because if a child misrepresents themselves as an adult online, then either the child or the child’s parent must assume some responsibility (last time I checked, no one’s blog comment system came with a government ID check nor could many afford to implement one). With regard to the Megan Meiers incident, the adult in question knew that they were talking to a child, knew who the child was, and instigated the cruel crowd mentality that has destroyed plenty of childhoods. The other word is “task,” which I have used in this preliminary bit of text: “to hold responsible any adult knowingly suggesting to a minor any task intentionally detrimental to the minor’s welfare.” My thoughts are that willfully making statements resulting in a child’s death would certainly infer responsibility.

“Conspiracy,” sadly, is broad and ambiguous enough without adding “Accessing Protected Computers Without Authorization” as code for “you lied on your sign-up form.” While everyone (including myself) thinks the woman being charged should shoulder some responsibility for this (even if its just community service educating minors on the dangers of the Internet), these broad charges resulting in a conviction could set the precedent needed to again attempt to make ‘Net anonymity illegal, and that’s a bad thing.

My name is Alan Smithee, and I approved this message.

A co-worker actually asked me this question today (along with indicating that Halloween was the other one). Nice to see I’m leaving an impression, huh? Very nice.

All chant! “The night time is the right time… the night time is the right time… the night time is the right time… the night time is the right time…” (with full apologies to Adam Sandler).

I believe that the art of embracing divine inspiration is the happy frustration of trying to arrange 26 letters into a cohesive thought onto a clean slice of a processed dead tree.

Too much? Yeah, too much. After a little though, I’m dropping the clean slice of a processed dead tree. And so, the edit:

“The art of embracing divine inspiration is the happy frustration of trying to arrange 26 letters into a cohesive thought.”

Much better. No, wait. “The art of?” What kind of pretentious verbiage is that? Okay, one last revision.

“Embracing divine inspiration is the happy frustration of arranging 26 letters into a cohesive thought.”

Wow… that’s almost an email signature. I’ll work on it again later.

Most people who fly anywhere at all in the United States are pretty used to the new routine (laptops out, shoes off, carry on bags through “the machine,” ID and boarding pass, please). Most of the security people at each of the terminals I recently went through we’re all pretty joyless about their jobs… EXCEPT in Las Vegas!

At the ‘D’ terminal gate, a jealously-enormous television screen shows you what can and cannot taken on the plane. To illustrate the fact, “Star Trek” Federation “Red Shirt” security personal demonstrate what can happen when a Klingon tries to sneak guns and knives through the checkpoint. Hilarious, yes (especially for 1337est geeks like myself), but isn’t this clearly promoting “species profiling?”

You be the judge. Check out someone’s YouTube video of the educational film.

Two things: I was wrong, and boy was I wrong!

Even upon opening the storage container, there was a sense of underestimation. Inside were a washer and dryer, a full-size fridge, pieces to a bed, and over a dozen or so odd boxes, containers, and trunks covered with sheets of plastic (images coming soon!) So I asked innocently, “Which stack is mine?”

My friend laughed at me. “Here’s a hint: it ain’t the appliances or the bed.”

Uh oh. What I’d guessed to be a morning or an afternoon project turned into a morning AND afternoon project. I decided to do this in two phases. First, get rid of the stuff I definitely wasn’t keeping, like a fish tank, old lamps and antiquated electrical stuff, art supplies long dried out or ruined, and other general junk. Sadly, what was left could still fill over three foot lockers, much more than I could afford to ship back.

After a quick stop to eat at a west-coast-staple Carl’s Jr. (which Hardee’s on the east coast is quickly transforming into in every way but name), we sought the shade of the garage for the second sort. Sadly, all the magazines had to go to make room for the actual books and such, and there were many. Starlog, Fangoria, “official” film magazines, gaming rags, you name it, plus various pieces of outdated paperwork in the form of old bills, empty notebooks, and shreadables.

This second sort was hands on; I meant to touch everything to ensure it was seen to be sorted before keeping or tossing. Among the keepers were two college yearbooks, a high school yearbook, class ring, senior key, pictures and advertising for various theatrical work I’d done prior to enlistment, and an unusually sentimental number of pictures from events I didn’t recall documenting. There are enough images that I’m considering doing a mandatory half-life montage, but we shall see. Apparently I’ve reached an age where I don’t look back on old photos in horror but as a chance to think of my younger self as another person from another time (DeLorean and sports almanac not included).

In the end, two foot lockers remained that weighed in at 95 pounds each, so the whole bit on the plane was out and Greyhound Xpress shipping was in. Although their website estimated less than 3 days shipping and about $60 for under 100 pounds, that price of course doubled (two trunks), incurred a gasoline surtax of about 10% each on top of it, and would take a week. Fortunately it’s now all done and everything is on its way; on to the Winchester Mystery House!

I’m flying out to the West Coast to visit a friend this weekend, but part of this trip is also to clean out my portion of a storage unit and have what I’m not throwing away shipped back with me. I’ve asked my buddy out there (repeatedly) to take a few digital snapshots of the stuff to help me pre-sort it, but that hasn’t happened (thanks, Ed… you’re buying the first round). My ulterior motive for the request, however, was that I can’t seem to remember too much of what is actually there.

A lot of teens graduating high school can’t see past their senior year, and up until I joined the Navy, I only had a thought as to what I wanted to do with my life and neither the focus nor ambition to move in that direction. I believe I was 22 when I enlisted, 23 by the time I got there, and after traveling the world, enduring the rise and fall of an infamous ISP, and getting married then divorced, it has been almost half my life since looking through all the things I thought were important to me back then… my “half-life,” if you will.

I know there are books in there I want to keep and hope aren’t damaged. I also remembered my original Worlds of Wonder “Lazer Tag” equipment is there, too, with the old-fashioned toy guns that didn’t have the mandatory orange tips (no taking those on the plane). Everything else is a mystery lying in wait, but at the time it was the cumulative worldly possessions of a college dropout with only a hunch that a stint in the military might do him some good.

To be continued…

Isn’t it funny that a marriage license looks ready for framing as a document to endure for all time, while the divorce finalization looks like it was stamped in a post office for whoever was next in line?

This was originally posted at CommandLineIdiot.com.

The United States economy is in a funk. Food prices are up, oil is through the roof, real estate has collapsed, and credit is becoming scarce. Here are 12 signs to look for when the recession hits the Internet:

1. Digg.com moves their server over to Dreamhost
2. Jeff Bezos delivers his TED talk with a GoldenPalace.com tattoo across his naked chest
3. i can affordz cheezburger?
4. Drew Curtis switches to Pabst Blue Ribbon
5. For $20, Rick Astley will show up to do it in person.
6. Woot.com starts accepting payment in Flooz
7. Jeph Jacques sells all remaining ad space to Warner Music Group
8. Nigerian spammer steals your identity, only to return it 3 days later when he finds out your credit score
9. Scoble spruces up resume for sweet new gig as Hugh MacLeod’s intern
10. StuffWhitePeopleLike? Liquidity.
11. Guy Kawasaki trades in his MacBook for a Dell
12. You hire a PHP Developer for $12 an hour through elance.com, and it turns out to be Matt Mullenweg

A while back I got an unbelievable steal: $200 round-trip to San Francisco, California, from Jacksonville, Florida (and that wouldn’t pay a car’s gas even half way).

The primary purpose of the trip (other than to hang out for a weekend with an old high school bud) is to sort and empty out a storage unit 3/4 filled with stuff from about 18 years ago. Most of what’s there are books that I intend to keep, while the rest of it has either been upgraded or replaced long since. The question is, how to move just under 100 lbs. of books from coast to coast on the cheap?

FedEx wants over a dollar per pound and seven days to get it there. UPS is only asking for $80 or so. US Postal Service wants around $60-$70. And an option I’ve seen used in the past, “Greyhound Express” would throw it under a bus, up to 100 lbs in something as large as a foot locker, for about $60. Not bad.

There is another option, however. Being that its only a weekend, I can pack light and use my non carry-on (up to 50 lbs) to pack stuff in, then pay $25 for an extra bag (of up to 50 lbs again). If either bag is over 50, however, they charge you $50, and that’s only for 51 and up to 70 lbs. No, those numbers don’t make any sense, but you CAN stuff two bags with up to 50 lbs. each and only be out $25 more than your plane ticket. Of course, it used to be free and tipping the skycap $5 will let you load up two Navy-issue sea bags with about 100 lbs each (which is how I got most of that crap out there in the first place), but those days are sadly gone.

Not that this would be a problem for anyone, but Jessica Alba wants you to stare at her. In fact, she challenges you to do so! She absolutely DEMANDS that you stare… until one of you blinks, that is. In what may be the dumbest idea ever for an Internet publicity stunt, it doesn’t seem crazy or calculated at all when proposed by Ms. Alba. Check out her challenge at celebrity.myspace.com and remember, if you can’t find a reason to out stare Jessica Alba, you’d better be blind, in a doctor’s care, or seriously playing for the other team. Good luck!

Interestingly, if you’ve ever wondered whether or not a MySpace page was really a celebrity or not, I’d say this is a pretty good way to prove it. Golly, I hope she approves my “friend” request… tee hee!

We have a local coupon magazine in Jacksonville, Florida called Mint Magazine. It comes through the mail once a month chock full of local deals and such. Every local and franchise pizza place is listed, from Domino’s to Pizza Hut. The one I was most interested in, however, was a specialty pizza only available at Papa John’s and for a discounted price.

After logging onto their website, I attempted to place my order to get the deal, but unlike Pizza Hut or Domino’s, no online coupons reflecting their printed counterparts could be found. I checked again to see if their were any “promo codes” that I had simply missed. Nope, no codes, no anything, just nothing there.

I called the local restaurant that would be fulfilling the order and asked how to get the deal through the online ordering, but I was referred to their corporate web site’s help desk number (at the bottom of the screen). After a prompt answer, I was told that they had “problems with Mint Magazine before” and that these local deals were never submitted to the site, or else they’d be included in one of the “deal blocks” at the top and bottom of the ordering page. Sadly, I had to call back the restaurant to place my order over the phone (with my credit card) to get it for the prices advertised.

I’m a consumer. Ordering online lets me use a credit card without reading out the numbers over the phone while ensuring that the order placed is the total I expect. The salesperson at the restaurant threw the blame at the website, and the website threw the blame at the advertiser, and I’ll bet whomever the local owner of the restaurants are is the same person who sold the ad to Mint for inclusion. Judging from the reactions from all involved, no one felt the need to do anything (although to be fair, the website rep said they would tell their supervisor about the issue, but only when I’d asked them to).

Here’s what should happen:

1. The owner should ensure that the ad has website promo codes and that the website can accept them. If they are getting sales from the website, this is a must.
2. The company should put pressure on their franchises to ensure print ads contain the updated info. If it isn’t easy for a local franchise to add these (even themselves if they have to), something is very wrong.

Am I over reacting? Maybe, but I set up stores like this for a living professionally. Of course, I can just order from Pizza Hut and not worry about it, right?

Just got the word, so for everyone who voted me up, thanks! Here’s an excerpt:

Your video will be shown before several feature films at the Jacksonville Film Festival at the festival executive director’s discretion. May 21, 2008, the final night of the film festival, Jacksonville.com will be hosting the event and announcing the winner based on Editors’ Choice. The winner will be presented with a $500 prize courtesy of the Jacksonville Film Festival.

Your video will also be included in the trailer video of the 2007 48 Hour Film Project winners that will be screened tonight on the giant projector in the Jacksonville Landing courtyard during the 2008 48 Hour Film Project Launch Party festivities beginning at 5:30 p.m.

As I already said, I may not win, but it’s nice to see how far it can get.

I don’t often send packages unless it’s around Christmas time or I’m returning a item I’ve ordered online. The video contest I recently entered required me to send in a DVD copy, so I found an old padded mailer, tapped over the old info, readdressed it, and off to the post office I went.

I get to the clerk, hand her the already-addressed and sealed envelope, and tell her I need postage for it. She points to a screen with five options on it, priced from 75 cents all the way up to $16 bucks, and asks me to choose. I chose the 75 cents, to which she says, “This isn’t a letter, it’s a padded envelope.”

Okay, so I pick the next one up, for $1. “You didn’t put it in a first-class mailer,” she smiles.

I say, “I just want the cheapest one that I can send this with.”

Again with the smile. “I’m a salesperson, sir. You have to choose. I’ll recommend the 16-dollar one, if you ask me.”

“Then why can’t I see just the options that apply to what I’m mailing?”

“We encourage you to do your own research of our products, sir,” was the stupid response I got. Fine. My “research” then consisted of me reading off every option from cheapest to costliest until she at last accepted it, much to the frustration of the person in line behind me. And she just kept on smiling.

I equate this to basically the same frustration of putting money into a soda machine and pushing buttons only to find out that the machine is empty and the little “choose again” lights are on the fritz. I have no idea what options apply to what I’m sending… that’s why I brought it in to the post office to begin with. I didn’t need a moonlighting school teacher; I was looking for a knowledgeable postal worker.

I think I liked the post office better when the workers were disgruntled and carried firearms.

Sure, there were only six entires, but now “The Public” (that’s you) get to vote on your favorite video to be selected for showing at the Jacksonville Film Festival.

Now is the part where I beg; I made the “Jacksonville.com: NOT Scary” entry. Vote for me right here!!!

So there was a local contest with the 2008 Jacksonville Film Festival for entries to make a 30-second ad. Heck, there were only a couple up there, so with 12 hours left before the deadline, The Reaper and I put a story and shot list together, took 2 hours to engineer the graphics, 90 minutes to shoot, and 2 hours in editing to upload it with 15 minutes to spare. Hey, it may not win the contest, but to go from concept to finish in under 12 hours is a feat I wasn’t sure I could pull of with any real (or reel?) quality.

The video is on Jacksonville.com, and mine is called “Jacksonville.com: NOT Scary.” With any luck, they’ll show it all over the festival. And yes, The Reaper is officially now a commercial whore. Enjoy!

Saw this on Boortz.com as pointed out by a friend, a view of the American election as reported in Dutch newspaper.

‘We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.
On one side, you have a lawyer who is married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a lawyer.
On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a blonde with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.
Is there a contest here?’