At last, I am home.

So yeah, haven't posted in, what, three months? See, it really wasn't my fault. I went on a backpacking trip to the Ukraine in June, and somewhere outside Odessa I got lost. Damnedest thing. Spent two months living off the land, Survivorman-style; you know, trapping game, building shelters out of twigs and leaves, etc. Figured out how to start a fire using only some copper wires I pulled from my cell phone, a flint, and kindling. In retrospect, I should probably have just used the phone to call for help; I had a decent signal. Live and learn, I guess.

Eventually some hikers found me, but they were lost, too. Long story short, I had to eat them.

Afterwards I found a stray bear cub, his mother had been shot by poachers. I raised him and he helped me hunt and defend my makeshift shelters from predators. After we hunted down the scoundrals who shot his mother and exacted revenge (we killed their mothers), I turned him loose into the wild. I won't lie, I cried: a single, manly tear ran down my cheek as I watched him follow is kindred into the woods.

Finally, I decided that enough was enough, tore down my most recent shelter, and started the long, torturous hike out of the Ukrainian wilds. I headed due north until I found a road. Determined to follow that road until I reached civilization, I stopped only every two or three days to build a fire with what was left of my cell phone and sleep for a few hours. After several weeks I finally found what I'd been hoping for all these months: people! Unfortunately, it was only a small mining outpost, with minimal contact with the outside world.

Anyway, I ate them.

So I continued my trek along that deserted road until finally, after what seemed like eons, I found myself back home, here in Memphis. I have no idea how I got from eastern Europe to Tennessee, but one of these days I'll Google Map it.

So anyway, I've moved into the Raleigh house with Jenny, I have a full-time job servicing forklift batteries, and things are going pretty well. The end.

An open letter to the national sports media.

We exist.

The Memphis Grizzlies have always been short-sticked when it comes to coverage on the national level. When Portland won the draft lottery two seasons ago, the national story was, "Poor Boston, they didn't get the first pick," despite the fact that the Griz actually had the worst record that year, and therefore the highest odds (1 in 4) of getting that pick. This year, Rudy Gay was overlooked for the NBA's Most Improved Player award, despite having not only the highest increase in scoring of any player, but also having more impact on his team than any other player in the running (in averaging over 20 ppg, he matched a feat unheard of in Griz country since Sharif Abdur-Rahim did it back in Vancouver).


Just last night my dad called me because he had found an unlabeled VHS tape that had an old Griz game on it, a blowout win over Houston from 2004. Turns out it was the tape I used to record random Griz games on, and after the Houston game, the end of a double-overtime win at Cleveland came on. I remembered that game, because the SportsCenter highlights mentioned several times how LeBron James, then a rookie, had a career high 33 points -- despite the fact that Pau Gasol also had a career high that night: 39. And he won the game, on the road. That little nugget of sports trivia went unmentioned.

The ongoing excuse for how little attention the Grizzlies recieve on the national level has been that we're a small market team. "Only a few small market teams really make it big," they tell us. "You can't expect to be the San Antonio Spurs overnight." "Go fuck yourself," is my response, because we're not that small a market after all.

According to this Infoplease.com study of the most populous U.S. cities, Memphis is the 12th most populous city in the country with an NBA team. That's 12th out of 30. In what way does that make us "small?" We have more citizens than Boston, for Christ's sake. Not to mention Seattle, Atlanta, D.C., New Orleans, Miami, Oakland, and yes, Cleveland, plus ten other cities.

So where's the respect? I remember wondering about this frequently back when that Houston game was recorded. We won fifty games that year, but were rarely mentioned on ESPN. Granted, Hubie got his well-deserved Coach of the Year trophy, and Jerry West won Executive of the Year. But those are awarded after the season is over, and aren't exactly the best way to gain out-of-town fans.


As far as I can tell, the only way to get national attention to this city is for the Griz to make at least one deep playoff run despite a low seeding, and probably two. That, or trade up for Beasley in this year's draft lottery. The latter would be easier, but I don't expect it to happen.

Then again, is that so bad? Lack of national attention to how great the Griz were in '03-'04 allowed them to sneak up on teams all year; they beat the defending Eastern Conference Champion Nets by 47 points, the highest margin of victory by any team in any game all season (it was on that same VHS, and ended with the Stro Show's thunderous alley-oop dunk that is still remembered in Memphis with the same reverence as CDR's posterizing of Kevin Love). The answer is, yes, it is bad. Higher awareness of a team leads to more season ticket sales, more jersey and other merchandise sales, and, most importantly, higher advertising revenue, which a team in Memphis needs, given the terrible state of the NBA's profit-sharing model.

So my message to the national sports media outlets is, hey, we exist! And if you pay attention, we actually have a pretty entertaing team!

Stern has some 'splaining to do.

This news went live as I was listening to Verno's show this afternoon, but I didn't get around to looking into it until just now. Apparently Tim Donaghy is attempting to lessen his sentence by spreading the blame around the league. Yes, we all saw this coming, but the story is almost too "what I've been saying for years" to be true:

Without identifying anyone or naming teams, Tim Donaghy also claimed the NBA routinely encouraged refs to ring up bogus fouls to manipulate results but discouraged them from calling technical fouls on star players to keep them in games and protect ticket sales and television ratings.

Okay, that one's too easy. If that kind of thing hasn't been going on for years, what league have I been watching all this time? It gets better, though:

"If the NBA wanted a team to succeed, league officials would inform referees that opposing players were getting away with violations," the letter said. "Referees then would call fouls on certain players, frequently resulting in victory for the opposing team."

Oh, this is just too good. Just seeing those words in print is a small market team fan's wet dream.

Look, I love basketball, and in particular I love the NBA. I want all these allegations to be definitively, beyond-all-doubt proven false and laid to rest forever. But I'm not that naive. I'm sorry, but I'm just not stupid enough to pretend that NBA officiating is not only bad and getting worse (thank you, Stu Jackson), but that it's pretty clearly agenda-driven.

Is Tim Donaghy the first ref to step out of David Stern's shadow and tell the truth, or is he just flailing wildly to get out of jail? We may never know the answer to that, but to quote Jack Donaghy: "My cousin Tim fixes NBA games..."

No, I'm not boycotting Blogger.

I'm just lazy.

71 days since my last post, pretty sure that's a record. I won't go into why it's been so long, because... Actually, I will. It's because I'm lazy and nobody reads this anyway. So there you go.

Got up obscenely early again today. Don't know why, I just woke up. Worked around the house and then spent the afternoon burning gas around north Memphis trying to get someone to fucking hire me, already. No dice so far. At this point it's moved past irritation to the point of surrealism. I've had around a dozen jobs in my life, so it's not like I don't know how to get one. Maybe the job market is just that bad in Memphis now, maybe it's businesses scared off by my over-qualification, maybe it's my brand of shampoo, I honestly have no idea. I can learn to do any job in a day, I'm experienced, (semi) mature, and I'm willing to work any hours for any pay, because I just need the goddamned cash. But I can't get hired. What the fuck is going on?

Whatever. Here's some trivial nonsense. My new favorite basketball site is Basketbawful, because those guys ignore the mainstream media story lines and aim squarely at the balls. Metaphorically. Because groin-shots are funny (have you even seen America's Funniest Home Videos?). Because I'm a homer, 3 Shades of Blue is now in the 2-slot, ahead of TrueHoop. The ESPN and SI NBA pages have dropped completely off my radar (and RSS subscriptions).

Just ran out to get milk and smokes (two great tastes that taste great together). Where was I? Oh, right. Rambling. Here's something funny:



See? Robert Downey Jr. is the funniest comedic actor this side of Tina Fey. I'm looking forward to Tropic Thunder, if only because it points out, completely obliquely, how badly named Island Thunder was, the second expansion to the original Ghost Recon. It was super kick-ass (and really, really hard), but "Island Thunder"? Really?

I'll end with the news that my one and only Jenny has carved out her own spot here on Blogger after getting fed up with technical problems with LiveJournal's editor. You should read it, and by "you" I mean "Jenny" because you're probably the only one reading this, baby. Love you!

I heart Steam (finally)

Prey was on sale over Steam this weekend. At five bucks, it was an impulse buy for me; my download is at 78% and counting. I've already posted my thoughts on the Prey demo. Looking forward to playing the rest of the game.


Steam has matured a lot over the past year. My biggest gripe with the system, mandatory patching, was remedied with the option to disable updates on a per-game basis. The catalog now includes games by id, Rockstar, Atari, Majesco, Epic, Sega, Eidos, and more. They have blockbusters like Bioshock and The Orange Box, and entire franchises like the Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, Call of Duty, Unreal, Doom, Half-Life, and Quake series (except Quake 4, for some reason). Throw in indie favorites like Darwinia and AudioSurf, community features that track game stats and award achievements for some games, a click-and-buy system, and seamless multiplayer for Valve's games, and you have one of the slickest PC gaming apps ever created. I hated Steam for a long time, but Valve has put in a huge amount of work to make it a viable and painless system for gamers. Oh, and did I mention the spec surveys?

Switching gears, the Tigers are in the Final Four for the first time in over 20 years. I would be prouder had I managed to graduate, but hey, I wore the blue for three years, I figure I have more cause than most people around here to be excited about it. I envy the kids in the band this year; all they managed to do when I had the Sousa strapped on was lose some NIT games. Whatever happens against UCLA, I'm happy for the school and the city, and I hope Rose stays in the Forum next year (grab him, Chris Wallace. Don't think, just do it).

All slack, all the time.

But you don't care.

So yeah, haven't posted in a selfishly long time. After the usual spiel of schoolwork, Real Life, etc., I got sick. Horribly, evilly sick. Some ungodly combination of strep and flu. My one and only Jenny caught it taking care of me, so now I'm at the Raleigh house for a few days taking care of her and hoping/guessing I have leftover antibodies that will keep me from getting it again.

Been playing some games lately, mostly Quake III with Jen. That girl has got some deeply buried bloodlust or something, I've never seen someone so unused to shooters take to a game like this before. "Don't shoot Lucy, that fucking cunt is MINE." That sort of thing. Fucking awesome. Also playing Psychonauts after finding a rare retail copy for 6 bucks at Big Lots. God, what a great game, though Yahtzee wasn't kidding about the crazy-ass difficulty curve. I'm at the very end, and a sudden onslaught of jumping puzzles is making me want to start over from the beginning to have some actual fun again.

There's more to tell, but I really need to get to bed. Jenny takes some looking after when she's sick, and I can't do it passed out.

Geek My Truck.

My dork cred just leveled up.

Coming soon to the back of my sweet '92 Explorer XLT: Gordon Freeman's automotive accessory kit.

Life should have a fast-forward button.

Seriously, someone get on that.

Not a huge amount to report right now. Things are changing for me, but slowly. I'm in the opening stages of writing a new, much better chapter of my life, but it's taking time. I'm looking for work, getting ready for a move, and cutting back on school to accommodate. Reconnecting with the love of my life has changed everything; I have a new purpose now, and something phenomenal to look forward to. Even now while things are still in flux I'm happier than I can ever remember being.

For now I'm just plugging along in my client-side JavaScript and basic networking courses and trying to find a job. Filling the gaps by spending every possible minute with Jen and practicing bass when I can't be with her. She's tuned me into some amazing bands I might not have found otherwise, like The Radio Dept, The Libertines, Damien Rice, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My secondary hard drive is rapidly filling up with new music and videos.

I'm also still trying to help with FABA! in the limited ways I'm able. I'll be designing a flier for the resurrected FABA! Bash soon, and have finally gotten hold of a copy of Photoshop 7 to help with that. I realized not long ago that there's only so much I can do with Paint.NET and GIMP, and I think I've hit that ceiling. Simple things like the transform tools I took for granted just don't seem to exist in those apps, and I'm tired of jumping through hoops to do shit that Photoshop makes easy. Now I just need Illustrator and Dreamweaver...

The internet owns me.

Bah, these kids and their techno-whatever.

So I was finally peer-pressured into setting up my own half-assed blip in the MySpace continuum. "Everybody has one," they said, so like a good doggie, I obeyed. It's been a decent time-waster, if nothing else. And sorting through the spam friend requests is pretty entertaining. I mean it was, until the sixth one in two days, after which I started filtering them.

I'm in a weird head-space about school this semester. The only course I'm taking that I have even the slightest interest in is the client-side JavaScript programming class, and it only meets once a week. The networking course would be interesting if it weren't so frustrating that it's three hours long and taught by a total dingbat. I just want to get down to the really fun, challenging stuff, but for now I'm slogging through the requirements. Meanwhile, Real Life is hammering on my door, I'm busy trying to find a job that will fit with my schedule, and school is suddenly more of a burden than an opportunity.

Whatever. I started looking into the recent news about Mozilla hiring some guys from something called Humanized, and found a beautiful bit of programming they've written called Enso. I installed Enso Launcher this afternoon and I'm already addicted to it. If you meet the minimum recommended nerd requirements, be sure to check it out.

Speaking of which, apparently I don't meet the requirements for xkcd. I mean, I get it. But I don't think it's funny. I think it's one of those things where you're supposed to love it if you have the dork-cred, because you can water-cooler how cool it is with your fellow techies. But honestly, do we really need an unfunny, stick-figure, hardcore-geek version of Penny Arcade? Anyone up for that? Thought not.

Killing time.

Best post ever.

I'm in wait mode lately. Waiting for the semester to start Monday, waiting for some personal things to resolve themselves (which has been a lot harder). Waiting for xmas to finally end. All the decorations are back in storage, but there's still a big damn tree in the living room and pine needles everywhere. I'd been distracting myself by going out every day, but lately I've just been holed up with my computer and my bass. Ran out Friday to get some things done, relaxed for a while over a latte at MO's Edge. After hitting up the last three, I finally missed an open-mic at Newby's this week. I'll probably go next Tuesday after my late networking class, just for the distraction.

I'm loving this Deftones B-Sides record I bought the other day. Favorite track by far is "The Chauffeur," a Duran Duran cover, of all things. The DVD is little more than a collection of their videos through the self-titled album, but the brief interstitial material is interesting and well done. It could probably have been released on its own.

Picked out the basslines to a few more Radiohead and Weezer songs. Again: bored. Hell, I'm bored out of my mind just writing this, don't tell me you're still reading. Go do something more productive, like emptying the lint trap on the dryer, or, I dunno, staring at your phone until it rings. Just pretend this post wasn't written. That's what I'm doing.

Pointless post.

Bored? So am I. Here's something to read.

Spent some xmas gift-card goodness on, among other things, a giant, decent-if-not-great pair of over-ear headphones. They have a switch that lowers the bass; I don't know who that's for. Half the point of buying a good set of cans is to get some appreciable bass, no?

Couple days later I went by Cat's expressly to blow some cash, and found myself holding two records called B-Sides & Rarities, one by Cake and one by Deftones. Although I do have a man-crush on Cake's music, and despite the fact that the Deftones record cost twice as much, that's the one I bought. I'll get the Cake LP eventually, until then I'm satisfied. Deftones is just a brilliant fucking band, and this is a great set (CD, DVD, booklet/mini-photo album). Almost picked up a Damien Rice album while I was there, but I think Jen may already have it. Need to check her library.

Quick Steam update. Valve's landed another major developer in Rockstar Games. The entire Rockstar catalog is live, check it out if you're a PC snob like me. GTA San Andreas is one of my all-time favorite PC games, console-origins be damned. When and if some more disposable cash comes my way I'd like to finally get around to checking out the Max Payne series.

Oh, I thought this was funny. So there's a drug store in Raleigh I go to sometimes. There's an older black lady who works the register in the evenings, and she used to bust my ass about my ID before I got my new license. I get it, I look way younger than my 31 years, and my old ID was nine years old, beat up, and the picture didn't really look like me anymore. But she would go all out, looking for a second opinion on it, asking for secondary ID, the whole deal. Just for a damn pack of smokes. This happened at least a half-dozen times. At a certain point you'd think she would fucking remember me, but no.

Anyway I went in there tonight. I'm really not a douchebag, but I was definitely wearing a douchebag's uniform: baggy jeans, a black knit cap with a big skull printed on it, and a bright orange t-shirt that says 'Show me your Titties' (don't ask). Guess who was working the register. I walked up dressed like a dick, and she was clearly already unhappy with me, and proceeded to buy nothing but beer, cigarettes, and condoms. I don't know why, but there was something liberating about being, superficially, a complete and utter asshole for once. That's so not who I am, but I think I could grow to like at least pretending to be one every now and then.

Netscape is dead.

The world shrugs and moves on.

I meant to bring this up a few days ago, but I've been too busy doing things that matter. AOL has officially pulled the plug on the resurrected Netscape project. This would have been a huge story several years ago, but come on. Those of us who keep up with this sort of thing are not even remotely surprised, and those who don't have no idea why this would ever have been newsworthy. Netscape 6 was a mess, and is really only noteworthy for how sad it made those of us who remember when Netscape far outclassed Internet Explorer, and for ultimately leading to the creation of Phoenix, the browser that would become Firefox. Subsequent versions failed for various reasons, several outside of the Netscape team's control, but the bottom line is that this browser has been irrelevant for years.

The resurrected versions published recently by AOL were rebranded editions Firefox 1.x, loaded down with entirely unnecessary features (which is exactly what doomed Netscape Communicator in the first place) and an ungodly UI that made early versions of Opera look friendly. Even relaunching it as a slimmer, less cluttered version with the old, once beloved Navigator name didn't work, as it was still essentially Firefox with a few extensions and a big, fat pile of links to Netscape and AOL-hosted sites. Basically, no one other than nostalgics cared, and it turns out that's not a very profitable business model.

Phrases like, "end of an era," are showing up in articles about this news, but the truth is the Netscape era ended long ago. Don't get me wrong, I loved Netscape, and I continued to use it for some time after the rest of the world had moved on. But the name "Netscape" is a mirage; its spiritual successors are Firefox and Seamonkey, not the marketing tactic that name became.