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Godchecker

Are you always confusing Zeus and Odin or Coyote and Loki? Avoid such embarrassing faux pas and consult Godchecker before invoking that deity; you’ll be glad you did! Seriously, this is a great site that thoroughly covers the African, Australian, Aztec, Finnish, Greek, Incan, Norse, and Native American Pantheons, with more to come. Pretty cool…

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Updates

Last week (and this weekend) was pretty light on updates, so I figured I’d add a quick post making some excuses telling everyone what I’ve been up to.

First of all, the NHL season started last week, so obsessively putting together a fantasy hockey team took up most of my free time a couple of days before opening night. Although I’m still pissed off at the couple of trades I had to waste to get rid of some dead weight players who aren’t playing or didn’t make the cut, I’m doing relatively well, fourth place in my division as of this morning. That’ll have to change… 🙂

Secondly, I finally broke down and bought a new computer, after holding out with my Pentium 3 800 Mhz for a couple of years now. As usual, some new games were a large motivating force behind this decision; whenever I look at the minimum hardware requirements on a game box and I’m not up to snuff, I know it’s getting to be that time, although I don’t play half as many games as I used to. Still, now I can play some of the new games I’ve been eying for a while now (Enter The Matrix; Tron 2.0; the Civilization III Conquests Expansion Pack when it comes out; and maybe NHL 2004, although NHL 2003 was a big disappointment compared to earlier versions) without worrying about things being horribly slow and unstable.

Besides games, I’ve been doing a lot more digital photography and music work on the computer, and HAL5 was just getting too bogged down and unstable at times. So HAL6 arrived last Thursday, and I’ve been working on him off and on the whole weekend. As you might have guessed from the name, this is the sixth major computer upgrade I’ve handled on my own, although this time I broke down and bought a ready-made system, one of the few I haven’t built on my own. Still, I must say that I’m very happy with the Alienware Area-51 system I customized. The hardware is top-notch, the software installed was well-appointed and completely bloat-free, and the assembly and installation of everything was the most professional I’ve ever seen. I still sort of miss putting together the system myself, but after the month-long nightmare of troubleshooting I experienced last time around, I am much happier leaving the installation and assembly to the professionals.

Rest assured, however, that HAL5 will continue to serve us well. The plan right now is to make him into a second workstation with lighter duties, but more importantly to act as a dedicated music server for all of our MP3s. A nice big hard drive and an upgrade to Windows 2000 (rather than 98SE) should allow us to store our entire music collection on HAL5 as MP3s, and my AudioTron already does a great job of streaming them to my stereo system on demand. Sweet… 🙂

Finally, here in southern Maryland, we had a great holiday weekend, with beautiful fall weather pretty much the entire time. Between family stuff up in Baltimore and yardwork around the house, we were kept pretty busy, although we were still able to enjoy our long weekend. Now it’s time to get back into the swing of things, although it’s taking me a little time this morning to wake up and get moving. I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and has a good week. Hopefully I’ll have more time to update this week…

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Post-Recall Gary Coleman

Although I still don’t approve of his candidacy in the first place, Gary Coleman shows what a good sport he is by appearing on Letterman to read “Top Ten Ways California Would Be Different If I, Gary Coleman, Had Been Elected Governor”:

10. “Pretty much the same as Schwarzenegger, but less body oil”

9. “Three words: Lieutenant Governor Urkel”

8. “Thanks to my innocent charm, I’d get away with 60% more groping”

7. “I guess I’d have to quit my job as a security guard”

6. “You may not agree with me, but at least you could understand me”

5. “Inaugural address would have a laugh track”

4. “Television viewers wouldn’t know if they were watching C-Span or Nick at Nite”

3. “Wouldn’t have to worry about me having to take time off to do movies”

2. “I would form a task force to find out exactly what Willis was talking about”

1. “Unlike Schwarzenegger, I would admit I’m not qualified”

Pretty damn funny…

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(At Least) 12,690 California Voters Don’t Care

By now, I think everyone has heard the results of the California gubernatorial recall: Gray Davis has been recalled and Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected in his place. Go figure. However, I hadn’t seen the full voting results until today. I can’t believe how many voters threw their votes away! 12,690 people voted for actor Gary Coleman, 4,864 voted for crappy comedian Gallagher, and thousands more votes were cast for the other 130-some wannabes and unknowns. I don’t know why people even bothered, although I guess the same could be said for people that voted for Nader in the 2000 presidential elections. 😛 Don’t get me started on how I feel about the outcome of that…