XTux is rather amusing. Basically, you play an open source character trying to "save the world." You can be Tux, the BSD Daemon (my choice), the GNU Yak (**snicker**), the KDE Dragon (I didn't even know they had a mascot ;-), Linus, Stallman, etc...

The graphics are cheesy and low tech--sort of reminds me of Diablo, but lame... The controls suck too... Still a funny and sortof cool game though...

Compiles easy, the only thing I did was commented out all the CC lines and change the CFLAGS ones (to a += and removed the -g crap)--I like the config in my environment variables... But no actual problems.

The levels are kind of funny. The first one you go into M$ headquarters to destroy the evil Bill Gates. };-) Then there is the kill bunnies level (didn't quite get that) When you get back, you find a nice surprize with your house. Then you have to navigate some virtual desktops to find mozilla so you can surf slashdot. The slashdot level is the funniest. You get to fight trolls and flamers! :-D Read the "stories" too...quite entertaining.

Several years ago, I was talking with this woman. I was telling her how great she was, but she said she didn't believe me. As I was leaving, I told her I loved her.

Later that night, I was visiting the people an apartment in the same building. Her roommate came in, hysterical. The woman had attempted to commit suicide. An ambulance came by and the paramedics went up to her apartment. By this time we were all standing outside. The apartment manager told us to go back to our own aparments because she didn't need a horde of people staring at her, so we did.

I didn't really hear anything about why she did it, though it must've been me. Most people go insane when a freaky creature like me tells them I like them...

The next day, I heard she was went back to {small town in neighboring state}. A few days later, I heard her sister was coming to pick up her things. (Someone had also told me before that she had a sister who looked much like her.) So, I go outside, and there is a car in the parking lot. In the car, there is a woman who looks exactly like her. I walk by, and she smiles at me. I am confused at this point, because if that was her sister, then why did she smile at me like she knows me (at least, that is how I intepreted the smile)? If this was her, why would she smile at me at all? Who knows.

Went on the trip to Vegas. Left noon Saturday, returned about noon Sunday. About fourteen hours driving total, including two hours driving around Las Vegas. Note to self: when traveling to a city, have a specific destination in mind. Just driving around hoping you'll find something interesting doesn't always work.

Driving to Vegas wasn't very eventful unless you count slow drivers (55 in a 75 MPH zone? why? I can understand the various vehicles with trailers or a big load, but not normal cars.) and trying to figure out pre pay gas.

I hadn't owned a car in a long time, so I'm out of practice guessing how much gas I'll need to fill the tank. Also, why don't all the prepay place have a sign somewhere saying so? One place didn't say anywhere, and as luck would have it, it was the first prepay I've been to in a long time. I did read all the signs/notes (nothing said prepay) tried to pump gas, and some woman says in the intercom, "you'll have to come inside to pay first unless you want to use a credit card." In a really bored but annoyed voice--as if I were stupid, as if I am supposed to be psychic and automatically know their place is prepay only. I bet a lot of drivers come in and do the same thing because they assumed it was pump first, pay later (like most gas stations I've seen). Her voice seemed to reflect that too.

More later, I've got to go now. I saw my roommate smoking something outside, so I am probably being exposed as I type this.

Look at the weather in Las Vegas!!! Wooo!!! I think I need to make a road trip. :-)

Very interesting.

Oh, BTW, it appears some trolls have been cutting and pasting old posts to build their karma. People mod them up anyway? Trolls also seem to be organizing on anti-slash.org. When you see them, foe them and throw them into the dungeon to be eaten by a grue. We'll have a barbecue! ;-)

Holy crap. Let's send nuclear missles up the tailpipe of any car with a burnt out light. After all, it is a safety hazard, and we want the public to be protected.

Mood music: Fake Beach Goths by Mannequin Porn. Silly me, when I heard this song for the first several times, I thought it was about goth wannabies.

I saw Thirteen the other day. Not too bad. I heard a nasty rumor News Corp was fronting for it, but didn't see any logo at the start of the movie...plenty of Fox Searchlight and Sony Classics on the previews though.

Slashdot VIPs

People on slashdot who are significant...as I remember anyway.

• volkerdi - maintainer of Slackware.
• linuxbaby - The creator of CDBaby....I think.
• m.dillon - Was a developer for FreeBSD, now works on his own version Dragonfly.
• Bruce Perens - More or less the posterboy for Open Source. IIRC, he even coined the term.
• pjones
• CowboyNeal - The coolest person who works on Slashdot.
• Sarcasta - Well...I'm not sure if she belongs on this list, but she is funny and married to one of the Slashdot monkeys. Look at her site, it's cool. I loved the milk cow poster. :-D
• sreilly - I think has some sort of significance, but I can't remember why.
• Submarine - Same as above...anyone know this guy? I wish I could take notes on the Slashdot system. Perhaps I should've made a text file...

Reason #666 why the MPAA is evil - check this! One of many examples of the entertainment cartel flooding the internet with bogus DMCA complaints. Too bad small individual users who have been pounded don't have a voice. They probably just lose their internet connection or some odd thing. Then we'd see the real depth to the problem. I'm sure they number in the thousands.

I was looking through my old bookmarks and found slashgoth. It's like Slashdot's cool little sister.

Here is a Halloween game. Yes, it's a java applet with shitty graphics.

While I'm posting, if you haven't taken a look at the Internet Ray Tracing Competition before, check it out. They have some good stuff.

As some of you may know, I've been thinking of buying a GameCube. However I may be moving/traveling a lot in the coming months.

The GameBoy advance seems to have some fun games. It even has Super Monkey Ball. Are they just as fun and playable?

I've noticed the GameCube appears to come in some sort of carrying case. Is is good for traveling? Would I have too much trouble hooking it up to hotel &etc TVs? What about cheap portable TVs? Maybe I could just bring a TV along in the car. Don't have a car yet, but looking into getting one--there's a nice trashy Ford Escort Wagon with my name on it. ;-)

Ideas? Suggestions? Flames? Should I just watch the paint dry instead? Or should I just spend my money on hugs from prostitutes? I know I would increase my sanity if I had more hugs. :-)

The women at MAdGE have a great argument for genetic engineering! Who wouldn't want such an enhancement? I for one would be first in line to be modified with this great technology. I just hope the milking machine is optional as it would be painful and cumbersome to have those things attached to my chest all day...then again, I may like it. }:8P

I've mentioned this system on Slashdot, and meant to mention it in my last JE. I figure I may as well write a JE on it.

There is this P2P network called The Circle. It not only has file sharing (with Debian apt-get functionality), but an IRC like chat system and a group messaging system as well. The reason I am talking about it here is the group messaging has an interesting moderation system. They call it "trust based".

Basically you move a slider according to how much you trust another user. If you move it towards the left, it means you think the person is a liar, annoying, stupid, or you just hate them. (Like a foe in slashdot.) Towards the right, you trust them, you like their posts. (like a friend[1] in slashdot) If it's in the middle, you don't feel either way about the user. It's not a binary sort of thing. The trust value can vary in any amount you want, more than just foe/neutral/friend) You can rate individual posts this way as well.

I don't remember the exact way the trust values were calculated. More or less, the post's default was rated by how much you trust the poster. If you haven't rated the poster, then the system goes by others' trust values adjusted by how much you trust them. If that post was rated by you (or a user you trust), then the rating overrides the poster's rating. Posts with a rating below a certain threshold are deleted from your computer (so you don't have to see untrusted posts). Posts are also sorted by rating, so you will see higher rated posts first.

I think this system would work very well--they didn't have many users when I was on it, and almost no posts. Everyone can moderate. You will probably see posts you want. No one person can control the rating of a post, everyone will see different ratings according to who (and how much) they trust/distrust. In this system, you can see what others think of you. (all ratings are shown) Troll posts shouldn't last long. I believe new users have a default of neutral, so unless you go for strict a config, you'll still see them. The system also allows anonymous posting (not sure if this is good or not).

Keep in mind The Circle is still in beta and the group messages weren't a high priority, so the interface is clunky. They didn't even support threading when I was using it. Also, this type of system wouldn't work well on a web board (like slashdot). It'd probably take too much processing time.

[1] Update: mistake fixed

The subject line doesn't really mean anything. I just like the way it sounds. An entry for some misc things I thought I should mention.[1] MsGeek: you have replies in your journal turned off, so I replied here (further down).

For those of you who are hiding under a rock, Master Knox has published the images for the Slashdot Photo Contest. Tet was kind enough to make a thumbnail sheet. May the Great Internet Goddess have mercy on their bandwidth. Inspired by the amazing photos (they have some hot ones in there!), Bethanie asks the eternal question "What Sexy Is."

Ms Geek has become discouraged by the moderators on crack. Don't worry love, you're not the only one. In fact, you get lots of upmods, so be happy. Join us in the glorious land of Journals, and the trolls will have a more difficult time finding you.

As for the posts you mentioned, technically the offtopic modded post was offtopic[2], and if you know FAQNatzis like I do, they like to arbitrarily punish people in the worst way. The stupid bloke was probably saying to himself "They should delete the message, block her account, and kick her off her ISP! In fact, all the posts on this entire site are offtopic! I'll mod them all! Damn! Out of mod points...guess I'll have to kick some puppies for playing in my front yard." That whole thread was marked with OT, troll, and flamebait mods.

As for the flamebait post, was proably some luser who's girlfriend couldn't sing a tune to save her live, and his copy of Autotune was the only reason she goes out with him. ;-) I don't think anyone is out to get you specifically--if those are the only ones, I didn't see any others. Just wait until someone modbombs you with all 5 of their mod point across a wide variety of discussions including JEs.[3] That's when you know you've pissed someone off! Try it sometime, you may like it. :-)

BTW MsGeek, I love the subject line: "Autotune must die." Classic. You don't mind if I use it do you? I hope not. It could be a new trend.

[1] Apologies to Surak if this seems too much like his weekly recap.

[2] ...but is anything really offtopic?

[3] Happened to me once. (or was it twice?)

Dubya didn't ask me to leak this information!

My roommate decided to pay the bill. Don't know why he lead us to believe he wasn't going to. Maybe he changed his mind?

It looks like I'll be off the internet for a while. The roommate who handles the isp bill decided not to pay, yet was still happy to take money for it. Since that is the only real option for internet access from my home besides dialup between 2am-5am, I won't be posting much. (Using a crappy kiosk now--25 cents/minute, and it has a huge strip of ads on the side.) I love you all. From the front page, one would think there aren't nice people on slashdot. ;-)