Author Archives: Captain Shenanigans

Jun20

The Perils of Music Download Subscriptions

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The Perils of Music Download Subscriptions

So I just remembered that I had to download my tracks for eMusic for the month. I go to the site and as I do, I realize that I’ve got the dates wrong. Today’s the 20th, not the 19th! Crap, they expire today and the account refreshes for the new month! Now the exact time the account resets is different every month. It used to be a set time, but they’ve (deliberately, in my opinion) changed things so that the exact time is seemingly random. My reset time used to be around 4 PM back in the day, but its become pretty erratic the last several months. What this means is that when I went to the site today, I found that my account had resetband I was out my 50 downloads. Not the worst thing in the world, I suppose, but still annoying, as they’ve moved from a customer friendly to a customer hostile policy. Curse you, eMusic! You and your opaque policies! I’m really not a fan of customer disservice, you know?

I have a pretty good track record with them, though. I’ve only missed 2 months in 4-5 years, both for major events. The first was when I was in the middle of my move to MT. The second was now, while I’m being consumed by the World Cup. I have like 6 cards good for 100 downloads each that I got back before they halved the number of downloads you get for your monthly fee. I’m going to enjoy using those and sticking it to the man. 😉

Jun18

World Cup 2010 Day 8

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World Cup 2010 Day 8

OMG. Fucking Koman Coulibaly. His name and face are burned into my memory. If I ever see him walking down the street, I will run over, ask him what the fuck he was looking at, punch him in the face, and ask if he saw my foul. I may or may not do it in that order. I may also punch him more than once depending on his answer. Seriously, the dude needs to choke on his whistle and spend the rest of his life making a whistling sound whenever he tries to talk or breathe.

See? This is how soccer riots get started!

Anyway, on to today’s games. Please note that this is likely not the last you’ve heard of my ranting about Mr. Coulibaly. In fact, I’m going to add the spelling of his name to my spell checker’s dictionary because I think I shall be using it often. Most likely as a curse. That fucker.

Right, right, the games. So here’s my fake liveblogging notes on today’s games. I’m still working on getting StatusNet up and running for my real liveblogging updates. That should be done in a day or so. Anyway, enjoy!

    Germany vs Serbia:

  • We’re only a few minutes in and its already a pretty lively game. Germany has had a couple of good looks at goal. If they keep this kind of pressure up, they’ll do to Serbia the same thing they did to Australia.
  • A yellow card for each side already and we’re like 18 minutes in. And as I type this Serbia just got yet another yellow. None of these cards seem deserved. This is some poor officiating and is really going to damage the quality of the game. OMG yellow card #4, this time on Germany, but this one actually looks to be the first legit yellow issued.
  • Holy fucking shit. The card happy official hasn’t stopped his yellow card assault on either team and he just gave Klose his 2nd undeserved yellow, putting Germany a man down the rest of the game. Serbia’s response? Scoring a goal literally seconds later. Worst officiated game of the tournament to date.
  • An exciting play at the Serbian goal by the Germans lead to two almost goals, but the crossbar foiled the best of the two shots. The second was intercepted by the Serbian defense.
    I wonder how many players will end up being ejected. The yellow cards are being given out like candy on Halloween.
  • Germany isn’t playing like they’re down a man their assault on the Serbian goal continues unabated.
  • Germany earns a penalty kick on a foolish Serbian handball, but isn’t able to capitalize on the kick or the rebound.
  • The crossbar is a hell of a goalkeeper as it just stopped another shot on goal, this time a header from Serbia.
  • This ref is hobbling both teams for not only this game, but the next as well, since getting a yellow in 2 consecutive games leads to a 1 game suspension. Both teams are going to be overly cautious in their third group game, I think.
  • Did FIFA get bought out or receive heavy sponsorship funding from the Pope or something? Almost every player coming on as a substitution in this tournament has crossed themselves as they come on. I don’t remember that from the last World Cup.
  • Germany unable to produce a goal, but not for lack of trying. A surprising result of a 1-0 Serbian win.
    USA vs Slovenia:

  • A quick injury in the opening seconds with an accidental collision between opposing players. The Slovenian player got the worst of it and there was some question of a yellow on the play, but the referee let it go. Intense opening moments!
  • OK seriously? 14 minutes in and the US already gives up a goal? Its the second game in a row they’re done that and its highly disappointing. The commentators mentioned that the US is 0-15-3 when they give up the first goal.
  • Three very close almost goals for the US, but no joy yet. We’re showing some life, but as I was typing this, we gave up another goal. There was some talk of a possible offsides, but the replay showed it was good. To add insult to injury, we got a yellow card that was totally unjustified on the second of our three quick attempts. Going into the half, we look like we’re done. 🙁
  • OMG AWESOME! Landon Donovan makes an amazing goal to bring the US back into this game! What a wicked goal! It was streaking in so hard that even the goalkeeper backed away from it. We almost got a second goal off of a free kick, but it went just a touch wide. If we can keep the pressure on, we can pull a draw, or dare I say even win this.
  • Its about damn time a call goes our way. Can we make the free kick…? It was close, but no.
  • OMG WHAT AN AMAZING GOAL! Damn, that was just what we needed! So awesome, just so damn awesome.
  • Holy shit, we just had our game winner taken from us by a bad offside call on us while one of our players is literally being bear hugged by the opposition and another is damn near in a headlock! There have been some really bad calls this game.
  • WTF players from both sides go down and don’t get up and the ref says play on?! This guy needs to be choked with his own whistle.
  • The game ends in a draw after a bit of highway robbery by the ref. What a game and what an asshole of a ref.
    Algeria vs England:

  • 25 minutes in and its pretty dull so far. No terribly exciting plays for either side. There was almost a nice break as I was writing that, but it stopped almost as soon as it started. The outcome here is important given that we lost our win to the idiot referee in he US game, so a draw may not be he worst thing in the world.
  • England just had a good shot on goal, but a nice save by the goalkeeper keeps it scoreless.
  • A great play by England in the 32nd minute and another great save by Algeria. The game is picking up!
  • No goals yet going into the half, but both teams are showing a lot more life than they did at the start. I think we’ll at least have a goal by England by the end of the game. The question is whether Algeria can fire back for the draw because I don’t think they can win.
  • A lot more action from both sides, but England still has the upper hand in attempts on goal. No stupid calls by the ref, so that’s nice and refreshing.
  • We’re in the closing minutes of the game and while it was a good back and forth, the commentators are fairly disappointed with England and I can’t say that I disagree. And as I type this, the game ends as a scoreless draw. It should be interesting going into the last game of the group. The US will need to win that game in order to advance. England has to be wondering why they’re not leading the group, and I’m pretty sure they’re not the only ones.

So there you have today’s games. OMG RAGEFACE! I’m so not done ranting, but it’s late and I need to get to bed. Don’t you worry (or do, as the case may be), I’m planning on expounding on the USA game this weekend. I BITE YOU THROUGH THE INTERNET IN ANGER, STUPID REFEREE!

Jun18

Ask the Fatty WordPress update

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Ask the Fatty WordPress update

Since the My Twisted Mind upgrade went so well, I’m going to try it here. I’m also going to turn on auto-update for WordPress AND Gallery on both sites and hope for the best. I’m feeling reckless, but I don’t care! I live on the edge, baby. THE EDGE! Here goes nothing!

(Cross posted to My Twisted Mind.)

Jun18

Holy crap it worked!

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Holy crap it worked!

The update is done and apparently everything went fine. I’m on 3.0 now and everything looks how its supposed to and nothing has exploded in my face like usual. I’m very pleasantly surprised. I… I almost don’t know what to do now. Maybe I’ll update Ask the Fatty tonight when I get home from work.

Jun18

WordPress 3.0… maybe

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WordPress 3.0… maybe

It’s become something of a tradition that I make a quick post before trying to update WordPress since each update seems to break WordPress badly enough that Dreamhost support has to fix it each time. Hopefully that won’t happen this time, but who knows. Just in case, here’s my heads up that I’m updating. I hope this goes out over the RSS feeds in time, and I’ll be cross posting this to askthefatty.com just in case. Luckily I can keep typing up my World Cup posts on my Droid, save them locally, and then publish them all rather quickly once the site comes back up. But that’s disaster planning. The update will go fine. Really!

Really! 😀

🙁

Jun17

World Cup 2010 Day 7 and Other Stuff!

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World Cup 2010 Day 7 and Other Stuff!

Earlier today I caught up on the backlog of games generated by my extended work week and then caught up on some other stuff, like the 400+ Twitter updates and the pile of Facebook statuses I had queued up. I played some Resistance 2, ate an entire pizza because I hadn’t eaten properly in days, caught up on some some shows in my DVR, and read up on some of the stuff that went down at this year’s E3. X-box 360 Slim, here I come! Well, in a month or two because I want to see if they burst into flames like the old ones did. And while I’m sad to see Criterion making a racing game that isn’t Burnout, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit looks awesome. It also looks like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, which isn’t a bad thing since I really liked that game, but I’m pretty sure the Hot Pursuit title was already used by a Need for Speed game. By two of them, in fact! I’m not really sure what’s going on there. 3DS looks interesting, and can I get a hell yes for new PilotWings?!

HELL YES!

There. I knew if I left it to you jokers in the comments, I’d get nothing. MONSTERS!

Moving on… Kinect is a stupid name. Not as stupid as Wii, but damn near close. I think someone moderately drunk would have trouble deciding which name would be worse to bring home to have a drunken night of abandon with and then wake up the next morning, be startled, and feel shame and remorse. I sure hope it doesn’t become a dumping ground for ports of crappy Wii games that didn’t sell. Then again, if it does and they don’t sell here, maybe the crap-tastic developers behind them will get the hint that their games didn’t sell not because Nintendo players don’t buy games, but because Nintendo players don’t buy GAMES THAT SUCK YOUR WILL TO LIVE. Not that I’m bitter about constant streams of disinformation or anything.

The 3DS looks interesting, and 3D or not, I’m sure looking forward to the games they’ve announced for it like Mario Kart, PilotWings (HELL YES!), and Metal Gear (!). Definitely one to watch. Oh and Goldeneye Wii remake? Awesome. The only thing better would have been a Perfect Dark Wii remake, but at least I’ll be able to get Perfect Dark HD once I get the redesigned 360.

Sony doesn’t seem to have much good stuff for me this year. Playstation Move? Move where? So it’s Wii HD, basically. Wiiiiiii! And the garbage names continue! Oh and a paid PSN subscription? The hell with that. The thing that grabbed my eye was the new Twisted Metal game! That. Looks. Awesome. I don’t care if it does everything, I want it to do Twisted Metal, and then I will be happy.

On a completely different note, it occurs to me that this category system I have going on the site is in direct conflict with the tagging system I have. I almost feel like it should be one or the other. The tags are definitely more flexible, but I feel I could get some use out of the categories if I go back and redid them all. Of course, that means redoing the categories on all the posts I already have. Good thing I go for years without posting a thing! 😉

OK, enough nerding. Time for some World Cup! I took notes while I was watching, and I was going to pretty em up and make them into real sentences and everything, but I’m too goddamn tired. So here are my notes on each game, edited for readability, continuity, and such. It’s a different format than what I’ve been posting, but its been a busy day and reworking all this into real paragraphs and article structure would take longer than I’m willing to commit to it right now. Besides, I want to play more video games before I go to bed. Maybe some Super Mario Galaxy 2. [insert ridiculous Mario sound]

    South Africa vs Uruguay:

  • There was an exciting moment near the beginning when Forlan chips it in off of crossbar from long range. Gooooooooooaaaaaaalllllll!
  • South Africa got pretty outplayed.
  • You know you’re an accident when your parents name you Surprise Moriri. Yes, there really is a South African player named Surprise Moriri. Awesome.
  • An unexpected red card for the South African goalkeeper Khune, who has done an excellent job thus far, leads to point scored on the penalty kick.
  • South Africa came to life second half, but not enough to save them.
  • Late 3rd pt for Uruguay to put the final nail in coffin.
    Argentina vs South Korea:

  • South Korea ends up scoring an own goal off of an Argentinian corner kick. Hilarious! I probably shouldn’t love own goals so much, but I laugh every time.
  • Higuain nicely heads in the second point for Argentina.
  • Argentina is more offensive minded, but South Korea has been getting back into it after the own goal.
  • Argentinian carelessness leads to a lone SK striker stealing the ball and a goal! The score now 2-1 in favor of Argentina.
  • The pressure exerted by both teams has been high for much of the game and there have been several good shots on goal.
  • Holy hell, Argentina launched a wicked assault! The first shot was saved, the second went off the post, and the third was gently tapped in past everyone! Beautiful play!
  • Another fearsome Argentinian assault leads to another goal and now Higuain has a hattrick!
  • Final Score is 4-1 Argentina.
    Greece vs Nigeria:

  • Nigeria scores on Greece about 15 minutes in on a free kick which was awarded for a yellow card offense that the Greeks should never have committed.
  • Kaita earns a red card and gets ejected for freaking out on a Greek player after the ball was out of play. It was a silly foul and it puts the Nigerians down a man for the rest of the game. Good thing they already have a goal scored.
  • Greece scores via a deflection off of a Nigerian player just before the half to tie it up. Things are a lot more tenuous for them now. Credit to Greece for seizing the opportunity.
  • Nigeria blows a fast break. Caught out Greece, the first shot is blocked and the rebound should be easy goal but they don’t get a good foot on it and end up kicking it wide.
  • After a series of fantastic saves, there was just one too many assaults for the Nigerian goalkeeper and he let a rebounded kick get by him. It was a valient effort, but I don’t think Nigeria will be able to pull off a draw. To make matters worse, several injuries are forcing them to use their subs and hurting nigerian play quality.
  • Prediction correct, Nigeria loses 2-1. On the upside for Greece, they scored their first ever World Cup goal and got their first ever World Cup win.
    France vs Mexico:

  • A more physical game that we’ve seen thus far, France and Mexico seem to be pretty evenly matched. No major runs by either team yet and we’re going into second half scoreless. There was one almost goal by Mexico, otherwise good goalkeeping both sides. A game where the teams are really well matched can either be really exciting, or really not. Unfortunately, so far this one is the latter. While the skill on display is great, it’s not edge of your seat stuff.
  • A fantastic but possibly controversial goal for Mexico give them the lead! There was some question as to whether Javier Hernandez was offsides, but it looked like he was right at the edge and the call could have gone either way. His grandfather scored against France years ago and now he gets to follow in those footsteps. Pretty amazing!
  • A penalty kick gives Mexico another point. We have another first! The first Mexican player to score in three different world cups is Cuauhtemoc Blanco! (Try saying that three times fast!)
  • There were lots of yellow cards handed out this game
  • Mexico takes it! Pretty unexpected, given France’s last World Cup performance.

Do you know, I just had a thought. A somewhat startling occurrence, I know, but hear me out. I think I may do a liveblog kind of thing for future posts. That might work better because it captures my thoughts at the moment and I don’t have to worry about turning notes into fancy pants writing. I’ll probably forget less stuff to include too. Maybe some open source, embeddable twitter-like app. I very nearly think Dreamhost has something like that available. Hmmmm…

EDIT: I just realized that the timezone setting on my blog has been wrong for… quite some time, shall we say. It looks like it was calculating times in UTC or some stupid nonsense like that instead of my local time. Good job! Because that’s useful! It’s fixed now, but all my old posts have timestamps that appear to be off by about 7 hours or so. Can you feel that, WordPress designers? I’m flipping you the bird as hard as I can!

Jun17

World Cup 2010 Day 6

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World Cup 2010 Day 6

Another quick update since I’m sort of playing catch up here and I want to get this in before midnight! Somehow, I don’t think I’ll manage that.

First, yesterday’s game summaries:

Portugal’s 2nd half was better than their first, but they just couldn’t seal the deal. They had plenty of chances, but a solid defense by the Ivory Coast and… shall we say a reliance on drawing fouls seemed to hamper their efforts at actually scoring. It was a decent game, but not nearly as good as I thought it would be. I expected more from Portugal, and sadly I was disappointed. Oh and Rinaldo is a fantastic player, but he flops like a fish. The most annoying part about that is that he’s got such amazing skill that there’s no reason for him to go skidding across the field every 30 seconds. Imagine if Michael Jordan took a dive every time another player got too close. There isn’t a roll eyes graphic big enough.

So I finally got to watch the Brazil game it was a great one! North Korea came at them like there was no tomorrow, but Brazil brought that magic they’re known for. No matter what the North Koreans did, they couldn’t get the ball away from Brazil with any reliability. This isn’t to say that they played poorly; but they were the 105th ranked team going against the 1st ranked team. Yeah… that’s not gonna end well. Surprisingly the Koreans did make Brazil work for the goals they got. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, they managed to score one on Brazil! WTF mate?!

And now for Today’s games, by which I mean the games of 6/16!

Honduras vs Chile! Perhaps one of the most exciting games yet in that both sides played hard, but it always seemed like Chile was balanced on the edge of coming crashing down upon Honduras like an unstoppable wave of destruction. They won the game 1 goal to none and it was pretty great all the way through. I did think the score would be higher given how often they had a shot on goal, but they did seem to have trouble finishing their runs. Oh and a word of advice to Chile for future games: I don’t care how good Sanchez is, the dude had HORRIBLE shots on goal, kept taking them, and routinely spent time doing step-overs while the Honduran defense got into place, thereby ruining his chances of capitalizing on fast breaks. Seriously, he didn’t fool a single player with his step-over nonsense, but did that stop him? Nope! He kept doing it and probably ended up costing Chile a goal or two. Why he waited for defenders to get back before making a play is beyond me.

I’m getting into the second half of the Spain vs Switzerland game now, and so far this has been an interesting one to watch. The Swiss defense has been pretty awesome, with them making only one major mistake leading to a breakaway play by Spain. Fortunately for the Swiss, the Spanish attack didn’t end in a goal. It’s still scoreless at this point, but I’d be surprised if the game ends that way. An odd note about something the commentators were saying about the Spanish offense was that Switzerland wasn’t going to be able to steal the ball from them, and indeed there were precious few turnovers. From what I saw though, it seemed more like the Swiss were afraid to attack the Spanish and hung back in a more defensive posture than anything Spain did to really hold on to the ball. Granted, their ball handling skills are nothing to sneeze at, but their passing wasn’t nearly as crisp as that of Brazil’s, nor did they seem to have

OMG AWESOME HOLY POO

So as I was writing that last sentence, I was watching the game (yay picture by picture on my monitor!) and the Swiss just scored an AMAZING goal on the Spanish! Two attackers, two defenders. The defenders get beat and the first attacker takes a shot that the goalkeeper comes out to stop. He’s successful, but he’s unable to hold onto the ball. Fernandes zeros in o the loose ball and slams it into the goal, putting Switzerland up 1 goal to none. I didn’t think the game would end scoreless, but I didn’t think the Swiss would be the ones winning. Wow, what a play. Oh and that sentence I was writing before should end like this: “nor did they seem to have that magical Brazilian ability to pass the ball through the bodies of the defenders as if they weren’t even there.” In any event, while Spain is certainly playing very well, I don’t really agree with the commentators confidence that Spain is going to have the majority of the possession through skill alone. There’s certainly some trepidation by the Swiss in attempting to go head to head to take the ball from them, although this half they’ve been more aggressive, with some pretty fantastic results.

I’m wrapping this up and now and focusing on the game, because I don’t want to miss another second. Goddamn do I love the World Cup! 😀

Jun15

World Cup 2010 Day 5

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World Cup 2010 Day 5

This is going to be an early and short update due to my wacky work schedule.

Today’s first game, New Zealand vs Slovakia had a totally epic finish. It was made all the more epic by the fact that New Zealand l, the team responsible for the epicness, was also responsible for a lot of the dullness in the game. Much like their neighbors Australia, they appeared pretty stiff and somewhat uncoordinated. To their credit, this game was the first time they didn’t allow a goal in the first half. They did give one up in the second half, and with their poor offense, it looked as if they were going to lose the match. Then came he epicness. In he last minute of stoppage time, minute 93, Winston Reid scored what I believe was his first World Cup goal to tie it up. I don’t think New Zealand was really expected to do well, but they surprised everyone with that in at the death goal.

I’m watching the Portugal vs Ivory Coast game now and so far its been OK. Neither team has made much progress yet, but he real story thus far has been Ronaldo. He had a blazing shot at goal that just barely missed and he also had some… colorful moments. He’s gone down a bunch, sometimes without even being hit! Granted, he is a target for obvious reasons but some of those falls were a bit mug. The confrontations hat they’ve produced win the other team has gotten him a yellow card along with yellow cards for two Ivory Coast players. Fun fact: it seems whenever they had a close up of any of the player’s faces, it seemed as if they were yelling “fuck off!” Its pretty hilarious. 😀 I fully expected Portugal to dominate this game, so I hope they can generate some real offense during the second half because aside from Ronaldo’s one shot on goal, hey really haven’t pressed the Ivory Coast much.

And now I sign off until tomorrow evening. I’m working till 8:30 tonight and then have to be back there at 5 AM tomorrow, so I wont get to catch up on the games until I get home around 2 PM. At least I have Thursday off. :