All posts by zbalance

Lakewood, NJ Electronics technician. music composition, computers/hardware, gaming, autos, debating current events.

A note to racists

Now that Obama is on his way to America’s throne, (note throne/toilet double-meaning) I wish him the best of luck with the turd Bush left for him. I personally did not vote this year because I did not like either choice. Playing eenie-meenie-mynee-moe at the booth is nonsense.
I have nothing against Obama, it’s just that I’ve never heard of the guy until the “bandwagon” effect started rolling, and yes I do follow politics. On the other hand I’m not voting for a Bush-clone either.
The fact is, Obama’s intelligent, well spoken, educated…. and black. Don’t try to correct me about his race. The community defines your race, not your blood-line. So as long as the black community emraces him as one of their own… he’s black.

Now here’s my request: Please for the love of humanity, stupid, racist, KKK, Nazi, skinhead, rednecks, leave this one alone. You don’t have to love him, but please just leave him be. My biggest fear is what would happen to America if he was assassinated by one of these kooks.
It will push race relations back 50 years. Riots will break out in every major city. We finally live in a time where whites don’t feel the need to feel sorry for errors of past generations, but this will all be erased if anything happens to Obama. It doesn’t help much that the (to be) Vice President is about as gringo as they come. People will start conspiracy theories about how this was the plan all along.
The fact that 60% percent of Obama’s voters were white will not help our cause. Another black hero dies, and it would probably be a long time before another gets to the same position.
So please gripe all you want if his performance gives you a reason to, but either way lets leave violent racism in the 20th century.

note to FBI/CIA: You’ve probably received some automated alarms related to some key wording I’ve used in this rant, so just to be clear: Neither I, nor anyone I know, is connected in any way to plots, designs, meetings or individuals with intent to bring harm upon any public figure.

But I have been sharing privileged information concerning Roswell.
Suck on that.

3 Things I’ve learned about my wiener this year.

I’ve received an automated notification that if I don’t contribute to the blog soon, I risk losing my rank as “commander”. I sure as hell don’t want to be demoted to a measly “admiral”.
Truth is I didn’t think I had anything relevant or topical to add lately, but that is unfair to the crackteam organization. There’s always something relevant if you think hard enough!

THREE THINGS I’VE LEARNED ABOUT MY WIENER THIS YEAR.

number1
No matter how sure you are you didn’t get any on your hands, never “handle yourself” after using Ben-Gay.
While not completely uninteresting, the cooling sensation will last for hours. It can be especially uncomfortable in the winter.

number2
No matter how careful you think you are, never use your crotch to secure your drilling site.
Sounds like an obvious one, yet there I was holding vinyl shutters on top of my legs while sitting on my front steps. I drilled about 20 holes before it happened.
As soon as I broke through, the drill bit drove into my pants and twisted up everything on it’s way down. While not breaking skin, I still had to reverse the drill to release the tool from my tool all while trying to maintain the look of “nothing to see here. I know what I’m doing” because the only thing worse than drilling through your crotch is looking like a fool to the neighborhood.
Moving on…

Number3
Sometimes it’s best to sit when you pee.
Follow with me here. It’s a complicated one.
I was trying to remove some stickers from a control panel. They are stuck on using a permanent sticky glue. It’s worse than sap when it gets on your hands. It’s meant to stick to anything and I had gotten some of it on my fingers.
Later I had to pee, so there I was standing over the toilet after I was done with the stickers. I pulled my johnson out long enough to make sure the aim was correct, then tried to let go. I TRIED to let go. But I wasn’t letting go. The glue was forcing me to maintain hold of… myself and I ended up spraying all over the walls of the “executive” bathroom while trying to shake myself free. So a 30 second wizz turned into a 15 minute scrub down.

Well that’s it for now. I’ll be sure to get back to you next year when I learn all kinds of great new things about my wiener.

FLA@NYC

I saw Front Line Assembly for the first time at BB Kings, May 3rd.
Acumen Nation and The Start, opened.
FLA’s playlist was fantastic since they were set up like a band (drums/guitars riffs) which is my favorate style for them. There’s nothing worse than watching an industrial one-man-band sit in front of a laptop while hopping and down trying to get the crowd into it.
Bill Leeb was in a sarcastic mood. He apolagized for the tour-bus-incident last time he tried to come to NY. The smoke machine ran out of fluid, so he suggested we all fart to keep the mist alive. He also voiced his aggrevation at the lack of any PA system so he couldn’t tell how they sounded, but it wasn’t that bad.
Although I didn’t recognize the other band members, I overheard someone point to Chris Peterson and someone else said Rhys Fulber wasn’t there. I can’t confirm any of this.
After performing, they came back for an oncore including Mindphaser that was phenomenal.
After the show we ate at Lucille’s restaurant, located in the same building. When we were done, we went outside to get a cab and found Bill Leeb (my idol) was just hanging out on the curb while they were loading the tour bus. He was practically alone! It figures I went through two batteries on my camera to get 1.5 gig of pictures and videos. (requests?). Even my cell phone was dead after searching for a signal in the underground club for 4 hours.
So I ended up just gawking at him like a teenager, think of nothing better to say than “duh…, I like music!” as he finished up outside and hopped on the bus.

Next time I will be better prepared.

Blasphemy but comedy

So I was in Lonestar steakhouse, waiting for my order and I had this wonderful thought:
Christians use the cross as a symbol of Christ. What would we have used if he was hanged? Would we all worship a noose?
Instead of performing the devotional gesture of a cross on our chests, we’d have to trace a hand around our neck and pull up on an imaginary rope with our tongue sticking out.
Good thing they didn’t have the electric chair back then. It would make for some horrible looking necklaces.

In closing, if I were a great man, and died by stepping on a land mine, please don’t worship the thing that killed me. Just worship me.
(Also, no statues or artwork depicting the moment I was blown to bits. Thanks.)

NeverwinterNights 2

So….

Anyone else want to rip their hair out trying to get those camera angles just right? I don’t remember this being such an issue with the first one.

Aside from that, GREAT GAME if you got the computer muscle to back it up. I had to add ANOTHER fan (5 total) to my case because it was sweating so bad. I’m not even sure why. The game is nice, but it doesn’t look better than Oblivion.

Hey Atari! Give us a camera upgrade! One that stays DIRECTLY behind the player would be nice.

Cool software

I saw this clip of a program called ASSIST (MIT) which is used as a design aid for mechanical applications.
Probably old-news to some Crack Team members, but the clip just started showing up and I though I’d share.

http://thatvideosite.voxcdn.com/core/3406/mit_digital_drawing_board.wmv

I’m told that Microsoft has a “Physics Illustrator” that works the same way.
Anyone have any experience with this kind of software?

Make love not Warcraft.

I haven’t watched South Park in about 8 years, but last night I was flipping through channels and stopped dead on what I thought was some sort of game demo.
Turns out it was a South Park episode all about the game “World of Warcraft” and since I know some Crack Team members are into this, I had to watch it. Much of the episode includes actual gameplay.

The story line goes: There is this high level player going around killing characters for no reason. I guess that normally characters have to accept a duel before risking their characters’ lives? Well this guy is such a high level that he overrides this rule.

The staff at Blizzard Entertainment is worried because the guy can “kill” administrators’ characters, so even they can’t stop him.

Cartman and the gang figure that if they spend every waking hour for months on end (in hiding) they might reach a level high enough for the four of them to defeat him.
Can the gang of four, with the help of Stan’s dad(a noob) and Blizzard’s banned “Sword of a Thousand Truths”, defeat the serial killer?

Quotes from the show:

Blizzard staff: What kind of person would do this?
Blizzard President: Only one kind. Whoever this player is, he has played World of Warcraft nearly every hour of every day for the past year and a half. Gentlemen, we are dealing with someone here who… had absolutely no life.
Blizzard staff: How do you kill… that which has no life?

[think about that for a minute]

Blizzard staff: There are over seven million people who log on to World of Warcraft! Are you telling me all those people’s characters are going to die, and there’s nothing we can do to save them?
Blizzard President: Yes. And it won’t be long before everyone gets really really frustrated and stops playing altogether. Gentlemen, this could very well lead to the end of the World…… (of Warcraft).

Cartman:[Trying to convince others to join his cause.] If you had a chance right now to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn’t you do it? I mean, I personally wouldn’t stop him because I think he was awesome, but you would, right?