Soldiers’ Deaths Don’t Matter?

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In reference to the Republican support for the president’s Iraq strategy not holding out all that much longer, Representative Thomas M. Davis III (Republican – Va.) said the following…

The key for everybody is to try to find a way to declare victory and get out of there.

So in essence, what he’s saying is that, in order to get out of Iraq, we need to find a way to save face and claim that it’s a victory. We don’t need to actually have a victory… just be able to spin it that way.

I think that’s possibly the pinnacle of self-centered absurdity. It seems the Bush administration (and its supporters) are willing to continue to sacrifice lives in order to “save face” and not harm Bush’s evidently fragile ego. Based on Davis’s comment, they’re not staying there to help Iraq or to bring stability to the region (since it’s obvious that the opposite has happened), but they’re staying there so that they don’t have to say “Oops.”

Link to the MSNBC article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18586983/

The Potato Joke

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I saw this on Cindy’s blog and thought it was worth posting. Ha!

An old man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his potato garden but it was very hard work as the ground was hard. His only son Fred, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Dear Fred,
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my potato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over I know you would dig the plot for me.
Love,
Dad

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
For heaven’s sake, don’t dig up that garden! That’s where I buried the BODIES!
Love,
Fred

At 4am the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love,
Fred

What’s up with Condi?

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Condoleezza Rice

So… it might just be my warped impression, but Condoleezza Rice always seems to sound like she’s about to burst into tears whenever she’s speaking. It’s like her voice is right on the edge of cracking and she’s trying her damndest to maintain her composure… but she’s only one dirty look away from a complete tearful breakdown.

She also seems to look pissed off in most pictures I see of her. I wonder if that’s related.

The Lord of the Rings Online

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Pingwulf riding past WeathertopWell, a few weeks ago, my friend Mike got me a closed beta key to play The Lord of the Rings Online. I started playing it and was really enjoying it, but was still waffling over whether to pre-order the game (thus gaining nice benefits if I decided to play it when it went live) or to just stop playing when beta ended. Mike kept trying to coerce me into getting it, to no avail, so he finally forced me to commit to playing the game by pre-ordering it for me as a birthday present. FFS!

So now I’m committed to playing it, which isn’t a disappointment because it really is fun and well-done. Two months before launch, it’s more polished and complete than most competing MMORPG’s are after six months from their release dates. The closed beta ends this Monday and the open beta starts for pre-order customers on March 30th. For non pre-order customers, open beta starts a week later. Pre-order customers also get a couple bonus items when the game goes live and they get to keep their characters (up to level 15) from beta, which is really nice for beta players. It means we won’t have to start over AGAIN to create characters.

So… I’m happily playing Lord of the Rings Online now each evening for a bit… about an hour or so a day, give or take. Mike even convinced me (the bastard!) to join a guild of older gamers who are very casual (mostly) about gameplay and have families that are a higher priority… which fits nicely in with my playstyle. Once a game becomes a chore, I’m done, and nothing makes it more of a chore than feeling like you have to play a certain amount, a certain way, or for a certain purpose.

I periodically take some screenshots from the game and post them on my gallery site (http://lotro.26thavenue.com) in the Lord of the Rings Online gallery. Mike plays a character named “Arepfoot” (and other characters whose names always start with “Arep”) and I play a character named “Pingwulf” (and other characters whose names always start with “Ping”).

Drew’s Preemptive Strike

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For round three, Drew fired off his submission before I got around to sending one of mine. I find it extremely disturbing and I’m thinking I’ll most likely lose a lot of sleep… or at least have a much higher frequency of nightmares. FFS!

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It works! It works!

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Well, I reinstalled Windows XP on my system, but immediately had the same lockup problem that I’d been having when I’d run any application that used 3D graphics. I’d replaced my video card recently because of the same issue, so I figured that this time that wasn’t the problem. After doing some research, I decided that I needed a bigger power supply. The symptoms sort of indicated as much.

As it turns out, that was the problem. My video card was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, which is why, when it got taxed by heavy graphics work, the system would crap out… by doing a pseudo shutdown. So now I have a nice, beefy 500-watt supply in my case and everything works wonderfully. 3D apps are no trouble and my system is in happyland again.

That means I can play Defcon again. w00t!

The Most Hated Task

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I’m on Lori’s computer right now because the hard drive on my computer is being formatted for a fresh install of Windows XP. It’s been giving me some trouble lately and I think the problem is related to the video driver, but I’m not sure. There’s a lot of junk on my system, too, so I figured it was time for a good house cleaning.

Having a nice, fresh install is always nice, but it’s usually a little nerve wracking wondering whether or not I backed up everything that I need. Too late now, if I did forget something.

I have a second hard drive in my system that I’m going to use for Linux after I get the XP install done on the primary hard drive. I’d love to switch over to 100% Linux, but there are some Windows applications that I rely on that won’t run under Linux’s WINE application, so I’m sort of stuck until I can wean myself off those applications.

*sigh* Hard drive is 67% formatted…

Oh, it’s ON now!

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My friend Drew (see AllSystemsRunning.com) and I had a competition last year to see who could find the weirdest (or creepiest or most twisted) image on the web. We didn’t really have any rules, but I know we pretty much stayed away from porn or real-life gross-out images. I think all of our “entries” were hand drawn (by someone else) or computer generated.

Well, we decided to start it up again and here are the first two opening salvos…

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