Rant: Star Wars... in EVERYthing?

Ok here's the deal. I'm a fan of Star Wars. Well, at least the original trilogy, and select segments of the prequels. However, the Lucas camp has been inserting the franchise into too, too many places that in my opinion, it does. not. belong.

My biggest beef is with the Star Wars Transformers. Also a Transformers fan! But you don't make a Transformers Chewbacca, nor a Transformers Han Solo! And you especially don't make a Transformers Chewbacca and a Transformers Han Solo that combine together Voltron-style to make a Transformers Millennium Falcon! That's just all bad in all ways!

Oh but there's more. Games. There have been some truly great Star Wars games, right? Heck, the original arcade. X-Wing. Tie Fighter. X-Wing: Alliance. Rogue Squadron. Battlefront & 2. Then came the Lego mashup. Well I'm a big Lego fan too! Well guess what? That mashup worked, and worked well!

I mentioned there was more. Yep. Here it is:

http://www.gamestop.com/productmerch.asp?groupid=935

Watch it.

Just watch it.

All the way through.

Do I see what I think I see? That's a video for the latest installment in the Soul Caliber, the first blade-based fighting game to break through in the years when graphics power was going exponential. But wait. Is that freakin' Darth Vader's breathing I hear? Oh no. Yoda?!?!

What's next? Obi Wan Tennis for Wii? Ki Adi Mundi as an unlockable character in DDR?

Tested the upcoming SimCity Societies

I had the honor of being in a group of 7 people who were the very first outside of Electronic Arts to play a fully-functioning version of SimCity Societies, the next game in the SimCity series. Of course an NDA prevents me from saying anything about what occurred during the test or mentioning anything that isn't already public knowledge, but fortunately there's a decent amount of public knowledge out there already, like this and this.



There are several big differences versus the original series:

• No zoning. Rather than designating areas for given types of construction, you actually go in and place every single building yourself.


• Like other modern entries under the Sim moniker, Societies is fully 3D, and you can freely rotate & zoom with the camera.


• You don't construct a power grid or lay water mains -- fine details of infrastructure are handled automagically.


• Some "The Sims"-like elements are introduced in the form of what they call "societal energies" that influence cultural and technological development of your society as a whole.

Browsing around the web a bit, it appears that serious SimCity fans aren't too happy. In fact, they're quite disappointed, and in some cases outraged. They like being city planners and watching their cities grow, rather than building them piece by piece. We'll have to see how it works out once it's released!

Cease and Desist, I Insist

Yesterday I was made privvy to two sites that were using content copied & pasted from one of my own sites, without permission. With the help of legal council, I drafted formal Cease & Desist letters to the owners of each of the sites. Within four hours, one of the sites was offline. By this afternoon, the other had removed the copied content.

Justice: 2
Shameless plagiarists: 0

Just when you thought it was safe...

Yeah, thought I had given up on this thing, didn't you? You should be so lucky! I've been around, I just haven't been around... here... if you know what I mean.

I've actually been doing some editing of my life over the past couple months, if you will. The stress of work had been growing steadily, and I reached a point where it was time to scale some things back, reprioritize, and start enjoying things more again on a day to day basis.

After a good deal of adjustment, work is still quite painful, but everything else is better. My RC projects have been getting a lot more love lately, and one I started over 4 years ago finally seems complete and is tearing up the road something terrible. The sites have been doing well since I finished moving them to their new servers, ending a long stretch of technical problems there. The forums have been mostly running themselves lately, so there's really been no stress from the hobby, just more fun and accomplishment then I've had in about 2 years now.

My "to-do" list is now delightfully devoid of any "must do" items and nothing has a date next to it. The most longstanding and difficult item on there is even close to completion. My financial plan is right on track and I haven't even spent any petty cash from my Q1 bonus yet. I've become progressively less inaccessible to friends, too, thanks to more free time opening up.

Far & away the best thing in my life recently, though, has been my girlfriend. We've been going out for 5 months now and I can't point to anything that's really gone wrong the whole time. She's down to earth, unselfish, funny, caring, sharp, plus hot & scrumptious (bonus!). Having a special someone is great. Having a special someone who you feel comfortable with able to share any feelings at any time, and who you know always has your best interests in mind is just heavenly. Thank you, life, for this gift.

Right now, I feel like a really, really lucky guy. I've just got to be careful not to "f" anything up.

A dog with no bark

I think most dogs are born wishing (or thinking) they were human. Well, this one was born wishing (or thinking) he's a chimpanzee:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1088159598

The Safeway receipt to end all Safeway receipts

When it comes to grocery shopping, I like to follow the "less is more" principle. I shop less frequently, but get more items than your average bear each time out.

Well, the most recent time I went, I got so much stuff that my Club Card savings alone totalled to $40. The receipt is 24" long. Twenty-four. Inches. That's not including the sheet of coupons they give out or any of that jazz. Just the coupon.

But less is more, right? More or less.

Yo JANG, what've you been up to?

What do you mean what have I been up to? You follow my blog don't you? Oh, I haven't written anything lately? Oh. I can see how that could be a problem. Sorry about that. Well, I think a better question would be, what have I not been up to lately? Alright smartaleck, blogging is an easy one. Too easy. Can we move on now? Thank you.

Work has continued to be "challenging," but I'm changing gears in that realm and continuing to try to find or make an area where I can be fully effective at making the PayPal site/application look & function better for its users (against all odds). I continued to be courted hard by recruiters, though, so I'm not too concerned about things not working out in the end. Regardless, I'm going to continue to do my best to make sure it does work out.

On my RC sites I've been pushing forward as hard as ever, nearly completing the migration of a site I bought about 1 1/2 years ago to its new and better home beside my own creations. I've also been getting back into my projects as well as pushing forward on reviews and videos on which I've remained way behind schedule. I've even finally gotten my feet wet with RC helicopters, something I've been planning to try for several years now.

I'm still driving the Ralliart hard while waiting for the Evo X to come out. No complaints yet, though my left knee is getting a little tired of using a manual tranny on the daily commute. Speaking of driving, yesterday I went back out to my favorite road in Marin County, only this time I only hit it at 50-70% since I had a passenger. I stopped at the halfway point and took a few new photos, to boot.

Oh, and those of you who check out my MySpace page may have noticed that my status recently changed from "single" to something else...

Hooters Heading for the Holy Land

Once again America contributes to global culture:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070319/od_nm/hooters_israel_dc_1

Beat boxin' Flautist

This is pretty fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ZX5qdIEB0

I can move mountains

For the past couple of weeks I've made random references in the company of friends to an indeterminant mass of clothes piling up in my bedroom, patiently waiting to be ironed or folded and put away. Today, I ironed or folded all of them and put them away. With a twist. I counted them too. The results are in! Survey says:

• 13 button-up shirts
• 4 pairs of slacks
• 8 pairs of jeans
• 7 long-sleeve heavy shirts & sweaters
• 3 long-sleeve undershirts
• 11 short-sleeve shirts (from basic white tees to designer button-ups)
• 2 pairs of PJ pants
• 4 ties
• 15 pairs of socks
• 11 pairs of boxers
• 1 set of thermals

Brutal. Just brutal.