Hmm.... meat.

Slashdot has a poll up: favorite meat. and I saw a couple funny funny funny lines in the comments.
ATTN: VEGETARIANS - CALM DOWN, THEY'RE JOKES.
"I love vegetarians. Some of my favorite foods are vegetarians."
"Plants aren't food - food eats plants!"

Also, "Cows would have a much longer life expectancy if they weren't made out of beef and leather"
I voted beef, but only because there wasn't an "all of the above" option.

current music: the Primus cover of "have a cigar", which is one of my favorite ping floyd songs.

I forgot.

I mentioned the escape key. I had that last post half typed, hit the escape key for some reason, and all my text vanished. fuckers.

Anyway, the thing about the swarm mentality of the A.I. in RTS games is that is leaves them open for certain tactics. In generals, the chinese have a unit that can convert enemy buildings to your side, and is camoflauged unless doing something. I'll sneak in and convert a power plant or something, to get the swarm distracted blowing it up - then I convert the headquarters and build a worker. that worker, if you can get it back to your base, is the greatest fucking thing ever. It builds the buildings it would have built for the enemy - only they are yours. You can have that bulldozer (or rebel guy) build anything the enemy can. I've had the superweapons of all three sides built in a single game. I love that. I'll build a usa airbase and amass a swarm of helicopters, then I'll build a gla war factory and have toxin tractors spraying the area around my base with poison. Another thing about the computer: it's dumb. I've had one infantry unit survive an attack on the enemy base, and used that infantry unit to blow up the enemy headquarters. For some reason the AI will sometimes ignore a single unit unless it attacks an enemy unit. I just wish these game developers would come up with at least semi-realistic AI. Now, if you'll excuse me, my rocket buggies are done building. Time to rush those fuckers.

current music: Wow. it was "People=Shit" by slipknot, which is a musical sledgehammer, followed by a song intended to aid meditation. it's all feng-shui and shit. That's random play for ya.

Fucking A.I. (and escape keys)

I just played a round of command and conquer: generals. Good game, but I have one gripe - the A.I. is fucking ruthless.
I played a skirmish round with 3 computer controlled players, who all had assault teams rolling across my base before I had any way to defend myself - before I had my fucking war factory built. All I had was a handful of infantry, and a few builders constructing my base defenses. the builders, construction sites, and infantry were trampled upon and burned. My measly infantry units were no match for the mighty chinese flame tank, which then parked in front of my goddamned headquarters and crispy fried my new builders as they came out. I lost horribly. I got stomped on. in 5 minutes. So I decided to get on here and complain a bit, as I am wont to do. See, there is a technique called rushing in real-time strategy games like generals and warcraft and such. Rushing means to build a large army of cheap units early on, then use them to mow down your unprepared enemy, who might be able to stop a tank or 2, but is helpless against a swarm of humvees. The problem with this is: the computer rushes. constantly. every time it builds a new unit, that unit make a bee line for your base. and every unit that trickles down the road attacks the same building, over and over and over, until it breaks, then the stream flows in a new direction. The only way to combat this is to build defenses immediately, quickly building up an impenetrable wall of rocket towers or whatnot so you can actually build your base up without having to constantly rebuild key structures. But. the computer has certain advantages over you that I thought I might list here:

1) The computer can see the whole map, all the time, and it knows exactly what you are doing, and where - from the first second of gameplay. I've had super-weapons hit tank convoys that took the long way around, and never got within sight of any enemies.
2) The computer doesn't need to use a mouse or keyboard to issue commands, and thus issues them instantly to multiple units. The computer can have 45 units scattered to hell and gone and have every single one of them bear down on various key structures in your base - at exactly the same time. This allows the computer to organize vast multi-spearhead assaults that outflank your defenses and tear them down just in time for the bomber run that wouldn't have made it anywhere near the target otherwise.
3) The computer is 100% effecient. there is never an idle worker or any wasted resources. The computer knows the radius of attack of every unit and can position them in an exact grid to provide 100% coverage.
4) The computer instantly attacks the biggest threat when fighting you, then it moves on to the next biggest threat. If your flame tank is wiping out those infantry, the next missile will strike that flame tank.
5) All that "ruthless" A.I. that is supposedly using strategy and cunning to outmanuver you also allows it to amass hard-hitting assault teams at the base before they rush your base, giving them a greater chance to punch thru.

Picture this: you start a skirmish against a computer opponent. You start off with your one worker, who you tell to go build a supply center so you can collect resources to start building. then you queue up a couple more workers. The computer already has as many workers as it is going to need queued up - they were queued up instantly, in the same instant that the first worker went to build a supply center. You get your new workers, who you tell to go build a barracks and a war factory or maybe a base defense. The computer will be building tanks before you get done with the barracks. Then, as you go to work on your second defense turret, and you have a tank building, and maybe some infantry - the first wave comes. You will die quickly if you don't drive the computer away. Sucks to be you.

current music: "kill you" by korn rad guys, korn.

Holy Crap!

Ok, so I needed to install realplayer. I hate realplayer, and real networks, and everything they love. But the website has morphed again, and I was able to download the free player within 2 clicks of the front page, and the links were fairly visible. Kudos to real. I still hate them, tho.

PIRATIZE© Your Life!

Yeah, you know how a couple days ago I mentioned that I used illegal methods to obtain music for free, even though that music had not officially been put on sale yet?
I do that a lot. But I'm sorry. Truly. Except for metallica. Fuck those guys. I used to be a fan. I bought every album from the black album to the s&m thing they did with that orchestra. The black album was the first cd I ever owned. Now, I don't mean to hurt artists when I download music. I mostly use my downloads to see if i like the album, and I do buy a lot of cd's still. But metallica, on the other hand, won't be getting my money any time soon. They stopped being artists when they started trying to get their fans arrested for downloading their music. I'll never give them another cent. Oh, I'll still get their albums, mind you - I just won't pay any money for them. If I can't download the music, I'll fucking steal the cd. Fuck metallica.

current music: "130 steps" by Badmarsh & Shri, which is this cool sort-of electronica duo. I say sort-of because Shri is an instrumentalist, meaning he plays actual instruments, so the music ends up sounding very organic and natural, since it is for the most part. By the by, I really enjoy these people, and I never would have heard of them if I didn't see the "dancing drums" album in mp3 format on an ftp. So there.

ST33L M0NST3R!!!

I have a desk.
'tis a large desk, to be sure.
It resembles THIS.
It is the vessel on which my immortal soul will travel thru eternity, because it is the only thing that will last that long.
It is also heavy.
hernia-inducingly, mind-numbingly heavy.
it forms a gravity well, and the moon will eventually crash into it.
but it shall live on.
and now it lives in the basement, with me.

My former roomates (who got a nifty apartment along with the computer business they are buying) went back to our former home and retrieved all my (and their) belongings, and ferried them 500 miles up here in a 26 foot u-haul. all my furniture and whatnot was in there, including the steel monster (as I am prone to call it lately).
The desk and a large couch stayed in the garage, which is at-grade with the basement (the house is built into a hill). Normally it takes 2 people to move the desk, and 3 to carry it. I moved it into the basement, at great cost to my health. I fought it for a while, learned it wouldn't go thru the door upright, so I fought it onto it's back and fought it most of the way thru the door, until I realized that I needed to remove the door, since it was also too large to fit thru the door on it's back. So I removed the door (the only part of this ordeal that was easy) and proceeded to fight the desk back thru the door until I realized that it was *still* too wide for the space. so I pulled the leg off. See in that picture I linked to, how the leg is sort of a large square looking thing? well, it's a rectangle, and it is as deep as the desk, and the feet for that side are both attached to it. and it is attached to the desk via 4 nut-backed screws, 2 of which are very nearly impossible to get at, since they live deep within the bowels of the monster. but I prevailed, and re-attached everything, and now I'm sitting here in front of the old wooden desk, because I'm too tired to move the monster over here and transfer the computer to it, even though my 21" monitor is putting this particle board hutch thru unspeakable pain.

current music: "26 mixes for cash" by aphex twin. It's an album of his remix work done over the last 10 or so years. It's not out yet, but I PIRATIZED© it. I found it on a warez channel I was hanging out in on irc. that and the new megadeth double live cd, and the rage against the machine rare and live cd, and the (7 disc!) soundtrack of gta:vice city. tee-hee!