Weekly Roundup

Once again I apologize for the lack of meaningful posts, still a lot going on. Recently I've really gotten into Entourage and Weeds, both are excellent shows on HOB and Showtime and if you have either of those channels I encourage you go give them a shot. Here's my list of weekly links:

The UK Terror Plot: what's really going on - Nice alternative spin on the British plane scare
The Lost Hatch Door - A cleaned up and translated image of the map on the hatch door from Lostpedia
Encyclopedia Mythica - A wiki encyclopedia of cross cultural mythology
Why Mommy is a Democrat - A "children's" book for heathen liberals
PodTube - Any Youtube video to your iPod
The Greatest Software Ever Written - I'll give you a hint what #1 is, it starts with U and rhymes with sticks
Debian Etch Beta 3 - Now with a delicious GUI install
One Good Move - A blog Stephen showed me

It's Not a LAPtop, it's a Notebook

Lucky number three.

Today will mark the third time I will send my G3 iBook in for a logic board replacement. Thankfully the computer is still semi-covered under the iBook Expanded Logic Board Repair Extension Program (such a lovely name), but I was warned by the Apple support person that this would be the last time they replace it, and I will either have to buy a new computer for pay for the repair myself. Now that sounds reasonable, if I had mistreated it in any way (little night time browsing in the hot tub...), but I don't. I use it like a normal laptop, I even got a padded form fitting water resistant laptop bag to carry it around in for safeties sake. Sure it travels with me almost everywhere I go, but that's what it's made for. If I wanted a laptop that sat on my desk all day I would have gotten one of those suitcase size extra-wide screen Dells that are meant to be a desktop replacement than a portable.

Now sure, maybe I could be more gentle with it, and I even asked the guy what I could do to prevent it (since it will most likely happen again in 4 months), to which he said(I shit you not):

Don't use it on your lap

Okay...... so apparently I have a LAPtop and I'm not suppose to use it on my LAP.... great. You know, I should have seen this coming. A few months ago Apple even said so themselves, that the Macbook is NOT a Laptop. Almost all the major computer companies are trying to avoid the title "laptop" simply so they can plead ignorance when some dude burns himself by simply using the thing like the title dictates. The correct terminology now is "notebook", safe, simple, and completely avoids the whole reason why most people want a small, portable computer, so they can sit down and chill with it on a couch. Huzzah for newspeak.

Enough rant, back to my logic board issue, thankfully I found out I'm not alone, and almost anyone who bought a iBook G3 or G4 in a specific time frame suffers from the same issues. Reading elsewhere, one of the better way to avoid the 90 degree tilt of death is to not pick the laptop up solely by its left corner, where the video hardware resides. Doing so will break the chip bonds, causing it to freeze on boot. Also, if Apple tech support gives you grief about it, ask for Apple Customer Care, which may give you more options.

As much as I bitch, Apple's support has been more than stellar. I bought this iBook when it's hard drive was failing from my sister for about 100$, and even though it's had it's problems Apple has repaired it twice when it was out the extended warranty period. Both times the technicians have been friendly and helpful and the turn around for the repair is usually only a day (may be faster for me since I live in CA). If they treat a customer who never really bought the product from them this well, they are definitely getting my $ when my next lap^H^H^Hnotebook purchase comes around.

Weekly Roundup

With Comic-Con, Alissa moving, my parents coming into town over the last few weeks I haven' t had a ton of time to sit down and write. So to keep myself motivated and the site not stale, here's some links I've found interesting over the last couple weeks:

Super Mario Bros: A Literary Criticism
The Pour - A wine blog on the NYT site
The Escapists - A new comic based off Micheal Chabons novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Recipe for Life - An essay by Micheal Chabon relating writing to golems
Weighing a Switch to Mac - Article about switching from a PC to a Mac
What Vista can Learn from Leopard - Nuff said
Debian Administration - I recently got Debian Etch running on an UltraSparcIII and I spent a lot of time here getting everything to run smoothly
Wait, Aren't you Scared? - Blog post on recent British Airline Scare

Comic-Con Preview Night Images

While checking out Rotten Tomatoes for how well Clerks II was doing (60-70%) I came across a gallery of images from preview night last night. Looks like the guys who made Shaun of the Dead are making another movie called Hot Fuzz, awesome.

13 Reasons Why Comic-Con 2006 Rocks

1. Free Stuff
2. Awesome Panels
3. Finally people who understand my "Rogues Do It From Behind" shirt
   
4. You can legally carry a "weapon" without fear of being tagged as terrorist
5. Largest concentration of geek girls in the world
6. Realizing there are people who are exponentially nerdier than you are
7. Chance to pitch your Star Wars/Star Trek crossover idea
   
8. An excellent oppurtunity to stalk your favorite creators and celebrities
   
9. Wonder Woman
10. Snakes on a Plane!
11. Finding that old back issue of Spiderman you just NEED to have
12. The only time besides Halloween you can dress up and not get weird looks
13. Princess Leia

Comic-Con A Coming

With Comic-Con starting tomorrow I'm getting pretty excited. Last year when I went it was only on Saturday and I really just wanted to see the guys from Penny-Arcade and one or two of the panels. I had no idea what I was in store for and afterwards with a bag of free loot in my hands I slowly developed a taste over the last year for much of what I saw.

The insanity this year will start early, with potentially going to preview night on Wednesday to scope out the con, then heading back on Friday and Saturday for panels and walking around. Currently I'm excited for:

Friday

• 10:30am-11:30am: Spider-Man: Then and Now
  
• 2:00pm-3:00pm: Battlestar Galactica with cast members
  
• 4:30pm-5:30pm: Web comics 102: Finding Your Audience panel which the guys from PA are on
  
• 5:45pm-7:00: Samuel Jackson promoting Snakes on a Plane
  

Saturday

• 10:30am-12:00pm: Lost Season 3 Panel
• 10:30am-11:30: 300 Movie Panel
  
• 12:00pm-1:00pm: Simpsons Panel
• 1:00pm-2:30pm: Kevin Smith on Clerks II
• 2:45pm-3:30pm: The Spirit Movie
  

Comics I'll most likely pick up

• New PA Book - Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings
  
• Premiere Maddox Book - The Best Damn Comic In the Universe
• 300 by Frank Miller
• Spiderman #530
• The Imaginaries #2
• 30 Days of Night
• Marvel Heroes
• The Red Star
  
• Astrocity Vol. 1
• Essential X-Men Vol. 1
• Anything free!
  

Weekly Roundup

Here's a few links that caught my interest this week:

The Cake Song - Video shown to me by Chris, annoying yet vaguely entertaining
Baghdad Burning - Blog written by a girl living in Iraq
Hammer and Tickle - Essay on communist jokes
Propaganda Critic - Site Stephen sent me with nice examples of modern propaganda
Oh My God I Hate Ann Coulter - Old blog post about Ann Coulter's ridiculousness from Anthony
What Shamu Taught Me About Marriage - Article about how to get your spouse to be more cooperative