03
Currently it looks like Harriet Tubman is in the lead at 22.42. The contest will end tomorrow at 5:00 PM and all times submitted after that point will not be accepted. 22.42 is a very beatable time, so dont give up yet - keep trying!
25
Alright, since I have had some decent success with this website, I am going to try something new here - I will be giving out a $25 giftcard (Wal-Mart, Target, or HEB) to someone one week from today. How can you win this giftcard? Simply achieve the highest time in this insanely addicting game made for the airforce to test reaction times (link is below). For proof, you will need to take a screenshot of your results and to do that, press the Print Screen button near the top of your keyboard, open up Paint, paste, and save. If someone tries to get cute and cheat the system, and I question the integrity of the image, I will require “fraps” proof of your time. Email results to connor@connorspitzer.com
One note: This game runs differently on different web browsers. Therefore, the only accepted browser will be Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome). It is personally my favorite browser and by far the fastest. No times from any other browsers will be accepted.
Here is the link to the game…..good luck!
24
Before I say anything else, just ignore the new title of the website - that is not permanent and only a part of an experiment.
But onto more important things, like the Bachelor. Back in high school, I semi-diligently watched a season or two with my mom, and admittedly, thought the show was pretty entertaining. At the time, I didn’t think much of it - I knew it was a pretty stupid show, but for some reason, it was relatively enjoyable to watch.
About 6 years later, I watched another episode of The Bachelor for essentially the first time since high school. Can you guess what comes next? My thoughts about The Bachelor!!!!
Since the last time I had really watched the Bachelor, alot had changed in my life - I am now a college graduate, married, working full-time, and focusing on making sure I don’t have kids anytime soon. I don’t think my opinion of the show really changed over 6 years, but I was definitely in a different place and for some reason, after hearing that this was the most watched Bachelor ever, I decided to really analyze this show. Here is my conclusion:
HOW THE FUCK DO WE STILL ALLOW THIS SHOW TO BE ON TELEVISION?!?!?!
Let me preface, once again, I was actually somewhat entertained by the show itself - they make sure to have a decent amount of hot girls, and anytime there is a developed “story,” it can be hard to ignore. But holy balls, when I sat back and really thought about what I was watching, I was genuinely floored at how extraordinarily worthless the general public has to be for a show like this to continue for years and years.
(I know I am not really breaking any ground here, but I still want to ramble…..)
Let’s just think about what we are watching - I’ll start with the basics - a person who thinks they can find true love among 25 people in a couple weeks. No sane person would ever think this is a good idea, but the fact of the matter is, it was an idea for a TV show that was expected to be entertaining, and honestly, you could argue that unless it has been tried, could you really know that this was a terrible method for finding “the one?” So starting out, the show had some worth - we expected it to be entertaining for obvious reasons and who knows, maybe you can find the one like this. After people watched the show, it was easy to see why on the surface this was such a great idea. Guys were (at least somewhat) drawn to the show by all the hot women, and the envy for being in the situation of the bachelor. Girls were drawn to the good looks and charm of the bachelor and wished they could have a fairytale ending with someone like him. After the “intensity” and drama of the first couple seasons, it seemed to a be a fair enough show - sure it was a little cheezy and over-dramatic, and certainly had its inherent flaws, but it was undeniably entertaining, and it hadn’t lost its credibility…….yet.
6 years later, after 15 of 16 failed attempts at “love,” the show no longer has any credibility (the 1 season that it did work was as much a fluke as someone walking into a bar and marrying the first hot person they see). This might be ok, because the show still has entertainment value, but the problem becomes that the show continues to take itself much too seriously - it is more than apparent that this is a TERRIBLE way to find “the one,” and yet we keep hearing, “the most dramatic rose ceremony ever,” and the same rhetoric from the bachelor about how much they are falling in love with this person despite only interacting with them 6 times, and 15 examples of why you shouldn’t be so sure.
Some people might still believe that, despite the show’s track record, this is a good enough way to find love, and it is definitely entertaining enough to warrant keeping the show alive. Well, after watching the show last night, something really hit me: how is it remotely acceptable that the method for this madness is to fall in love with two people (or more) at the same time (not to mention, be consistently “videod” making out/sleeping with them), and then pick one at the end (when they almost always fully admit to still having strong feelings for the other)? This is the show’s ultimate flaw - if the Bachelor really does only “love” one of them, then we should feel so pissed and annoyed that he/the show was just fucking with us the whole time by creating drama that isn’t real; if the Bachelor really does have strong feelings for both (which seems like the most likely situation), then there is no way the relationship can ever really work. Just imagine if all the relationships in your life happened at the same time, but you only had a few weeks to evaluate which one you liked most. Almost all relationships start off great (new car smell, anyone?), and having to pick, at that point in time, which one you want to MARRY (or at least STRONGLY commit to), is just incredibly dumb.
I could probably go on much longer, but I think everyone gets the point - this is one of the dumber shows on television, and should only be viewed for unintentional comedy purposes (like when Chris Harrison says that, “because tonight’s episode is so dramatic, so emotionally difficult,out of respect to the parties involved, we have chosen to make tonight’s taping as intimate as possible”).
Hey, they got me.
19
This has bothered me forever, but seriously, why the fuck do people have so much trouble swallowing pills? Every time I see someone struggle swallowing pills, I immediately lose at least 15% respect for them (yes, despite this, I still married Jess, who spends at least 15 seconds per pill, making horrified faces, and drinking half a gallon of water). Why do I lose respect? Because not being able to swallow pills is at least 98% a mental block which, if you cannot get past, makes me believe you aren’t exactly the most mentally tough person in the world.
Outside of the respect I lose, this fatal flaw bothers me on an entirely different front - people would rather feel sick than take pills. Hell, some people would probably rather have a pill shoved up their ass than swallow it. If that doesn’t work, they probably look for chewable pills made for little kids (although damn, those Flintstones vitamins tasted good as hell!).
Point is, next time you are standing there with that disgusted look on your face from tasting the disolved pill which has been sitting in your mouth for the last 52 seconds, remember how much of a loser I think you are.
17
I will soon be adding more games to the games section, but this is an example of some fun games you might able to find here in the future:
13
Those that know me know that it takes a lot of patience and understanding to be around me, much less like me. But for my wife, there is obviously an entirely different eschelon of ”patience and understanding” that must be reached if you want to spend the rest of your life with me. So before I say anything else, I must say how thankful I am to have found someone that is willing to live in the same house as me for the rest of their life. Hell, I don’t even like living with me half the time……
There is somewhat of a history with me and Valentine’s Day - I have not been shy in voicing my feelings of hate and displeasure with this “holiday.” About 0.12% of my total goal in life is to somehow destroy celebration of V-Day. Here is my (admittedly weak) yearly attempt at this: I am not buying any roses or candy for Jess for V-Day. But, at some point over the next few weeks, when the same roses are 1/5 the price they are today, and conversation hearts on on clearance for 5 cents a box, I am going to go buy 3ish dozen roses and a sackful of conversation hearts and surprise Jess. This makes perfect sense to me - Jess will be more surprised by the roses sometime over the next few weeks than if i just get them on V-Day, she will get more roses, and it will cost me (effectively her too) less. Luckily for me, I don’t have some dumbass wife/gf/fiance that demands a V-Day gift on actual Valentine’s Day.
Jess agrees with me too, right? RIGHT???
12
Before I say anything else, let me just throw it out there - I am by far a fan of plasmas over LCDs and I really don’t know one good reason why someone would prefer an LCD over a plasma unless you like spending more money for crappier products.
But as most plasma fans know, the creme de la creme when it comes to plasmas (outside of crazy expensive “non-market” models) is the Pioneer Elite. Well, apparently we will no longer have to torture ourselves by looking at these beautiful displays, as Pioneer is shutting down their TV business.
Pannys for life!
P.S. - Just finished reading the article and apparently LCDs are available with a larger screen size than plasmas. Awesome! Now we get to see twice as much shitty picture at 5 times the cost! Sign me up!
11
I am an avid sports fan. I truly cannot get enough of sports in my life. But when it comes to baseball, I have my hesitations, and always have.
Even when I was younger, baseball was the least favorite of my sports. I even stopped playing as early as junior high because I got to the point where I literally hated baseball. It was just too boring for me and I didn’t think it was very fun.
Outside of old school baseball fans who still claim that baseball is “America’s Pastime,” no longer do many Americans seem to care all that much about baseball - it only really carries much weight after the NBA Finals are over and everyone is just waiting for football season to begin. And I think Americans are justified in their thinking - baseball (MLB) just has too much working against it - the season is too long, its playoff season starts right as football begins, the draft is boring because the college market rarely puts players straight into the majors, the lack of salary cap kills most mid-market and below teams, there is no off-season hype (see draft), dominant players only have a chance to dominate a few times a game (hitters) or once every 5 games (pitchers), America’s best athletes have continued to drift largely towards football and basketball, and the game itself is simply not that entertaining. The one thing that seemed to keep baseball alive was its deep history and inherent statistical nature.
Well, as you could probably guess, with the culmination of the A-Rod scandal, my concern is that baseball can no longer live off its (questionable) history and (tarnished) stats.
The demise started about 10-15 years ago when, because of the obvious negatives I mentioned before, baseball had to somehow attract fans and attention. Since people love displays of dominance, what better way to draw attention to baseball than to accommodate an infestation of home runs. Smaller ball parks, juiced baseballs, and broken records - perfect. From this, we got to see the McGwire/Sosa home run chase, Bonds’ 73 home run season, and Bonds’ head increase in size by 68%. This seemed great to baseball at the time - attendance was up, they were making money, and everyone was happy.
But a few years ago (it seems like it was almost spurred by Jose Canseco), allegations of steroids and other banned substances became thrown around quite often, and the players we had idolized were suddenly being questioned by the government. Baseball probably knew it at the time, and we are probably figuring it out now, but this entire “performance enhancing drug” era is going to destroy baseball.
Just think about it: widely considered to be the best right-handed pitcher of all-time, Roger Clemens, is now literally a laughing stock; widely considered one of the best left-handed hitters of all-time (and certainly the best of our generation), Barry Bonds, is even more of a laughing stock. And now, the best player of our generation, Alex Rodriguez, has openly admitted to using full blown steroids for an extended period of time. Throw in guys like McGwire, Sosa, Palmiero, Giambi, Pettitte, Sheffield, Tejada……..this just reiterates how rampant the use of these PEDs was, and more importantly, how rampant it was among the league’s best players.
What makes all this even worse is that baseball knew all about this, effectively chose to do nothing about it, and attempted to sweep all this under the rug as much as possible. What the fans are now left with is a league with tarnished integrity, players with no credibility, a history which now must be questioned, and stats with little to no validity. Why would anyone stick around?
It is worth bringing up - is the discovery of baseball’s abuse of PEDs just “ahead of the curve” in respect to the other major sports? Maybe so, but I don’t really think that matters much. For one, in basketball, there would be very minimal use for any of that stuff, so there is no reason to think that would be a problem (until they create drugs that make you jump 12 inches higher). In football, though, obviously PEDs would make a huge difference, and my guess is that the use at least at some point was just as rampant as it was in baseball. But I think there are two points to be made here. First, I think the NFL did a much better job than the MLB of cracking down on it. And second, I will use a metaphor:
Take two cars, one is a cadillac, and the other is a corvette. The corvette prides itself in being fast and powerful, while the cadillac prides itself in being classy, luxurious, and “historical.” After awhile, people began to be drawn more to the speed and power of the corvette, and cadillac lost some customers. But within a few years, cadillacs were suddenly faster and more powerful than ever before. People questioned if the speed of the cadillac was legit, and wondered if they were using NOS in their engines to go faster. Cadillac denied for years that they used any NOS, but one day it got leaked that in fact, cadillac had been using NOS to increase the speed of their vehicles. If you are an owner of a cadillac, you are likely going to be furious that they used a banned substance to make your car go faster - it diminishes too much of the luxury and class of the car. But if you owned a corvette and found that NOS was used in your engine, how mad would you really be? You bought the car to go fast, and that’s exactly what it did. Yea, you would wish that it was totally legit, but hey, you wanted to go fast in the first place so you can’t really complain.
I think thats kind of how football/baseball is. Football fans are like corvette owners - we want to see speed and power and intensity, and the game fuels on those things. So what if we find out Shawne Merriman took steroids? He knocks the shit out of people and then goes crazy afterwards - that’s what I want to see. Am I happy he took steroids? Of course not. Does it make him look a little bit worse in my eyes? Sure. But the point is, because the game is built so much around the exact things that steroids can improve (speed and power), we almost expect players to take them, and when we find out that they did, it doesn’t really frustrate us all that much.
But a baseball fan is like a cadillac owner - they love the game for its history and statiscal nature (equivalent of “class”). Sure, they certainly enjoy when people hit long home runs, but the integrity of the game and stats is much more important than that. When they find out that not only the players, but the league as well, was compromising the integrity of the league just to draw more attention (go faster in the cadillac), they are pissed. The fringe fans who joined on during the home run boom (when cadillac made their cars faster), are likely to never come back because they feel so tricked, and you can bet that a few of the die-hards feel so cheated that they might venture elsewhere as well, at least attempting to honor baseball’s history by not supporting the very thing that has tarnished it.
I guess I honestly don’t believe that baseball will ever go away completely, but I would not be the least bit surprised if in 10 years or so, we no longer consider baseball as one of the “big 3.” As I mentioned, it already had too much working against it to begin with, and this A-Rod saga might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Actually, now that I think about it, this is all Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux’s fault. We all dug the long ball.
09
For those of you whom are not aware, a LAN (Local Area Network) party is basically an event where a group of people bring their computers over to someone’s house, hookup them up in the same room, and play games for an extended period of time (hence, the “party” aspect). These parties are the pinnacle of multiplayer gaming, as the ability to communicate is only minimally compromised, with the only interference being wifes, girlfriends, or any other humans with an attachment to RL (real life), who may impede us in our quest for dominace.
LAN parties are very flexible. They can accomodate all types of games and gamers (of course, assuming intensity among all players), and no single LAN party is the same. For us, LAN parties typically include plenty of gaming, eating (snacks etc., purchased at grocery store), eating (dining out, at fast food places like Taco C and Whataburger), drinking (used to be cokes, now beer), sports/movie watching (in down time between games/rounds), and minimal communication with the outside world. The party continues indefinitely until RL demands termination of the event, or someone slips into a coma (well, that is questionable).
Here are a couple pics from our last LAN party. My computer was not setup yet, so next to Tay, there would be one more person (me). As you can see, even through a picture, these parties are nothing but pure fun and excitement. Just look at the intensity on Clint’s face - that is what we all strive for when gaming.
06
Think how awesome LAN parties would be…….
http://tech.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=17337626>1=40000
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