While the arcade itself may be dead, arcade games seem to be making a comeback lately. Classic games like Pac-Man and Galaga are available on the XBox 360 and Wii. People of all ages are loving these games, and it seems to be feeding the need these days for a game that you don’t have to sit in front of for hours on end to enjoy. Long 20 hour epics such as Zelda sprung up long ago when it was realized that video gaming in the home was different from that in the arcades. People desired a deeper story with their games, and it was exciting to play into the night trying to find that magic sword or hidden room.

As gamers are growing older, they have less time to devote to gaming. I myself don’t have the time to devote to games like World of Warcraft or Zelda. I spend a lot of my time on a train, bus or plane. This feeds my need for the 5 minute burst of entertainment that I get with an arcade type of game. I think many others share the need for these games so they can play for 5 minutes and just put it down and be done. Many cell phones have arcade type games available on them so that a player can play for a bit, put it down and be done while they are on the go.

I think in the coming years, we are going to find many more arcade “shoot-em-up” style cames making their way to consoles. We will be taken back to the years when games like Contra and 1943 was big in the arcade. Long live the arcade game!

Months ago, a few bloggers introduced me to Foxit Reader. I didn’t try it at first, but after experiencing the lag after clicking a PDF file on a web site in Firefox, I finally though I would give it a try. Foxit Reader is one fast application. It never freezes or locks up the way Adobe Reader does. It doesn’t take a ton of RAM either. Check it out at http://www.foxitsoftware.com/

So I’m sure people are going to bash Britney Spears over her appearance on So I Met Your Mother. Yes, I agree the acting was terrible, but guess what, Britney Spears is not an actor. Yah! That’s right! She’s a singer. She’s not supposed to be good at acting. She was on the show to get ratings and she probably got a hefty fee for that appearance.

Britney is just like the other countless actors that have tried their hand at acting. Terrible! Elvis Presley wasn’t any good at acting either, but he did plenty of terrible movies and they all made money. So really it makes no sense to bash her for what many other singers are terrible at. It should be treated like any other appearance when a singer, model or any other person whose field outside of acting makes an appearance in a movie or television show.

You people! You sit in cubicles everywhere chatting away. You’re on the street texting on your stupid phone. You even sit right next to me. When we chat or text message and I type something funny, you type LOL. Liar! I did not hear you laugh! You are not laughing out loud!

Oh ROFL? No! You are not really rolling on the floor laughing, so don’t use that either! I demand that you people stop using LOL so carelessly! This is not responsible texting or chat etiquette.

We need to invent something new to respond with when somebody chats us something funny. How about TF? That can be our way of acknowledging THAT’S FUNNY without faking that we are actually laughing. That would be a step in the right direction.

I am floored by the amount of items that iTunes installs on my PC. I just want to be able to listen to my music on my PC, but iTunes wants to creep and crawl into every crevice of my operating system.

qttask - A part of QuickTime that wants to run in my taskbar every time I start the computer. The Q sits down there and annoys me until I remove it from my startup items. It returns with every iTunes update though.

ituneshelper - Well gee, I guess based on the name of this service, it helps iTunes. It supposedly makes iTunes perform better.

Bonjour Service - Finds things on your network. Kind of creeps me out because my firewall reports that it constantly wants to use my Internet connection.

iPod Service - Yet another service that could probably be built into iTunes without constantly taking up resources. I don’t even have an iPod attached to several of my PC’s, so why not give me the option to run this one or not run it?

Apple Mobile Device - Like the iPod Service, unless you have an iPhone, you don’t need it. Yet it runs anyway.

5 services from 1 application. That’s insane! I know Apple specializes in Mac stuff so naturally they aren’t that great when it comes to PC software, but my I don’t think we need so many services loading and taking up memory.

What once was a super cool line of devices is now far behind front runners Apple and BlackBerry in the smartphone game. Today Palm stock lost big as they missed revenue. I’ve been feeling this coming since I left Palm as an employee a few years ago. This company is unable to innovate enough to keep up in this market. The Palm OS, which was the only innovative thing Palm had for years hasn’t seen many changes recently. Things got so bad, Palm resorted to using Windows Mobile on some of their devices.

The Palm Centro is doing well as far as sales. It’s a lower priced device that people are happy with, but cheaper items aren’t going to save this company. They need a truly innovative device that can rival the iPhone or the BlackBerry. I don’t see it happening. I fear Palm will be gone soon and we’ll be left with nothing but memories of the days when Palm came out with only a couple of devices at a time like the Palm III and the Palm V. Back then they focused on making products that were really cool. Now they take anything, slap the Palm name on it and pray you’ll buy it.

So I installed ClipMate 7 yesterday, an application I have sworn by for years. Clipmate is software that allows you to expand your cut & paste clipboard where you can have multiple items on it. I have used the application to provide email support for years, but after I installed it yesterday:

1. My menu was blank under Start > Programs.

2. Internet Explorer failed to launch. It would do nothing when I tried.

3. Firefox took up 50% of my CPU time even when open on a blank page.

4. After restarting, it changed my Windows theme back to an old theme I used to use.

I didn’t think people made software like this except AOL these days. Luckily I was able to uninstall the application and things returned to normal.

I thought I’d share my latest email to the Tech Support department at a large corporation. This time we’re dealing with Philips because the DVD-RW drive doesn’t work correctly. Their SPD2513BD/17 installs Microsoft drivers dated in 2001 for this drive. I thought surely there must be new drivers. Apparently their isn’t and they rely on Microsoft to make drivers for their own device, which I think is extremely lame.

Here is the email in broken English. “They all does not have a driver” Do you think I’m talking to somebody overseas or what?

Dear Valued Customer,
All of the SPD- model units (burners/CD/DVD-roms) they all does not have a driver; they all uses the Window’s default driver for the operation. In another word, the unit shall be plug-in and play once you installed the unit to your computer.

If you are experiencing a driver issue with a message and or an error code, that message is coming from Windows. Visit www.support.microsoft.com and type in the message and or error code and the site will provide you some solutions on fixing the problem.

If you are experiencing a problem that the unit is not being recognize by the computer, check the jumper setting and the BIOS.

If you are experiencing a problem that the unit is being recognized by the computer, but not reading any media, go to the Device Manager to check the DVD region.

Hope this will give you some ideas on how to resolve your driver problem.

Best regards,
Technical Support
PLDS, USA
SL

I think I might write back and say “Somebody set us up the bomb. All your base are belong to us!” but they might think I’m serious and call the police, so I won’t.

So I recently emailed Chris Pirillo because I liked the way he has his site setup on the main page. He has a google ad below the 2nd, 5th and 8th articles displayed on his home page. Like Chris Pirillo, I use WordPress to manage my personal web site and I was wondering how he did this. Chris Pirillo (There, I said his name 3 times so he will appear and see this) unfortunately is way too busy to address my email, so I set out to find out on my own. I wanted to find the plug-in that did this for me, but I couldn’t find anything. I was already using the Adsense Manager plug-in to serve my ads on each page.

After a few days of searching, I finally figured that this isn’t accomplished using a WordPress plug-in. This had to be accomplished with PHP. So I modified the Main Index Template using the Theme Editor. Below the Read More function I put:

<?php if ( $i == 1 || $i == 4 || $i == 7 )
adsensem_ad(’adname’);
$i++; ?>

Now my page looks just like Chris’s and every main Lockergnome page as far as displaying a 250 x 250 ad box after the 2nd, 5th and 8th articles.

After years of waiting for this sequel, Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day is finally getting made. Check out writer Troy Duffy’s video about it and celebrate, because everybody’s Irish today.