It really upsets me when people refuse to see the show just because it’s based on that — or at least that is what they assume. We all know what happens when someone assumes something. Now, you may be asking what is the show about then, and the answer is simple. It deals with opening your mind and thinking for yourself, which is something that a lot of people assume they do. I say this because nowadays, it seems everyone is saying whatever someone else supports. How many people do you know who support a cause just because a friend joined? How many people are sheep that just follow whatever is spread in front of them?

For me, I feel that a mixture of creation and evolution will somehow be shown as the true answer. Yes, God created the world. However, it didn’t happen in seven of our days. I know people will give me flack for thinking that, but the world according to the religious zealots is only around 6,000 years old. Sorry — 6,000 years old? So what about the prehistoric remains of dinosaurs? What about rocks and fossils that are dated to be around a million years old? According to the story of creation, the Lord created the sun, the moon, and the stars on the third day. We use the sun to calculate the length of our days. What was used to measure the length of days in that time? For instance, the first and second day could be an indeterminate length. That would give a good reason as to why there were dinosaurs, and to why they were not in the book of Genesis. There is also another fact that makes me cringe. On the sixth day, God created a creature that we call man. Herein lies the rub…what about Neanderthal man? Where are the cavemen in the book of Genesis. You know, the big browed savagely stupid precursors of man? Why are they not in the good book?

Now, as far as man evolving from monkeys, I am not smart enough to debate that. However, there are similarities in the two species. But to say that we evolved from them, that may be a bit much. I mean, remember how the Church stated that Earth was the center of the Solar system? Science proved that to be incorrect. Remember before that, the Church told everyone that the Earth was flat, and you could “sail off the side?” Well, some brave souls tested that theory, and proved it to be wrong. Just because the Church tells us something, we should not just blindly accept it. Yes, faith is important to believe in, but we as people need to think for ourselves.

My character, Mr. Jesse H. Dunlap, is different in his beliefs than I am. He is dead set on only believing in the Bible, and damn everything else — so it’s a good thing that he gets turned away from jury duty. A man who is stubborn in his thinking is just as dangerous in some regards as a terrorist. When we learn to open our minds to other thoughts, we don’t confine ourselves to being a slave to one ideal. I mean, a few years ago, who honestly thought that a black man would be the leader of America? Is it good that the tradition of leadership is changed? In just under four years, we will find out if this is good. Will Obama be a good president, will he be a bad one, or will it be more of the same just with a different skin color.

Thanks to GandalhDJH for sending me info on this.

 http://www.lunarsoft.net/news/1-frontpag…

Reports are reaching us that today’s update of the AVG 8.0 crashed many computers. After the update AVG 8.0 thinks that “user32.dll” is a virus: PSW. banker4.APSA. This file, however, is not (part of ) a virus but in fact an essential part of your Windows program.

In the event you have deleted this vital file as a result of the faulty detection, your computer will not restart. It shows a blue screen at start up and tells you it cannot find winsvr, error c0000135. System recovery has no effect.

How to repair the problem (as mentioned on AVG’s own forum here):

* Restart your PC in Safe Mode (tap F8 repeatedly during Windows startup)
* Open the AVG control center by clicking the logo or via Start -> Programs -> AVG.
* Go to the virus vault, select user32.dll and click restore.
* Empty the virus vault.
* Close AVG.
* Uninstall the entire AVG program (TIP from Lunarsoft: Download Anti-Malware Toolkit [AMT] from here, run the Anti-Malware Toolkit and download the AVG Removal Tool.)
* Reboot the PC and it is fine.

How to prevent this ever happening again:

* After uninstalling AVG (as suggested above), do not re-install the program as AVG 8.0 is a drain on resources.
* We from Lunarsoft recommend the free avast! antivirus.
* Download avast! from here or from the Anti-Malware Toolkit.

So yeah, it seems Avast is the way to go now. Way to mess everything up, AVG.

source: Bustedquad.com

Looks like straight idiotic partisanship to me. Bush took a gamble on Iraq and it hasn’t paid off. He was talked into it by the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds and the Wolfowitz’s of the world, convinced that we could turn Iraq into a “shining beacon of democracy” and that we’d be greeted as liberators. The whole idea of trying to spread democracy was very 20th century… The Cold War was done, democracy was spreading itself. Along the way he used American’s fear after 9/11 to gain popular support for something that had been in the works long before 9/11 ever happened, talking about WMDs in Iraq and connections to al-qaeda, neither of which were legit. We weren’t greeted as liberators and almost 6 years and thousands of Americans lives later, we’re still trying to make it work. And it’s a project that has cost billions and the American people have really seen no return on it (oil still extremely expensive). Meanwhile the head that the American people really wanted is Osama Bin Laden’s after he killed thousands of innocent civilians, and it hasn’t happened yet. Not to say that’s ENTIRELY Bush’s fault, but people are going to assign the blame for that failure somewhere, and a lot of people think Bush made a big mistake by concentrating so much of our forces on Iraq rather than on Afghanistan, the unquestioned safe haven for al-qaeda and a country governed by a completely sadistic regime, even worse than Saddam Hussein’s.

On the economy… eh. President’s don’t play nearly as big of a role in the economy as politicians want you to think. When the economy is doing well presidents love to take credit for it, but the flip side of that is that when things aren’t going so well, you shoulder a lot of the blame even if it’s not really your fault. It’s kind of like in the NBA, when a team wins a title, everybody praises the coach. But when a team has a bad year, it’s the coach who ends up getting fired. Really it’s the players that matter, they’re the ones out there executing and that’s what decides the game. The coaching isn’t totally irrelevant, but really it’s not as big of a factor as most people make it out to be. That’s kind of like the President as it pertains to economics. When things aren’t going well, people are looking for somebody to point the finger at, and the President is usually the guy. You can say it’s unfair if you want because to some extent it is, but it’s the reality of politics and always has been. The whole “tax cuts for the wealthy, and the jobs trickle down” thing is still really passe though. Again, trying to apply Reagan era thinking in the 21st century and it’s unsuccessful. The whole idea behind Bush/Reagan economics is that if you give tax breaks to the wealthy they will invest in new companies and that will in turn create more jobs for the American people…. that’s great and all, except the economy is completely global now, and all the jobs that a new company might create aren’t going to Americans but to India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, or to Latin America for manual labor. The jobs don’t go to Americans anymore. The whole concept of supply side/trickle down/Reaganomics is asinine, but amazingly a large portion of the American public swallows it.

Which brings me to the one thing written there that I DO agree with–Americans are fucking retarded on the whole. It’s funny to me to see a Conservative saying that after hearing Liberals saying it for the past 8 years when the majority of America’s morons were voting Republican. As sad as it is to say, that’s the reality of 21st century America and winning elections is all about dumbing your message down enough that the plebeians can wrap their tiny minds around it and like it better than the other guys.

Now if a guy who’s posting on a wrestling forum can have something that intellegent to say, why can’t most of the people on so called “good blog sites” have something half as decent. He didn’t bash the left or right sides. He just bashed

Now, while it is great, it’s also nice that the support people at least look and respond to emails. I posted an idea of using RSS feeds for it, and the support contact was receptive to the idea. It showed that someone was actually looking at the emails and sending out a written statement, not a canned  reply from an automated bot. Another good point is that from inside the main source options, for the Webcam, you can chose any video source that is on your machine. It’s awesome for TV Capture cards, and is what I use when streaming my games from my xbox 360.

Now, with the PIP sources, you can grab part of the screen, useful if you want to incorporate chat into videos or live streams. Besides screen, you can have pictures or a movie playing. It also gives you the option to clear the PIP selection. A drawback to the way it Webcam Max has it now, the PIP settings are not saved, nor can you define one that I have found that will keep the position, size, and location of the source. This is the worst for screen. You must re size the box in the window to get it where you want, and you must move where the screen capture is. Still though, minor annoyance, but nothing that is a major problem to overcome.

Webcam Max does have a a big drawback, and that only being if you are on a weak, single core system. The more PIP soruces and effect you have, the more CPU it takes up. Howver, with most dual core systems, that is not a factor anymore. However, if you are on a decent system that isn’t a few years old, you can download this great peice of software here.

Last Week, I decided to do beer reviews, since my friend NUKE over at http://www.nuke1.net does them. Also I am now converting and uploading the videos for Nuke, and since most of them are beer reviews, I thought to myself, why not run with this.. So, I did.

While I was out, I went to one of grocery stores, Food City, and got a mix and match six pack of beer. Well, my first review is Guinness Draught.

Here is a little about Guinness Draught from the Guinness website

Adored since 1959, it’s the powerful surge and settle that gives GUINNESS® Draught beer its uniqueness. Lovingly poured around the world, GUINNESS® Draught is one of best-selling imported beers in the USA.

A unique mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide helps create GUINNESS® Draught’s liquid swirl that tumbles, surges and gradually separates into a black body and smooth creamy head.

The rise and fall of our bubbles has perplexed PhD physicists. But all you need to focus on is the taste. With an initial malt and caramel flavour, GUINNESS® Draught finishes with a dry roasted bitterness. Enjoy.

Six Degrees of Preparation

GUINNESS® Draught is best served at 6°C (that’s 42.8°F), with the legendary two-part pour. First, tilt the glass to 45 degrees and carefully pour until three quarters full. Then place the glass on the bar counter and leave to settle. Once the surge has settled, fill the glass to the brim. It takes about 119.5 seconds to pour the perfect pint. But don’t fret. It’s worth the wait.

When you have the bottle, if you rattle it, you hear something on the inside of the bottle. Guinness calls this the “Rocket Widget”, and they say it’s to help give you the same great taste. Also, they do claim to drink straight from the bottle.

Now, for the part about actually drinking from the bottle instead of a glass. It is true, as you can tell in the video I posted for it, there is a distinct difference int he aftertaste when you drink from a glass and from the bottle. The aftertaste doesn’t linger in the back of the throat as long from he bottle. The smell of the brew is good. It doesn’t overpower you like some other beers do. It also is a very dark beer. The aftertaste does taste a bit like coffee, but as i said, the aftertaste doesn’t linger when drinking fromt he bottle. From the glass, I had the aftertaste stay in the back of my throat for a a while. It was persistent from when I took my first drink till I took a pull of the bottle.

I ended up giving Guinness Draught a 4 out of 5. With 0 being Horrible, and 5 being Perfect.

You can catch other videos like this on my youtube channel, http://www.youtube.com/tuxedojericho, you can also catch more of these as I do them here on my lockergnome blog, and you might even be able to catch them when I post them to http://www.nuke1.net

The image will be shocking, but it came from a truthful source.. Unless my source was a drunk Irish man.

If only. However, with the mindset of “why buy, when I can download” that is in most of the world’s minds now, it will be really difficult to rid he world of piracy.

So many people want to download a movie to watch instead of paying the eight dollar price to go to the theater. They don’t want to pay another ten dollars to get a coke and a bag of popcorn. They want to eat their own snacks and drink cheaper drinks, and not put up with annoying crowds. Now, that is only when the movie is in theaters. When a movie comes to DVD, it’s about being real cheapskates. Instead of paying the fifteen to twenty dollar price to buy the movie and be able to watch it as many times as they want to, they would rather take the time to download it from the net, and then watch it on the computer screen, or burn it to disc and watch on their TV. However, if they want any of the special “bonus” material, well.. they are boned. There is the option of Netflix, but people don’t want to pay, even a small monthly payment for anything. They want to get, get, get, but never give.. or pay.

Games are the same way. People don’t want to buy a bad game. lord knows there are MANY out there (Deadliest Catch:Alaskan Storm for one) that just stink more than rotten eggs. People use the excuse of “wanting to test the game before buying it.” Now, that was a valid reason in the past, before the Xbox 360 and PS3. However, now we can download game demos and test them out. Still, there is the Gamefly service (Netflix for games) that allow people to get games for a price each month and keep them all as long as they want. Still, there are those who are lazy people who just want to download and modify(and potentially brick their consoles) their systems to play downloaded games.

So, getting rod of piracy is a good idea, but it only looks good on paper, a blog comment, or on a blog post.

Reason I’m doing this, is I had a LONG blog about stage tech that didn’t post, and I emailed chris, and he asked me if it was working. So, here is the answer.

I was at Ingles on the west end of Morristown the other day to get some drinks to stock in some vending machines. Well, I saw the price advertised and it was near Wal-Mart’s price. I ended up going to get two Diet Cokes and a 24 case of Pepsi for what was needed. Sadly, I got to the self checkout and scanned the Diet Coke. It rang up at $7.77. Almost a full dollar more than the advertised price. The little rude check out worker that was standing there said, “Well, you HAVE to have a value card.” I simply said, “No, I can go to Wal-Mart and get it for the “value price” without the hassle of a card.

Why do grocery stores think that everyone wants to fill their wallets with these insipid cards that  give us such a value that we can now get the item at normal Wal-Mart price? If it takes you over five minutes longer to get to Wal-Mart than the grocery store, then it might be some sort of savings.

Eh, I guess that is commonplace with some people. They tend to think, “if I can do this, anyone can.”  Sadly, I learned how to set up and run lights and sound for theatrical sound, so just by watching a video online or a podcast, he should be able to focus lights, get a great color mixture, cue the show in  the board, set up the speakers, wireless and wired mics and have everything sounding perfectly fine and then run the show and not make glaring mistakes. If he can do that his first show, I will eat my underwear.