Guitar Hero III - The Fall of Gondor

I have just had a revelation. I will never be good at video games. ANY
video games. This was just made clear and stark to me during my
attempts at playing Guitar Hero III on the Wii. I will just have to
admit defeat and shout it out loud to the world - I SUCK at this.
Whether this is reflective of my lack of musical ability, or just lack
of hand eye coordination in general is beside the point. I wanted to
kick ass, and instead got the can of whup ass poured and spread all
over me like that time in Thailand when we were on that deserted
island, and this girl... oops...

I tried, Ma, I really tried. I haven't even gone past Easy level.
I've played Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Slow Ride umpteen times,
but I still can't get 100% note coverage. I played Cherub Rock, one of
my ultimate ever rock anthems, over and over and over again, and
eventually managed to get around 48,000. Then my 17-yr. old brother
comes along, who's never heard the song before, plays it for the first
time and gets 42,000. It's just not fair.

I absolutely love these songs on Guitar Hero III: Cherub Rock,
Paranoid, Kool Thing, Cult of Personality, Welcome to the Jungle,
Bulls on Parade. These alone are worth the price of admission. But
they don't seem to love me back. Shouldn't you get extra points if
the guitar controller detects your enormous, all-enveloping,
tingling-through-every-fiber-of-your-being worship of these songs?
Shouldn't a score multiplier apply when it sees that you've had them
on repeat in Winamp for like, forever? That you've annoyed countless
friends (okay, all three of them) when you sang along in the car and
you also *sing the guitar solos*? What, they didn't install that
feature?

It's pre-midlife crisis therapy for those of us who can't afford the
Harley or Ferrari. Pretending to be a golden god, struggling with your
own limitations in the harsh face of anonymity. Maybe you've already
missed the fucking bus. Maybe it's too late to be somebody significant
to anyone but your immediate kin. All you can do is pick up the
plastic Les Paul, shake your hips doing the Axl Rose snake dance, and
get the led out using Star Power.

This revolution will be text messaged

This revolution will be text messaged
By Marguerite Reardon

Filipinos have been masters of using text messages to rally political
protesters. So what happened during last month's failed coup d'etat?

http://www.news.com/This-revolution-will-be-text-messaged/2100-1039_3-6222963.html

Nintendo shortages for the 2nd year in a row

I just don't get it. Nintendo should have fixed their supply problems
by now. Or is there really a phenomenal spike in demand that have
caught them unaware? Christmas 2007 already and the shops *still*
don't have enough stock of the Nintendo Wii? Surely they wouldn't be
manufacturing these shortages to fuck with us salivating consumers!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/technology/14wii.html

Today is the first day of the rest of your Gmail life - taking the zero inbox plunge

Finally bit the bullet and decided to start with a clean slate.
Selected the 3000+ messages wallowing in my Gmail inbox for the last 2
years and archived all of them.

Obviously, it's not as radical as it should be, since they're really
*still there* - just not in your face. So if I ever need to remember
that so-and-so sent me a link to their photo album on such a date, I
can possibly look it up. Possibly. All this hinges on the assumption
that I can search for old items if I ever really need to. If the
search terms in my head don't match anything in the message, then it's
effectively disappeared, but taking up precious inbox space.

I held off for such a long time. Kept saying "I'll go through the
unread ones, and read them and tag them." Nah, it was just all too
much. For me, trying to delete old emails is at times like trying to
decide which photos of my baby I should delete. Silly, I know, since
their value is way down on the sliding scale compared to pics of my
first child. I don't know. Maybe it's just my pack rat mentality gone
digital.

Here's to clean inboxes!

Maybe I should start learning those Gmail keyboard shortcuts, while
I'm at it. But would these work cross-browser? Firefox *and* Opera
*and* Safari *and* Camino. (yes, camino is using firefox engine, but
UI is native OSX, so maybe they handle things differently)

<drift />
<meander />

Oh boy, we have an official fun day at work tomorrow. Bowling in the
morning then lunch then watching the premier of Darjeeling Limited.
The title just prepares me to be bored. Darjeeling - tea, hmmm...
Could this be another "English Patient" experience? Good grief. Then
early mark and work party in the city from 7 to 11pm. Moulin Rouge
theme. Hope the hotties in marketing and sales all dress up like the
Green Fairy. Or some such sexy variant. The invite suggested at least
wearing black and/or red. Woohoo. My White Stripes tee will be
purfect. Too bad I don't have any black pants though. Maybe I should
wear green and orange, just to be contrarian.

Oh well, time to go.

MySQL database Front end clients

SQL Yog: http://www.webyog.com/downloads/SQLyog614.exe

HeidiSQL: http://www.heidisql.com/

SquirrelSQL: http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net/

(uses jdbc - not just mysql)