Author: Krunk

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Gaming Addiction

So I was reading this article on Games for Windows titled: Don’t Call Me Catass by Jeff Green. It’s not posted online (yet?) as this is part of the October issue. It’s an interesting article about gaming addiction and there are some things I wanted to share.

Early on he introduces some terms I’ve never heard of:

They do not want to nurture or encourage the sad legion of poopsockers and catassers and pasty-faced, three-chinned zombies profiled on shows like 48 Hours and The Tyra Banks Show for having lost their jobs and families because of their inability to stop gaming. Nor do I want to be one of those people. I laugh at those people.

Honestly, I’ve known a few people who had fallen behind in college and even dropped out due to gaming addiction. One of my friend’s parents even drove all the way from Southern California to Berkeley after he got put on probation and took away his Sony WEGA TV. I personally was never a big fan of MMORPGs, but those who are say it’s very easy to get addicted to.

Having no idea what catasser or poopsocker meant, I decided to check them out on Urban Dictionary:

catass

Some one who plays a Online game and excludes everything else. Often used to describe when some one has a lot of time to spend in a online game.
Came from a article in a newspaper on Everquest. The player they interviewed played so much Everquest he forgot to change his cats littler box, leading the reported to comment his house smelled like “a cats ass”.

Not every one has enough time to catass foir items in Everquest.

That guy is such a catass, he has been at the same spawn for 9 hours straight.

The explanation of poopsocker is actually rather gross, so if you’re eating, I’d recommend you skip the next section.

poopsocker

In reference to players of MMORPG’s that instead of taking a break to go to the bathroom, they take off their sock, defecate in it, and throw it aside for later disposal. Refers to someone who stays up all day and all night to play an MMORPG.

“Steve, how’d you make lvl 50 already? You were just lvl 45 a couple days ago. You friggin poopsocker!”

Ungsunghero questions why it’s not called a sockpooper instead, as it would sound more correct as the -er usually modifies the verb, which in this case is “poop”. People would recognize what sockpooper means pretty much immediately. Poopsocker just sounds like someone how socks poop, which also brings up a disturbing image nonetheless.

Anyway, it appears the original term was poopsock, so maybe that’s how the term poopsocker came about:

poopsock

1. A sock that is used as a temporary contained for faecal matter.
2. A vital part of any dedicated EverQuest player’s equipment. A poopsock eliminates the need to go all the way to the bathroom, which wastes valuable levelling time.
3. An insult used to refer to an obsessive MMORPG player who gains an unusually high number of levels in one day.

SpawnSlayer13 is such a poopsock. He got from level 1 to 60 in the space of a day.

Near the end of the article, he talks about the game Peggle which Hjo3 and Ungsunghero introduced to me recently. That game is addictive, but thank god that it cost $20 for the full version, so I stopped after the 1st 3 stages.

And that’s not all. I have bailed out on important social events because I was “busy,” only to spend that entire time trying to beat Peggle.

Speaking of which, I picked up Halo 3 and Blue Dragon today. God knows when I’ll actually play them, but for $25 a pop, I thought it was worth it to add to my collection.

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Corrupt Banking System

First thing first, after the Feds decided to drop rates by 0.5%, many banks have been following suit with ING Direct’s interest rates now down to 4.30% and HSBC Direct announcing a drop to 4.50%. Oh well, I’d wait a bit before deciding if I should move my money around, since I’m pretty sure more banks will drop in the next few weeks.

Speaking of which, the $50 ING sign up bonus is back! Well, for awhile. Exclusive $50 bonus for nytimes.com readers who open an account with an initial deposit of at least $250 by 10/01/07! For those who haven’t opened an ING account yet, this is a great bargain as the usual bonus is $25 for you and $10 for your referrer.

Anyway, the main topic of this blog is the Corrupt Banking System. I knew banks created money out of thin air, but when CMDCC asked how it was done, I wasn’t able to give a detailed explanation. However, the following documentary was posted on YouTube and is a must watch if you’re into how banks work: Corrupt Banking System.

It’s a 5 part series:

  1. Cartels Robbing the Public
  2. How Money is Created
  3. Money is Debt
  4. Monetary Reform
  5. Warning About the NWO

Currently America is over $9 trillion in debt, but how did we get into this situation? Who are we borrowing from? Who has all that money to loan to us? Many people actually don’t know that the Federal Reserves isn’t actually part of the government, but is controlled by a small group of board of directors, usually major banking players. They’re the ones in charge of our nation’s entire financial situation, including printing money. How can we outsource printing of money to private organizations? You can read more about The Fed on Wikipedia.

Back to the videos. I’ve only watched 2 of them so far, but it’s told me more than I need to know about how banks can create money out of thin air. Today, when banks loan you money, I always thought they can only loan you money they already have (from deposits and reserves), but apparently that isn’t the case. Banks can loan you money backed by some small amount of reserve and the promise you’ll repay the debt. To give you an example, the current ratio (I forget the terminology) is 9:1. For every $1 the bank has, they can loan out $9. That is to say if the bank has $1000 in its reserves, it can loan out $9000 just based on the promise that you’ll repay the debt. In other words, $8000 was created out out of thin air, loaned to you, and now you have to pay interest on that $8000 that didn’t exist in the first place.

After realizing that, I just couldn’t stop thinking HOW CAN THEY DO THAT!?!?!?

The documentary goes further into proving that for every $1 that a bank has, it can eventually loan out $90 (90x the original investment). Banks expect money they loan out to be paid to someone, who’ll eventually deposit the money back into a bank. Because the banking system is a closed system, all the money just circulates within themselves. And with the new deposit, they have new money to loan out, each time, less than what they can loan out previously. And with a simple area under the curve calculation, it comes out to the fact that you can loan out 90x what you originally have.

This gets me really pissed off just thinking about it. Imagine a $360,000 mortgage loan (pretty close to what I have). Basically the bank only needs to have $40,000 in order to issue me that loan. And it would make sense if I had to pay interest only on the amount they have. But no, they’re charging me interest on the full $360,000 amount. No wonder banking investments are so lucrative.

This got me thinking… If I have $40,000 just lying somewhere, can I issue myself a $360,000 loan and just make monthly payments back to myself? It took me awhile to get my head wrapped around that idea, because basically every monthly payment I make would disappear into the abyss because it never really existed in the 1st place, but that’s basically how the banks do it. Then it also got me thinking, can I issue myself a interest-free loan? That’d be sweet!

Maybe I should get into the banking business after all. Create money out of thin air and make interest off of it.

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Ichi, Ni, San…

So while I was watching My-Hime (舞-HiME), the students were counting as they were practicing their tennis swings. So I counted along with them: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, (by this time, the chanting has faded away) shichi, ocho *screeching halt*. Ocho?!?! Is that 8 in Japanese? Wait… What the heck. How did Spanish suddenly get involved? I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation. I racked my mind a bit to figure out what 8 was in Japanese and I figured it out moments later to be hachi.

It’s funny how I’ve mixed up numbers like that. Then again, ocho technically can be a Japanese word:　おちょ. So maybe that was why it sounded right for a moment.

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Traffic Jam Game

Well, it’s not exactly a game, but I’m curious who else out there does this. Whenever I get stuck in a traffic jam, the most difficult decision I have to make is whether to change lanes or not. And for some reason, almost immediately after I change lanes, the lane I was originally on becomes faster. Of course this is all in my mind, so I ended up coming up with a game. What I do is before I change lanes, I mark the car behind me. By mark, I mean remember its color and shape and model, etc.

What I do then is always keep an eye out for him. If he never passes me, I’m happy since I had made the correct decision. If he does pass me and I never get the chance to pass him again, that means I made a bad decision by switching lanes, and that makes me sad.

Usually throughout the entire traffic jam, I’ll have about 2 or 3 cars marked, since I usually change lanes about 2 or 3x.

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Bologna?

Who the heck decided to pronounced bologna as baloney or decided to write baloney as bologna? While shopping at Safeway today (which I have now found out that postage stamps don’t contribute to the $50 total if you want to get the 10¢ gas discount), I was walking down the ham aisle. While trying to decide what to get, I was surprised the Oscar Mayer Bologna wasn’t on sale, but every other bologna was (beef, turkey, etc.).

Anyway, I always just thought “baloney” was just a slang for bologna since it’s not easy for kids to say bo-lone-ga (which is what I’ve always called it). Someone awhile back corrected me and told me that’s how “baloney” is supposed to be spelled. I was like WTF? What idiot decided to spell baloney like that or decided to pronounce bologna as baloney.

Anyway, I decided to look up bologna to see if there’s a good reason for this. According to Wikipedia:

It is commonly called bologna and often pronounced (by hypercorrection) and/or spelled baloney.

However, I did noticed that there was a city in Italy called Bologna:

Bologna (IPA [boˈloɲɲa], from Latin Bononia, Bulåggna in Emiliano dialect) is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, in the Pianura Padana, between the Po River and the Apennines, exactly between the Reno River and the Sàvena River.

They apparently pronounced Bologna as bo-lone-ya, which I can see how, and definitely sounds more correct than Baloney, Italy.

Digging up some more, I found this on Online Etymology Dictionary:

bologna – 1850, variant of bologna sausage (1596), named for the city in Italy, formerly Bononia. See baloney.

If a city like Bononia does exist, I can completely see why baloney is pronounced as so. Searching on Wikipedia resulted in this:

Bononia is the Roman name of several cities, including:

  • Bologna, Italy
  • Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
  • Vidin, Bulgaria
  • Banoštor, Serbia

So my hunch tells me that it could be that this sausage was originally called baloney because the Bologna city back then was called Bononia. After the city changed it’s name, they didn’t change the way the sausage was pronounced, and when it was added into the English dictionary, it took the pronunciation of the original Bononia, but used the modern name of Bologna as the spelling.

Fascinating…

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Media Center Remote

So I have 2 different versions of the media center remote. My first one is the Remote Control for Media Center PC which I got from the company store. The 2nd one appears to be from the Windows Media Center Extender for Xbox (Amazon.com) package. They were giving these out for free awhile back. You can see more pictures of the 2nd remote here: Media Center Extender for Xbox Review.

Anyway, I recently swapped to the Xbox remote because it had the “My Videos” button that I really liked, since I use that button everytime I enter media center. However, the downside of that was that I lost the ability to program its buttons, since this remote doesn’t have a learning feature.

The learning feature wasn’t that useful before as the only buttons you can teach are the volume buttons and the TV power button. I didn’t really need to control my TV’s volume as the volume control on the PC itself was sufficient. The TV power button I really only use twice every time I wanna watch TV, while on the other hand, I could easily use the “My Videos” buttons 5 or 6x during 1 sitting.

Anyway, this changed after I got my receiver. Using multiple remote controls while riding my exercise bike is a difficult acrobatic task as I only have enough space to hold one remote on the display. So when I need to control the volume, and I have to bend backwards, stretch out my hand and reach for the receiver remote on the couch.

Then one day, I thought to myself, why can’t I just program one of the buttons to be “My Videos” and be able to use the media center remote control with the learning feature. I programmed my TV power button as “My Videos” button and the volume up/down buttons with the receiver’s volume up/down signals and it’s been working great so far.

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Minesweeper The Movie

As a big fan of minesweeper and having lost hundreds if not thousands of hours on this game, I was extremely amused by this video: Minesweeper The Movie posted on the Microsoft distribution lists. It’s a CollegeHumor Original and it’s a trailer of what Minesweeper would be if it was made into a movie. The little red flags, the in-game strategies, the fact the 1st one is never a mine, all played into the trailer really nice.

My favorite 2 scenes were:

Instructor: Why are you really here?
Student: I want to make this land safe.
Instructor: Why are you here, soldier?
Student: I’m here because I’m bored.
Instructor: Don’t you ever forget that.

Instructor: That clock is going to keep ticking until it reaches 999.
Student: What happens then?
Instructor: Nothing. You just suck.

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Ever Lost A Day Sleeping?

You ever waking up feeling like you slept through an entire day into the next? That’s what happened to me this past Sunday. I went to bed on Saturday around 5 or 6am. Well, you could technically call that going to bed on Sunday morning. Anyway when I woke up, it felt like I’ve slept for ages, but when I looked at my clock, it was only 3pm. The day was sorta dreary, mostly cloudy. I was thinking to myself… did I sleep through Sunday… no way…

Anyway, I didn’t think much of it. I was planning to go into work that day anyway to finish up some stuff. When I exited my garage, I noticed that someone’s trash can was out. Do note, garbage collection is on Tuesday and so garbage cans usually come out on Monday. I was like WTF…

Then I remembered, it couldn’t have been Monday. I had browsed through the hot deal forums before leaving for work and even remarked there weren’t that many new deals since last night. When I got to Building 40 and having no cars in the garage confirmed that it was indeed Sunday. I could’ve looked at my cell phone, but that didn’t dawn upon me till later. I don’t think I really ever believed it was Monday. Well… maybe for a split second.

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Lamp and Static Electricity – Part 2

So my previous blog entry generated quite some buzz, mostly about my facial hair. But Xyon and I discussed it for some time and it might have to do with induction, because there is a metallic bar the runs below the lamp underneath the desk. I’ve taken a picture to show it in more detail:

lamp and glass desk

As you can see, nothing is really touching the lamp and the lamp sits firmly on the glass desk. The only metallic parts of the desk is the frame and the keyboard tray. The electric cord is insulated and connects directly into a surge protector below. We thought maybe the static electricity jumped from the metallic bar below, through the glass, and into the lamp.

On Howstuffworks, they have an article on How do touch-sensitive lamps work? They suggest 3 methods on how touch sensitive lamps work:

  • Temperature
  • Resistance
  • Radio reception

However, none of those methods really explain how static electricity turned it on. I’m really tempted to take apart my lamp now to figure out what’s going on.

Update: I knew there was a few things I forgot to mention.

The trick isn’t limited to just my keyboard tray. I can touch any metallic part of the desk (such as the the legs) with static electricity and it has the same effects on the lamp. However, touching the glass doesn’t have any effects. I guess the static electricity in that case never leaves me.

I also found out it was less painful to use my toe/feet to transfer the static electricity. It didn’t really hurt my fingers/hands, but I definitely felt something strong when using my fingers. Maybe the skin on my toes are just thicker or maybe my nerves down there aren’t as sensitive, but I hardly feel anything when using my feet.

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Non-working Videos

If any of my videos/music/animations weren’t playing for you on my blog or gallery today, it was due to a recent change that I had made to combat hot-linking which has caused about 12GB of data transfer in the past 30 days. Baidu.com (a big Chinese search engine) apparently linked directly to an mp3 I have in one of my old blog posts: 永恆的記憶, and it almost reached 30,000 requests. My statistics show that ~12GB of data was transferred during the last 30 days and that mp3 was responsible for 98% of it.

I found out some interesting things.

First, my regex for my RewriteCond in my .htaccess file was incorrect:
!^http://(.*\.)?krunk4ever.com(/.*)?$

which I realized now that any URL that included “krunk4ever.com/” as part of the URL would pass right through.

I fixed my regex so now that krunk4ever.com has to be the domain:
!^http://([^/]*\.)?krunk4ever.com(/.*)?$

Next I was looking through my access logs and it appears that when you embed a media file (such as an mp3 or video), the referring URL is null and the agent is actually the media player, in which case, it was showing up as WMP11 mostly.

I’ve always allowed direct loading (as in copying and pasting the link into the browser), but decided to prevent cases like these. I went ahead and also blocked referring URLs that were null/empty.

Xyon pointed out to me earlier today that my videos weren’t playing, but if he clicked the “Download Movie” link, it’d work.

Of course! The purpose of blocking the null/empty referring URL was to prevent embed media files that link to my site. It would make sense any embedded media on my site would hit the same problem. Therefore, I’ve fixed the access rights again so that only that particular file will be blocked when referring URL is null/empty. All others should be fine.

If you haven’t seen the static electricity video (which was broken earlier today), do get a chance to see magic!