Wednesday, April 30, 2008

My first inbound link

And it's from Jen at Keep Passing The Open Windows.

Woo hoo!

There's Something About Kate




Kate Hudson.





Cameron Diaz.

Between the two, I think Kate uses more hair gel.

Finally, there's hope for all you WoW geeks

A Belgian woman is offering to have sex with any virgin who promises to support Net Neutrality. To which this poster comments:

"For those of you on four day World of Warcraft binges, keep in mind that according to the terms of service, "Tania may deny service for hygiene reasons."


Man. That's cold.

Iron Man this Friday

I have a day off. I think I'll see the first screening.



Hey, comics publishers! Enough with the multi-title crossovers, already!


I picked up "DC Universe 0" today. It's basically giving DC Comics readers a taste of all the cross-overs planned for the coming year. Likewise, "Action Comics 864" is a taste of the upcoming "Legion of Three Worlds" with the Time Trapper as the villain and is designed to explain why there are three different versions of the Legion of Super Heroes out there. And "Green Lantern: Secret Origins" is already re-writing "Emerald Dawn."

Enough already. Stop rebooting, retelling and rehashing. Instead, try telling tasty-little stories in serialized art form. Every damn comic doesn't have to be part of a Major Event.

Actually, I did like both these comics. I'm hoping that "Final Crisis" is just that.

I hate to admit this, 'cause I've always been more of a DC fan than a Marvel fan, but the best comics titles out there are Captain America, Thor and Daredevil. I'm lost with the other Marvel stuff, 'cause they've got their own problems with multi-issue crossover disease. But these three books manage to tell well-plotted stories with decent art.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

City Planning for Dummies

I'd like to thank the people who decided it would be an absolutely smashing idea to close down sections of West Columbia Terrace at the same time they've got multiple lanes of West Main Street closed at the intersection with Sheridan.

Moment sago, I was part of a three-block long line of cars stuck on Main Street trying to get home. Thanks to the barricades they put off to keep low-life scum like ME out of their neighborhoods, I couldn't pull off Main and hightail it up to Armstrong.

And on University between Columbia Terrace and Main, there are multiple city trucks and multiple city employees filling up potholes. But, I saw more workers standing on their shovels than using them, but it was late in the day ... 3 p.m. Backed-up traffic made me and, I am sure, hundreds of otherPeorians, waste gasoline as we sat through multiple traffic light changes,

Absolutely smashing example of the brilliant city planning we've come to expect here in the River City. It sort of reminded of two summers ago, when the closed down West Nebraska, Gale and Forrest Hill Drive at the same damn time, preventing anyone from being traveling east to west the the city.

Keep up the good work folks. It's always nice to see some things never change in the ol' River City.

Blogger Bash is tonight

The Peoria-Area Blogger Bash will start at 6 p.m. TONIGHT at the Silver Bullet, 135 N Main St. East Peoria, IL. A map is available here.

I'll try to be there at least by 6 p.m. This is an event held in a public place, so anyone can show up. Creators of Peoria blogs, commenters and readers are especially invited. We sometimes have news makers and politicians show up to schmooze too.

And I'll be posting any pics from the bash HERE instead of on Peoria Pundit.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

I'm really liking the new Blogger

Seriously, guys. Blogger offers a bunch of stuff that you have to upload as a plug-in if you have WordPress. I can even upload a file to get a new theme if I want. Not that I can't change the look or my current theme anyway.

My suggestions is to try their Beta, because of the massive numbers of integrated "Gadgets" (WP calls them "widgets." I like the slide show gadget (which would eat up too much bandwidth and resources on MY system) and the news feed.

The advantages to Blogger: You don't have to pay for and administer your own site.

The disadvantages to Blogger: Your posts are ultimately not controlled by you. If Blogger (i.e. Google) decides to delete or lose your and you can't find someone at the company to take pity on you to help, you are screwed.

The twins




Yet another reason to like Chris Muir's Day By Day.




Phrases I can do without hearing ever again


"Baby bump."

I don't think I was even aware this term existed until I read it on one of those celebrity gossip sites.

They use it whenever the post a picture of any relatively well-known female who just might be expecting a baby, yet who hasn't announced it to the world.

It's the new scarlet letter.

America is a funny place. We both revel in sexuality and are appalled by it. It ain't healthy.

Life imitating sci-fi movies

This is good news:

Caterpillar Inc. doesn't plan to stop at being the No. 1 construction equipment maker in the world.

It's aiming for the universe, with NASA as its partner.

Caterpillar and NASA - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - are getting closer to having the right earthmoving - er, moonmoving - equipment available to put on the moon in less than a decade to build habitats, roads and other infrastructure that could sustain life on the lunar surface.

Excellent. I am reminded of that scene in Aliens, where Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) hops into a exo-suit power-loader designed for moving equipment on a star ship, and does battle with the Alien Queen. And what giant corporation's logo adorned that exo suit? Caterpillar.



Aliens owes a lot to "Starship Troopers" (the book, not the bad movie) ) and you all know what a fan I am of Robert Heinlein. Two recurring themes in Heinlein's work are the settlement of the moon and the commercial exploitation of space. He was in favor of both, and so am I.

We NEED to expand onto other worlds. It's the only way to guarantee our survival. Right now, all our eggs (pun intended) are in one basket: Earth. And one reason space exploration is stalled is because we've let government have a monopoly.

Cross posted to Peoria Pundit.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

My bad TV habits


I splurged and signed up for the most basic TV package Comcast offers. I get local stations, two superstations and some religious and home shopping channels.

I don't get the Sopranos or Weeds or any of trendy, water cooler shows. But I do get short-lived sitcoms that are in endless re-runs. One of them is "Half & Half." It's on really late at night and it's often the only thing that's watchable.* Except on weekends, when they are re-running original series Star Trek eps with revamped special effects.

So I'm watching Half & Half last night and I suddenly realised that I have seen every episode of this lightweight show.

I have GOT to get a life. Or better cable.

* "Watchable" excludes SMG informercials and Jay Janssen's fake legal advice show. However, the infomercial that has bust women extolling the virtues of male enhancement products is kinda interesting to watch with the sound turned off.

So, what is up with this?

I decided I needed to own my own name.

So I went to GoDaddy and registered billydennis.com. I needed to point the domain somewhere. I tried pointing it to my local politics/media blog, Peoria Pundit. But why bother doing that?

Luckily, I had already snatched up this Blog*spot.com sub domain.

I haven't really blogged via Blogger for a long time. It's a big improvement over past versions. And there are advantages to a blog that really doesn't need a lot of tender-loving care on MY part. Nor do I have to PAY for hosting.

So I'll be posting stuff here, mostly of a personal nature. It'll be sort of a backup blog. I may upgrade it later.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Tech support hell

The caller who asks me where the "start" button is, I'm going to tell them they are too fucking stupid to use the Internet. Swear to God.