"This figure skater isn’t just doing tricks to earn points. This program is showing a part of who he is."

VOMIT! I’m tired of listening to all the idiot announcers "calling" the Olympic events. The worst group by far is the figure skating announcers. Whether that sport lends itself to more stupid comments than the others I don’t know, but they say a lot of dumb stuff. In the women’s combined a lady wanted to wear tiger ears or something, which I guess they wouldn’t let her. Mr. "I’m a stupid announcer that will have nothing to do until the next Olympics" was shocked. "That is a disgrace to the time honored tradition of these Olympic games! Oh, and I am a moron!" he remarked.

Right now I’m watching the men’s skeleton, and the announcers are yelling like crazy. "OOOOH look at him go! He’s goooooing!! Look at him goooooo! His time is a minus, that’s goooood! Urrrrrrrrrr I’m an idiot!"

When I setup the arcade I made sure that my MAME (an arcade emulator) collection was fully up to date as of that version of mame. Well that was a year and a half ago, and I’ve never updated it. Over the last couple days I’ve been working on updating that list and backing up all the information/settings on the arcade. It would be a shame if that went down and I lost all my settings. There is a cool program called ClrMame which will scan your roms and check for bad and missing ones. It will even take updates and rebuild roms you already have with the new updates.

Today I woke up at 5:20 am. Myself and a couple guys from work got breakfast at Carrows and had a little mini-bible study. It was cool, but holy cow that is early. The wife was still in bed when I left! They want to do it every week, but I dunno. It’s only 5th period and I’m dead tired.

Thank goodness it’s a three day weekend.

I went through a short DDR phase a year or two ago. It was fun, good exercise, and great for parties. Recently Stacie has been asking me to get a DDR game so she can play it and exercise. The other day I stumbled upon StepMania. This is DDR for your computer, but even better. Not only can you hook up a USB dance pad, but you can customize the thing to death. You can download thousands of songs, install themes, and change pretty much any aspect of the game.

I’m setting it up on the arcade and plan on hooking up one of my old cheap pads for now. The site DDRfreak has tons of great information. If Stacie really likes it I might consider upgrading to a top of the line metal dance pad. Soft ones slide around and rarely last longer than 6 months – 1 year. The most uber of dance pads is made by Cobalt Flux. At $350 after shipping it is expensive, but they’re supposed to last forever. See what I’ve resorted to during my media blackout?!

A couple friends have died. Their funerals will be held soon. Theirnames are Chris and Curt. Granted, Chris has a MySpace which doesn’t really count in the first place, but he hasn’t updated it since early December. Curt hasn’t updated since the end of December. The only conclusion I could possibly draw from this information is that they are both dead.

I can already tell my posts on here will suffer due to my self-enforced media blackout that is preventing the spoiling of the Winter Olympics. Thanks to the DVR I can actually watch a lot more than I would usually…or at least more of what I really want to watch. Off to work.

The Olympics have begun, and they are in HD! This also means that I will shun every source of news for the next two weeks. There is nothing more annoying than seeing who won a certain event before I’ve had a chance to watch it. Do news websites have no respect for the fact that no one has watched an event, yet they are putting in big bold letters who wins? It’s the same as a movie reviewer putting in big bold letters the outcome of the movie. I DON’T WANT TO KNOW YET! Let me watch the freakin’ games for myself you idiots.

I bought TurboTax, installed it yesterday, and after just a couple hours…I’m done. It all seems too easy.

Usually I’ve just helped my dad, and since he claimed me as a dependent, I never had a very exciting return. This year though I am filing as joint-married, and we bought a house. If you pay taxes you know that it makes things a lot more exciting. After a pretty thorough 1st pass it looks like we’re getting quite a bit of money back, so that’s good.

My dad has used TurboTax for years, but this was my first real in-depth experience with the software. While my return is far from complicated, TurboTax did a great job. It’s really easy to use with a great interface. Even after just one pass, I feel very confident that I’ve found 99% of the deductions I qualify for.

If you’re up in the air, the $35 for the program is money well spent. It’s even deductible.

I saw this article over at google news about the whole Muslim cartoon issue. It’s written by a US hater, but I think it’s important to know your enemy. There were several statements that completely baffle me.

"It is, after all, Muslims who are overwhelmingly at the receiving end of Western violence." – Of course, gotta watch out for those US and Israeli suicide bombers. I’m sure people will point at the Iraq war, but the burden of proof was on Saddam, not us. Also, don’t forget the money he paid suicide bombers.

"…the controversy reveals a dangerous and virulent anti-Muslim racism that will almost certainly return to haunt us." – If by haunt us you mean "Muslims are going to continue suicide bombing," then you are correct.

"The debate on the cartoons tells us less about fanatic Muslims than about how Europe is choosing to deal with its ‘Muslim question.’" – Europe prints a cartoon, Muslims burn down embassies. Which tells you more?

"The hysterical tone of some free speech defenders comparing official apologies for the cartoons to a dangerous form of appeasement thus betrays a fantastic sense of delusion." – When people respond to something they don’t like with violence and demand an apology, I think the granting of that apology would in fact constitute appeasement. What the heck a "fantastic sense of delusion" is I have no idea.

You can read the article for yourself, but it amazes me how easily he brushes aside the violent acts being commited by Muslims both now in response to the cartoons, and also in the last 5-10 years.

Today at work the Dodger Caravan came to visit. To my amazement, every person that said they were coming showed up. I expected people to be convientely sick that day. Here is a picture of all the people in attendance:

From left to right: Jaime Jarrin, Steve Garvey, Ned Colletti, Don Newcombe, Brad Penny, D.J. Houlton, Maury Wills, Brett Tomko, Charlie Steiner, Eddie Murray, Grady Little and Willie Davis is off to the side of him.

They gave the kids some free towels that said Dodgers on them, and then they went down the line and let everyone say a little something. Grady Little was funny…he told a story about how he wanted to drive his Dad’s car when he was in High School, but his Dad said not until he cut his long hair. Little pointed at a picture of Jesus in the house and said "But Jesus has long hair," to which his Dad replied "He also walked a lot." Brad Penny unfortunately had a cold and couldn’t speak, which is total horse poop. The guy couldn’t even muster a "Thanks for having us, see you at the ballpark." Later on they had a question and answer session, and when a kid asked a question for Penny he just stood there and shook his head. How lame is that. Someone asked Tomko what his favorite pitch is, and he replied "whatever doesn’t get hit." Another funny question from a student was "Are you going to get back Paul Lo Duca," which Steiner let Colleti handle. He said they pursued him, but couldn’t make anything work, supposedly.

Overall it was a really cool assembly, and really neat to see so many famous Dodgers all in one place. This really gets me pumped for the upcoming season. GO DODGERS!