I thought I’d take a break from the political posts and put up something a little more fun.

We had some old Blockbuster gift cards lying around, so I went the other week and looked for a good game to buy. The only thing that caught my eye was Metal Gear Solid 4, so I got it. The reviews have just been amazing, so I had to give it a try. Then I found out that you could get the first three Metal Gear Solid games for the low price of $30…so in an effort to better understand the story in part four, I bought the first three games.

I beat the first Metal Gear Solid today after 15 hours. It’s old school, from the PS1 in 1998, so the graphics are a little dated, but the story is awesome. It’s a little hokey and over the top at times, but I quickly forgot about the pixelated 3D environments and was engrossed in the story. The first half of the game seemed familiar as I had played it in the past, but I had never beaten it until now.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid 2, which was made for the PS2. I’m pretty sure I beat that one all the way through when it came out, but I’ve forgotten the story line completely. My goal is to beat all 4 games pretty close together so the story flows well. My overly optimistic goal is to have them done by October 21st when Little Big Planet comes out, but I know the first game is quite a bit shorter than all the rest.

Oh, and Luke helped me beat a lot of the game.

I put up a new header just for fun. It doesn’t match the site very well and looks like a big rectangular weird thing, but we had too much fun making it not to use it. I’ll revert to the old school blarg title eventually, but for now enjoy this one.

You put a light bulb into a socket, turn it on, and you have light. Light only comes in one form, on or off. Or does it?

Believe it or not, a light bulb is putting out more than just lighting, it’s also putting out color. Unless you live in a black-lighted gothic room, it’s probably putting out a shade of white light. If you’ve ever painted a house you know that there are more shades of white available than anything else. So the question is, what shade of white is your house being lit with (and why does it matter)?

To see this represented visually, take a look here or above. White light will "match colors produced by a black-body radiator at certain temperatures in kelvin." I’m not entirely sure what that means, but looking at the graphic, notice how color temps to the left are more red/yellow, and color temps to the right are more blue. If you are at a computer (sorry to my minions of cell/pda readers) you probably have a color temperature setting on your monitor. The generally accepted "whitest" color is around 6500k. Try playing around on your monitor setting the color temperature higher and lower, and you should see the difference as shown in that chart.

So what does this all mean for your light bulbs? The cheapy regular incandescents most of us have in our house have a color temperature rating of less than 3000k, a far cry from that holy grail of 6500k. This makes the lighting tend to be very yellowish. However, usually ignorance is bliss. If every light looks yellowish, you probably can’t tell. If you have flourescent bulbs in your kitchen though you might be able to see a difference. Most flourescents tend to be closer to 6500k than most incandescents. In our house the kitchen has always had a very nice white look, but the neighboring dining area is very yellow. Having these two areas right next to each other made the difference very obvious.

If you’re curious and want to see the difference, I recommend checking out some of the "natural" or "daylight" bulbs sold in stores. They usually come in two varieties. Flourescent bulbs usually have a high lumen output (how bright they are) but most that I found were the spiral variety (bad for most of our fixtures). The other type are incandescent bulbs (old school kind) that are made with special glass that filters out the yellow (leaving the light "whiter"). You can browse some different bulbs here where I just bought some (the selection in most stores is lacking).

Make sure that when you are looking you can find out the lumen rating. Some of the daylight bulbs I’ve seen in stores are only rated at 500-600 lumens, but a regular incandescent is closer to 800 lumens. Lots of the daylight bulbs don’t list a color temperature rating, but if they’re advertised as daylight or natural, they should be closer to 6500k.

There is a very strange phenomenon occuring at the Subway on Florence and Paramount. For whatever reason the dumbest people on the planet are drawn to this place of employment. Making a sandwich shouldn’t be that difficult. You take bread and put stuff on it. But if you’ve ever been to this Subway I’m talking about, you would think they’re constructing a nuclear bomb they make it look so hard. Here are some examples of the idiotic things I’ve seen:

• After the "artist" placed the cheese on my sandwich he said "Is that it?" What the crap are you asking me! Use less pronouns and be a little more clear on what you mean by "it"! Apparently he wondered if I wanted anymore sandwiches.
• Because I’m not physically on the other side of the counter making the sandwich, it is very important that I have clear communication with the person who is making the sandwich. Today a girl pointed at the bell peppers, and instead of verbally communicating, she simply raised her eyebrows. Hellooooo, a simple "bell peppers?" would work a LOT better than forcing me to read your mind.
• The other week a gentleman in front of me had to tell the cashier how to do her job. Instead of handing him his cup by grasping the outside, she put her thumb on the outside and put her fingers INSIDE the cup! Her nasty fingers were rubbing against the inside of this man’s cup, and he had to point it out to her!

While I think the overpaid minimum wage workers are part of the problem, I believe there are two other areas that need to be addressed. The management clearly sucks because the employee turnover is horrendous. Every time I walk in there are new people working. I remember a couple years back there were a bunch of girls that worked there, and they knew what they were doing. But now there is a different buffoon working there every week. The other main problem is the pathetic assembly line setup they use. By the time your sandwich is done about 10 people have worked on it! One idiot asks you what kind of bread, another asks what type of cheese, another if you want it toasted, someone else what toppings you want, and then the cashier has to ask you, the customer, what kind of sandwiches they are. Go back to the old school way where one person made the whole sandwich!

I stumbled upon this really odd website today. It’s full of text files. That’s right, .txt files. They want to preserve some of the old school internet or something. They’ve got old stuff from BBS days, talk about bringing back some memories! Where’s the ZOO when you need it?!

www.TextFiles.com