Level Orange

The other morning, as I grabbed my things to head out the door, I disconnected my iPod and put it in my pocket, not looking at it until I got in the car. When I went to put it in the Transpod, I noticed that it didn’t turn on. No backlight, no menu, not even the Apple logo. I checked the power, the Hold button, the connection. Nothing.

I took it out and gave it a quick visual inspection. Nothing seemed out of place.

Not yet panicking, I tried to reset it. By simultaneously pressing the Menu portion of the clickwheel and the Select button in the center for about ten seconds, the iPod will reset (essentially reboot, I guess) and all should be fine. At least that’s how it’s worked out in the past.

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I signed up for Blockbuster Online a little over a week ago. Nearly a year ago, I had tried Netflix for a few months and really liked it. I had even tried the now-defunct Wal-Mart DVD rental service for comparison. But it was all getting to the point where I had seen all I wanted to see. My queue was starting to get empty and stay empty. So I took a break.

But after the last ten months or so of going back and forth to stores and the hassle of due dates and whatnot, I decided it was time to give Blockbuster a try. They’d made such big deal of “no more late fees” and started pushing their online service as an affordable alternative, I figured they’d at least match Netflix’ quality of service, if not selection and responsiveness.

However, in setting up my account, I immediately encountered a problem. When logging in to their site, I received an notification that the security certificate could not be verified. If you’ve done any sort of transaction online, you can probably guess that you’re already at risk of exposing your information while it’s in transit, but this sort of message just throws up a red flag.

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As others have already mentioned, it’s a bit ironic that the America’s Choice vote, in which viewers were asked to vote for which of the evictees they’d like to see return to the house, decided on Kaysar over Eric. In today’s world, with our nation at war against the threat of terrorism, how is it that America decided that this Iraqi man was more deserving than the American?

Not to say that Kaysar is a bad guy–he’s far from it. Nor am I saying that there’s any equation with terrorism and the Iraqi people, but if our current government had any say, they’d probably tell you that “America is doing everything it can to help the poor little Iraqi people to learn how to be like us”. The truth is that Eric, a firefighter, being a symbol of contemporary American heroism, was just a straight-up asshole. Plain and simple. A bad sport, an overblown ego and most of all, a shepherd of idiots, Eric was probably a bitingly accurate metaphor for our president and his administration. And when he was guided out of the house by his own doing, most viewers were all to happy to see him go.

When CBS pulled this twist by allowing viewers to “vote” for their favorite evictee, people didn’t choose Kaysar because he’s Iraqi. They chose him based of his attitude, his integrity and from what I hear, probably for his looks too. But when Kaysar made what will probably be considered one of the biggest master moves in _Big Brother_ history, now called “back-dooring” by the houseguests, he ultimately set himself up for the same fate.

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I owe a bit of thanks to the guys at Podtacular, the new Halo 2 podcast, for mentioning this site on their last show. I listed them as one of my favorite podcasts, along with several others, and since then, they’ve blown up big time. It’s cool to see something start brand new and catch everyone’s attention, only to take off like wildfire. I’m sure those guys are on a hell of a ride right now.

When they announced a new Podtacular clan, I joined up immediately and did what I could in the first few matches. That was a week ago. Since then, they’ve had to create two more clans just to accomodate all the requests they’re getting. In that time, the show also flew up the charts at Podcast Alley and iTunes Music Store and they’ve even been noticed by Major Nelson, GamerTag Radio and Bungie themselves. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

And being a nice guy, I offered any help I could provide as a designer and come to find out that the host Foo Mo Jive is a designer himself. Not to encroach, I gladly stepped back and let them handle their business, but it’s kind of cool when you have something in common with other Halo gamers (besides Halo itself).

What’s even better is their ability to buck the status quo, with their follow up to all the attention being their longest show yet, well over an hour long. Of course, that drew criticism from listeners who were trying to download via dial-up (c’mon guys, DSL is on the cheap these days!), so they followed that up with a straight rip on the low-bandwidth users, Episode 4.5. Renegades, they are…

If you’re looking for a fun, informal podcast dedicated to Halo 2 that discusses everything from tips and strategy to news and community, check them out.

After a little game of tag with UPS, I finally picked up my SOCOM 3 Beta package this morning. My dedication to the PlayStation has wavered drastically in the last year or so, and just powering up my PS2 is going to be a rare event in itself. However, seeing as the SOCOM franchise is the PlayStation’s only real online venture that’s seen any success, I’m definitely looking forward to getting back into the fray, even if just for a little while.

Since the actual testing began on July 20th, I’m going to have to do a little catching up in getting to know the game and how much it’s changed since the last one. Now there are vehicles, larger maps and up to 32 players in a single game. That’s some improvement over SOCOM II, which pretty much stayed the same as SOCOM, but with some newer maps and different weapons. Of course, this is a _beta_ test, so I expect to have my hopes dashed as I encounter bugs and network issues and who knows what else.

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