Fletchivol 2005 II

What the hell is Flethivol you might be asking? A couple months ago me and my friend Fletcher were at the bar having a few drinks and we were talking about Seinfeld. I brought up the Festivus celebration that George's father has in the show and we thought we need to have our own Festivus. And thus Fletchivol was born. Except instead of a bare metal pole and wrestling, we celebrate with beer and a high girl-to-guy ratio. We had one already and it was great, we're having the second one tonight. I think there's going to be a lot of peeps at his apartment. I hope he has party proofed it well!

Also, I played in a Texas Hold 'Em Tournament on Wednesday and took 1st place! It was held by a group of embassy employees and there were 10 of us that played. So it wasn't anything huge, but it was really fun. I ended up walking away with an extra $150. I'm going to host the next one on the second week of June. I'm glad I've finally gotten a good poker crew together here. I stopped playing regularly after I joined the Marine Corps because I couldn't find anyone interested on playing on a regular basis until now.

And keep an eye out for my Mac Mini review. I'm working on it right now and it'll be posted either today or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow though. With pics.

Free At Last

Why is it that when shit starts to happen it has to all culminate at one time and rain a giant shitstorm? For the past month it has been relatively calm and uneventful around here and this week has exploded in activity. Not all of it bad mind you, but it's just been inordinately busy.

For starters, today is my last day of restriction! So I'm free to do what I will on my time off again. I was getting pretty bored with being couped up in the house all the time. There will be much celebration this weekend.

And Tuesday we had our first real protest since I've been working at the embassy. It was a 5,000 person march of land reform activists. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the US and everything to do with the Brazilian government. I think they stopped by here because of their anti-Bush semitism bullshit. They threw trash and made a big pile in front of the compound and set it on fire. After the fire department showed up and put it out the Brazilian trash company came by and cleaned it up. That really showed us Americans! I was at the embassy all day because of it and I had duty that day too afterwards. Fun. To top it off, we're supposed to have another protest today! It's two-for-one this week folks, everyone bring your picket signs.

Tonight the Marines are cooking at the happy hour at the embassy. And let's not forget about Star Wars! I'm sad I'm going to be missing the opening of it this weekend. But between working the happy hour and going out with all my friends I haven't seen much outside of work for the past month I just don't see how I can fit it in this weekend. So it will have to wait. May the Force forgive me in my lack of being an über-nerd.

And if you get bored check out the covers for Superman is a Dick. This is one of my favorites. I don't know if they're real or not but some of them are pretty funny. And the captions aren't too bad to boot.

XBox 360 Unveiled!

As many of you are aware by now Microsoft officially took the wraps off their new XBox console yesterday on MTV. I didn't get to see the show, but from what I heard it was unimpressive in terms of actual information. However, this doesn't surprise me because Microsoft's marketing department's aim was more for the casual gamers than the hardcore crowd. For the rest of us, we'll get our meat and potatos from E3 next week most likely.

That being said, a lot of the media speculation was wrong about the new console and I'm glad it was. Just goes to show how much stock you can put into internet rumors, which is to say none. So most of the rumors I had gathered from various internet sources turned out to be bunk. But here's what we know for now, the Xbox 360:

• Will come in only one version that will ship with a 20GB detachable harddrive.
• Will be able to stream music, pictures, and movies from a PC over a network.
• Will have wireless controllers as a standard.
• Will have mandatory 720p resolution for all games.
• Will have two levels of XBox Live, Silver and Gold.
• Will not have WebTV or DVR functionality.

Unfortunately Microsoft didn't give any details on whether it would be backwards compatible or not. I believe that the hardware is powerful enough to emulate the original XBox. I've heard a range of reasons on what the problem may be ranging from technical difficulties to licensing issues. Who knows, let's keep our fingers crossed that they say something about this at E3.

It's shaping up to look like a pretty amazing console. I can see myself getting one of these as soon as it comes out. And if I'm overseas at the time I'm just going to have to recruit someone to stand in line for me. It will be mine...oh, yes, it will be mine!

All Your Identity Are Belong To Us

I saw this in the news a few days ago and I'm surprised no one is making a bigger stink of it. Yesterday a bill passed that senate floor that creates a new, unified, all-purpose national ID that would replace your drivers license among other things.

Image Courtesy of UnrealID.com

The ID would have a mandatory address, no PO boxes allowed, among other information encoded on it in some fashion. Probably via magnetic bar, smart card chip, or RFID. I'm pretty sure they haven't designed anything yet. But the bill says it must be implemented by 3 years time. The whole purpose of the ID is to help combat security and terrorist threats.

We can only hope that George W. will not sign this bill. It's suppose to be on his desk tomorrow for him to sign or veto. I don't think this is constitutional at all, and it likens to the ID system that old China or Russia used. It invades your privacy. Every time you go to a bar or some other public venue that swipes ID's they would instantly be able to obtain all your personal information! They could potentially sell to other companies or it could be turned over to the government, giving them a tool with which to track any citizen with. I don't know about you, but that's pretty scary. Doomsayers might even say it's the Mark of the Beast, but that's a whole other tangent.

Too make matters worse, we'll probably end up with illegal immigrants driving around unlicensed without ID's since they can't obtain one. That makes things a LOT safer. Not to mention that it doesnt help the government track criminals. Just your law abiding citizens mostly. Anyways, there's a lot more wrong with this than there is right I think. There's some good info on UnrealID.com's website, you can also google some interesting stuff about Real ID as well.

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Ranting aside, I do have good news. I worked out the problem with my KVM switch and got it working again. I ordered a webcam last night too and I think I'll wait until I get a chance to try that out before I post the Mac review. I might as well be as thorough about it as possible because I probably won't revisit the subject again after I do that write-up.

Cinco de Mayo for all you Gringos

Contrary to belief, Cinco de Mayo is actually not the day of independence for Mexico. September 16 is reserved for that day. What it does celebrate is a short-lived victory over an initial attempt at French occupation. It's a much more indoctrinated holiday in American culture than it is in Mexico. But it's a great chance to partake in some Mexican culture and drink a few beers, so whose complaining...Now don't you feel smarter?

Moving on, the review on the Mac Mini / OS X Panther that I promised later this week will have to wait a little longer. I ran into some unsuspected problems with the KVM switch I am using. So once I have those resolved than I will be able to finish up the review.

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Did you know that...

A single nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of approximately 50,000 ft, or greater, over the general vicinity of Kansas could possibly generate a large enough EMP field to envelop the entire United States.

SecState Visit Complete

Last week went by smoothly and the visit from the new Secretary of State was a success. She's been to 23 different countries in the past 3 months! That Condoleeza sure does get around. Our part was to augment her security detail. Here is a picture of all the Marines involved in the process along with the one and only Condoleeza Rice.

I'm going to leave it at that. There's really not much else of interest to say about it. Later in the week I'm going to post my Mac Mini / OS X Panther review. So stick around to see what a PC user that use to shun anything Apple thinks.