babiegoose.com

gotcha.

a classic movie in my mind, which I haven't seen since I was in thrid grade. it was probably very much too much for me to see at that age, but nevertheless I remember quite a lot of the movie and probably a lot of the lines from it.

in any case, in the beginning, there were people playing a game where they had to tag everyone with what I vaugely remember being a paintball handgun. probably nothing near as powerful as the markers of today... rather large but mostly concealable...

they were give a list of people who they were required to "hit" other players of the game or maybe designated targets that would report back to some governing authority. in any case, anthony edwards (ER) was the top dog, so to speak and was popping people lef tand right... a trip to europe turned him into a reluctant spy, adventure ensues...

which got me thinking, well, actually it's probably something I always wanted to do (I'm not sure how telling this is, but you're just going to have to trust that I'm not a psycho) was to do a "hit" but not really kill anyone.

long range, close range, remote, blah blah... probably why I like paintball so much - all of the rush but none of the death. well, maybe not all of the rush, because I have no idea, nor do I wish to know, what it feels like to be in a life or death situation.

I try to imagine sometimes, but I get too creeped out and thing about bunnies and other happy things...

but whatever - I think I'm going to go around the office with post-its with "gotcha" written on them and stick them on the backs of co-workers.

basically, I will continue until I get caught and then tally my score.

if someone figures out the game and hits me back, then the game ends as well and my tally stops there.

I figured post-its are much safer than paintballs or airsoft, but it probably won't satisfy my desire to peg someone from a distance... I guess I have to wait until we play sniperstrike next time we play paintball...

anyone want to play "pretend assassins" with me?

I'll make up dossiers and backgrounds on intended targets and methods of "execution"

I think the best we can probably do is post-it them or maybe booby trap their door with the pull snaps or hit them with throw snaps. sort of like mafia - but more action. and you can't get caught either. maybe we throw in a detective... maybe we don't...

if I say paintballs or plastic bb's, I'm pretty sure people will judge me much more than they are now. well, that and no one would want to play...

... ... ...

don't judge me.

you know you want to play too.

post-it notes
pull snaps
throw snaps

and maybe some hot peppers. :-P

there is a "10-year" rule for those considered the tops in any field.

10 years of hardwork,deliberate practice...

according to this article
which is probably from a few days ago... a world-class virtuoso will have practiced 10,000 hours in his or her lifetime.

if you break 10,000 hours into 10 years (obviously not a lifetime) you will have something like 2.5 hours a day, every day...

but it requires deliberate practice (observing and constantly adjusting and fixing mistakes) not just pounding away at the piano or swinging a golf club a thousand times with no real technique.

...

so, if I were to just practice playing the piano, with a really good teacher mind you, since I graduated highschool then I could probably be a concert pianist right now.

the article goes on to talk about how certain people "stop learning" and how others continue to learn... something to do with drive and proper practicing technique...

i've repeated myself.

anyhow, I wonder if it would be possible to be a world class geek... I probably have more than enough practice at that.

actually... scratch that. I am a world class geek - the trick now is to find someone to pay me for being one.

so for all of those people who are you think are talented - they are not natural born - they are raised...

it gives me hope... one day, I can still possibly be a ballerina! :-P

dude.

heroes is a GREAT show. don't know why I like it so much. maybe because it's GREAT?

I could spoil it for you, but I won't because you should probably just watch it.

because it's GREAT.

I hope it finishes like it started... GREAT.

hahaha... I'm watching it right now, so I'm having trouble thinking about what to type.

I'm gonna stop now. so I can watch.

I'm holding on for a hero til the morning light...

I google the world.

I google everything - I'm not sure if you knew but you can google earth.

oh, you knew that?

did you know you can google mars and the moon?

I already mentioned google books...

and just so it's out there... because I'm not sure that it's common knowledge, nor am I aware of any formal documentation of it... but just so you know.

When searching in google - most people enter the text for which they are looking. For example:

lorie ryan

the above implies looking for documents (html pages are documents) that have lorie and ryan somewhere relatively close together.

exact phrase searching:

"lorie and ryan"

that will only return documents that have the phrase as you typed it exactly with no exclusions, so if you don't want a million pages returned and you know that those words will be right next to each other - use it.

the OR search - really it should be self-explanatory, but I will just say for who don't have time to think about it. it will return either search parameter, regardless if the other one is present or not.

ryan OR lorie

I only use that when in conjuction with exact phrases, because otherwise it would be pointless...

now, if you want to exclude certain words (like to get rid of unwanted and inappropriate sites you can do the following

ryan -evil

the first term is what you want, the one following the "-" is what you don't. simple.

also ther eis the site searech... you can choose to look is a specfic site:

"ryan and lorie" site:babiegoose.com

it will look form the search string in the indicated website... I use it a lot with imdb.com and wikipedia.org...

to get tricky you can look for links to web pages... say you want to find sites that link you... do this:

link:www.babiegoose.com 

if you want to see the lasted cached version of the site (so if you go offline, this is what you would probably be able to pull up)

cache:www.babiegoose.com ryan

of course, I almost never use that, but you might... say if you lost all of your data from a page and you can pull a cached version to recover something - hopefully... of course if you cleared your cache, then there will probably not be anything there...

the following are like the exact phrase and exclusion, except they are for document types - some other document types php, html, htm... you get the idea

lorie filetype:doc OR filetype:pdf

lorie -filetype:doc 

lorie -filetype:pdf

and the following will give you some of the same info as what is above... just more concise and specific to whatever address you give it...

info:www.babiegoose.com 

I am not a representative nor do I endorse google... I am not getting paid, I just prefer this search engine over others... google. wikipedia. imdb. if I don't hit all of those at least once in the day, then I'm not at work. :-P

I also prefer SUV's to cars, snowboarding to skiing, in-line skating to skateboarding, paintball to basketball, pepsi to coke, ice cream to gelatto or yogurt or custard, fall to summer, full moon to any other phase...

and I prefer being happy.

it's all good...

uh, and if you don't know, now you know...

wireless is one of the greatest innovations of all time. starting with the radio, broadcasting audio all over the world, to the infrared remote controls, to mobile phones, bluetooth, and wireless networking. wireless has many postive attributes, like freedom of movement, no wires to plug and tangle, physical space, and increasing the number of resources able to use an internet access point. there are zero negative attributes, if you ignore set-up, security, cost, as well as the potential for anything to happen with all that data being zipped around through the air.

I love wireless. i can have one point in my house to allow any number of computers or mobile devices to use my broadband connection. of course, it is not as easy as plugging in a cable and being set to go, but I believe that the setup time is worth the wait. i can move from room to room to show lorie or whoever what I am looking at online. I can even go outside of the house and surf the web on the lawn if I so desire. (btw - the internet and the web are not synonymous - the internet is the physical manifistation of all of the computers and servers and what not, the web is the actual content, so you can say that you use the internet to access the web, and you use you computer to interface with the internet - though technically your computer actually becomes part of the internet)

now that I have broken the fourth wall of my little 6th grade essay I was trying to write, I will no longer go back (as shakespeare did with taming of the shrew, but the other way)

I just set up the tivo with wireless, and I was able to remove, or lessen rather, the rats nest of wires in the media closet. if only one did not need so many wires to connect the tv to the tivo and the dvd player and the stereo and the game systems. ah, how wonderful life would be.

of course, if that's all you need to make life wonderful, then I am truly envious of you, I guess you could say that in my case it would be on less thing I could worry about... like when forrest bought into apple and then never had to worry about money ever again. like he said, "One less thing!" what a blessed and tragic life that man leads...

he is, obviously, fiction, so I guess that's all I have to say about that.

now, we just have to get a phone table that can possibly fit the printer/fax/scanner next to the piano, and we'll be all set...

I just have to wait for my new laptop from work before I check lorie's previous searches from earlier this week.

I was up all night moving stuff from my work computer to my pc. whilst cleaning out my pc. I call it darksteeltower, because it's a big charcoal colored server. 400gb of storage. I wanted to get to a terabyte, but that would mean I would have to get ride of my older hard drives and drop several 250 gb drives in their place. I don't have enough space to add anymore, and even if I did, the power source wouldn't be able to handle it, not to mention I'm out of available plugs inside the box.

now if the could only make the inside of computers completely wireless and easily customizable (without that last caveat, I would have been at a loss, considering there are almost no wires in laptops) then that would be cool.

but it certainly wouldn't make life all that greater. just fairer.

polls are neat.

they tell you what a certain subsection of the population thinks. with proper sampling, you can even get a good idea about an entire neighborhood or city.

in the wrong hands, polls can be devestating. they can skew topics and their results can be taken out of context.

but regardless of how polls reports return, I think people should redefine what they are actually going report from polls.

the best video game of all-time. seriously folks, you need to have a huge population from which to sample in order to even come close to naming a game "the best of all-time" - plus, you really should even use that title, because in a year or so, another game can possibly blow that game out of the water... it whould be called "the best game until now" which is probably what they meant by best game of all time.

some games listed as the best of all-time: final fantasty vii, the legend of zelda: the ocarina of time, super mario 64, super mario brothers, super mario brothers 3, doom, the legend of zelda, the sims, the sims 2, resident evil 4, halo, halo 2, soul caliber, golden eye 007, half-life, and half-life 2...

imho - the legend of zelda series is the best. ever I think I would but resident evil and the super mario series right after. as for the best game. ever? - I have to say final fantasy vii. it was way ahead of its time, limited by technology, plus the story line and character development was and still is superb. it was rekindled by the advent children movie and the fact that it has been almost 10 years since it's release and I'm still willing to play it says a lot. it's like playing a graphic novel... sure it's not as flashy as some of the newer games, and the controls aren't all that complex, but it is a hell of a game.

call me crazy. of course, this is a guy who really doesn't like sports games, reads a ridiculous number of books, and watches too much tv. but my opinion is my opinion...

of course, the legend of zelda: twilight princess has yet to be released and it looks sweet.

yeah. I'm a dork.

what do you think the best video game ever is?

ok... so it's like I'm going backwards in time... a few weeks ago, I spent much of my time playing guitar hero on the ps2. then I found the ps1 emulator and started playing ffvii... now, today, I found battletech - which you would play on in DOS on a 386 PC... dude. my phone has more processing power than those old computers.

in any case, I could never finish the game, because I didn't have the manual and I couldn't do the puzzle at the end without it. so I gave it up, oh so many years ago.

somehow I randomly came across the game... but given my current affinity for finding old games, I decided to give this one a shot. dropped the name in google and a few scant minutes later, the program is sitting on my desktop...

at work.

I booted the game up, and it occupied my whole screen. it's a good thing no one was looking, because I probably could have gotten fired. I killed it and e-mailed the game to myself, for future use.

it is very much a rpg, but very lo-tech compared to what we have now... but considering that it's from the late 80's, that's kind of an obvious statement. I'm going to give myself a couple of days to beat it. in ffvii I just picked up vincent in my party (so I dropped barret from the three and went with cloud, tifa, and vincent - he just seems cooler than barret) but I'll probably give that a rest until I beat battletech...

I am a scatter-brained attention deficit geek. I get bored way to easily... it's like tetris or bust-a-move, I end up making a mess out of things just so I have something to do :-P

well, not really, but I'll just pretend for today.

every wednesday sushi for lunch! I read somewhere that korean run sushi places are now outnumbering chinese restaurants... I wouldn't know... I only go to three or four chinese restaurants at home - three for the dim sum and one because I like their bread and egg rolls (along with all the other food too, of course). :-)