blueZhift Blog

Well actually, it was actor George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek, who revealed in an interview that he is gay. As far as I know, Mr. Sulu is straight. Now that said, let’s go off on a fun tangent!

In the original series episode, "Mirror Mirror", Captain Kirk and the landing party find themselves in an alternate universe due to a transporter malfunction. In this mirror universe, their counterparts are essentially barbaric opposites to our peace loving, noble crew. The mirror universe Sulu is particularly aggressive and in one scene leaves no doubt that he’d like to get busy with the very fine Lt. Uhura, right on the bridge…yow!

So, maybe there was more to this that meets the eye. If the mirror universe Sulu was aggressively straight, then maybe our Sulu actually is, wait for it….Nah, too easy, never mind. Besides, how would you explain Captain Kirk?

Anyhow, I must say that I am neither shocked nor surprised by this announcement because I never really thought about it. George Takei was the first Star Trek cast member I ever saw in person and one of my favorites. He’s just a really cool guy. And most recently I’ve greatly enjoyed the voice work he’s done in animated productions such as Mulan, Avatar: The Last Air Bender, and others. So I hope that his announcement won’t cause too much trouble for him. I can only imagine how painful it must have been to keep such a secret for so long. Human beings seem to have an inherent need to express themselves to each other. Denying that can only bring suffering to the soul.

While my honeymoon with Ubuntu Linux may be over, the love continues after nearly a month of use. Let me just say right up front that while Ubuntu is great on the desktop, this is still not the OS for your grandma! No offense to grandma or Ubuntu, but there are still a number of things that are easier to do in Windows or a Mac. The biggest problem is with multimedia. I still can’t get DVDs to play and setting up sound and screen resolution was more of a pain than it should have been. This isn’t a big problem for me because I actually like the challenge of solving these problems, but the average consumer won’t be so amused.

Still, I really really like Ubuntu! With the strength of Debian behind it, updates are a breeze. And heck, if I ever get some time maybe I can write some stuff that will address some of the shortcomings I mentioned above. I think though that one of the best things about Ubuntu for me is that when I’m using it, I feel like I’ve got control of my computer again! Just last night I was able to get the Cisco VPN client to work with some help from a poster in the German Ubuntu Forum. I don’t read German, but it was almost too easy and a bit ironic since I had been unable to get this to work using Knoppix a release or two ago. Knoppix is a popular German (though it is available in English too) Debian based distribution, probably best known for popularizing live CDs to demonstrate and test Linux. Knoppix is pretty good and got me hooked on Debian, but Ubuntu has really sealed the deal for me! Now if I can just get these pesky DVDs to play…

First I am very happy to have survived the weekend at what will likely be my very last Reactor convention. I don’t want to be mean, but things just did not come together at all. The hotel was way too small and things were almost totally disorganized with main events starting anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour or more late. This disorganization, coupled with an over emphasis on smoking, drinking, and sex (in a distinctly child-unfriendly environment) lead to one of the worst arguments my wife and I have ever had.

We got over the fight and I already knew Reactor wasn’t likely to be very kid friendly anyway. But the level of the excesses was not something I was prepared for. And the fact that there was not a discount registration for children under 12, I think kept a lot of families away, which from what I saw was probably a good thing. Putting on a con for mature audiences only is not a bad thing, but putting one on poorly is!

Click here for more Reactor Rants.

Okay, this falls under the heading of too much time on my hands, or more likely, goofing off when there’s work to be done. Hey you kids! Brush your own teeth!

The new Celebrate! Chicago Christian Woman Magazine has just launched and my lovely wife (aka WillowBrow) is one of the cover ladies for the web site! She’s the Chinese woman in the black chongsam holding flowers in her hands. w00t! My babe’s a star!

Okay, maybe I’m overblowing that star stuff a bit, but seriously, this looks like a pretty good magazine for the modern Christian woman, or any woman who believes there is a spiritual dimension to life that must also be nurtured. The magazine market is pretty brutal though, so I hope this one will be around for a while.

When I started working in downtown Chicago my office just happened to be in the same building that serves as the corporate headquarters for Playboy Enterprises. The weird thing about all of this is that for the first few months I didn’t even realize this because I always used the building’s west entrance. It was only when I came in on the south side that I was greeted by a couple of� plaques and inside an enormous Playboy banner that left no doubt. It was a "Doh!" moment to say the least.

I was in that building for about a year, and during that time I may have seen models in the lobby maybe once, and Mr. Hefner never. So when I heard about the Triple Platinum autograph session at the Virgin Megastore featuring Hugh Hefner and 3 blonde bombshells (also promoting a reality show they star in on E!), I bought a copy of the November issue the day before and got in line for the signing yesterday.

There was quite a mix of people there, mostly young men with maybe a third women. The odd thing for me was the fact that I really hadn’t read the magazine regularly for at least 10 years. I was there mainly to meet Mr. Hefner and get his autograph. It was pretty cool, the guy’s in pretty good shape for 79. The models were nice too, but I have to admit that I don’t really go for blondes all that much, even though I play one in FFXI most of the time. All in all it was one of those pop culture events that was well worth the time. Here’s a photo of my bounty which may be worth something on eBay some day.

w00t! Video Games Live is coming to Chicago on Saturday November 12 and I got two tickets today! Normally I try to keep spending down on the eve of a convention (Reactor), but after what happened to me with the Uematsu Dear Friends concert, I did not want to miss out this time. The Chicago Theatre is a pretty cozy venue, so even the cheap seats should be pretty good!

Yugi Oh GX got started on Cartoon Network today. It’s basically young aspiring duelists in Duelist Academy, all seeking to become the King of Games. Well, I sit here as the Wimp of Games! My poor SP sits almost forgotten as I get cozier with my PSP and Ubuntu Linux. The SP’s original mission was to provide gaming goodness during the lunch hour on days when I’m not out walking around. But I just haven’t been able to get over the feeling that I’ll look like I’m goofing off if I play games on the SP in my office. So yes, I am the Wimp of Games!

Well no time to sulk, it’s time to get the FFXI October update!

Okay, first things first. There is no porn on this site! Nevertheless, my top read post is an item that mentions porn on the psp. Of course most of the traffic is probably due to search engine bots, nevertheless it does once again confirm that one of the most searched for items on the internet is porn (or pr0n 4 l337 dudes). So why am I writing about this? Simple, remember the episode of Sponge Bob Squarepants where Sponge Bob and  Patrick keep saying swear words that are bleeped out by the sounds of dolphins? That was one of the funniest episodes ever and like a kid who enjoys the shock value of using forbidden words, I love screwin with the search engines by using the word porn whenever it is appropriate. LOL

Anyway, I was curious about where the couple of thousand extra hits might be coming from and while searching I came across the PSP Porn blog. The hits weren’t coming from any references there, but it is a pretty cool looking blog. As for web porn on the PSP itself, it isn’t worth the bother because searching for that stuff really requires keying in  a lot of stuff which is a bit of a pain in the PSP web browser and you definitely don’t want to stumble over a graphics heavy site with the PSP because the memory buffer will fill up. It’s just too too hard… Oh I just had to say that!

As for porn on UMDs, I haven’t seen any in the U.S. yet, not that I’ve been looking of course. But if I were to make a wild guess, I would not be too surprised if it showed up in Virgin Megastores within a year. They seem to be trying to cater to the cool stuff niche, and they already carry a good selection of UMD movies which I have not seen elsewhere yet and they already carry adult DVDs. So porn UMDs at Virgin would not be a big stretch. Will I be buying them? Nope, probably not. Not because porn is bad and evil, though a lot of it is, but because most of it is crap! I don’t have a lot of patience with low quality products, even porn. So, have I said porn enough today?

One of my favorite strips, the Boondocks by Aaron McGruder, is coming to Adult Swim next month (November 6). I’d heard that it was originally to be on Fox, but I guess it was just too hot for them to handle. I remember the days when Fox used to be an edgey, scrappy new network. I guess those days are long over.

It’ll be interesting to me to see what adding the Boondocks does to Adult Swim’s viewer demographic. If what I saw at this year’s Otakon is any indication, there are already a significant portion of young African Americans who are into anime which means they probably watch Adult Swim. The Boondocks is not anime, but following the adventures of two black kids relocated to a distant suburban neighborhood, it probably will appeal to young black audiences. If it does well enough, maybe Fox will pick it up much like they brought back Family Guy after its phenomenal success on Adult Swim.

In the meantime, the marketing has begun! Here’s a picture of a billboard in downtown Chicago.

With all due respect to Harriet Miers, who is probably a wonderful person, I’m a bit insulted by her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The old adage that it’s not what you know, but who you know is playing out right before our eyes to the detriment of hard working American women and minorities. Ms. Miers who has never served as a judge has been nominated to a lifelong postion on the highest court in the land. Now arguments about late Justice Rehnquist, who also had not served as a judge, aside, I think this is a slap in the face to all of those who have worked hard working their way up the judicial ladder and actually aspired to sitting on the Supreme Court someday. This tells those people that all of that just doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how well connected you are and that you haven’t done enough to leave a significant paper trail on your judicial philosophy. Indeed, this makes it even more difficult for the highly qualified to even gain notice for the job. If they must choose a conservative women (in the best traditions of tokenism) surely they could have found someone in the mold of the recently sworn in Justice Roberts. There must be hundreds of Federal judges whose experience make them far more qualified than Ms. Miers.

Heh, on a slightly lighter note, I supose that Justice Scalia will be doubly pissed now. First he was aced out of the Chief Justice job and now he is going to have to serve with someone whose path to the court was paved by Executive branch affirmative action. Annoying Scalia is good sport I suppose!

You’re soaking in it! This post is being written from Ubuntu Linux which I installed on a new hard drive last night. I’d been getting more and more fed up with my Windows XP setup. With my Windows setup I just could never be sure whether it was clean or not and wouldn’t crap out on me without a moment’s notice. So after the realization that most of what I do on my home PC doesn’t require Windows, I decided to give Ubuntu a try. This decision was aided in part by a really good sale on 80GB hard drives at Best Buy. And a few months earlier I had tried the Ubuntu Live CD on this box, so I knew it would work on this hardware. And I liked the aesthetic and overall Ubuntu philosophy of a Linux for human beings. The install was pretty straight forward. The only thing I had to wrestle with a little was the video setup for X, but I’ve done that before and the Ubuntu Wiki was incredibly helpful too.

I’m running the Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger preview right now, and  for the first time in a long time, I feel like I can use my computer with some confidence!