Steve

-- Steve likes a good sense of humour.

spotted via jaylake

Mass Effect 2, ah, how we love you and your call-outs. Apparently, "Blasto the first Hanar SPECTRE" was a running joke on the BioWare forums since the release of ME1... and they couldn't resist putting a nod to their fans into ME2.

For those unfamiliar with the Mass Effect series, the Hanar are an aquatic species of space travelers who believe that they were made sapient by the Enkindlers some 50 000 years ago. Think of a hovering, pink Portugese Man-o-War with bioluminescence and very formal grammar. Now think of one in a blacksploitation flick. That's Blasto.

-- Steve'll note that Google finds some 3000 references to Blasto the Hanar right now, the majority of which are either clips such as the one above or pleas to BioWare to include Blasto in ME3.

Just got an update for the Zune Canada Marketplace over Xbox Live to note that the BBC and BBC Earth have content up... and they have episodes of Top Gear up for purchase. And Doctor Who, Torchwood, Blackadder, Walking with Dinosaurs, The Blue Planet...

-- Steve may shell out for some more space bucks.

PS: A lot of them seem to be in standard definition only, but I suppose a lot of those shows were only shot in SD anyway.

In the past week I have been asked four times if my laptop was an iPad that I'd somehow gotten early.

As long-term readers of this blog probably know, it's not; it's a Samsung Q1, built to the Origami PC standard, and I bought it almost four years ago. In computer terms it's positively ancient... but the Turtlenecked One has pronounced that slates are In this season, and the fashionistas flock to slates.

I swear that most people buy iStuff not for the design or the interface but for the same reason they buy Gucci.

-- Steve is considering replacing his Q1 soon, as it is getting a bit battered after four years of hard use, but not with an iPad; a Win7 7" slate would be ideal.

PS: I know the joke is juvenile, but I can't help but snicker at the joke that the iPad should'be been launched as the Mac cPad.

( Casualties from my final mission cut to hide spoilers for Mass Effect 2 )

It's a good game. The last mission can be a bit brief if you've gotten all the upgrades in place and are playing on Normal, but I don't feel let down at all except for the casualties. I'm tempted to make a second run-through with this profile, just doing the core and loyalty missions, to both get the level 30 Achievement (ended as a 27, dammit... so close...) and to see if I can get a no-death ending. I'd do that run-through a difficulty level up, though.

-- Steve definitely thinks he got his money's worth out of this game, at nigh-on 50 hours for the first run-through.

I just (almost literally) bumped into the moving guys in the office and they've let me get access to enough of my equipment that I can do my job again. So only half the day wasted, I guess.

-- Steve hopes he can make some inroads today into the week's backlog, as the current traffic is pretty slack.

Dear Americans of the Democratic Party;

Suck it up.

Your Massachusetts candidate got her ass kicked on network TV. So what? Turn off the damned face-faucets and take it for what it was; not a sign that you got "too radical" for a political fringe that isn't entirely convinced that some of its electorate deserves more than 2/5ths of a vote, but a rejection of your weird form of whining complacency. You assumed that a Senate seat was dynastic and it wasn't, and the voters punished you for running a Party non-entity. Take the hint and stop trying to ride on your top-o-ticket's coat-tails.

A majority in both houses with a 59% share of seats in one would be envied by some generalissimos. Don't tell me you can't pass important legislation now because you've lost the ability to force cloture motions... unless you really are the ennervated, ineffectual wrecks your opposition claims you are. There are plenty of parties around the world that can deal with the threat of fillibuster without giving away the store... so why can't you?

Stop caving to blackmail. Stop appeasing your fringies, among whom I include your "Blue Dogs"; if they want to keep voting with the other guys, tell 'em to join the other guys and kick them out from behind Mama's skirts. Go hardball on 'em one-by-one; it'll cost, at first, but it'll pay off when your more fractious members see you're serious about derailing their gravy trains. Your own polls tell you that the public favours your positions on your key platform planks; stop whittling them down to satisfy some cowards who aren't sure they joined the right party.

Take charge of your message instead of letting the Republicans draft it for you. Bipartisanship doesn't mean, "give the other guy everything," nor does it mean, "become just like the other guy." Give the electorate a real alternative on the next ballot instead of a coin-toss whether to have a beer with Dumb or Dumber.

And stop telling voters what you won't do. There are lots of people outside of politics who can't do anything for voters, and they don't get votes either. Start telling voters what you will do, and then get it done.

If you can't do that, then at least go under with some shred of dignity instead of cringing and snivelling in front of the cameras.

Gah.

-- Steve thinks that a healthy body politic needs both a left and a right, so that each can keep the other honest. You ain't got that, and that's your big problem.

Well, I just double-checked my Internet speed again... this time with both a 3rd party tester and my ISP's own test. The test to my ISP's server shows slightly under the rate I've been getting since last September; 5.66Mb/s down, 0.67Mb/s up. The third party server test, though, shows about half that down (3.31Mb/s) but the same up. (Another run, to a server in Chicago, showed a positively dismal 1.67Mb/s down and the same up; a fourth run to London UK showed 1.27Mb/s down and 0.55Mb/s up.)

Taking this at face value, perhaps the trouble's not on my line but at their gateway. (Or their pet test is fibbing... but their figure, as I noted above, matched my earlier third-party tested performance so I'm inclined to trust it.)

-- Steve will also note that his account info page shows that there is an unidentified service issue limiting functionality of that page... so hopefully this'll clear up soon.

I went to stream a movie over Xbox Live and I got a warning that it wouldn't be able to stream it in hi-def. That's odd, as it's been able to stream in hi-def since they implemented streaming.

So I check on a couple of speed testing sites, and, yes, I've dropped by about 2Mb/s downstream for some reason or other. Upstream's not affected.

Gah.

-- Steve just won't watch the movie, as it normally takes a couple of hours to download instead of stream and this was just an impulse.

Bungie's raising money for the Haiti relief efforts. One way is to purchase a particular t-shirt from their online store; profits go to the American Red Cross.

As cross-border shipping isn't possible for the Bungie Store I'm eyeing their second option more closely; play Halo 3 or ODST online on Jan. 20th and 21st with a particular shoulder emblem (described in the article) and Bungie will donate $100 for every 1000 player sessions. (ie: if 10 000 players with the emblem play 3 games each, Bungie will donate $3000 on their behalf.) They'll donate up to $77 000 this way.

-- Steve remembers a similar effort back when Hurricane Katrina hit; he hopes this is as successful.

Got ambushed by a cold last night, so I gobbled down a couple of flu relief pills left over from the Plague Month and hit the sack.

For fourteen and a half hours.

Yikes.

I'm drinking tea by the litre, and my BBQ chicken that just arrived is going down fairly well... but my Ghu do I feel stoned by this thing and the "daytime relief" tabs.

-- Steve's just glad he had the day off... because he wouldn't have awoken in time to call in.

Pat Robertson believes that acts of mass destruction against civilian targets is justifiable. Under the Bush Doctrine, this means he should be pressed up against a wall with a bag over his head and handed a one-way ticket to a former-East-bloc "health spa" for some quality time with a "hydrotherapist".

-- Steve has more trouble telling the difference difference between the US "evangelical" movement and the Taliban every day.

The Red Cross has set up a "Family Links" site with lists of relatives sought and those found; names can be added as necessary.

-- Steve hopes folks find good news there.

Found via the Globe and Mail

Canada's Governor General, Haitian-born Michaelle Jean, made a tearful public address last night about the disaster and relief efforts. The title of this blog post comes from an aside by her, in French; in a way she's right, as a 7.0 Richter earthquake releases the same energy as a 30 megaton warhead... and note that this "bomb" went off only 15km (10mi) away from Port au Prince and only 10km (6mi) down. In another way, thankfully, she's wrong... fires are localised, not the firestorm that would have come from a nuclear weapon, and there isn't the same number of burn casualties.

The news this morning also said that the Canadian government will match donations made by Canadian citizens to international aid agencies, so my donation last night looks to go further than I thought it would.

Apparently George Clooney will be hosting a telethon to raise funds for the relief effort, though so far no news on when.

-- Steve's also sobered by the realisation that the last time Port au Prince saw an earthquake like this one, the 13 Colonies were still British.

Things are looking grim on the ground in Port Au Prince; estimates of 3 million homeless, over 100 000 persons unaccounted for, what government services were there are overwhelmed, the UN force in place is almost completely occupied with digging out their own headquarters and tending their own casualties, and aid workers on-site are quickly running out of supplies. Relief is on the way, but more is needed.

The good news, I guess, is that the Canadian Red Cross donation gateway is extremely slow right now... which suggests extremely high traffic, and thus that folks are getting their wallets out to help in Haiti.

If you haven't yet, and can, please do.

-- Steve'll try to send in his donation again later tonight.

Port au Prince, Haiti, was hit by 7.0 magnitude earthquake at 4:53pm local time today. Casualties as yet unknown but feared to be high; building standards are not good in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Carribean, and there are reports that at least one hospital there has collapsed.

-- Steve can't properly express the sorrow he's feeling at the moment.

Barrie man arrested for driving snowblowing under the influence. While trying to clear a major intersection with a driveway snowblower he managed to nearly get run over twice while drivers were trying to avoid the thick cloud of powder snow he was blasting into rush-hour traffic.

-- Steve's seen some weird coping mechanisms for winter blahs, but this one is new to him.

spotted via supergee

For those who don't follow teh Haloz as closely as I do but are still interested, I should point out that the Xbox Live service "Halo Waypoint" is showing the first half of the short film, Halo: Origins. I haven't seen it yet, but the chatter online is that it shows a lot about how the Forerunners, the civilisation that constructed the Halo rings, lived and worked together... and likely how their war against the Flood failed.

Remember, as was the case with the earlier previews of the Halo: Legends anime complilation, this is running for today only. The link turns into a pumpkin at midnight.

-- Steve loves this part of the Halo series.

It's so slow that the supervisor on-shift has brought out a TV and DVD player; right now Shawshank Redemption is running so that the staff doesn't go stir crazy.

-- Steve knows this is common practice on major holidays, particularly on night shifts, but didn't think it'd be necessary today.

PS: I'm contemplating taking up rubber-band or paperclip macrame. Seriously, I've heard less than one call per hour today and average call duration is under the two minute mark.

Here's hoping this'll let me watch the Times Square New Year's events, as none of my local stations is even bothering.

-- Steve finds it disturbing that CITY-TV would have the only dedicated coverage, and that's just of Toronto events with bands he doesn't like.