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Dear Diary,
I never quite figured out why the sexual urges of men and women differ so much.

And I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing.

I have never figured out why men think with their head and women with their heart.

I have never figured out why the sexual desire gene gets thrown into a state of turmoil, when it hears the words "I do."

One evening last week, my wife and I were getting into bed. Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says "I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me."

I said "WHAT????!!!"

So she says the words that every husband on the planet dreads to hear..."You must not be in tune with my emotional needs as a woman."

I am thinking "what was her first clue?" I finally realize that nothing was going to happen that night so I went to sleep.

The very next day, we went shopping at a big, unnamed dept. store...I walked around with her while she tried on three different very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide which one to take so I told her to take all three.

She wanted matching shoes, I said "lets get a pair for each outfit."

We went to the jewelry dept. where she gets a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you ... she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I said it was OK.

She was almost sexually excited from all of this.

You should have seen her face when she said "I think this is all dear, lets go to the cash register."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out "No honey, I don't feel like buying all of this stuff now."

You should have seen her face...it went completely blank.

I then said "Really honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while."


And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me I added, "You must not be in tune with my financial needs as a man."

I figure that I won't be having sex again until sometime after the spring of 2008.

Found this cool list of the top stolen cars listed state-by-state at cnn.

It's rather interesting to check out. Nice to see my car isn't listed anywhere. I guess no one cares about jacking my car becuase it's so boring. Although the '04 Chevy Malibu is all new in design so it might be a hotter item to steal now.

Over at the Penny Arcade forums there’s a discussion over a lawsuit against Nintendo.  Basically, some dumb hick family from Baton Rouge, Louisiana is suing claiming Nintendo isn’t doing enough to protect people from having seizures.

It’s a well-known fact that the flashing from TVs while playing video games can cause people with epilepsy to have seizures.  However, the family isn’t just going after a quick buck.  They’re trying to get Nintendo to put onscreen warnings on games, include some sort of seizure ranking system like the ESRB rating system, and force Nintendo to fund a nationwide campaign to inform the public about video games and seizures.

Umm… Ok, you freaking morons drive me nuts.  I think Nintendo does more than enough to warn about seizures.

Every Gamecube box comes with two manuals.  The first is a small precautions booklet that on the first page has a large section on seizure warnings.  The other is the main instruction booklet and once again the first page has a large section on seizures.

On top of that, every game has seizure warnings.  On the back of every game case is a warning that says “WARNING: People who are photosensitive (have had seizures induced by flashing lights or patterns) should not play video games without first seeing a doctor.”  Then the instruction booklet has the same warnings as the hardware manuals on the first page.  And if that isn’t enough Nintendo even includes a special Health and Safety booklet that, you guessed it, has a big section on seizures!

Ladies and gentlemen I ask you is that not enough?  If you just bought a new Gamecube and a single game to go with it you will be giving 4 pieces of printed literature and 1 visible warning right on the package of possible seizures from playing video game.

Maybe it’s just that I was raised in the country by a conservative family.  If something bad happens to me and it’s because I was doing something stupid I realize I screwed up and that I’ve learned a lesson.  I remember not to do the same thing again.  If something happens that’s not of my doing I find out what happen and learn how to fix it.

If I were playing a video game and had a seizure I’d go to a doctor and find out what’s wrong.  Then I’d say, “I guess I better not play video games again.”  Now day’s people are so lawsuit happy the first thing they think is “how can I make money from this?”

I bet this stupid family dialed their lawyer before their retarded kid had even finished seizing.  The poor kid probably had his eyes rolled back into his skull, choking on his tongue and foaming at the mouth and their first reaction was to hit the speed-dial for a lawyer.  Then once they were sure they could sue they got around to dialing 911.

These people make me sick!  Of course big companies just settle since it’s easier than fighting but I wish Nintendo would have fought.  It would be worth blowing millions to win this case.  If they pulled the big W it could start the change of tide for ludicrous lawsuits.  Getting courts to start throwing out cases for people trying to sue for their incompetence is needed badly.

Personally, I’m about to start a secret group that goes out and eliminates stupid people.  Get a few black helicopters and ex-military types.  When we hear about people like this just fly out and remove the people from their homes.  Take them to an undisclosed location and brainwash them.  Drop them back home with instructions to publicly admit their scum, were just trying to make a quick buck and were very sorry for bothering everyone.

After a few reports of that happening it should scare people from thinking about suing so readily.

Ha, I'm on vacation right now! Technically spring break starts Saturday. However, I don't have Friday classes and I was done with my classes by 12:30 today. So I'm on my spring break. It's too early though honestly. I really wish the spring break was later when the weather is nicer. I mean sure if you go to Florida or Mexico it's fine. Unfortunately, for poor bastards like myself I have to stay home. It doesn't feel like spring break when you can look out your window and still see the evil white stuff on the ground.

Anyways, there's no big post today. I'm too burned out from tests and homework these last two week to find anything interesting to talk about. There was a programming assignment and exam in my computer graphics class and exam in networking.

Plus, I've been pretty busy with personal projects. I have a disgustingly long todo list up on my whiteboard in my room right now. Currently, I'm developing a website for my fathers union division. It's going to be a pretty big project. Unlike most of the other union websites I've looked at this will knock the socks off everyone. There will be news postings, newsletter manager, links page, contact page, and perhaps even a simple forum. It will be fully database driven with a complete administration backend that will allow whoever ends up maintaining it to change content from a easy to use web interface.

It's going to be the most ambition project I've done yet. Luckily, I've got a whole week with the vacation to work on it. My current schedule is looking to go like this:
Sunday - Database design finalized and created / Member login system online and functioning
Monday - Newsletter subscription manager
Tuesday - Links page
Wednesday - Contact page
Friday - News posting system
Sunday - Administration control panel

That covers just about every I plan to get done except the forum. The problem is a message board is a complex thing to build. I'm not sure if I will build that from scratch or perhaps take one of the open source free forum systems such as phpBB and customize it to fit into the website.

Found a link to a cool computer cluster project over on mini-itx.com.

The creator used twelve Via Epia mini-itx based systems to create the cluster. He used the Epia V8000 motherboards that have 800mhz C3 processors. Each system included 256mb of ram and use 340mb ibm microdrives for hard disks. He used FreeBSD as the os for the cluster.

All in all this little mini supercomputer is very cool. Performance wise it's not that great as with 12 systems all connected it only performs on par with a cluster of 4-6 Intel Pentium 4 systems running at 2.4Ghz. But it's the coolness factor that's more important here. Being able to brag about having a 12 cpu cluster to do heavy duty data processing is a geeks dream come true.

I know I sure want one. Although, I'd go with the M10000 based Via Epia boards. It includes a faster processor, 1ghz, vs the V8000's 800mhz and uses newer PC2100 DDR ram instead of the old pc133 SDRAM of the V8000. This would mean a larger performance kick both from cpu and ram. The price difference for the motherboards is only around $50 dollars and the new ram is roughly the same price as the old style ram so it's well worth the upgrade.

Here's what each node in the cluster would be:
Via Epia M10000 motherboard w/ 1Ghz cpu - $160.00
256mb pc2100 ram - $45.00
IBM 340mb microdrive - $80.00
Microdrive to IDE adapter - $25.00
Drive cable - $2.00
Total price - $312.00

You're looking at roughly $350.00 per node (when you add shipping costs and other misc costs I didn't think off), which isn't too bad of a price. I'd say the project creator had the right idea and a reasonable cluster for playing with at home would contain at least 12 nodes. So price wise you're looking at something like $4000-5000 total to build once you include power, mounting, networking etc. That's pretty reasonable consider people building high-end gaming systems can put in $4000-5000.

Of course I'd love to get a nice big government grant to put together a massive cluster. I'm sure I could get the government to give me like $250,000.00 so I could build a cluster with like 500 nodes. With that kind of computer power I bet the cluster could do some pretty hefty number crunching.

Man just think what that'd look like all wired up. I'd be in heaven!