Just got done with an Indiana Jones marathon I put myself through. I got that DVD trilogy set from Walmart this weekend. It's been out for a while, and I've wanted it since I hear about it, and I've been waiting for the price to drop. I figure after so long, the price is about as low as it's going to get for another long while, so I just went ahead and got it. I've had the VHS tapes for ages, but I don't have a VCR on my computer... so I never watch them.

But, man, I'm tellin' ya'... those movies will never get old. I mean, sure, they're old... and some of the special effects are laughable, but I don't think I'll ever get tired of them. I might not feel like watching them sometime, but I'm sure that if someone else put them in anyway, that I'd just become glued to the screen. Except for maybe Temple of Doom. That's some creepy business there. Not even Event Horizon makes me so edgy. Probably because Temple of Doom delves into some... more specific nastiness than Event Horizon's generic "evil". But The Last Crusade is still, by far, my favorite. Lost Ark coming in second.

Got another wonderful eBay bidder this weekend. We sold a couple of items "as is" and they're hopping mad because they weren't what they expected. Maybe they were damaged in transit, I don't know. But if you expect to buy something clearly stated "as is", you should be prepared to take responsibility for the fact that the seller is telling you he doesn't guarantee the condition of the item, and if you commit to being the fina bidder, you need to just deal with what you get. This moron eBay bidder doesn't seem to understand the concept of "as is" and they're disputing the item, claiming that what we sold them was not as advertised. Even though we specifically mentioned that this was being sold "as is". Geez... this happened with that other guy, too, only he didn't whine to PayPal for his money back. What's with the human race these days? They all have a total lack of BRAIN MATTER!

We'll probably have to end up refunding them and garnering a negative feedback. It ticks me off at first, but after a few hours, I cool down and settle back into my "I don't give a care" mode and just do whatever it takes. After all, it's not me losing the money, hwahaha-er... did I say that out loud? Uhm... *ahem*

I cancelled my World of Warcraft account. I can imagine all the startled readers out there... all four of you. But, yes, I cancelled WoW. Only temporarily. I figured... I haven't played it in a month anyway, so why renew it? I've pretty much seen all there is to see and done all there is to do so far, so I'm waiting for the expansion pack to come out before I renew. Unless I get bored enough to play it again, but that probably won't happen for a while. I've got plenty of other things to do.

With the free monthly fees I have now, I decided to spend this month's normally WoW-dedicated funds to a game called Defcon, by Introversion Software. The guys behind the game Uplink and the very neat Darwinia. Anyone around here had the guts to see a movie called WarGames? About that kid who inadvertantly triggers what could be a precursor to global thermonuclear war? Pretty sad movie... typical 80s. Anyway, the game Defcon is based off the computer interface of a system in WarGames. The giant supercomputer that monitors worldwide military assets and nuclear launch sites. Defcon looks exactly like that. It's like a quick (relatively) real time strategy game... a lot like Risk, actually. You place your units in the first rounds (Defcon 5 and 4), and by the time the game timer hits Defcon 3, you can start firing conventional weapons from aircraft and naval fleets. You continue fighting through Defcon 2, until the timer hits Defcon 1, which allows all players to fire nuclear weapons at will. It usually starts with submarine nukes, followed by a wave of aircraft bombers, and then, finally, you launch from your fixed missile silos. (Not at all necessarily in that order, though... but that's what seems to work best.)

When you're launching missiles from your silos, your country becomes vulnerable to other nuclear strikes because, you see, the silos, when they're not in launch mode, act as anti-aircraft/anti-missile defense systems. When they're in launch mode, however, they cannot defend. So it very accurately depicts and induces decisions like "do I risk a first strike or sit through their first strike and then retaliate?" See, if you launch a first strike... then... while you did get off the critical first strike, you become incredibly vulnerable to their retaliation and it's all too possible that you wind up in worse condition then they are.

The motto of the game is "everybody dies... but maybe you can die the least". (Or close enough.) Which is the also the object of the game! To lose the least. You WILL get nuked and you WILL lose cities... but maybe you can hit more of their cities than they hit yours. Really quite the morbid game... but that's what makes it fun! It's really addicting and tense and strategic... and the best part of it all is that they're independent developers. More or less a group of friends who brainstorm and come up with a really awesome game, and then release it digitally.

You can download the demo and see what it's like. It even supports multiplayer, but only one demo client per game. But it's only $17.50... and it supports the best of the "bedroom programmers", and you probably spend more than that on movies, CDs and fast food in a month. I'm tellin' ya'... it's very much worth it!

To switch topics... I have an announcement! Okay, not really... I'm just going to show off. But I moved my blog to a new server... my server! I figured out how to get my paid-for domain name to work with a dynamic IP just yesterday and decided to do what I've wanted to do all along! No more funky port redirections and complex domain names! From now on, it's just www.rivenwolf.net! Behind the scenes, my blog loves it! I got bombed with pingbacks when I first loaded up the new dashboard... It's finally able to tell me who links to my site now!

I probably won't be using my server for anything heavy. Just a light personal site, like I've always had. But, of course, TW wants to fix his server now, since I've stopped using it. Hah... after losing a customer, uh-huh. Well, too late! I already love it here. You're going to have to find a way to make me WANT to move back. This'll be interesting, bwahaha.

I love dynamic relative websites... you can just pick them up and move them to anywhere and they'll automatically update all their links. I wonder how many people noticed (if it was even possible) the 5 or so minutes of downtime. Had some craziness with the domain name servers, and with SQL not wanting to export and import properly... but that's all fixed now!

But anyway... I'm going to find something to eat. I'm hungry, and I'll bet there wasn't anything fixed for supper, so I'm going to have to find something like... dry cereal or something bland like that. Hooray!