So TW gives me some random link he always does. A Wikipedia link to a Dharma Initiative logo being hidden in Half-Life 2: Episode 2. You know the story... The mysterious group behind all the hatches on the island in LOST. So from that image, I scroll down to see where the image was linked to from. Okay, the Dharma Initiative page. I thought it might have randomly been on the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 page, but, nope. I click it anyway... Scroll down the page... Nothing I haven't already known for the past 300 years or however long it's been since LOST was last on TV.

Scroll, scroll, scroll... Hit the bottom of the page. I see a little LOST box containing links to main characters and such... And I see a link to Rousseau, the resident castaway of the island. I see it and my mind goes: "Hmm, you know, now that I think of it, the actress who plays Rousseau? She looks and sounds a lot like the actress who plays Ambassador Delenn in Babylon 5." I had also recognized Rousseau from somewhere other than LOST, but I never quite pursued it and eventually forgot about it. So on a total whim, I clicked the link to see who the actress was! My random "I KNOW THIS PERSON" moments are usually just that... Random, and pointless.

But... I was totally right. They're the SAME PERSON. When I saw her name, it was like getting hit in the face with a 1200 page A+ certification book, it was that shocking. I'd seen Babylon 5 long before now, on the Sci Fi channel, and Delenn must have made an impression on me all the way back then, because I remember thinking I knew Rousseau from somewhere.

But, oh my gosh. First Heroes and now this. This is one of those days where everything is just perfect. To me, this discovery is a revelation! She's an awesome actress in Babylon 5 and knowing this makes LOST a bit more awesome, too. (Barring, of course, the downward spiral of the ever confusing and convoluted storyline and characters that are slowly falling apart and going insane. I sincerely hope the next season is better than the last. Season One was amazing and got me hooked. Season Two was all about the hatch and was just freaky mysterious and gave you chills. Season Three was just BLAH. Less mystery, more deception, and more characters gone insane.)

Still... DELENN AS ROUSSEAU.

Woah, woah, woah... Everyone stop! Pay attention.

Stem Cell Research Defuses Debate

In a nut shell? Some brilliant folks discovered a way to make stem cells out of skin cells.

You mean, after all this time, and after all the fighting and name-calling and debating over the morals of cloning an embryo, just to suck its brains out, we were right? That you didn't need stem cells from a cloned baby to do your research? After all this time of bashing "clueless Christians" over the fact that we don't care about all the poor, sick people with incurable diseases... There really was another way? Do you mean to say we were right? Nah, I think that's too much to ask for... We're still the clueless Christians. It's just a pure coincidence that there was another way, and we still don't care about the poor, sick people with incurable diseases.

Despite the fact that there were more breakthroughs with adult stem cells than embryonic stem cells, they still wanted to use embryos for some reason. Seriously. I'm not going to go back and fish up all the articles, so just Google for "adult stem cell breakthrough". I'm serious. Go ahead. Then Google for "embryonic stem cell breakthrough". You've got a few, but most wind up talking about breakthroughs in adult stem cells. The kind you don't need to kill babies for?

Oh well, the entire argument is completely and totally pointless now. Finally, everyone's happy. You've got your adult stem cells (the ones that show the most promise), and now you have reprogrammed cells that act just like embryonic stem cells. So now you have the best of both worlds without sucking any innocent brains!

Ohhh my gosh...

Heroes is now officially the best show on TV right now. Not LOST, not Stargate, nothing comes close.

So I was reading some articles about Super Mario Galaxy and how it's set on beating Ocarina of Time for "best game ever" and I see lots of people commenting about how they like OoT better, and then some nut job comes along and goes on a diatribe about how "SMG and OoT are so completely vastly 100% polar opposites that you can't compare one to the other, and people are dumb when they try."

Oh really? Let's form an example here.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Which is better? I say Oblivion. Am I allowed to say it's better? Apparently, yes, I am, because they're both the same genre. I like both, but Oblivion is my favorite out of the two and I think it's clearly the best, and I'm allowed to compare the two because they're both RPGs.

Example two.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Megaman 5

Which is better? I say Oblivion. Am I allowed to say it's better? No, I'm not, because Megaman is a sidescroller and Oblivion is an RPG. Aka, they're "so completely vastly 100% polar opposites that you can't compare one to the other, and people are dumb when they try." I am supposedly not allowed to compare the two because they're not the same type of game.

Example three!

Side Scrolling Platformer
Role Playing Game

Which is better? I say RPG. Am I allowed to say it's better? This is where the stupidity comes into play because, see, they're both games. I'm comparing a game type to a game type. Just like I'm comparing an RPG to an RPG, and yet, at the same time, I'm comparing a Sidescroller to an RPG. Am I not allowed to say which one I think is better because they're not the same?

Example four!

Eating
Gaming

Which is better? I say... Eating. Am I allowed to say it's better? Here, again, is where the stupidity comes into play because, see, they're both "things to fill my time". Am I allowed to compare a "thing to fill my time" with a "thing to fill my time"? Just like I'm allowed to compare an RPG to an RPG? Or am I not allowed to compare them, because they're "eating" and "gaming". If I'm not allowed to compare them, why am I allowed to compare "Morrowind" with "Oblivion"? They're two different titles! But they are the same genre, so I'm allowed to.

Example five!

Living
Dying

Which is better? I say... Living. Am I allowed to say it's better? They're both "states of being", so to speak, but they're vastly different things. Is it the proverbial "Sidescroller vs RPG" or is it "state of being vs state of being"?

How about this. We can say what we like and everyone else can shut up and stop trying to rationalize away the fact that not everyone thinks the same way about everyone else! Case in point:

I prefer living over dying and eating over gaming. RPGs over sidescrollers and Oblivion over Morrowind. If I had a choice between Megaman and Oblivion, I would pick Oblivion, because I think it's better than Megaman on so many levels. That's because I also think that RPGs are better than sidescrollers. But if I had a choice between eating and playing Oblivion, I would say that eating is better than Oblivion, because I prefer eating over playing a game.

In other words?

I like Ocarina of Time over Super Mario 64. Incomparable? No. I'll show you why! Because in the grand scheme of things, you can go up one "flight" and have a list of game types. OoT is... whatever Zelda games are. For simplicity's sake, we'll just call it RPG and we'll call SM64 an adventure game. On this level of things to compare, it goes like this: RPG over Adventure over Sidescroller. I like RPGs. RPGs rank higher than Adventure games. I think Zelda is better than Mario. Are they different? Of course. Apples and oranges? Yes.

But guess what? I prefer oranges over apples. Windows over Linux! Sleeping over eating. Babylon 5 over Monk. Okami Soundtrack over Dragonforce. Chronicles of Narnia over Fahrenheit 451. Get the picture yet?

Apparently, a bug in Pidgin/Gaim snuck in that makes your computer give off the loudest beep you've ever heard in your life when you backspace something that isn't there. I was sitting here, talking to Ed, when I backspaced and here comes a beep loud enough to wake the dead, break my windows and temporarily misalign the magnetic poles of this planet by the sheer power coursing through the PC speaker.

Search sites are a wonderful thing. I found a fix for this atrocious problem! Basically, this is just for me, because half the people I know won't touch Pidgin/Gaim with a 5-foot-pole for no reason in particular, but anyway!

For Windows, obviously:

1. Navigate to %APPDATA%\.purple using Run, or Explorer or whatever.
2. Open the following file in Notepad: gtkrc-2.0 (If it's not there, create it. No extension.)
3. Add the following line anywhere inside: gtk-error-bell = 0
4. Save, close, restart Pidgin/Gaim.
5. Tada! No more beep!

There is nothing quite like going from "this story is the dumbest thing I've ever seen" to "oh man, this is the most wicked awesome element EVER". There's nothing quite like it when you're reading someone else's book, but there's definitely nothing like it when you're writing your own. (What's equally cool that most people can't understand this until they actually start writing. Clearly you think your story is awesome to begin with, but then it's just a natural par-for-the-course effect that you eventually despise it and think it's crap, but if you give up at the first sign of trouble, you won't hit one of many EUREKA! moment and keep on chugging!)

In the shower, I was stuck. (On my story, not in the shower.) So I just thought about random things... What if this happened. What if that happened... What if I did something like this... What if this person did that? I just let my mind wander and I don't even remember half the stuff I considered, but then. BAM! It hit me. The answer to a story element that's been left unanswered since the day it all first came together. I've got lots of stuff to write about now, so I'll get cracking!

I've noticed two things about NewEgg reviews on computer hardware components... One is that if the device in question is in the least bit noisy (and I don't mean loud, I mean... if it gives off any noise), then it's 3 or 4 stars. Or eggs... Or whatever you want to call it. The thing could be absolutely rock solid without any record of crashes (according to reviews), but if it makes a sound. It's not perfect.

The other is that if the device in question doesn't support overclocking, it's also 3 or 4 stars, and heaven forbid that the device in question makes a sound and doesn't allow overclocking. On the bright side, if you buy only the best rated devices, you'll get quiet operation that lets you rev up your processors to run Stargate address correlation routines or even just blow it up, causing a artificially created black hole in your case.

I know it'll never happen, but can we please have reviews that rate the quality of the device instead of how loud it is or how much it does or does not overclock? Some people are looking for stability over speed. If most people did that, then hey! Windows would actually work for most people and we wouldn't keep hearing about your BSoDs in Windows XP. (That really takes talent, man.)

For example, a motherboard I'm looking at. The one previously mentioned on my dream computer list is no longer carried at NewEgg, so I'm looking at alternatives. I can't tell if this motherboard supports quad-core processors or not, because people are too busy talking about how it doesn't overclock. Does it support quad-core? Does it support quad-core well? Does it promise everything it claims? Good, then give it 5 stars. I really don't want your personal opinion on decibels bleeding over to your grand rating. If you want to tack it under "Other Thoughts", then go ahead. Loudness isn't a "Con", SATA failing to support RAID like it should? That's a Con and should affect the rating. It doesn't overclock very well? File that under "Other Thoughts" unless the thing actually advertises the ability to overclock. Then it's a Con and should affect your rating.

3 eggs because the fan is too loud? Not a Con. Go buy a new fan.

Honestly, there's this dual-hard drive external enclosure by Western Digital. 1 entire terabyte. Overall rating is 3 stars. That's pretty poor for hard drives. If they don't work well, I don't want them. I decided to click on it anyway because it was the one with the best ratings. It turns out that all the reviews were complaining about how loud the cooling fans were. Some people actually said "this hard drive is very stable, but it's really loud, so only 3 stars". It works fine but it's too loud, so it's 3 stars... Hard drives get HOT, mister. Have you ever handled one after a fresh shut down? Ouch. Putting two in a tight enclosure like that? Yeah, you're going to get some fan noise.