Wii Friends, Part II

As if to directly answer my Wii friend dilemma, I just watched the latest episode of DL.TV (193) and they shared how to identify the unique number of one’s Wii and how to register to make more friends. I don’t think it’d be wise to post my number here, but if you want to be my Wii friend leave a note in the comments section below and we’ll hook it up. And just in case you want to be DL.TV’s Wii friend here’s there Wii number: 3866-4961-3764-6024. This still isn’t going to help me with the e-Harmony ladies, but I gotta find some friends for my poor lonely Mii. JBB

Mac vs. PC?

What is it about a computer that turns old people into infantile morons? - Steve Dallas from Bloom County

Not that my co-worker is an “old person,” but I spent the first 45-minutes of today trying to get her PC to “talk” to her projector. Her husband had already spent the previous day (yes, the whole day!) trying to get the PC to run both the LCD monitor and projector but could only get one or the other. When I pulled up the PC’s screen/monitor properties menu it showed both video connectors and asked me if I wanted to extend my desktop to the second monitor. When I clicked either “apply” or “OK” it would churn away and then go back to the screen as if I hadn’t clicked either the “apply” or “OK” button. Then several clicks later it’d ask again if I wanted to extend my desktop to the second monitor. Ack. I told my co-worker to report the problem to district IT. Let them deal with it. jbb

The Dilemma of Having too Few Wii Friends

After months of complaining, bitching, and searching I bought my first game console, a new Nintendo Wii, last May. A mere one month before I’d purchased my first handheld game device, a Nintendo DS, basically because I couldn’t find the Wii anywhere. After over twenty years of screwing around with computers and countless unplayed computers games I’d pretty much convinced myself that I just wasn’t a computer gamer. The thing is that I know that “gaming” is the gateway drug for my students to technology and computers.

For the most part they don’t care about writing or reading and are completely unaware of the creative power to make movies or music. But they are very aware of the power of being transported and challenged by these little devices. And contrary to popular belief, gaming today is not a solitary thing with one social misfit sitting alone in his room staring at a screen killing aliens. Truth is that the most popular computer/video game, World of Warcraft, is based on cooperative interaction albeit generally with total strangers over the Internet. Or as Stan in South Park said, when told by his dad to go outside and play with his friends, “I am socializing, Artard. I’m logged on to an MMORPG with people from all over the world and getting XP with my party using team-speak.“** And maybe that’s why I haven’t gotten into my Wii all that much this summer, I don’t have gaming friends. Ack. Something tells that this gaming thing isn’t going to help me with the e-Harmony ladies either. Damn. JBB

**NOTE: I love that Stan’s dad’s response is a sheepish defensive, “I’m not an artard.”

Click here for an awesome music video summary of the South Park episode, “Make Love Not Warcraft. Click the “Read the rest of this entry” link for a video on the incredible benefits of the recently introduced “Wii Fit.” Looking stupid playing video games reaches new heights!

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Concerns about RFID-Passports & Bad Guys with Blacklights

Back in late 2005 when the US State Department announced that all US passport would include an embedded RFID chip (radio frequency identification) similar to those used by such fine retail establishments as Wall-Mart, privacy groups such as the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) spoke out because of concerns that citizens’ personal information would be just floating out in the wireless ether for any RFID-reader-carrying-criminal to snatch. The State Department said that this change was being made to fight terrorism by making it harder for criminals to counterfeit passports. Tech journalists and podcasters such as Cranky Geeks’ John C. Dvorak made light of privacy groups concerns like it was just so much tin-hat paranoia. Everyone had a laugh and then moved on the next tech/pop culture news item.

Recently in an episode of CNET’s Buzz-Out-Loud podcast affable host, Tom Merritt, read a story about a company in England putting the chips in the school uniforms, then joked about English school children running around naked in order to avoid being tracked by parents or school officials. Former co-host, Veronica Belmont, then mentioned that she’d just gotten her “chipped” US passport, to which Merritt quipped, “did you put the chip in your arm?” Maybe I’m having a tin-hat moment but am I the only one who realizes that the bad guys don’t need to actually read the data on the chips for them to do bad things. I don’t want to be the one to give the bad guys the idea, but all they would need is some device that could read the presence of the kind of RFID signal being used in the passports and suddenly they’d be able to pick out the US citizen walking through the crowd. Whether the device is that accurate or not wouldn’t matter because part of inflicting terror is the randomness of the act, not the accuracy. So, everyone with an RFID-passport is figuratively walking around with a government issued white “X” on their backs and all the bad guys need to do is switch on their RFID-blacklights. We are so screwed. JBB

Is AT&T Pushing e-Billing or Did They Just Screw Up?

Internet hottie, Justine Ezarik, loves texting on her iPhone. iPhone exclusive wireless carrier, AT&T, loves keeping track of every single byte transfered to and from their subscribers and recording said transfers on their bills. Note I said that they itemize every “byte,” not simply listing how many bytes or even listing how many many messages. They track and itemize every time a little byte of data goes from ones iPhone up to the wireless cloud and every time little iPhone pulls down a byte of data. Justine sent approximately 30,000 messages last month. Does anyone see a possible conflict here?

After this apparent screw-up hit the blogs and podcasts, AT&T made an “executive decision”:

Way to go AT&T! JBB

Music: Lunch With Gina from the album “Everything Must Go” by Steely Dan

The Nets are not just slow… They’re Broke!!!

From the Onion…

Trigger Finger

Ouch… it only hurts when I do this… I finally went to the docs for my clicking right thumb. Don’t know how it happened but my “snapping tendon” is now a trigger finger (er… thumb), mysteriously on my right hand, even though I’m left handed. Ack. Hopefully anti-inflams, daily soaks in Epsom salts and the brace will effect some healing so I won’t have to have cortisone shots or surgery. Ack.

In other health news, I went with Juls to her last conference with her doctor and he has a plan for further treatment.

Technorati Tags: comedy, family, friends

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