Today’s example comes from Engadget: "Zealots lineup for Jobs’ keynote".  The word "lineup" is always a noun; it could define a company’s range of products, or a viewing gallery of suspects at the local precinct.  When used as a verb, the words "line" and "up" need to be separated.

The apostrophe at the end of "Jobs" is correct; you could get away with "Jobs’s" as well, but I agree with the poster here.  We’ll probably have to get into apostrophes at some point, but not today.

First, open any Office 2007 application (besides Outlook) and click on the nifty new “Office Orb” in the upper left-hand corner.

Second, at the bottom of the menu that appears, click on “-application name- Options” (where -application name- equals the app you happen to have open).

Third, on the default “Popular” tab of the new options window, select your color scheme from the drop down menu on the right. Please note that this option changes the color for all Office 07 apps so you can’t set each to a separate color scheme.

There you go. That’s it! You can choose from one of the follow schemes so hopefully you can find one that works with your windows theme. I’m just glad to be rid of “Zesty Cresty Blue”.

Impressions?  The gameplay was really pretty decent.  The areas were really creepy, and it’s got style like no other game.  Story seems intriguing.  It’ll play on my rig, but I’ll have to turn off some of the cooler effects.  I zapped guys with electricity, and fried some with fire, and shot some.  Seems like lots of options for destruction.

I’d like to get a feel for how it’s running on older hardware, so if anyone’s played the demo, feel free to give a report with your specs in the comments.

I’d like to toss out an official Modstomp policy, pending Rudeboy’s agreement, that we’ll post any press like this that shows gamers in a good light whenever we come across it.  Gamers are awesome people who do a lot of good in the world, and it’s time that everyone started noticing.

I don’t deny that I probably come across as a bit of a Sony hater, but lest you think it’s due to my devotion to some other gaming console, let me enlighten you. Over the years I’ve owned a good many Sony products, from calculators to car audio. And in all those years, I’ve come to find one thing in common with all those products… they’re crap (well, I guess the calculator was ok).

Let me explain a little further…

I’m a bit of a music fanatic and I enjoy my music loud and clear. Luckily, my job allows me to wear a huge set of enclosed headphones during a large portion of the day (reporting and web developing). Now, along with being a music fanatic, I’m also a bit of a tightwad. I realize that a $300 pair of Grados would be ideal, but a) I don’t have that kinda spare cash and b) even if I did, I wouldn’t want to leave those at work where any shady co-worker could walk off with em. So my budget is sub-$30. Now, I currently use an older set of Panasonic cans (RP-HT355). They sound good and they’ve been pretty bullet proof for 5 years now. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the set of Sony headphones I had previous to my current set. Within a month of purchasing a $30 pair of Sony cans the inline volume quite working (how the crap does that even break?). Aside from that though, the sound quality was awful. It sounded like listening to my tunes through one of those cup and string phones you made when you were a kid. I could have gotten better sound from a pair of $4.99 Radio Shack p.o.s. headphones. Strike 1!

For strike two let me just say that Sony car audio componants aren’t called Xplode for no reason. That’s pretty much exactly what they do after 4 or 5 months. Volume knobs quit working. LED backlights die (wtf?). The crappy paint used on the buttons disolves when it comes in contact with human skin juices. And in my case, the whole left channel just dies. It was by far one of the single most horribly eye-opening gadget buying experiences of my life. I now own a Clarion head unit which has been one of my best gadget experiences to-date.

Anyway, I won’t go on further, but I can say that the list doesn’t end with strike two. I eventually learned that if I want a quility peice of electronics that will last, I should steer wide of anything Sony. So now you know the history behind my deep seated Sony-haterism. And apparently the folks in Australia agree with me.

I realize that everybody has their own pet peeves (Zarch’s happens to be stupid real estate ads with happy couples smiling and laughing in front of their new dream home), but these ads in particular just rub me the wrong way. I also realize that through the use of firewalls and firefox plugins most ads can be totally removed from the surfing experience, but in many cases I’m using computers where I have little control. Also, there are times when I actually want to see what’s being advertised on my sites so I have to leave ads enabled. I just wish I didn’t have to deal with 4 slightly out of sync and obviously gay cowboys dancing at the top of the screen while I’m trying to read my email.

While looking for a picture to help get my point across it became apparent that LowerMyBills.com is by far the most guilty party in this trend, but I also blame apple and their stupid Ipod ads. I’m pretty sure the Ipod ads came before any of these craptacular banners. I realize that much like reality tv, these ads are probably going to be around for a while. I just wish there was a way to arrange a meeting in a dark alley with the creator of this garbage. I’d also like to kick the creators of MTV’s Real World in the head as well. I blame them for ushering in this age of reality tv spewtum that we now have to deal with on a nightly basis.

Rant over.

The permanent list is located in the forums HERE so please feel free to add anything you think is a ‘must go’ sort of item, action, behaviour, etc.

To start the list, here’s most of my first entry (which can be seen at the above forum link):

You see a lot of custom paint jobs on cars these days, but I gotta say, you’re not foolin me into thinking that your car is actually made of diamond plate steel and that you just drive soooo fast that the paint is starting to peel back and reveal the diamond plate beneath.

You’re also not foolin me into thinking that your car is really built from discarded circuit boards and that, due to an unfortunate run-in with some jagged edge that happened to only catch the paint on your door (on both sides somehow), that the circuitry beneath is now out there for all to see.

I’m not falling for it when you try to convince me that there’s some Hell-Spawned demon under your hood who’s managed to claw a few gaping holes into your hood and is now peering out at me as he lies in wait for the perfect opportunity to spring forth and devour anyone stupid enough to pull up next to you at a red light and rev their engine.

Now, I’ve got no problem with custom paint jobs. Some well-placed racing stripes are almost always a nice addition. I think gigantic yellow sponsership stickers are stupid, but a car always looks better with a sweet custom paint job. Unless, of course, you go to the trouble to make it look like some misfortune has befallen your beloved vehicle, only to reveal what lies just beneath what would have been a sweet paint job.

This trend isn’t even limited to dumb-ass civics either. It’s now starting to bleed over into the ‘ridiculously lifted super-duty monster diesel this things never going off-road with my 36 inch mudders’ truck category. But that’s another ‘Things that must go’ entry.

Here are a couple examples of this retardedness in action…

Now, I’m not talking about slamming the gas pedal to the floor breifly to prep my tires for a screaming fast run down the quarter mile. Today I’m referring to the type of burnout that makes you say ‘I CAN’T FREAKIN TAKE IT ANYMORE AND I WANT SOMEONE TO JAM A LETTER OPENER THROUGH MY BRAIN STEM TO MAKE IT STOP’, or at least something similar to that.

To be fair, I don’t have it all that bad. I’ve got an ok job with a reasonable stress level. I live on 1234 Nowhere St. in the dead-center of your typical middle-class American suburb. I’ve got 2 kids, a house, 2 cars and a motorcycle and none of my stuff has been recently spread across five square miles by the wrath of mother nature. But still…

I just seem to be having one of those weeks where you wonder where you’re headed and how the hell you ended up there in the first place. Where every day holds the same prospect of exciting adventures in the land of monotony. Where you can’t drag your sorry butt out of bed until 10 because you loathe the idea of going in to work to do the same stupid chores (that nobody seems to care about until they don’t get done) for the gazillionth time. Yaknow… one of those weeks.

Most likely I just need to spend some good quality time playing Counter Strike so I can kill and destroy and blow crap up. Unfortunately, I don’t think the hour or two I may find to play this week will quite do the trick. Maybe the answer is to just take a week off and do nothing but play video games for 20 hours a day. Although I doubt my wife would support me in that endeavor. I think the ultimate answer is to find a job that doesn’t bore me out of my skull so that I actually enjoy coming to work again. I just need to start sending applications to places like Eidos, Rockstar, Blizzard, Valve, EA, etc, etc, etc, the list goes on and on and on and on….

Well, that’s enough ranting for today. Hope y’all have a great day and I’ll c-ya online this weekend.

After I uninstalled Quicktime, the install of the Creative software went without a hitch. I’d like to believe there’s nothing to this, but in a world of white plastic and hip twenty-somethings rocking out in public to the top 40 on their iPods, nothing is certain anymore.

Anybody else have this problem? Fire an email off to me.

I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this phenomena, but I first encountered it when I would log into Battle.net while playing Diablo. It didn’t matter when I logged on, there would always be somebody trying to raise hackles by telling everyone their mom said hi last night. I never figured out why. As time went on and I started spending more time online, I noticed it more and more. It occurs in chat rooms, forums, game rooms, etc. Everywhere one or more people join to discuss anything online, out comes the potty talk.

I’ve tried to figure out why this happens, but all I can figure is that the anonymity of the internet allows people to cast off the shackles of oppression that society has forced upon them. Once people log on, they’re able to let their true self out of the cage they’re trapped in when associating with ‘real’ people face to face.

Personally I find this trend a little scary. If this is the ‘true’ face of society, we’re screwed! I’m not sure if this bugs anyone else as much as it bugs me, but on behalf of everyone out in cyberspace that finds these smack talkers more than a little annoying… if you’re one of those out there talking smack in every chat room you log onto…

STOP IT!!!