by Matt | Dec 5, 2008 | Personal, Reviews
I’m a frugal mother-fucker. I don’t like to spend money on myself, with the notable exception of video games, which I consider “therapeutic entertainment”. I wear jeans that have been “busted” because I don’t want to buy new ones for myself. The same goes for shoes. I buy shoes once every five years. The same can be said about lunch. I rarely go out to lunch (on my own dime) because I don’t see it as nessisary. Yes, food itself is necessary, but I don’t see why I need a “nice lunch” when a simple PB&J will do. Or Ramen noodles.
I ate ramen in highschool, college, and now at the office. I’ve sampled every flavor from every major manufacturer. I’ve had ramen in packets, cups, bowls, trays and even frozen “gourmet” ramen in cute little mock-Chinese tack-out containers. I can say, with near perfect certainty, that I’ve had whatever variety of noodle you’re currently thinking of.
So much so, I’ve started rating them. What better way to remind myself which ones I like, than to give them a number. I won’t bore you with a long list, but I can give you some examples. For starters, I can tell you that I prefer the premium “noodles in a tray” variety from Nissin’s Chow Mein line over the more traditional Maruchan. When it comes to dry noodle packets though, Maruchan is still king. In the more obscure categories, containing things like Thai or Vietnamese noodles, I prefer the Simply Asia brand of Pad Thai over things like Thai Kitchen or Taste of Thai. Frozen entrees are also an interesting category, even within brands there can be huge discrepancies between flavors. For example, in the Tai Pei frozen meals product line, the Teriyaki Chicken is quite eatable. The General Tso and Cashew Chicken are absolutely not.
The upside to all this is that even the most expensive asian dish I’ve purchased over the years is cheaper than going down the street and getting a hamburger. I think the “premium” dishes run about $2-2.50. The packets of dry ramen will run your about $0.15. In economic hard times, you can’t beat lunch for $0.15. I think stock in a noodle company is about the only stock I’d buy these days.
(PS: If anyone is vaguely interested, I could actually make a list, complete with ratings, but I’ll hold off unless there is a demand for vast amounts of noodle knowledge that I don’t know about)
Matt out.
by Matt | Nov 28, 2008 | Web
The Nation is back under my control. Yahoo was actually fairly helpful. I called their Small Business/Domains 1-800 number, got right to a person, explained what was going on and about 20 minutes later it was back under my account. I changed the DNS servers, locked the domain and now we just wait for it to propagate across the interwebs. Not that there’s anything there to see since I had to wipe the whole directory, but it’s the principal of the thing.
Anyway, I hope everyone’s turkey day was good. I’m still full 24 hours later, and the History chanel is making me sleepy. I think I might just nap until Monday.
Matt out.
by Matt | Nov 26, 2008 | Aggravation
Well, with a little help from JTN, no help whatsoever from my web host and a little digging, I figured out what was going on. Some Russian script kiddies were injecting PHP files laden with proxies and redirects into my site in nearly every single directory, including WordPress. Since the melicious files were named things like “admin.php”, “config.php”, etc, it screwed up my WordPress install when it overwrote the normal files with the same names.
My host basically told me it was my own fault for running an insecure PHP application (wordpress) and that I’d just have to clean up the mess myself.
I’m typically very careful with my permissions and settings, so I’m still trying to work out how they got in, again with no help from my host. Luckily I had a nearly complete WordPress backup (which you’re seeing now) so I’m OK in terms of data loss. I’m still pretty pissed about it, but there’s not much I can do except try and prevent it in the future.
Also, SavvyNation is gone. That’s the more pressing of the two problems. My DNS settings were changed and it’s now pointing to a parked Yahoo page. I’ve sent multiple emails to my host and haven’t gotten a response yet. The owner/admin information is still mine, but the DNS servers are changed. I don’t know what the point of that would be. I would figure if someone is trying to steal or hijack the page, they’d just take the whole thing. Why change the DNS to Yahoo and leave everything else the same? It’s really starting to piss me off that I can’t get a hold of anyone at my host either. I realize it’s the day before Thanksgiving, but seriously, if someone steals my domain because someone took today off, there will be death.
So, to you dickless vodka soaked fucks in Russia, I hope you freeze to death you fucking sacks of sub-human garbage. Rot in your fucking fur hats. Douche-Nozzles.
by Matt | Nov 25, 2008 | Aggravation
Seems that some douchlord decided to trash this website, the wordpress install as well as the same for SavvyNation. Various files were CHMOD’ed to 777, the owners changed to “99” (whatever that means) and then the htaccess files were changed so I couldn’t get back in. Luckily I have a backup for this domain. SavvyNation isn’t as lucky and for some reason, it’s redirecting to a domain parking service. I checked with my host as well as registrar and nothing was changed there, so I’m at a loss as to why its redirecting. I’m not pleased. I’ll get it straitened out but it’s not something I wanted to deal with today. I’ll let everyone know when everything is back to normal.
by Matt | Nov 6, 2008 | Culture, Games
Management of time is crucial during the busy holiday gaming season. So much so that it’s nearly an art form. A constant war must be waged between wallet, free time and the game of choice. Rarely a restructuing of events occures. Most major decisions regarding purchases have been made long before now. This year unfortunatly, is a little different.
In previous seasons, developers have released games for the holidays in close proximity to each other but not on top of each other. For example, last years mega hits Call of Duty 4 and Assasins Creed hit in November and December respectively. That gave me time to play both.
This year, apparently the gaming gods have seen it nessisary to launch every major title in Novemeber, save a couple for October who were in turn released on top of themselves. So, we’ve already seen Fable 2, Fallout 3, FarCry 2 and DeadSpace, all within a week. Those are already hard choices I’ve had to make. I’d love to try all of them. This week we get Gears of War 2, quickly followed by Call of Duty, Mirror’s Edge, Need for Speed, Tomb Raider, Left 4 Dead, 2 different snowboarding games AND Prince of Persia at the end of the month. Then, nothing. A completely blank December.
I have to admit, I’m a little confused by that. Nothing right before Christmas? No one saved a big release for the “after Thanksgiving” shopping season? Really?
Does that seem odd to anyone else?
Either way, I’ve made my choices and changed one of them significantly. After playing the new Call of Duty beta and being very underwhelmed by it, I’ve decided to leave that for an after Christmas sale purchase. I had very high hopes for it but it seems little more than a COD4 mod with less impressive weapons and slower game play. I’m also very much done with the WWII genre, at least for the moment. Need for Speed and Mirror’s Edge will also get the axe, but not for a lack of effort. The Mirror’s Edge demo was interesting and proved it a valid concept. Alternatively, I think I’m going to pick up Gears this week in their place. Something I was going to wait until December to get. It’s not that I’m expecting it to be great, but it’ll pass the time until Left 4 Dead, my true choice for the season. Then, my next big purchase won’t be until Skate 2 in January. Everything else will have to be picked up later, probably while on sale. It’s not that I don’t want them, but seriously, how would I find the time to play something like Fallout if I haven’t finished Fable 2 yet and I’ll be battling zombie hordes inside of two weeks. That’s a very small window to squeeze 80+ hours of RPG into.
Anyway, it’s not like it matters. Everyone has their own list. What are you guys excited for? What will you be playing between now and the holidays?
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