First a matter of categorization. This is a problem solution because it is a solution to a problem. And it is finally a tutorial, but that term is used very loosely as few would be stupid enough to replicate the forthcoming description of procedure.

So about a year ago I bought the G15, the great glowing keyboard with programmable keys. Unfortunately I spilt some water into the top and the warranty has expired. After its little drinky drink the 4 R C and left Alt discontinued service. So because I didn’t want to pay for a new one i.e. I’m a cheap bastard, and I enjoy this keyboard very much, I decided to try and make it functional once more.

The idea was to take an old keyboard and put it in this one to use the broken keys on it. Trying to take two broken and turn them into one functioning was my only real option with the only downside of taking up two ports. Thus began the quest for the extra keyboard, I had three extra but one was ps/2, one usb (both of which were broken), and a an older one which has a converter to ps/2. (the googlenet said it was AT/XT but all else I could find on it was starwars related). I tried to obtain another so that I could complete this little experiment in frankenstiening, however certain persons were not exactly helpfull. I needed a usb keyboard because ps/2 isn’t hotswapable and as old as

this one is I would need it should this ruin both keyboards. Click more to continue…

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Popularity: 92% [?]

As most of you already know, Sam and I have a pet lizard. He caught him over the weekend while I was gone. It took us four days, but yesterday, we finally got some food for him. We had to go ant hunting, but it was worth it. We caught around 20 ants, but Lizzy is blind and can’t see the ants unless they’re a cm away from his face. Otherwise they just crawl over, under, and all around him. Hopefully he’ll learn how to eat once he gets bigger.

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To update Emo’s:

So anyways, instead of doing my freakin’ Asian American Studies essay which is due in 5.5 hours today, we decided to go bowling. I found it freakin’ hilarious how everyone kept trying to say Harpreet’s name. With the adjective thing, emo used Happy Harpreet, which sounded like Hoppy Hapeet at the time. I said Super Sam. Regrettably, I didn’t say Sexy Sam or something cooler like Somethin’ Sam. Anyways, we bowled and everything and I was suckin’ ass real bad. Like my lips were all over this guy’s fat, hairy ass. Then, at like the 5th frame, I started my cheating method. I’d roll the ball and shove it onto the lane instead of throwing it like normal. It’d go hella straight and shiite so it was working pretty well. At the beginning of the tenth frame, Hoppy had 91 points, while I had 75. We both had strikes and this was it. The moment of who gets a dollar. Hoppy screwed up his strike and got a nine. I went up and guttered immediately. It was horrible, with all the pressure on me. Second try for a spare, and I got a nine. It was over. I let out a primal, guttural wale and the world crashed down on me. Hoppy was all grins and evil laughy. I reached over into my back pocket slowly feeling for that papery feeling. I pulled out the dollar…farted on it and handed it to Hoppy. He doesn’t even know I did it and won’t until he sees this post in a while. We ended up forkin’ over a dollar fiddy each, but I didn’t wanna give up more than a dollar so I told preet to give up the dollar he just won for both of us. So in the end, he ended up paying fiddy cents for me and I only lost that much. In other words, I’m rich, BIATCH!

Popularity: 28% [?]

Yesterday Sam and I went bowling with his sister, Aileen. She told us that some other people she knew there, but she wouldn’t tell us who. Sam suspected it was this Asian Christian group she made him hang out with last weekend. When we asked her, she said not to worry because we would get our own lane so it wouldn’t matter. So we made the biggest mistake of the day and decided to go.

Once we got there, it was decided that our religious freedoms were worth less than $6 (how much it costs to play on a lane) and we decided to just play a game with the Christians. “That ok I guess,” I thought to myself, “they can’t be that bad. They’re just people like the rest of us.” Boy was I wrong.

The first one we made contact with was Mrs. Wong 2.0 but twenty times worse. She made us introduce ourselves to everyone and then she made all of her friends go around in a circle and say they’re names. I guess it wasn’t that bad, it was a nice-not-so-fast-way of getting things started but whatever. But then these other two people came and the chick got the brilliant idea of going back around in a circle, saying our name along with an adjective that had the same first letter as our first name and our lowest bowling score. It was like the orientation queerness all over again. Everyone had shitty low scores and there I was, with my low score of 1 0 fucking 2. I told them I only played one game before and that that was my only score, but it made it awkward seeing as how they were all better than me.

So after half on hour of that bull, we finally started to bowl. Aileen wanted us to make a bet where lowest score buys highest score a drink, but Sam and I knew it would just turn into a battle of who wasn’t going to buy Aileen a drink because she’s cheatingly good. So instead, Sam and I wagered a dollar on the game. Maybe Sam can update you guys on what happened during the game, like me starting of with 2 points in my first two tries, but in the end, I won 119-101 and I got my $1, but then I lost the dollar because we had to pay the Christians $1.50 for playing with them.

New High Record: 119

[Update]: Now that I have some more time, I guess I’ll go into more detail about what happened. Pretty much, it was queer all around. There was some queerness to the left, queerness to the right, queerness down the middle and queerness all night. There was no, “YOU SUCK!” when someone went up, there was just “Wooo! Yea! Good Job!” Fuck, if I hear someone tell me “Good Job” when I hit one pin in two tries, I’m going to shove the bowling ball down their throat. Debra, the Mrs. Wong 2.0 chick, she was the leader of the queer pack. I wish my name was harder to say because the entire time she was going “Go Harpreeeeeeet!” Comon, there are two “E”s, not fucking forty bitch. Then at the end, she was like yea, you guys can hang out with other groups too if you want cuz this is the somethingqueergroup but there are other groups that bowl too. Thanks Debra, thanks for giving us permission to not be your bowling buddies, thanks a bunch.

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This is our first of many “Davis Adventures” posts. We’ll be posting pretty much anything cool we catch on film.

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Watch it here. Download the mp3 here.
It wasn’t that funny but they did a really good job.

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Title: Trainspotting

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald, Peter Mullan

Director: Danny Boyle

Plot: Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends.

Review: An older film, but it has scored very well on imdb and I have often heard that it is an “excellent” movie, as well as the fact that it was directed by the same guy who made 28 Days Later, which I really enjoyed, motivated me to check out this movie. I was wary of it because to me it seemed to be another Requiem for a Dream, a movie about drugs that was highly praised but that I didn’t really understand nor think it was all that great.

And as it turns out, I was right. Now don’t mistake me as this movie isn’t really all that similar to Requiem for a Dream, only in that even though they are highly regarded I didn’t really care for either movie. Which I guess mainly is because of the subject matter, as I myself am not really into the whole drug scene. I understand the appeal of drugs but I never felt that movies like this which “exposes” addicts’ plights, were never necessary. It is just that we get it already, drugs are bad. And even though this probably isn’t what this movie is trying to show, I just thought that this was kind of pointless.

I think that another problem is that this movie was praised for really tapping what the youth drug scene when it was made, and watching it now I can’t really appreciate that aspect.

The acting was pretty good as the main characters where all pretty well drawn but it still came to the point that their interactions were ultimately pointless. Forgive me for not putting it in a spoiler box, but as it is fairly vague I think I can get away with it, but in the end nothing that has really happen meant anything and it ends extremely open endedly. So I didn’t enjoy getting there and then the ending lets me down as well.

It was interesting but I just didn’t enjoy this movie all that much.

* * * * * * _ _ _ _ (6 out of ten)

Popularity: 27% [?]

Title: Night at the Museum

Starring: Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, Jake Cherry, Ricky Gervais
Director: Shawn Levy

Plot: A newly recruited night security guard at the Museum of Natural History discovers that an ancient curse causes the animals and exhibits on display to come to life and wreak havoc.

Review: To enjoy this movie have only one piece of advice, don’t go in expecting a really good movie. As long as you just go into it just to be entertained and nothing more, you will be.

My first major concern about it was that it was going to be just a movie pulley for a younger audience, and though for the most part this was true, there was still enough to keep me interested and there were some “coy” moments for the more adult viewers (i.e. “Good lord man, why are you slapping you monkey?”).

There was plenty that was fine about this movie, but some things that I took issue with I just couldn’t let go of. One such thing was the apparent immediacy with which Larry accepts the predicament he is in. In real life one would, unless already highly delusional, would be a little more surprised about what was happening to him, I would think. Another such thing was the rage and anger that the pharaoh seemed to have, until he was let out, at which point he became merely a “figurehead”, and what I couldn’t figure out was that with all his magic he was still content to stay at the museum.

Though it was aimed at the younger audience, I felt that the humor was generally appealing because of the manner in which Stiller was able to deliver it. In this movie he was gave a very good performance and I just enjoyed him as an actor. I thought that the rest of the characters were also well done and I especially thought that the character of the curator, portrayed by Ricky Gervais, was very funny. I delighted in his half speak, and I thought it was a strong performance.

I think that you may enjoy this and it would be an adequate distraction for a bit.

* * * * * * * _ _ _ (7 out of ten)

Popularity: 25% [?]

Title: Half Life 2: Episode One
Publisher: Valve
Developer: Valve corporation (steam)
Genre: FPS
Platform: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Rating: M

Review: Here goes my first review of a video game, Half Life 2: Episode One. I will start by getting what I did not like about it out of the way first, because, for the most part, I have only good things to say. The first thing that I did not like was the whole “lets not give the player a weapon for a really long time” thing. When you first start off you have only the gravity gun and even though it is super powered for a while it wears away too soon and I don’t see what would have been the harm in at least having a pistol or something. For some reason it annoyed me much more than when it happened here, because I mean this time Alex gives you the gravity gun, and what you can’t carry an extra pistol for me? And it makes sense that the dissipate when you use the over powered gravity gun as they did in Half Life 2, but Alex is killing people too, where do their guns go. But this was a minor annoyance and was still pretty enjoyable, it just didn’t make sense to me.

Another thing that I didn’t like was the lighting, because while it was more realistic, sometimes if you walked from a dark place to a white room it would be all shiny and over bright. Let me use pictures to explain.

Eventually it would return to normal but I just found it annoying for some reason. Like there was this time you have to shoot a gunship down, but the sky is so bright you can’t see a thing.

That is pretty much all I can complain about.

As for the good things? It excelled all over the place.

The game play was pretty much the same as it was in Half Life 2, but this time Alex is with you on your journey and makes the trek much more “involved” I guess is the word. Because in Half Life 2 it is always just you and there was sometimes a feeling of its just you, but with Alex there it adds to the feeling that you really are doing this.

It looked as good as ever and there were a nice large range of environments and locations. The reactor room I thought was especially cool. The updated character animation I don’t was huge but I guess the best changes are those which you don’t notice.

There were some cool additions, like the Zombine and the torches, but essentially you are going against the same foes here.

I forgot to mention in things I didn’t like the length of the game, and while it was shorter than I would have liked, I thought that it was long enough to enjoy and it was a devastatingly short game which left me longing and longing for it to be longer.

The story here was great, and I loved the chance to further develop the adventures of Gordon Freeman.

Probably my favorite new thing was the commentary nodes throughout the maps; one can be seen playing in a picture above. I always love watching commentary on movies and the like and the opportunity to do it in a game was very enjoyable.

This was a very fun game and I would really suggest it if you enjoyed Half Life 2.

* * * * * * * * * _ (9 out of 10)

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Title: Desperation

Starring: Tom Skerritt, Ron Perlman, Steven Weber, Annabeth Gish

Director: Mick Garris

Plot: When a sheriff arrests a writer, a family, a couple, and a hitchhiker and throws them in a jail cell in the deserted town of Desperation, they must fight for their lives.

Review: Desperation is the two hundred ten minute made for TV adaptation of the Stephen King book of the same name. The short version is that, while this was interesting and had some decent acting, it just fell flat with too many flaws for me to overlook.

Just to get it out of the way, I absolutely hated the little boy; both character and actor. It was probably a combination of aspects of the performance, the fact that he was portrayed by a horrible actor is part of it, I mean it can’t be easy being a child actor among adults, but come on. The other reason that I probably didn’t like him was the annoyingly integral part of the plot that their whole salvation lay in him being told what to do by god. I’m not sure who this crappy plot device was pulled off in the book, and here it was almost redeemed by the use of the sister’s ghost. I expected this to be poor, but it was actually pretty good, however the “flashback” of the movie about what happened was unacceptable; I don’t know how to describe it, besides just being plain crappy. I also don’t know why, but it was easier for me to accept that some ancient being was taking control of people than it was to accept that god had some vested interest in telling this boy to make all these people blow up Tak. Not to beat a dead horse, but even just God’s guidance would have been ok, but the arrogance and certainty with which this boy decided he was being told by god.

I know that I stressed that point, but it was probably the most annoying and unenjoyable parts of the movie, and probably was the downfall of the movie for me. Other things that I did not like were the poor acting aside from a few. Ron Perlman did a good job as the sheriff but we saw so little of him. Other good performance were on the part of Tom Skerritt and Steven Weber among a few others, the rest were either weak performance or they suffered too much from what they all did, with so many characters a few would be understandably underdeveloped, however they all seemed to be lacking even though this was much longer than a normal movie.

I wouldn’t recommend this because, while there were some standouts, the rest seemed unimagined and unmemorable.

* * * * _ _ _ _ _ _ (4 out of ten)

Popularity: 25% [?]