BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

The shooting in that school is super tragic, and each detail that they find next makes me a little sicker when thinking about the whole thing.

That being said, I’m already seeing the media bite on this a little to hard, so I’m predicting by this weekend they will have found way in which to use this situation to reflect negatively on myspace.

Media types like the synergy of negative things happening to teenagers, mixed with the places teenagers like to “hang out”, as if congregation of people under 20 is a bad thing.

That is my little anti-media rant for today….carry on with your normal blog reading now.

Current Mood:  contemplative

I’m afraid of taking pride in myself. I’m afraid of this because I know it is a deceptively hard thing to see. I know that lots of people who have pride issues have no idea that they are taking pride in themselves. This scares me as my tendency is to lean in that direction, and I’m afraid I can’t see where I would be crossing a line.

I also know that it is hard to nail down self-centeredness. Lots of times I’ve pointed out where I think some people are being self-centered (either to them directly or someone else while bitching about them), but then thought about how if I applied my reasoning to myself I would probably come up lacking.
( implications )

If you listen to Dave Schmelzer preach about having fights in relationships he always says something I’ve found profound in the last couple of years. (September 10, 2006 - a good example of one of these sermons)

He says “feel your feelings, but don’t trust them.” And usually follows up with advice about leading into a conversation to resolve conflict by stating a feeling instead of a judgment or by placing blame.

This is an idea that is aimed at the people who feel like they are superior to someone else because they refrain from being emotional in an argument. He says if you completely ignore your feelings, or you don’t respond at all to your feelings you are most likely just silently, or not so silently, judging the other person instead of seeing where you can actually being to make things better.

That is me.

( How this has effected me )
Well, now I have publicly stated one of my deep fears. That is oddly liberating.

Since everyone seems to be all talking about important stuff like Pope’s and wars and such, I thought I would lend more of a completely trivial note to my corner of the blogosphere.

I can not wait to see the Nintendo Wii in action in my living room.

For those of you who don’t follow the whole console video game scene, the Nintendo Wii is nintendo’s ‘next gen’ product, and will compete directly against the PS3 and XBOX 360. Last Thursday Nintendo announced that this would be seeing a North American release date of November 19th, and a price tag of $249 which includes a sports game.

The reason I’m pumped about this is that $249 is much less than the XBOX 360, and you could almost buy an XBOX and a Wii for how much they are going to charge for a PS3. Unfortunately my wife informed me that this is still to much for us to buy one particularly soon, but at $249, it is much more likely that I could get one when compared to other possibilities, and I like nintendo games better than most other games.

The super exiting part of the Wii is the new controller. It is a remote that you can hold in one hand, and it detects where the remote is pointing, if the remote moving, and what position the remote is in. So, for baseball games, you hold the remote, and mimic the action of throwing a ball to pitch, and then swing it like a bat to make the character swing. In a driving game, you hold the remote on each end, so it looks like it is laying on its side, and then you literally move the remote the same way you would a steering wheel, and the car turns.

I think a lot more people will enjoy playing video games, and it is exciting that they are packaging a sports game because it will really showcase the potential of the remote. I’m hoping to really enjoy some multi-player games with people who would normally never pick up a video game (like my dad), and at the same time, explore some new depth in some of the classic ‘hard-core video gamer’ type of video games.

Also, they are going to allow you to buy classic NES, SNES, and N64 games over the internet and play them on the Wii for $5, $8, and $10 respectively.

It already sold out of pre-orders on Amazon, so I’m hoping whenever I can afford one, there will be one available for me to pick up. And then, there will be video game parties….oh yes, there will be parties and tournaments.

Ubuntu is a word in some African language that means “Humanity to Others”.

It is also the name of the distribution of Linux that I use.

It was created by a South African guy who got rich on the internet boom, and he is working hard to get African countries who have the means to build computer labs to use it.

Anyway, here is a brief article on what he thinks about Africa using open source, and what Microsoft has to say in response.

http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1200011.php/Millionaire_cosmonaut_takes_on_Microsoft

My favorite line, and what sums up my ideals about using open source to promote African countries growing to be economically competative on the world stage is:

Nhlanhla Mabaso, manager of the Open Source Center at South Africa’s government-sponsored Meraka technology institute, says open source is about using Africa’s scant resources wisely, and about systems designed for Africans by Africans.

‘We missed the industrial age, now we are in the information age and we don’t want to miss that too,’ Mabaso told Reuters.