Behemoth Droppings

Ok, I know that sounds weird but let me explain. I just had my first bowl of Trix cereal in over 16 years. And I plan on having a bowl of Cocoa Puffs in the morning. Kellog came out with cereal that had 1/3 less sugar than it’s normal counterpart, but it is still too much sugar for people with type 1 diabetes to eat (which I have, for anyone reading this that doesn’t know). I’ve been a diabetic since I was 7 and have had to eat bland, tasteless cereal ever since. Well, General Mills has come out with three of their staple cereals that have 3/4 less sugar than it’s counterpart. The cereals are Trix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Cocoa Puffs. All three of these are low enough in sugar for diabetics to eat. Leslie and I were at Kroger and I just happened to see them. I checked the nutrition label not expecting it to be low enough in sugar for me to eat, but was pleasently suprised. I thought I was going to cry. This has been the product I have wanted to have in sugar-free form most. I was in shock. I was even more suprised at how good it tasted. You can’t tell a difference at all. In fact, in blind taste tests performed by General Mills the results were equal. Just as many people chose the low-sugar cereal as the regular! Of course, this is all thanks to Splenda. I have a link to the article on General Mills website. One thing that does bother me is that they say the reason they did this was the shift in consumer wants. Basically, the low-carb dieters are the reason. It upsets me because companies are willing to make these products for people who have a choice in what they eat, and not because of diabetics who have no choice but to eat certain foods. No matter, though, I am still happy that this day has finally come. I can’t wait to see which products come out with a sugar-free form in the future!

My brother, who spent nine months in Iraq at the beginning of the war, emailed this to me. I thought it was interesting. These are the facts about Iraq!

My question is, where was this website when I was in college? It would have helped me not choose several bad professors. Anyway, this is a website where students can go and rate professors from almost any college or university. It rates the professor not by how much they were liked, but their effectiveness and the ease of the class. I would recommend any student go and check it out.

www.ratemyprofessors.com

George Lucas has finally revealed the name of the last movie. It will be titled Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. As soon as it was released, the George Lucas bashers all came out to make their voices heard again. I sure hope this movie doesn’t stink like the last two. Why did he have to change the original trilogy? It’s stupid that he waits four years at a time to release the movies. Yoda is supposed to be a muppet. Sound familiar? I’m sure we all know people, or are those people, who love to bash George Lucas. But why? Well, I think I finally have the answer. It is because he is a marketing genious, and rich. Think Bill Gates. Ok, we have to wait four years for each of the movies. This builds drama, excitement, and suspense. Also, as Leslie pointed out, it allows him to make the movies the way he wants them to be. Why, if the first two episodes stunk so bad, do the people who complain keep going and seeing these movies? It’s because they don’t stink. Episode I had to build the characters up, so it was a little slower. But it was still a good movie. Episode II was just great. Good story, good action, and seeing Yoda throw down was awesome. Now what about the people who complain about Lucas changing the original movies. Well, first off, they are his movies to change. Second, if you don’t like them, just watch the originals. And about Yoda and the digital scenes he added, do you really think if he had the technology then that Yoda would have been a muppet? All in all, the movies are great. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have friends, or ourselves, camping out the night before the tickets go on sale just to say we saw the first showing.

Ok, this is too funny. One of the ladies Leslie works with told her to go to this site. They have a little flash clip of Bush and Kerry singing a ‘different’ version of This Land is Your Land. It doesn’t matter whether you are a democrat or republican, this is funny.

www.jibjab.com

After about a week of doing nothing on my spare time but try to get an old game to play on Windows XP, I FINALLY HAVE IT WORKING!!! That’s right, I finally got Stonekeep to run on my computer. How?, you might ask. Well, let me tell you. The first problem was that I was using DosBox v0.60, and I needed v0.61. This alone, however, didn’t make it work. But there was no possible way to get it to work on the older version, so it was a step in the right direction. Then, when I ran the game, I had to add ‘win95′ after the .bat command to run the game (for those of you not familiar with DOS, which is about 99% of the people who come to my site, sorry). So it looked like this: sk win95 Now came the tricky part. This wasn’t the hard part, that was fixed. The tricky part was that the sound was skipping. I checked the config file, and there were cpu cycle and frame skip commands. I upped the cpu cycles and frame skips, and imagine this, it ran fine. So now, my game is finally running. So enough about this, I’m gonna go play my game. And remember, if you have a DOS game to play, get the latest version of DosBox. It’s a wonderful thing.

In my continuing frustration with some things that I can’t get to work (my game and to be able to comment a word longer than 49 characters), I forgot to take the apostrophe off of some code I was working with. This turned the code into a comment, and wouldn’t let it run. Since I was working on it at 4 in the morning, I didn’t think to test it. I thought I had just put it back to normal. I was wondering why nobody had commented anything in a few days, then Leslie told me today that neither she nor Lori were able to comment. So I go check, and there it is plain as day. Oh well, it’s fixed now.

The Good: I finally got around to having the Bible verse at the bottom of each page come up with a random verse. Before, it just had my favorite verse (121st Psalm).

The Bad: I still can’t get my game to play. I’ve tried VDMSound, DosBox, BootDisks, and the stupid compatibility mode for Win XP. Also, the journal won’t let anyone put in a word of 50 characters (thanks Chris, for noticing that). I can actually get it to let you put in more, but it doesn’t like to stay within the parameters I set. It’ll just go right out of the table and off the screen. Oh well, I’ll eventually get that fixed.

The Ugly: How James and I look after you mess around with our picture. I put in a fun little program under my pictures page that lets you warp a picture. Go on and check it out. But beware, if I have a picture of you your probably going to see it there someday.

Hey, that’s alliteration…Anyway, I have to say that I don’t like second shift. Not that I mind working from 2-10, because that means I don’t have to get up at 5 A.M., but it means I never get to see my wife. She works 8-5, so when I get home she’s ready for bed. Then, when I get up she’s already gone. I think we’ve gotten to see each other about 30 minutes a day this week. I’m ready to go back to first shift…I think I’ll get used to getting up in the morning again. College kinda broke me of that habit.

Ok, I now have my first real complaint about Windows XP. My other “complaint” was that Windows XP doesn’t include a personal web server. The reason this isn’t a real complaint is that it does, if you get the professional version. It’s just not included in the home version. That’s what I get for trying to cut costs. Anyway, the real complaint is that there’s no DOS. I know, DOS is ancient, but it is required to play some older games. I’ve been trying to play Stonekeep, which is a great game. Problem is, I can’t play it without DOS. For those of you saying, “Well, what about the commad prompt?”, let me explain. The command prompt basically simulates DOS. It lacks the underlying code necessary to run DOS based programs. Also, the compatability option to run programs in Win 95 mode doesn’t do much. Or, if it does, I’ve yet to see it. I tried downloading a DOS emulator called DOSBox, which is really cool by the way, but I am still having problems with Stonekeep. However, if you have DOS games I strongly recommend checking out DOSBox, it’s a very good program. I don’t know if I’ll ever get Stonekeep to run, but I’ll keep trying. With that being said let me say this, Windows XP is the most stable and reliable Windows OS to date. I have yet to have it crash on me once. I also need to apologize to everyone that comes to my site with the exception of maybe Chris and my brother, Chuck. You probably don’t know what I’m talking about, or just don’t care…Sorry.