Sorry folks with an e-mail subscription, you're going to get a lot of junk all at once.  I've been updating my Blogger, but I keep forgetting to move them over here, so here you go!

I can't have just a pure rant blog for today, so here's some joy for you.

Sins of a Solar Empire is ridiculously good.  Everything everyone has said about it being amazing is exactly true.  Buy it.  I played it for four hours this afternoon and I still don't know where they went.  It's difficult too, the AI definitely knows how to hit you.

Courtesy of Digg today:  Romney has dropped out of the race.  Well technically his campaign is suspended, but same thing. 

Clinton dumped $5 Million of her "own" money into her campaign, Barak wants to know where it came from.

A bunch of folks have signed a petition to have a medieval painting of Muhammed in one of Wikipedia's articles.  Wikipedia have refused, citing neutrality to all parties.  Kudos Wikipedia.

Michael Moore has moral objections to voting for Clinton. 

This should say something.Bush has eliminated one of the last government oversight positions, taking us one step closer to fascism.

Apparently, despite everyone yelling "Duh!  It's torture!" the Whitehouse is going to approve waterboarding as a legal interrogation technique.

This article is awesome.  Cute but deadly.

And just for fun, one of my favorite GI Joe PSA's . . .

I have this horrible habit of starting games and not actually completing them.  So what have I played in the last week?  Here's the list.

- I started modding the crap out of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and playing it again.  I used the Improved Frostcrag Spire mod to give myself a kickin' house and grabbed a thousand or so armor and weapon mods.  I have this dream of one day collecting them all and having them adorn a thousand mannequins in my Spire.  I also have a dream of finishing the game to some extent.  I'm probably about halfway through the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild quest lines, and just started the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines.  On the side of cheating, I find myself consistently using the console to change my infamy to be able to keep my ability to wear the Knights of the Nine armor.  Possibly I should just hang that up and go to town with some new stuff, but I'm too cheap to enchant elven.  Oh well.  I've got a complete list of all the mods I brought in if anyone finds that they're interested.

- Picked up SimCity Societies.  I used to play SimCity 2000, and of course was addicted to The Sims in all of its incarnations as well.  This incarnation of the program was a little disappointing.  You have to build a city, a la SimCity, though the mechanics are a bit different.  There's no zoning or powerlines or water pipes any more, just surface buildings, which is kind of nice.  You build buildings which create a resource, Authority for a Propaganda Building, Art for a Wall Mural, Prosperity for an Office Building, etc.  With this accumulated resource, you purchase homes for your denizens to work in these production facilities and entertainment venues to keep them happy.  So, you keep the housing pretty stead with the job market so no one is jobless or homeless, and make sure that everyone is entertained, and you've won.  And that's the game really.  Replay value seems pretty darn low.  You're only incentive is some medals and trophies, most of which you can gain in a three hour sitting or so if you're so inclined.  It's a good little mindless distraction, especially if your tired of any of the current market trends, but I don't really recommend buying it.

- I got Holly hooked on Puzzle Quest!  She's playing it behind me right now, it's pretty hilarious.  I love that I can kind of share a game with her and bring her into the gaming world slowly.  It is an awesome game, and right up her alley with the whole Bejeweled-esqe play.  They casually slip that RPG element in there, and it's my way of slowly transitioning her into being an RPG player with me.

- I grabbed Neverwinter Night 2 and the expansion and tried to play it, since I'm all in this RPG swing right now.  I was pretty darn excited about it, but it's bugging the heck out on me, so I'm still trying to fix that.  I'll let you know all about it when I finally get it to work.

- Bioshock!  Holy crap.  That game is freaking amazing.  I just started, made it to level two, but dang.  It's so stinking scary, I'm jumping every second or two, freaking out when the lights click off, running around with a pistol and hoping a Big Daddy or a turret isn't around the next corner.  The thing is awesome, suspense everywhere, really good dialog and atmosphere.  I might actually finish this one.

- Overlord.  Ever play Pikmin?  It's kind of like that.  You are an evil Overlord, and you have this little band of demons to do your every bidding.  This pretty much consists of raising your hand in a direction and watching destruction ensue.  It's very simple, very linear, but super fun.  Completing the story and gathering pieces to your Evil Tower is the basic goal, I recently picked up a damsel to live in one of my towers, and she's really decorated the place quite nicely.  Watching my tower grow is great and trying to organize my little color-coded monstrosities effectively is quite fun.  I think I'm about halfway through this one.

As far as games, that's pretty much it.  I picked up Picasa for my computer and Holly's, which grabs photos straight off her computer.  It's pretty awesome as far as ease of use, can do some minor photo editing, and upload to the web for hosting.  I also moved my feeds over to Google Feeds in my apparent swing to Googlefy my life.  Next thing you know, I'll be on Orkut (noooot likely).  I also spent a day or so getting myself some good freeware apps to keep the PC running at full speed and such.  That's pretty much the news!  Later dudes.

So, new chapter, new blog . . . I hope you dig it.With my complete and total lack of a job or ability to get one at this point, I feel like a complete and total loser, which I guess makes sense.  In an effort to make up for all of that, I am kind of trying to be the domestic boy about the house as much as possible and let Holly be the worker/lay-about after work.  It makes me feel better, it keeps me from being a complete louse, and I still have plenty of time to be useless on the internet.

So today, in the news, Sir Edmund Hillary is dead at 88.  The first guy to ever scale Everest died from heart failure in an Auckland hospital.  God bless the pioneers.

The FBI has had several of its wiretaps dropped because they didn't pay their bills.  This is very humorous to me, and a slight triumph in an ironic way.

It turns out that the "You will blow up in two minutes" message that the Navy tried to convince us was from an Iranian broadcast, may not have been.  When their creative editing was stopped in its tracks by the Iranian version of the story, it seems the Navy needed to backpedal a little.

In an example of heavy-handed law enforcement that is apparently becoming the norm in China, a man who was filming a confrontation between Chinese officials and protesting towns-people was beaten to death by the government officials.  The good news for me in all this?  The Chinese will only take so much, and this is becoming a bigger and bigger deal to them.  Chat rooms are ablaze with people speaking out, one can only hope the end is near for the oppressive systems there.

Talks are still on-going in Kenya.  The numbers are up to 600 dead or missing in the unrest.  The UN is currently trying to provide aid for around 225,000 displaced people already, and predict the numbers to jump up to around 500,000 before all is said and done.

Hugo Chavez is tempering good deeds with the crazy.  After securing the release of a couple high profile hostage from Farc, a Colombian-based militia group, he wants both Farc and ELN removed from the list of terrorist organizations.  Known for their connections to drug money, multiple kidnappings per year, and brutal guerrilla tactics, Farc and the ELN seek distribution of wealth throughout Columbia at the expense of the government.

Several people were injured when a 14 polish kid devised a remote control for switching markers on the train system for the city of Lodz, Poland.  Turns out the kid is an electronic genius and was just having a little fun, derailing four trams along the way.

On a lighter note, the PS3 may get cheaper after Sony was able to cut production costs.  Now, if they could just get people to make games for it . . .

Most Ron Paul supporters (including myself) are getting fairly well ticked at Fox News after editing out Ron Paul's answer to the question of whether or not he is "electable"  in the South Carolina Republican debates.  The answer was aired on the original live debate, but was edited out for all following re-airings.  It seems to be one more snub to the Ron Paul campaign from Fox News.  (This may be removed due to licensing issues.  If it is, I'm sorry).

A fun little rundown of the news, now on to the fun stuff.  I spend entirely too much time on the internet, here is what has been entertaining me lately:

I'm still playing Eudemons Online, albeit sparsely.  The frequent disconnects and laggy servers make it rather difficult to play for any extended length of time without getting pretty frustrated.

Conan O'Brien had his own German Dance Club Light Show, it was pretty tremendous.

I've cleared the Acre Poor and Rich districts of flags and Templars on Assassin's Creed, bagging me another 20 gamerscore, which makes me pretty happy.  Middle district is next on the list.

I finally organized my bookmarks, another couple random things from that list for your viewing pleasure:
TV Anime -  Streaming anime series, pretty much everything you could ever want.  Amazing.
Frets on Fire - Guitar Hero on your keyboard, a la Stepmania.  Completely open source.
Open Secrets.org - Interested in politics?  Want to see where money is going?  Where it's coming from?  Who is funding your favorite candidate or their enemy?  All of the information is collected here and distributed to the general public.