Earthquakes, Hurricanes and Freshmen; Oh My

I returned to northern Virginia after a few weeks with my folks up in Massachusetts and while things up there were not great weather wise I had no idea it was going to be far worse down here. Right before I left New England the news was predicting that hurricane Irene would be hitting the greater DC area over the weekend. Given the location of DC it appears that the brunt of the Irene will pass us to the east, so we will have rain and wind but not too much (and now that I in the middle of that storm I can say that the weather folk appeared to be right). After hearing that DC would be spared the full force of the storm when I returned to Virginia I was relived. I had a trip planed to western Virginia for the next few days so with the knowledge that the storm would not hinder me after returning I headed out. Little did I know that we would have an earthquake. Now I had never known that the Virginia area has earthquakes but apparently it dose. Evidently Virginia is no stranger to the smaller magnitude earthquakes but this nearly 6.0 quake was the largest in many years. Oddly enough I did not feel the quake, at the time I was walking with a friend of mine, we were approached by a woman from her house asking us if we felt the quake. We said no since neither of us had, she was surprised by this fact since it was quite powerful. From what I have heard if you were inside or stationary during the quake you felt it but if you were in motion you did not notice it.

After I returned to Arlington there was an aftershock, which I also did not feel. At this point Irene was well on its way to the coast and on top of that it was time for the freshmen to move in. I had volunteered to help move in freshmen earlier in the week before I realized that Irene would be coming up the cost around that time. Lucky for me, the freshmen move in was totally Irene; well the humidity of the day may have been from Irene. This year’s freshmen look like they are ready to start college, and with an earthquake and hurricane on their first few days I am sure that they will have an eventful year.

No Cable for a Year

For over a year now I have lived in an apartment with no cable. It was a finical decision that my roommate and I made when we first moved in. We wanted to have internet but cable looked as if it was going to be too costly especially since neither of us watch much television. This past year has been interesting, without cable I have had to adapt to not seeing the shows that I did watch when I had access to cable in my undergrad dorm. Because of the lack of internet I have had to watch shows that I am interested in on the internet. Hulu and the various network web sites have become my new television. While these sites still have commercials they are few and far between and they can be custom tailored to your needs and wants, in theory I still get many cat litter ads despite my telling it I have no cat.  The sites also have the advantage of getting to see the shows whenever you want to.

While there have been many times that I have wanted cable I find that not having it has not impaired my life in the slightest, it may have even improved it. There if the finical savings that I mentioned earlier, which in this economy is important. That extra cash can be used to buy important things like food, it can be put aside for a rainy day, or whatever. There is the time saving, I can’t count the number of hours that I would watch TV just for its own sake. Without TV that time can be better used since it takes more effort to watch TV on the internet, especially when shows are on various sites. I also find myself less drawn to the silver screen movies. This could be because most movies over the past year haven’t really applied to my but I am sure the fact that I am not being bombarded by trailers for them in commercials helps too. The only down side is I cannot watch shows when they premier, and when people come over we can’t all watch TV. Overall, I would say that if you drop cable from your life you just may find that it is not all that bad.

Cookouts and Jarts

Well it is cook out season so that means that it is also the season of lawn games. Ladder golf, horse shoes, softball and kick ball are some of the most popular. These games allow the cookout goers to enjoy some activities while waiting for food while testing their abilities against their fellow cookout participants. I was at a cook out just yesterday where there were three lawn games for people to partake in ladder golf, washers and Jarts. Now these three games share several things in common. They are all played in a similar fashion to horseshoes; that is there are two teams and they stand opposite sides of the field throwing there projectile at a target and are trying to get points. All the games have varying points which allow the players to score points from. Lastly they all require a modicum of hand eye coordination and a decent throwing hand. Now, those of you not familiar with the obscure lawn game scene may be wondering what on earth are Jarts? This is understandable since they have been illegal in the United States since 1988. So why would I want to play a game that was made illegal, and what made it illegal in the first place.

Well let’s first look at Jarts and why they became illegal. A Jart is a lawn dart, similar that you would find in a regular game of darts but about a foot long. It has fins on its side to guide it and its center is made of metal. You attempt to throw these Jarts into a circle (about a foot in diameter) that is about thirty five feet away. At this circle your opponent stands throwing their Jarts at the circle near you. If you land in the circle your team gets two points and if your dart lands outside of the circle but closer than all the other Jarts than your team gets a point. The goal of the game is to get twenty one points without going over, if you were to go over with a throw the throw does not count. Now the reason why this is illegal is because when people would play this way they would accidently hit their opposing team, which led to several deaths. 

A Jart

Which begs the question why would I want to play this game? Well it is really fun! That and we all stand on the same side so we do not hit each other with darts.  

Emulators and the N64

I recently came across some Nintendo 64 emulators for a few games. Mario 64, Harvest Moon 64 and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask to name a few. When I found these games I instantly remembered the great amounts of fun on the Nintendo 64; it was the first gaming council that I owned; it introduced me to Starcraft (odd I know since it is a computer game) and it gave me and my friends many hours of fun. I have heard of emulators for the Nintendo 64 in the past and downloadables for other councils and I have been less than excited. For starters when I heard of the Nintendo Wii gave you the option to buy old games I thought it was a stupid idea, since the Wii remote would take an old game and add a motion sensor to the mix.

The emulator that I came across is for the computer so the clunky remote is out, yet so are all controllers, so there is a whole new learning curve as well as new clunky controls. The first few games that I have played had a pretty odd learning curve and I suspect a first person shooter emulator would fare poorly on the computer, since the emulator only allows you to use keys and no mouse. While playing these games I noticed one thing in particular, they haven’t aged well. Now maybe it’s my nostalgia goggles but I remember of games for the N64 like Mario, Harvest Moon and Majora's Mask being a lot of fun with a bit of a challenge, where as playing them now I do not get such an experience. Putting emulator conversion issues aside the games are all kinda mediocre not terrible but not great either. While they were instrumental for giving us the modern games in their respective franchises the games have not aged well. The graphics are blocky, controls clunky (I recall that they were the same on the N64 so I assume the emulator didn’t clunk it up all on its own), the writing bland (Majora's Mask being the exception) and none of the games were all that innovative. At the time they were released these games may have been great but they have been since surpassed by their newer incarnations.

Giant Spider Robot

Since middle school I have wanted a giant spider robot. I attribute this to the movie Wild Wild West. While the movie itself was pretty mediocre the giant spider robot at the end of it was really cool. I would talk about how I wanted it with friends and it evidently left such an impression that some remember it to this very day, nearly a decade latter. Evidently a guy even made his own spider robot; the only problem that I saw with it was that it was not giant. The possibilities with a giant spider robot are endless, traffic would be of no concern since you could, one step on cars or two just walk in the country side. The robot in the movie was also able to shoot explosives at rocks, so that feature would also be something that I would want in my giant spider robot. That way I could get through forests with no problems and no one would try and take the robot from me if it could fight back. Something that the robot in Wild Wild West didn’t have but real spiders have is the ability to create webs. If I were to have a giant spider robot I would want it to have the ability to shoot webs. This would be useful to pick up stuff and trap giant fly robots to feed the giant spider robot; because that is exactly how that works.  The only problem I can see with it is one of practicality. It would be kinda slow, it may be hard and or expensive to fuel (unless it is nuclear powered), lastly I would suspect that it would be costly to construct. I don’t think there are any laws on the books prohibiting the use of arachnid walking machines so there shouldn’t be a problem legally. In the end though it is an awesome vehicle to have and if it is ever for sale I will buy one. 

A mini version