WWII in HD

Watching this three part series today.. and does color make a world of difference.

This is one of the best documentaries ever; the film being in color really makes a huge difference... you can see that its not mud on a marines face, instead its blood. The color just adds a certain humanity and humility to what the soldiers had to endure.

Watching this though; you can't help but realize that we live in a completely different "America" now though. The days are gone of sending in 150,000 troops in order to secure a beachhead, all in the name of liberty... knowing damn well that you're sending at least 25,000 to their certain deaths. No longer would you send in 485 planes, full of 9 men each, on a suicide mission just so their escort planes could wipe out the opposing air force. We don't do what is necessary to win any longer, no we only do what is acceptable in order to achieve a semblance of political victory to achieve "peace". During World War II, the entire country was behind the cause, and the military was given a political blank check to ensure the safety of peoples of all nations, regardless of the human cost... because the alternate cost would be tenfold.

Now, guarded by political red tape, humanitarian activist, media, journalist with personal agendas, and a fickel, self-serving nation.. we're no longer the nation that won the second world war. War has changed, as it has ever since its inception, but the basis is still the same... the nation or body thats willing to give up everything for its cause will be the victor. The "Greatest Generation" all gave up a part of themselves to ensure victory; they did whatever it took... even if it meant walking off a ship, onto a beach head with 4,000 rifles aimed at their boat; they would weather the onslaught and they would make it up that beach. Now.. we expect our men to fill out a piece of paper for every bullet they fire, why they fired it, and how they justified their right to fir; and our country scrutinize their every action with judgmental, arm-chair quarterback eyes.

I guess there is no real point to this post... more of just a rant. But I wish they we could get back to that America.. I wish we could get back to where we could raise the Flag, salute it, and sing the national anthem without fear of pissing someone off. Where we could not give a damn if we prayed in front of someone, because thats one of the founding principals we were built on... where we could do as we please without having our president go on an apology tour, begging for the forgiveness of all nations of the world.... cause God help us if we were to remind them, that if it wasn't for us; they'd be speaking German.

I do wish we could get back to "that" America.. but I'm kind of afraid of what it would take to get there.

Project Natal

Because I was talking about it tonight and we were playing the Wii... here's the youtube video for project Natal... this is coming out summer 2010 (they think); and it's some crazy stuff.

This is the crap that people wrote about in the 60's.. about how the year 2000 was going to be.

Voice Recognition

Facial / Body recognition

No Controlers

Sophisticated, Learning and Adapting Artificial Intelligence.

The first video is the promo vid for Natal.. this isn't the presentation that Lion Head Studios demonstrated the full under-the-hood horsepower of Natal (... that's Video #2). This is just the simple, over-the-top view of how Natal is going to change gaming and bring it in to a whole new audience.

With Huge.. **huge** studios chomping at the bits to get at Natal's source code.. big developers like Activision (World of Warcraft), BioWare (Fallout 3 / Dragon Age Origins), Electronic Arts (EA Sports Titles + Gears of War), Lionhead Studios (Oblivion)... with developers like this getting a hold of this technology; they'll be able to further the line where Nintendo and the Wii left off. Remove the 'clumsiness' of a controller from the mix; remove that boundary that prohibits so many from gaming, and open up the genre to even more people that it currently is enjoyed by...

Anyways, I'm very excited about this...this has the potential to be THE innovation in entertainment; potentially the largest innovation since color television; if it's really bought into by the industry and public:

Video #1:

And here's the full E3 presentation with Lionhead Studio's Milo AI:

that's all *real* stuff that's going into living rooms next year. I mean... voice recognition and facial recognition technology has been around for years in security equipment; but its so unreliable and dated.

But Natal's speed of recognition, facial expression reading, voice inflection recognition.. its just all brilliantly swift. If they can get buy in on this... you'll see and Xbox in 80% of all households.

POst

So... I failed at NoBloPoMo. Meh; I gave it a good fight.

Ya see... I got sidetracked, originally on Friday.

Friday night, I came home, changed clothes... then me and Jill went out to eat @ TWO: Urban Licks.. then afterwards went and saw 2012. We didn't get home that night till like, 12:30.

Saturday was busy too.. work @ 8:30, worked till 1:30, came home and ate (could've posted then I guess), back to work at 3:20, didn't get off till 6:30, came home then immediately turned around and went to Jennifer and Michaels UGA vs. Auburn party.. didn't get home then till after midnight.

Sunday.. had church that morning, then did some running around town and a little shopping, then home and straightened up (laundry etc) and then had my parents over for dinner. After that, I was pretty pooped and had work early on monday... so we went and watched a movie in bed and fell asleep.

Monday, went to work and stuff like normal, but then I got home and went and helped Jill babysit... so we didn't get back till 10:30ish or something like that, and I went to bed (it'd been a long couple of days at this point).

Tuesday, work and schtuff like normal.. then my really good friend from my Small group graduated from the police academy for his new job at the capital police in Atlanta, so I wanted to go to his graduation for support... which was in Jonesborough. So I didn't get back from that till 10.. got home, talked to jill for a little bit and hit the hay.

Now we're to Wednesday night and this is the first real time I've had the opportunity to post =/

been a great couple of days tho! Having fun and hanging out with loved ones >>>>>> "winning" at NoBloPoMo

PEace! Off to watch a movie!

Daily Update

Not a ton to really go over today.. worked on getting my new computer setup at work; which I'm excited about... but no real progress on it.

I did, however, sit on a call with a Pakistani man named "Elvis" for 2 hours trying to convince Microsoft that I wasn't a software pirate and that I needed my office key activated... but the key they printed was off by 1 digit. It took a freakn act of congress; I even read them the retailers Invoice number.

Got home... Ran for a little bit; played with the boys (who were in crazy moods) and then chilled in the living room with mah Lovely wife while we watched Glee and a little bit of Mythbusters.. came upstairs and she worked on homework and I played MW2 with Carlton till now.

I think I'm in a WoW rut... I tried to play it a little this afternoon; but quit before I even really started. 77 is like, the last milestone before 80.. and the 77-80 grind sucks. So it takes a little bit of mental prep to push over that hump and finish the drill. Probably will pick it back up once the newness of MW2 wears off a little.

Peace!... off to bed... soooo sleeeeepy

Número once

Or Number 11 in english...

So been playing a lot of CoD:MW2... and by a lot, I mean like 2 days straight. Incredible Multiplayer... the weapon & accessories combos are nuts; and each item that you get feels like it has its place, but isn't overpowered.

There'll be sometimes where you'll focus too much on the heartbeat sensor.. and get racked from someone to your left or right; and you'll beat yourself up for putting that stupid thing on your favorite gun... then there's times where you flash and charge a room, killing 4, cause your HB sensor told you they were in there. It's not like CoD:MW1, where not every accessory really felt like it had a place.

The perks are awesome too... Bling = 2 Primary Attachments... so SCAR-H with a Silencer and Heartbeat Sensor is the ultimate quiet killer. Couple that with Cold Blooded (don't show up on thermal scopes, UAV's, Pred Missle strikes) and you're basically undetectable until they see you.

Best gun to me so far is the SCAR-H... best blend of knock down power, range and accuracy. Fire rate is a little low, for when you gotta go rock-n-roll on someone.. but everything has it's trade offs.

Most disappointing... gotta go with the MP5. I thought they would've brought back the badass MP5 from the first Modern Warfare, but this one just feels really underpowered. You've got to either be ten feet from your quarry, or dump a whole magazine into them.

Coolest part... has to go to either the C130 kill combo reward or the Predator Missiles. C-130 is just sheer awesome; but you've gotta get really lucky to squeeze that reward out. The Pred missile is more easily attained, but still reaps almost the same 'fun' reward. Watching the CNN-Esque nose-cam as you direct the missile towards the earth is just an awesome 'oooOOOOooh' moment.

Ended tonight Rank 26.. which is over halfway of what I was in CoD:MW1. Crazy.

In non-MW2 news; the druid polished off 15% exp today to finally hit 77. Finally get to fly in Northrend.. making questing, grinding... and dang never everything go 300% faster.

Moving to non-leisure/Killing time activities... back @ the Grindstone tomorrow. We're prepping two new software releases; one to our main core processor and any of our redundancy boxes (7 of them), and another to our Scheduling product, which should take care of some "false" reporting we've seen. This'll let jobfile scheduler be a little more accurate when he says a job is "finished"... he'll tell you whether it really did finish, or if finished but with an error code.

No NWeds this Sunday... just regular 'ole church. We do have a party at a NWeds graduates house on Saturday though, after I get off of work.

In non-Greg News... Thanks to all of our Veterans. Americans truly do appreciate the sacrifices you make every day in order to ensure our protection. To all current serving armed forces personell and all past, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

-GTG-

EDIT: For anyone who doesn't know what Modern Warfare 2 is... or what it looks like:

INTENSE

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2... is.. INTENSE. JEEEZ.

Not sure I'm gonna fall asleep anytime soon, despite laying down and trying to.. it's very fast paced, and very frantic. The AI is extremely smart as well.. doesn't look like I'll be beating this on 'hard / veteran' any time soon. Trying hardened, but man that stuff is tough.

Dunno about the story... so far it doesn't feel as "solid" as Modern Warfare 1, to be honest. It's a little sporadic and jumps from here, to there, to here, to there. But I think some of the pieces are coming together.

But man; it is no stop action... defending a Diner in D.C. from waves of airborne troops felt like i was one of the poor little infantry I commanded in World in Conflict (another PC game).. it was pretty awesome.

bed time.. I hope.

Posting Early

and I'll probably post again tonight.. while I'm installing COD:MW2.

Hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures @ the Midnight release party; but the Gamestop off of Barrett is going all out for this thing. They're going to have snacks and drinks, demo's of the game on like, 22 different TV's, a rock band tournament going and they're going to (after 10pm when the other stores close) setup an airsoft field & game rotation in the parking lot for everyone waiting.

The last midnight release I went to was in Cartersville and about 70 people had preordered GTA:3 at that point... according to the dude @ Gamestop, they've already preordered about 470 copies of Modern Warfare 2... so this should be quite crowded.

Anyways... so talking about games / gamers; there's this cool, charitable deal that I've found out about, called Raid for the Cure and Azeroth United. AZU is just a basic charitable thing... donate a couple of bucks, and you feel good about something and a Game-Related site is giving a 25% discount. Raid for the Cure is pretty cool though... $10 and you reserve a raid spot with a dedicated group of 10 people who will run you thru a raid dungeon and let just the donatee's roll on loot. Additional $5 and you can 'bet' on how long it will take a particular group/run (of the 10 man and donatee's) to clear the dungeon.. closest person wins the non-spoken for items on the raid.. without having to go. It's a win-win for everyone involved... donate $10 or more and the Susan G. Komen charity 'wins', and then you 'win' for having a garanteed raid spot + loot.

I think it's just cool, and good for the gaming industry as a whole, to see gamers being socially concious. I think there's a negative / immature light painted on the gaming industry.. on MMO gamers specifically cause it's seen much the same as D&D is.. sort of a group of outcast / social misfits; despite the fact that the gaming industry has overtaken the film industry in terms of revenue. Doing charitable events and casting gamers and developers in a more friendly and "acceptable" light will only help to further the development and acceptance of the industry among mainstream media. Something interesting though, is that Blizzard is dedicated to their conciensous gamers as well... vowing to match the charitable contributions of the community to both causes (AZU is for 'Child's Play').

Anyways.. back to working.

Day 8 and still going strong!

So day 8 and I'm still hanging in there.

Not a whole heck of a lot went on today... me and Jill just kind of chilled and spent some downtime together. We didn't end up going to church, although we wish we had. we hung out, ate some leftovers, and watched some mythbusters... fast times at the Glawson household ;)

Went to NWeds and 'glommed' on some new people.... we tried to make them feel welcome and not uncomfortable, being the newbs that they were.

Here's to hoping Jeremy's prognosis goes well tomorrow, I'm really praying for him.

Another day another dollar tomorrow... BUT... COD:MW2 released tomorrow night!

Yes... I'm a 24year old successful grown-up adult, who works in an adult job, with a family and house etc... who will be at gamestop for a midnight release party. I'm a nerd and I at least I know it =)

Chattanooga.

7 days blogging in a row, how bout that.

So today I rode up to chattanooga with a friend on his part tiem job. He works for a marketting firm of pespi's, doing different shows / events involving pepsi products. So, they're trying to help drum up business for one of their few pepsi venues in Chatt.; so they sent us out with a pepsi-sponsored (via the Amp product line) item... the #88 Car (Dale Enrhart Jr.) from the Nascar Racing Series.

I'm not a nascar fan; lets just put that out front.,

however, it was really cool to be involved in. Just the trailer this thing is in is awesome, and nicer than some people's cars. But the race car is obviously the show stopper. While I'm not a nascar fan, I am a fan of really really fast things... so my interest was piqued. Because jeremy has a bum shoulder, I got to not only sit in, and crank... but drive a 765hp race car.

The amount of power this machine had was wicked.

First off though, this thing is LOUD. And by LOUD, I mean it puts a chainsaw without ear plugs to shame. It puts a rock concert to shame... sitting in it, reving it up to 7,500 RPMS is like sitting inside the engine. It's like a vision-rattling loud.

Second... it's uncomfortable as hell, and hot. The inside of the car is all sheetmetal or steeltubing, including the seat. It's made of a re-enforced steel tube skeleton, covered in sheetmetal with about 1/8" of padding between it and your ass. Sitting in that for 5 hours? No thanks.

But the day was really fun.. I got to drive around the parking lot of a mall; got to meet a lot of "interesting" Nascar fans... ahem. Played a game with myself.. "count the teeth"... and had fun just cutting up with Jeremy and people watching.

All in all, it was a really fun saturday.

Blog update

Figured... since i'll be posting on this at least once a day for this full month, I might as well make it look a little nicer.

I'm getting involved in an opensource programming project, WoWAce, that's a LUA Framework and full UI... in other words; helping 6 other people shore-up and polish a user-generated interface for a game I play. It's fun, something I can do on the side and at my own pace; just steady as she goes.

Not a ton has really went on today... slow day at work, which was the first we've had in about 3 months. Most of the top-level people weren't there... the ones that matter anyways (even they'd say that), so there wasn't much heat from up that direction. Apparently everyone on the user-side didn't have problems remember passwords, unplugging their printers and wondering why they didn't work, or figuring out the difference between the "computer" on the desk (aka Monitor) and the "computer" under the desk... cause I think we only had about 8 tickets.

I don't know why we've (tech services) been the black sheep lately. Well, really I do.. but it's just not fair. You see, Technology Services, in the eyes of people that control the cash, has been, is, and always will be an expense department. It doesn't matter if that $6,000 new server is going to let you process 18 more loans per hour, or 25 less dropped calls in your service center per day.. it's a $6,000 expense. Lending Departments can increase productivity by 10%, and you can't walk around a building without someone saying something about the great job Lending is doing.

Our Tech Services department has seen a reduction in staff of 2, an increase in work volume of 119% (thus far, 2 months left) and a reduction in response time and resolution time by 51%!

If our lending department increased approved loans by 100% and reduced the time to close the loan by 50%, with less staff... they'd all get a free 2 weeks vacation.

But if its us... there's 2 questions 1) How much did it costs, in $, the organization? 2) Why couldn't 51% be 60%? With us nothing is ever good enough... but you don't stop to think, that every single time you do, essentially, *anything* at your job... does it pass thru a wire? does the information you're looking for reside on the internet\a server\a shared folder? That printer you're printing to, was it just magically put into place? When the crap hits the fan, and you have to put a Disaster Recovery plan into effect, who's gonna be one of the first on the scene? When you need that Credit Report pulled that a $25,000 car loan is hinging on... or you've got that one customer with $400,000.00 wrapped up in CD's that's only using your web banking cause you export into QIS format... re-evaluate whether that "expense" department is really just an expense department or not.

Anyways.. rant time off. It's department evaluation time and budget time, all wrapped into one; and I'm heading the defense of Tech Services and the justification of the TS Budget, so guess I'm still in defense mode.

Jill's gotta babysit tonight... looks like I'll be bach-in it infront of the computer. What a wild 20-something I am! Ha!

I wish she didn't have to work tho ><

That was close!!

Almost forgot post #5... remembered as I was laying in bed.

I'll write more stuff tomorrow about what went on today... but met a neighbor, raked the yard, watched Mythbusters and worked oin configuring some new UI stuff.

peace out till the AM!

Four Days in a Row

It's a record or something I think.

Not much happened today...doing a ton of analysis for work and upcoming projects, trying to avert disaster on a current project, and trying to be proactive and get on the good-side of things for next year on another project. So... basically, its just a buncha projects.

Ordered my new PC for work; should be in sometime early next week... dual 26" monitors!

Druid hit 75 just a minute ago... go go 300g in training costs. Only 2 more levels till I can fly in Northrend though.

Only had 1 Coke zero since I got home. I haven't been terribly productive around the house tonight (although, I have been productive). I was going to rake and bag the yard again.. but this getting dark at like, 6:30, sucks for doing yard work.

Our two beautiful, but smelly boys have an appointment this saturday to get their haircut. It's always such a pain to carry them on Saturdays; not because there hard to deal with.. but because of all the tiny sad faces begging for a good home on "Adoption Saturdays" at Petsmart. They all tug at my tiny heart strings with their sad little faces that light up like christmas when you walk by or scratch them on the nose. I wish I could adopt them all and give them the love they need.

Anyways... not much for tonight; not really in a writing mood, but I didn't wanna give out on day 4!

NaBloPloMo Watch - Day 3

Today had lunch with TD at a local bar-food restaraunt thing here in Towne Lake. Had a ton of fun... I hardly ever find the time to take a full lunch hour (usually about 20 minutes).. but took the whole hour today, even slipped in a tad late, heh. Had a great time though, talking football, health & diets, the economy, mine and his jobs and just shooting the crap.. it was a ton of fun; I wish we'd do it more often.

Speaking of fun.. this saturday looks like I'm gonna be riding to Chattanooga with Jeremy to work some kind of festival or event or something. He does side work for a marketting company and sets up and run the booths for various companies at big events and stuff. So anyways, he asked me if I wanted to tag along and get the chance to back a racecar off a trailer and zip it around a parking lot.. he kind of needs a little help; might have torn his rotator cuff =( So I said sure, I'd love the chance to! It should be fun... hanging out, eating free vendor food, people watching etc. Jill's gonna have a girls night that night I think...

Speaking of Vendors though; found out going back to present @ a conference again this year; guess mine this past year didn't go to bad. This year its going to be at Biloxi, MS, which is much better than Nowhere, PA. Crappy thing is, I think I'm gonna have to leave the day after Valentines day =/ Business trips are fun, and its always good to network with a lot of other vendors, CU's and companies.. but I always feel bad leaving Jill. I worry about her =(

Saw the most satanic thing ever in the grocery store yesterday... Fat Free White Chocolate Mocha creamer... Oh-my-gosh. That's like, my coffee-ecstasy dream come true... just a scant week after quiting coffee and energy drinks. **BUT** Here's what I'm thinking; I'll drop the Coke Zero's for coffee (in moderation). So many places say that diet sodas are as bad for you, if not potentially worse, than alcohol according to some. So I think that if I were to start subbing out Coke Zero for coffee, so long as I don't go back to a Pot at a time (maybe.. 3 cups a day?) I'd be ok. But then there is the convenience factor when it comes to cokes... cans and bottles travel well =( But My Oh My do I love a good cup of coffee.. its like, food/drink for the soul

So this was just kind of a scatter-shot blog... but thats pretty much whats on my brain! Now to try and grind out to 75 or log into work while doing laundry and waiting on Jill to get home..

#2!

So we're good for 2 out of the 30 now..

I don't know what I'm gonna write about for 30 days. Most of my thoughts are mainly really random, and bounce from subject to subject. I could write about Chernobyl one day, a WoW druid the next, Coke Zero, Caffeine Addiction, and the tribulations of working with incompentent people... and nothing would really "flow", or make too much sense. Usually my hands are about 12 thoughts behind my head, so sometimes my hands can ramble while my brain has completed the thought process and move on to something else...

Speaking of...

Anyways... so Caffeine Addiction & Energy Drinks. I've recently went "clean".. haven't had an energy drink in 2 weeks or so. And really; it wasn't that bad... especially when you consider how much caffeine I drank

• 1 (or 2) Large Sugarfree redbulls everyday ($3.50 per can)
• Someday's add in a Redline 7hr Energy Shot ($3.29 per thing)
• Sometimes tack on a Redline regular ($2.99 on sale!)
• Then there's the pot of Coffee at night (negligible.. except for creamer)
• Oh.. and starbucks double Venti White Chocolate Mochas. ($4.29 per)

All in a day sometimes. The financial benefits of being free from energy drinks are amazing, lol.

Also... the funny thing? WAY more energy since I've quit drinking them... WAY more. No more midday doldrums, no more crashing at night, no more inconvenience of having to always be near some place to get a redbull to avoid the headaches. Any time you have to have something to avert a physical condition from happening... thats your body telling you it's time to stop. But the energy is amazing. Something else that's odd.. the ability to cope with stress. I never got the "jittery" feeling that many people describe, however, at work I was frequently "on edge" as I work in a very stressful and fast paced field. Without caffeine, I make much more well thought out, and less knee-jerk decisions.. I don't get overly stressed (as bad at least), and I don't have a constant feeling of urgency; yet everything gets done just as quickly, maybe even quicker. Focus might be one area where I can see some detrimental effects... I don't feel as 'focused' sometimes, but thats not entirely a bad thing as I'm required to multi-task constantly. While I have cut out energy drinks, I haven't cut caffeine out entirely. I'm currently drinking between 2 and 3 Coke Zero's a day.. just for a little pep, and to slooooooowly come off of the caffeine dependency.

Anyways... if you currently are drinking Redbulls, Redlines, Energy Shots, 5hr Energy drinks.... put'em down. If I can, anyone can. You'll be happy in the long run, you'll save a ton of money, and your liver will thank you immensely.

EDIT: Sigh, you just can win... damn you coke Zero's and your aspertame: http://health.yahoo.com/experts/drmao/20270/what-soft-drinks-are-doing-to-your-body/

NaBloPloMo... or whatever

So yeah; gonna give it a shot... 1 post a day; I think I can do it.

Wanna talk about something hard though... NanowWirmo... National Novel Writing Month. You've got 30 days to pump out a 175 page / 50,000 word novel. For you math junkies, thats 1,666 words a day worth of work on a single, continuous story. Jeez that'd be hard... but the focus is just on the finish, not necessarily the "quality" of the work.

Mostly this month; I'll probably be writing about WoW (as usual)... trying to push my druid thru the drudges of the 74-77 range, so I can get him up and raid-healing. It's the one aspect of the game that I've never really touched, so it'll be fun to poke and prod my way through it.

Something else I might write about is... oddly enough... Chernobyl. I've been reading a lot about it lately; the event of, aftermath and now the dead lands ("Land of the Wolves") that surround that corner of Russia. Its just so interesting, and slightly depressing, that one man's mistake will more than likely be our "lasting impression" on future generations or species, long after humans are gone... as Pripyat and Chernobyl will continue to be radiated for the next 100,000 years. Got all of our technological evolution.. the failure of a safety check in 1986 is going to be the most persistent thing we ever manufacture (unless another meltdown of greater proportions occurs, which I hope not).

Here's a ladies blog I've been reading about over Chernobyl: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/index.html