Splosion

Just purchased a name tag. Still can't get cards. Someone buy this nametag...

I'm farming both don't starve and counter strike right now. You don't even have to play or be in a server. As long as the game is running the drops come eventually. It seems like drops happen every 20-40 minutes. It is a bit ridiculous they set it up this way, especially considering each badge has multiple levels. It wouldn't be as annoying if it weren't possible to have a card drop that you already own. I got two labs when grabbing my portal badge.

Hah! profits from selling wallpapers and emoticons paid for Borderlands 2. I approve of steambook.

Finally hit level ten and that's when all the showcases open up. Crafting didn't give anything all that mind blowing. Just a coupon for 25% off no time to explain, the pyro wallpaper for my profile and the jarate emote. All of which I'm instantly selling since I have the demoman wallpaper. I can't tell if this was a waste of 3 dollars or not.

Is there a list of what level you need to be to unlock showcases?

I'm actually really liking this so far. Just got a new background for my profile.

Since Raz decided to get us into a deep philosophical conversation on why we're alive I thought I'd start another. I've found this topic always makes for some very interesting conversations. For those of you that don't know the AI singularity is the point when artificial intelligence meets two criteria. 1. Is capable of learning 2. Becomes self aware While it may sound like something out of bad science fiction experts in the field believe we will reach the singularity in as little as 20 years which is not surprising at all considering how things like the Blue Brain project and crazy Russians are advancing sciences towards the goal of understanding intelligence and autonomous AI. I always take the most pessimistic view on the singularity. The way I see things, the moment we reach this humanity will no longer be the dominant species on the planet. And I mean the exact second the singularity is hit. Even if you imagine an AI on par with a human being it will still excel in many many areas we struggle such as our capacity for memory and information and the application of it. Just imagine for instance a living mind connected to the internet, able to absorb and process information at speeds we can hardly imagine. At that point it would seem almost omniscient to us. I can't say for sure what I think will happen if and when this breakthrough is made but if I had to my bets would be placed more towards a robot apocalypse before a new age of technological enlightenment.

A lot of the devices we use every day were science fiction not too long ago. This is far from being outside the realm of possibility here considering how fast things are advancing these days and with plenty of scientists all over the world dedicated to this exact goal. I would think that something at this level of intelligence would bide it's time if there were a threat of "pulling the plug". It only takes a very small mistake to "leak" something like this.

This is a point a lot of people bring up that the simplest answer would be to contain such an AI but with something like we're talking about here that is capable of becoming exponentially more intelligent the longer it "lives". How long could it be contained before it outwits us? http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWeMvrNiOM

Still a bad deal.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Was playing a few rounds of hightower. Saw a trolldier who took about 20 minutes to get a single kill. Called a successful votekick. this happened... That kid gets kicked. Server changes maps and I go to a different hightower server. Both kids follow me in. Failed attempt to votekick me. I switch teams and kick the trolldier again. Kolonel changes to my team and starts screaming at me. Another successful votekick on him. Follow them to their next server. Both kicked again.

Basically this. And while not really an excuse the "this is kind of how things are in New Orleans" comments do have a bit of weight to them. You see after hurricane Katrina there were ridiculous amounts of jobs offered to basically anyone who could hold a hammer with little to no questions asked. I had many friends help out with the relief / rebuilding effort for a few months but the majority of people hired to basically rebuild half of the entire state were illegal immigrants and people who couldn't get work anywhere else. So what happened when the work was done and most of them were no longer needed? Well those that could afford to left but a lot stayed behind and basically became homeless so the crime rate there saw a pretty large spike post-k. It isn't confirmed yet whether this was some disturbed kid or the crossfire of something else but my guess is heavily favored towards the latter considering how things are down there. Downtown New Orleans and the larger cities and more rural areas like Breaux Bridge aren't that bad but when I move down there for my culinary degree you won't catch me anywhere near the outlying suburban areas where the last of the reconstruction was done.

Probably just angry forum posts about key prices in the economy today. That's all anyone writes about Valve anymore.

So I recently came to the realization that far fewer people are aware of this series than I thought. You're welcome. There's about 50 more episodes of this and all of them are absolutely hilarious. I can't seriously be the only one to know of this series.

He's only a swastika tattoo away from being the poster boy of those guys... Creepy resemblance isn't it? I know it may seem extreme to compare him to someone like that but sadly it isn't that much of a stretch. I remember the last time any of my friends let him come to a convention with us not only was our hotel room damaged to the point where we were charged for cleaning/repairs within 15 minutes of arriving, he got "a little too grabby" with a girl at a party and tried to take advantage of her while she was fucking passed out drunk. We had a damn mob of 40 people crowded outside the door of the room he weaseled his way into. That was the last time I ever voluntarily saw EY.

Gather round children. I'm here to share with you messed up stories about my life because I'm bored, everyone seemed to like that bit about me puking on the bus, and feel like getting these written down somewhere. I'll post more after this one if anyone wants but for right now how about a short one. That one time I made a celebrity hate me on a personal level: Once upon a time in the mystical city of Atlanta, I was attending Dragoncon. Dragoncon is a special time of year when tens of thousands of nerds pack themselves into Atlanta's most expensive hotels for a 4 day long party that ends in a week regretting it. Now Dragoncon is not the stereotypical Sci-Fi convention the media shows you, in fact if you were passing it on the street, you'd swear it was the world's largest Halloween frat party. Saturday night of the convention things were beginning to wind down (or the closest thing to "winding down" the convention offers) and I felt the need for a nap before more party hopping, having already been to about 12 that night and consuming close to my weight in booze. I stumbled my way to the Mariott hotel where some friends were staying to grab some floor space to sleep off my 27th drink. It was about 4 AM at the time so the wait for an elevator was fairly quick (Only 15 minutes!) and as it arrived to the lobby floor I was amazed to see only one other person on the elevator someone who looked very familiar but I couldn't place why, being incredibly drunk wasn't helping this either. Now where have I seen this guy before? That's right, I had stumbled upon Eric Estrada. While riding the elevator from the lobby to the 46th floor I started staring at him trying to place where I knew him from and then it hit me "OMG are you Eric Estrada!?". You cannot imagine the amount of smugness that wiped across this mans face, as if I was about to beg for an autograph that could be sold on Ebay for thousands of dollars. "Yes I am." he replied. Then there was a moment of silence as I continued awkwardly staring at him, after realizing I was just standing there staring like some creepy stalker the first thought I had fell out of my mouth... "That sucks..." I replied Another awkward moment of silence as I see he is getting offended. After realizing what I had said I broke into hysterical laughter then after realizing how horrible the fact that I was laughing at how much it sucks to be him was I instantly felt terrible and stared at the floor for the remainder of our 50 story elevator ride while desperately trying to avoid eye contact. In the next adventures of Splosion: Doc Hammer: Why you should hate him as a human being! Voltaire: You're career is dead, accept it already. (AKA that other time I made a celebrity hate me on a personal level) That one time my best friend got hit on by a 90 year old woman. The fridge is for beer, Lettuce goes in the sock drawer. And more!

Doing what? Voice acting?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! Oh that's a good one. No, that pathetic excuse for a human being knows that I can and will release plenty of information to the police that would see him locked inside of a tiny cell should he come anywhere near myself or anyone I care about.

EY is the kind of person that would shit on someone's face if he thought he could get away with it. Thank god I wasn't present for this but Chris's wife told me that one night while he and EY were drinking they came to this weird agreement where chris got to stab EY if he was allowed to shoot Chris in the arm with a small caliber pistol. This was all a joke in Chris's mind but one day EY asked to "show Chris something" in his basement and while walking downstairs Chris noticed a pistol grip sticking out the back of EY's pants and kicked him down the stairs and beat the hell out of him. [spoiler2]In case you guys haven't picked up on this. EY is a terrible person in almost every way imaginable, and very few people stay friends with him for very long.[/spoiler2]

Yeah it's time for another. What else am I going to do this early in the morning? That one time EY nearly got murdered by an angry sushi chef. Before I begin let me say that this was one of the very few instances of EY being a complete moron that I enjoyed him doing. You see as an aspiring chef I've come to have a deep disdain for two types of people in the food service industry. Sushi Chefs & buffet owners. Sushi chefs in general do not deserve their title. When your job consists of 95% prep work and almost no actual cooking you're only a step above flipping burgers at a fast food chain. Buffets take this to the other extreme. When you "recycle" today's food to becomes tomorrow's dishes you should never be allowed in any kitchen ever again. However in Marietta there is a somewhat high end Japanese buffet that I did enjoy from time to time and one day while I was walking around with EY I asked him if he wanted to run in there for lunch before I had my saxaphone lesson down the street. He replied with "I can't. They know me. They hate me. We can't go there. But it's probably fine. Let's go there..." I almost didn't even need to ask why they hated him. It turns out that one night EY and a couple of friends got extremely high and ate at this buffet for a solid 5 hours until they were chased out by the sushi chef. I said that we could go somewhere else but EY insisted that we just get a disguise for him and eat there anyways. So we headed to a nearby discount clothing store to buy a "disguise" for EY which consisted of a cheap visor, a pair of giant aviator sunglasses, and a black and white striped tie he wore with a t-shirt and beat up khakis... I knew this wasn't going to go well. We entered the restaurant and to my surprise they actually didn't notice him even after multiple trips to the sushi bar. I knew this would last very long when EY's kleptomania kicked in and he decided to see how much silverware he could get into his cargo pants. We managed to make it through the entire meal incident free until the check came. We put our money on the table and EY decided to hit the bathroom before we left. Now the bathroom to this place was down a very long hallway that ran almost half the length of the very large restaraunt so with the silverware in EY's pockets this long walk was creating a lot of noise and I saw our waitress give him a suspicious look on his way back to the table. He tapped me on the should and said "We should go, now would be a good time to go". You ever have to get away from something as fast as possible without looking suspicious? No one ever doesn't look suspicious. Just before we got to the front door I heard some angry shouting in chinese followed by "HE STEAL SOY SAUCE! HE STEAL SOY SAUCE!!!" I looked down and there was a giant trail of soy sauce leading from our table to a EY's cargo pocket on his khakis that was nearly pitch black from where a soy sauce bottle he had pocketed had turned over. I made my best attempt to act like I didn't know EY and slipped out the door unnoticed and hopped inside the store directly next door. I heard a faint sound of glass breaking and looked back outside to see EY sprinting through the parking lot with silverware flying out of a ripped pocket. A second later the buffet door swung open again and the sushi chef started running after EY as fast as he could wielding a GOD DAMN BUTCHER KNIFE! Lucky for EY this man was in no shape to catch him so the chef opted to just scream at him from the parking. "I SWEAR TO GOD YOU SHIT ON MY FLOOR AGAIN I KILL YOU!" Turns out that "long walk to the bathroom" was too long for EY and he used the seclusion of the hallway to shit right on the floor... EDIT: Remembered the name of this place and they're still in business. I'm shocked they haven't murdered half their customers... http://www.hibachibuffetmarietta.com/

Torchlight 2 on sale today if any of the 4 people left on the planet that don't own it are interested.

Until I can come up with a better title I may as well go with my actual nickname. Change mine to Captain Cockblock

You should see what I can do with beef jerky and chicken skin...

Magby... GOD DAMN MAGBY! I demand my profile be changed to number 101.