I wrote a commendation for my personal trainer Yoda earlier in the month after we finished up our 40 sessions. I sent it to our gym’s general manager and our account rep, along with my before and after pictures. I expected Yoda to get some kudos, maybe a bonus of some kind, and that would be the end of it.

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My incident with modchipman.com caught the attention of Ben “Stasis7″ Kuchera, a writer for Ars Technica. Ben sided with me, and posted his feelings on Opposable Thumbs, Ars’s gaming column.

I didn’t know that the article had been published until I updated my site statistics for the day. The column was out for a few hours, and I had already gotten five times the amount of traffic I normally do. I glanced at the logs. I could only see one referrer, over and over: arstechnica.com. By the time the first day ended I’d received over twenty times my normal traffic. Yesterday I had about fifteen times as many visitors as normal.

Today, we’re more or less back to normal. Visits are still a little bit higher than usual, but nothing compared to the last two days. Ben’s article about my experience has slipped off of the home page, and the referrer list is more … cosmopolitan.

It was fun while it lasted, I hope that some of you from Ars stick around for the rest of the Gibberish.

The bottom screen of the Nintendo DS is touch-sensitive. I often use my finger on the screen, but some games require a more precise touch from the stylus. I’m nervous that the plastic tip of the stylus will result in a scratch or an imprint, especially during games like Starfox Command, which requires you to rub the stylus back and forth during play.

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This is going to wreak havoc with my XHTML validation, but I recently took the Which Superhero Are You? quiz at thesuperheroquiz.com and here is my result:

Your results:
You are

The Flash

the flash 70% green lantern 65% spider-man 60% hulk 60% iron man 55% catwoman 50% batman 50% robin 45% superman 45% wonder woman 40% supergirl 40%

fast, athletic and flirtatious.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

I guess this isn’t too bad of a result. I would have thought more “Batman,” but that’s way down on my list. I don’t know enough about Green Lantern, and I am not too keen on Spider Man. I don’t see myself as swashbuckler-y as Flash or Spider Man.

What super hero are you, and whom did you expect to be?

Gather close to DrFaulken friends, and here a tale from long ago. Before Virginia, before the PSP, before even Gibberish, I purchased a Nintendo DS. I was completely enamored with my GameBoy Advance SP, and bought a DS on launch day. The DS was so full of promise — wireless gameplay, backwards compatibility (mostly), and a unique dual-screen setup the lower display being a touch screen. I was so optimistic I asked for a second one for a holiday gift so that Lady Jaye and I could play all sorts of fun games together.

Except that the fun games didn’t show up, especially at the DS’s launch. I found myself playing my old GBA games in the DS’s larger, bulkier package. My GBA SP had an extended battery pack on the back, and even then it was much more portable than the DS. I couldn’t carry the DS in my pocket, so it sat in my bag, sad and lonely. I never bought a single DS game, the “must-have” titles now weren’t out when I had my two handhelds. I sold them both to offset the cost of buying a set of PSPs.

Fast forward to 2006: Nintendo releases the DS Lite, a smaller version of the now-christened DS Phat or DS Voluptuous. The NDSL has some size and usability improvements over the original; there is a very good write up about the differences on Ars Technica. The game problem had also gone away, now the hard question was not “what games should I get,” but “what games should I get first?”

I purchased a New Super Mario Brothers DS Lite bundle from Costco. I bought the bundle not because of the price (I probably saved at most $5 or so), but because of Costco’s lifetime unconditional warranty. There has been some discussion about the NDSL’s hinges cracking after repeated use. Just in case I got an iffy unit I wanted to be able to take it into Costco and get a new one for free. So far, no cracks.

How is the NDS this time around? Fucking awesome. The complaints I had about the NDSV have been mollified. The newer unit is small enough to fit into my shorts pocket, along with two sets of keys. Game support is way way up. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the New Super Mario Brothers, and I am eagerly waiting to play some of the other “top” DS titles, like Advance Wars DS and BrainAge. Playing Mario Kart DS with Stilts wirelessly was a big hoot, it’s too bad there isn’t a Double Dash game out for the handheld. I look forward to doing some Tetris DS play over WiFi with Stilts and Bond’s friends The Cleavers in the near future.

I like to review the access logs for Gibberish to see how people get here, and to see what they like to read.

My bump key article has gotten a lot of attention lately. Google supplies the points of entry to Gibberish with searches for “bump key set” and “bump proof locks,” and so on. Most of these readers don’t stick around for a second article, so I consider their transient visits almost throwaways. Still, it’s interesting to see how many people out there are interested in, and possibly afraid of, how easy it is to open common locks with a bump key.

So far, my favorite search terms used to lure a reader to Gibberish have been “gm speedometer piece of shit.” I have no idea why someone would think to query for that, but my 5000 mile Solstice review is the number six result for that particular combination.

With my recent bad experience with modchipman.com posted here, on Reseller Ratings, and Ars Technica, I expect an influx of some readers. Will they stay? Who knows, but at least I’ll be able to watch them, and hopefully learn more about what people want to read.

I ordered an EZPass 3 from modchipman.com on August 18th. I’ll get into what an EZPass is for in a later entry; for now it’s just important to know that I ordered something from a Web site that had a fairly good reputation.

The ordering process was smooth. I received my package yesterday (a day early), only to discover they’d sent me an original EZPass, a device that won’t work for my version of the Nintendo DS. Furthermore, the EZPass is about half as much as the EZPass 3 I ordered. I sent a trouble ticket to the support group at modchipman.com, expecting an apology for a simple misunderstanding and then an RMA with paid postage.

Instead, the customer service person argued with me in a series of responses. Their main argument was that the original EZPass product wasn’t for sale by them any more (it was, the Web site still lists them as being in stock and available for order) and asked why I opened the package if I knew it was the wrong product.

The product that supposedly has not been stocked since July, still on sale.

I’ve pasted the entire conversation below and contacted my credit card company to issue a chargeback. To top it all off, they wanted me to pay the postage on the item they sent to me by mistake! What a bunch of crooks, I hope this guy gets fired. Most likely, though, he’s probably the owner.

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First zombies, now Euro-style board games. The Xbox 360 moves one step closer towards my household. According to this post at 1up.com, Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne will be offered on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Internet service. Other, as-yet-unnamed European games will be making their way onto Microsoft’s console gaming platform. There is no word on about the pricing structure of games, or when they will be available for download. 1up seems to think by the year’s end.

I guess all of those personal training sessions with Yoda paid off. When Lady Jaye got home from work tonight, I tried to make us a pot of tea. I held the tea kettle in one hand, and turned on the kitchen faucet with the other. I pulled the spigot towards me, and all of a sudden SNAP it broke off in my hand!! I batted the faucet off, but a jet of water managed to soak our kitchen wall ten feet away in the split-second while it was on. Part of the stream glanced off of my Herculean bicep and splashed over fuck-all, all the way to our dogs’ dishes.

Check these pictures out. The faucet had a retractable hose-thingy. There was a plastic piece that gave way, fucking thing. The faucet was less than two years old.

We’re going to Lowe’s tomorrow to buy a new faucet, you can bet your ass I’m not getting one with an extendable hose or one from this manufacturer again. Maybe something in SOLID STEEL this time?

There are no spoilers in this review, just my opinion of the movie and the verdict using The Patented DrFaulken Movie Prediction System™

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