Ladies and gentlemen, America’s culture of rampant consumerism has an official theme song. No, I don’t think that’s the song’s original intent, but that’s definitely how it’s being used. Seriously, I first heard it the other day on a PS3 commercial. Sorry, Sony; no matter what music you use, I’m still not shelling out $400 [...]
I’ll admit it; I still use the old installation of PhotoShop that I got from my webmaster job in college. To be honest, it’s hard not to. Unless you’re stuck in the dark ages of text- or graphic-only websites, good web design requires photo editing from time to time. Of course, there’s no way for [...]
That is the question. Ever since my wife and I put our finances in order, we’ve been looking forward to pursuing larger goals like becoming debt free, paying our son’s way through college, or the ever-popular buying a house. More immediately, though, I’ve been entertaining the idea of getting laser eye surgery. I’ve had poor [...]
All of us office workers have passive-aggressive fantasies about annoying office mates getting their just deserts from time to time. The person who doesn’t respect office coffee etiquette, the one who’s way too chatty, or the one who refuses to recycle even though it’d only take him a second… wouldn’t it be great if they [...]
Players in my D&D games almost universally consider me to be a particularly evil bastard (my wife included). It’s a skill that I’ve honed over the years. After all, being a good antagonist goes hand-in-hand with being a good DM. More than anything, however, I find that gaining the title of “evil bastard” is all [...]
Whenever I watch the Pretender video, I can’t help but think, “Tough crowd.” It’s not just a great song, but a beautiful piece of artistry as well. The song flows between mellow and intense, adding emphasis to the internal conflict alluded by the lyrics and the symbolism. It reminds me of Freud’s id and superego, [...]
I’ve been coding in PHP for more than five years now and I’m still learning new tricks. A novel problem the other day led me to learn how to pre-parse a PHP file prior to inclusion. Here was my problem. My friend Adam asked me to write some code to include recent post lists outside [...]
If you’re anything like me, you want to be a good parent and you want to be healthier. Very recently, I came across a good way to help achieve these seemingly disparate goals at the same time by using a health incentive program. It’s one of those oft-overlooked benefits of health insurance. My provider offers [...]
I’ve always had a simple approach to winning at Monopoly: Buy everything. If you land on it, buy it, period. Mortgage other properties if you have to, but don’t pass up a chance to own more of the very limited real estate available. This is because, in my experience, the person with more board space [...]
I’ve played all the hybrid classes to a fairly high level thus far, and druid is by far my favorite. My solo shaman comes in a respectable, but not necessarily close, second. My paladin, unfortunately, comes in way last; there’s just something wrong with paladins. Shamans are better for PvP, but, in my experience, druids [...]