SATURDAY, 1/6/2000, 9:00pm HST by Raul

Hmm, a review of Torquetech's mandrel bent exhaust pipes is forthcoming.

An informal submission from the Lemur, who reports that the transplant went well. Check out Movie-a-minute, a site that gets straight to the point.

In the immortal words of a certain M. Sack, "Hookah!"

Because women are too hard to use

American males are happily ditching sex to play with their PC or mobile phone, a report claims.

Eight per cent of men questioned by Youth Intelligence on behalf of Playboy magazine said they spent less time under the covers with their partner because they were too occupied with their hi-tech gadgets.

Other Reg raid results:

• In the spirit of fairness and journalistic integrity, check out Reg's postage of the response to their 'Fishy porn search engine launched by teenage dotcom millionaire' article.
• PalmOS cell phones? Yup.

If you ever get confused by all the computer jargon that gets thrown around these days, check out this Jargon Lexicon.

FRIDAY, 1/5/2001, 8:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Done for the Week" Edition

I slack hard and my boss in Alaska loves me. Hmmm, I could get used to this job. Now to con them into letting me hire a paralegal.

When people first heard that Lemiuex was coming out of retirement, they wondered if he could stand up to the checks. Well, in his 4th game (which they lost), he got a penalty 46 seconds into the game for this crosscheck on Lind. Looks like the old man can still dish the dirties like the young uns. Read a review of the game here.

After lobbying so long and hard for deregulation, PG&E and Southern California Edison are saying that they are going to go bankrupt. I say, let them, and have the State of California buy up their assets for dirt cheap. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Read the story here.

And you thought your job sucked. Check out how these dot com employees got laid off. No wonder that guy killed all the people in the that consulting company last week.

How much would you pay for this 445 pound blue fin tuna? How about almost $390 a pound. Yup, $173,200 for this fish. And we couldn't bring up anything on the 31st when we went out. Read the whole story here.

Huh Huh, They Said Beaver

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -- President-elect George W. Bush began a long weekend at his ranch hideaway Friday while a "busy beaver" President Clinton raised Republican eyebrows with new executive actions in his waning days.

The president-elect arrived in early afternoon at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, after meeting in Austin with chief of staff Andy Card on transition issues and packing up at the Texas governor's mansion for moving trucks to come on Monday.

Poor guy, he cut off is wanker, and now he's just a stubby. Read the story here.

Maybe the guy from the last story could borrow this phallic cactus.

FRIDAY, 1/5/2001, 2:15am HST by Raul The fuddy edition

Gotta get this post done tonight if I want to even think about finishing the PalmPix article later.

From left to right:

1. Mogilny had a hat trick in the Jersey Devils' 4-2 win over the N.Y. Islanders last night.
2. The Red Wings took down the Stars last night in Detroit 4-2. Red Wings' Doug Brown is seen here scoring on Dallas Stars goalie Ed Belfour from his knees in the third period at Joe Louis Arena.
3. Colorado Avs' Milan Hejduk tries to get the puck in past San Jose Sharks' goalie Steve Shields, at the Pepsi center last night. The game ended in a 2-2 tie, with Shields making 38 saves.

A double dose of the Blues:

• LEFT: The Blues took it on the chin in a 4-2 loss to the Nashville predators, just like Blues' Tyson Nash took it on the chin from Predators' Cale Hulse.
• RIGHT: St. Louis pulled the goalie, only to have the empty net scored on.

Twingalaxies is sponsoring a contest -- with a money prize -- for turn-based-strategy types. The tournament involves Space Empires IV, which is a modern incarnation of the exploration-empire building-conquest type game.

THURSDAY, 1/4/2001, 7:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Left Work Early" Edition

Got to get down to doing some real work tommorow. Never though you'd hear me say that, did you.

Could we have a monkey for president? Looks like we have one already. Check out all the shots here.

I think if I tried what this guy did, I'd get disbarred. Read about the naked defendant here.

Hmmm, I'm thinking of two cats in an apartment with a green rug here. FoxNews has a story about overweight pets here.

Looks like the Pepsi UK site got hacked. A very interesting hack as it doesn't advertise who the hacker is or other sorts of self-advertisement. Read about it here. See a mirror of the anti-corporate hack here.

Yeah, nothing will get me to buy a oddly colored snack product like a picture of two kids humping a giant corn.

THURSDAY, 1/4/2000, 2:15am HST by Raul

Those are pork fat and chocolate bars. The writing says: "Animal fat in chocolate, joke bars, made in Odessa." On the packaging is a Cossack, an ancient folk Ukrainian warrior, eating a piece of fat. Apparently, these bars make fun of the traditional Ukrainian snack salo -- salted pork fat -- usually eaten along with vodka and pickles. Those Ukranians are an odd bunch.

This is an odd site, complete with an author screw-up: a link to a file on his local drive. Also, did you know Joe-Bob Briggs has his own site?

Well, the Pittsburgh Penguins with Lemieux continued their win streak last night, dropping Washington 3-2. Lemieux, Hrdina and Jagr each had a goal, with Jagr putting in the game winner off a Lemieux pass. The picture on the left is Lemieux scoring the first goal of the game, and the other picture is the congratulations afterward from everyone else on the powerplay line. Check out the story here. The Iwon/Reuters bit has a nice picture of Lemieux putting the check on Ken Klee. You can really see how big Lemieux is in that picture.

As a side note, AGAIN we missed watching this game due to circumstances beyond our control. We may have to deliver the dirties someday when the circumstances are under our control.

They really f'd up a good classic Mac here. Personally, I would have made a Macquarium out of it.

Going for a spin

LONDON (Reuters) -- A laundromat owner in the Welsh seaside town of Tenby is in a spin after youngsters were caught playing a potentially deadly form of dare -- in a heavy-duty tumble dryer.

Yup, you heard right. Is nothing sacred?

For your hairy Palmers out there, someone has released an apparently very complete version of the Kama Sutra for Palm. This one weighs in at a hefty 1.2MB ZIPPED, so if you are short on space you may want to check out Palmasutra (330k) or Kama Sutra excerpts, ported to Palm by Ryan Ozawa.

WEDNESDAY, 1/3/2001, 9:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Meandering to Court" Edition

I find myself going to District Court quite often now. Interesting point, some of the guards will let me in with my Spyderco and some will make me check it in.

[H] has their choices for the best products of 2000. Check out their choices here. I tend to agree with their picks.

The Register is reporting that Micron is throwing down the proverbial gauntlet and DDR and offering PC1600 for the same price as PC133 SDRAM. Read the story here and the actual ad here..

Since Raul actually got one of these for Christmas, I felt it was only appropriate to post this. How to hack your boogie bass, complete with instructions on doing both the sound and the motions.

Saw the trailer for the Quake movie. Looks decent, the Final Fantasy actually looks visually better. The movie looks like it was rendered with the Q3 engine. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the link, all I remember it was from Fileplanet. I have it on HD if you want to get a copy.

WEDNESDAY, 1/3/2000, 3:30am HST by Raul

From time to time, someone in the forums over at NHL Wishlist will go on about how playing on all-star mode is so good in NHL 2001 and generally piss on players that don't play all-star. I say, "Feh!"

The only thing I have seen happen when you go into all-star using the settings I do is a ridiculous slowdown of your players and a boost for the opponents. You get broken away on left and right, your biggest guys all of a sudden bounce off of other players on hits and your coordination goes to shit.

But as if that wasn't enough, the game outright CHEATS YOU, yes that's right cheats you, in all-star mode. Don't believe me? Check out the little animation I made up out of some actual screenshots (385K) from a game the other day.

After this little show of utter disregard for the rules, the CPU players scooped up the puck out of the goal, burned every player on our team, and proceeded to score. Now if you still want to tell me that you can play all-star with some kind of semblance of fairness, I'm going to tell you you have your head up your arse. Hehe, I like the word "arse."

Darwin 2k1

New Year tends to be a time of reflection, a time when we look back over the past year and take stock. So what better time to announce the list of people who have contributed most to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool in the most innovative ways. Yes, it is time for the Darwin Awards.

Had to create a Lemieux character and boost his stats hard. Above, he decides that he doesn't like the prospect of ending with a tie and pounds the Jagr pass home past a flying Brodeur, with Madden hooking to no avail. One of the nicer screencaps I've taken, if I do say so myself.

Oh and speaking of NHL2K1 -- I finally saw it on a PS2 and I have to say ... that it looked a hell of a lot like the PC version! Of course the resolution was nowhere near as high, but the TV really makes the most of its pixels. It's as if it was antialiased. It runs very smoothly, but seems to lack the complexity of commentating and the GUI is a little simpler. The controllers cannot be set up differently from each other (which could be a real problem) and the #1 gripe I have is YOU CAN'T PATCH IT. That's right, all the terrible long goals and crap that was somewhat fixed by EA are in FULL EFFECT in the PS2 version. Which leads me to the point: NHL2001 for PC has a new patch out! It's version 1.03 and fixes, among other things, the coaching strategy switching bug! Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.

I am posting this because I said I would. Check out SportCraft race cars, about as serious as racing gets here in Hawaii. I have to try to promote the sport when I can, right?

TUESDAY, 1/2/2001, 8:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Down in the Office" Edition

Today was my first full day at the office. Gary came by to visit. Help me deal with the boredom and come visit. Email me for directions.

Someone might as well make some money on the whole Bush-Gore thing. Salon.com has decided to make a bunch of t-shirts mocking the whole thing. Check it out here.

If you plan to sacrifice livestock, make sure not to place the animal in a position where it could kill you. Read about the revenge of the sheep here.

Speaking of Livestock

-- On a cold night, people do whatever is necessary to stay warm. One man living in Parkman, Maine, carved out a unique lifestyle niche by enjoying a sexual relationship with his dog. When his father discovered the son was banging the pooch, he attempted to kill the man with a crowbar. This month the father pled guilty, and faces several years in prison...

"I'm the first out-of-the-closet 'zoo' to be attacked because of my sexual orientation, so they have no precedent to gauge how a jury would react," Buble explained to the Daily News. "This attachment is often in preference to humans, and the relationship can develop to be a sexual one."

Isn't it supposed to be a sheep thing? Anyways, I think this guy may have been checking out farmsex.com a little too much. Hit up the full story here.

TUESDAY, 1/2/2001, 1:45am HST by Raul

No, it's not some strange sex toy. It's Sony's new eMarker. Firingsquad has a writeup that leads off with some mis-heard NWA lyrics. But we shall forgive the yellow man for making a yellow misinterpretation. Of course, if any mainstream radio station would play NWA, James Yu could have eMarkered the song and STFW'd for Boyz in the Hood. But what we shall not forgive him for is using the word "tight" in first paragraph.

Now, a device that can "name that radio tune" on demand might sound like a good idea, but when you take into account that everything on the radio these days is crap and the fact that radio stations that play music worth listening to (read: not pop crap) are most likely unindexed, the usefulness pales.

Here's a cheap DVD drive for those of you who don't have DVD drives in their computers yet.

Hot on the heels of the "Claw" and "Battlefield commander" comes another oddly shaped control device that promises to also be a palmtop, mouse, keyboard, and a tobacco waterpipe. Okay so I lied about the waterpipe, but this thing, the Alphagrip, aside from being big and ugly, misses the main point of palmtops -- small size. As for the other "features," the only one that I find remotely interesting is the PDA keyboard app. But when you could have a nearly full-size keyboard in a smaller package, I have to think this product won't even be built, let alone become successful, anytime soon.

Is it just me, or do the drawings not even make sense?

Diablown

Players of the online fantasy game Diablo II must wait almost a week for their characters to be restored after a hack attack, developer Blizzard Entertainment revealed this morning, Andrew Smith writes.

Also from the Register: Fishy porn search engine launched by teenage dotcom millionaire.

Yellow tap

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -- President-elect George W. Bush rounded out a Cabinet diverse in race, gender and politics on Tuesday, fulfilling a pledge to include a member of the opposition party by choosing a high-level Democrat to serve as his transportation secretary.

Bush plucked Japanese-American Norman Mineta from President Clinton's Cabinet, nominating the current commerce secretary to the new post in his own administration.

Also from Iwon: Napster in Alliance with Edel Music.

Remember: Penguins-Capitals tomorrow night.

MONDAY, 1/1/2001, 1:58pm HST by Penfold
The "New Years" Edition

If anyone wants to know what I did for New Year's last night, I was watching Iron Chef and sleeping. FoodTV even has the Iron Chef Drinking Game instructions. Oh yeah, it only runs til 7pm tonight.

Got a little too much money in your pocket? How about buying a new vette and immediately start cutting it up. Check it out here.

Now that almost ever car mag is total crap due to the Peterson-Argus-McMillan mad buying spree, the authors that actually know something are being forced into the online media. David Vizard, formerly of Popular Hotrodding now has his own web site, check it out here. I have not actually read the articles, but considering the state of Car publications, it can't be any worse.

FoxNews has a story about the legacy of Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. While the stories aren't very good, the animation is, so check it out here.

Got a CD that you need to fix because of scratches. Check out this review of various cd repairing polishes including some home cleaning stuff. As a side not, you may also be able to do DAE with your cd-rom and burn a new copy, but that would presume a good cd-rom and a cdr.

As a side note, those $100 cd-rw drives from compUSA, the Iomega ones, are very out of stock at both Hawaii compUSA branches. The most painful part is that they're rebranded Plextors and I was too late to get one on Saturday, the day before the sale. Oh well.

OCed your processor and vid card on your PC, *yawn*. OCed your PalmPilot, been there done that already. OCing your PocketPC, now that's cutting edge. Read about it here.

Long the domain of computer games, a British Company has developed an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device which does not require a nuclear blast and is deliverable as an artillery shell. And they called it, appropriately enough, the E-Bomb. Read about it here. This actually has more use as a terrorist weapon as most military gear is emp shielded.

SUNDAY, 12/31/2000, 9:00pm HST by Raul

If the traditional New Year's stuff above perplexes you, click here.

Party safely tonight. See you next year ...

SUNDAY, 12/31/2000, 1:15am HST by Raul
New Year's Eve!

I can't believe 2000 is already gone. It was supposed to be a landmark year for mankind, and in some ways it was -- but nothing truly earthshattering happened. It was just the natural, albeit logarithmic, progression of human society.

If you've ever wondered how the pros grab those wonderful fireworks shots like the one above, this site breaks it down for you. Brush up before tonight. While you're at it, check out Zambelli fireworks, just one of the many manufacturers of hardcore pyrotechnics out there.

As linked on [H]ardOCP, this site has a little mouse-clicking game that will test your ability to mouse and select quickly. Or, more to the point, to acquire targets and frag them.

The really evil thing about having a job is you can look at some things and say, "I shall have it (or something like it)." Especially things you would have never considered before. At work I use mostly Sony Multiscan HGs in a 21" size with component video in -- and I can say that I don't notice that they are much better than the Viewsonics I have had at home.

I am happiest when I eat something else, but that's another story for another day.

Lemieux, Jagr rack it up

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) -- In his second game back from retirement, Mario Lemieux got his 1,500th career point and set up Jaromir Jagr's 1,000th as the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Ottawa Senators 5-3 Saturday.

Challenge of the day: Figure out the part I had to edit in the above excerpt. Then figure out why the hell it appeared the same in both the Iwon's story AND headline! Some copy editor's brain is on early vacation.