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lomk

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Blog Entries posted by lomk

  1. lomk

    I'm terrified right now.

    By lomk,

    College has been great and all but now I'm coming up on finishing my fourth year and getting that degree and finding work. And I've been looking places where I can find work.
     
    I found a summer internship that is about an hour and a half's drive away from where I live. They're looking for an auditing intern. That would be nice since internships are where you go to get work experience when you go apply for a big boy job. I'm thinking about applying for it. I'll have to find housing over there, but that should't be a huge problem..
     
    But, truth be told, I'm terrified. I'm not afraid of not landing the internship. I'm afraid that I will get the job. You might call it being afraid to grow up and work. I'm not afraid of working. I'm about ready to see all this time I've put into college finally pay off (even if it's to the humble tune of $16 per hour, which isn't great if you've spent 4 years of your life in college, but hey, it's an internship so what would you expect?) and I can finally get started on my career. I'm definitely not afraid to work.
     
    My fear is this: What if I've spent all this time in school and it turns out to mean nothing in the end? What I mean is what if I've just wasted four years of my life? What if I get this internship and it turns out that I can't stand the thought of wasting my 20s away working late hours at the office? What if spent four years and thousands of dollars on a degree that I hate? Those thoughts scare me to death.
     
    But very, very soon, it's all going to be very, very real.
     
    It feels like that scene from "A Goofy Movie" when they're coming up on the junction and Goofy asks Max "Okay, left or right?" and right as they're about to crash the car, Max screams, "LEFT!" That's how I feel right now. That junction in my life is coming up very quickly. I know what I should do. But I'm frozen in fear. If I go one way, I'm getting a good start to my career. If I go the other way, I'll eventually have to tell my parents that I still haven't even written my resume. And after I told them I've given it to, like, 6 different banks. But if I don't do anything I'll just crash at the Y.
     
    It's so scary. This was a time in my life I couldn't wait for. And now it's something I'm completely unprepared for.
     
    At least talking to my mom about being afraid of this helped me feel a little better.
  2. lomk

    If spiders could talk.

    By lomk,

    If you haven't got to know me and my ungodly fear of spiders, then now's your chance to know...I FREAKING HATE SPIDERS!!!
     
    They can all go die in a fire.
     
    But, you know, I get the feeling that if spiders could talk, I'd be a whole lot less afraid of them. Like, we could talk it out and maybe make a compromise. At least he could let me know when he's about to drop form a web right next to my face...
     
    I imagine it would go something like this:
     
    It's 7 o' clock in the morning, and I'm feeling gross. It's time to shower yesterday and last night off of me. I throw the shower curtain open and there's the little bastard. Just hanging in the bathtub. Doing spider stuff. But he talks!
     
    Spider Whoa, man! I'm in here!
    Me Oh hey! I almost didn't see you there! The hell are you doing in my bathtub?
    Spider Sorry! I can explain this, but you're not gonna squish me, right?
    Me Well you're talking and this is a first so I guess I'll let you off the hook.
    Spider Thanks, dude. We cool?
    Me Yeah, I guess we cool
     
    [Awkward silence...]
     
    Me So yeah, about you being in my bathtub...you see, that creates a problem for the both of us.
    Spider Yeah, I get that. I came down here because I saw this water and I was thirsty. Now I can't climb up the sides cause they're slick and I can't get out of here. Been stuck all night so I just decided to wait it out here by the drain.
    Me Well, I'm glad you told me you're in here. I would have hated to drown you. Do you have kids?
    Spider Yeah, only 547 of them. And I appreciate that. It's tough feeding all those kids, but a dad's gotta do what a dad's gtta do.
    Me I could imagine. Well, hey, I don't fancy the idea of you crawling up on my hand but I have a piece of cardboard here you can crawl on. I'll move you over here on the counter. You can climb up the wall and out the vent if you want.
    Spider Sweet!
     
    [The spider crawls on the cardboard, I move him to the counter, and he crawls off.]
     
    Spider And thanks again for not squishing me. [holds out leg] Pound it?
    Me Well I am like thousands time your size. I hate to leave ya hangin there, but I don't wanna smash you or break your leg. But we still cool
    Spider Aight, cool. I'm out of here, bro. This was pleasant. We'll chat later.
     
    [The spider crawls up the wall and out the vent]
     
    Me What a nice fellow. So gentlyspidery.
  3. lomk
    I'm subscribed to Marques Brownlee on YouTube. I'm into tech and whatnot and I like the stuff he talks about. This video is a little old but in it, he has a dummy iPhone 6.
     


     
    Now, I just want to say that it's not things like battery life, display resolution (which still isn't 1080p, but I guess you don't really need anything much higher than 720p on a display this small, but that's a discussion for later), screen size, clock speed, RAM, etc. that won't have me sold on this one.
     
    It's that design.
     
    This is possibly the ugliest iPhone I've ever seen. And I have to say that I really liked the designs of the iPhones 4 and 5. The square edges were pretty cool. It was hardware, specs, and iOS that kept me away from iPhones after I got rid of my iPod Touch. Especially iOS. I think iOS 4 was the last truly good version, but - again - different discussion for a later time.
     
    In my opinion, pretty much every Android and Windows phone out there looks better than this. But hell, even if I did love the design of the phone, I'd still stay away from iPhones.
     
    The phone I really want right now is the OnePlus One. Even though it doesn't have SD card support (which is something the Galaxy S5 has over pretty much everything - it can take up to 128 gigs of additional storage), the OnePlus One looks sexy, and it'll be something that pretty much nobody else has. I really hope I can find a way to get one at some point in time!
  5. lomk
    When I bought these four years ago, they were my favorite pieces of furniture. I picked up this desk and chair at Walmart because I lived in a rent house with a spare bedroom that I converted into my personal office. When I got these, I didn't have my desktop computer. Just an old HP laptop. I left it plugged in and on the desk at all times. I used the drawers to keep literally everything organized. It was probably one of the best purchases of the time.
     
    Fast forward almost four years and this is what I have now.
     

     
    (Don't mind the textbook - Grad school stuff kinda gets in the way of my gaming/work/social life lol)
     
    Like I said - Four years ago, these things were awesome. But things kinda started to go downhill with these about two years ago. This first one was completely avoidable, by the way. I was thirsty. So I did what any normal person would do - I grabbed a whole ice cube tray and put it on my desk so I could have ice whenever I wanted it. Well I didn't use much ice at all and I forgot to take it off the desk. Ambient moisture condensed on the ice cube tray and caused the wood to swell, hence the larger lighter spots on the desk surface.
     
    You can't really see them but there are much smaller lighter surfaces towards the right side of those bumps. That's from all the hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours I've spent on my various computers moving my mouse around.
     
    You'll see a light line on the edge of the desk. There's a piece there falling off. I have to keep something there (like a cloth) or it digs into and irritates my forearms when I'm trying to do anything.
     
    The drawers are also not functioning the way they should.
     
    Finally, the desk is just in overall bad shape.
     
    Now the chair...it's peeling. Just another testament to how much heavy use these pieces have had in the four years I've had them. Plus it doesn't sit up straight so if I don't replace that soon I'm probably gonna develop back problems...
     
    It's not that I've been extremely rough on them. It's just simply due to heavy, heavy use of them over the years. For a period of about two years when I was away from home for college, I sometimes spent up to 10 hours a day at this desk either watching movies, watching videos, gaming, chilling to music, and (yes) perusing the forums. It didn't help much that they've been moved a lot since I got them, much like all the furniture I own. It's just that these have seen the most use.
     
    So I think I'm going to be getting a new desk and chair soon. I don't know how I'm going to get this old one out of here, though. I live in an upstairs apartment and it took a team of two to get it up in the first place. I'm probably just gonna have to take it apart and haul it down piece by piece. That should be fun...
     
    Anyway this was just kinda random. Maybe I just kinda wanted to gripe about my old desk and chair because they are causing me some annoyance.
     
    The hardest part will probably be finding a way to get it here. Only way I got this one to my first house was because it was in a box and I could slide it into the trunk of my car. I don't know what kind of desk I'm gonna get next but it'll probably have to be in a box.
     
    So I can slide it into the trunk of my car....
     
    Well then......
  6. lomk
    Really you guise. Every time I check the weather, it's never over 9,000 degrees or balls to the wall cold in Florida. Like, do they wear bikinis in winter too? They probably are. Just to mock the rest of us.
     
    In my Oklahoma town, the current temperature is 13°F. The warmest it's been is 14°F. That's a lovely day [if you live at the South Pole] :okiedokielokie:
  8. lomk
    I was watching a video hosted by Jeremy Clarkson earlier called “Inventions That Changed the World: The Computer.” It got me thinking about just how amazing these machines have actually become. We started with machines capable of computing a couple numbers at a time to the Colossus which used a series of 1,800 valves to perform computing functions all the way up to ENIAC with 17,000 tubes to the microprocessors of today, which have moved past those archaic valves and tubes to hundreds of millions of tiny and reliable transistors capable of performing a lot of math very quickly.
     
    It got me thinking about some of these specs we take for granted. A computer (as stupid as it is from time to time) is a brilliant machine. A true modern marvel. At one point in time, the only SI prefix we really used was kilo- or 1,000. Other SI prefixes like mega-, giga-, and even tera- have become pretty commonplace thanks to the computer. But how big are they? To illustrate this, I asked myself the question, “What if we used these prefixes in other applications? And how big would they be?”
     
    What if we used them in distance?
     
    I’ll start with a meter. A meter is pretty easy to wrap your mind around: the rest of the world knows it, but for you fellow American types, it's about 40 inches - right over a yard or 3 feet. A kilometer is pretty easy to wrap your mind around too - just over a half a mile. On the highway, you cover this distance in about half a minute.
     
    But what about a megameter? It’s 1,000 kilometers or 1,000,000 meters Well that would be like driving from Washington, DC to Bangor, Maine. From Salt Lake City to Albuquerque. From Los Angeles to Sacramento. Or From Amarillo to Corpus Christi. In Europe, it’s like driving from Hamburg, Germany to Geneva, Switzerland. If you live in Australia, it’s slightly longer than the distance between Sydney and Brisbane.
     
     
    A gigameter? It’s 1,000 megameters, 1,000,000 kilometers, or 1 billion meters. At the equator, the earth is 40,008 kilometers around. So we'll call it 40 megameters. A string one gigameter long would be enough to wrap around the planet at the equator twenty-five times.
     
    A tetrameter is 1,000 gigameters, 1,000,000 megameters, 1 billion kilometers, and 1 trillion meters. That is equivalent to a round trip from the earth to the sun........
    ...
    ...
    ...
    three times. And that's still only 90% of it. You'd make it 2/3 of the way back to the sun before you complete your terameter run.
     
    And most of your computers these days have at least 500 gigabytes of storage. I've got 1.6 terabytes myself. And yet we throw these prefixes around. But when you take a second to think about just how far we've come in the field of computer science, you can't help but admit that they're pretty amazing.
  9. lomk

    Marshmallowey Proof

    By lomk,

    Last time I checked, ponies and horses are hard as rocks. Not all soft and squishy like Rarity.
     
    Verdict: Rarity is a marshmallow.
     
    Which explains her phobia of microwaves.
  10. lomk

    MLP Forums Fun Fact!

    By lomk,

    Maybe it's a fact I'm not sure but I kinda figured it out just through observation.
     
    Did you know that you can go to your profile on here and see which number your account was that signed up, chronologically?
     
    For example, the URL for my page is mlpforums.com/user/6322-space-woona/
     
    The 6322 in the URL tells me that I was the 6,322nd member to sign up for the forums.
     
    Obviously, the number in Feld0's URL will be 1 as he created this place. Naturally, his account would be the first.
     
    My number being only 6322 and there now being more than 20,000 members kinda says something as to how old my account is. That there were only 6,321 other members here when I signed up I guess you could say I'm one of the older members
     
    I noticed this. It seemed like this number appeared in every profile URL and that it was smaller for older members and larger for newer members. So just by putting 2 and 2 together, I figured that it tells you which member you were to sign up.
  12. lomk
    All in all I can say this year has been a good one for me as far as March Madness is concerned. And while my favorite pony lost earlier than I would have liked, I still love Luna most. I'm also not mad about her losing to Fluttershy because I love Fluttershy only marginally less. Like, it's the same difference between sugar cookies and chocolate chip. I pretty much love them the same.
     
    Now we're at the Final Four and the championship is right around the corner. The fans have spoken and I'm quite pleased with how it looks.
     
    First, I want to talk about Pinkie Pie. I want to say that you Pinkie fans have to be pretty dedicated to your character. She's had a pretty rocky season so far, from making Fluttershy cry to just being called the "village idiot." You guys and gals have held dearly to your favorite pony this season. I have to say that I'm surprised to see her in the Final Four. Pinkie Pie has had a much more threatening bracket journey up. She could easily have lost to Sweetie Belle and Derpy, but she didn't and I'm happy to see her here.
     
    Next there's Applejack. Up until Rainbow Dash, I think it's safe to say she's had it easy. So I'm not quite as surprised to see her here. I think episodes like Rainbow Falls really hurt Rainbow Dash's chances to get into the Final Four. It's only my opinion, but I didn't think the Applejack episodes this season were 100% amazing. But like the others she's had to claw her way up here and it's nice to see the one pony who gets picked on for being a "background pony" (when she obviously isn't) make it this far. Good job, AJ.
     
    Fluttershy is one of my favorite ponies. In fact, she's my #2 favorite (next to Luna...duh). I love Fluttershy. She's sweet and caring, but extremely reserved. If she's in a room with others, she's definitely not one to initiate conversation. She's fragile, but she'd go out of her way to help a friend in need because putting yourself second is what kindness is about. However, she's just so timid that she has difficulty standing up for herself. In short, Fluttershy reminds me of myself in a lot of ways, making her super easy for me to relate to.
     
    And Rarity. Let me say that before this season, I didn't really like Rarity too much. She seemed kinda snobby. Like, I had a problem with some of her earlier episodes, but I won't get into that. All I have to say about Rarity is that she quickly went from the bottom of my list to having a spot in my Top 5. And I owe it partly to a great season and also to @ghostfacekiller39, who has shown me that she really is an awesome character after all. Thank you, ghostie, for showing me the error of my ways
     
    So as for my favorites to win the Final Four, this was easy for me
     

     
    From my post earlier
     
    And who do I want to win?
     
    You expect me to say, Fluttershy, right? Because if you do, then I hate to disappoint.
     
     
     
     
    After having such an awesome season, she definitely deserves to win it all.
  13. lomk
    Source Article: Mother accused of burning her 2-year-old with scalding water, industrial strength bleach
     
    This is a pattern I keep seeing: The people who deserve the absolute least to reproduce are the best at doing it while the people who deserve to be parents more than anybody have the worst chances of it. I mean, my biological parents had five children. We were so poor at one point, our whole family of four in early 2000 slept in a 1990 Mercury Topaz. We were homeless while my mother was pregnant with the third of us. My biological parents don't deserve to have children but they have five. While my foster parents (who are some of the most awesome people I know) didn't have kids of their own. And the doctors said they probably shouldn't count on it...
     
    Why is that so? I digress...
     
    So this story is just sickening. This mother is being accused of child abuse because her daughter turned up at the hospital with burns on about 12% of her body. In the article it says that the mother has conflicting stories. What hits me in the gut the most is that the poor baby went about 24 hours before receiving medical attention. The grandmother says she was present but didn't call for help. The mother didn't call for help or take her baby to the hospital. That's very suspicious. If I have a baby girl and she accidentally gets scalds and chemical burns, I'm dropping whatever I'm doing immediately and taking her to the hospital. There is no waiting 24 hours. There is no waiting 24 seconds. I don't care what the circumstances are. If your baby gets hurt like that, you go to the hospital.
     
    They haven't determined if it was actually child abuse, but the daughter is quoted saying "Mommy is mean." When I was a little kid, my mother sometimes had to pull out the wooden spoon attitude adjustment on a stick or use my middle name. She hollered at me. I was sometimes stood in a corner for half an hour to really think about what I did that was wrong. I was sometimes made to pick a belt to get my ass busted by. I respected my mother for the things she did right. Never once did I ever say she was mean. Because I didn't think that. Children who become attached to their parents will love them. So when a little baby girl says "mommy is mean" it's probably believable.
     
    Top that off with scalds and chemical burns and this major case of neglect, and I'm sickened. I think this mother (if you can call her that) intentionally hurt her baby. I hate to jump to conclusions like that but everything is too suspicious. Either she's not telling the truth or there really was an accident and she's not being fully honest. It makes me think she tried to hurt that baby.
     
    With burns on 12% of her body and no medical attention for 24 hours I'm hard pressed to find any sympathy for the mother. You take your baby to the fucking hospital....If you really did try to hurt her, then I think something like this transcends child abuse. It's borderline attempted murder. Because, yes. I feel there was a danger that the baby could have died. Burns covering 12% of your body is no laughing matter.
     
    I really hope that I'm wrong and it really was an accident and that this mom is really trying to get her life in order, but when they're saying there are inconsistencies in her story and that medical attention was not sought until after her eyes were swollen shut...I have a hard time believing it was an accident.
  16. lomk
    I enjoy a little coffee in the morning. It helps me to get out of that rising zombie state into a fully aware zombie ready for a full day of apocalypse normally functioning person ready to tackle the day. I don't drink much coffee, though. Generally, a shower also does a pretty good job of getting me up, but it doesn't have the lasting power of coffee for me. But if I'm not feeling up to speed after my morning shower, a hot cup of black coffee will do the trick. But only one cup of coffee because any more will make me sweatier and shakier than a prostitute in church (yeah I know that's pretty tasteless...go ahead, throw rocks at me)
     
    Well a few years ago, my family went to Las Vegas for a Christmas vacation. We were going through a bunch of malls because I was 17 and my brother was 15 so we couldn't gamble [On a side note, there were plenty of times where our parents went to play a few hands of Blackjack while we just roamed the Vegas Strip and checked out malls by ourselves]. Gambling age is 21 in Vegas. Well, one day when we were there, we were at one of the restaurants in one of the malls. I can't remember its name but they had some pretty good hamburgers. They also had a machine there that was dispensing hot caffeinated beverages free of charge. I decided I could use a cup of coffee...
     
    So I get over there and grab a medium size cup. I think it was about 12 oz / 350 mL. I put it under the spout and hit the button. It dispensed a tiny bit of coffee. I couldn't run on that! So I assumed the coffee machine was malfunctioning and hit the button like 10 more times. At least until the cup was full. I got back to the table and started enjoying my cup of hot coffee. My dad also loves coffee and he thought it smelled pretty good so he went and got some too. By the time he got back, I was done with mine. I asked him if it was giving him trouble too. He said, "Nope." So I told him, "That's funny because the coffee machine was hardly giving me any coffee so I hit the button like 8 or 10 more times. I thought it was broken." My dad looks at my empty cup. Then he looks back at me.
     
    "8 or 10 times? That wasn't coffee...That was espresso."
     
    All three - my mom, dad and brother dropped whatever they were doing. They slowly cocked their heads at me and looked at me for a few seconds with this panicked look in their eyes, as if they all wanted to scream at the same time, "Oh shit!!!"
     
    I have ADHD
     
    Everyone knew it was a matter of time until I would be more hyper than a dozen small children in the world's biggest bouncy castle!
  17. lomk
    I have four siblings, three of which don't live in the same town as me. We'll call them John, Jane, and Jacob for the purpose of anonymity. John is 14, Jane is 12, and Jacob is 9.
     
    A few weeks ago, I had John over at my apartment and we hung out and I took him home that Sunday.
     
    This weekend, my next brother down (he's 20) and I had Jane and Jacob over for the weekend. Jane and Jacob are at my place and Jane goes through my games to find something to play on the Wii. She grabs the case for Paper Mario TTYD and says, "Hey! John has this game!"
     
    "Really?" I asked, "I didn't know he had one too. I went to play this game a couple weeks ago and it wasn't in the case so I thought that maybe I just lost it."
    "Oh, well John said you gave him that game. It's in a bag at the house."
    "Oh? Do go on. Because I don't remember ever giving him that game. I don't give a game away and keep the case. That'd be stupid because the game's going to get all scratched up."
    Jane just looks at me, kind of shocked because she now knows that John stole that game from me and she couldn't believe he would do that. So to lighten up the air, I said, "Busted!" and that got her to laugh a little.
     
    So this is what pisses me off. It's not about the game. It's that I invite him into my home. I serve him my food. I take time off from whatever it is I enjoy doing on the weekend just to spend time with him. And he wants to steal from me? I've been there and done that. And I ought to break his fingers for it too as I deserved to have mine broken when I was a teenager.
     
    Yes, I used to be a thief too. I have since reconciled with the people I stole from and I've changed.
     
    So when I make that 90 minute drive back to take Jane and Jacob home today, I think I'm going to have a little chit chat with John. Because that's bullshit. I also gave him my old PlayStation 2 when he was here and he wants to steal my things? After I gave him things?
     
    Man, does it hurt a hundred times more when it's your brother - your own flesh and blood - who puts the knife in your back.
  18. lomk
    Pretty recently, I found Adam Buckley on YouTube, and I think most of his stuff is pretty funny or agreeable. Even in his less than funny rants, he tends to make a lot of good, intelligent points to certain things while not giving a fuck in the least. That’s what I like most about him. He just doesn’t care. Adam Buckley is about as apathetic as they come, and he makes it pretty clear in some of his videos.
     
    So I became a kind of fan of his and I’ve been listening to a lot of his stuff because I haven’t got a whole lot better to do with my life anyway. I found out that he offered his two cents on bronies. Now, I was intrigued by this. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but, having seen some of his other stuff, I knew he either wouldn’t care or he would offer some valid points one way or another.
     
    After listening to his rant on bronies, it’s pretty clear he isn’t a brony, he has no interest in it, and one might go as far as to say he’s against it. So I wanted to take a little bit to write my opinion on his opinion. And I know he’ll never see this, and if he does, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass, but I’m going to throw this out there anyway in case others have heard it and they care to see what other people think about it.
     
    Basically, he starts with the fact that different people like different things and he gets that and respects that, but he doesn’t understand why guys in their 20s like MLP because its premise is just so girly. Fair enough. He goes on to say that lots of people judge the show without ever watching a single episode with an open mind and the intent to try and wrap their minds around it. He says he picked S3 E12: Games Ponies Play and gives his version of it. He didn’t particularly enjoy it because the plot was obvious from the get go, the jokes were pony related puns, and Pinkie’s ADHD. He continues that he doesn’t understand the fandom because it doesn’t even have any redeeming qualities for young girls because they go to Shining Armor for help, comparing it to girls who run to men thinking that will solve all their problems. Then he compares us to beliebers and directioneers. Then he talks about cloppers and how that when we participate in a fandom, we’re “partially responsible for what goes on in it,” telling us to ban cloppers from forums and message boards.
     
    So I wanted to pick this apart because there are some points with which I agree and some points that where I think he could be better educated.
     
    On the first part, where he says, “It couldn’t get more fucking girly if each episode taught you how to braid your hair and do your friend’s nails,” I actually completely agree with this. This show is girly. It’s very girly. But look at what the show came from: a toy line designed to be cute to sell to little girls. When have cute ponies ever been considered masculine like Terminator? Never. At least, not in my memory. Maybe there was a time when ponies were the most badass beast on the planet, and they’d make the Arnold Schwarzenegger shit himself, but if there were ever such a time, I haven’t read about it and I don’t remember it.
     
    Next, about people who judge the show prior to watching an episode and having watched an episode himself, I’d like to take a minute to say that even though he’s not a supporter, I have some respect for him for this. There are so many people out there who judge the show just because it’s girly. But I don’t know many people who have done this except my brother. And he watched an episode and he said it wasn’t exactly his thing. He didn’t hate me for it. I’m not any less his brother. His tastes are just different from mine like they always have been. Moving on.
     
    This is what I feel ruined it for me: the episode he picked. Okay, Season 3 had some good ones, but it was mostly subpar in my opinion and I think there are a lot of people who will agree with me on this. As a whole, Season 3 felt rushed. It started off blandly. The openers just weren’t all that good. Out of the 13 episodes in Season 3, I think there are only four that I legitimately enjoyed: Too Many Pinkie Pies, Magic Duel, Sleepless in Ponyville, and Keep Calm and Flutter On. The openers were bland, I couldn’t ever bring myself to relate to Babs Seed, Spike episodes aren’t really all that good, and we never learned anything about Applejack’s parents, although baby Applejack was freaking adorable. Regardless, I’m getting off topic here. What I mean to get at is that Adam picked a pretty terrible episode off of which to judge the whole series. Did he know it wasn’t one of the more popular episodes? No. But he could have done some research instead of just reaching in a hat and pulling out any episode. Now, sure, if the production quality is high, then every episode should be great, right? Well, yeah, but you’re always going to have those that just don’t meet your expectations. In any case, he should have picked something a little better to go off of. My recommendation? The Season 2 openers.
     
    Next: the plots in the episodes. A lot of bronies will argue that the plots are well thought, excellently executed, and very deep overall. I actually don’t agree with this so much. Actually, I had to side with Adam on this point. The plots are very predictable. They always have been. It doesn’t take a whole ton of foreshadowing to tell what’s going to happen in the show, but one must understand that the plots have to be good enough to keep adults into the show while staying simple enough to keep their target audience. And let’s face it. Even though we’re extra dollars going into Hasbro that they didn’t see coming from this show, the show’s target audience still is, and always has been, preteen girls. You guys, we’re just not getting away from that fact. So the plots have to stay simple. Especially given that the show has a 30 minute runtime and they’re not continuous story arcs like you see a lot in anime. So unless it’s a multi-part episode, the plot can’t really get extremely deep.
     
    Concerning the jokes, Season 3, like I said earlier, was lackluster for me. Again, I only enjoyed 4 of the 13 episodes. That’s only 31%. Compared to the 17/26 I enjoyed in Season 2 (65%) and the 22/26 (85%) in Season 1, then yes, Season 3 really wasn’t all that good in my opinion. As for pony related puns, that’s just a long standing tradition the show has. Is it funny? Not like it used to be. But it’s not like they can just change it because there’d be a lot of people mad that these would be gone. I personally wouldn’t care. As for Pinkie Pie’s ADHD, that’s just how she is. Some people love her for it and others hate her for it.
     
    Continuing, he talks about how Twilight goes to Shining Armor when she’s in over her head. He laughs at it because “they couldn’t have gone with a less subtle name unless they called him Man Pony That Saves Little Girls From Their Own Mistakes.” I just kinda shake this off as invalid since he doesn’t know about Shining Armor’s previous appearance or backstory. Arguing against this is pointless until he figures out that Shining Armor’s character isn’t what his name necessarily means in this episode. Sure, they turn to him for help, but his name comes from his position as an extremely high rank in the pony army. To Celestia, Shining Armor is one of her four-star generals.
     
    As for beliebers and directioneers…I’m not even going to go here. Yes, it’s very easy to compare us to them. But I’m not one to go out wearing a pony shirt in public or ask everyone I see if they like ponies. I’d like to go to a convention, but I don’t think I’d cosplay. At least, not the first time I go.
     
    Finally, I’m going to address cloppers. I can only bring myself to halfway agree with the statement that we’re responsible for what goes on in the fandom. Honestly, concerning the origins of clop, I like to think it was a bunch of trolls who wanted to destroy the innocence of the show so they made clop material. And it caught on with a few folks in the fandom. I think most forums actually do ban users who post R34 material. I know this one doesn’t tolerate it. Besides, if you want clop material, it doesn’t take long to find it on Derpiboo. You don’t even have to search for it. I’ve accidentally stumbled upon some clop stuff and I really didn’t like what I saw, but R34 leaves no exceptions. Except Dora…because that’d be illegal. I did an essay on child pornography for a computer forensics class I took last semester and drawings of child porno are just as illegal (and just as immoral) as photographs and videos. But I’m getting off topic again. Rule 34 leaves no exceptions. And a lot of people will justify clop by saying that the ponies are so much like humans in the fact that they have society and government, different personalities, facial expression, etcetera…whatever. Look, they’re anthromorphic ponies. They show a lot of human traits. But I just can’t use that to justify clopping and it keeps a lot of people from becoming fans because they don’t want to be associated with that. At the same time I just can’t agree that we’re responsible for the actions of other members of the fandom. This is the internet. It’s difficult to monitor and control the actions of others here. Remember this?
     

     
    Anyway, I’ve ranted myself for long enough. Adam says not to be pissed when people make fun of us and judge us for the show because that’s how people react to things they don’t understand. I agree with this. It’s why things like homosexuality are considered taboo. A lot of people just don’t understand it. It’s so different to them that their very first reaction to it is to condemn it as weird and even hate it. Anyway I’m gonna shut up now. Hope you enjoyed reading my rant that was 2½ pages in Word. I'm gonna get off my soapbox now.
  19. lomk
    Just a little disclaimer - I'm not bashing consoles. If you have a console, then that's fine. Have it. If it's your preferred choice. Really, I think what you get is a matter of preference. Contrary to popular belief in the PC gaming community, consoles do have advantages. That said, let's move on.
     
    I’m really not too impressed with anyone’s offerings in terms of consoles. The one that comes closest to impressing me is the PS4, and I’m still sort of…eh…about it. Have I become jaded to the next generation’s graphical capabilities because I game on PC? Probably. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no elitist. You’ll never catch me using the term “console peasant” because my attitude is simply to get what works for you and don’t try to tell someone else they’re wrong for having something different. Convince, but don’t condescend. That said, I’ve heard people have been complaining about the new generation of consoles because they’re already dated or underpowered. But if you’re a console gamer, I want you to ask yourself a question:
     
    Do you want an affordable console? Or do you want something that will give mid- to lower high end PC’s a run for their money? You can’t have both.
     
    In the past, having a console with superior hardware, but putting a price tag over $500 on it has been unsuccessful. Need proof? Look at the seventh generation. And discount the Wii here because that one is something everyone got because it was cheap and it had the motion control gimmick. Now, I would go as far to say that most Wii consoles serve primarily as dust collectors. Mine does. But it’s probably fair to say that the Xbox 360 won the seventh generation hands down, despite the PS3 catching its second wind later on and I believe it had a lot to do with two things: relatively subpar launch titles and its price point. I wasn’t as into tech in 2006 as I am today and I didn’t even know there were such things as gaming PC’s. I thought video games belonged to those who made home consoles. Goes to show how much I knew back then. But even when I was 14 and the PS3 was being launched and I heard it could put you back up to $600, I was curious as to why anyone would spend that kind of money on a PlayStation. Especially when the PlayStation 2 launched at half that and the top end Xbox 360 of the time was only $400. Unless the games and the experience were just that superior, I couldn’t ever justify that kind of money. And look at the launches of the Xbox 360 and PS3 respectively. The 360 started off well while the PlayStation 3 was just unaffordable. Sony had to come down on their price so much that they were losing money every time a PS3 was sold just to make it a relevant console. Of course there were other reasons (like subpar launch titles, funky architecture that backfired on them, and so forth), but I think Sony learned from that.
     
    I actually like the PS4. I’m not awed by its graphical capabilities, but I like what Sony did. I think Microsoft felt like they were the king so they started doing all this stupid crap like the Kinect, voice control, inferior hardware but premium price tag, DRM, requiring an internet connection to play games and so forth…it all backfired and MS responded to what they could accordingly. But the damage had been done. They just got too much bad publicity. I also think the main weakness of the Xbox is how it tries to do everything all in one box while maintaining relative affordability. Essentially “jack of all trades, master of none.” I wouldn’t pay $500 for a gaming console so it could run a dumbed down version of Windows 8. With digital distribution catching on, the meager 500 gigs in the HDD will be eaten up fairly quickly with a decent sized library. If you use the DVR function, you better swap it for at least 1TB.
     
    Oh wait…the hard disk isn’t user replaceable? Well then…
     
    And that’s another reason I really like the PS4. And the PS3. User-replaceable hard drives. And it’s not a funky hard drive like the Xbox 360 had. It’s a standard run-of-the-mill laptop hard drive. Sony’s support site even has a detailed guide for replacing your PS4 hard drive in case you ever want a huge library of digital content. Or if you want to SSD it, that’s an option available to you.
     
    What I’ve been hearing about is that the 8th generation feels like catch up. It doesn’t feel like a huge step forward like the previous generation was. When I saw the graphics on one of the 7th generation consoles for the first time, I was blown away. And my reaction to the new ones is probably because I was doing 1080p 60fps for a while before the new consoles got their releases. But even so, 1080p is not a new standard. We’ve had 1080p for a while now. The PS3’s operating system can run in 1080p and plays Full HD movies, and it even has a few games that can run in 1080p. So these new consoles come in at a weird time when 1080p is beginning to become obsolete and 1440p and 4K is starting to take off because GPUs that can support that are becoming more affordable. There’s no way the new consoles can support 1440p without taking a hit to their framerates, which has been a saving grace to the new consoles. The games move like butter compared to the jerky 30fps of last generation. And I feel like 1440p will become mainstream in the next two years with 4K following not too distantly behind. I feel like these consoles will become irrelevant within the next 5 years, and that’s sad considering the previous generation (excluding the Wii) was very relevant all the way to the end. And that generation lasted 7 or 8 years.
     
    I could be wrong, and if I am, I will gladly eat my words.
     
    Right now, I don’t have any of the new consoles. My brother recently got a PS4 and I've played around with it so I have seen what it's capable of firsthand. I still have my old PS3 which I hardly play anymore. If I do it’s probably GTA 5. I also watch movies on it. It’s not a bad media player. If I were to get one, it’s definitely a PS4. It’s less expensive and it does what it’s supposed to do better than the Xbox. And hell, for a $400 box, it’s actually damn good. It gives my PC a run for its money, and I’ve got about $900 in it. The Xbox just tries too hard to be a PC. PC’s are more expensive than consoles because they are the jack of all trades. The difference is that they are also the master of them all as well. A good gaming PC will also surf the web, type up documents, create presentations, store and play media, manage your other devices (like your iPod and your cell phone), create music, create videos, make Skype calls, and hell – if you want to add a TV tuner card to it, you can even use it as a DVR for cable and OTA TV. And if you have good parts, it will do all of those things and it will do them well.
     
    I’m not saying that custom building is better for everyone. PCs are bigger, louder, consume more electricity (it takes more power to have more power), can be pretty high maintenance, can have compatibility issues because they’re so diverse (a lot like apps for Android), they can set you back more than the cost 2 Xbox consoles (once you consider all your PC’s peripherals like monitors, speakers, webcam, keyboard and mosue, headset, etc), so much can go wrong during a build, BSOD, and other things I probably failed to mention. PC’s aren’t perfect. There are downsides. But there’s a reason we spend more on our PC’s. We expect more out of them. All I expect from a gaming console is for it to play video games. I don’t care if it doesn’t play music or movies or make Skype calls or record the football game. If it plays video games and does a fantastic job of it, that’s all I expect from it.
     
    And really, that’s the sentiment I have towards consoles as a whole. Most people already use their laptops or tablets for most things the Xbox One does. It’s so bloated with features that are just best left to other devices. A gaming console’s primary focus should be gaming, not all that other crap the Xbox One tries to do. If Microsoft had put more of their R&D dollars into a purer gaming experience, left out Kinect and just made it a $100 accessory, made the Xbox One prettier to look at (because really, it’s uglier than a VCR), and put superior hardware into the Xbox One, I think a $500 price point would have been acceptable. Or if they wanted to match Sony’s price, I feel like the Xbox could be outperforming the PS4 by a long shot by now.
     
    And even if I think the PS4 is far superior to the Xbox One, I still believe the 9th generation will be rushed in much sooner than any of the Big 3 expected at first. I give it until late 2016 or early 2017 and 1440p will be mainstream if 4K isn’t by then. Everybody is going to be running like chickens with their heads cut off trying to satisfy the demand for higher resolution capabilities of their systems unless they don’t mind losing a lot of loyal customers to PCs, which are already doing 1440p and 4K. So they will have to have to create something that tops this generation and probably do it in less time. I give it until 2019 and the current consoles will just be so obsolete that they will pretty much be forced to rush in the 9th generation. If they don’t, I feel like they will begin losing all their big 3rd party developers to the PC market. If that happens, the consumer won’t be far behind. Nintendo will end up like Sega – nothing more than a name for their first party titles like Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda. Sony and Microsoft will end up selling off the PlayStation and Xbox divisions to someone else. And who knows what will become of that? If consoles do become irrelevant, the only company that stands a chance of remaining is Microsoft. Sony missed the MP3 bandwagon and now the Walkman is irrelevant having lost out to the iPod. And nobody is buying Sony TVs, stereos, and other stuff anymore. The PlayStation is probably Sony’s biggest revenue generator right now. Microsoft will still have Windows, which commands a huge share of the PC market, so I don’t think Microsoft is going anywhere in the near future. Not until Linux distros get more compatibility and more general consumers begin using Linux. This probably won’t happen until we get a lot of AAA games on Linux.
     
    By the way, if that happens, it will only help the PC market. Windows 8 Pro is still $160 and building a Hackintosh is a little more involved. So if Linux catches on, you can save $160 on your PC build. Or you have an extra $160 to invest into your build. I would hope this happens one day as I would love to use Ubuntu again.
     
    Anyway I’ve gone on long enough and nobody will probably stick around all the way til the end. If you have, here’s a cookie.
     
    Be sure to have cookies enabled.
     

  20. lomk

    Nerf Wars

    By lomk,

    >Nerf wars
     
    This got me to thinking...what if we took all the real guns in the world and replaced them with nerf guns?
     
    Like, war wouldn't be a bad thing. War would, quite possibly, be the most awesome thing ever. You couldn't hate going to war.
     
    This is the world I want to live in.
     
    Source: GIVE THE PERSON ABOVE YOU 5 REASONS HE/SHE SHOULD LIKE YOUR FAV PONY
  22. lomk

    Oklahoma: The Bipolar State

    By lomk,

    This picture was taken at 4:53 pm
     

     
    And this one was taken at 5:22
     

     
    In hardly half an hour, it went from hardly being able to see across the road to a picture perfect evening. Welcome to Oklahoma!
     
    And it's December. While other people are getting snow, we're getting rain, hail, and tornadoes.
  23. lomk

    One Year of Twilicorn

    By lomk,

    One year ago today, one of the biggest changes to ever hit the fandom became canon.
     
    Something that was only parodied on DeviantArt and in Friendship is Witchcraft became reality.
     
    For many, it was the greatest crime against humanity ponamity. A complete bastardization of their favorite character.
     
    For others, it was a gift from God.
     
    Today marks one year since Twilight was crowned a princess. Can you believe it's already been a year since Season 3 ended?
     
    I can't. Time moves too damn quickly when you get older.
     
    I'm gonna keep this short because I slept like crap last night and my brain is frazzled. I just want to share some of my thoughts and take a look back at this Twilicorn thing.
     
    I remember when she was announced. I remember how most of the fandom freaked out. I remember this
     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3kMGDHrqFg
     
    I wasn't too comfortable with it myself. I didn't care for her but my reaction was far from this.
     
    Now, one year later, it doesn't really matter that much. I actually don't mind what they've done with Twilight this season. What we need is a very good Twilight episode this season. I'm not sure that we've had a really good strictly Twilight episode yet. Not anything that was as good as Lesson Zero or It's About Time.
     
    For now, I don't like Twilicorn. I don't hate her, but I don't like her because she just hasn't grown on me yet. So far, I'm just kind of indifferent.
     
    Really, I think she's become less quirky and adorkable than she used to be and I'd like to see that come back. Adorkable is a trait we all love in this pony. In the meantime, I'll be waiting for a truly excellent episode that is centered at least 90% around Twilight. That episode will determine my feelings toward Twilicorn.
     
    In the meantime, happy anniversary to Twilicorn! lol
  24. lomk
    There are certain things in this world that are only good hot like spaghetti or coffee
     
    And there are certain things in this world that are only good cold like ice cream or a soda
     
    And then there's pizza.
     
    Whoever created the first pizza deserves a nobel prize. There are laws that dictate tastiness versus temperature and they proved every one of those wrong
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