In the Twin Cities, 73-year old Gerald Haley of Coon Rapids, MN has made the news for shooting and killing a home intruder. The intruder in question was a 17-year old neighborhood kid named Anthony Parks.

This is a tragic story, and what is even more tragic is that Gerald Haley will not be charged with a crime. He should at least be charged with involuntary manslaughter or some other lesser crime. While I do not think he should do jail-time, I believe he should be punished.

It is not proper for a homeowner to shoot first and ask questions later.

I have no idea what I would do in Mr. Haley’s situation but one thing is certain: I would not shoot anyone. I own a hunting rifle but I have no bullets. If I am going to attack a home intruder, it will be with a six-foot stick or a survival knife. Possibly a coat hanger.

But to think that a homeowner has the right to shoot to kill without regard will only harbor a mindset that it is acceptable to kill people on your property. The dead boy’s step-mother goes as far as to say,

If someone walked into my door and it was dark, I would empty my clip, too. He didn’t know they were kids … or if they would shoot him. We feel really sad that this happened.

It’s not sad that this happened. It’s sad that this will happen again.

Punishing Mr. Haley may not prevent this from happening again, but it might make someone think twice before pulling the trigger.

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About a month ago I came across a curious story regarding a large land purchase by the Bush family in northern Paraguay. The source was a bit dubious, so I bookmarked it and filed it in the “hmmmm, that could be interesting” bin.

Well, lo and behold, Wonkette is running a story about the same thing. So, hell, here it is. Call me paranoid, but it looks interesting.

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Wow, this is certainly an interesting look into the mind of Lindsay Lohan, isn’t it? I normally don’t care that much about celebrity gossip and news, but this story is just too good to pass up. Visit the link and read the entire letter she sent to Robert Altman’s family to offer her condolences. Wow, just wow.

Hey, she’s being sincere, but come on, Lindsay. Were you home-schooled by inept parents or something? The best part is she played a brainiac kid in “Mean Girls.”

My favorite excerpts:

“…I am lucky enough to of been able to work with Robert Altman amongst the other greats on a film that I can genuinely say created a turning point in my career.

“I learned so much from Altman and he was the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I’ve had in several years…”

“…”He left us with a legend that all of us have the ability to do…”

“…Look in the mirror and thank god for every second you have and cherish all moments.

“The fighting, the anger, the drama is tedious…

“…’Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourselves’ (12st book) -everytime there’s a triumph in the world a million souls hafta be trampled on.-altman Its true. But treasure each triumph as they come…”

“…Thank You,

“BE ADEQUITE”

Lindsay Lohan

Yes, “Be Adequite,” indeed…

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A certain someone’s grandma was recently on television with Martha Stewart celebrating National Bundt Day. Dottie Dalquist appeared on the show to help Stewart make a sweet-potato bourbon Bundt cake. Now, I wonder if that certain someone will make a cake for all of us? We’re waiting.

The Bundt pan, you may recall, was invented right here in Minnesota. Nordic Ware still exists and is found in St. Louis Park at the interchange of Hwy 7 and Hwy 100.

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After playing through a chunk of Call of Duty on the Wii I’ve come to the conclusion that the wiimote makes a really good fps controller–at least as good as the dual-analog alternative. Although the Wii set up is adequate, adding a motion sensing headset would make it better.

A while back I read a blog by a kid who suggested the addition of another analog stick to control “looking” on the wiimote side. Giving the player movement control with nunchuck and look control with the analog stick on the wiimote then allowing free pointing around the screen with the wiimote itself.

It sounded good to me but the addition of another control on a hand that is used for one set of orientation seemed complicated and I don’t think it would catch on. It would probably work well but it would take a long time to learn and would be daunting to new players.

As I played COD3 last night I had a bit of an epiphany, if I could move the camera by moving my head then I could use the wiimote as a pointer (gun) naturally pointing it anywhere on the screen–even the corners. As I thought about this I remembered that when the Wii was still the Revolution one of the first accessories Nintendo showed was the headset. That was accompanied by a commitment to voice recognition built-in (programmed in?) to the Revolution. Then there was nothing more about it.

I doubt that Nintendo forgot about it, perhaps they just stopped working on it because the controller garnered so much attention, but if it’s still out there it seems to me that adding some gyroscope/tilt sensing stuff to it would be easy.

So that’s my hope for the third secret, a motion detecting device in the headset. Where is it Nintendo? I want it in Metroid (I also want matchmaking for Metroid as good as in Halo 2).

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So, I’ve only been out of college for a few years. Until today, I have avoided working in my very own Cubicle. Straight of school I had to share an office with an older women who had allergies and coughed all day, BUT it was a corner office with a lot of windows. After proving myself as an asset to the company they gave me a spacious office, with a window, and even let me put this up on one of the walls. It was a great little company, but several things made me need to leave it.

After taking down my mural, autographing a few pieces and leaving them for my coworkers, I went out looking for new opportunities. This time around I had half a dozen companies eager to get me into one of their Cubicles… I really had no choice.

After hoping around within this office for over a month, borrowing cubicles, they’ve cleared one up… JUST FOR ME!

So at this point I guess I’m looking for advice. I’m only on a contract, so I know that I have an easy way out of this Cubicle in about 10 monthes. What can I do to make the hours between eightandfive a little more bearable in here. (more…)

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Anyone who attended CENTCOM’s presentation entitled “The Long War” at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute knows that top leaders at CENTCOM were not aware of the National Intelligence Estimate that stated America was less safe from terrorism after the botched war in Iraq. And, yes, it was/is botched.

Now comes this Marine Corps intelligence report stating that the American military has lost control of the crucial Anbar Province in Western Iraq, and basically that the rest of the population centers will follow.

From the article paraphrasing the report:

Between al-Qaeda’s violence, Iran’s influence and an expected U.S. drawdown, “the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point” that U.S. and Iraqi troops “are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar,” the assessment found. In Anbar province alone, at least 90 U.S. troops have died since Sept. 1.

Ugh. What is the answer?

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The goddamned Jesus freaks are beating on my door. They want to come in and ram a bottle of 100% pure salvation down my throat even though they know it will kill me. I saw one last week following me. At first I thought she was just another chubby girl who wanted to sleep with me. It happens you know. It has something to do with my girth and my penchant for telling them I love them. It’s not that I love them specifically…it’s just that I love ALL women. It’s not like I try to get them to follow me, they just do. I ran down the street - very slowly. After all, I am a fat man. I slowly scurried down the street and ducked into the nearest Wal-Mart. One thing was certain…if she followed me in she would find plenty of soulless bastards to save and would soon forget about me. That’s not quite how it worked out. They descended on my house around 7am tonight. I was settling down for a mellow evening of Monday Night Football. For grins and giggles I put on some easy listening jazz music in the background and I was going to read some Heinlein. It’s not that I subscribe to his political ideas but the world would be a hell of a lot better off if we could keep the goddamned Christians out of our fucking politics and let Veterans of actual WARS run things awhile! You wouldn’t find us caught in any quagmires with any social or political fallout because they would FUCKING THINK about an end game before they committed young men and women to DIE in a foreign land. That reminds me, who’s going to gang-bang Lulu when we’re all overseas? I hope some skinny peckered civilian is up to the task. They all make me sick, but at least they don’t try to pour Salvation down my throat in the guise of cheap wine and flatbread. Initially, I opened the door. When I saw their flaming eyes and the black flesh falling away from their skin, I screamed, slammed the door and locked the deadbolt. It wasn’t what they expected. They knew I was in here. They have been tracking my movements possibly for months. I lit a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I hoped the smell of fire and brimstone would scare them off. It only increased their presence. I heard them calling someone. I got the garden hose from the basement and hooked it up to the washtub. As they were prowling about outside I opened one of my basement windows and sprayed them screaming, “Get the fuck off my property! I’m a fucking Buddhist! I don’t want to be saved!” They screamed and hollered, “Jesus is the way!” I yelled, “Fuck you!” They started singing Amazing Grace and moved away from the range of my water hose. I yelled out that my soul was lost in the desert when I was alone. I was walking along a forgotten dune in a forgotten country and I was nearly out of water. I came across a small dog who said, “I am here for your soul”. I told him to get lost. He did…but not before he bit me. It hurt like hell. The only pain comparable is a rotting tooth. The pain of a rotting tooth will make you wish for death. It will make you want to take a dry stick and pound it into your mouth in order to drive the rotten tooth from your gum-line. If you’re lucky…you will accomplish just that. If not, well…you die. I scrambled up to my attic where I could observe the Christians lurking about the shadows. They’re still there. I think they’re channeling the squirrels to spy on me. That’s kind of weird and sort of witchcrafty… I wouldn’t expect Christians to resort to voodoo but in this time of Salvation they’ll try any damned trick. The end apparently justifies the means. I don’t know what I am going to do. I am digging in. I have a water supply. I have food. I have a secret entrance. I don’t want to use it except as a last resort. Once I use the secret entrance they’ll know where it is and they’ll be waiting for me next time. It’s not that I don’t love them. I do. I really do. I love them more than they will ever love Jesus. I just despise their tactics. They’ll lie and cheat because to them the end really does justify the means. It’s not going to happen. I am locked in and loaded for bear. They’ll never take me alive.

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As I looked on this weekend I saw two family members that have only condemned video games in the past stand up and without hesitation grasp the wiimote. Not only did they play Bowling in Wii Sports but they played it well. So well that they beat me, and I’d been playing the game for a week. In addition to playing bowling they gleefully played Golf and enjoyed it. In that I saw the power of the Wii and it was… well… powerful.

During the build up to launch Nintendo has sung out their desire to reach non-gamers and that the Wii will do it. I believed them but I was still shocked when I saw it happen. These guys of which I speak probably won’t be buying a Wii anytime soon but they really did play it and enjoyed it.

I expect that this incident was repeated at many residences over thanksgiving and will certainly be repeated in many more before and during Christmas. Nintendo made a brilliant move packaging Wii Sports and because of it consoles will sell; but will the Wii really result in the Blue Oceanthey wished? I suspect it will but games like Wii sports must keep coming and I’m not sure that that’s going to be easy.

Nintendo touts Brain-Training as a success with their blue ocean strategy which it was (and is). But the Wii is different than the DS. Games that monopolize the television need to be social which is why Wii Sports is great. Wii Sports excels at moving a family from their table games (cards and board games) to something on the Wii, not an easy task. For their blue ocean plan to work and actually get a lot of people to play games regularly that normally don’t they need do more than move people off the table, they need people to stop watching their favorite shows when they want to veg and Wii sports won’t make that happen. Games are work and the television is not. Until games become as easy as TV or more entertaining to justify the work (they have a ways to go) in the television crowds eyes the Wii won’t become something people use every night.

Nintendo is going to take a chunk of the table players and although I can’t envision the successor to Wii Sports I’m sure it’s coming and it will get people off the table. After the initial de-tableizaton there will be some internet games that the table crowd will play which allow socialization when proximity is difficult but this won’t be too significant (at least not for the next three years). So far, what Nintendo has demonstrated is great and it will be the best selling game console of the next three years, but will it be the Blue Ocean? Can they get the TV crowd?

Possibly. And if they do this is how it will happen:

Reality TV. There has been a trend in television towards interaction. If Nintendo can come up with some sort of interactive show that becomes a weekly event that people schedule then they will have truly won the blue ocean. It’s possible but it won’t be easy. When it happens (and it will–it’s a matter of how soon) people will begin to leave the television. It won’t be fast but it will be significant. 10 years from now the cable box will be the video game box. Will Nintendo be the ushers of the interactive TV revolution? They may. The News and Weather needs to be good so people have the opportunity to latch onto other channels (I wish there was a hard drive in the thing). If the TV crowd begins to go to the Wii for news and weather regularly then another channel has a chance of getting them.

In closing I’d like to wish Nintendo good luck. And I await the channels. Get them out before Christmas lest you miss out on the opportunity to get millions of free demonstrations of the magic of your console to those who won’t see it otherwise.

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