Pixel Posybytes of life

The back-story on this video is that during finals week, this girl wanted to surprise her sorority friends by making “snow” in the hallway with a fire extinguisher, apparently something her dad had done. Something went horribly wrong and the fire alarm was set off awaking a houseful of angry sorority girls. Funny, funny.

I stumbled upon squidoo.com when it was first born.  Basically anyone can self proclaim themselves an expert on a topic by providing a “lens” of information.

For example, I have a lens about moissanite. This was a topic I researched endlessly when we were looking for an engagement ring and I had acquired a decent amount of articles, web sites and recommendations that have made for a popular lens.

The incentive to doing all this is that you share in revenue from the advertising and traffic directed to your lens. Plus it’s fun to be a self proclaimed expert. There are some pretty interesting lenses out there so pay squidoo.com a visit and leave a comment if you decide to join the fun and make a lens.

I caught the crafting bug from my grandmother, or at least that’s what my mom tells me.  So I try to share this hobby with my hubby in what I deem as Man Crafts. I think most everyone else calls them DIY projects.

The first one I tried to entice my husband with was the Cereal Box iPod speaker. How cool would that be??? Well, I wouldn’t know because the project fizzled out after he discovered the old music playing greeting card I found for him played “girls just want to have fun”, and it was more fun to listen to that, than to engineer a speaker from it. Bleh ;p

This next craft is way manlier and practical too. A concrete lightbulb wall hook! How perfect for a garage to hold all kinds of junk… the inventor even sells them in his Etsy shop. Hopefully, I have better luck convincing my husband this is a project worthy of his time.

I consider myself an avid gamer. My husband and I purchase at least 3-4 game titles every month in various formats and we both hold monthly online game subscriptions as well. We also have 3 personal computers each in our home.

I have to jump on the bandwagon though as a legitimate customer and the direction that DRM seems to be headed with game companies.

I purchased Spore well over a month ago, only to find out my legal copy of the game came with a DRM caveat that I really only purchased 3 installs, a fourth if I care to plead my case to customer service. I didn’t notice this policy labeled on the packaging, but was asked to agree to it, if I wanted to play during install.

To join the angry crowd here is how my 3 installs were used up after owning the game for one month.

1. So excited to finally have the game, I decided to risk an install on my main machine. This computer is well overdue for a reformat, but because it’s my main machine and performance would be the best, I wanted to try it. Sims 2 was still running beautifully, so I kept my fingers crossed for Spore. But… the game crashes upon load. Most likely a driver fault with my machine.
2. Still being excited and not ready for many more weeks to do the reformat on the main machine, the game is installed on my laptop. Game runs, but not at a great performance level, so after the initial buzz of the new game went away, I uninstalled.
3. I have the good fortune to be given a cast off computer from my mom after she replaced hers. This machine still isn’t as great as my main, but being freshly reformatted will play Spore with much great performance than my laptop… thus my last legal install is used up.

Although I just read something that the 3 install limit may have been bumped to 5? Will have to look into that.

We have literally hundreds of old game titles, and from time to time, I like to go back and install them and replay. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I’ll have that luxury with Spore… and E.A. seems to be okay with that as they have my $50 already, and according to E.A. I’m considered an atypical customer, even though I’m a regular consumer of their games. It appears not to be their concern that their product and its limited installs only lasted me 1 month.

DRM is in place to prevent the piracy of video games. Yet, Spore was available by pirated copy before the actual disc release date. So what’s the DRM doing, besides causing grief and forcing loyal customers to rethink their next purchase?

I discovered the online game Miss Bimbo after reading some of the negative press the site had received and I was quickly addicted, as is my mother.

The premise of the site is a fashion game. Goals include finding a boyfriend, studying to acquire better jobs and buying your own place. You earn Bimbo Dollars through your Bimbo’s job or through playing word and logic games. It’s a recent start up so the depth of the game is still pretty shallow.

The negative press is drawn from the assumption that young girls are being influenced by the stick thin yet curvy look of their Bimbo dolls (much like Barbie or a Bratz doll IMHO) and how they could buy diet pills or get face lifts and boob jobs for their doll. The latter two being actual goals in the game.

Not exactly a feminist dream… But in my experience, the message boards are filled mostly with women in their late teens and twenties. The focus is usually on who can pull together the coolest looks and everyone eagerly awaits new clothing to come out. The women here are proud to be Bimbos, and not in the dumb blonde with an IQ to match her bra size type, but in the girl power, reclaiming the word type.

Can a younger girl distinguish the difference? That’s not for anyone to decide, but her parents. And hopefully those parents that don’t agree with the concept of Miss Bimbo are being active participants in their child’s online time.

Ever wondered what you and your honey’s future babies might look like??? 

 Well probably not as creepy as this baby generator makes them out to be.

I hope.