More Vignettes From Spring Break

The new Quaker Oats advertising campaign doesn't sit well with me. "Go Humans Go"? As opposed to what, all those oatmeal-eating crocodiles? Who's telling us humans to go? The hatted Quaker himself? If not human, what does that make him? Zombie? Alien? Robot? Something far more sinister?


I've just finished my first ever tax return, and it was a pain to put it mildly. Turns out, tax programs like TurboTax are wonderful... as long as you only made money in one state. If you, like I, made money in several different states, you get to fill out IL-1040-NR and GA-500 Schedule C.


Being a 20-year resident of the area, and being a strong advocate of local community, government, and affiliation, the Evermore CID is something I'm following closely. I like their efforts. Make US 78 not suck. Encourage businesses to come to the area. Allow pedestrians to walk through my part of the county. Improve traffic operations. But in an evening trip to Starbucks, I was perplexed beyond belief to see this:



Why is this bridge blue now? The March edition of the Evermore newsletter suggests it's to provide "a safer and more attractive environment for nighttime driving". There's a bridge there to be sure, but not a particularly unsafe of accident-prone one. My mom had the idea of changing the lights from their perplexing blue color to tiki torches, which I agree with, as long as we can also ritualistically summon the spirits of Commissioner Beaudreau.


I'm not exactly sure how I got subscribed to Rolling Stone. If it was a gift, thanks! I don't like the fact that the magazine has a political slant (regardless of the direction of that slant), but I did gain a lot more respect when I found that Rolling Stone named Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the greatest album of all time.

This issue in particular features an intriguing little cover photo. If you've seen my Facebook page lately, you may have seen my comment on the situation. I might have to start watching Gossip Girl, if this picture is any indication of what happens on that show. (I've already been advised that it does not, so I shouldn't waste my time.)


Three days into March Madness, and my bracket has already taken a beating. In retrospect, picking Clemson to win a game and Wake Forest to win two was a terrible idea. After all, both teams lost to Georgia Tech this season, and we had one of the worst squads in Division I. I picked Pitt to win the tournament, which seemed a fine choice a week ago. While they've won their first two games, the Panthers looked far from championship caliber today. But at least CBS has broken the habit, somewhat, of showing us crappy games.

It used to be that whatever "region" you were in dictated the game you saw, regardless if it was a good game or not. Don't want to see UNC beating up on a 16 seed? Too bad: because you live in the southeast, and UNC is in the southeast, you're stuck with the Tar Heels. Now they're more likely to flip back and forth between games you might actually be interested in watching.

Now, the only way to make the tournament better is to have those Tar Heels lose.


Currently listening: "Beautiful World", Carolina Liar

Clearing from the Wreckage

Before I forget, addition to my list of promised future topics: on resurgence of popular media in the past few years.

Let's talk about the good old NCAA basketball tournament, shall we?

So a lot of people's brackets aren't looking so good. Mine, for instance. I correctly predicted zero of the Final Four teams. So did my dad. But it wasn't unreasonable, in my opinion, to pick most of the Final Four teams. LSU, a fine choice. Lost of people were expecting lots of good things from the Tigers, and those good things materialized. Given that a team could beat Duke, most other potential matchups wouldn't be that much of a challenge. So after picking LSU to beat Duke, maybe a bit of an upset but not an unreasonable one, picking them to win the region makes sense.

UCLA, also perfectly reasonable. It's never unreasonable to pick the #2 seed to win the region. The regional final, a classic 1-2 matchup. Sure, Memphis impressed people with their athleticism, but you can't discount the experience and background of UCLA. Florida, nothing wrong with that pick. The #2 seed in the region got there by winning the Big Ten, and as much as I like the Big Ten, they're just not that strong a basketball conference lately. So Florida beats Ohio State (or gets Georgetown to do it for them) and skates into the regional final. At that point, it becomes a tossup between Florida and Villanova.

So, by themselves, those picks make a lot of sense. Put together, it's a gutsy bracket that bets against Duke, Texas, Memphis, Gonzaga, and Villanova at the same time, but it's at least a sensible one.

Now show me a bracket that had those three teams, plus George Mason. Heck, show me a bracket that had Mason and any other three teams.

I have to think that the word "Cinderella" has never been used so often in conjunction with an early American patriot and statesman, but if the shoe fits... (dear God. Horrible pun absolutely unintended.) And I think I know why. Yes, they're only the second #11 seed to reach the Final Four in tournament history, but even more significantly than that, people love to see teams like UConn and UNC lose. If only the Patriots could also have faced Duke.

Review: Oblivion

You might have noticed that, although I promised a whole lot of interesting-sounding topics last week, among them a review of Oblivion, none of that has come to pass until today. That's mostly because I've been playing the game and having no time to review it. I predicted last year sometime that when Oblivion came out, I would lose all semblance of a social life that I might have thought I had. As it turns out, Mock Trial has been more responsible than anything for destroying my social life, but Oblivion is coming in a close second.

Simply put, this game is magnificent. I can't sing its praises highly enough. Everything is done exactly correctly. And so, rather than attempting to tell what the game is about, and how it works, I will give a summary of everything bad about the game, and every other aspect of the game can be assumed to be somewhere between "excellent" and "outstanding."

The first and most obvious problem with Oblivion is its performance requirements. I'm running P4, 1 GHz ram, 256 Mb video card, and I get an acceptable frame rate most of the time, a good frame rate in locations with little activity, and in the open world when fighting, it's pretty jerky. To fully experience this game (which entails not reducing any graphical settings, because they're that good), you absolutely need as much ram as you can stuff in your machine, and the highest-powered video card you can buy.

Secondly, the openness and lack of linearity can be a little overwhelming to players at first. Trust me, though, it was worse in Morrowind. Fast travel and the revamped quest log system make it a lot easier to remember where you are going, why you are going there, and what you're supposed to do once you arrive.

Who should play this game? Obviously, fans of the Elder Scrolls series. You know how every series has its stubborn purists? I've yet to run into anyone who liked Morrowind who doesn't also like Oblivion, which is saying something. For that matter, any RPG fan in general--be it MMO, console, tabletop, whatever--needs to play it. And heck, even if you're not into RPGs at all, but do like other video games, give Oblivion a try.