Sigh. . I was wrong, there is no ban, I was duped my false news, but at least the source that I got it from was legit, so they got duped too. I guess Australians across the US should be rejoicing.

-Trevor

Evidently Sony does not have much faith in it's customers. Sony has effectively shut down Lik-Sang, an electronics company based out of Hong Kong that specializes in exporting games and hardware that is hard to find in Europe and the United States. They claimed they were protecting consumers from possibly inferior quality. Now I know that is absolute bullshit, because the only people who buy from sites like Lik-Sang know what they are doing and don't have to worry about incorrect voltage on their electronics and whatnot. My experience with the company was very enjoyable.

It is just another case of using government regulations to product/price discriminate (nothing inherently wrong with the idea of price discrimination as long as long as a company does not need to hide behind the government to do it). I don't know, but from the relatively small sales of companies such as this, the ill will towards Sony seems to outweigh the potential benefits of these types of actions. While the general attitude of buyers of Playstations will likely not care about a story like this, I still have to wonder if stories like this will eventually catch up to Sony. Their public image has certainly had some mud thrown on it recently. The sad thing is, this really will not stop the game enthusiasts who used the site to buy imports and limited edition games and hardware, but rather will be replaced by companies in China and other countries which will have less of a public avenue to do business with .

-Trevor

During game two of the World Series last night, it appeared that Kenny Rogers had some sort of dirt on his hand during the first inning, but by the second inning, it was no longer there. There was some early speculation that it was pine tar (an illegal substance to use for pitching), thus Rogers was violating the rules of Baseball. However, none of the coaching staff and the umpires made much of deal out of this incident, as it clearly did not improve his performance. What makes me angry is that fact that reporters are making too much out of this deal. They seem intent on tarnishing what otherwise is promising to be a very exciting series in which the Tigers were not really in the picture to do much this season. I have decided that reporters would rather see ratings through writing about a scandal than trying to draw readers through quality writing. Since I do not expect this article to draw additional writers to this site, I exempt myself, however if this is the first time you came here to read this rant, I apologize, since this article is clearly not written with elegance. I am hoping that this does not devolve into a fiasco, baseball has had enough scandals recently and am hoping to see the continued resurgence of fan support.

Go Baseball! As a side note, the Lasorda commercials in which he is trying to convince baseball fans of all teams to keep up their baseball spirit and watch the world series is pretty cool, though I wish they would allow us non cable fans to enjoy the divisonal series

-Trevor

Genre: History Non-Fiction
Author: Jim Powell
Released: 2003
Notable Works: Wilson's War

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The St. John's Guesthouse is nearing completion. At six weeks late though, it is amazing that some parts of the building are as complete as the pictures on the guesthouse's website indicates. The interiors do seem to be keeping to the "Breuer" style which I think is good to keep a consistent style in the university/abbey. In any case, an informed source told me about a potential debacle of having a window in a woman's handicap stall in a bathroom (though it has a temporary drape up to preserve a little dignity)! Well, I guess architects can't be expected to realize where windows shouldn't be when their customer spends millions on a building. Regardless, I think their is a particular novelty at staying at the guesthouse, though since it is booked into 2008, I should make my reservation now.

-Trevor

I am just checking to see if anyone has been having issues with timely access to my website? I have noticed my performance become worse and worse over the last month and a half and am essentially fed up with performance of my host's server , thus am contemplating switching hosts if anyone else is experiencing a slow connection. Please post comments to let me know.

-Trevor

Update: My site appears to work relatively well late at night (1-2 am Arizona time), which leads me to think that another site on the server that my site is on is particularly resource intensive. I do not think my site is due to my site statistics . This item of note will be brought up with startlogic soon since my current contract with them is due around January.

I recently found a bizarre news story on how the United States has banned Vegemite (as pictured to the right). This is an absolutely strange story in which I am utterly confused why it was banned. According to the article, the United States has a ban on adding folate (folic acid) to all products except for breads and cereals. Evidently Vegemite has folate and thus cannot be bought. However, I have read reports of people buying it in the US this year, so I am fairly concerned about the legitimacy of the article. Thus in order to try to clarify this strange story, I emailed the Department of Agriculture on the ban this evening. I will keep everyone posted on what I find. I am also going to check out some stores around Tucson to see if I can find Vegemite (there is a large Australian population in Tucson). While it does not seem very appetizing, I am more concerned about the United States strange rulings and bureaucracy. For having no signs of negative health benefits (and plenty of good ones), I am concerned when the United States makes limits on individuals' choices, though this could merely be a hoax in which I which case I will be thoroughly embarrassed.

Regardless of the outcome, I have my doubts that I will become an activist on this subject, though I suppose stranger things have happened.

-Trevor

According to this article EA is planning on introducing dynamic advertising into their online video games. One of the games that is being considered is Battlefield 2142 (as pictured on the right). This game is a futuristic action game that pits the European Union against the Russians over North Africa due to an oncoming ice age. It is hard to imagine advertising in a game such as this, and a poster gave this humorous anecdote:

The year is 2142, cyborgs are taking over the world. The shattered caracasses of hyperscrapers lie horizontally amongst the rubble.

BUY A SOFA NOW, DON'T PAY UNTIL 2007!
CHILDREN ARE STARVING IN AFRICA, DONATE NOW!
VOTE BUSH!

Your eyes pass these abstract words, plastered on the billboard. Perhaps your mind is playing tricks on you....

Sighing, your concentration sharpens enough to wonder why this billboard is pristine and perfectly maintained whilst structures around it are in smouldering ruins. Could this be a trap? The hairs on the back of your neck prickle and you bring the IR scope of your plasma rifle closer to your eye.

Perhaps the heiroglyphs on the billboard are a code, instructions for planetary domination that you must decipher at all costs. The enemy is using this against you, It's the one rational explanation for the preservation of this object.

With an odd, jerking movement - unnatural in the smooth 60 frames a second of your eyepieces HUD-enhanced view of the world, a detpack appears magically in your hand. There's a "whoosh" noise as your rifle is dematerialised into your infinity belt storage device, where you keep your wrench, handguns and 8 heavy weapons and ammo crates.

Setting the timer for 90 seconds you place it at the base of the billboard and run behind cover. There's an almighty explosion as 30microgrammes of dark matter reacts with the antimatter fuse and obliterates everything in a deci-click radius.

Job done, you brush the dust off your stator shields and sprint away from the rubble before the enemy can pinpoint your location. Something catches your eye in the dissipating dustcloud though, the billboard, unharmed, floating mid-air in the middle of a crater bigger than a harvesting pool. Enemy technology is immune to dark matter reactive bombs! Nothing the alliance has can touch it, surely our nation will fall. Determined not to lose sight of your objective - the Royal Flag of Team OMGWTFBBQ - you run on towards the glowing haze of the enemy compound in the distance.

Lesser men may have given up in desperation, but you come away from this experienced ready for the next hurdle the enemy puts in your path. (Oh, and also, you think that maybe a new sofa would look good back at the barracks rec. room. Odd that. Very odd.....)

While not surprised that advertising is creeping into games, this is after all a capitalist society, I guess it is still a hard pill to swallow as I grew up without having to be force fed advertising as well. Even with people feeling unhappy with the advertising, I doubt that there will be an organized effort to boycott games/companies that use this technology.

-Trevor

I thought people may or may not be amazed by this photo. If you know where it is, you may be in awe as I was with nostalgia, but if you don't instantly recognize it, you will not care one iota. FYI, it is dated 1991.

As an interesting side note, Microsoft's mapping site is a vast improvement over Google Maps, at least in terms of images. In certain areas like Tucson, you get a "bird's eye view" which gets some very high quality shots of the city. I can even see my house with pretty good clarity, I may post it later. Further, in areas where satelite imagery is not as clear as others, it automatically switches to aerial photographs which as you can see, are pretty decent.

-Trevor

Display Mode: Basic, Enhanced.

Genre: Crime / Drama
Rating: R
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, & Kristen Dalton
Released: 2006

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It's so amazing, my first ever Wikipedia post. It is on the dissolved Armstrong County, SD. Why do ask, did I write a seemingly pointless article on a dissolved county? Well it boils down to my graduate research and while checking the dataset I am using for accuracy, I came across an unusual county. I have been using Wikipedia to cross reference some census data and noticed that Armstrong County did not have a Wikipedia entry . I decided I always wanted to contribute a bit, and this was my chance . Let me know what you think. I didn't add the map due to the possibility that it wouldn't qualify under fair use.

Oh by the way, checking for data integrity sucks. Especially when you have to determine how some data points were combined for a single data point.

-Trevor

I am hoping I can try to get back to a "normal" (what's normal in grad school) after my exam in econometrics today. This exam was historically known to be a rather difficult exam requiring us to apply techniques very quickly, and this year turned out to be no different. I think the exam went ok, there certainly wasn't the pressure of the prelims, but I spent this last week going over past exams and rewriting my notes a couple of times so I can now recite the log likelihood of the heckman self selection model amongst many others. I find it interesting, though not really a criticism, that our exams require vast memorization, yet the professors use notes . Though at some level, it helps give an incentive to get a deeper understanding of the concepts I guess.

I remember in undergrad, my econometrics professor said, "If you want to know the proofs, goto grad school, because I am not going to show it here and I don't want to relearn them." Though that certainly wasn't the only reason I am going, I can certainly see myself in that position in a few years.

Well, in any case, a few friends and I are going to see The Departed tomorrow. I've heard great things about it and am certain Scorsese can do at least as well as the Aviator (not to mention Raging Bull, Casino, and Goodfellas).

-Trevor

In an Indian village, a headmaster was quite pleased after he was able to get nearly 40 students (ages 6 to 11) off of alcohol. The village evidently has a free supply of locally made alcohol and is socially acceptable to drink. However, the headmaster wanted to see the kids improve due to some pretty bad results, so using various incentives, was able to sober up the kids. An interesting story, as this is not a problem I would expect to see in such large quantities, but I guess there is a first time for everything.

-Trevor

Quote of the Day:

If no one can do it, no one can!
-Dina Shatnawi

Note: She wanted me to write a disclaimer that this was said while studying for an econometrics exam, so you shouldn't judge her too harshly.

My sister let me know that Zoey has recently passed away after what appears to be a rather long battle with a tumor and a swollen liver. Over the summer when I was home, she had been very sick, but had a rather miraculous recovery at the time. However, illness and age got to her and she passed away.

Pets always have an amazing way attaching themselves to people, and even though she has been under the care of my sister recently, it is still very sad to see her pass.

-Trevor

This week will be marked forever in infamy for thousands of baseball fans across the country, mainly Minnesota fans, who had to suffer through three humiliating games to watch the Twins get swept by the mediocre Athletics. It is a sad time for all fans of this glorious sport, but there is still some rejoicing in the thought that the Twins overcame improbable odds in order to make the playoffs in the first place, which we cannot overlook.

Well, I will hold out hope that we will resign Hunter, he's a good team leader who helps out the team statistically wise and with positive team chemistry. My playoff hopes now revolve Detroit beating the Yankees, so let's all cheer for an early Yankees exit in the playoffs!

In the world of fantasy baseball, my playoffs actually turned out pretty well, considering I won, Yeah!. Hopefully I will be able to take this team to victory next year, though I noticed a general nonenthusiasm this year while playing, which may explain why a team which I barely managed actually won. Who knows.

-Trevor

There was an interesting article in the Star Tribune today about a retired College Chancellor who had what was diagnosed as Transient Global Amnesia in which a person can become confused for short periods of time about certain events, but are generally able to function normally otherwise. Luckily for the man, it was not as serious as an onset of Alzheimers.

-Trevor

So what does my sister do when she has time on her hands? She does makeovers of people/objects in photos. In this particular case, she took a clay head that I have and took a photo of for my photo class in high school about 9 years ago (damn I'm getting old ). In any case, here are the results, but the head looks to be dressing in drag, and from what I can tell, it hasn't had any life altering events since this photo was taken, other than making the move to Tucson with me.

-Trevor