A Terabyte On Your Desktop

...or under it depending on how much desk space you have.

Iomega is offering this 1 Terabyte XL series hard drive for $899.95. (Iomega product info page)

I remember back in the day when the original terraserver went online and we were all amazed (as we looked at the web site on 400 Mhz AMD windows 2000 machines) that a single server had a terabyte of storage on it. Now it's yours for under a Grover. And I mean this guy, not this guy... thing... whatever.

via digg

Stand-Off - The Banned Xbox360 Ad

This supposedly banned commercial for the Xbox360 is freakin' hilarious.

I would've volunteered to be an extra in it ;)

Canada's New Five Dollar Coin Starring William Shatner

You know that saying about the values associated with words and images?



I think this picture is worth about 50,000 words or so.

Read

Intel "Ultrasuede" Laptop

Any time my wife says "Wow that's a cool laptop" it's worth posting.

This is Ultrasuede laptop from IBM and Toray. And yes, that is a suede-ish material attached to the casing.

via Gizmodo

NOOKA Watches

I have a bit of an obsession with watches. And these just made me... well... want one.

Sadly they are in the $250 range, which is way above what I normally spend on a watch. Someday when I've got the money to blow I'll definitely pick one up.

NOOKA Watches

Will Ferrell as W. Bush, round 2

Happy Freakin' Monday folks! Hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving and holiday weekend. Mine was filled with too much shopping, lots of video games, food, and hanging out with friends and family. According to the media this is what any red-blooded American is supposed to be doing during Thanksgiving.

Next year I'll have to organize a group of pirates to go marauding with me or something. Break from tradition a little bit.

Anyway, here's your Monday video installment: Will Ferrell reprising his role as George W. Bush for a recent TBS special on global warming.

Enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy Turkey Day!

Crazy Holiday Lights

Another Monday video post...

Think you've seen some crazy holiday lights?

Think again.

Monday Cat Hijinks

It's Monday. Unfortunately. At least it's a short work week.

We've got five cats in our house. Yes I know that's a lot. No, we didn't intend on having any more than three. Two of them were charity cases.

This video should give you a good idea of why I like these little fur balls so much.

via digg

Robot 1, Bush 0

I for one welcome our Einstein-ian robot overlords.

via

I Support Bloggers Rights

Support Bloggers' Rights!

Bloggers get fired for posting about their jobs. Bloggers get sued for posting previews of upcoming products (I'm looking at you Apple). Bloggers are sued, fired, AND shunned by some in the tech community for posting information on important and potentially devastating flaws in commercial software and hardware. What is potentially the biggest issue is the one I try to avoid on my blog: Politics. Current laws do NOT provide protection for bloggers who openly criticize or comment on politicians and elections. So we can talk about it to each other, but God help you if you publish your views on your blog.

Over at the EFF's site you can pick up a badge and put it on your blog or web site, just the like the ones I've added to J*Blog and Freeware Freak today. The EFF also maintains a legal guide for bloggers and a guide to blogging safely, both essential reads for any blogger might be pushing the lines a bit.

Show your support for blogging rights by adding a badge to your page, and join the EFF!

I'm being stalked by powdery white stuff that falls from the sky

See that white stuff on the radar map above? It's doesn't take a degree in thermodynamics to figure out what it is.

That's right folks. Today is the first day of the season in which I've seen SNOW *shudder* on the weather radar. And yes, it is fairly late in the year for our first snow. Which makes me think we're going to get hit that much harder when the season really starts to kick-in.

Our forecast is calling for snow around 3:00 PM today. I'll be securing a bunker with a sauna for the remainder of the year.

UPDATE: It's here.

R.I.P. Eddie Guerrero

Eddie Guerrero
1967 - 2005

As a recent convert, I cannot begin to describe what this means for life-long fans. Eddie Guerrero had more in common with the "average man" than just about any other professional wrestler. He was open about his alcohol and drug abuse, spent the last 4 years sober, and had recently proven that he was just as popular (if not more so) as a "good guy" character than his previous incarnation as a lie-cheat-steal dirty fighter.

Metafilter points out that this just another in a long string of professional wrestlers who died relatively early in life.

For general info check out this AP News story, and for a personal insight into what this means for the wrestling community check out this post at rajah.com. The Wikipedia has an exhaustive page covering his life and background.

You'll be missed Eddie. Don't forget to frog splash St. Peter from the corner when you see him.

I'm such a slacker, random Monday musings

I was updating the site code today after signing up for a Google Analytics account when I noticed I haven't posted anything new in over a week.

Man I'm such a slacker sometimes.

Truth be told, it's been a fairly crazy week. My skills as a product manager (the little title under my name on my biz card) were put to the test over the last two weeks as the company I work for pushed through some very large projects in a very, VERY short amount of time. Nothing I can't handle, it just makes for some really rough work days. Thankfully I had a nice relaxing weekend.

On the 11th one of our cats (Zoey) had her kittens:



She had four total, even though all you see here are the first set of two. All of them will be going to good homes after they've had about eight weeks to become more independent.

Let's see... what else...

I've voted in every presidential election since I was 18. Last week I voted in my first mayoral election, and I'm happy to say the guy I voted for won (first time that's happened in ANY election I've voted in). Why did I vote for this particular candidate? Simple: I want to see if he'll make a difference. Lansing has had the same mayor for several terms now, and it really seems like the city has done nothing but stagnate while the former mayor was in office. Hopefully Mr. Bernero will show us something other than the status quo.

Friends and family know that I keep several different pages on the internet for a variety of purposes. There's the blog you're reading now, my Flickr account for digital pictures, my del.icio.us account for sharing bookmarks, my depository for freeware titles Freeware Freak, and my Last.fm profile where you can check out the music that I've been listening to.

Through the awesome data-merging service SuprGlu you can now view all of the content above in one place, or with one RSS feed if you're into the whole news aggregation scene. Point your browser at http://jasonrallen.suprglu.com/ to get all the latest posts, pics, bookmarks, and track listings.

That's about it for now. Hopefully you'll hear from me again before Thanksgiving.

Delphi Execs Go "Yaarrrrrrr!" After Plundering Larger Severance

Picture several warehouses full of fifty gallon drums of bull poo. Now read this article. I think you'll find the BS levels about the same.

Thousands of my fellow Lansing residents are in the economic outhouse due to GM's recent issues, and this can only hurt our economy as well as the rest of the state. If this isn't illegal it sure ought to be.

My First Pro Wrestling Show

Tonight I'm heading to Detroit to attend my first professional wrestling event. Ring Of Honor (basically a much cooler version of the WWE) is having a show tonight, and I will be attending with my brother-in-law and a few friends.

I never really got into wrestling as a kid, but my bro-in-law has a HUGE wrestling DVD collection, and over the last five years he's educated me in the ways of the ring. For the record: I know it's not real. I know it's scripted. But that doesn't change the fact that watching a man do a full 720 degree flip off the ropes before hitting the mat is impressive as hell.

And yes, this guy (Samoa Joe) will be there.

I need to make sure I don't forget my chair repellent.

UPDATE, After the show:

Wow...

First off I can now safely say that you haven't really experienced any form of pro-wrestling unless you've seen it live. The fans and the wrestlers were all really cool people, and I was pleased to discover that all the stereotypes simply don't hold any water (unlike most of the rest of the world).

I really did need that chair repellant! A match went outside the ring and two of the wrestlers proceeded to go at each other with chairs. At this point it basically turned into a mob-like scene, with a huge crowd of people around me jockeying for the best view. I was only five feet away from the carnage but still couldn't see it as the crowd kept moving, like some kind of river flowing around a couple of very large, moving boulders.

It was when this river of people suddenly took a collective step backwards in my direction that I started recalling the "Holder of this ticket voluntarily assumes all risk and danger of personal injury and all hazards arising from, related in any way to, the Event" portion of the back of my ticket.

Thankfully nobody got hurt, and I can't wait for the show to come out on DVD so I can pick up a copy.

I would recommend a Ring of Honor show to anybody. Simple put: It's just fun.

Stephen King's Dark Tower Comic Coming

Holy freakin' crap...



I recently finished the Dark Tower series, and today there's word that it's getting turned into a comic, with pencils by Jae Lee (one my all-time favs)...

Words... fail...

via 4 color rebellion

Even Stormtroopers Prefer The Nintendo DS

Just one more reason why the Nintendo DS rocks...

Because once the Imperial Empire takes over you won't have a choice.

via Kotaku

Unrest

What the hell is going on in France? - Metafilter

I mean really, what the hell IS going on in France?

Looking at this from a broad perspective, I see multiple free and fairly prosperous nations such as France and the U.S. with increasingly large numbers of increasingly unhappy residents. Are we nearing a point where a "free" society cannot remain free while still avoiding revolution?

Are more and more of us reaching the point where we can't stand our government? Or are we reaching the point where we really can't stand each other? Anger has a habit of easily transferring from one person to another, from one idea to another, from a good reason to a bad reason. I hope the answer is where it usually is: Somewhere in the middle.

I wish I knew.

UPDATE 11/04/04: Check out this BBC News article. I'd be hard pressed to say the situation is improving.

On The Virtues Of Idleness

I highly recommend reading through Mark Slouka's "Quitting The Paint Factory: On The Virtues Of Idleness", originally published in Harper's magazine, November 2004.

A brief taste:

Ah, but here's the rub: Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idle­ness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had "too much time on our hands." They knew we might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to something, "Quick, look busy."