A rather enjoyable weekend, but as with most, it was just way too short. Quick recap time:

Went to see Brian Regan at Rascals. Too funny! Do yourself a favor and go to see him if and when he comes to your area. Well worth paying for. The fact that this was a free ticket was just icing on the cake.

Saturday turned long and uneventful when my hang-out plans with friends were turned sour by an upset stomach (not mine). So I spent most of the day staring at the computer. When I finally had enough of that, I went out and drove. For two hours. With no destination. Such a nice way to drive.

Sunday I decided to torture my body and try and play some roller hockey. Considering I hadn’t laced up the skates in over a year, I didn’t do too badly. No to say that I wasn’t in pain afterwards. The sunburn was just a bonus.

There is a whole lot of plumbing work going on behind the scenes here at Fischler.org. I’m taking my limited (and by limited I mean nearly non-existant) knowledge of programing languages and databases and trying to build myself a content management system. I plan to teach this old dog lots of new tricks, but before that can happen, you have to have the data there to manipulate. And that’s where the fun stops.

The long and tyring job of placing nearly two years of weblog entries into the database, along with a host of other info has begun. I know in the long run it’s going to be worth all of the hassle, but I did data-entry for a living before and I didn’t enjoy it much the first time around.

Hey, I have to bitch about something, right? ^_^

New York might finally be getting new ballparks for the Yankees and Mets. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is quoted in the Times:

"We are negotiating with both the Yankees and the Mets and we are very, very close and we will tell you everything in about two weeks, maybe three."

It looks like Rudy found an extra $1.5 billion lying around when he was working out the budget. Think maybe he can do the same for my checking account? ^_^

It looks as if AOL is considering dropping Internet Explorer as the web browser of choice in their software. Personally, I think they should. The only thing they give up is having their software bundeled with Windows out of the box, and if any company can survive that it’s AOL. Everyone and their grandmother have heard of them and probably have at least four or five of their CD’s lying around the house acting as coasters.

The only thing I find shocking about this is the fact it took them so long to get the ball rolling. As soon as Mozilla (the true Netsacpe 6) reaches 1.0, I have a feeling they’ll make the switch and bring about another swing in the browser usage stats, which is good for standards and developers in the long run. They didn’t just buy Netscape for the hell of it, y’know.

This story broke yesterday, but I still felt I needed to comment on it. Relatives of those killed in the dreadful Columbine massacre have decided that violent games are the reason those two very disturbed teens decided to go on a killing spree, so they’re suing the game companines for damages. The total asked from 25 companies: $5 billion.

Are they out of their fucking minds? They can’t be serious, can they? Yes, I feel bad about their loses, as does the rest of the country, but I highly doubt that video games can turn anyone into "monster killers" as the lawsuit states. In fact, the text of the lawsuit alleges: "Absent the combination of extremely violent video games and these boys’ incredibly deep involvement, use of and addiction to these games and the boys’ basic personalities, these murders and this massacre would not have occurred". Bullshit, I say!

In my opinion, it’s like someone trying to sue Coca-Cola because it gave them cavaties. Just another example of our society passing the buck of responsibility from parrents and those directly involved in the raising of these kids to the media and entertainment industries. I’ve played these same kind of games in school and it never gave me the urge to go grab an uzi and wipe out a couple dozen of my classmates. The same can be said for millions upon millions of others across the country. These shooters are exceptions to the rule, and everyone should not be made to suffer because of their actions, least of all the companies who did nothing more than deliver what their customers wanted.