i hear this sound all the time...

This is one of those sounds you hear all the time without really realizing it.

Listen to the sound that's played at just about 1:51 into this trailer, just as the zombie looking dude's head pops up.


Does it sound familiar to you at all? It should. It's in a lot of stuff, especially where there is fire, or a Ford truck needs to appear, or you are watching the preview for any old action movie at all.

Here it is in it's full form.

When you hear the whole thing, is it more familiar? To the dudes I tend to hang with, it very much better be.
It's the sound from the last level of DOOM II, when the boss room or The Icon of Sin, or whatever, throws the cubes at you.
Check it:


Even if you have not played this game, I guarantee you have heard this sound. It's called DSBOSPIT and I wish I could find out more about it. Like, was it created for DOOM II or did it exist before and how the hell was it made?

Let us look around the GlobalMEGAnetZ.
Ah. We find this, from doom.wikia.com trivia page:

Did you know that many sound effects used in classic Doom games were acquired from Sound Ideas' General series sound effects library, which is why they can be heard in various movies and television shows?

Also, from a doom.wikia page about the Icon of Sin level:
The launch sound of the skull cube is used in many television shows and movies. One such movie is the documentary Hawking's Paradox about physicist Stephen Hawking. This is because the sound (among many other Doom sound effects) was acquired from Sound Ideas' General series sound effects library.

If you go Sound Ideas' main page and listen to the demo, which is 6:26 long, so I assume I am the only dope who will actually do so, you'll hear several sounds that were used in the production of DOOM II, but not DSBOSPIT. However, just because you don't hear it in that front page demo, or in any of the other, er... 10 or 15 demos I listened to on the site, does not mean it didn't come from them. I believe it did come from them, but it's a very popular sound so they keep it out of the demos so peoples can't steals it.

To do some more research into the creation of the sound or even to what Sound Ideas' calls the original file, which is something I really want to know, I went to the DOOMWORLD Forums.
I was going to register for the forums, when I caught myself slipping down a rat-hole of unneeded energy usage. More accurately, I caught myself slipping further down the rat-hole of unneeded energy usage I was already in.

I'm going to bed.

on the road this morning...

The guy behind me on the exit ramp to get to where I work had some interesting mouth action going on.
This continues to be not NSFW, so don't get excited.
He was drinking coffee and smoking at the same time. I don't mean he kept the cigarette in his mouth while he tried to get his coffee in his face. That would be silly. He would take the butt out when it was time for coffee.

However, he was chewing gum while drinking coffee and smoking. He did NOT remove the gum when it was time for a sip or time for a drag.
I could not help but think about what that gum looks/stinks like by the time he gets where he is going. I wish I could help it. I really do.
I was compelled to watch him in my rear view mirror probably more than was safe, because he was an entire flurry of activity all by him self.
Coffee up!
Coffee down!
Cigarette up!
Cigaretre down!
Coffee up!
And so on...
Betwixt all the tobacco/java action, was the chewing, which was somewhat compelling all by itself.
For you to see what this chewing was like, go to a mirror. Look in the mirror and say this:
Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine.

Go on.
Do it.

garfield...

I was talking to Steve the other day about Garfield, and how horrible the comic is. I thought, I said, that you could take random panels from all the various strips, mix them all up, and get results at least as good as what Jim Davis is now producing.
I was feeling really clever until Steve told me people are already doing in OnTheLine.
I'm okay with someone else doing it, as I never would have had the gumption to figure out how to make it happen.

Here is a place to do it. You can sometimes hit upon something interesting, though it takes more work than I had guessed.

THIS however, is brilliant almost all the way through, AND the concept never even occurred to me. I think I love it.

garfield minus garfield


Then, there is always this horrible bit of INtraWEBz stuff. Yeeks. This really made me sad.
Is Garfield dead?

some advice...

Listen to me. What you are doing is not good for you. It's unhealthy. Do you understand?
There's no reason to use the level of effort you are using, and, if there is, something is really wrong with you. What you're doing can only make it worse.

It should not sound, when you do what you are doing, like you are sanding down a burl, or steel-wool scrubbing burnt lasagna off the bottom of a pan.
Scrubbing at all, I think, should be avoided.

Be more gentle, will you? Parts of you will thank other parts of you.

welcome to el posto 200...

Yes, yes. 200 posts. Quite a landmark.

Here is post 200.

An associate in the program I team lead for drew a picture of me.


As you can see, he really captured my essence, especially the perpetual look of bemused annoyance I carry around on my face. And my thick, full lips.
He drew in the tools of my trade, as well. I am frequently packing heat and... uh... have a chain on a stick.
Apparently, I dress as though I were on my way to go play baseball, with, like an ascot on, or something.

What he did not capture correctly, was my hairstyle. He drew me COMPLETELY bald, which is just laughable.
I had him go back and fix it.


There. That's better.

tts funnies...

TTS Funnies

nature movie...

Nature Movie

A-hole or stupid dork-ass...?

The question of whether an individual is a horrible person, or just a total dope who doesn't know any better, is a prevalent one.
I have an example, but I will present someone else's other example as a clarifying example first.
Steve has a fellow who is renting from him. In the interest of keeping all of Steve's information as private as possible, I will not even mention the first name of the guy who is renting from him.
Let it be known that all people with the same first name as this person, suck.

Steve, being the kind hearted and somewhat dopey landlord he is, allowed Ra... the guy, to utilize his, Steve's, wireless network for 10 bucks a month. This is a nicety that is totally outside what is required of any landlord.
Almost immediately, Steve's intraWEBZ connection speed dropped off dramatically. He also received email from his ISP stating that he must both cease and desist the sharing of the copy write-d material he was sending out on-the-line.
Steve went and asked his tenant what the deal was. His tenant said, "Oh. Sorry, dude. I am torrenting all kinds of movies and crap."
Steve, nicely, asked him to stop.
A couple of days later, Steve had another drop in his connection speed. He looked at his router logs and saw all kinds of connections out to IP address from nice places like Kenya and Kaflakastan.
Steve went and asked his tenant what the deal was. His tenant said, "Oh. Sorry, dude. Now I don't know what's going on."
The dude then asked his girlfriend what the deal might be. She might know, because she was on her laptop using Steve's encryption key which tenant decided to share.
Steve posed the question to me, "Is this guy a massive A-hole, or is he simply stupid-dorkass?"
I contend that he is probably oblivious to the impact he is having on the world and that MAKES him an A-hole. However, he probably isn't malicious in his intent.
Prolly.

I think, when you find yourself asking the question of A-hole or stupid-dorkass, your immediate response to yourself should tell you something about the reality of you.

Here is an example from my morning.
I was at Dunkin' Donuts.
Here is an approximation of what the parking lot looked like when I came out from getting my iced coffee:

It's a little blurry, I know, but that finger is pointing to the area where the Dunkin' Donuts was located in relation to the parking lot. It is relevant.
The car that is not green, is mine.
Extra points to anyone who can name where the cars came from.

As I was preparing to leave, and by leaving I mean pulling forward since there is no one parked in front of me, this truck comes into the scene:


Given the available parking place configuration, and where the Dunkin's Donuts is, where would you park? The parking place closest to your destination, the one that would not at all obstruct the forward momentum of the car trying to leave? Or, would you chose the one that is farther away from your destination and that DOES impede to forward movement of the car attempting to leave?

Guess where the truck started pulling in:


Without really thinking, I did:




This maneuver caused the driver of the truck to slam on his breaks, flap his hands in the air in frustration and stare at me open-mouthed. I did my best to ignore all of the above behaviors and just drive away.

Quickly, almost unconsciously, the question went through my mind. A-hole or stupid-dorkass?
What says a lot about me, I think, is that I assume that the only way a person would make that decision is because they felt the need to inject themselves into someone else's day. To cause some minor disruption. Just because.
That's what I think.
And I think that says that inside I basically see people as evil, at least with the little "e".
I think if I asked a number of people what they thought about this incident, many of them would say, "I'm sure he didn't even realize what he was doing." Maybe, they might also add, "Don't you think you put a lot of energy into pondering things that no one really cares about?"
I believe those people think that human beings are basically dumb and oblivious.
Which is worse?
Dunno.

The other thing this makes me think, is this:
I KNOW in that situation I was right. I KNOW he was wrong.
However, I KNOW that he KNOWS he was right.

He will probably relate this story to his friends, though possibly without the un-needed detail of all the GIMPed pictures.
How will he tell the story?

los 5 magníficos...

Los 5 Magníficos!!!
smallchild101 and myself have stumbled upon this show. It is on Sunday nights and we end up watching it after the Simpsons as I simply cannot allow her to watch Family Guy. I'm wicked responsible.
Los 5 Magníficos is on the Portuguese Spanish channel UNIVISION. We have no idea what anyone is talking about, but it's okay, because it is insane and insanity is fun in any language.
Here's the premise as best as we can gather. It's like American Idol, except, instead of singers competing against each other, it is performance groups, not musical groups, though there is always music. They are jugglers and acrobatics and trapeze artistes and people who spin around on ropes a lot. I'm not sure what you call that pursuit.
The "acts" sometimes end up with just a bunch of people flipping around the stage while crazy music plays and spotlights spin wildly. While what the individuals are doing is impressive, the overall presentations sometimes do not at all call to mind the word "choreography".
There is also a reality-show kind of aspect. We seem to be following this group specifically:

We see them outside, talking to each other while dramatic, less-crazy, music plays.
See how that one guy has a broken leg? Apparently, this is a big deal. These people MIGHT be the titled Magnificent 5, but, as there are seven of them, they might not be, either.
It's as near as I can guess, because I don't see anything that leads to the number 5 at all. There are all kinds of different groups that show up, but these guys seem to be the core.
Perhaps, they are the current Magnificent 5 and the other people are on the show to become, "Your NEW Magnificent 5"?
I don't know.
There is certainly a level of competition, though. Sometimes, the show changes and it becomes almost like a game show.
At the end of last week, there were 3 groups competing against what I am now going to refer to as the Magnificent 5.
Here's what the competition was.
One guy from a group has to jump on a small trampoline. He has to jump on the trampoline, because he is throwing feathered Lawn Jart looking things at a high board with some balloons on it. He has to jump and throw until he pops 3 balloons.
Once he has popped 3 balloons, the group can work together to unlock a unicycle that is chained to a pole.
The best person on the unicycle then gets on the unicycle. They are to follow a path set up with traffic cones, though if they don't follow the actual path, it doesn't seem to matter.
When they get to the end of the path, the whole group get together and make a human ladder high enough to lift a person to a chain hanging from the ceiling.
On the chain is a bag hanging from a hook.
The person gets the bag off the hook.
In the bag is some balls.
They all run to another location, where one of their other guys is sitting on a platform over a pool of water.
The best thrower in the group has to throw one of the balls from the bag through a small hole in a black board. If he does this, the person on the platform does NOT fall into the water.
The person only falls in the water if the group does not beat the last groups time, because it's all timed, if I forgot to say that.
I don't know what the point is of having the guy on the platform for the first group as they are setting the original time.
Whew.
So one group won, but I don't know what they won.
Luckily, there is this guy to keep all this on track:

I think there is a Portuguese Spanish version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band somewhere. This guy is the Ryan Seacrest. He smiles a lot and speaking loudly and very animatedly and is generally much more likeable and heterosexual appearing than is Ryan Seacrest.
At first, I though it was Portuguese Spanish Peter Brady, but it isn't.

See how this post is kinda all over the place? So is this show.

There is an aspect of the show that is very similar to American Idol. An act will perform and then three, no four, FOUR JUDGES, give their opinions and a 1-10 score. One judge has a big, white handlebar mustache. Which is always a bonus.

Here's a sample of some of the acts that were on this week.


This guy balanced a lot of stuff on his face.


This chick balanced herself on her face and generally manipulated herself into inappropriate positions while her male partner walked around her and threw rose petals. Seriously.




These guys... um... They, uh, held each other in odd shapes... a lot, and, uh... one guys face was very frequently on a level below the wasteband of the other guy, both front and back...
One guys face was frequently in the other guy's butt. If you will.
Also, in these pictures, they look dirty. And I don't mean dirty as in "dirty". I mean like they were rolling around in actual soil.
Why do they look like this?
When they first appeared on the show, for the first couple of seconds, I said to myself, "Man. Those guys are jacked." But that was only for a couple of seconds. While they are in fine shape, true, they are not in as fine shape as they are wanting to appear, so they seem to have outlined all their musckles with a charcoal briquette.

Then... there was this guy.

He was really pretty impressive. Impressive both in the way he could juggle all kinds of stuff in interesting ways and impressive because he crammed a large jiggly belly into a yellow spandex shirt and ran around and sweated from his head a lot. There was the additional level of interesting inherent in watching a person who could, at any moment, have a massive cardiac event.
He did not though.
He bounce juggled 10 or 12 balls at once. He spun, with his feet, the table in the image above so fast it was a blur.
He sweated and juggled interestingly for some time.
For the finale, his assistants lugged in a large pole with some seats tacked on the ends.
Then, they lugged in some small children. The children began strapping themselves into the seats while smallchild and I started saying, "Oh no... No, no, no. He's not gonna...?"
The children had problems with the strapping in process, so the sweaty juggler guy had to help them out. My confidence in the whole scenario was not inspired.
Then, sweaty got back onto his platform with his legs in the air and the two assistants hefted the children into the air and onto his waiting feet.



He spun the crap outta them. The Department of Children, Youth and Families would not approve of this behavior.
Of course, I cannot find video of it. The still picture just does not do it justice.

This show is now on the DVR list.