TV.com now allows us to use our own images for our icons. This is a good thing.

I can now represent myself as the falcon form of the Sorceress (Zoar?) from the 2002 He-Man remake. This is a good thing.

The default icon for a new user is now the scariest Howdy Doody image I've seen in my life. This is a very very very bad thing. Get it away from me. Now.

One part of the local news tonight in the DC area is about how a man killed a 21-month-old child who was left in his care while his girlfriend (who runs a child care out of her house, albeit an unlicensed one) was out to run errands.  The child's sister was a witness, the man's on the run, and things are looking pretty bad.

The news people reported on this heavily.  One station in particular made a big deal about how the child's mother was in the Twin Towers on September 11 and managed to escape, and her son happened to be killed one day after the fifth anniversary.  While that is an interesting point, that really doesn't have much to do with this killing.
Also, we shouldn't read too much into the fact that the man's name is Mohammad Ahmad.

We will never forget September 11.  That's almost a given, especially for someone like myself whose father worked for the Pentagon.  But that doesn't mean that any tenuous link to those events should be hopped upon by the media.  This is either a case of murder or manslaughter (it's kinda suspicious that only one of the four present children was killed and a witness wasn't, so I'm not thinking this was premeditated) by a local man, and does not resemble an act of terrorism in any manner.
Trust me on this.  I happen to live right next door to the guy.  If this was meant to strike fear into my heart, it failed. (It does, however, depress me and make me more certain than ever that I should work on not losing my temper, lest I do something like he did.)

Note to the news crews: You've been filming my house all day.  Could you take a break at some time?  Some of us were hoping to run some errands tonight, and we already told you everything we know.
Also, you're in our parking space.

It happened twice in the past week, and both times it has been bothersome.

1. While you can still search URLs on Google to determine the content of the site, it no longer gives you a link to the site in the case that it has no record of it. As a person who doesn't like to type one-time URLs into the address field (I like to use it to keep track of sites I visit regularly), this requires me to use another method to create a nice link to click. Minor, but irritating.

2. Ever since Cartoon Network's site has been updated, their TV schedule has been unhelpful. There is no longer any information on any of the episodes, and the window that would normally allow me to see all showings of a certain show no longer appears properly.

But I'm not here just to rant. Someone linked me to a workaround.
http://schedule.cartoonnetwork.com/servlet/ScheduleServlet?action=GO
It looks awful, but at least it has the information we desire. Yay!

(For the record, no new Ben 10 episodes are scheduled for the next two weeks.)

This could have been a forum post, but a) I need to update my blog occasionally, b) this is likely to contain spoilers, and c) this is the kind of theory that will anger a lot of people on the forums, even if I'm wrong.

SPOILERS START HERE!

Today, I watched the ad for the upcoming episode "Ghost Freaked Out". It has obvious connections to "The Last Laugh" in its villains and main transformation, and it looks like Ghostfreak is going to get the chance to possess someone for once.

Unfortunately, he's possessing Gwen. While Fourarms looks on.

Now, examine the facts with me.
* The show is called Ben 10.
* Vilgax was defeated at the end of last season. Other than a flashback and his appearance in Gwen 10, we've heard nothing from him since.
* Cannonbolt and Wildvine became available on the Omnitrix this season, bringing the total number of forms to twelve.
* Ghostfreak has only received a short cameo so far this season.
* While four episodes have contained "Heatblast", one was a short cameo, one was Gwen 10, one was a Kevin role, and one was an unrelated Pyros. None were voiced by Steve Blum.
* Steve Blum also voices Ghostfreak and Vilgax.

My theory is that Steve Blum is no longer going to be a regular cast member on the show.
Vilgax is dead.
It seems highly likely that Ghostfreak will be a villain in tomorrow's episode who acts independently of Ben, and I won't be surprised if he's gone from the Omnitrix after that.
And if my theory's right, the next step will be for Heatblast to vanish as well.

Even if that's the case, we can hope for Blum guest starring roles. Life goes on.

END SPOILERS

I currently have three Atari 2600s and an Atari 7800 resting on the dining room table, complete with various AC adaptors and devices designed to get them to attach to an old TV set.

I have gotten none of them to work.

In short, this means that I cannot currently play nearly half of my gaming collection.  And even then, I'm fairly certain that if I could get them to work, I probably wouldn't enjoy half of them as much as I did when I was younger.

In fact, the only systems I have currently configured to play games are the N64, GC, GBA and DS.  My computer's CD-ROM drive isn't working properly, so I can't even play the PC ones.

In short, although I boast a collection of 250 games, I can only play 44 of them at this time.  (Not counting the individual games included within the Gamecube compilations and Animal Crossing, which might get the game count into triple digits again.)

Sigh.

It would be worse if I didn't visit various Internet-based gaming sites which aren't featured on this site.  I'm not going to be completely bored anytime soon.

Well, I probably will be, but it won't be due to lack of anything to do.