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There a quiz for both the guys and the gals out there of any orientation:
Date a Super-Hero Chick
Date a Super-Hero Dude

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Our miniature wiener dog who wasn’t sure what to make of things either! He’s just as happy as we are to see the snow piles melting a bit…especially considering every time he has to do his “business” it’s a chilling experience. He’s too low to the ground even when we clear him a spot!

Here’s a few of Brownie (we keep him warm as best we can):

I’m sure the snow will be around for a while longer but here’s to hoping the worst is behind us!

No related posts.

Now that I’ve seen the iPad, I suspect that Amazon’s first thought on seeing Apple’s newest product was relief. The iPad is more laptop than e-book reader.

First, as far as readers goes, this thing is large. I love that my Kindle easily passes as a book with the right cover. Carrying it with me through the airport or around town draws absolutely no attention because it simply looks like a book. Throw a cover on the iPad and you’ll have what looks like a briefcase.

Second, with the iPad being backlit I think it will make for a poor choice as an e-reader. It’s funny because my first thought when I bought my Kindle was disappointment that it wasn’t backlit. I couldn’t have been more wrong on that one, though. The fact that it’s not backlit makes it so easy to read. Reading on the iPad looks like it would be the same as reading on my laptop. I’m sure the Apple fanboys will soldier through and rave about how great it is to read on the iPad but having used the Kindle I’d never want backlit for reading again.

Also, does anyone else really dislike the name iPad? Aside from the fact that MadTV had a joke about this very product name, I just don’t like it. It’s very similar to my initial thought on Nintendo’s Wii. Like the Wii, I suspect I’ll hear so much about the iPad so very often that I’ll eventually forget my initial thoughts on the name…society will beat the name into my subconscious until I don’t even remember ever not liking it!

The iPad looks awesome as a multi-purpose tech tool/toy. However, for those who think this is going to be knocking off the Kindle as the most popular e-reader, I just can’t agree (yet). I think the iPad is designed to be a little bit of everything in a very cool package. Because of this, it just doesn’t appear to have the pinpoint purpose like the Kindle does. Every design choice made for the Kindle had reading in mind and that’s obviously not the case with the iPad. Do I think people who own the Kindle will be buying the iPad? Absolutely. But I also believe they’ll keep their Kindle close at hand when they’re looking to read.

If you’re thinking of the iPad as a cool new addition to your tech collection, I say go for it. If you’re thinking of getting the iPad just to use exclusively as an e-reader, I would recommend researching the Kindle a little more (or any other device specifically for reading). At least try to read a free eBook on a computer screen and decide how easy you think it is. I suspect the size will be mildly annoying when traveling but the backlit screen will be the real problem as an eye killer. Obviously all this changes if Apple drops some kind of bomb about switching to some type of reader mode!

Why I Love My Kindle

• It’s easy on the eyes. Even reading for hours puts no strain on my eyes.

• It really feels like a book. Even a week after owning it I would occasionally reach up to the upper right-hand corner in an attempt to turn the page.
• It looks great with a nice cover and passes as a book easily.
• Free internet access via Whispernet.
• The book prices are great plus there are plenty of free books to download. I suspect I’ve saved around $40 buying books on the Kindle over the last few months – well on my way to making my money back.

A Few Tips for New Kindle Owners

• If you’re buying an old book, be sure to try to find the free version. For example, with Sherlock Holmes being released in theaters I was interested to give the books a try. There are plenty of versions that will cost you money but there are also normally free versions if you look long enough.

• Be sure to switch to offline mode when you’re not on the internet or shopping the Kindle store (Menu then Turn Off Wireless). This will save you on battery usage and switching back online only takes a moment.
• I found locating the web browser a little tricky the first time: from the Home screen select Menu then Experimental then Basic Web.
• To turn on text-to-speech hold down Shift and then hit Sym. Give it a few seconds to start (if you hit the key combination again too quickly you’ll end up turning it back off again).

I guess I shouldn’t complain about Apple fanboys since I’ve obviously become something of a Kindle fanboy myself. I think the Apple fans do have a lot to be excited about but I also believe that Kindle owners have nothing to worry about. As Steve Jobs said, the iPad is “way better than a laptop, way better than a phone.” I think it’s important to notice that he stopped there.

For those interested, you can learn more about the Kindle 2 here

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Still….they are fun…

see more Funny Graphs

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With the Twilight craze going on right now, I can’t help but feel that Mingle2 chose the incorrect undead beings to use to generate traffic. I decided to check to see if there were any vampire related dating sites…and based on Twilight fans I was afraid of what I would find (see below). I did find LoveBitten.net which appears to be based on HBO’s True Blood…although it appears that it’s also a real dating site. Then I found two more very real vampire dating sites: VampirePersonals and VamPersonals. All of these sites appear to be taking themselves seriously which is fine, I guess. One man’s joke is another man’s…dating site.

The last two vampire dating sites seem to be marketing themselves to both vampire fans and goth people…which I was under the impression were two very different groups of people. I guess not! Either way, it goes to show if you’ve got a niche, there’s probably a dating site for it.

Oh, and here’s one of those Twilight fans if you were wondering what I was talking about…

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As with my experience with the Diablo series, Torchlight offers a lot of fun with single player dungeon crawling. The first few levels have felt less frantic than I remember Diablo being and I’m not convinced this is a good thing: it seems I am having the most fun when a flood of enemies comes pouring out of the wall. The game has also been much, much less dark. It’s been quite a long time now but I remember actually being a little freaked out playing those first few levels of the original Diablo in those dark dungeons.

I do like some differences the game has introduced such as pets and the (sort of) uniqueness of the classes. The specializations of the classes add a lot of variety and the skill trees allow for variety even among the same class. For example, you wouldn’t normally see a mage class (Alchemist here) specializing in melee combat but it’s a viable option in Torchlight.

Overall the game is really solid and fun and more than a few ideas have made their way from the Diablo series to this game (not a bad thing). There are some things which appear to be missing, such as online play and depth in character creation but you come into it looking for a fun hack-and-slasher, you won’t be let down.

This isn’t something I would normally post about but I found out that by using Steam I could get the game for $5 and I wanted to pass that along. Unfortunately, in the last 12 hours, the game price has gone up to $10. I think I must have (by accident) purchased the game on the last day of a holiday sale. Still, even at $10 the game is way underpriced. It appears the game will be priced this way through January 4th, at which I believe the price will go back up to the $20 range.

While the game isn’t perfect, if you’re looking for a fun game to play, I don’t think you could get more for your money than this.

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But David Anderegg, a professor of psychology at Bennington College, says that merely mentioning terms like nerd or geek serves to perpetuate the stereotype. The words are damaging, much like racial epithets, he says, and should be avoided.

This blows my mind because, as both a geek and a nerd, I have to say that these two groups are just now entering the greatest point in their history. Acceptance of being a nerd or a geek is at an all-time high. When I was growing up, people would quickly deny being a geek if they were accused of it. A nerd meant your only friend was math. But today, people are embracing these labels and finding overwhelming acceptance. I’ve heard it said “geek is the new cool” and even one of the comments in the Wired article mentions that “nerds are the new rockstars”. I think both of these comments take things a little too far but I will say any shame previously associated with these labels has all but disappeared.

To bring the argument back around to the main purpose of this blog, online dating, I was never secretive that I was geeky in my dating profile. I believe I made some kind of joke about being able to “out geek” any of the women I met. And you know what? I still had outstanding success dating online. True to my geek form, I analyzed what worked, what didn’t, changed a few approaches and was averaging two first dates a week the last few months. You know what else? The woman I met dating online who would eventually become my wife is a photography-geek and I love that.

Don’t turn around and ban something just when the people who make up that group are starting to thrive. Don’t even suggest doing so just to try and make some point about how society needs to make the stereotypes more welcoming. If some geek wants to deny being so just to improve his social standing with people he would never hang out with, he’s not smart enough to be in the club anyway. We shouldn’t argue that geeks are both intelligent and stupid in the same breath. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that you can be a geek, wander online, and have more friends than any jock could dream of, finding acceptance and love from communities all over the world.

Wired discusses in their article:

Society has to take a role in this because the more nerds and geeks (which we are assuming are the smart people that will run this tech heavy world someday) that withdraw from the world due to social stigma the worse off we’ll be for it. The nerd that is getting pantsed right now at some high school just for being a math honk, could be the kid that was going to grow up to invent the cure for cancer. Instead, his constant social torture at the hands of his so-called peers cause him to withdraw and spend his life collecting turtles.

This couldn’t be more incorrect. This sounds like someone describing something from the 1980s not 2010. So here’s my modern-day take on it:

Society has to take the role of staying the hell out of trying to “fix” something that isn’t broken. The nerd that is getting pantsed right now may have never turned to the thriving online community that fully accepts him and in turn may have never met the person who would become his best friend that worked with him to cure cancer. Instead, society’s constant obsession with making sure everyone is exactly the same, even though they’re not, would drive him to hang out with a bunch of jocks that he doesn’t even like forever missing the amazing opportunities just being himself would have provided.

I love being a geek and I love being a nerd. I enjoy hanging out with my friends playing Star Wars pen-and-paper games (double-whammy there), I’m more than happy to talk Tekken 6 framerates and have heated debates on why Twilight is ruining everything that’s great about vampires. I’m super excited about SW:TOR and hope they get this one right. I love that being a nerd has garnered me an amazing tech job at an amazing company that pays me so well. I love that when I was dating online the women I met recognized this and knew that because I fit these labels I would be a great provider (and by the time I had reached my mid-20s, how far I could throw a football finally meant as little to them as it should have all along).

Hey Society: You missed your chance to chime in on this one by a few decades. Move along. We’ve taken care of things just fine. No need for the Political-Correctness police to barge in and screw it up. While other people may use our labels in a negative way, they’re still ours. Keep your grubby hands off of ‘em.

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A few of my favorites joke include:

• The relationship options when trying to do a search.
• The How It Works page which has a little too much truth hidden in some of the jokes
• Just about all of the profiles

Give it a browse and have a laugh…and if any of the profiles remind you of your own it’s time to write a new one!

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I was excited to learn this week that HBO will begin filming its adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. This is the first in the series A Song of Ice and Fire which is probably my favorite series of books around. However, all my excitement regarding the filming has led me back to a familiar feeling of frustration that I haven’t felt since the second half of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series.

My problems with Mr. Jordan are that for around 3,000 pages he didn’t really write anything and it took him far longer to publish these books. If you look at the Amazon reviews you’ll see anger that can only come from those who feel they’ve been betrayed. A simple bad book would never garner 1,200 1-star reviews. Sadly, while still quite “readable”, the story had become bad by being far more concerned with the rearranging of dresses than moving the story in any direction at all.

Regrettably, Mr. Jordan passed away on September 16, 2007. In some ways, I’ll always see him as one of the best authors ever but I’ll also see him as the one author who would have forever been remembered as one of the greats had he only been able to write some actual plot in the second decade of his series. Brandon Sanderson will be taking over the series and I have high hopes that he’ll get things back on track.

Anyway, back to Mr. Martin. I feel like we’re walking down such a similar road with a super-strong start that fizzles out. Unlike Jordan’s writing thousands of pages with no plot, Martin instead writes nothing at all. Well…that’s not entirely true. He does continue to write just not the Song of Ice and Fire series. It took five long years for us to get book number four, A Feast for Crows, and I think many agree that this felt like the lightest plot-wise of the series. An amazing book? Yes, but I still found myself having visions of The Lord of Chaos all over again. It was only a worry at the time because rumors were the next book would be release much quicker. This book, A Dance with Dragons, was to be finished in 2006. Then 2008. Then 2009. Then earlier this month Martin said that the manuscript had reached 1100 pages…which sounds very Jordan-esc to me. Considering that the details being told in AFfC and ADoD were never intended to be told in the first place it appears the series is continuing its book expansion pattern (unless that 1100 can be trimmed down some).

I’m not against the author’s right to expand the story as they tell it but I wish these wonderful authors would being willing to skip some of the side stories that don’t make up the core of the tale. Add those stories as supplemental books after the main series is complete. Your fans will absolutely love the filling of gaps. Part of what makes A Song of Ice and Fire great is the fact that many of the details are hidden in mystery anyway. I know J.R.R Tolkien regretted not making his story longer but I can’t help but feel his modern contemporaries are over-compensating for this fear. That said, if Mr. Martin were able to publish as quickly as he did in the beginning, I would be happy to see the series continue in expansion. However, if we’re going to see two books a decade I think continued expansion is a mistake.

If you’re like me and have found yourself repeatedly frustrated by the epic stories that lose steam, I would highly recommend checking out Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen). The first time you read Gardens of the Moon you may find yourself confused but give it another read and then read the rest of the series. It always moves rapidly, the characters are great and Mr. Erikson churns out a new book almost every single year. Malazan Book of the Fallen really is a wonderful and wonderfully unique series.

As to Mr. Martin, I truly hope he is able to knock out A Dance with Dragons soon and then put this period behind him. I also hope he lives another hundred years and never stops writing. Can’t wait to see the HBO series…the casting looks great.

Finally…please Mr. Martin, stay healthy!

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