the episode is only halfway over, and i am already prepared to say it is HIGHLY FUCKING AMAZING.

thoughts to come.

UPDATE: amanda and i summing up our reactions so far:

pablohoney: AAAAAAAAAAAH
mads t r e t c h: WHAT/
mads t r e t c h: oh jesus
pablohoney: AHHHHHHHHHHH
pablohoney: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH
mads t r e t c h: lkasjdf;lkasjdf;lkkasdjf
mads t r e t c h: ;alskdjf;laskdjf
...
pablohoney: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH
pablohoney: i AM DYING
mads t r e t c h: can't... breath....
pablohoney: WAIT
...
pablohoney: OH NO OH NO OH NO
mads t r e t c h: oh my god
mads t r e t c h: a'ldksfjal;sdkfj;alskdfjas;ldfkj
pablohoney: what
pablohoney: the
pablohoney: fuck
mads t r e t c h: ok, now can't breath and am crying
...
pablohoney: EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
pablohoney: EWWWWWWWWWWWW
pablohoney: AHHHHHHHH
pablohoney: EWW
mads t r e t c h: EWE
...
pablohoney: ahhhhhhhhh
pablohoney: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
mads t r e t c h: OOOOO WAAAAA/ ]]

UPDATE II: if this show does not get renewed, i will kill every single one of you fuckers who has not been watching it.

SPOILERS BELOW!

Awesome:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Major League Baseball claiming that this material is infringing:

Bird Getting Hit By Baseball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPgEpQNHJDw

For the record, I believe that exploding birds are a part of our shared culture and should automatically fall under the fair use doctrine.

Bonus punchline: the only other clip I've ever posted to YouTube is an excerpt from a copyrighted DVD. It remains happily un-C&Ded.

Alright, here's another stab at a legitimate complaint about OS X: my copy can no longer play Flash movies. Every time Flash launches on a webpage it apparently tries to connect to my Bluetooth headset (which is nowhere nearby and hasn't been used in months). I then get a "Bluetooth Audio Failed" message and playback stops — and can't be started! Argh. This despite my decidedly non-headset-oriented settings in Preferences and Flash's settings.

This guy seems to be the only other person on the internet having this problem, and he hasn't got a solution. It's pretty goddamn irritating — I'm missing out on YouTube-based hilarity on a daily basis.

good news! via julie, it appears that the red cross has loosened some of their restrictions regarding who can and cannot donate blood. i was informed a year or two ago that i could never donate blood again because i had lived in europe for a year and could potentially have teh mad cow. and i was sad. but it looks like now, unless i am mistaken, i can donate all the delicious blood that i want. more worrisome: even though i must have donated near ten times now, i can NEVER REMEMBER MY BLOOD TYPE. what's up with that?

Today is E3, when we'll supposedly learn some more details surround Nintendo's new console and the plans of the Big Three in general. Already revealed: the PS3's $500 price tag — and that's just for the entry-level model without wifi or HD support. Yikes.

I sort of had a PSOne in college — a roommate owned it, but I chipped it — and it was a pretty fun, but not great system. I've always had a grudge against Sony's offerings, though, on the basis of their insanely bad controller. I think they just shot themselves in the foot pretty seriously.

Meanwhile, I'm getting more and more excited for the Nintendo Revolution Wii. Everytime I look at that new controller I get a little more excited.

UPDATE: NYT coverage of the Wii can be found here. In general the various gaming news outlets are saying Nintendo hit it out of the park with their demo, It's getting very favorable comparisons to Sony's presentation. which is being treated as something of a flop (largely because of the huge price tag for the PS3). No word on price for the Wii, but they've previously pledged it'll clock in at under $300. No release date either, other than the disappointingly vague and far away "Q4".

Well, my SMS project has finally been loosed on an unsuspecting world. And yeah, it's for DCist. Go check out the announcement message here — it's got all the details on what the service does and how to use it.

My dirty little secret? Throughput is an unimpressive 4-6 outbound messages per minute. If things don't crash horribly under the announcement traffic, I'll be very surprised. But there's nothing I can do but dive in and see how it handles load. Once it breaks I'll start sorting it all out.