Cry Havoc, And Let Loose The Dogs Of War

In A.D. 2009.  War was beginning.  Courtesy of Fortune.

Get this: Microsoft – the king of paid software – will announce today that it is going to give a version of Office away for free online. Both the online and desktop versions are scheduled to arrive in the first half of next year. Yes, you read that right. The latest version of its ubiquitous productivity software, dubbed Office 2010, will come as both a piece of software you can buy for your computer, and as a service you can access in your browser. [UPDATE: Microsoft says it will support the Firefox and Safari browsers as well as IE.]

For free. From Microsoft.

Yes, it's true.

For those of you that have been living under a rock, blogging incessantly, or doing whatever it is that gets you though the day, Open Office and Google had been doing a fantastic job of slowly, but surely, marginalizing the overly expensive, bloated, and resource intensive applications that made up the Microsoft Office suite.  Google had gone as far as announcing, last week, Chrome OS for netbooks, further infringing on Microsoft turf. 

Now the sleeping giant is awake.

God help us all.

Or is that, God *is* helping us all?

Homage

I haven't said much about anything lately, but for some reason, this struck me as a classic, appropriate of Michael Jackson.  You want proof on how much the King of Pop has influenced culture?

Look no further.  For your amusement:  Prison Thriller.

Rest in peace, MJ.

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One For The Archives

Just because I'm in that kind of mood, and because Thanksgiving is approaching:

WKRP in Cincinnati: Thanksgiving Turkey Bomb! @ Yahoo! Video

...may it stay on this blog until doomsday.

Starcraft 2 - The Trilogy?!

Yes, people, I have more news on Starcraft 2, which I've been impatiently awaiting ever since Brood War made it's appearance way, way back forever ago.  From CNET:

 

Anyway, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that StarCraft II is shaping up to be a much more ambitious product than Blizzard Entertainment had originally conceived, and the company is going to be forced to delay parts of the game.

 

The good news is that instead of waiting until everything in the game is complete, Blizzard is splitting the game into a trilogy--each focusing on a different StarCraft race.

Ye, gods.  When are they going to put out this thing?

 

Of course, it is Blizzard.  It very well could take another year and a half, but the wait will be worth it.  My daughter will be older and able to fend for herself somewhat in the kitchen, and I just have to be happily married by then to someone that hopefully understands my Starcraft addiction. 

 

Resumes are not being accepted.  Sorry.

 

 

Perspective

"Remember that you can eat right, exercise, drink lots of water, not smoke, not do drugs, sleep well, and focus your mental state, and the end result will still be death."

 

 - Clark, while eating a veggie stew for lunch instead of a steak, fried chicken, or bacon.  Mmm, delicious bacon.

My First Book Review

You probably noticed that I haven't been writing a whole lot lately.

It's no coincidence, and yes, I'm still alive. I've just been busy. Besides doing some writing for Divorce 360 and my own blog, Single Dads (although that's been suffering recently - I need to go back to my roots), I've been hanging out with the four year old, working quite a bit, and now... reviewing books. As a member of the website LibraryThing (you'll see the widget over there on the side, there,) I signed up for the Early Reviewers program. It has its perks.

So, here's my first review - that I'm going to put with my first freelance paycheck stub and my first volunteer freelance letter. Be kind, because God knows that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Yet.

But all is falling into place. I think.


--


To say that I fancy myself a poet is not exactly accurate; somewhere in a trunk at home there is a folder with Lord only knows how many pieces of poetry that I wrote in the 80’s and 90’s, when things for me were much bleaker and introspective. I even had some success writing a poem that was published a very long time ago.

Therefore, I looked forward to reading How To Write A Suicide Note by Sherry Quan Lee, a multicultural woman writing about her grappling with suicide, growing up different, and finding herself. To say that I “liked” the series of “poems” (many of which read more like prose than poetry to me – that seems, in retrospect, apt) is not quite the correct word. This was a great series, but in some ways, was so emotional and passionate, that I actually had difficulty reading them. But then again, I’m often dramatic when it comes to topics of this nature.

This was a very good book that I would recommend to people interested in mental health issues, multiculturalism, self-help, poetry or real-life essays, and if you are a parent, read this and learn.

--

Let me know what you think. The curiosity is killing me.

Uh Oh...

I have... returned. It's been a while.

And are you all in trouble. Even so, please, no hacking.
But I'm not going to break Rules 1 and 2. No sireee. And if you don't know what those are, don't look. Run! Run!