Friday, March 30, 2012

Mega Millions Winning Numbers, March 30, 2012: Here They Are!

The odds of winning the Mega Millions Lottery are stacked against you, as you may guess.

If you think you can win this week’s mega lottery, think again ... you have a better chance of being killed by flesh-eating bacteria than rolling in lottery gold.
The Mega Millions jackpot is at $640 Million (and rising), with odds of winning at roughly 1 in 176 Million ... but get this ... 1 in 3 people think winning the lottery is the ONLY way to be financially secure in life (eeek!).

So we looked into the odds and found a bunch of crap that is more likely to happen to you ...


-- Death by lightning: 1 in 2,650,000

-- Death by flesh-eating bacteria: 1 in 1,000,000

-- Getting eaten by a shark: 1 in 11,000,000

-- Death by fireworks: 1 in 1,000,000


That said… anyone care to join me in an office pool?

To find out if you ....er..won...tonight, at 11pm, check out the homepage HERE.
UPDATE: Here are the numbers....and...I  didn't win...I know, shocking.



Winning! !


Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Adriana Lima ...need I say more?

Sometimes in life, there are important questions we have. Some go unanswered, some are forever a mystery. After much investigation, hope and faith...I came upon some of the great questions of our world.

How Much Does Adriana Lima Weigh?

She weighs about 120 pounds or 55.5kg

How Tall Is Adriana Lima?

5’10″ or 178cm

What Are Adriana Lima's Measurements?

34C-24-35 (86-61-89)

need I say more?? 

Birth Place: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Date of Birth: June 12, 1981
Heritage: Brazilian 


Blue is my favorite color...





LOVE the pig-tails!

whoa....






OMG......




I love the beach....




My Personal Favorite.
Adriana Francesca Lima (born June 12, 1981, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) is a Brazilian model, best known as a Victoria's Secret Angel since 2000, and as a spokesmodel for Maybelline cosmetics from 2003 to 2009. At the age of 15, Lima finished first in Ford's "Supermodel of Brazil" competition, and took second place the following year in the Ford "Supermodel of the World" competition before signing with Elite Model Management in New York City. Since 2005, Lima has ranked in the top five of Forbes' lists of the 20 highest-earning models in the world, and in 2006 ranked No.99 on the Forbes Celebrity 100. She is married to Serbian basketball player Marko Jarić.

Personal life

Lima is a devout Roman Catholic who attends church every Sunday.
On St. Valentine's Day 2009, Lima married Serbian basketball player Marko Jarić (Марко Јарић) in a small private civil ceremony in Jackson, Wyoming. In May 2009, it was reported that Lima applied for Serbian citizenship. The couple's daughter, Valentina Lima Jarić (Serbian Cyrillic: Валентина Лима Јарић), was born on November 15, 2009. Valentina was born at 34 weeks gestation, weighing just 4.4 lb (2.0 kg), due to Lima's suffering from preeclampsia In March 2012, Lima confirmed that she and her husband are expecting their second child.

Charity

Lima does charitable work helping with an orphanage, "Caminhos da Luz" (Ways of Light), located in Salvador. She helps with construction to expand the orphanage, and buys clothes for poor children in Salvador, Bahia. She appeared on Var mısın? Yok musun?, the Turkish version of Deal or No Deal, where her prize money went to a hospital in Istanbul for children fighting leukemia.

How can you NOT love this woman?!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Saturday, March 17, 2012

HGTV Dream Home 2012 Giveaway Winner finally Revealed!

Well the day finally came, the winner of the HGTV 2012 Dream Home has been selected this evening.

A big congratulations to Vicki Naggy from Acme, Pennsylvania. She is the proud winner of the HGTV Dream Home 2012 Giveaway! I can't say I'm not jealous as all get-out...as I also submitted at LEAST 4 times a day for, well, at least HALF the total days of the sweepstakes! Fully legal, of course, I listed my wife's information as well as my own, on both sites, with the required two seperate email addresses. Hey, it's a tough world out their folks...gotta use your resources.

The lucky @#$!...er...Winner, Vicki!
 Vicki, a beauty salon manager, is the youngest of 11 siblings, a devoted wife, mother and grandmother and the proud owner of five dogs (clairvoyant, it seems — they began to howl as soon as Monica Pedersen was one-half block away from our winner’s home).

Vicki has entered the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway in past years and entered this year every day — twice per day. She had a funny feeling that she might win and attributes her stroke of luck to her guardian angel, Donna, a family friend who passed away last year.

sigh...i'm gonna miss imagination-living in that house!...
Vicki and her hubby are big fans of HGTV and admit that they often fall asleep in front of the tube, watching their favorite home decorating shows (Property Brothers is a personal fave). The lucky winner says she’s never been to Utah, but can’t wait to visit the beautiful state and step inside her new modern rustic ranch home. “I don’t believe this,” says Vicki. “I’ve never won anything. This is going to change my whole life.”

So the dreaming is over folks...until NEXT year HGTV...next year!! 

~source-HGTV

Friday, March 16, 2012

Skyrim Machinima - Amazing videos here-->

I never really did know what 'Machinima' officially was, but, as a film guy, was always intrigued. No really, that sounds counter-intelligent but I just haven't gotten around to it! 


Machinima, for those unfamiliar, is a movie genre that uses game technology instead of traditional film technology. By recording in-game footage (usually heavily modded) and applying voice overs, music tracks, and post-processing effects, indie artists can create some pretty impressive short films. 

Sup...how YOU doin'?
Anyways, It simply amazes me that people have the talent AND time to accomplish such awesome videos. I've already seen 'The Beauty of Skyrim' via a  Facebook friends post, and was amazed at the detail/atmosphere of this game I haven't yet purchased. It must be no small feat in the game's editing suite, video editors etc. to make this magic happen. Consider me sufficiently inspired to go check out some of these guys other videos! Skyrim is turning out to be a landmark game, on a multitude of levels, lucky for me, the one that stands out most is the art design, the graphics, the sound and music, which all collide to create a very immersive and atmospheric experience.


Check out this sample, one of the most amazing i've seen so far, entitled simply, 'The Battle of Skyrim', to see what I mean. The Great Battle of Skyrim boasts "500 Draugr, 200 skeletons, 500 Dwarven Warriors", a couple of epic battle mages and one very hungry-looking dragon. Watch the whole thing, as halfway through it gets pretty bad-ass.
The Great Battle does a pretty good job showing off what the Skyrim engine is capable of if you have a killer video card and OC'd rig.


Dovahkiin

Dovahkiin is more of a music video than a film but I really enjoyed the mood created by this one. This example does a really good job showing off Skyrim's visual capabilities. (Something that can be further enhanced through mods.)


There are many more fine examples out there, just surf through the links within YouTube and you will begin discovering the beauty and artistry that is MACHINIMA in SKYRIM!

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Diablo III launching May 15th! It's finally coming Ladies and Gentlemen!

 Diablo III is launching May 15th! It's finally coming Ladies and Gentlemen!


Blizzard fans have long known that their games aren't released until they feel they are good and ready. Now, the how's and why's of exactly when that happens I will leave to the conspiracy theorists and naysayers but usually this ensures a great game when its finally released.  What this means for you is the game will be polished to a fine sheen, and will ensure hours of left-clicking mayhem right out of the box. Of course there will be bug fixes, and balance tweaks for the approximately 15 years I'm guessing we will be playing this game, if Diablo 2 is any indication!

My wife is excited! Both her and her Dad played the hell outta this game. I also have fond memories of playing both versions. With the hauntingly beautiful acoustic music soundtrack and sounds, the addictiveness of making the best weapon/armor load-out, the challenge of those final boss battles. It seems like only yesterday that I fired up my first burned game, Diablo, into my first PC and left-clicked into the late late hours in those Air Force dorms, with red candles lit (for Atmosphere!) and beer sweating on it's cardboard coaster, while the northern California winter drizzled out my window. Ahh memories!

Choose your class wisely: Wizard, Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, Barbarian, Monk 
It looks to be a similarly addictive, and potential profiting game this time around, as we now have an in-game Auction house, similar to what Wow users already enjoy...but with one crucial diffference. This time, you can buy and sell with real-life money. This significantly raises the stakes a bit. Does it make it more fun to seek out rare items? What sort of emergent behaviors will we see in this new frontier of adventure gaming? To be sure, Paypal, and it's parent company Ebay are certainly smiling all the way to the bank. [Paypal is the in-game payment processor]
Hmm, I wonder what the epic green horny-toad boots of velvet doom are going for today?
For all you console cretons', you won't be left out so no cryin'. You didn't think Blizzard would just let an extra couple million dollars pass by would you? Nope, the rumors all point to them developing a PS3/Xbox version of Diablo 3...so you all will be able to slide your credit cards into the online Auction house the same as the rest of us.

For more info at the official Blizzard site go HERE. You may want to pre-order a copy now, as I've seen it a hundred times, hot titles like this will be hard to come by for at least a month after release day!



Let the fun begin next month!

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Was the New Apple iPad Made Ethically?

Apple mania took over the interwebs on Wednesday morning as the company unveiled its latest iPad.

There weren't any tectonic technology shifts introduced by the new iPad 3 (or iPad HD or iPad 2S or whatever it's called). The new model has a sharper, high-definition display and 4G wireless speeds (LTE, for the acronym aware). The new iPad also sports better cameras.

In addition to the roar of excitement, the activist watchdog group, “SumOfUs” called on Apple to release employees’ time card data from the last four months to see if workers in China were forced into grueling and illegal overtime schedules.

SumOfUs Executive Director Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman spoke with Mashable on Wednesday morning. She cited the New York Times’ story from January that reported employees at an Apple factory in China were awoken from slumber to work overnight shifts in order to make last-minute changes to the iPad 2. That article was the catalyst for this particular petition, she said, but SumOfUs has targeted Apple and its working conditions in China since the organization launched in late November 2011.

She says Apple’s hiring of the Fair Labor Association is a public relations move, or “whitewashing” as she called it.

“It is a PR exercise, not an actual investigation,” she said. “The head of the FLA was giving interviews one day after he arrived — he didn’t interview any workers. It’s clear anything they release will be calculated.”

This response doesn’t fix the problem, “but it’s cheap,” she said. Apple will have to spend money or change their practices in order to actually make a difference. — “Apple’s going to have to allow it’s suppliers to have a slightly bigger profit margin,” she added.

Last year, Apple’s profit margin was more than 30 percent, while Foxconn (Apple’s most notorious factory) had a 1.5 percent profit margin, Bloomberg reported. Stinebrickner-Kauffman said Foxconn’s profit margin is actually more profitable than a lot of factories in Asia, but still not enough for suppliers to follow Apple’s and the FLA’s code of conduct.

“The other thing they’ll (Apple) have to realize is they can’t make last minute changes and expect their suppliers to hold to their timeline,” she said.

Stinebrickner-Kauffman said she’s an iOS device-user herself and like many folks with Apple devices, doesn’t want to be complacent while accusations of unfair working conditions persist about Apple’s factories in China.

The FLA said the conditions at Foxconn are better than other Chinese factories. It’s also been said that the suicide rate in China is higher than at the Foxconn factories. However, Stinebrickner-Kauffman points out that the suicides we hear about at Foxconn are just the reported ones.

The petition has not yet been emailed to supporters and has already garnered more than 130,000 signatures. Stinebrickner-Kauffman said she thinks Apple will hear the message loud-and-clear, even if they don’t acknowledge it.

“Apple doesn’t like to admit it,” she said. “But there have been successful NGO campaigns against Apple.”

Green My Apple, a campaign by Greenpeace was one of them, she said. It spurred Apple to change its recycling practices and restrict or ban certain toxic chemicals. Apple called the program, “A Greener Apple.”

SumOfUs was launched in late November with the goal of help organize consumers to push companies to be more sustainable and responsible.

Are you going to buy the new iPad or will you wait until Apple hands over employees’ time cards? Are you going to sign the petition? Have you stopped purchasing Apple products because you don’t want to support its overseas labor practices? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

My two cents?: No mass-produced product in the past few centuries was made ethically. If ipads were assembled in the US, the cost would easily be 8X higher. The fact is that almost everything electronic is made in China these days in similar factories. Arguably, FoxConn’s conditions are better than most. What do you think?

Solar Flare on it's way Thursday morning! See video here-->

                                                 We're all gonna get an upgraded sun tan!

One of the most powerful solar storms in the last five years was unleashed yesterday after a massive solar flare erupted from the sun. Space weather scientists are closely watching the sun’s activity as the storm could interfere with satellite communication and power grids.
Joseph Kunches, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said:
“Space weather has gotten very interesting over the last 24 hours… When the shock arrives, the expectation is for heightened geomagnetic storm activity and the potential for heightened solar radiation… There is the potential for induced currents in power grids… Power grid operators have all been alerted. It could start to cause some unwanted induced currents.”

NASA captured a video of the solar flare (below) as it erupted and hurled a “big blob of magnetized material” toward the earth. The AR1429 sunspot region shout off a solar flare on Sunday and two more yesterday. The AR1429 region is currently pointing almost directly at earth which means that the coronal mass ejection could have a big impact on earth.

Harlan Spence, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire, told SPACE.com:

“The sun is waking up at a time in the month when Earth is coming into harm’s way. Think of these CMEs somewhat like a bullet that is shot from the sun in more or less a straight line. When the sunspot is right in the middle of the sun, something launched from there is more or less directed right at Earth. It’s kind of like how getting sideswiped by a car is different than a head-on collision. Even still, being sideswiped by a big CME can be quite dramatic.”

The New York Times reports that the coronal mass ejection will hit earth at about 1:30 a.m on Thursday morning.

Here’s a video about the 2012 solar flare from NASA.

The giant active sunspot AR1429 has given space weather scientists plenty to monitor recently and the solar activity isn’t expected to slow down anytime soon. The sun’s activity is expected to increase until it peaks next year.

“We’ve got a whole series of things going off, and they take different times to arrive, so they’re all piling on top of each other. It complicates the forecasting and predicting because there are always inherent uncertainties with any single event. Now, with multiple events piling on top of one another, that uncertainty grows.”

Alex Young, a solar physicist at NASA Goddard, said that it isn’t inevitable that the solar storm tonight will interrupt satellite communication. Young says that the solar storm may just put on a great light show, saying that auroras will be visible as far south as Illinois.

So folks, make sure you put on your tin-foil hats before going to bed tonight!