AKIRA IS HERE! Got ‘em Monday in near perfect condition. I say near because only volume 6 has a very small tear on the front cover. No biggie considering what I paid for them. Other than that, they’re perfect. Volumes 3, 5, and 6 are the only first printings and I’m fine with that too. Wouldn’t care if they were 100th printings. I just wanna read and enjoy the story. And I will as soon as I’m done with my Supremeverse books. Reading Supreme Power: Nighthawk now (really impressed with Daniel Way’s writing too). After a little research, I know now that issue 9 was the last published Squadron Supreme book and Ultimate Power apparently takes place afterwards. Unfortunately, I don’t have Ultimate Power and I’m missing issues 2 and 3 of Superion vs. Nighthawk and 8 and 9 of Squadron Supreme. I might do some digging around online to find a good deal on all those cuz I don’t wanna switch stories like that when I have the opportunity to read it in full. Come to think of it, I might call some local comic shops too, to see if anyone’s having an Independence Day sale.

I also found out that the Supremeverse core characters are based on DC characters. Hyperion is Supes. Nighthawk is Bats. Blur is Flash. Doc Spectrum is Green Lantern. Zarda is Wonder Woman. Amphibian is Aquaman. It’s almost like a Marvel version of the Justice League (fuck the Avengers) but much, much better (thanks to Straczynski). Hyperion’s limited series would reveal even more copied characters. I never would’ve even thought about it till it was revealed to me during my research. Pretty slick.

This picture says it all. Last weekend, I washed my car at my friend’s house using the IBIZ car wash system. Pretty much used everything except the sheen which is for the interior. I’d been outside in the heat for a majority of the day to make damn sure the exterior was perfect that I ran out of juice and still haven’t vacuumed and cleaned up the inside. Not that it’s a mess or anything. I don’t have all this junk and shit inside my shit like a lot of people do. Like aluminum cans, mail, fast food bags and nasty ass shit like that. There’s just some dust on the dash and some dirt and debris (like grass, pebbles, and little shit that gets caught under your shoes) on the carpet. Nothing major but I still like my shit looking right and clean though. That was the first time I’d ever washed a car with my own hands. And NOBODY does it better than me. That applies to almost everything in my life. Want something done right, gotta do it yourself. And at the end of the day, you can’t depend on nobody but your damn self either.

The finished product was amazing. All the dirt and grime and bugs were gone. There’s still some areas that I let sit too long and can’t be cleaned, mainly the love bug juice that seeped into the paint. But my car looks practically new now. The shine is ridiculous. Kept rubbing my fingers across the car and not once did I feel any dirt. It’s been raining lately and any dirt that accumulated while it was parked was long gone, no streaks or anything left behind. Just washed away, as opposed to before I could still see all the dirt spots and shit. Only cost me 50 bucks plus shipping for the complete kit. Highly recommended! And my wheels and tires? Oh shit, they look brand fucking new! Never thought they could look like that. I’ll admit, sometimes I just stare at my car now cuz I’ve never seen it clean like that before. That product is awesome and most importantly, it works as advertised. And no, they didn’t give me nothin’ or pay me jack shit to put over their product.

I saw Robert Nathans (IBIZ top dog) at the Central Florida International Auto Show last year. Got plenty of video of his product demo too. Click here if you wanna peep it. I wish I would’ve bought the stuff then and saved some bucks but I still got a good deal. If I hadn’t seen it in my face with my own eyes at that show and saw how good it worked, I never would’ve even considered it. Since I did, I knew exactly what I wanted and I got it. My friend washed his car too using all these different products from different manufacturers and shit. No comparison between how his car looks and how mine looks. None! And he’ll tell you that shit too. No bullshit. He tried to downplay the effectiveness of my shit v. his. Talkin’ bout it’s all the same. He know better now, don’t he?

I’ve heard rumblings of Sprint going from unlimited internet to a 5gb cap like their competition. I’ll admit I only went with Sprint cuz of the unlimited bandwidth. If they take that away, especially since my mobile aircard plan is unlimited, I might have to shop around. If they keep my plan as is, I’ll stick around. But if it does change, I’m sure I’ll be able to cancel without having to pay that damn early termination fee. These businesses that are capping, throttling, and filtering just don’t get it. Don’t penalize your customers. Update your infrastructure to meet demand. How hard is that to understand? And Sprint’s already in the financial doldrums. Why get rid of the one thing that sets you apart from your competition that’s stomping you into the ground? Idiots. I really hope I’m not affected by this cuz I like my service and net speed.

You know why I love the internet? Cuz it’s a community for one. It’s another method of hooking up for two. And there are plenty of other reasons but probably the most important is the wealth of info that’s available. Anyone have Windows Media Center on their computer? Was it working fine and then all of a sudden it won’t play certain files properly, if at all? Folders not showing up, deleting, or importing? No sound? Updating didn’t solve anything? Well here’s the cure for all your ailments. This website has registry fixes for a lot of (if not all) problems associated with Media Center. I used the ones specific to my probs and all of them were fixed. They work! Also, you might wanna make sure you have the proper codecs installed and make sure that you keep them updated if you run into probs. About a week ago I played some .avi files in Media Center and there was no sound with some while I could hear others. I deduced that I needed to update my codecs, so I did and I was back in biz. Follow the directions in that link and you will be too. K-Lite is the recommended coded pack for most users (x86/32-bit). I use the Vista Codec Package with the x64 components.

Another little trick I found out about on my own a few months back is how to take screenshots of what’s on your monitor without any external programs. Your graphics card plays a big part in it. If you have a good card (and strong system components), then you don’t have to worry about this. If your card doesn’t pack much punch (and your components aren’t that powerful), then you might wanna pay attention. All you need is the print screen button on your keyboard and Microsoft Paint (comes with all Windows computers). Say you wanna snag a pic from a webpage but right-clicking to save is disabled. Or there’s something on your monitor (non-video) that you wanna turn into a standard pic. All you have to do is hit your print screen button>Paint>Edit>Paste or Paste From and whatever was on your monitor will show up in the Paint window and from there you can crop, resize, edit, or whatever you wanna do with it. Paint provides basic photo editing features so keep that in mind.

But let’s say you wanna take a video screenshot (and your media player doesn’t already have that option built in). Whether it’s full-screen or a smaller sized player, the key is to turn off hardware acceleration. You can do that by going into the options of whatever player it is you use and locate the option to do so. Then you’ll be able to take snaps without the image disappearing once you’ve saved it after editing (which is what happens when hardware acceleration is on). I learn this stuff through trial and error and I hope this saves you some time if you’ve wanted to do something like this. My time wasted is yours gained.