Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Dangers of Splenda

The first time I had Splenda was in a candy my mother gave me. Now, I was never a fan of artificial sweeteners in the first place, but I was told that this was different.

They were right.

As soon as the candy touched my tongue, I had to spit it out. It felt like I had placed acid on my tongue. Very soon, my stomach started rumbling. Within minutes, I had the worst hour of gas I'd had ever. I shudder to think what might have happened if I'd had the entire candy.

So, for a while, I assumed I was safe from Splenda. If it causes these problems, it's not likely to catch on, right?

Wrong.

Soon I was seeing the Splenda logo everywhere I looked. New diet drinks, sugar free popsicles, basically anything that used to use aspartame.

Then came the real problem.

One day, I was offered a stick of gum. I began chewing said piece, waiting for the flavor to show itself. The flavor turned out to be acid.

Hurriedly, I spit the gum out. I thought it horrible. They were using Splenda in gum now?

I asked to see the package. No, there was no Splenda logo on the package. I checked the ingredients. There it was, 'sucralose', the technical name for Splenda.

It was my worst fear. Splenda was being used without warning. Apparently, too many people are unaware of it's dangers. It may never again be safe to eat or drink anything sweet without checking the ingredients list.

Warn your friends about the dangers of Splenda. The colon you save may be your own.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Status Report

Hey everyone! I've been meaning to update my blog for a while now. In fact, I'm hoping to do it at least semi-regularly.

Computer Woes

To start things off, if you've been following my Twitter account, you may have seen that I was having trouble with my new video card.

My previous one carped out on me (the Video RAM burnt itself out) a while back. I managed to get it working slightly for a few weeks over the summer, but then it stopped working altogether. I had to wait until I had enough money to buy a new Video Card. Once I had the money, I bought this one. It was the best Graphics Card I could find that would fit in a single slot.

Anyway, I get the card, put it in, and it's working fine. I download the latest drivers (because who trusts the the drivers that come with the hardware) and installed them and the CCC. When I rebooted into Windows, after a few minutes, I started seeing red dots on the screen. Moments later, other graphical corruptions manifested themselves. After a while of that, I got the dreaded BSOD. A few restarts, same thing kept happening. I even managed to remove the old driver but to no avail. Nothing bad happened in safe mode and it worked fine if used the "Standard VGA Adapter" driver, but that would hardly be enough for gaming.

At that point, it was time to do some diagnostics to find out if this was truly a software problem (like it seemed) or if I'd gotten a faulty card. I installed an old hard drive of mine and set up a partition (which it now seems was unnecessary) to install Windows onto. With a fresh install and up-to-date drivers, I found none of the graphical errors that occurred my normal portion. That was the good news.

The bad news was, that meant I had to re-install Windows for real. I backed up all my important files, as well as my Steam Installations, onto an external hard drive (turned out to be unnecessary, but still a good thing to do). Then it was time to do a fresh install. Thankfully, I was able to do a clean install without having to worry that I only had an upgrade copy of Windows 7.

So mostly this past week has been spent re-installing all the software I've been missing. So far, I've installed Firefox, Winamp (for music), VLC player (for video), Photoshop (along with the rest of CS4), Steam (along with all the Steam games I had on my previous installation), and Mass Effect 2, which looks even more awesome than I remember, by the way. I still have to re-install MS Office (will be doing that later tonight), Dragon Age 2 and the Sims 3. Oh, and I also got a free copy of Deus Ex with my Graphics Card. I'll be trying that out soon.

The Job Front

In other news, I started a new job. I'm going to be working for event security for IU home games. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. Hopefully this will lead to more gainful employment.

Unfortunately, this comes on the heels of some other news. I will not be attending college this semester. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get IU all the information they needed in time so now I have to re-apply for the Spring Semester. I also can't attend classes at Ivy Tech due to a "Maximum Timeframe" issue. Apparently, if you don't graduate after attempting a certain number of hours, you lose your financial aid. Had I known that ahead of time, I wouldn't have taken so many electives.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Till later!

Monday, August 29, 2011

Hipster to English Dictionary

Hipster: They used to be good, before they sold out.
English: I don't know what they sound like now because I can't afford their album.

Hipster: I Liked them before they were popular.
English: This is the first I'm hearing of them.

H: I have X ironically.
E: I learned about irony from Alanis Morissette.

H: This look is in right now.
E: These clothes were on clearance at Goodwill.

H: I have a Facebook page ironically.
E: I got a Facebook page before I became this pretentious.

H: I don't have a Facebook page.
E: I don't want you to know I secretly play Farmville,

H: I don't have a MySpace page.
E: I don't know how to delete my MySpace page

H: I don't have a Twitter account.
E: What's Twitter?

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Gripes

As I sit here, waiting for a graphics card for my desktop that may or may not come tomorrow, I've been surfing and have found a few things that really annoy me. If you follow my twitter feed, you may already know them, but I feel like posting them anyway.

Firefox 6 is out already?!?

Seriously? I haven't even updated to 5 yet because Google Toolbar refuses to support anything beyond version 4. Granted, I could probably live without Google Toolbar on my desktop, that is once it starts working again, but it's a real pain to work without it on my laptop.

Protected Tweets

I suppose that's a little misleading. I understand there are people out there who have legitimate reasons for protecting their tweets, among those the potential backlash that could be caused by a current or prospective employer.

No, the problem I have is when people have conversations over twitter and one or more (but not all) of the participants protect their tweets. It's like being in a room with someone who's talking loudly on the phone. Even if what they're saying sounds interesting, it's still annoying because you're only hearing half the conversation. Hell, that's the whole reason I refuse to send any @replies to anyone who protects their tweets.


Ok, I suppose that's all I've got. Still, even if no one winds up reading this, it was nice to vent a little.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Rupture

All this talk about the so called "Rapture" that will allegedly happen this week has got me thinking. I've come to a startling realization. I don't think I want to be raptured.

I mean, think about it. Let's say the rapture is real. Lets just say it's going to happen and then you'll be brought up into heaven and be able to do whatever you want when you get there and live in a paradise forever.

Sure, it seems nice, but how long will it be before you don't want it anymore? In a perfect paradise, there will be nothing you can't do, and you don't even have to put any effort into it. There will be no fear. No fear of dying, no fear of injury, no fear of failure.

There will be no challenges to overcome. No challenges means nothing to spark the imagination. Paradise will get boring, only you won't even realize you're bored.

Meanwhile, those of us that get "left behind" will have to suffer through the apocalypse. Sure, it'll be Hell on Earth (literally), but at least we'll be living.

Life is filled with pain and fear. Living is finding a way to cope with the pain and rise above the fear. If you can't do that, then you were never really living in the first place

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Mass Effect: Extinction

I've started a new FanFic called Mass Effect: Extinction. You can read it over on FanFiction.net
Mass Effect: Extinction
Commander Shepard's actions, while done to safeguard the Galaxy, have resulted in Galaxy-wide chaos. Now, with the Reapers closing in, Shepard must unite the Galaxy's waring factions if she has any hope of stopping them.
This story stars a version of the Shepard from my previous FanFic who made a few different choices over the course of ME2. I'll reveal those different choices throughout the course of the story.

Mass Effect 2.5 is going strong. Not as many readers as I'd like, but much more than I expected. I'll be wrapping up Episode 3 this Friday for anyone who wants to read it.