Peon's Place

The hits just keep coming for Sony.  The maker of the PlayStation Portable and the PlayStation 3 announced last week that hackers broke into its PlayStation Network (PSN) database and stole its 77-million customer database. Sony waited an entire week while investigating the breach before notifying customers.  In the meantime the PSN was down.

This week Sony revealed new details in media comments and posts to its PlayStation blog.  They commented that up to 10 million users’ credit card numbers were likely obtained by the intruder. Haha. Sucks for you guys.

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Reaction to the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed nearly 10 years after masterminding the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil was strong and swift from American political leaders:

Former President George W. Bush stated “A victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also stated “The killing of Osama bin Laden does not lessen the suffering that New Yorkers and Americans experienced at his hands, but it is a critically important victory for our nation. New Yorkers have waited nearly 10 years for this news. It is my hope that it will bring some closure and comfort to all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.”

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The latest NFL Injunction statement is here.

This mainly applies to the training at facilities, mini-camps, and other activities that should have been taking place in a normal NFL year at this point. The NFL rookie draft starts tonight and extends for the next 3 days, so the 2011 season is definitely underway.

Here we go, as taken from the official site:

The NFL clubs have been notified that we have requested from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals a stay of the preliminary injunction issued late Monday afternoon by the Federal District Court. Pending further guidance from the Eighth Circuit, we believe it is appropriate for clubs to take additional steps in response to the preliminary injunction. The clubs were informed of the steps below that will be effective on Friday at 8 am ET following tonight’s first round of the NFL Draft. Clubs are free to contact players immediately to advise them of the hours that the facility will be open for their use, to schedule medical and rehabilitation activity, and to arrange meetings with coaches or related activity, such as film study or classroom work.

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Does anyone else think the individual NFL owners are just being greedy little bitches?

Seriously. And now we’re going to talk again mid-May. FYI, the NFL draft takes place April 28-30. So we’re drafting rookies who may not even have a chance to play their rookie season. They’ll be on-par with next year’s rookies. Rubbish, I say!

I suppose now is the time for the CFL and UFL, and better yet, the LFL (Lingerie Football League) to really shine through. The NFL has no idea how fierce the competition is behind them.

I am going to exclude the fact that my mother is already planning this as her retirement job in a few years. But seriously, where does this put my generation, being 25-35 years behind?

Baby boomers facing retirement are worried about their finances, and many believe they’ll need to work longer than planned or will never be able to retire, a new poll finds. The 77 million-strong generation born between 1946 and 1964 has clung tenaciously to its youth. Now, boomers are getting nervous about retirement. Only 11 percent say they are strongly convinced they will be able to live in comfort.

A total of 55 percent said they were either somewhat or very certain they could retire with financial security. But another 44 percent express little or no faith they’ll have enough money when their careers end. Further underscoring the financial squeeze, 1 in 4 boomers still working say they’ll never retire. That’s about the same number as those who say they have no retirement savings.

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Barry Bonds – Guilty or Not Guilty, of knowing he was using steroids?

When she first considered the matter yesterday, Judge Susan Ilston strongly suggested that the newly-discovered tape recording of Dr. Arthur Ting and Steven Hoskins, allegedly discussing Barry Bonds’ steroids use, would not be admitted. Indeed, she characterized the tape as ”almost entirely inadmissible or irrelevant.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that Judge Ilston has excluded the tape from evidence.

Where this leaves us and what the jury heard:  Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, how we never get enough of Ah-nold!

Ex-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his return to movies last week, saying a film version of his much-publicized cartoon project The Governator is in the works. “First will come (The Governator) comic books, then a (cartoon) TV series and after that we will develop the games and then a movie,” Schwarzenegger told a packed room of international journalists at global TV market MipTV in Cannes. “Maybe then we’ll be back in Cannes for that.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger says his new animated TV venture features a “superheroic guy” who gets things done — without constraints like laws to thwart his action.

“I think that a lot of times you can actually do more and accomplish more being outside of the system,” the muscle man-turned-Hollywood hunk-turned-California governor told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

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So once again we have the NFL and its Player’s Association wasting time with the Collective Bargaining Agreement – basically, we get paid too much money for 10 years of our life, and we want more. Sure. Okay.  Whatever floats your boat, and feel free to raise ticket prices as well, to ensure we all stay home and watch the game in a better at-home atmosphere where we can actually see the game.

One of the main topics is the move from a 16-game schedule (across 17 weeks, teams are given one by-week) to an 18-game schedule. Now, here are my points to mention as to why we should switch it up:

• Pre-season lasts 4 weeks and takes place immediately before the regular season. Most fans do not care about this month of football, since it means nothing over the course of the season, and in weeks 3-4 the main players don’t even dress up for the game, much less play in it. It’s like we’re watching practice football, and we are supposed to be excited about it. In the 18-game schedule, two weeks from the pre-season will be removed, so that there are only two weeks of “practice” games, and you get to see your favorite players in action before then. Same amount of football, but there’s 2 more games that people pay attention to, now.
• A secondary by-week would be implemented, thus making the NFL season one week longer. Eighteen games means two bye weeks, as opposed to sixteen games and one by week. This is a better ratio! If you’re going to talk about “ooohh, Austin Collie had three concussions last year, we can’t do this!” then stop crying, because you now have an extra week to heal up. Besides, three concussions? Should he even be playing football at that rate? Hello, Steve Young.
• This isn’t baseball or basketball where you play multiple times a week. You play once, typically on Sunday, a week for less than 5 months (unless you make the playoffs). That’s not even half a year! Stop crying because your salary per game would decrease. Take a look at Albert Haynesworth, who was paid over a million dollars PER TACKLE last year. Not even per sack. Tell me you’re not overpaid, and we’ll discuss.

Apparently we’re having yet another new telephone area code in the San Francisco bay area. Go figure, all of the new cell phone plans outweigh the downward trend of home phone lines and complete lack of pager numbers. Represent the 669…! I can only see numerous sexual innuendos coming out of this.

The past four nights have combined a stunning total of around 14 hours of sleep, and my saving grace is this warm cup of cocoaespressocoffee that I make with our nifty machine upstairs. I’d blame Ron and the brunch that I went up to the city for on Saturday, which then led to breakfast on Sunday morning, but that’s honestly only a small section of the story at this part. On the flip-side, tonight is (tentatively) the first night I’ll be in my own bed since Thursday! You have no idea how I am looking forward to that.

Let’s see.. a couple weeks ago, when I had more free time (ahem), I passed through 10,000 gamer points on Xbox Live. It’s only fitting that the 80 point achievement for being crowned ruler of Albion in Fable III would be the achievement to push me past that milestone. I don’t think I’ve turned on my Xbox 360 since. I was going to purchase a Kinect, too.. but not if I don’t have time to play!

School’s going well. Stats is still a joke, and I have large projects in both my business and microeconomic theory classes, so that should be entertaining to compile together last-minute. Go me!

Lastly, are we tired of hearing about Charlie Sheen yet? Just when we get out and away from Lindsay Lohan, the media becomes fascinated with another drug/alcohol abused victim. I can’t wait to see who our new celebrity target will be once Charlie is completely washed up.

How many of you spot a police officer, of any uniform, and feel a sense of trepidation more than a sense of relief? Let’s say you’re driving on the freeway, at a comfortable 64 miles per hour, and you see a California Highway Patrol officer sitting on the side of the freeway. Engine on. Radar gun targeted. What do you do?

If you’re anything like the majority of the population, you ease off the gas pedal, even though you were already traveling under the speed limit. You may even tap your brakes slightly our of a “slow down” reflex. Why is that? Are we more scared of the CHP and other law enforcement than we should be? Shouldn’t you feel safety and security as opposed to fear?

It is in my mind that officers these days are substantially more worried about being a California Highway Ticketing System than they are a patrol unit. Allow me to give you two examples:

1. I was in court watching a man defend himself for being given a ticket for driving around a cluster of vehicles in the far-right lane. The vehicles were completely stopped in a cluster, which would typically indicate that there was an accident. He utilized, completely safely, the right-hand shoulder to move around the vehicles at a slow pace. However because he had all 4 wheels of his minivan off of the freeway to engage in this maneuver, he was given a traffic ticket by a parked CHP officer 100 yards away. An officer that would rather sit and snipe at his prey than to assist in a poor traffic environment.
2. I received a ticket myself for occupying the diamond-lane. I was driving in lane #2, the left-most non carpool lane, going to work in the morning. I came upon an accident covering lanes #2-3. Instead of merging twice to the right to go around the accident, I merged one lane to the left, into the carpool, and back into the normal traffic lane once I had passed the accident. It was 2 minutes later that I was then pulled over by a CHP officer, who would rather write $1000 tickets than to clear an accident off of the freeway. My intention is only to get to work safely and in a reasonable amount of time, so that I may pay taxes which go into your paycheck, sir. Thank you for instilling the belief that you are “out to get me” rather than the statement that you are here to “serve & protect”.

I feel that my justification in this is solidified by increasing fines given out by the traffic court system over the past several years. While fines may start out at a meager $30, the addition of more fines and fees of the court system ups fines to a nominal $494 to a $620+ range. And that’s for any speeding or other minor traffic violation which could have designated a patrol or city police officer’s to substantially better use. Is it not enough that my taxes increase to pay for city “services” such as the ability to fine citizens?