I just wonder if when you get married you can use this to roll for starting treasure…

If you look up Karma in the dictionary, it says “A spiritual sounding way of telling someone not to be a dick”. If your dictionary doesn’t say that, throw it out because that is EXACTLY what Karma means. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun to say “Don’t be a dick”, but it’s much easier to say “Well, that’s just bad Karma” in front of your grandmother without needing an explanation.

Today I read THIS ARTICLE about a man in Uganda that probably could have benefited from someone reminding him not to be a dick. He stole a phone from a patient at the local hospital and began making phone calls with it. The real problem was that the patient was hospitalized for his Hemorrhagic Fever due to his Ebola infection. The thief checked himself into the hospital after he began to show Ebola symptoms, and admitted to stealing the infected patients phone.

There you have it, folks. Doing stupid things like this are almost always going to end badly. Maybe not today, but someday. So when you are tempted to do something stupid like this man did, just think of me and these words I leave you with: “Don’t be a dick”.

Some stories are just so astonishing that it is virtually impossible to write something funny about them. THIS STORY is one of them. That’s right folks, the zombie apocalypse is coming, and it’s starting in Florida (As if Florida weren’t already filled with enough mindless zombies). The story is almost an identical scenario to the beginning of the first Resident Evil game. You walk around the corner and find someone eating the face off of another person. He refuses to stop, so you shoot him. Zombies never go down in one shot, so you shoot him 5 more times until he drops. If the autopsy reveals traces of the T-Virus in their systems, I am going to shout “I told you so” as I load up on ammo. Stay safe out there, and don’t get bitten!

Show of hands, who here as been drunk before? If you currently have your hand in the air, go sober up and come back before you read this, it was a rhetorical question and I don’t need you getting any ideas.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have done some questionably stupid things while I have been under the influence, but THIS STORY takes it to another level, and I will explain why.
For those of you still reading but too lazy to click on the colorful text to read the news story to which I am referring, it is about three men who decided to strip naked, jump in a shopping cart together, and go through a car wash. If we dissect this story, a few things actually make a little sense. Getting drunk and thinking “Hey, let’s run through a car wash” isn’t that farfetched. “Well, we should strip down first so we don’t ruin our clothes during the wax cycle”. Again, this makes sense. But the moment someone in the group says “Hey, let’s all jump in a shopping cart”, I’m out. Tap into the juvenile part of your mind for a moment and try to imagine three naked men writhing around to fit into a shopping cart together. I just hope they didn’t plug the drain.
So, a note to anyone who will get drunk with their buddies anytime in the future: Stick to drawing penises on each other when you pass out, and stay the hell away from the Wonder Wash.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The amount of spam in the comments of our site is becoming astronomical. Some articles have over 30 spam posts on them. If you log into your account and go to “Comments” it will show you a list of all comments and their posters, and you can check the box next to comments on your posts to unapprove them, delete them, or report them as spam. I would hope that reporting them as spam will prevent that poster from reposting in the future, but in the mean time please check periodically and remove the spam postings that are on your articles. This will help ensure that our site looks a bit more professional while we attempt to sort out the issue with the spam filters.

I remember reading books and watching films where a great accomplishment was achieved through “Blood, Sweat, and Tears”. So maybe something got lost in the English -> Taiwanese translation when a man created a likeness of Iron Man in a toilet using his own blood, urine, and saliva. I’m not making this shit up. Really, when was the last time you were inspired by an experience in the bathroom? I can’t think of a time when I took a huge dump, then sat there and looked at it and thought about using my butt lint to make a tapestry. Well, this idiot decided that instead of getting his kidney infection fixed, he was going to be an artist. Way to go dipshit. When your catheter fills with crude oil, call us. Until then, leave the cool geek stuff to the people who can actually create cool geek stuff, and don’t forget to flush.

Sometimes the logic of science just is not logical. Now I am by no means against science to make the world a better place, but most often the first idea that pops into your head to solve a problem is the last idea that should actually be applied. I present to you exhibits A and B for your consideration. I would have loved to be around the lab when a couple of scientists were talking this idea over.

Scientist A: Wow, did you read in the news about how the bee population is rapidly disappearing due to all the pollution in the atmosphere?

Scientist B: Hey, I have an idea! Let’s make fake bugs!

Scientist A: Have you been making bongs out of the test tubes again?

Scientist B: Naw man, we can make bees and spiders and stuff!

Scientist A: But won’t that process just make more pollution, thereby killing off even more of the natural insects and making the problem worse?

Scientist B: Maybe, but we can sell ours for money!

Scientist A: Well by that logic we should just be building endangered species like Rhinos. What about the Rhinos?

Scientist B: Pfft, the hell with the Rhinos. Come check out this bong I made with a Newton’s Cradle in it!

There are things that the world needs, and there are terrible ideas on how to build them and fix them. These ideas both fall into the terrible category. Don’t get me wrong, building them for use as spy drones, bomb disposal, and actually useful tasks is a great idea, but building them to replace nature is a different issue all together.

-Thorngage

What the hell is the matter with people? Of course I am referring to This Article that describes how scientists in the Netherlands have used bovine stem cells to create artificial hamburger in a lab. An anonymous celebrity donor has paid 250,000 Euro (roughly $330,000) to be the first to eat a lab grown hamburger. Now, I enjoy meat just like all Americans (vegans don’t count as people), but is it really asking too much to get my meat from an actual animal? It’s bad enough that I can’t get meat at McDonald’s or Taco Bell, but someone is actually spending money to do this crap. My wife and I buy a Black Angus cow every year from my  father-in-law, and the whole cow comes in at about $3,000 for a 1500 pound cow with the current beef prices. So get out your trusty iPhone, bring up the calculator, and do the math with me. Assuming quarter pound patties, you could make approximately 6,000 hamburgers from the average cow if you ground all of the meat. If you figure in the special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickle, onion, all on a sesame seed bun, you get to about $1.25 per burger. Cost of the produce may even get cheaper if Scientists Build A Better Leaf. I probably don’t need to point this out but $1.25 < $330,000. It would be cheaper to clone a really big cow to get a higher yield of meat. Well, either way I doubt that this will become the sole choice of beef anytime in the near future, and if it does, I’m switching to pork.

-Thorngage

It was lovingly pointed out to me yesterday that my writing thus far has been more advertising than entertainment, and after reading over much of it I have to agree. It is not my intention to try to sell you junk that I find on the internet, so I decided to spend several hours today reading articles about geek news items. I found a few that I will be sharing over the next few weeks, and I hope that my new direction will be more appealing to you all.

On that note, The Pirate Bay has begun to post torrents for physical objects. Ok, breathe, I’ll explain it. Until recently I had no idea that 3D printers could ever exist. As I was watching a documentary about Jeff Dunham, he showed how he used a 3D printer to create the physical form of his dummies from imaging software. Printing a 3D dummy head took about 20 hours. He showed how these printers can even print moving parts, like transmission gearboxes that actually work. All of this is currently done with plastics, and the printers cost around $2,000.

The Pirate Bay has begun posting models for things like Cowboy Hats, Lawn Darts, even the trademark Pirate Ship from Pirate Bay. The goal of the 3D printing industry is to be capable of printing things like car parts, shoes, and books right at home by 2020 with metals and paper products along with their plastics (don’t ask how much the ink cartridges cost). I’m not planning to buy a 3D printer anytime soon, but the idea that I will someday be able to print computer parts is kind of amazing. The list of “Physibles” can be found here.

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

When you think of Laser Tag, what comes to mind? (That’s a lazy way of filling your head with visual imagery from my lack of writing skills).  As cool as the concept originally was, it just never evolved into a game where you could dress as Master Chief and blast each other with harmless plasma pulses and throw light grenades. Instead, it seems to have faded into a game where 7th graders can shoot at each other with modified Nintendo gear in a heavily padded basement space with black lights and terrible fluorescent paint on the walls. Well now the Geeks have stepped in to reclaim what was once ours by using modern technology.

Enter the XAPPER Gun. Being released soon on the Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone platforms, this gadget can turn your smartphone into a laser tag device to play with your friends anytime. It also has the option of shooting aliens, and what gamer tech device would be complete without a zombie mode! Using the screen of the phone along with the internal GPS, we could soon see hoards of geeks walking around our shopping malls and parking lots with toy guns shooting at nonexistent creatures that appear on a 2″x4″ screen. The XAPPER Gun can be yours for only $30, which is roughly the cost of a round or two of traditional Laser Tag.

I invite you to grab a couple of these Geek Gadgets and try them out, but be warned that it may lead to black lights and fluorescent paint being added to your basement at home.

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

In my lifetime, I have been fortunate enough to see the technological explosion that has spawned cell phones that can run your whole house, Tablet PCs, and Wikipedia, which we can all agree is really awesome. I truly believe that in my lifetime I may see the extinction of the telephone pole. On that note, I would like to share an article about a new tech gadget that may actually change everything once again.

A few months ago, a group of geeks decided to build possibly the smallest computer on earth. They built a machine that can fit in a pack of cigarettes, and you can stack them to increase their power. That’s right, our friends over at RaspberryPi have designed something that can be turned into a computer the size of your house. The best part? Each individual computer costs $25-35. Yeah. If you were to buy one each month, you could have an incredible super computer by Christmas.

Now to be fair, I’m not geeky enough to know my way around Linux, which is what this system appears to be running on. But everything is open source, and it seems their mission is to get technology to everyone for a low price. I encourage you to check them out, order one or two, and let me know what you think.

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

I began reading through a few of the neat little tricks at Lifehacker.com the other day, and was amazed at the ingenuity of some people. If you haven’t checked out their site, it is full of cool ideas on how to change miniscule details about your life by using geek logic. For example, they did an article showing how you can turn a bag of instant oatmeal upside down, cut the bottom off, and fill the pouch with hot water to eat it right out of the bag when there isn’t a bowl handy. Another article shows how using a metal or wooden spoon (be careful, the wood can warp) to place on top of a pot of boiling water to keep it from boiling over when you aren’t watching. Did some prick on Wall Street come up with this idea? NO!  A geek with a see-through computer case, 4 cats, and posters of vampire gargoyles did.

The article I would like to draw attention to today is how to Seal Plastic Bags with Aluminum Foil and an Iron. I have tried this trick, and it really does work. Take a piece of aluminum foil and fold it over the opening of a plastic bag, like egg noodles, brown sugar, even coffee. Then use an iron to heat the foil and melt the plastic together for a tight seal.

Lifehacker has a great variety of subjects to read about, some of which are pretty smart, others are kind of dumb and useless, but all of them entertaining. I definitely encourage you to at least give it a lazy pass by to check it out.

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

So recently I was surfing through Thinkgeek.com, a website that my brother turned me on to. The site features all sorts of things for the everyday geek. Most of them are frivolous wastes of money, like the laser light star projector for only $169.99 (cool as it is, nobody NEEDS this). Then I happened to stumble upon an item that I couldn’t come up with a negative response to. For only $5.99 they offer a set of chopsticks that have a fork and knife at the other end. Think of all the times you have tried to show off your chopstick skills while eating sushi or some other Asian inspired food, only to reach the inevitable point of needing a fork when you want to dig into your 2 quarts of something fried rice. Well now you can whip these babies out from your shirt pocket (don’t scratch the cover of your iphone when you do) and impress those who lack the manual dexterity to wield chopsticks, while showing the humility of using real silverware like the lazy American that you are!
Thinkgeek offers a wide variety of geek eating utensils, like Chimpsticks, Titanium Sporks, and Samurai Sword Chopstick sets. If you want to check out this item, or perhaps order and send a few sets to me, you can see them here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e86a/?pfm=homepage_Featured_8_e86a

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

Hello fellow geeks, nerds, techies, and con-artists (As in convention. See what I did there?)! I am Thorngage and I look forward to sharing a few entertaining tidbits, hobbit humor (if you don’t get it, don’t worry. We can have the half-orc explain it to you), and rants and raves about gaming and tech issues. I may even share a few amusing stories from the world of telephone tech support. Stay tuned!