Leavenworth is way cool in comparison.

The Mayans were a pretty amazing people and their culture and civilization were fascinating, but I find it hard to believe that they were in some way blessed with magical future-seeing capabilities.

Also, keep in mind that the person that popularized the 2012 myth, Terrance McKenna, did so while absolutely whacked out of his mind on hallucinogens. I don’t think it would come as a shock to many to find out that I have on occasion used hallucinogenic substances. Some things I was absolutely convinced of while under the influence of said substances:

1. The road on which the car I was a passenger in was traveling on was not a road at all but rather a great glass-bottomed ocean. Also, the car was a submarine.
2. Pizza (vegan pizza, no less) had a consciousness advanced beyond that of humanity and by eating it I would gain its mystical powers.
3. The half mile walk I had just completed took six days and I very nearly dies of thirst in the desert.
4. Cats possess telepathic abilities.
5. Sound waves were not only visible, they could also be tasted.
6. All homeless people were government agents. Or unicorns.
7. That song I wrote just now was going to change the world.

When the drugs wore off I realized that roads were made of asphalt, pizza was delicious but nonetheless inanimate, cats are lovable but really stupid, sound waves are not edible, homeless people do indeed actually live outside and that song I wrote was terrible.

So yeah.

If you don’t torrent, and you don’t open email attachments from people that you don’t know/trust, then you probably don’t need anti-virus software. Honestly, get a good firewall and you’re well protected – when I was on Windows machines I used ZoneAlarm, and I was really happy with it. It’s easy to set up, it’s painless on a day-to-day basis, it works well and is updated often, and it’s free.

If you’re really worried about viruses, AVG is good, but honestly, your browsing/use patterns sound a lot like mine and I’ve never needed anti-virus protection, a good firewall will do the job for you.

If you’re not torrenting and not visiting any weird sites, then you probably don’t need to spend the money on it, not that it’s a lot of money.

I would caution that you can be in pretty safe patterns and still get infected. Earlier in the week in one of my classes, a girl sent out a doc file as an attachment for the class to read and some hours later she was posting the text into the body because people were getting virus warnings and she didn’t know why. I was one of the downloaders and sure enough, a few days later my computer started acting funky. I spent several hours yesterday screwing around and trying to fix it. I did, but it was a waste of my time all the same, and all because someone else didn’t have enough sense using their machine.

I prefer the preventative maintenance method because I find most anti-virus programs to be unbearably obnoxious. I usually scan with Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware scanner about once every couple of weeks. Thus far, I’ve had two trojans in my computer using lifetime and I’ve been able to remove both without reformating (the first took me several days, yesteday’s took me several hours). But I’m an unusual case, I know just enough about these things to recognize and treat them.

You probably don’t need it, but if it’s a basic comfort thing and you wouldn’t know how to fix it, then $75 isn’t that bad.

I was disappointed that he only worse the ST hat in the news conference, and didn’t put on the jersey.

Also, just curious, is Griffey always kind of a douche to the media? Couldn’t help but noticing it yesterday.

and it wasn’t about death and/or destruction!!!

(if you ignore the whole disappearance of the buildings he walked between)

How in any balanced, sane competition does that man lose the Best Actor nod?

I could have sworn I was watching a documentary through half of that damned movie.

Followed closely by Gran Torino.

The Oscars are a total laughingstock, and they have been since The English Patient. I don’t get how they haven’t realized this yet.