While Command & Conquer: Generals and Zero Hour seem to install OK in Windows 7, actually running them, well, not so much.  When you try to launch the game, you might find you get the first splash screen (where the DRM checks disc 1) followed by a slightly larger splash screen, and then... nothing.  Eventually you'll get an error dialog that "a serious error has occurred" and that "game.dat" has crashed.

For whatever reason, C&C seems to have trouble writing out a default options.ini file when launching the game for the first time, or otherwise dies because it can't find one.

To call this drive array "whisper-quiet" – as G-Tech likes to tout on their literature – is to call the Grand Canyon a "small drainage ditch."

I've been playing SImpsons Tapped Out and started to wonder, when I send one of the characters off on a task, what generates the most money and/or XP the quickest?

With some free time while it's snowing outside and a little bit of easy math, here's what I've come up with based on a few of the characters I currently have access to on Level 12.  The summary?  The longer a task takes, the less return you actually get for the time.

So this is funny. I'd sent a message to Colorado state representative Daniel Kagan on some issue or another months and months ago, and subsequently have been getting little email updates from him once in awhile on whatever his issue of the day happened to be.

Thursday morning I got another one, a whine about some mailer that his opponent this year sent out that said "I'm tired of political [ass]s" -- except [ass] was a picture of a donkey's head.

I thought it was funny, and decided to reply back to Kagan's complaining with a short one-line suggestion that he obtain a sense of humor.

Well, today I received his reply:

"You have been unsubscribed from all communications from the Office of Colorado State Representative Daniel Kagan."

I guess maybe that was his picture on the mailer...