OK, I just have to add my two cents to the blogosphere’s reaction of Nintendo re-naming their upcoming system “Wii” (pronounced like “we”):

This makes “Nintendo Go” look like a good name.

My biggest issue with the new name? For me, it’s not the fact that it’s such a cutesy-sounding name, or the fact that it sounds like childhood slang for…well, you know. No, my biggest issue is that the pronunciation is not at all apparent from the spelling. Granted, this can still be overcome with enough of a massive marketing blitz, but still… When I first saw the name, my brain parsed it to rhyme with “high,” like the first half of “WiFi” (and I suppose it makes sense, since the system has wireless controllers!). For that matter, I could easily see someone reading it as “W2″! And with that double “i,” it looks more like a typographical error than a legitimate name in many languages (I first misread it as a typo of “WiFi,” in fact!).

(Amusingly enough, I made the exact opposite mistake with Intel’s Viiv platform, which I thought rhymed with “sleeve” but which actually rhymes with “drive.” I guess I was thinking of the French word vive…)

Dear ‘tententwelvecorp.com’ spammers:

If you really wanted me to buy shares of some fly-by-night stock called Southwestern Medical Solutions, the least you could’ve done was to not spoof a very real and completely unrelated domain name in the return address of your spams. It’s not fun receiving twenty or so return-to-sender notices a day on my catchall account, particularly when they all include the 24KB GIF file you embedded your spiel within to avoid filters.

And the fact that you’re sending your mail by exploiting an assortment of infected PCs all over the world, so there’s no trace of where your messages actually originated from? Not fun, either.

At least a Google search informs me that I’m clearly not alone in having my address spoofed. Of course, that just makes it even more of a heinous crime, as far as I’m concerned.

May you be flooded by hundreds of e-mail bounces,
*@zone38.net

Ah, ATF. Once again, you’ve saved us from the dangerous threat of…cosplay?

No, really— it’s a news item from right here at the University of Georgia: ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat.

ATF agents are always on alert for anything suspicious — including ninjas.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus Tuesday for Project Safe Neighborhoods training, detained a “suspicious individual” near the Georgia Center, University Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.

Jeremiah Ransom, a sophomore from Macon, was leaving a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was detained.

Note to any ATF agents reading this: please, think twice before you decide to hold any sort of training September 22-24 in the vicinity of the Cobb Galleria. It’s for your own good; trust me. ^_~

Argh. What will it take to get this town to actually run buses at halfway reasonable hours? I’m sure that a good number of people would get more use out of a bus running at 8 PM than one running at 1 PM… seriously, if you work 9 to 5, there’s not really any time to do anything else! And if you work past 6:30 PM or so…good luck getting a taxi; I read an article in the local paper a while back that some cab companies have flat-out refused to give people in other parts of town a ride at night because they were too busy escorting drunk students home from downtown.

And it’s really bad on the weekends. Some of the routes don’t run at all on Saturdays; others (the ones that actually do run more than once an hour) run on an even sparser schedule than usual, or at the least, force you to take a more roundabout route. And forget about getting to campus from the edges of town, or vice versa, on Sundays; the only route running then is the campus weekend route.

It wouldn’t be so bad if (a) everything weren’t so ridiculously spread out, and (b) roads actually had sidewalks and crosswalks in halfway logical locations. But no, we have things like crosswalks spaced miles apart on very busy roads, sidewalks that randomly disappear and reappear, busy intersections without crosswalks… and the traffic around here scares me sometimes. It’s bad enough as a pedestrian; there’s no way I could drive in this without crashing into something! And as for the whole issue of sprawl, the nearest grocery store to campus is about a mile from the nearest edge of campus (which, thankfully, is the south edge at which I’m living)— which is hardly the most convenient distance for carrying several heavy bags of groceries. It’s even worse in the other parts of campus. You’d think the zoning laws would actually encourage the placement of a store that might, I don’t know, actually be convenient for students!

I guess I should be glad that I at least live on one of the campus bus stops, which actually does run into the night (though only to campus destinations and downtown). I seriously don’t see how people can live off-campus and survive… oh, right, they’re un-spacey enough to actually pay attention to all the unpredictable traffic, or at least they can find someone to live with who can drive them around. Meh.