Can't remember, did I already mention that Isis was pregnant again?!  The Abattoir Labs have been working full time and unit 2 is due January 14th (...according to some slide-rule, then the woman always traces it back to the night somehow and asks you if you remember the moment -- spooky -- you nod and smile...) Yesterday I removed my services from work, the place that's paying for all these spawn, to spend my afternoon in the Diagnostic Imaging Farm at Credit Valley in Mississauga, Ontario; it was time for Isis to get the big ultra-sound and you all know how I love these UHF images!  Okay, so here's the fun -- on this historic visit, Isis, my Mother, baby sMyles and myself are present...  The hospital was running two hours behind "schedule" (...whatever the hell that is in a hospital these days...) and I'm sitting in a wading-room of pregnant women who've all been herded into one area and who've all been forced to drink 200 litres of water prior to their "scheduled" ultrasound so the baby is more visible or something (...since, I guess your bladder is crushing it flat like you stuck it in your flatbed scanner...)  Did I mention the hospital was running two hours late?  Suffice to say, there were not many comfortable people in this Imaging Farm -- if they have your name on a "schedule", would it be safe to assume they have your phone number, would it perhaps be too much to ask that you have someone call the persons who are "scheduled" to have an ultrasound to inform them that their flight's delayed, or perhaps you could post something on a web site that would aid the working people in not blowing their entire afternoon watching you run behind schedule?!  Yes, I blast a lot of run-on sentences, I can't stop myself.  Really, it's just become accepted that if you are going to the hospital, there's a dandy chance you're going to be looking at dank artwork and wander the hallways praying for a pamphlet you've not yet read 12 times -- this just isn't right...  If you're running behind, post something on your web site like the airports do, give us a tool to not be pissed with you -- we'll be happy, you'll be happy, there'll be more smiles and less soaked crotches; everyone wins.  *end rant*

Now for a report from the past -- Cam (Skunkworks) Wright ordered a Burger from Double-Double; I've bought a round of their burgers before and they're not cheap but they are yummy...  Remember the "where's the beef!?" commercials?  Skunkworks sent the Abattoir these photos of his awesome hamburger delivered by Double-Double -- nice job guys.  Who the hell assembles a burger without any meat at all and delivers it to a customer?  The chef obviously had someone steal his cloudsong and was too pissed-off to concentrate on his job; this person could work in a hospital as a scheduler.

 

Did anyone notice that all the food we served at BTM47 "Breakfast" Edition was organic?  There's several reasons I spend more for organic food -- the paramount one being that's it's better for you and better tasting...  Did you also know that Kraft has been using you as a guinea pig for history's largest genetic engineered food experiment?  It's said that 99% of homes in North America have Kraft products in them, but do you really know what's in the Kraft products that are in your home?  Bet you don't.  Although labelling a products ingredients is required by law, what's not mandatory is disclosure on genetically engineered content -- Mounting scientific evidence suggests that GE foods may present serious and unpredictable hazards to human health.  Hundreds have reported allergic reactions to the FDA after eating Kraft and other brand name corn products likely containing GE ingredients.  The British Medical Association has called for a global moratorium on GE foods.  Scientists warn that GE foods may set off allergies, produce antibiotic resistant pathogens, and produce dangerous toxins. A 2002 study showed that genes from engineered foods can be taken up by bacteria in the human gut -- something that until now was thought to be impossible.  I'm no paranoid conspiracy theorist but the more I read and know makes me believe that I'll soon be living up north in my own bio-dome sucking carrot sticks I grew myself since I won't be able to trust anyone else to provide me with healthy, natural, non-frankenfood eats; no offence, but I don't want to bite into a slice of pizza and have my genitals suddenly fall off.  Want to learn more? (about the GE foods, not my genitals)  Next I'll find out that Cheez-Whiz® isn't actually good for you.

If you read the Abattoir.BBs (...and you know you should...) you'll recall I posted from the cottage via my laptop through my new "Data2Go" connection from Bell Mobility which allows me to use my cell phone as a high-speed modem...  Sounded like a great idea at the time when I signed-up for the service; Bell offers several packages you can choose from starting with the "Occasional User" package -- with this variant, you pay no monthly fee, however, be prepared to pay the second you use it; Bell will ding you .30¢ per 20k of traffic...  Just to put that into perspective for you, imagine that the Abattoir is your home page (...and you know it should be...) and you're up at the cottage with your trusty cell about to read-up on the BBs -- once you launch your browser and the LAN Minutes come up, you're already out $8.60 not including taxes and you've not done anything yet!  (...God forbid you had Windows Update set to automatically download updates in the background too...)   Since I don't condone rape, I wouldn't take option number one -- you move up progressively in $25 increments, the first plan ($25/mo) gives you a whopping 4 meg of data movement, after you exceed that, they extort $10 per meg thereafter from your wallet.  Just so you know, the two posts I did from the cottage cost me $121.54 (...bend the hell over!..) Of course you can pay them more per month, all the way to their "Unlimited***" plan which offers "Unlimited***" traffic for a meagre $100 extra on your cell bill per month, intrigued by the word "Unlimited***" I had to read the mega-fine-print at the bottom to find out why they were spelling "Unlimited***" with three asterisks, it states "*** Bell Mobility reserves the right to limit usage to 100 meg per month" -- I'm no scholar, but I think that statement flys in the complete opposite direction of what Websters defines the word "Unlimited" to mean (...even if you spell it with three asterisks...)  Perhaps Bell Mobility should call it the "Almost unlimited until we say stop" plan.

 

Guess it would only be prudent to recap on our season closing BTM47 "Breakfast" Edition back in June...  Never in the long and rich history of the Abattoir BTMs has there been such a massive breakfast effort -- I guess we should have weighed all the food before cooking just to keep some sort of statistical record, but suffice to say, no one went hungry; there was so much food prepared that we actually had to get on the phone and start inviting neighbourhood friends over to indulge.  Thanks to CorpsE, Isis, Odin and BammBamm for their help and CommanderX who manned one of 4 grills that were ablaze, nice job on the hash browns!

It goes without saying that Myles was a huge help at the BTM, he personally inspected the installation of each PC during set-up, checking for loose parts, making sure power bars worked properly by testing the rocker-switches (...sometimes while people were playing...) and even cleaning the occasional keyboard with drool -- thanks boy!  In related news, the gaming world will soon see the creation of Abattoir Spawn v2.0 coming in the new year; Isis is pregnant again (...and if I catch the bastard!..) so we'll be adding another bed in the Abattoir come mid January -- I've played SIM House for a while now and everything's working to plan so far.  (...can't find how to get out of the game and load SIM Orgy though...)

So a great time was had by all again, or so goes the feed-back -- congratulations to our two Pioneer DVR-109 DVD Burner winners Dave (Cyclone) Nowak and Cam (CorpsE) Smith.  The winner of the Mazda 323 was Mike (Rennick) McCrea, who although thrilled, had no use for the car really and asked what he should do, "I could really use a DVD burner." -- I told him he was holding the trump card, trade.  He asked Cyclone if he would trade his DVD burner for the car and Cyclone asked "...and what else do you want?"  Rennick said "just the DVD burner, even trade." -- I loved the look on Cyclone's face at that moment, it was like watching Bevis and Butthead.  In the end, Cyclone walked with the car (...sorta' speak...) and Rennick and CorpsE took the burners home; may you enjoy years of legal DVD backups...  Abattoir.Net even delivered the car to Cyclone's home in Cambridge, now that's service.  Thanks again to John Cameron for his generous donation of the car, you made a Cyclone happy.  Congrads to all, thanks for coming out, it was a blast of a BTM! (all digitals are of course on the SuperFTP for download)

Remember the update about the cottage party babes?  (...don't lie, it's right under this paragraph...) The related thread on Abattoir.BBs about our cottage weekend was posted live via cell phone modem link-up after I bought in to Bell Mobility's 1X network deal which connects my laptop to the Internet through my cell phone...  Seemed like a good idea at the time, I just received my cell phone bill, I'll tell you about that later. (...when you read the next LAN Minutes update, be sure to have a tube of KY handy...)

 

Where the hell have you all been!?  Okay, you can stop with the emails...  I know the LAN Minutes have remained dormant for almost three months now and for that I apologize; your comment about the LAN Minutes as your stagnant home page shoved me to the keyboard BitchInHeat, so I have placed a baby-gate over the Abattoir Lab door thus creating a firewall between the Lab and Myles the button pushing technophreak son I've spawned -- he's already starting to haxx0r the Abattoir, I'm in deep shit and I know it, he is mini-me.  It's been a beauty summer so far and not showing any sign of slowing down -- we've shattered so many records in southern Ontario this summer with temperatures constantly hovering around 38°C (100°F) with the humidex, it became mandatory to flee into cottage country for watery frolic; we had enough badgering from our power 'providers' that we must all shut our air conditioning off, shut-off all lights and disconnect your Mother's life-support or we'll be forced to pull rolling black-outs -- just doesn't seem too stable around here...  Of course crashing cottage parties with the stealth of the Abattoir's Solar Troller helps to relax a soul, so we're sorry for the lack of updates, but we were partying with half-naked, drunken college babes who called me Sea-Weed.  (Available online at the Abattoir Store in Hi-Def)

So what's been going on in the gaming world?  A 28 year old south Korean guy who's family name has been identified as "Lee" (thanks for narrowing that down, BTW) died today after playing Starcraft at an Internet cafe for 50 hours with little food or sleep -- thank God I never got into that game!  On the brighter side, Battlefield 2 is out!  (more) Shit, that link works like the game when I brought it home, broken.  When I first found out that the boys were making Battlefield 2, I cried with anticipation...  I have the game and I'm still crying.  This game has been an ongoing train-wreck from the start, they should have just dropped it from the huey...  Who wrote that browser code?  My main game machine is a power-house, so I have no problems running it, providing you don't touch anything when that horrible crash-o-matic server browser was updating; my common way of getting out of Battlefield 2 involved the three finger salute; alas, those times are now behind us -- after the recovery of the first patch which left your memory leaked all over the carpet, we enter the next patch; I think I'll try the game again...  Let me know when the authentication's hacked, until then I'm considering a class action law suit for "Connecting to account server" being burned into my retinas while I await the privilege of playing a single player mission in a game I purchased...  I'm pretty sure I've clocked over 3 minutes on way too many occasions awaiting their servers permission to start my game, I'm to understand that's acceptable.

Regardless of my above pooping on Battlefield 2, we have put up a dedicated public server for you to run amok -- just look for Abattoir.Net in that horrible server browser.  I don't know if you'll really want to play on it anyway, it's not a ranked server; Abattoir.Net just couldn't bring itself to pay over $510 (USD) a month for a rented server.  The only fair way to give Battlefield 2 a good run, would have to be on a LAN...  The demand for a summer BTM has been large, so we're going to break with tradition and host a mini-BTM smack in the summer heat.  If you want to join us, sign-up now; this BTM will be on August 20th and we're only going to assume this heat wave is pushed off by then or you're all going to die (...while awaiting authentication to play Battlefield 2...)  Note: before you scribble in your attendance card, this mini-BTM will be very much focused on Battlefield 2, we will play other games of course but it's a Battlefield 2 assessment we're running here so BF:2 is the game you must have.

We'll be back to regular updates now, I just had to break the silence, sorry about your luck; thank-you for your patronage.  Now advance order this keyboard