News Archive - May 2004
5-27-2004
Net Enigma. Good things ahead.
Meaning with the "128 Hottest" anyway! Today, I give you round 3 winners and a quick rundown of who will be moving into round 4, aka The Sexy 16. So, read on and then prepare for round 4 later today or first thing on Friday.
The match-ups for the Sexy 16 break out like this;
Marisa Tomei will face Karen Cliche. Marisa took out Sarah Thompson by 7 votes while Karen survived a close match against Tea Leoni to win by only 3.
Britney Spears went up by 7 over Kelly Carlson to get to round 4 against Ashley Judd who dominated Courtney Peldon by 19 votes to move on. This should be the match to watch as Britney has to be heavily favored but Ashley has been putting up good numbers.
Another close vote (3) separated Carmen Elektra and Tara Reid. The ex-Mrs. Worm was too much though, and those 3 votes were in her favor. Gina Gershon, on the other hand, got 13 votes more than Nikki Zeiring to pass into the next round. Can't wait to see Gina and Carmen in the next round, it's anybodies guess as to who could win this one.
In another surprise vote, Carly Pope got a 1 vote win over Tiffany Thiessen. Was it that hard or was everyone just baffled by the match-up? The Tyra Banks/Nicole Kidman vote must have been just as tough as only 3 votes put Tyra into the next round against Carly. I think I see a lopsided vote coming...but I don't want to say too much.
Ali Larter continues to dominate by gathering 17 votes more than Sofia Vergara to move on and face Vida Guerra in the Sexy 16. Guerra was 3 better than Courtney Cox...I guess Cox lost all her friends when her show went off the air.
The Latin hottie Shakira continues to march on with a 3 vote win over Amande Detmer. Could we see a pop-princess battle with Shakira and Britney? Another surprise vote, for me anyway, was Susan Ward going large over Elin Nordegren. The new American Hottness, Ward, stacked on 15 more votes than the European beauty. Hope Tiger's game is better this season. Susan and Shakira will be one to watch next round.
Not to sway any votes, but my personal favorite, Sophia Bush pulled out a 9 vote win over the Playboy model Dalene Kurtis. Buckle will be displeased but at least his girl Dalene made it past round 1 this time. Sophia will face off against Alyssa Milano who won a squeaker over Sophia Marceau.
Our last match-up in the Sexy 16 will be Amber Arbucci v Jordan. Jordan, the adult model from the UK took home 1 more vote than actress Cerina Vincent to advance. Amber only had 3 more than Heidi Klum to move on. This match could be tight...or a huge blow-out. I can't predict.
And there you have it, round 4, the Sexy 16, is all set to start in a couple days. And, although I promised this last round, we WILL be mixing up the photos for this round. Although this game has been plagued by several unforeseen problems over the past several weeks, we're poised to wrap it all up in the next couple of weeks. The rounds are going to move a little quicker and Buckle is going to update faster even if I have to use some Abu Grhaib-style humiliation tactics.
5-24-2004
Net Enigma. Rant of the week.
Here's what I don't understand. Gas prices are through the roof, the highest in history but even Saudi Arabia is pumping out 8 million barrels of oil a day. Why the price? They say they'll ramp up and pump out 9.1 million barrels a day to help balance the price but when it comes down to it, it's the refineries in the US that have to make gas out of all that crude oil.
By all accounts, the refineries are at full bore, putting out all the gas that they are able to. So, why the price hikes? Where is that money going?
Another problem is the shitty disparity between gas content and properties from state to state or, at least, region to region. So, if there is a glut of gas in Idaho it probably can't be rerouted to NY because the formula isn't right. So, why doesn't someone get off their ass, figure out what the best, cleanest, most cost efficient formula is and make it a national standard? That way all the refineries pump out the same gas and it can be distributed anywhere in the country.
Let's take that one further; car emissions. Why don't we have a national standard on emissions? Take the strictest, most clean emission setup on a car and manufacture all cars to that standard. It's like having a smoking section in a restaurant; just because I'm in the No Smoking section doesn't mean I can't smell the cigar from the bar. Same is true for car emissions. Just because I'm in NY and not, say, Detroit, doesn't mean I'm not out watching the acid rain run down the gutter.
Let's go even further. Hybrid cars or alternative fuel cars. Why isn't there a national push for a cleaner, more fuel efficient car? Finley is driving a hybrid Honda Insight and gets some sick gas mileage. Honda also has out a Civic and Toyota has the Prius. Ford is putting out a hybrid SUV pretty soon but where are the rest? Where is Chevy, Dodge or the other GM cars?
I actually like the look of the new Ford coming out but I'll tell you one reason we don't see more of the existing hybrids; they're fucking ugly. Have you seen the new 2004 Prius? Ugly. I want to like it. I want to maybe buy something like this when I'm ready for a new car but please, I wouldn't be caught dead in that. Why can't I have a car that looks like the Stratus or Grand Am? Where is the Saturn hybrid? Instead, although it looks mean as hell, we get the new Dodge Magnum. With a hemi.
This weekend I was in PA and came through Dickson City on Sunday. The price of gas at the Sheetz on Route 6 was $1.89, $2.00 and $2.17 (I think). Price in Ithaca? Oh, $2.10, $2.2x and $2.3x. WTF? Some of that can be blamed on Cuomo but the rest is just inexcusable.
Weekend Recap
On to happier news. This past weekend I had a good time down in Philly. I left Ithaca about 6:00am and drove into the city for the Wizard World Philadelphia comic convention. I spent the day with my buddy Joe looking at art and digging through bins on tables looking at all sorts of cool collectibles and art. Saturday I was back with Finley and Buckle for more of the same.
Saturday night we finished off the day with a ball game at the new Citizens park where the Phillies took on the Padres. I was hoping to spot David Wells who's now with the Padres but he's on the DL and wasn't taking any warm up. The game was pretty good, close all the way but the Padres pulled it out in late innings.
The stadium is really nice with not really a bad seat in the place. About $20 for the ticket wasn't bad either but man, $6 for a bottle of beer? I passed. It was fun to see a major league game though, and to see a baseball game in general. Been a long time since I've been out to any park.
Going shooting
Although I've pretty much stopped shooting pistols competitively I will be going to a really cool match this weekend to use the AR-15 in a match. It has some elements that are set up like an IPSC or IDPA match but with some long range steel thrown in. Ought to be fun. Hopefully I'll have some pictures.
Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King comes out on DVD today. I know where I'll be heading after work. That also means that this coming weekend I'll have to find about 9 hours where I can sit down and watch the trilogy. Yay!
5-24-2004
Net Enigma. I'm back.
I'm back from a long weekend in Philly. I'm pretty beat so I'm going to get some sleep but I'll wrap up the weekend later as well as give you the rundown on who won round 3 of the "128 Hottest!"
5-19-2004
Net Enigma. OKAY!
It's all up and running if you can believe that! The site is on the new server, email is working and now, I just have to update some new pages and verify some links.
After a little bit of a panic on the email side, everything seems to be working well. And, there are a lot more things I can do with this server than I could on Earthlink. So, hopefully, there will be good things to come.
Nice hat
Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones, popularized a hat in the 1980's, Hugh Jackman, as Van Helsing, is doing it again in the year 2004. 'Cause that's one slick hat he's wearing in the new movie, by the same name, Van Helsing. Opening last weekend to, expected, shitty reviews, this is the latest movie to wrap up a monster flick in the slick production values of the post-Matrix Hollywood.
Starring with Jackman are Kate Beckinsale and Richard Roxburgh as Count Dracula, this take on the monster hunter Van Helsing had a lot of action, some hot broads and enough F/X to make every hardcore geek wet his pants.
After Van Helsing deals with a rampaging Mr. Hyde he is dispatched by his bosses (The Vatican) to Transylvania to deal with Count Dracula. While looking for Dracula, Van Helsing encounters the lovely Anna (Beckinsale) along with werewolves, Frankenstein's monster (and Igor!), Dracula's Brides and eventually the Big Bad himself. The movie comes down to the inevitable battle between Van Helsing and Dracula and that's where a ton of those F/X that I mentioned came in.
Although there was a lot of wire work for the various characters in this film, digital had a huge presence that at times became tedious...they almost relied on it too much. I'm starting to take a disliking to that trend.
Overall, though, I really liked the movie. The story was interesting, it moved along relatively well except for a short period in the middle, and the acting was pretty solid. Oh, and did I mention hot broads? Well, let me mention them again. And look for Beckinsale in her red dress at the ball!
Jackman is great as the mysterious and ass-kicking Van Helsing and at first I though that Roxburgh over-played Dracula...till I remembered that Dracula NEEDS to be over-played. You can just throw Beckinsale into any movie so that we can just look at her and she's good...it's only a bonus that she can act. If you get a chance, catch this movie, it's fun and there's plenty there to gawk at for your money. I'm going to deduct a half wheel of cheddar for the F/X at the end and give this flick 2.5 wheels out of four.
By the way
The "128 Hottest" is open for a couple more days for round 3 so this is the last chance to get your votes in. With moving to the new server and some email issues yesterday, if you submitted a vote between Monday night at about 11:00pm and Tuesday at 8:00 pm I probably didn't get it, so send it again.
Results will be up in a couple days and then we'll be on to round 4!
5-18-2004
Net Enigma. We've moved.
Okay, you're now reading NetEnigma.com on it's new server, HostSave.com. Everything on the web side seems to be working okay right now but you may see a link or two that is broken as well as some content not where you would normally find it. Don't worry, that's being updated.
I AM having a problem with email, however. Can't seem to receive anything. But, hopefully I'll have that problem fixed up here pretty quick.
Also, I've taken the "128 Hottest" link down because of the email problem. Round 3 has been on for over a week so we probably got about all the votes we're going to get. So look for the results later today or tomorrow.
5-16-2004
Net Enigma. We're moving.
Okay, sometime between 3:00 Sunday and 3:00 Monday NetEnigma.com will be moving to our new hosting provider. So, the site may be down while the DNS change takes place. But keep trying and as soon as the DNS switches, we'll be back up and running!
5-15-2004
Net Enigma. Relieves back and joint pain.
It's your right as a free citizen of the Internet community to gawk at hot broads and then vote for your favorites. It's the right of NetEnigma to facilitate that right. Please vote by clicking the link at the top of this page.
This has been a test of the Emergency BROADcasting System.
Hmmm...
I don't know what to think about this article. Nick Berg, the guy that got beheaded in Iraq last week, was buried yesterday but not before his father made some comments about how it's President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld who are to blame for his death.
Um...okay. So, I guess that let's those masked thugs off the hook, eh?
Let's see. Nick wasn't in the military, he wasn't drafted and ordered over seas. He wasn't armed, didn't have any protection and, oh yes, he's a Jewish American. I can't think of a more safe place to be than Baghdad, Iraq. No sir.
Don't get me wrong, what they did to Berg is potentially more disgusting than the Unknown Russian Soldier (or so I'm told) and I have nothing but contempt for those that did it. But I didn't see W's monkey face in that video. I didn't see Rummy grinning from behind a Pentagon podium waving his kukri in the air screamin' "Death to the infidels!" I fail to see where they are to blame for this.
I see a guy that went to Iraq, not even as a contractor, to look for work. He happened to get picked up by the wrong people on the wrong day (4/9 was when Hamill and a bunch of others were taken hostage) and being an American and Jewish, he wasn't coming home.
He went there on his own. It wasn't the job of the military or the FBI or the State Department to watch out for him. It wasn't the job of the Iraqi police to watch out for him, it was Nick Berg. He chose to go to the most dangerous place in the world, outside of Detroit, during a war. He knew what he was doing and he accepted the risk. As bad as his murder is, it was his fault for being in that position, not George W. or anyone else in this country.
Stop pointing fingers and accept the fact that the responsibility for Nick being in that situation was his own.
5-13-2004
Net Enigma. May cause blindness.
The votes are rolling in on the "128 Hottest" game but we still need more, and you still have plenty of time. Hit the link up top and vote!
5-12-2004
Net Enigma. It's a celebration, bitches!
Let me introduce you to the most diabolical crew of haters ever assembled!
This past weekend was one hell of a party in Philly. Friday night I drove down to Finley's where a few of us cracked open some liquor before hitting the strip club for John's 26th birthday. By 6 a.m. Saturday morning we knew the weekend was off to a good start.
Saturday geared up about 3 after we had some food and got the snacks and decorations ready for the real party.
That's when the surprises started showing up. Namely, J-Ass and his new girl. I was floored. Seems that Finley got in touch with him a week or so ago, buried the hatchet, and hooked up for the weekend. Later, Mike-Dog showed up after, I thought, trying to bitch out earlier in the day. And then, as the kids say, it was on!
There were a ton of people, we had a bunch of food, the kitchen looked like a liquor store and we didn't run out of steam till about 6 a.m. Sunday morning!
The only crappy part of the night was the less than 4 hours of sleep I got. But, who needs sleep when there's drinking to be done?
Anyway, I had a freakin' blast. And if you wanna see some pictures hit up this link. I'm sending some more pictures Finley's way so he may add them later on.
Get out the vote!
That's right, you need to vote, bitches! Hit the "128 Hottest" banner up top and vote your hearts out. I see about 23 votes rolled in over the weekend but I would love to see about double that roll in over the next few days. And I'm making a promise right now that there won't be such a big gap between rounds next time.
Special Announcement
I have a special announcement to make; Netenigma.com will be moving to a new server by the end of the month! That's right, I've had it with Earthlink where I'm currently being hosted. So, this year instead of a total revamp to the site for our anniversary we'll be moving to a new server.
Hopefully all will go smoothly and you won't even notice except for possibly an hour or two of down time in the middle of the night when the DNS entries update.
When we re-launch on the new server there will be some pages that will not be available for a few days and probably even a few broken picture links. However, they will come back up relatively quickly. There will be no impact to the forums and except for that short outage for the DNS switch, the "128 Hottest" game will not be impacted.
As I said, there isn't going to be a huge site redo for this year but that doesn't mean there won't be any changes. The Party Up! pages will be going away. I'm working on a new feature called the "Cast of Characters" (title may change) that will lead you to a lot of the pictures that were in the Party Up! section before, only now the pictures won't be party based but person based. Meaning that instead of looking through a ton of meaningless photos from some party to find, say, Sabrina's hottness, you'll look her up in the Cast of Characters and then access a page full of pictures of just her.
The Vault is going to be reborn also. When The Vault started it was a password based section of the site and you needed to contact me to get access. When I moved out of York I did away with that and just opened up most of the pictures that were there. Well, if everything works out, when we move to the new server I'm taking The Vault up a notch. We're going back to the password based access which is good and bad.
The bad? You'll need to contact me to get access. The good? You'll have access to some of the most incriminating pictures ever captured in York, Philly and elsewhere! Don't worry, though, there will be no charge for the access and you'll still get your random porn for free. But, I should be able to again offer some pictures that were not available because of the lack of passwords.
Allrightythen! Back to your regularly scheduled Internet.
5-7-2004
Net Enigma. hhhhh-WHAT?
Holy Shit, Ralph updated Round 3 of the "128 Hottest." Can you believe it? Do you still care? Man, what a pain in the ass. Anyway, hit the link up top and give it a spin.
5-4-2004
Net Enigma. If excuses were crack I could get all of North Philly loaded.
Once again I have the sad news of telling you that Round 3 of the "128 Hottest" is not ready. Once again it's Ralph's fault. Seems he was too busy getting laid last night. But, he can recommend a good photographer in the Philly area, Jodi Samsel.
5-3-2004
Net Enigma. Welcome to Monday.
Well, it looks as though round 3 is on hold much longer than I wanted. Sorry about that. This time around we seemed to have a lot of things going on that has kept us from getting the rounds ready to go. The good news, Ralph's band played for some recording people this weekend, working to get on the right track for a recording contract of some kind. Bad news, he's busy with work but will try to get round 3 up as soon as possible. Check back and I'll also be notifying those of you that have voted in rounds 1 and 2 by email.
5-1-2004
Net Enigma. Just what we needed.
Hear about these pictures from Iraq that show US soldiers making fun of Iraqi prisoners? I'm absolutely disgusted.
Granted, you go in and fight a war, see your friends get killed and that's going to make you angry. But that doesn't give the soldiers the right to retaliate like this. Especially when they had to know that if anyone found out it would just make the entire situation over there that much worse.
What's even more disturbing is that it appears that some soldiers from the UK have done similar things. It sounds bad, and even though I don't like it, I'd expect something like this from the American soldiers but not the British. I'd definitely like to know the details behind these pictures but when it comes right down to it, the people involved should be publicly tossed in jail for the entire Arab world to see.
Anything less than that and we'll never have any respect again from the people in Iraq.
Ahnoldhead
A couple guys in Ohio sold a bobblehead of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fund raiser for cancer research but the new governor of California took offense. Through his lawyers he demanded that they stop selling the bobbleheads and pay him for using his likeness.
Guess the governator isn't a fan of cancer research. But, if I remember correctly, once a person becomes an elected official his/her image then becomes part of the public domain. And if so, these guys don't owe Arnold a dime.
Can't wait to see how this one turns out.