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By Mark D, July 21, 2012 9:54 pm

Growing up as a fan of the New York Mets, and eventually becoming a fan of the Jets, Knicks and Islanders, I was used to a shitty decade sports wise. The 90s were pretty bad for 3 of the 4 teams. The Knicks were the exception, especially once Jordan retired for a bit to try Basketball. Knicks fans will always be haunted by John Starks inability to sink a basket in Game 6 of the Finals against the Rockets. We don’t talk about his Game 7.

The Knicks seemed to be going downhill in 99 when they went on one of the most incredible runs, taking down the hated Miami Heat as an 8th Seed, then taking out the Pacers to reach the Finals. Sure they were taken out by the Spurs in 5 games in the finals, but the future looked bright. Then the team was mismanaged by GM Layden, only to be taken over by the even more grossly incompetent Isiah Thomas.

There are not enough words to describe what Thomas did to the Knicks. Not only was he a bad GM and a bad Coach, but he embarrassed the organization with a sex scandal. But even that wasn’t enough to get him fired and finally NBA Commissioner David Stern stepped in and forced Owner James Dolan to replace Thomas with the amazing Donnie Walsh. Walsh finally slowly but surely cleared the Knicks of crappy contracts, hoping to eventually bring in LeBron James.

This hope though fell short, but the Knicks became a better team and managed to pick up Amare Stouduamire and were looking like a possible playoff team under Mike D’Antonio and a bunch of promising youngsters. But this wasn’t enough for Dolan, who wanted his shiny new toy. He forced the team to gut itself in order to trade for Carmelo Anthony who was going to be a free agent anyway.  The Knicks went 13-13 after the trade, following a 28-26 start without him. The Nuggets went 17-7 without Carmelo.

This season Carmelo openly argued with Coach D’Antoni as the team went 29-36 with him in the lineup. Eventually everything between Anthony and D’Antoni came to a head, and D’Antoni said it was either him or Anthony. So now D’Antoni, one of the better coaches the team has had who has worked the team back to respectability is gone. Walsh eventually left because he never wanted to make the Carmelo deal.

Finally a Miracle falls into the Knicks laps in the name of Jeremy Lin. Injuries force him to start, and he ends up being one of the best stories of the year. It got to the point that he got Knicks fans more excited about the team then they have been in years. The stocks for MSG shoot up for the first time in years. The Knicks went 20-15 before Lin went down to an injury, and were 4-4 in games in which he played less then 10 minutes.

Now Lin was going to become a Restricted Free Agent, but what’s that matter to Dolan who was spending hand over fist for the last Decade and paying for all of Isiah Thomas’ mistakes while keeping him around? Apparently everything. The Knicks decided to let him go out and get offers from other teams to figure out “His Value” and then are somehow shocked when he goes out and signs an offer from another team.

But hey, that shouldn’t matter, the Knicks have a chance to match that offer. Money has never been a thing for Dolan. But apparently not this one time. Nope, obviously at this point Dolan considers the fans someone he can piss all over and ignore. It’s his toy and he’s going to play with it how he wants to play with it. Celebrities and corporations don’t help things when they pay for insanely overpriced seats that keep Dolan rolling in the money.

It makes me sick that it seems like the Islanders, a good organization that seems to try to do right gets pissed all over. But the Knicks are the Knicks and apparently free for the most part from greater scrutiny. Not signing Lin is one of the worst moves the Knicks have made and they don’t even have a real excuse for doing it.

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By Mark D, April 21, 2012 12:55 am

So there’s this rather large group of people I dislike. I got word that they were having a party, and decided to try to mess with them. I proceeded to schedule my own party for 2 hours before theirs, charge nothing (they were charging people) and offer videos to watch on my big screen TV.  I also announced this party before their announcement got into the public, just to get another leg to stand on over them.

I even managed to get my apartment cleaned and looking nice, which is a rarity. I also got my tax return the week of the party so I was able to buy a ton of food. It actually seemed somewhat professional. Even though I was going to be out a good chunk of change from everything, money doesn’t matter when your trying to get revenge.

Then the day of the party, with my gf over the apartment to help me take care of everything going on, something strange happened. No one showed. Not a single soul. Mostly because I forgot that 90% of the people who know me consider me a huge asshole. And plus I guess some people might have thought I was purposely holding the party to screw over the other people.

To make things even funnier, or worse, my girlfriend kind of realized I was a huge asshole that weekend too and broke up with me the following week.  So yea, not only was I out the money I had spent on the party, and the girlfriend, but I had gotten no revenge whatsoever on the people I was trying to screw over.

And yet in a continuing theme of my life, I probably would do it all over again if given a second chance.  Revenge is one of those things that are so delicious, even when it blows up in your face it’s worth taking a shot. Not enough people take chances in this world. It is better to flame out then slowly pass into the darkness. When the chance is there, you gotta grab it by the neck and run with it.

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By Mark D, December 8, 2011 12:42 pm

You ever go to help a friend whose wondering why their computer is running slow, get there and discover that they have about half a screen filled with toolbars? Normally I’d just figure the person was an idiot and didn’t realize what they were downloading. In reality there’s no reason to even download toolbars anymore, since most browsers now come with search boxes built into them. But toolbars still exist for browsers mostly so the company which made them can track your internet usage. If there’s a real use for browser toolbars, I haven’t seen them yet.

But lately I’ve been noticing a new trick that is annoying as hell. You go to install a game and your given the choice between the manual or automatic install. Now back in the day this was sort of important. Games would run largely off of the CD, but the installer gave you the option of installing all the files to the computer so the game ran faster. This mattered back in the day when your hard drive was only a gig and installing everything from the CD could take 200-400 MBs. Now it doesn’t matter as much given the size of hard drives, but most installs give you the option of custom installs.

Custom installs are largely jokes these days, but something that installers have been doing lately is sneaking in a toolbar installation. Now this isn’t something new, but in the past you would get a screen asking you if you wanted to install a GoDaddy Toolbar. Now though when you go to select what items you want in the custom install it seems to be a choice of game components, toolbars and useless non game related crap. I can only imagine the number of people who do the automatic install and wonder why they suddenly have a new toolbar.

It’s time to stop this. Trust me game companies, I’ve had a million chances to download a new IE toolbar. It’s not as though I’m suddenly going to change my mind about them because it’s on the install program.  Packaging toolbars with installation programs is one of the most annoying trends in gaming today. I can only imagine they do it because they are getting paid to.  But it’s a disservice to anyone who trusts installers to just install the games and wouldn’t actually look to see what is being installed.

As long as I’m bitching, I’d also like to see the return of actual options of what to install when installing a game. If it’s possible to run stuff of the disc, that would be nice. Not all of us have 1 TB hard drives growing off of the trees. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff (including the god dam music) that can be left on the CD just fine. Especially if you are going to force us to have the CD/DVD in the drive to run the game anyway.