A few things on my mind:

1. Lil’ Wayne. Is this guy for real or what? Why is he a big deal all of a sudden? And most importantly, why are all of his fans white suburban teenagers?

Get the hell outta here.

2. Supreme Court rulings. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision Wednesday morning that it’s too “harsh” of a punishment to give the death penalty to someone who rapes a child in Louisiana. Wtf? At least they ruled against the Handgun ban in D.C. Thursday morning to make up for it. I love this country.

3. Technology: Firefox 3 is pretty cool. Pros: Still better than IE7, more or less equal to safari from a speed/efficiency viewpoint. The only con: every time you start to type something in the address bar, a giant magnified drop down box comes up with all your history/bookmarks, so that someone standing ten feet behind you can pinpoint that you’ve visited redtube.com thirty times in the past half hour. Niceee.

On another technological note, I’ve had it with the Zune. The device is pretty cool overall (I own a first generation 30GB), but the software is utter shit. One major annoyance was that I could not add a few albums – maybe because of some sort of bullshit microsoft encryption, who knows. I’ll keep this updated if I find anything to make the Zune suck less. It really makes me want t-

Obviously we haven’t updated this in a while. Why the hiatus? We simply don’t get enough hits. No one cares about us. Maybe that will change, who knows…for now I’ll just be putting up random tidbits and whatnot, hopefully the other editor reports in every now and then to give us some Australian news (he went down under this morning).

Upcoming events: Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival ’08, more on that later. ONE

For starters, say you find an album my using the search method in the article above. So you get a rapidshare or megaupload link, you download it, and when you go to extract the rar, you find there’s a password. This shouldn’t discourage you. What you then want to do is google the rapidshare link, or the file name (in quotation marks if there are any spaces). This will then bring you to the page that you originally downloaded the file from. On this page somewhere, posters of the rar usually put the password somewhere, likely under something like “Pass:[the password]“. If you’re having trouble finding a password to an rar’d folder, don;t give up yet. The password may be somewhere in the file name. For example, if the name of the file is “BTBAM_Colors_www.albumdlforum.com.rar” most likely the password is going to be the name of the website or user that had uploaded it (in that case I would try “www.albumdlforum.com”).

If the name of the file is “mchammer-greatest_hits_uploaded_by_mikej.rar”, I would suggest trying “mikej” as the password. If you cannot find the password, there are password finders made for rar files, but they might take a while, so just get back to googling for another link because chances are there’s another file out there to your liking.

I also wanted to stress the importance of staying clear from any sites, such as megaupload search engines that are powered by zango. These search sites are full of spyware and other harms, so I would stay clear of them and try to find an rar file on your own. With that in mind, always use Firefox as your browser (should be your browser of choice already for Windows users), as this will help a TON with keeping your computer spyware-free. For more info on how to stay clear/clean spyware, check out this article.

If you stumble across a forum site that uploads music, and you find an endless amount of rapidshare links, I would also suggest shelling out the 9 bucks for a premium account. This gives you a limit of 25 GB of downloads per month and no stupid wait period. You can also get free rapidshare accounts by uploading, so if you have a vast collection to share, start uploading with the uploader account, and depending on how many dl’s you get (you need a lot) you can score a free account. Any questions just comment. Happy downloading!

   This year’s tournament will be extremely difficult to predict.  This year’s season has lacked a true #1 where teams like Florida and UNC have been juggernauts in prior years.  This year UCLA, UNC, Memphis, Tennessee, Texas, and the always iffy Kansas, head the pack, but none of these teams stand out and make a convincing case that they are the BEST.

So, what do you do? Well, with everyones final four differing this year, anyone will have the chance the win especially if a  #3 or #4 seed win it all. This means you have to be very smart in the early rounds with who you choose to advance.  ESPN puts together a great video analysis every year of all the teams in the tournaments and then looks at the match ups for possible upsets and underdogs.

Once you have an idea of what your bracket looks like, head over to CBS SPORTS, and either create a league for you and your friends or join an already existing one.  I have used this website every year now for March Madness and it is very efficient and gives you the ability to change how you want your league to be scored.  They also offer live video feeds for the first few rounds so you can watch all the games at once. It does not get much better than that!!!

Stay tuned for some more March Madness related posts and we’ll start sharing some of our picks and hopefully give you a game plan to take down your friends and collect some cash during the month of March.

So what happened here? Rangers choked as usual…but maybe it was because we were missing this guy?

Hopefully that gave the Rangers fans a much needed confidence boost. If you’re a Ranger fan, check out Steve Zipay’s blog on Newsday; he attends most of their practices and reports back (frequently) with who’s hurt, line changes, rumors, etc.

So basically, you should only have a Mohawk if: (1) Your name is B.A. Baracus, (2) you are a member of any Native American tribe, or (3) you’re a complete douche bag and you listen to punk music (these two go hand in hand). So with that said, if you’re rugby team or whatever kind of gay club you are in wants to shave everyone’s hair into a Mohawk, just think about its past. You’ll never be as badass as Baracus, even though he ain’t getting on no plane. You won’t magically become a savage Indian, nor would you even want to listen to punk.

I’d also take the time to address the faux-hawk, which has evolved from the once-masculine Mohawk to a metro-queer haircut. Do everything you can to avoid this god-awful haircut for god sakes. For those who don’t know: basically you have a regular dude haircut, and you just take hair gel (or semen) and fashion a Mohawk-type style to the already existing hair, no baldness involved. Pretty much don’t do this unless you drink a lot of protein shakes.

If you want a haircut that will knock the socks of everyone, go with the mullet or the sideways Mohawk. Don’t be a pussy, too many college kids today are falling into the Mohawk trap, and don’t get me started on the blowout. Creativity is a must, so choose your next haircut wisely.

Recently, ached on by the gigantic Superbowl spread, I joined Betus.com so I could make a few bets and hopefully cash in on some big games.  I did not do my research and just took someones word that it was a reputable site …. boy was i wrong.  Their signing bonus was hard to turn down (25%) and that was the final enticement for me.  I won several big bets and quickly doubled my money.  Content with my earnings and lack of knowledge for basketball I knew it was time to quit. The problem was that BetUS did not want me to quit.

Quitting such an addictive habit like gambling is tough already, but when your bookie does everything in their power to make sure you don’t leave its almost impossible.  I had to send upwards of 10 emails to confirm my account and verify my license and credit card etc… After they managed to receive those, another obstacle stood in my way.  Since I received a bonus when i signed up, I had to wager at the least what i put in my account plus the bonus money they gave me before I could cash out.  Reluctantly, I placed several more bets and barely broke even to reach the wager requirement.  At last I was free to claim my money and get my check in the mail….. but wait there is more.

There is a processing fee to cashing out… 50 USD…. 50 big ones.  Are you kidding me??? So even if you pull through a rough month and come out even you are down 50 in the hole.  Luckily I had profited enough to cover this expense and just get off this site. Currently I am waiting their confirmation on a payout and after reading several forums I doubt I will see this money for at least a month if at all.

So if your going to bet, do your research. Check for bonuses and what those entail, possible fees for cashing out, and customer satisfaction.  I found the best list of sites currently available and I recommend Bodog from this list because they do payout and you receive one free payout per month.

Most Reputable Betting Sites

If you make an account check out my associates site, haveadayeveryday.wordpress.com for his daily lock pick and humorous advice on the games of the day.

Be safe

The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide. That takes second behind Christmas. The origin of Valentines Day is somewhat weak, but it started in the middle ages when courtship was highly recommended. Today, courtship does not exist. Divorce is the new way to express your feelings toward your “lover”. However, not only does Valentines Day exist, but it thrives. Since true love and romanticism has been thrown out the window, there must be another driving force……CAPITALISM.

Advertisers for Hallmark and Hershey’s Chocolate must be paid out their ass for all the work they are putting in. They have managed to convince every woman and even some men that Valentines Day is an all important holiday not to be missed by any. Regardless if you have been married for 20 years or are just involved in a casual relationship, the pressure placed by large corporations is enough to send you to the jewelery store, florist, and to the god of the holiday, Hallmark!

Avoid breaking the bank without breaking your girl’s heart!!

As a college student, with a college budget, Valentines Day sucks. Many do not have to deal with the holiday all together because they are too busy hooking up with as many STD ridden students as possible. For the minority, those in relationships or those following the antique customs of courtship, Valentines Day acts as any other holiday in this country. One indulged in materialistic demands and jacked up prices. Items such as roses, chocolates, and dinner reservations at your top notch restaurant can be quite draining on your pockets, so I devised a list of cost cutting ideas for college students or those on a tight budget to follow.

1) Check your University center for any tables set up selling flowers, roses, and chocolates at lower prices to benefit campus organizations etc..

2) Cook a special meal or fix a dessert for your special someone at a fraction of dinner costs.

3) Escape the lure of costly activities and grab a blanket and a bottle of wine and head to the beach, park, or any place secluded from the holiday hype.

4) Make a creative card or burn a cd that will have more meaning than any Hallmark gimic.

5) Grab a bunch of friends and make a group date or celebration.

Whatever you do, do not fall into the commercial trap, your woman will know what you think of her regardless of a dozen roses or diamond earrings, but if you have the money those could definitely help your cause.

With that said, torrent sites are shite. They take days to download from, and you are risking getting a letter from your ISP saying to basically cut the shit and stop downloading torrents. On the other hand, torrents are good for very hard-to-find movies and music if you have the patience and want to leave your computer on for a few days to finish the download. P2P programs are another o.k. option, but again I would not recommend something like Limewire, as it’s easy to download a virus through those types of programs and a lot easier to get caught.

With my method, all you need is a little knowledge of Google and a program called WinRar, which you can download here. Download the latest, 3.71. It is trial software, but you don’t have to buy it to keep using it. You’re going to be downloading rar files, which is basically a zip file, or a way to compress many files into one.

Now all you need to do is go to Google (I would suggest using Firefox), type in the album you want, and then put rar after it. So for example, if I’m looking for the new Sheryl Crow album, I would type something like: ‘sheryl crow detours rar’ in the Google search box (without the apostrophe things).

Chances are you will get a lot of torrent sites when you search for an album. So if the first page of results are all torrent sites, go back up to the search box and just type ‘-torrent’ after your initial search. This gets rid of the results with the word torrent in them, and the same goes with any search; if your looking for the Jurassic Park movie, and you keep getting book reviews, type ‘Jurassic park –book’ and that should fix your problem.

When you finally find a site, you’re going to be looking for a “one-click web hosting” link, such as rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, z-share.net, filefactory.com, and the list goes on. Rapidshare is the most reputable along with megaupload in second. When you copy and paste the download link, it will bring you to a page, make you type in some sort of code verification deal, make you wait a minute, and then you will be able to download the file. Most albums are around 80MB, and when you’re done, you just need to extract the rar file. To do this, all you do is locate the downloaded rar file (for firefox, the default download location is your desktop) and right-click, then choose “Extract to [file name]”, and the contents of the file will extract to your desktop in the file name’s own folder.

With all that said, you can find and download pretty much anything through Google using this search method. Obviously, this isn’t the only way to search for files through Google, there are also search engines like filetube that will search only hosting sites for downloads, retrieving rapidshare and megaupload links galore. These file hosting sites are great because they are anonymous. Some of the cons would be the wait: they log your IP address so you can only download for example a daily limit of 300MB, or rapidshare will make you wait an hour on average between downloads. Also, you can only upload 100MB at a time to rapidhsare, so if youre downloading a movie, you might have to download 7 rs links, or find another link. If you are part of a forum site that shares music and movies, it may be a good idea to invest the 8 bucks a month and get a rapidshare premium account, which gives you unlimited downloads + no waits.

Also, if you do a search on Google for “Google hacks” you’ll find that there are a ton of ways to refine your search through the use of brackets and quotation marks and other ways to find exactly what you’re looking for. Any questions just comment, happy downloading !

The way to get “boosts” in your account is to either refer others or simply use them as your search engine. Also if you shop online a lot you get up to 10 % cash back from those sites like gap.com, buy.com, borders.com and many other sites. Then that money goes into your account either to get paid out to you by check or to wager and hopefully double or double a portion of it.

As a college student I have a lot of free time or just rather play games in class. Also I buy things offline, so if can save some money and eventually build up a nice chunk of change through doing normal online activity I’ll give it a shot.  If you want to check it out click through this invitational link: http://www.moola.com:80/moopubs/b2b/exc/join.jsp?sid=4d6a59744d5451304e446b3d-2

There is some strategy to these games which i have not figured out yet, if you have any ideas get back to me. IM out !

Not with that taken care of lets talk about these hats. First of all, I just purchased own for myself (the one above). Secondly, I was never a fan of these hats. I will tell you why: Everyone has one. Everyone that has one wears it around campus. Everyone on campus is already aware of the fact that you go to that school. Purchasing this hat is submitting to everyone that you are one of the millions of college students taking meaningless classes and drinking to your liver hurts. But then I thought, who the hell cares? Its a nice fucking hat and at least you can wear hats in class unlike high school. So be proud that your lucky enough to be on a college campus, rather than living in poverty or going to war in foreign countries. Go out and grab a hat with your school colors and rock the fuck out of it.