Rane

There's so much going on that it's ridiculous...I'm just waiting on final confirmation before I post on it. Things are nerve-wracking at the moment, but that's partially just me being a freak.

On an amusing side note, I discovered today that I can remove and pocket my tongue piercing in about three seconds.

Sometimes I forget that the day-to-day things are worth writing (typing) down.

I had originally intended to drop Alex off at her job and then come home for various cleaning, programming, and record-related activities. I end up staying there for her entire eight hour shift, spending the bulk of that playing FarCry: Instincts for the XBox. I had originally just wanted to try it out, but it really is a very entertaining game. There's a decent stealth element that actually plays out rather well; I kept reloading immediately after dying simply because any time I died I was so close to the objective and knew that if I tried just one more time I'd get it right. Think Goldeneye for the N64, but with better graphics and a wicked melee attack. On the one hand I feel a little guilty for playing games all day, but on the other I do deserve an occasional crack-out day. It also sort of releases me from feeling at least somewhat guilty when Alex is telling me that whatever it is can wait, that she'd love it if I stayed and hung out with her at work. (Yes, we're that sickening.) I plan on making up the lack of progress tomorrow anyway. Regardless, I know one thing...I've gotta get a used copy of FarCry at some point.

I have a massive migraine. I'm thinking it's from atmospheric pressure. My sinuses have been bothering me off and on all day, so I wouldn't be surprised if the headache is related. I'm going to try sleeping here in a minute or two.

Things have gotten a little busy...there's been a lot to do lately. Appointments need scheduling, bills need paying, and I still have a lot of work to do to prepare for the coming deadline. I've taken some pretty good steps on that last bit. I hope I'm taking care of all it properly.

So yesterday I used my Christmas money to finally buy an XBox. I was originally trying to hold out and find an unbundled $150 unit, but Alex finally convinced me that I wouldn't be able to. She's right, of course...and so like it or not I bought the bundle with Forza racing. (I will grudgingly admit Forza certainly looks fantastic. I'll play it a bit more and probably be okay with being made to buy it.) I knew I was going to get an XBox this month, so I'd been keeping an eye out for super cheap used games for the past month or so. Most of what I really want came out the first two years the system was on the market, so naturally they've gotten pretty damn cheap. So far I've picked up Jet Set Radio Future, Mechwarrior, Sudeki, and Morrowind. Today I added Splinter Cell and the first Knights of the Old Republic. I've still got quite a few games I *know* I want. I'm going to ask for suggestions, so let me go ahead and list everything out first.

Have

• Forza Racing


• Jet Set Radio Future


• Mechwarrior


• Morrowind


• Splinter Cell


• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic


• Sudeki

Want

• Halo


• Halo 2


• Silent Hill 2


• Psychonauts


• Fable


• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II


• Panzer Dragoon Orta


• Beyond Good and Evil


• Oddworld: Munch's Odysee

Need to Try

• Jade Empire


• PoP 3: The Two Thrones


• Ninja Gaiden


• Sid Meiers: Pirates!

...I just realized there are really too many I want to try out to list. And probably too many that I want. These are the ones that float to the top. There's also an entire class of computer ports, FPSs that honestly I will never have a machine capable of running...other than the XBox. Half Life 2, Far Cry, Painkiller, Battlefield 2...that list is large as well.

Any suggestions?

I'm discovering that the more I have this thing the more excited I am about it. I mean, Jim's XBox sat at the house for years and I played it a LOT...but it was always *his* XBox. I didn't really do anything with it except drop a disc in and play. Now that I own one, I'm already thinking about an XBox: Live! account. I'm relishing never needing a memory card for the damn thing. Putting my own music on it to place into certain kinds of games. Downloading new content for games I've already bought. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fanboy. The PS2 and GameCube are just as sweet, even if it's only from content standpoint. It's nice to have all three systems of that generation, though.

Okay, let's see...woke up 10 minutes late because while I set the alarm, I forgot to turn it on. I got up that quickly only because my wonderful wife had a feeling I should be up and pushed me out of bed. Walked out the door without my badge, and I realized I left my phone at Alex's work last night.

I'm in a good mood, but holy CRAP am I dragging ass.

Hey neat, it works. Seeing something in Lao Hu's journal reminded me of a picture I snapped with my phone that I thought she (and everyone else) might enjoy. It's awfully blurry, but still legible.

Yep. That's Geisha brand tuna fish. Yum yum.

I finally picked up some replacement headphones on my way into work today. I set sound up on my workstation, and in moments I could listen to my CDs...bliss. Since I was configuring sound I decided to get a few other miscellaneous things working while I was at it. I'd never attempted to set up printing on Linux before, so I really wasn't sure what to do. After skimming a couple of how-to pages and some example configs I wrote a quick configuration and tested...bingo, I was able to print from Firefox and OpenOffice - sweet. Well hey...I've done this much, might as well take another pass at setting Evolution up. It's a newish mail client, one that supposedly interfaces with Exchange. If I can get that working, I can lock my Windows laptop up in my desk and forget about it. I haven't had much luck yet, but it's looking like a bug in the program itself. Might have to see if there's a newer and fixed version available.

So I had installed Eclipse on my workstation - it's a good environment for me to do most of my programming in at work. I decided today to install some plugins that aren't really necessary but add some nice functionality. I verified after each installation that the plugin worked. Then after installing one of the final ones, the first two plugins I installed shit the bed. Eclipse claimed there were problems and refused to even show them as options in the menu anymore. Since the first two plugins I installed were also the two most useful ones, I decided to track down the problem. I completely wiped out Eclipse, the reinstalled it and every plugin from scratch. This time around I was paying a bit more attention and discovered the problem - one of the larger plugins had "thoughtfully" included older version of two of the other plugins I wanted. This created conflicts, thus invalidating both versions.

I really, really, really hate bundling. Nine times out of ten you're not making my life any easier - quite the opposite. In this case it seemed doubly asinine considering these plugins are maturing almost daily. Naturally after I blew away the older versions everything loaded beautifully. I went back to the offending plugin's web site to see if perhaps I'd grabbed the uber-file by mistake, that there was a non-bundled version sitting on the page a few inches down. Nope, one version only. Sheesh.

I don't normally pay much attention to spam, even when the occassional one hits my super-secret-squirrel e-mail address. This one was too funny to pass up:

Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:58:16 AM EST
From:

Geisha Bingo <jajcgcvvcxdaskk@mycasinoartist.info>
To: XXXXXXXX@XXXXXXX.XXX
Subject: XXXXXXXXX, start winning with free cards

...right.
Geisha Bingo. Does one sing when a bingo is completed? Dance with a fan, perhaps? The very image of geisha playing bingo makes me laugh. I envision row after row of geisha, samurai, ninja, kabuki, and any other blatantly Japanese icons kneeling in front of low tables, placing tokens over numbers with a solemn and formal air. You could get some taiko drummers in the background, make it seem like some mystical and mysterious Japanese ritual. The possibilities are endless, endless I tell you!

I've figured it out. I've finally figured out why "podcasting" irritates me so much. Ready? Do you remember back when you were a little kid and you got your first tape recorder with a microphone? Remember how you'd eventually end up mimicking a radio or tv show because it sounded neat? It made you feel all important and entertaining, just like the shows you were imitating.

'nuff said.

New user icons. They're a bit sillier, but I like them.

the Wit (65% dark, 26% spontaneous, 27% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that 'the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 75% on dark You scored higher than 31% on spontaneous You scored higher than 43% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Finally, my record has been broken. I got to go to the emergency room Sunday night for the first time ever (as a patient). It was...an interesting experience. I was cleaning the toilet merrily as I always do, only this time when I was brushing the rim of the bowl several bristles became pinned. They flipped loose when I twisted the brush, and by a one in one thousand chance the hydrochloric acid based cleaner shot into my right eye. That was a whole new world of pain, let me tell you. It felt like my eye had exploded in the socket, and according to Alex I howled for a second. I don't remember howling, but I do remember frantically jerking my contact out and dumping half a bottle of saline into my eye. I skimmed the back of the bottle and saw that I was supposed to flush my eye for 15 or 20 minutes, so I hopped in the shower and did just that. The bottle also said to call Poison Control no matter what, so Alex took care of that.

The woman at Poison Control said I'd done the right thing, but that an ER visit was almost necessary. (Apparently the cleaner in question has the single highest concentration of hydrochloric acid out of the lot.) Northside Hospital, here we come! Everyone was very friendly and they saw me relatively quickly, which was nice. After some extensive tests and having an entire liter of saline irrigated into my eye via a suction cup IV they stuck directly on my eyeball, I was given the all-clear. The doctor then handed me Percocet and a prescription for Vicadin, which really confused me. I mean, yes, it burned when the cleaner hit and it burned when my eye was irrigated both times, but it wasn't THAT bad. I had forgotten, however, that they had almost immediately put those numbing drops in my eye. When we got home and those wore off, I got the most fascinating instant migraine I'd ever had in my life that made me literally sag and fumble for the Percocet like someone having a seizure.

Today was much better. I was told not to go to work because it would strain my eye to focus on the monitor all day. It aches a bit, but the Vicadin helps with that. It got a bit tender when I was outside in the bright sunlight for extended periods, but other than that it's been a pretty low-key aggravation. I'll have to throw those contacts out, but I don't really care - the doctor said very plainly that they acted like shields and most likely saved my vision.

So I've got a rather amusing and perhaps slightly embarrassed announcement to make - I've finally played a game of Magic: the Gathering, and lo and behold I find it very entertaining.

You have to understand...Magic was first released in 1993. At that time I was doing a lot of drugs and causing a lot of trouble, so RPGs and video games were very far from my mind. Whatever time I wasn't with friends I spent either writing music or chatting online. Also, the first and most fervent Magic players in my area were *shudder* Warhammer geeks. I don't really care who might read this and get offended, as a general rule Warhammer players are some scary fuckers. Seeing and hearing those guys play pretty much soured me on the whole card game concept, so I wrote it off. That sort of thing doesn't really come up in casual conversation, so if any of the people I met during that time were players they wouldn't have even known to tell me that it was a good game.

It's amusing how age can mellow a person. When Alex told me a few years back that she had been rather keen on Magic for a while, my first reaction was to sheepishly admit that I'd never actually played a game. I started thinking that perhaps I should give it a shot, although we never got around to it. When our good friend Frank recently mentioned that he had been a fanatical player when he was younger, my curiosity was piqued even more. I finally picked up a starter deck, skimmed the rules, and the very next time Frank visited I challenged him to bring his cards. He proceeded to stomp me all weekend long, but he pulled a different deck each time and demonstrated some very creative tactics. He rather deliberately showed me what the cards were capable of, and then he left a box of 600-700 for me to poke around with.

The entire game feels like a cross between poker and chess, which is probably why it appeals to me (and millions of other people). I'm definitely interested in playing some more, which lead me to discovering both the positives and negatives of picking up Magic at this point. On the plus side, cards are plentiful and cheap. You can hit eBay for lots or individual cards, and the prices for most of them are way below retail. On the negative side, it's going to be a little hard finding people to play with. A lot of people have already played and gotten sick of Magic, leaving more of the middle-of-the-road to hardcore range of players. I'll have to see what I can do about finding some people that are just interested in some casual games, the kind of matches where you shoot the breeze as you play.

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20050703/cx_db_uc/db20050703;_ylt=ApxSrQYfcbH1I0zqMODXDKvV.i8C;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Things like that make me smile.

Yay! With just a little patience and just a couple of tweaks I've managed to correct the issues with my journal and Safari/Firefox/etc. Turns out the whole mess was only being caused by two small size problems. The end result is something pleasing in every browser I've tried so far. Now that the appearance is more or less settled, I can start working on actual functionality. You know, that other 90%.

I want to try and get a few things done on my last day off. Alex says I shouldn't feel like a bum for laying around playing games for the past 5 days or so because at the same time I've been taking total care of her, but I do. I don't need to build the Sistine Chapel to shake that feeling, though...I just need to take care of a few things and I'll be right as rain. Er, whatever that means.

• Laundry


• Update and balance the checkbook completely


• Clean, put as much garbage on the curb as possible


• Do a little work (it always pays to be a little ahead)


• Program *something* for the MUD


• Record a full set

Busy day, perhaps. We'll see how much I can actually get done.

Okay kids, gather 'round and I'll tell you a story that explains exactly what I hate about the Internet sometimes. First off, some background. I don't read very much online regularly anymore beyond my web comics. I look in on Slashdot from time to time for nifty new geek stuff, and I scan ArsTechnica at least once a week in case they've posted a new review or in-depth article. I read The Register fairly regularly, because quite honestly they've got the most to-the-point and comprehensive tech sector news coverage I've seen. I read friends' journals, I wander around my MyYahoo from time to time, and there are a half-dozen sites I hit when I'm really bored. Oh, I also always read the news posts on Penny Arcade, but that's mostly because Tycho's writing is something I enjoy very dearly...any news I might find out about is purely incidental. Amusingly enough, it was one of his news posts that led me to my current rant.

In his post, Tycho mentioned something called a "podcast." It was incidental to his point, so I breezed right over it without caring - that is, until I clicked his link. I was then greeted by a site full of references to podcasts. Okay, now I'm confused. What's a podcast? I try Googling the term. Hmm, the first few hits are directories of podcasts. Holy crap, where did all of these things come from? And what the hell are they? There are no FAQs on these sites. No explanations. No nothing. Apparently I'm just supposed to know what these fucking things are. I mean, don't get me wrong, I can infer from the name what they probably are - recordings of shit, probably people talking about shit. Thanks to the iPod revolution, this particular name hints that people are typically listening to these things on their portable mp3 players. I had to hit the Wikipedia to get an official definition, though. Ah, now I see. The gimmick here is that podcasts can be subscribed to like RSS feeds. This apparently originated in 2003 and got popular in 2004. Yet another form of content delivery. That's great, except for one teensy little detail...

Most of the 'content' on this wonderful World Wide Web isn't worth scraping off of my shoe.

This is essentially audio blogging. I *hate* blogging. Blogging is the true soap box of the Internet, allowing any motherfucker from here to San Diego to spout their opinions and feel some semblance of legitimacy. The Internet Fad Engine blew blogging so far out of proportion that it makes my teeth hurt. It didn't take long for everyone to either have a blog or wait with baited breath for another entry in the ones they read fanatically. Then came subscriptions, something valuable for news but pretty fucking retarded when it comes to blogs.

I don't have a problem with these people spouting their opinions. Fuck, I'm doing it right now. (And before anyone says anything about me making this rant from a journal, I'll explain why I feel that's different in just a moment.) No, I start taking issue when people start to think that a fancy-looking blog template gives them some legitimacy, some weight. No jackass, you're still spouting the exact same opinion as before, it just looks pretty now. Congrats. It also really bothers me because thanks to the way blogging got popular (through the "grassroots," whatever the fuck you want to think that means) people talk about it with enough implied snobbishness to suggest a faux British accent when they're talking. Like they're in on something, something special. This podcasting thing is just the newest bandwagon, a brand-new delivery vehicle to deliver that shovelful of shit to your brain that much faster. And it's being talked about in that lovely faux accent as well.

So why is a journal different? For several reasons. One, this thing is for me first, others second. The very nature of a blog means you're writing for an audience. Two, I don't hawk my journal like a cheap wine everyone needs to try. (Coincidentally, in my opinion anyone who DOES hawk their journal like that is no better than a blogger.) I'm sick of hearing about everyone's blog. I'm sick of hearing about the great blog they read that I just HAVE to check out. I'm sick of people acting like I need to hear what they have to say. News flash - you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

I suppose part of why this makes me angry is that it's a pure and pristine example of the fad-driven nature the Internet has developed. (Much to my dismay) It's partially why programming for the Web sucks that special brand of ass. It's because some idiot who thinks he cleverer than everyone before him invents some specific tool to do a specific task his way, and his/her friends like it so it builds steam, then people get like "oh, this would work so well for everything" so they ratchet on the fucking kitchen sink, and then it's a "BRAND NEW CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY!!!!!1111" so suddenly everyone has to have it and sing its praises. If you DO bother to learn it it's replaced in 6 months with new standards, new tech, and new zealots. It's retarded. I could sit here for an hour and list off dead tech that was supposed to "revolutionize"...well, everything.

This rant includes "humorous" fads like the Badger song or *shudder* All Your Base. Yes, some people circulate these things because it's genuinely funny to them, but many times it really feels like these things are linked by people wanting to seem like they're "in" or "with it" because they're linking you to the latest fad. Half of what goes around isn't very funny or even weird, but someone reeeeeally far up in the chain thought it was and so wow, it must be - and it gets passed along as such.

The Internet started out as a niche, a place that only a select few even knew how to access. That made them feel special. When the second wave of people came in, they were a little less savvy because things had gotten a bit more accessible, but the crowd was still small enough for them to feel a little special too. I don't know how many waves we've gone through at this point, but astonishingly enough people are still feeling special somehow. It's not being special for being here anymore, it's being special for reading site X or *gasp* having a blog. There's a smugness, an implied superiority that really just makes me laugh.

I'm sure at some point they'll turn podcasting into braincasting, allowing you to get your daily subscribed dose of excrement wired directly into your cortex for maximum absorption. Enjoy.

As you may or may not know, Alex went in for her scheduled sinus surgery Thursday. She came through so well even the doctor was a bit surprised. I suppose I wasn't, mostly because her mother just had freakin' heart surgery and came through like it was nothing. Jimenez women are apparently indestructible, something I must keep in mind should we ever decide on mortal combat.

I have to say with all honesty...I'm grateful for the vacation. I love taking care of her, the surgery was for a fantastic cause (her breathing - a rather important thing I suppose), and on top of it all she's going to be in bed for days so I get to stretch out and play the SP for hours at a time. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying myself. I fully expect to go stir crazy in another day or so, but when that happens I'll just start cleaning and occasionally working out with good ol' Billy Blanks. (Yes, we own a Tae-Bo video. Go ahead and call me a yuppie, it doesn't matter to me. Yuppies have a rather nice life.)

Meredith loaned Alex her Nintendo DS for a few days, and I'm glad I got a chance to play with it. I'd been wondering for the last day or so if I had made a mistake by not dropping the extra $40 to get a DS instead of an SP, but after careful evaluation I know I made the right decision for myself. DS games are fun, but I'm digging on the culture of GBA and GBC games. GBC games are unsupported on the DS, so there's one strike. (Not to mention the fact that GBA games only use one screen, meaning that the bulk of my game time would only use half the machine.) I'm also digging on the compact size and light weight of the SP. The DS isn't an XBox, but it IS larger and heavier. I've noticed I can sit in almost any position imaginable and comfortably play the SP, the DS enforces a much more rigid posture. There's also no real "killer app" on the DS that appeals to me. There are *many* on the GBA and GBC side of things.

I suppose in the end I strongly believe in the right tool for the job, and the DS is overkill for me. A nice machine to be sure, and I do believe it's VERY well priced for its power, but I think the SP is more my style. I wanted a system that was powerful enough to play good games (surprisingly this has become a given, all hail the micronization of personal electronics), but very small and very light. The SP has that over every other handheld system out there, and it's got an enormous library to boot. I had to evaluate it carefully, though. I am nothing if not obsessive about my video games.

On a final note, I have started work on a new journal layout. Once again it looks fantastic in IE, passable in NS/Firefox/Opera, and completely broken in Safari. I'm barely 10% done, though. The current color scheme is a bit girly I suppose...I had wanted a sakura blossom as my background to go with the Kenshin icons, but the colors I pulled from the image...*shrug* I'll probably change that. Maybe I'll even change my icons for a while. I've had this set for a long time now.

Hmm...it's that time again. This journal could look so much better. I've already learned S2, so I think my second attempt at a new layout would be much more reasonable. No uber-layout...just something simple, clean, and attractive. I will ponder a general format and go from there. I want it to be something I could complete relatively quickly.

As some of you may or may not have noticed in the last to-do list, I'm applying to Kennesaw. Georgia State just isn't going to cut it anymore, mostly just because it's too far to drive. I work a full-time job in Norcross and live in Marietta...days with classes at State meant driving a triangle that easily added an hour and a half to two hours onto my total commute time. That much extra time made it that much harder to go to my classes even when I was single with nothing occupying my time on a day-to-day basis. Now that I'm married...forget it. I need every hour in the day I can get. Add in the fact that I now just really want a degree - any degree - as quickly as possible, and a transfer makes the most sense. I was surprised to find out that I already have a transferrable GPA, so that left me with no real excuses. I completed my application today, paid the fee, and I've already worked up a list of potential majors. Turns out I didn't even have as much credit in CS as I thought I did, so a switch should be relatively painless. I'm shooting for something interesting but also...well easy isn't the right word, but something that won't require me to burn the midnight oil every night to get good grades in. So I guess I'll be heading back to school in a semester or two. However long it takes to get everything transferred. I'm kind of looking forward to it, even though it'll be yet another drain on my free time.

In other news, I finally upgraded my GBA to an SP. I'm actually pretty excited...I picked up a GBA not long after its initial release, and I got disappointed fairly quickly when I couldn't see the damn screen. Seriously, I think I pulled it off the shelf for airplane rides and that's about it. Now I can play the games I own, and I've already started drooling over some of the newer ones.