It may sound rather odd, but after a work week, I feel like I’ll go batty if I don’t touch code before Monday :-/.
Hmm, what of use to me, could be whipped up in a weekend…
This morning, my mother rather piqued my technical-goat, when she said she was “Tired of my excessive computer buying”. Which of course, is an instant sequence of hash look ups in my brain:
- SAL1600 (desktop) was bought with a long lost inheritance and strings attached (*groan*).
- Dixie (laptop) was bought by my sister-in-law, so I could get work done around my mother driving me nuts.
- Vectra (improvised server) is currently residing in a hodge-podge of parts:
- Some from a gutted-Dell my brother was throwing out.
- Some from an old Vectra Vli8 handed down from someone we used to work for, when he heard my mother was being a bitch about letting me dual boot her (then “family”) computer.
Alice here, is the first computer that I’ve ever bought myself, not to mention it’s the cheapest computer I’ve ever had, lol. So, what the fudge is so “Excessive” about buying one computer, which probably cost me 25% or less than what hers cost? *Shrugs*
People are stupid.
Welcome dear little Alice
Today at work, an idea caught my fancy: since I don’t need an uber-expensive laptop if I go with separate laptop/desktop setup. I thought, well gee, maybe a netbook would work in place of a laptop. So far, seems to be awesomeness.
I found an ASUS Eee PC 1015PE model at a really good price. Originally I was thinking that all it would be useful for is a glorified terminal: SSH into vectra at home and the server at work (when needed), to run Screen, then use X11 forwarding for the rest. Sadly this little netbook seems to be more snappy than my laptop, although it’s likely just as useless for compiling stuff. Which is REALLY sad IMHO because my laptop is only about 5 years old, and this netbook beats it on every performane spec save the CPU: an Atom N450 instead of a Sempron 3300+. I think I like the Atom more…
Windows 7 is quite nice and I do like it, much as I expected, but I would prefer a BSD or Linux based system. My only real complaint so far, is the keyboard places the FN key where my fingers naturally expect to land on Control. My fingers are deffo having a hard time adjusting though, since the auxiliary keys (like home/end) are even more cramped than what my laptop uses, and I am extremely used to my laptops keyboard, hey, it’s been 5 years with Dixie.
The main problem is resizing the partition to make room for a suitable OS, as there are no optical or floppy drives built in, and I’mt o cheap to buy one. So I’ve made a thread over on DF seeking some advice.
Killing Floor
Yesterday I stumbled over an interesting game, perhaps the first to offer a positive ROI since I started with the Left 4 Dead series: that is to say, I’m really enjoying this game lol.
Killing Floor is similar to the zombie mode in Call of Duty but without the run & gun feel; which is rather surprisign considering it’s built off a modified Unreal Engine 2.5. It actually makes RvS/SWAT4 look more like a R&G game IMHO. The jist of the game, your rag-tag squad is dropped into wave after wave of “Specimens”, the most basic of which resembles a vampire out of I Am Legend and behaves like a Night of the Living Dead zombie; the majority however, are closer to mid-level Strogg from Quake II/IV.
For all the specimens you kill, you earn Pounds Sterling that can be spent on weapons, ammunition, and body armour between waves. Although it is only a co-op/horror type game, it’s not as team work oriented as Left 4 Dead, which was designed to *force* you to work together. It is however extremely fun when played with a good team. Also unlike Call of Duty’s concept for co-op, it’s not oriented towards competitive co-op but more realistically, completing the objective and living to tell the tail.
Me like 🙂
As much as Google seems to be trying to improve their already excellent search, I can’t help but wonder–what are they really doing with our location data?
Or is it just a fumble that I’m standing in Duluth, Georgia as the GPS symbol flashes in my notification area, and the #1 search result for ‘duluth library’, is still for Duluth, Minnesota!
You might think it might even include a map link to the library like 5km away lol.
Unwinding to a little UrT, reminds me of one of the reasons that I generally forgo adversarial game types these days.
Essentially, I ended up in a quaint little 2v2, and could probably have taken the other team on 1v2 and won. I was doing fine with it as a 1v3 before the server auto balanced the teams in the first quarter. Successful enough to be called a “Hacker” by the player that would end up my team mate. Once I noticed the other team was outclassed, I decided to sling my preferred weapon for something less ideal, in order to make the handicap a bit more even. What got my goat however was, when the rather insulting team mate I got thrown with not only kept dying, but started copying my loadout: then leveraged my streak of killstreaks to go spawn rape the other team for a good 12-16 frags. Then having to put up with said team mates rude behaviour at being told to stop laming. I do admit to being tempted to snipe him in the back of the head and exit, but instead focused on the remaining half of the game.
Morons.
A rare political digression
One perk of a journal, is that as it is my journal, it’s well open to the occasional excursion away from the topics I gravitate toward; if you’re thinking food or computers, you’ve obviously crossed paths with me >_>. Generally, like my grandmother, I make it a policy not to discuss politics. My journal even reflects that, and arguably, entries here that are associated with that particular subject, could probably be counted on one hands worth of fingers lol. Most people I know are rather miffed with the current pucky load going on about government shut-downs and such, and like I noted, I don’t really discuss politics with anyone.
What I’m thinking tonight, is perhaps our beloved founding fathers and federal ancestors got things wrong when they organised the balance of power between our three branches of government. Checks and balances is a fine, and very necessary thing. Unless perhaps, you believe in the divine right of kings means nothing will ever go awry. Something like the King of England is never going to happen in the USA, assuming that Kurt Gödel was wrong about our Constitution. The only problem is, we will never get a damn thing neather!
Something that most know about me, is that I do not believe in political parties, and am unlikely to ever associate myself with one, unless it’s gonna lead to a mandated change in schooling in America—the kind of change that would transition high school Algebra (etc) into the first couple grades. A number of people also know, that if I could build a model of my own “Ideal” society, it would likely be one that reserves the lions share for those that contribute to society. The kind where every person has essential rights but where the full rights of citizenship only come with service, reward those that help make the world a better place, as opposed to the majority of us, who just take up space. That probably sounds like something out of a Robert Heinlein book, but I’ve never read it, nor any of his works.
Or in short, I have a very different view of politics than most people: one that’s likely more pragmatic than idealogical. I believe that ideals are fine things but progress is better.
One of the principal points of American government, is balancing out the equation so that you can’t Totally Screw Up unless enough people are in favour, and of course. Problem is that much like the Articles of Confederation, to many people need to agree on the details. I also seriously do not want to know how many Americans have no idea what on earth the AoC were, let along that it refers to what we had before the US constitution, and not to the Civil War between morons. Alright, so I’m a history lover, so sue me. Another principal point of American government is the balance of power between the states, which is, well, just going to upset people anyway you slice it.
In my opinion, there needs to be more executive application and less political circle jerking. How do things get done? Identify what needs to get done, figure out the direction, then make it happen and assess the result. There is probably a good reason that the best progress in this world, tends to happen under applied direction, not micromanagement. The government could seriously benifit from an understanding of Commanders Intent.
A perfect example: if it isn’t harder than putting a man on the moon using only a stick of bubblegum, odds are someone is qualified to focus on applying the intent behind a direction. If it is less involved than building a replica of the LM out of spare parts in your garage, odds are that focus-agent has people to focus on ironing out the smaller details. If it’s less complex then getting 13 colonies to agree on something, you probably don’t need a lot of people in Congress to agree on anything. Things should proceed on down through the chain with balances plugged into that, not hell will thaw out before things come back into balance again.
Like the old saying goes, shit rolls down hill. Not up it until it rolls over and lands on everyone.
Today things really started to take some shape.
Had to take a vacation day because my mother’s appointment with the doctor that by the time we would’ve gotten back to Duluth, there wouldn’t be much sense going in to work. On the upside, I got to take a few minutes to stop by Petsmart and get the bird a new cage, and got to do a little bit of “Work” while waiting around the doctors office.
Originally, we had the bird in the cage until my feathered nephew (AJ) took off flying, which set Mike flying, which resulted in a game of find where the parakeet landed; AJ being smart enough to return to his cage! After that, the Mike got netted in, but with the move, it’s been a case of stuck in the cage. So now, I’ve setup a larger one to compensate, which concindentially was probably cheaper than the original one lol.
By now, I have moved just about every box three or four times. My bedroom was basically done in two days, one to get the furniture moved and another to organise books. Nearly a week after this all started, the living room is starting to look, remotely livable.
But I think I’ve come to hate boxes o/
Birthing Pains
N.B. written April 2nd.
Yesterday was a matter of loading Noelle full of stuff and driving ~70 miles to Duluth. Driving around it and th neighboring for a couple hours, then getting the paper work done over lunch. After driving back to Newnan to meet some Relatives for dinner, I started loading the car and did another round trip. That’s like 300 miles / 500 kilometres worth of driving, and going almost non-stop at packing/loading/driving/unloading from like 0730 to after 0300. U-Haul called while we were signing the lease, to inform us that we had to pick up the truck in Lagrange instead of Newnan, that’s about anm hours drive.
So 0740 my pastor (Steve) drove me down to get the truck and I drove the truck from there to Newnan, taking US-29 up until the I-85 access near grantvile. I wanted to make sure of the trucks handling before having to get OFF the Interstate. Steve split off and went to get a couple of guys to help, and I continued on to the apartment to get the truck ready. The original plan was for my mother and a friend to get the animals packed in an SUV with some stuff and drive up to the new place, so we could get to loading w/o having to worry about the dogs. Well, of course it took like two ******* hours to just get as far as getting a dog in the vehicle, with me having to hold Willow for most of it in order to keep her from running off. Guess what? Misty got OUT the door and went running around before we got her. No one ******* listens to me. After finally seeing them off, I got to start helping with the truck loading; that also saw interruptions, for having to pick up a cell phone and eventually hit the corner drug store: if I didn’t have some surger in me, my old running on three hours of sleep ass was gonna pass out. They did most of the loading, and did a brillant job. Which really is saying something because my mother can’t pack for ****. Relatives also took some stuff up in their van and supplied victory-pizza.
Tonight was the first time I ever drank a “Normal” Pepsi. I’ve had the caffeine
free version; that stuff has so much surger that you can almost feel your teeth
rot. But being from a Coke Cola family, I never got straight Pepsi lol. Being
disllowed Caffeine in soda until like 15, also helped. I really do not want to
know how much caffeine I have consumed tonight, let along the surger, but pizza
and pepsi with a little bit of sitting, helped recharge my batteries enough to
drive everyone back to Newnan and get myself home alive. I also had to drive
point for the truck on the way in. Unloading that truck almost made feel like
trying to bribe management to get ma to throw more stuff out. It’s tempting…
I’m sick as a dog. My noise is like a constantly exploding cherry and my eyes are filling like I need to scratch them out. After living there 13 years, loading/unloading all the crap has totally destroyed my allergies. My room was fairly clean but the living room essentially looked like a bomb hit it. Many of the things we had to load/unload came with years of dust, cob webs, and I don’t even want to continue thinking about it. Somehow I wonder, if she ishn’t being paid, if my mother even knows what the concept of cleaning is. I have no ******** idea how I’m going to drop off the truck tomorrow if I can’t ******* stop sneezing my **** brains out.
It was after 2000 when we got the truck done and it was after 2230 by the time I started driving home from Newnan. The nice plus, sarcasitly putting it, is that the paper with the dropoff number is AWOL, and the contact number for the truck went to an already full voice mail box. So in the morning I need to call again and try and get the dropoff number o/.
I can’t fucking breath through my nose right now.
Yesterday was a pretty good day. The weather started off raintacular just like I like it but not to obstructive. Downside of course being it’s impact on traffic. Speeds out on the Interstates here tend to vary between 120km/h and 140km/h, and a lot of driver’s refuse to go that slow unless traffic forces them. Well with Mehring thinking the wrecks/minute ratio has hit 1:3, I think a few people may have learned the hardware to SLOW the **** down here and there!
With the weight of the ever popular SUV and pickup trucks out here, it’s even more important, because heavier vehicle == slows down slower + (IME) loses traction faster under heavy breaking. Not that anyone is ever going to learn that the *easy* way 8=). One thing that I do like about being stuck in the commute for like 225km every day, is Art “Mad Man” Mehring’s traffic reports. The morning show is good for chuckles and Lance always plays the most music on our way home, but heck, Mehring makes the trip worth while.
Heh, looking him up off Google, also just turned up some awesome humour for this soon to be retired commuter 🙂 -&#gt; Welcome to Atlanta, Park anywhere!
On the way home, I also stopped off to action off an idea that occured to me during lunch, but that’s a different subject. Today, well, I’m just glad to have hammered out what’s been stuck in my kick-around-list for the past two days. Also looks like I’ll get to do some (more so) interesting stuff in the next couple weeks. For the most part, it’s just been trying to get stuff squared away at work, so that I’m ready to roll on Monday. Courtesy of the move, I have to take Friday off (*groan*) but the move oguth to conclude on Saturday. At least, that *is* the idea! Tonight the plan is to saver a little last minute zombie slaying, since I may have to stay zombie free for a week :-/. As well as the sort my inequivalent to a “Go bag” and decide where the last minute stuff is going to be packed.
GOD willing, by Monday, I will be able to sleep until at least 0800, depending on the traffic, I might even get to sleep later lol. The flex time we have at work, more or less amounts to a wide spectrum, and while most people (smartly) would expect me to leverage that in a later direction. When you spend like 3 1/2 hours a day driving, it pays to just wake up earlier and try not to write bugs before (br|l)unch time.