Current Ramblings
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Let me tell you a story. A story about pain.
I got permission a few days ago to reformat and install Linux on this ancient desktop Graham has had lying around. It's a 7-year-old Dell, nothing you would want to use all the time but certainly something you wouldn't mind completely fucking up if you screwed up a new OS installation. Our apartment isn't that big, and he got rid of the monitor for it long ago, so on Saturday I went to a used computer shop and picked up a KVM switch so I could just use my normal monitor, mouse, and keyboard and switch between the two PCs. Except it didn't come with any cables, and they didn't have any of the kind I needed. So I went to the Micro Center in the same shopping center and bought four cables, two video cables and two PS/2 cables. I got home and realized that not only did I misremember which monitor hook-ups were on the back of the box, I had snagged a wrong PS/2 cable, too. So I was thwarted until today. I went back, exchanged three of the four cables, and came home to realize that I had totally forgotten about the PS/2 cables for the keyboard. So I went back to Micro Center again just before they closed and got another pair of PS/2 cables, and a power cord because it turned out he had thrown that away with the monitor. We're talking well over $40 worth of just cables at this point. So I've been looking forward to getting this done for days, I've spent a little more than I had really wanted to, I finally get all the cables hooked up under my desk, and...the KVM switch doesn't work right. The main computer displays right but it won't recognize either the keyboard or the mouse, and the second computer recognizes the keyboard okay but the screen is unbearably fuzzy and it won't recognize the mouse either. The switch itself was only $5, so that's not that big a deal, but all those cables were expensive, and from what I've seen online not only do most new ones come with built-in cables, but that kind of switch can kind of suck and freak out if you type too fast (and I type quite fast) and not recognize the scroll wheel on your mouse, so I don't know if I even want to bother with any of that.
So I'm thinking tomorrow I'm going to return all those cables (they come in Japanese-toy-style bubbles that slide off the cards, good as new) and see if they have any cheap switches for just the monitor, and I'm also considering just getting a well-established commercial distribution of Linux that I'll feel safe installing as a dual-boot on my main computer. (I'm specifically thinking Mandrakelinux Discovery here.) It's just frustrating and stupid.
posted@12:26 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, March 28, 2005
I've Been Doing This For Too Long.
My prediction:
Within six months, there will be a book by Terri Schiavo's parents. It will be published by Zondervan*, the title will probably be "Every Life is Precious", and the subtitle will definitely have the phrase "our daughter's right to live". It will break into the non-fiction top 10 for a month or so, and might even break into the top 5, but will never quite make it up to #1. Mark my words.
Tonight and tomorrow I'm planning to set up Graham's old (and I do mean old) computer so I can play around with running Linux on it. I'm not certain if my formal schooling is going to cover it, but it's something I should definitely be familiar with if I'm going to be administrating people's networks. If I do have a class on it, at least I'll have a head start going in. I'm setting it up so they're both connected to the same monitor, mouse, and keyboard through a switch, so we don't have three entire PC setups here. Wish me luck with that! ;)
*Note: I totally chose this publisher before seeing that their main page is already taking advantage of this case to plug a book on the subject.
posted@7:09 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Yay, storage!
For his birthday, Graham decided what he really wanted was something for the apartment, to do something about all the piles of stuff we have. So he talked to his mother and she found a place still willing to produce a bookcase headboard, despite them apparently being greviously out of style or something. Yesterday we finally got a chance to put it together:
I was surprised at just how much stuff it got up off the floor. I'm really liking it.
posted@2:49 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
What's wrong with Columbus?
Three Injured After Wrong-Way Driver Crashes On I-71
From the article: "There have been four deadly crashes caused by drivers traveling the wrong way on local highways since December, NBC 4 reported." Four in as many months, and that doesn't even count ones like this where nobody was killed. We didn't used to have this kind of thing. It's not like it's only in one area, or only on one highway, so you can't just say, "This intersection has inadequate or misleading signs." There's just this sudden freakish epidemic of people going the wrong way on the interstate. I don't understand.
posted@10:13 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, March 21, 2005
On account of the awesomeness.
Yes, I whine about my job, but sometimes it comes through for me. We currently have a couple regular sellers at our store who are book reviewers, and we shower them with vast quantities of money because we adore getting new books. Really, any buy that has less than 50% Danielle Steel content is all right by us, and if there are less than a dozen computer books from 1996 that's an extra bonus. But brand shiny new stuff is absolutely the best, and a printer-paper box full of it makes up happy people. Tonight's Moment of Awesomeness from one of these sellers was a copy of Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception - which isn't even out until early May. And I have three days off this week to read it. Aw yeah.
I think I might just have to learn how to do a cut so I can discuss Galaxy Force. Maybe I'll do that on my days off, too.
posted@10:54 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, March 20, 2005
I suck at updating.
My first quarter back in school is over, spring break is here (though I still have to work), and I feel a great sense of accomplishment. I managed to get "A"s in both my classes, giving me probably my first 4.0 since kindergarden. (I took a hating to homework right quick as a kid.) So I did it. I've gone back to school, and I'm succeeding at it. I haven't forgotten how to learn. What started out early last August as a brainstorm has come to fruition. I am a student. When a customer at work tries to engage me in conversation by asking if I'm in school, I can rightly say, "Yes, I am, you creepy old man."
I've managed to keep up with my newly resurrected walking routine, too, though it'll be at least a few more weeks before the results become evident. Which is why you have to start it when it's miserably cold out, y'see. I've learned that the best way to make yourself get out and exercise regardless of the weather is to get mentally distracted, throw on a fleece sweatsuit, and toss yourself out the door hard enough to get well down the street before you realize the full implications of what you are doing. If you let yourself realize you are soon going to be a mile from home in 25-degree weather, you will never leave.
I've been neglecting my games lately, but I've caught up a lot on other things. I've been tearing through shorter non-fiction fare while slowly trudging my way through Quicksilver, for starters. I've gotten through David Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, which mostly gave me horrible flashbacks to my years in Houghton, MI, The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, to lighten things back up a little, and now I'm working on Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek. All in about two months. I think the broadband helps a little. On dial-up, especially our super-slow free OSU dial-up shared between two computers, I always felt deep down like I wasn't getting the full potential of the internet. It was subliminal, but it kept me glued to my chair, waiting for things to load. Now that I have broadband I have come to terms with how much of the potential of the internet is the potential to spend money, money I do not have to spend, so I am happy to use my blazing-fast connection to quickly check my regular sites and then sit my ass on the couch and read while waiting for the next Galaxy Force BitTorrent file to download. I've caught up with the fansubs of Galaxy Force since getting the nice fast internets, and I would love to talk about them at length except that I don't want to piss people off with spoilers. Maybe if I get too overwhelmed with the need to discuss it - and discuss it with rational people, not boardies - then I will find the part on Blogger where they tell you how to do a LJ-cut kind of thing, if such a thing exists. What I have not done is write any fiction, which I feel worse and worse about every day. Maybe sometime in the near future I will devote an entire post to angsting over my writer's block, and that way you can all just skip over that post. The gist of it is that I started blogging in hopes that it would get me back into putting one word in front of the other, so to speak, and now I'm worrying that the blog itself is enough of an outlet for my writing that it's killing my primal need to create fiction.
On the subject of my fiction (in a roundabout way that Walky picked up on almost immediately) I went with Walky to see "Robots" while Graham graded finals for his own students on Thursday. In general I thought it was really good, though at times kinda overly silly for my tastes. And it needed less Robin Williams. I'm just tired of him. Other than that it was awesome. I think I'm finally getting over the OMG SO PRETTY effect of CG movies, which is fine because it allows me to concentrate on the rest of the movie. It's been pointed out that it's a sort of Disney parable, with the idealistic young creative type dreaming of working for a company headed by an equally idealistic patriarch, only to find that when the time comes to pursue his dream the kindly old man has been replaced with a shark of an executive. I suppose that happens when you have an industry consisting largely of people who are disappointed with modern-day Disney. I can't say I'm all that big on Disney myself. But the important thing, the most important thing, is robots. I loves me some robots.
And now I'll let you get back to your regularly scheduled life.
posted@10:04 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, March 14, 2005
In reality, it moves rather a bit slower than actual quicksilver.
Have you ever read a novel that was not only extremely long but agonizingly plodding and desperately in need of an editor, but still just interesting enough that you had to finish it? That's what I've been doing for about an hour every night, working my way through one chapter at a time while finding other, more lightweight reading for my lunch breaks at work so I don't have to carry the damn brick around in my backpack all the time.
Also, today's Penny Arcade totally made me think of Ron.
posted@11:12 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Oh yeah.
Nintendo has officially announced a DS Wi-Fi network.
Agh. I gotta go AFK for a bit...
posted@9:19 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Redefining My Own Terms
I've done another beta for the Blogger template for when I move the blog to my main page. I'll probably do a little more tweaking (I'm thinking of adding a pic Ben took from the convention this year for the top of the right sidebar, for instance), but I'm really happy with this color scheme and layout. You can see it here. I really wanted to have a little character graphic for the right side of the banner, but I can't draw. *coughpleasedrawformecough*
Since going back to school it seems my very self-image has been changing to fit the new possibilities I've decided on for my future. I suppose that's a terribly vague way of saying I'm embracing my inner geek. Not that I've ever rejected any form of geekness, but my interest in computers and internet culture has been subdued by my lack of resources for properly pursuing it. Now I find myself looking at binary watches on ThinkGeek and seriously considering getting a cheap secondary PC to run Linux on.
Finals are next week. I'm feeling confident. School is so much better after a few years off.
posted@9:14 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Heh.
I'm sue many people would say there was nothing more me than Optimus Prime with a DS.
(I promise to have a post with some actual substance sometime in the next couple days, about stuff I've been reading and how my change of plans for my life has affected the way I see myself. In the meantime, Ash's Meltdown is out today. Go buy it.)
posted@12:48 AM by:Trixter: 2 comments
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Woo.
I finally have broadband. Really, really nice broadband, because the price difference/service difference ratio was good.
All is right with the world.
posted@10:38 PM by:Trixter: 1 comments
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Stupid stupid stupid.
I consider it a major accomplishment that I'm still managing an A in my computer class despite my teacher being an undeservedly, irritatingly smug moron. Last week I had to redownload all the files for one of the Access projects from the textbook publisher's web site because the ones on the school server somehow ended up truncated. When the lady who sits next to me started asking him why the results of the queries didn't match the book, I made the mistake of trying to be helpful and mentioned that I had had the same problem, because there seemed to be something wrong with the files on the school server, but the ones from the textbook site come up A-OK. And he told me I must have downloaded them from the school server wrong. Despite much of the class apparently having the same problem, I had downloaded them wrong. How do you even DO that!? I've noticed the aforementioned classmate doesn't even come to class anymore unless there's a quiz she absolutely has to be there for. He's so irritating she just does all her classwork at home. At least I can rest assured I'll never have to deal with him in another class. I don't think they even let him teach the second-level Office class.
(Why do I mention this tonight? While I usually consider PMS to be a misogynist myth, tonight he seemed even more irritating than usual, and I too decided I'd be better doing my work at home where I didn't have the constant background noise of his smarmy comments to other students and out-loud musings about how bad the students who left early must be doing. Maybe they just can't concentrate when you're whining about your LASIK side effects every two seconds.)
posted@10:47 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
...
I don't understand Amazon.com. I would assume they go with the cheapest possible shipping method when you use their free "Super Saver Shipping", but how is it cheaper to send Dinobot Hunt in one box via UPS and Just a Geek in another box via USPS when I ordered them at the exact same time?
posted@3:05 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
O. M. G. part 2
If you had told me when I woke up this morning that by the end of the day I would have a ticket - a $5 ticket - to see my current favoritest band Ash right here in Columbus, I would have...well, I would have been more enthusiastic about getting out of bed and facing the snow and ice and general cold crappiness. It's been a very bipolar day, which seems to be how things go for me: things are either dull and even or violently bipolar. I could't sleep, I had to get up extra early to clear the ice off my car, I felt generally crappy about work, I decided, regretfully, to skip class tonight after passing two wrecks just between my work and the freeway on account of the icy roads, but I got to spend more time with Graham on his birthday than I expected and I get to see Ash live again in a month!
posted@10:51 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments