![[SimGuy.net]](/shared/logo.png){kind=logo}
November 2004 Archive
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
[Comments: 7] 1:18 AM - bleeding-edge
I have this problem with my shaving face which is two-fold. First, my face tends to get irritated easily, and second, the hair on my face tends to easily become ingrown, worsening the irritation and causing me all kinds of annoying problems.
I asked a dermatologist about how to deal with these problems, because it's really very annoying to have raw skin for days after shaving, and to only be able to shave every two to three days to avoid compouding the irritation. The doctor told me to switch from an electric shaver to a multi-blade manual razor. He also told me I should shave in the same direction of the hair to reduce irritation.
I tried this, but I found that I would have to shave every single day shaving in the direction of the hair, and would never be able to look clean shaven this way. So against his recommendation I decided to shave the traditional way, against the grain, and it seems to be much better than with the electric shaver. Also, shaving against the grain, I can go two days easily without really seeming to look like I need a shave, which I really like.
I end up more or less clean shaven, and irritation of my face is much less than with the electric shaver. Problem is I really suck horribly at shaving (practice makes perfect?) with a razor, so I tend to cut myself a fair amount. I guess I'll get better at avoiding that over time....
It seems like it all might be less bothersome for my skin in general if I could find some configuration of facial hair that reduces the amount of area I have to shave, but I've never been daring enough to try it, and I've kind of figured that due to the curliness of the hair and the fact it's a little sparse, it would end up looking kind of bad. :)
I'm sure you all found this subject completely uninteresting, but I felt like writing this post, so too bad. ;)
Sunday, November 14, 2004
[Comments: 3] 1:11 AM - yet-another-timesink
I hammered my way into the World of Warcraft open beta, as soon as it opened. They apparently accepted more than 500,000 applicants, but the FilePlanet servers were clobbered and registering for the beta was practically a game of its own.
They've been doing funky things with the servers, so I keep creating new characters on different creatively named servers. Right now I have a level 6 Night Elf Rogue on Test 18, a level 7 Human Mage on Test 8, and a level 3 Tauren Hunter on Test 25. So far I remain pretty impressed.
Since the stress test beta, they've added upkeep of your equipment to the game, meaning with use, equipment becomes less effective and breaks. This was widely disapproved of when it was announced, but it seems to have been tweaked to be reasonably easy to deal with.
I've also had more time to explore than I did in the stress test (having only 30 hours of real time between my invitation and the end of that test phase), so I've seen more of the game world, particularly the Human areas. It's really very nicely done, but I don't think I'm read to venture of out the Elwynn Forest, where my human character started, just yet...
A couple of my friends have been playing, so I've been trying to meet up with them and level together, which has also been fun. I'm hoping all of us choose to subscribe to the final release, so we can do the sort of thing we'd done in Anarchy Online before I became the only person left playing it. :)
I think I'll probably subscribe for at least the first few months of WoW. If it goes well, I'll keep on, but I'm not going to leave Anarchy Online for now either. Each game has its own merits, and I think I'm going to have certain days when I'm in the mood for specifically one or the other.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
[Comments: 0] 2:19 AM - box-o-linux
I finally found the time to get together that Linux machine I've been planning to build for months. I had previously acquired very cheap hardware for the machine and run into a problem where it would turn itself off for no apparent reason. The subsequent solution was to replace the motherboard (which had an onboard CPU, video, and more), but since the new one didn't have an onboard CPU, things grew ever more complicated.
So Sunday evening, I threw together all the stuff I had amassed, and learned quickly that my 350 Watt power supply was no good anymore. Fortunately, I was able to dig up at 235 Watt replacement and went from there.
I got Gentoo on there in a few hours time. There's nothing complicated like Xorg or Gnome yet, but it's a great development server, web server, and file server for me. My IRC bot runs off that machine now, and my work Apache installation as well. Using Samba, I'm able to still plop files into a web accessible location right from Windows, which is nice.
I've updated the about page to include specs for this machine, named Bashir (as in Doctor Julian Bashir, Star Trek: Deep Space 9).
Anyway, now that my work Apache server is back up, you can again see what song I'm listening to, instead of a bit of muttering about the fact my computer is broken. :)
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
[Comments: 2] 3:25 AM - firefox-ate-my-post
I was planning to try to offer a site critique per month, but after having written an entire critique on Electoral Vote Predictor, Firefox did something funky and my post went the way of so many untamed electrons.
It's still a good site, but being I had meant to post it a few days ago and the election is closed now, there's not going to be much new content there. If you're interested in how polling went right up to the election though, go check it out.
Other than that, I was disappointed by tonight's election, and I decided to rant a little. Go poke at my latest rant if you dare. :)
Now, it's time for bed, because I need not reload the CNN electoral map any further tonight. The winner's clear enough and my hand is tired of clicking. :)
[Comments: 1] 2:48 AM - not-too-close-to-call
I can only say that election day this year has been an extreme disappointment for me. After all that this nation has been through in the past four years, most of which I can categorically say I do not support, I completely fail to understand how this election apparently slipped from Kerry's grasp. I spend months pouring over the logic in my head, and I can't figure the point of view that Bush is worthy of a second chance.
Well, there is one thing. It seems likely that Kerry wasn't really the man for the job. Don't get me wrong, though. If Kerry was the wrong man, Bush is relatively satanic, in my humble opinion. As it stands before I call it a night, Kerry simply didn't manage to convince the people he needed to that they needed him. He didn't assert himself as the solution for the 50% of this country that thought we needed one, and that's why it doesn't look like he's going to make it.
Instead we get Bush. This is the man with the one-track mind that will never back down, no matter how tough it gets. Great. Let's run straight into that oncoming train, why don't we?
I hope Bush takes a moment to reorganize the frightening staff he surrounds himself with, and takes another look at his plan or lack thereof. Before we go any further, we need to hash out some way to get other people from other nations to help us finish our overseas projects and turn back inside to bolstering national security (but not at the expense of civil rights), and correcting the recent massive spending with tax cut nonsense that has dug us a new hole to put our old hole in. I'm not saying raise taxes, but we need to seriously look at where all this money is going and try not to forget that we cannot sustain a balance of negative infinite forever.
It's not that I can't trust Bush. Right now, I don't. He's said things, and done things that I don't agree with. To make matters worse, there are more than enough times where he's flip-flopped on an issue, and I couldn't even support either position! To earn this country's approval rating, Bush needs to refocus his efforts on really, seriously improving conditions at home, such as working to bring back the jobs that evaporated over the last four years and stabilizing our economy amid uncertainty. He should also work toward trying to trying to settle the "religious morality" social issues such as abortion and gay marriage in a way that doesn't have to offend anyone. If Bush could prove to me he knows how to handle this country responsibly, I won't have any problem with him running the show for another four years.
Now about that... the people of the USA need to stop being so inanely stupid about their morals. I guess this is something that a lot of conservatives tend to cling to, but could someone please explain to me why you believe that if my set of morals doesn't exactly line up with yours, I should be forced through legislation to agree with you, rather than, without actually directly interfering with you in any way, take care of my own morals without your input?
For example, if I think people ought to be able to have an abortion, how exactly does that affect you? You aren't being forced to abort your child, mind you. I am simply saying that if someone you don't even know thinks it's something they need to do, I think they should, under carefully controlled circumstance be given that choice to make for themselves. Why can't you live with that? I can live with your moral that all of your children must be carried to term, even if they're going to end up suffering through social services for the next 18 years. Is there a really good reason we need to go out of the way to be offended by each other?
