March 2006 Archive

Welcome to the Archive for March 2006! What you will find here may be old. It may scare you. It may even scare me! More importantly, you might find links that no longer work, and *gasp* information that is no longer, or possibly never was, accurate in any way. Don't rely on this information to save your life!

March 2006 Archive

Friday, March 31, 2006

[Comments: 2] 2:57 AM - added-distractions

I've been wanting to own Super Smash Bros. Melee for a long time. For some unknown reason, I just decided to go for it, and using some Amazon.com gift certificates from Christmas, I picked up a GameCube, some wireless controllers, SSBM, and I got a free copy of Wind Waker. All told, I had to pay $160 after gift certificates, but it was definitely worth it. One advantage of consoles is that they can be much more social than PC gaming. I think we needed a good multiplayer video game we can sit around and play in the living room ourselves or when guests drop by.

Buying the GameCube has reminded me that I'm still a Nintendo fan after all this time. I hardly bother with consoles anymore, but Nintendo continues to produce the type of games that I actually want to play. I should probably think of some other GC games that I want and make a wishlist. :)

Karl's been back from Vegas since Sunday. He apparently had an "interesting" run-in with Utah police for going 78 MPH in a 75.

While Karl was gone, and nearly every day since, we have had dinner in. Not to jinx it (and I am knocking on wood as I type -- well, not exactly as, because that would make it impossible to type), but that's the longest streak of near-continuous dinners we have had in the apartment ever, if my count is correct. If we can successfully keep it up this time, I think it'll be good for all of us, though I know the folks at Kroll's will be disappointed.

Friday, March 24, 2006

[Comments: 0] 2:34 AM - motor-vehicle

Ray and I finally made it to the DMV in the Thompson Center before 4:15 PM and got ourselves issued new Illinois state drivers' licenses. It took weeks of trying to actually get myself ready to leave the apartment early enough on a day where Ray wasn't stuck at the datacenter till 5.

We made our first real attempt to get it done on Monday, but we were turned away at 4:18 PM because they stop doing new license written tests after 4:15 PM. Thursday was finally the day. The wait at the DMV was fairly short (30 minutes) and the staffing was fairly competent, and I now have my very own state ID and license to drive in Illinois.

It still remains for me to transfer the title for my car into my name, register it in this state, and set up my own insurance. Insurance is next on my todo list for car related stuff. I also need to get to my taxes this weekend or early next week. It's time that stuff is gotten out of the way.

Karl has been on vacation this past week. It's not caused too much damage because we're again in a holding pattern while we are out of stock on most of our servers. Support has been fairly quiet, though I am still neglecting my special projects a bit too much. I feel confident that I will be able to focus on them better once I am working an evening shift instead of the overnight shift. Hopefully May 1st.

I've been trying to integrate my schedule and todo list into a calendar program, so I can try to keep track of what I need to do and work toward goals. I always feel better when I can cross something off a list. Currently I'm using Korganizer from KDE, but I'm hoping to get Lightning working in Thunderbird so I can have some integration with my email, as it will add visibility and ease of access to the calendar that currently requires my unreliable memory to check every day.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

[Comments: 0] 4:43 AM - unfinished-business

I forgot to mention that I managed to complete none of the three items I had planned for last week. I had hoped to take care of my taxes and my license on Thursday, but we had a major network problem at the datacenter that day and I ended up spending most of the day trying to do what I could to keep customers informed and properly supported while Ray worked on repairing the problems on the ntework end.

So, no DMV, no taxes, no car insurance. All targets have been moved forward to next week, and hopefully will be met with a better success rate....

[Comments: 0] 4:38 AM - boldly-gone

I finally got around to hanging up my Christmas presents on the walls of my bedroom, which means I finally have things on my bedroom walls.

Karl helped me hang up the present that he and Ray gave me, which is a large Star Trek: Generations movie poster that has the Enterprise-D and the text "Boldy Go" on it. It's a very nice looking poster and it looks great in my room.

I also hung up my 2006 Futurama calendar that my parents gave me. For some reason, this calendar lists the birthdays of pretty much every celebrity there is. Nice calendar though, and it looks great on the wall.

We had a good party tonight at our apartment. Unfortunately, ultimately I ended up having to go do some work after it was done. Tomorrow, our friend Phil and his roommates are hosting a party up in Evanston, which I am currently committed to attending. That is where I'll be in case anyone is looking for me... :)

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

[Comments: 0] 6:57 AM - worst-episode-ever

I'm normally a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but every series has to have a worst episode. For TNG, the episode "Shades of Gray" is clearly it.... and it's a season finale, no less.

The plot summary is basically that Riker is stuck by some odd vine on a planetary survey mission and infected with microbes that are destroying his nervous system. Dr. Pulaski reports that once they reach his brain, it's fairly likely he will die.

The microbes reach his brain in the first 20 minutes of the episode and the remainder of the episode Pulaski stands by Riker's side using a device to stimulate his brain activity until they discover that unhappy memories repel the microbes. Troi stands around frantic and helpless. As they trigger different memories, they show a variety of random flashbacks, wasting a good 20+ minutes on old clips emphasizing his happy or painful memories.

Pulaski continues to repeat that he is getting worse, and Troi continues to reiterate this fact whenever they choose to return to the present to adjust the device. Eventually they succeed in making Riker really unhappy and the microbes just give up and vanish, for no reason. Apparently, he projects his feelings of distress to the most outer reaches of his nervous system, all the way down to his toes.

StarTrek.com explains the organism. By that and the episode's own explanation, this plant kills its prey intentionally using this method of attack in order to fertilize the surrounding area. If feelings of suffering, survival, and near-death experience would slow or reverse its advancement, you would think that the intense fear any animal or person attacked would feel as he's about to die would make this organism less than effective in its effort, especially since that would allow plenty of time for the affected to wander far away from the plant.

Pulaski and Troi are the only characters really featured for any length of time, with Data, Geordi and Picard appearing briefly, and Riker unconscious most of the episode. There's a bit of humor toward the end, but all in all, the episode was a waste of time, and I'm in disbelief they bothered producing it.

Oh, well.

I also noticed in "The Emissary", there is a tactical officer that appears briefly toward the end played by Diedrich Bader, Oswald from The Drew Carey Show. Looking this up lead me to realize for the first time that Oswald's full name is Oswald Lee Harvey. Funny.

Saturday, March 4, 2006

[Comments: 2] 5:55 AM - speed-watching

In the past week, I finally got to watching pretty much all the episodes of series for which I'd previously been slacking, basically since the datacenter move started. I got through all episodes of House, Medium, Lost, Bill Maher, and even a few random Star Trek episodes currently residing on the TiVo.

I also made sure that it starts recording Stargate Atlantis and Farscape as they're both series I would like to get into. I, arguably, should probably watch less TV than I do, but if you have any recommendations for other shows I should check out, perhaps I will.

Now I just need to get back to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and catch up on a couple other things, and I should be good to go.

Next week though, I'm going to try to get some other things done that need doing. I am going to aim to finally get my Illinois State license, do my annoyingly complex taxes (living in two states in a year makes things more confusing), and hopefully start looking to take on paying for my own car insurance. Let's see how many of these things I can pull off in reality... :)

Thursday, March 2, 2006

[Comments: 0] 7:54 AM - status-reporting

I finally got around to adding a signal to Gaim 2.0.0 that provides a way for plugins to learn about status changes, then updated my personal mini-plugin to report them on my web site again.

Now that that's taken care of, you will once again be able to see my current status message at the top of main index page of SimGuy.net.

I'm still mulling over how I will bring back the "Now Playing" feature since my switch to Linux, but hopefully I'll figured that out soon, so you can all spy on what I'm up to at all times right from my web site. :)

[Comments: 0] 5:41 AM - void-if-opened

The box of RAM for the last batch of servers came in was sealed with a sticker that says "Void if Opened" over a background of very tiny Kingston logos. This means this is a custom sticker of some kind.

My question: What the hell does "Void if Opened" mean? What is void of what? :)

Oh, by the way, I went with another greenish theme again amongst my "New (Exp)" color scheming. That one's not done either, but it definitely looks better than the yellow-red one, and it's lighter, which I think is wise. I was hoping to escape blues and greens, but I'm not good with other colors, and I like pretty much all the colors between blue and green... Oh, well. If anyone has some other suggestions, I'll mess around with them.

[Comments: 1] 3:51 AM - sticky-button

So, it finally came to the point where I had to build the servers in the so-called defective chassis we had in the datacenter, and after building the first box, it still wouldn't POST, so I decided that there had to be something in the chassis that was causing this problem.

I decided to think carefully about how some kind of short in the button and LED array might cause the problem, because I couldn't see any sign that the motherboard was shorting and there was simply no other possible component that could be causing a problem.

So, I reviewed the connectors for the chassis. The power and reset switch work by way of shorting two pins, and motherboards don't care either way if the lights are connected.

Then, I suddenly recalled from previous experience that holding the reset button will make the motherboard stay inoperative until the button is released. I also remembered that I had noticed these chassis have a tendency to have sticky reset switches. I gave it a quick check and that's what it was, the reset switch was pushed in and down so it was stuck. I released it and the system booted right up.

There is no reason this problem should have puzzled us all so much. I feel stupid now... :)

Oh, and yesterday was my birthday. I had a nice day. I want to thank all the friends and family that remembered or noticed for the good wishes and gifts, if applicable. If you didn't know/remember, no worries. I'll still like you (if I did before). ;)