Current Ramblings
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Geekiest. Thing. EVER.
The hint: It's binary, and I made it to wear on Friday.
Maybe I should take more classes. I clearly need something worthwhile to occupy my mind.
posted@9:39 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Data Dump.
I never did get Linux working. It freezes up at the very end up installation on the old computer, and neither Mandrake nor Red Hat want to cooperate with the graphics hardware on the newer computer. I think I'm just going to have to watch MicroCenter for a cheap video card when I have time again.
Man, friends are awesome. Not only did Phil and Malin come to visit the Columbus Crew after being in Indy for Celebration III, their visit also happened to coincide with Sipher and Mrs. Sipher (and their dog Amber) driving through on their way up to Cleveland, so for a couple days we all got to hang out and look for test-market Energon Built-To-Rule toys and watch The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera and just generally be social.
I worry for the other students in my Introduction to Computer Information Systems class. I figured once I got to classes that were only for computer majors I'd be way outclassed by the majority of the other students. I was surprised at how much help some of the others needed with the DOS projects, moreso when I noticed that you could log into the school service not only to check your own project grades, but the class average as well, and that the class averages were kinda pathetic. But the grades for the first exam went up this weekend, and even with four points added to everybody's percentage the class average was 60.68%. Wow. I got an adjusted 96, which I was sad to find I only earned 92 points of, but an A is an A. But man. Maybe there were some dropped students in the system who skewed things or something, but still, that's low. Maybe this class is supposed to sort the bona fide geeks from the kids who heard you could make a lot of money with this IT stuff and wanted a piece of that action.
I really liked this article from CNN.com today, if only for this bit: "Schuth retreated into his house and when SWAT teams arrived, he told negotiators he had 'more than 10 but less than 100' bombs and 16 firearms, and that it would be 'high noon' when he surrendered, according to court documents." The first sentence of the next paragraph is, "He surrendered early Saturday without incident."
I'm also enjoying woxy.com these days.
posted@1:17 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, April 21, 2005
To tha Local Crew:
I got the early shift next Friday (that'd be the 29th) so I'm up for an opening-night Hitchhiker's Guide showing. Nay, I insist upon it! And I'd kind of like to decide what we wanna do for Revenge of the Sith so I can put in the necessary schedule request. I'd ask for that night off, but if we decide to do a midnight showing I'd want Friday morning off instead. :)
posted@11:07 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Things.
Man, I want a blue DS...
To Ron: Saw an opening-soon sign for this "LoveSac" place in Tuttle Mall today. There's just too much sac on that site.
The Hitchhiker's Guide trailer they're showing on TV annoys me. "Look, it's a big acton movie!" it cries out, pretty much ignoring that it's a comedy that happens to be sci-fi. The trailer we saw at Sin City played the humor up a lot more, and it seemed to get a pretty good reaction from the crowd. It'd be nice if they played that up a little more.
I mentioned back in December that I won dinner and a pair of Riverdance tickets in the Christmas party raffle, and tonight was the night. We got dressed up nice and went to the Cap City Diner (they ran out of Outback giftcards, so they gave me one for any of the local Cameron Mitchell-owned restaurants), then we headed downtown. It was pretty awesome, and even Graham enjoyed it. ;) The first half was what you expect Riverdance to be, but the second half had a immigrant theme that included a group of Russian dancers and a pair of really impressive jazz tap-dancers. I'm really glad I won those tickets.
Yay for Spring!
posted@12:18 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Because I haven't made a boring game post in a while.
We finally got a DS game in at work, and it was one of those 80s game collections I usually can't stand. But I was desperate and it was cheap (And how often do you hear that in a child support case?) so I picked it up. And I'll be damned if Missle Command on a touch screen isn't God's Own Creation.
Man, I need some real DS games.
posted@1:30 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, April 18, 2005
Eeeeee.
This site and this other bit from the same site definitely win the Disturbing Internet Award for the week.
posted@1:04 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Vroom Vroom
Several months back, when gas started regularly hitting the $2 mark, I made a comment to my manager about transferring to the store that's actually within walking distance of me. (Well, on a nice day.) Now that's it's pulling scary shit like hitting the $2.39 mark, I decided to pursue that a little more actively. So today I was thinking about that happening sometime in the vaguely nearish future, and what that'll mean for my daily transportation needs. If I don't need to go all the way up to the northwest edge of town to work, I could do just about anything I'd need to do in my life - get to school, get groceries, get video games and CDs at small stores, go to, well, a Target at least - without having to go more than a few miles at more than 35-40mph. I started thinking about getting a small, Vespa-style scooter, not to completely replace my car, but for that 90% of my driving that would be alone on surface streets. My father's stepfather is still in charge of the family cycle shop in Alabama and Honda makes decent scooters, so I asked my mom to look into it. (Also because I don't just have that kind of money lying around and would need a loan.) He wasn't especially helpful, but she checked some things out and concluded that a small scooter wouldn't be enough. They usually only have 50cc engines, which gets you up to maybe 30mph or so. So there were two ways to go from there: a large scooter, which are never cheap enough to make up for being unbearably lame, or a small motorcycle. As FLCL-awesome as it would be to tool around on a scooter, I've always wanted to have my own motorcycle. And with the way I'm living now, it would actually be reasonable. My car's only got so much left in it at this point, so this way I can put off having to buy a new car for much longer and save money on gas, too. My mom's going to keep her eye out for a good deal on a used Honda Rebel, and then I get to learn how to use a clutch. Living in the city is awesome.
posted@10:20 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, April 11, 2005
Addendum.
I've posted some okay photos I took of Ash from the CD101 Day show to my Photo Blog.
posted@10:13 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
"I can't spend this money! Mark Hamilton from Ash gave me this money! It was in his wallet!"
*pauses for breath*
Man, I've been busy. I don't know if I have a whole paragraph in me about anything, so instead I'll just make a list of Random Ramblings(TM) from the past week or so:
- The Ash show was awesome. Mark The Bassist got me a pair of passes in return for the Star Wars toys (and also paid me back for them), so Kyde drove up from Cincy to go with me since my local friends are boring. They played a lot of songs I was hoping they'd play, though no "Starcrossed". It took me several songs to get over the initial "This is a song I know and really like, and they are playing it right up there" giddiness. This is the first time I've seen them live since their first album, but I hear there's another tour planned for this fall so maybe I can do some more catching up. I Heart Ash.
- Also awesome at the big CD101 Day show: Ben Lee. He was crazy happy fun.
- In the shipment at work today we got a big pile of Gerry Anderson TV show DVDs. Yes, the scary BBC puppet shows that inspired the style of "Team America: World Police". I think the store now has every complete series boxed set of everything he has ever made, including a particularly awesome one that I was not aware of: Secret Service. I couldn't capture the full strangeness of this show without pasting the entire entry. I'll just say it's about a priest who is also a secret agent working for an organization called B.I.S.H.O.P., and also he carries a shrink ray in his Bible.
- I finally bought a small tea kettle a couple weeks ago. It makes my tea very hot and very good, but on the downside if I take it to work in my travel cup in the morning it's not cool enough to drink until I'm at the store.
- I didn't just buy Star Wars toys for hot Irish rock stars, I bought a few for myself, too. Well, just the three Jedi women they've released so far. I have figures of all of them from Episode 2, but I picked up the new ones anyway. My Aayla Secura suffers a little from the ambition of her design: some of her joints are much too loose and some are much too tight. I like the fabric skirts on the other two, though. I think it's gonna hurt the most when Shaak Ti bites it.
- Man, I want me some Cybertron. When does the Cybertron start shipping?
- (Yes, I know, "May". But I want Vector Prime so much it hurts. And maybe Scattershot too. I mean, I want him. I just dunno if I'd commit to saying it hurts in his case yet.)
- In honor of my impressive progress through my literary backlog, I'm going to start posting a little "Currently Reading:" blurb at the end of my posts, a la LiveJournal's "Currently Listening To" add-ons, but as a link because I'm addicted to typing a href=. Like so.
Currently Reading: Code, by Charles Petzold
posted@9:20 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Friday, April 08, 2005
*gasp*
O. M. G. I am picking up Star Wars toys for the bassist from Ash. As is my friend Bryce, who brought the thread to my attention in the first place. And yes, whoring for tickets, I know, but I need to go to that Big Room show with a mighty need and about the only way to get tickets is to win them over the phone.
posted@1:15 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
y kant jenni rite
Damn, maybe I should get a PSP. I do like me some IRC. Of course, I'm sure the same thing will likely pop up once the DS goes online, but I don't know how easy it will be without something like those horrid overpriced Memory Sticks.
I just haven't had time to update lately, with work and school and trying to get this Linux thing working. After having two entirely different distributions crap out at right about the same point in installation, at the very tail end naturally, I'm ready to chalk it up to a hardware problem with Graham's old computer. I've decided to try to set it up as a dual-boot on my main computer, which I actually have recovery disks for, but I haven't had time to concentrate on setting things up (i.e. partitioning my hard drive) since I made that decision. It's not exactly the sort of thing I want to do while multitasking, backups or not.
School is going okay this quarter, but for some reason it seems a lot more stressful this time. I have both classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights, which means if I have to work I leave at 8:30AM, work 'till 5PM, rush to a 5:30 class downtown, and stay on campus until just before 10PM. With Graham's also-nasty quarter schedule, this means I get home just in time for him to go to bed so he can be up at 6:30AM for his M-W-F class. And if I have to open the next morning (like I did this morning), I have to get to bed pretty much immediately too. It doesn't help that the math homework is for credit this time, so I have to actually present it in a way someone other than me understands, and that takes longer. But I'm feeling a little more confident about my computer class now that I've done one of the labs. This quarter is Introduction to Computer Information Systems. We're working in DOS. :)
Not much else going on on the Me front. Maggie and Fang and I got together to do an awesome pic of the Aerialbots as people for the Allspark's March art challenge (which was to envision TF characters as people). I got a letter from my first Columbus employer Cord Camera to let me know they found a $105 discrepancy in my pay while cleaning up the bookkeeping, and those who are owed money from this can pick it up on Friday. That's nice, though something about it says "Department of Labor audit". Part of why I left them after 6 months was because of the ways they systematically screwed over their employees. The CD101 show with Ash is coming up this Saturday, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them live again. That's about all the excitement in my little part of the world lately. I've been too busy for excitement. Maybe I'll work up a nice lecture on the convention or something later this week.
posted@10:23 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments