So there was I was, at Fry’s, replacement parts in hand for the kids’ broken anime-viewing computer. Dawn had her Stellvia DVD and was looking for other stuff to buy tax-free at the Geek Mecca Of Portland, and Lil’ was outside waiting patiently with Geoffrey after having picked out her iPod. (She chose the 4GB model, in silver, in case you’re wondering.)

For some reason I ended up wandering from poring over the anime box sets to poring over the music box sets. I didn’t find what I was looking for on the first shelf, but I turned around and discovered it on the other.

It, in this instance, is the Genesis Archive #2: 1976-1992. The three CDs cover the usual boxed-set gamut from unreleased tracks and B-sides to live material and demos. Once I got home (after dinner at Kell’s… my tummy and Dawn’s both thank Lil’ very much!) I spent the first entire hour listening to various tracks and poring over the nifty booklet insert.

So, why did I get it? You mean other than the fact that I’m a die-hard Genesis fan, that is? Well, this box has some tracks from the Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance sessions that you can generally only find as B-sides, my favorites of which include “Feeding the Fire”, “On The Shoreline” and “Do the Neurotic.” There’s a song I’d never heard before, called “Naminanu.” (The geeky fanboy in me goes “Yay,” while the jaded media employee in me nods knowingly at the lack of mystery behind why the song didn’t make it onto the album.)

The live tracks I was most excited about include cuts from the generally-disregarded And Then There Were Three… album, which is admittedly not one of the band’s strongest works. I got a kick out of hearing live renditions of “The Lady Lies” and “Burning Rope,” as well as “Ripples” and “Entangled” from the Trick of the Tail album.

Included are a few tracks I’d consider filler, like the contents of the Pigeons EP, the fourth side of Three Sides Live, and a few remixes. On the other hand, it’s sort of nice to have even these not-so-rare birds collected in one place.

The track I got the biggest kick out of hearing for the first time, though, was “It’s Yourself,” another bit of the Trick of the Tail sessions that didn’t quite make it on the album. I say “quite” because the bridge section does make it on… as the opening salvo of “Los Endos,” the instrumental power-medly that closes the record.

So, yes, for the first time in many years I’ve had the chance to buy Genesis music and actually have something new to enjoy. It’s a damned shame that I’ll probably never have that pleasure again.

Adblock. Flashblock. And a handy-dandy list of prebuilt “rules” for Adblock, collected here. (One can only hope that the bloke in question moves off of Geocities some day.)

Why? Because I finally got sick and tired of the “shoot the monkey” kind of noisy, distracting Flash adverts, and figured that if I’m going to start blocking ads I might as well go all-out. And because I run Firefox, which already lets me block pop-up ads and other annoying crap.

Consider this part PSA, part note-to-self.

By the by: Flashblock can be configured to allow specific sites automatically, so for instance you can go to Tools —> Extensions, double-click on Flashblock in the list, and add in “www.neopets.com”. The really neat part is that Flash hosted on the Neopets site itself will still work, but off-site adverts won’t. Neat.

The anime site is now running WordPress 1.5, and so far I’m quite impressed with the product, the improvements, and the upgrade process. (Don’t worry, Matt. I’m not leaving MJ any time soon.)

I’m the same guy who pounces on every available update to video card drivers, Gaim, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and… well, just about every other bit of software I run, server- or client-side. Versionitis? Yep. But in my defense, it’s worth pointing out that most of the software I use gets better with every release.

Besides, it gives me something to do when I’m bored…

This has not been a good week, as you may have noticed or been privy to the details of. Today was something of a capper to the trend, leading me to a state of aggravation and frustration.

One of the ways I deal with intense frustration is to build a computer.

I know what you’re thinking: “Gee, Karel. Building a computer can be a challenging, frustrating experience. Why would you do this to improve your mood?” I’m so glad you asked, neighbor. You see, I’m really good at building computers. Sure, it’s frustrating at times, but the frustrations of a computer build are generally fixable in some fashion. Mind you, sometimes the fix is to throw out half of the parts and/or start the install process all over again, but there’s almost always a fix of some sort.

Today I learned exactly how salvageable those HPs the company’s been buying really are. (In case you’re wondering, the answer is “somewhat.” Just don’t ask me to transplant the guts of any of those no-AGP-slot abominations they’ve been shipping us the last two years…) With an old Matrox dual-head card, a first-generation Soundblaster Live, a chassis I had laying around and a very large hard drive, I have something of an interesting piece of work cobbled together now.

Now, of course, I have to decide what I’m going to do with it. That’s almost as fun as actually building the thing…

So I took a good, hard look at my City of Heroes roster on the Protector server yesterday, and realized that at least two were never going to be much fun to play. (There’s a third that may or may not make the cut. I’m still debating on him.) Yesterday I blew out one of them, and this morning I blew out the other. In place of NeutrinoStorm and Myne alMyne are a new Defender and Controller (respectively) named R Ken Ettic and The Immaterial Girl.

Ken’s a Kinetics Defender, and Imma’s a Gravity/Radiation Controller. And now I remember why I didn’t play Myne very much: Controllers are hard to play in the early stages. Gah.

I’ll post screenshots eventually, but for now suffice to say that Ken’s a robot (as implied by the Asimovian naming scheme) and Imma’s in a getup somewhat similar to (but not exactly like) Sailor Jupiter, as Dawn noted upon first spying her costume in the game. Ah well. So it’s not like I’m ever going to win any costume contests…