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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Month: July 2002

  • It’s Friday. It’s Five, somewhere in the world.

    I can see a time, far in the future, when I’m able to do several Friday Fives in a row. It will probably happen two days before the universe collapses in on itself, though.

    • Where were you born? – Ketchikan, Alaska. I don’t remember the place because our family left when I as only three months old. My earliest reliable memories are of New York City.
    • If you still live there, where would you rather move to? If you don’t live there, do you want to move back? Why or why not? – I don’t. I don’t. Er, I don’t. (Three questions? Does that make this the Friday Seven?)
    • Where in the world do you feel the safest? – At home, of course.
    • Do you feel you are well-traveled? – That’s an interesting question. Is the implication that I’ve been traveled, or that I have traveled? (Hmm, must get mind out of gutter.) No, I have never left the country, nor have I seen very much of These United States. I’d like to, though, on both counts.
    • Where is the most interesting place you’ve been? – I’ve been a few places of mild interest to myself, but I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere of wide, general interest. I apologize for being so boring. *grin*

  • Snap! goes the Snap! Server

    I woke up a bit earlier than usual today, got out the door earlier than usual, and as I was getting off the bus on the way to work my pager went off.

    The Quantum Snap! Server crashed, hard. This means no network storage for the entire building. As I write this, it’s still rebuilding its RAID array, after which I’ll let people back onto the system. A helpful technician at Quantum walked me through gathering a few reports that I then emailed for analysis; hopefully I’ll get back from them some sort of procedure by which I can prevent this from happening again.

    Not, mind you, that I’m holding my breath. Computers are evil. If you’ve been at this for as long as I have and don’t yet know this, you need to get into another line of work.

  • Another example of why I don’t trust Microsoft.

    And now we bring you an overview of what Microsoft’s “Palladium” nonsense is all about. Read on, follow the links, and learn to cast a jaundiced eye upon this so-called security initiative.
    Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

  • Random Work Tidbits

    So I haven’t updated in a day or so. I’ve really only been doing boring work things such as preparing to move a bunch of Promotions folk from office to office, directing my intern in the removal and rewiring of the server-room bench, hopping-to on a bunch of tedious file permissions issues on the server, checking activity logs on a half-dozen or so servers, answering email questions and just generally trying to stay on top of the “situation.”

    It’s not exciting. When you get right down to it, excitement is the last thing you want in this job. If it’s exciting, something’s usually gone awry.

  • Gaming for fun and… um… more fun.

    I’ve been playing more Diablo II again lately. I cannot resist the temptation to reach that “one more” level or waypoint or completed quest.

    My current focus is on Barak, my werebear Druid. As of this weekend, he’s one of the only characters with which I’ve killed Diablo in solo play. (Yes, I’m a great big wuss. Quell surprise.)

    We invited the Bourgos over last night for gaming and general family chaos. Amy and Michael and Wendi and I tried to remember what our “group-game” Diablo II characters were, then tried to remember how to play D2 effectively as a foursome. We made a lot of progress into Act 3 Normal, but Michael and I are chafing at the long wait ahead of us before we can use our best skills. (A werewolf Druid and a Javezon are both nearly useless until at least level 30, when Fury and Lightning Fury become available respectively.)

    I suggested that we should get our best-of-the-best-of-the-best-sir characters from our respective homes for a superstar romp through Act V or maybe the Cow level. We’ll see what happens with that, as well as Michael’s idea to bring over his wheel for some head-to-head Need For Speed V competition. (Some challenge that will be. His wheel versus my gamepad should be no contest at all!)

    Ah, I love multiplayer gaming. Who says that computer games cut us off from social interaction? “Hey, I wanted that amulet, you @#$%!” “Geez, stop hogging all the (gold, gems, runes)!” “Argh, I’m *#^%ing dying over here, help!” “Where are you guys?” “Would someone throw me a Town Portal please?”

  • Links to my first music videos, long overdue

    It occurs to me that I have yet to link to my first two anime music videos. Let’s fix that, shall we?

    My first video is The Ecstasy of Jurai, a two-minute exercise in “not screwing up too badly.” It’s wordless and sort of quaint. The music is from the opening to a Metallica concert, the footage is from the Tenchi Muyo OAV episode titled “Here Comes Jurai.”

    My second video is Mayuka Really Loves Me (Yeah), four minutes of Tenchi Muyo “Manatsu no Eve” footage set to music by Dada. It’s not a perfect video, but I’m quite proud of it nonetheless. My intent was to create something a bit creepy (not icky, just kind of weird) without losing the positive aspects of the story. In some places the lyrics, melody and visuals really work in this one, if I may say so.

    These are both rather large MPEG files, so unless you have lots of spare time or a fast internet connection you should probably leave off downloading. Sorry.

    I’m starting work on a third video this weekend. Wish me luck.
    AMV.org page for Ecstasy…
    AMV.org page for Mayuka…

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