• Spinning Hunks of Metal

    “Entrusting your data to spinning hunks of metal is no basis for a data storage system! Supreme data storage derives from solid-state equipment, not from some unstable rotating particles. I mean, if I went ‘round saying I had a storage system made up of flapping geese, they’d put me away!”

    With apologies to the Pythoneers and, in fact, everybody.

    I hate hard drives almost as much as I hate printers. Okay, maybe not nearly that much. But still.

  • Hail To Thee, Life-Giving Cocoa

    You know it’s a good, solid Monday when it takes not one, not two, but at least four cups to get you through the day.

    I’m on my fourth, and may not be done yet.

    Is it any wonder I keep telling my friends to buy me hot cocoa mix whenever there’s an imminent gift-giving occasion? Currently I’m enjoying the Gourmet du Village Double Chocolate Truffle mix Mari got me a while ago. Earlier it was some of the Starbucks “seasonal-only” Cinnamon Cocoa from Dawn. (Sadly, I’m now all out of the Peppermint. Waah!)

    Mmmmm. Cocoa.

  • Throwing out “supposed to” for a day.

    I was supposed to work today. It’s about time for the monthly tape backup of the Traffic system, a seven-hour-or-so procedure that mostly involves me being bored out of my mind, but also involves me getting to the office fairly early in the morning if I want to be able to bus home again afterward.

    Yesterday, however, came the surprise of hanging with the supercool rugrats while Wendi did another DJ gig. (She swears this one’s her last… it just about ruined her.) So I didn’t get home until nearly 1am. Add to that a drunken revel going on nearby that kept me up well past 3am, and you can understand why I didn’t peel out of bed until half past 9am, right?

    What did I do today? A lot of that leveling I wrote about yesterday. Yes, Woodsie’s at level 18 now. Two more levels and he can add a costume and cape. (I’m still not sure about the cape thing, though. It doesn’t seem to be his style, ya know?) The best part of getting to 18 was adding what’s referred to as “mez protection.” Woodsie now has a skill that helps keep him from being stunned, put to sleep or otherwise mentally messed about with. Considering the sorts of foes he’ll be facing from here on out, this is a very good thing.

    Mind you, on the downside was the matter of being disconnected every fifteen minutes or so during the last hour of play. Argh. They’d better get that resolved post-haste, or they’re going to start losing subscribers in droves. Double-argh.

    Anyway. All I wanted to do was let you know that yes, I wasted another perfectly good Sunday playing games and goofing off. Sucks to be me, huh?

    Wait, I did do one semi-practical thing: I created some mp3-format ringtones for my Treo. I’m hoping these are more reliable than the MIDI tones I created earlier. (The phone has a nasty habit of either not playing the MIDI at all, or only playing a few notes and then going silent. Argh.) Let’s hear it for making progress on minor geek projects…

  • Partially fused with infinity, eh?

    I was going to spend some quality time tonight leveling up what has become my main City of Heroes character (Woods Cutter on Protector, if you must know), but instead came down with a bad case of the woozies.

    I hate when that happens. Hell, “woozies” are why I had to give up playing Carmageddon II. Dammit. Then again, Carma2 had that thing where you’d get a bad power-up and the whole game display would writhe before your very eyes. I can’t imagine why that would make a person nauseous, can you?

    But anyway, enjoy this semi-relevant Penny Arcade comic.

    A Being of Indescribable Power

  • Portland Bloggers (u)nite!

    Are you in Portland? Are you a “blogger”? Do you have a couple of hours free this evening? Then you should come to Backspace, downtown at 5th and Couch, between 6pm and 8pm.

    For that matter, you should also be part of Portland Bloggers. I mean, why the heck not, eh?

    See you there, I hope!

  • Xinerama? Xineriffic.

    Add these ingredients:

    1 Matrox G450 dual-head video card, removed from one of the Enco studio computers months ago…
    1 spare 19” monitor taking up a sizeable portion of my desk space…
    1 slightly hosed Linux install, requiring a fresh reinstallation…
    2 hours of over-the-wire Debian Sarge install time…
    1 hour of Googling and configuration tweaking…

    To get:

    1 freshly rebuilt Linux box with a desktop display that spans two screens. Good for impressing co-workers, even if they don’t really understand what’s so cool about it other than being able to drag windows from one screen to the other…