Sorry about last weekend. My girlfriend’s way-out-of-town brother and sister-in-law (lots of hyphens) were in town and i was being Good Boyfriend. I think i acutally pulled it off really well. It is a large amount of fun to be asked my opinion about something and then have it listened to. Seriously, we talked of Operating Systems, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. He’s a physician starting up a small family practice, and i have nothing but respect for the man. Seriously, i think he is fighting first hand the war between good (doctors in contact with the patient and community, being helpful and actually fixing people) and evil (doctors distanced from the patient by regulations, fear, and insurance companies, their hands tied by lawsuit and idiots). And he’s up on the whole “Tablet PC as a moblie ‘chart’ for home visits” thing. Also his kids are avid readers who are both quiet and (fairly) obedient. Its incredible to not notice a child unless she speaks up. Honestly, in my line of work you see just about every variation of shouting and acting out, it is great to see someone who not only avidly reads, but reserves her own Harry Potter.

Next weekend mayhaps? My girl might be going to France (or Europe) some time this year, so if you cats get back in town before that we can power-level my poor thief, and mayhaps he’ll reach Dungeon Delver this year. (Hah!)

So i’m off to lunch with the co-workers. Vella’s is just about the best place around for steak sammitches, so i’m all there. I’ll probably post something later today, after i finish this site’s work orders again. It will be about the impossibility to find decent Cosmic Horror these days, and possibly about other things. Signing off.

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Sorry, been flying below radar recently. There really isn’t much going on in my life either in the buying, watching, or doing areas. The car thing has mostly curtailed the irresponsible spending thing, atleast until i get my tax returns (sent on the 14th, so i’m expecting them some time next year). Though i did get two shirts today, which isn’t all that interesting.

I’ve installed windows 98 on this ancient laptop, so i’m posting wirelessly from my bed. This 802.11b thing is all it is cracked up to be, seriously. I think that between this for data and bluetooth for devices then i think that we’ll finally be living in the 21st century. This whole “cord” thing has got to go.

John Allison’s guest week on Sluggy is about the coolest thing ever. I’m a bit biased, but i can’t think of a way to end that sentance without really offending the readership of a webcomic that really goes beyond human definitions of the word “popular.”

I’ve really got to get up to Florence (or you kids have to get over here). I really have to bitch about webcomics (of the eternal record of the inter-web) and force more people to read the Scary Go Round book. Seriously, bitching about Sluggy is like bitching about Everquest. A really easy way to get annoying comments is to air my opinions. Well, to air “those” opinions.

I love these new powerade commercials with whatever Agent isn’t Smith. Its a good idea, and that’s something you usually don’t see in advertising. It is mostly just annoying or forgettable.

My DVR just went “click.” That’s a bad hard drive noise. Even if it is just an IDE 80 gig, they don’t usually just die like that. The ideal solution would be something with a solid state drive of some sort. That or something silent. Martin is right, that damn drive cycling just gets under your skin. I almost get to the point where i can ignore it, then i have to pull the plug to get to sleep. Oh well, possibly the next hardware iteration will fix this problem in order to give me brand new problems.

So am i the only person who was surprised that Dr Pepper contains prune juice? I mean i seem to be the only one who didn’t know this.

Damn, i babble alot for someone with nothing to talk to. Well, i’ll be fixing up my server soon too, so there should be even more for me to pointlessly babble about. I wonder if i can fit a SCSI adapter into this box somehow.

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So i showed my parents Memento this Tuesday when i went over to their house with my girl. We go over there every week on tuesday in order to eat dinner and so forth. Usually we watch TV afterwards and talk about this and that, but a few times i’ve been successful in steering the group to a movie. So far i’ve been successful twice, once this week and once before (around New Years) with a showing of Royal Tenenbaums. They really enjoyed RT, and i think they got a good amount of enjoyment out of Memento. Which is good, as it is one hell of a movie. I honestly think that between the masterful presentation of the DVD (The special edition packaging is incredible, as are the menus and the extras.) and the masterful crafting of the movie that we have a classic on our hands that can rightfully sit on my shelf next to Lola Rennt and its badass ilk.

I think my parents even got most of it. Which is good for first time watching and being as tired as they seemed to be. I think my mom was nodding off during the movie. Luckily loud things kept happening. As a reward they will get to watch One Hour Photo next week if everybody feels up to it.

I’m still working on that segrigation thing between Features and Non-Features. Turns out that there is no NOT operator that can work on MT Categories. The only thing i can think of would be to use a “non-feature” or “normal” category as a secondary classification for everything i write from here on out. I of course couldn’t go back and re-classify all 400 or so entries that i’ve typed up to now, and apparently there is no batch conversion for secondary categories. This is why you haven’t seen any new articles show up in the “featured” block. Unless i can block features out of the main entries window then they will show up twice on the page. And we wouldn’t want that.

Oh well, back to work. Perhaps i’ll have something about the fileserver later. It may be changing clothes and jobs soon.

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So, a few updates and all that:

Round Con: I’ve apparently been forbidden from any contact with local conventions. She also seems really ironclad about this too, so i guess that any Zombies!!! playing will be completely off-the-books. I can pass anime DVD’s with impunity i believe. Also i do think that switching over to fansubbs might clear up some “group exhibition for profit” issues. Just thinking.

Zombies!!!: Something i didn’t mention: I got Zombies!!! 3: Mall Walkers on thursday, and Lord but it whoops ass. Seriously. The Mall is a bit larger than the Military Base, but i think that all things considered, it may be easier to get to the chopper. No government enhanced zombies and all that. However, i think that the Base is still really kickass. I’d go through hell to get that Rocket Launcher. Even though, it’ll still be fun to try with the base and the mall. I may need a bigger table.

HellBatBoy: So i swung by Silver City today and you will never guess what i found. I bought the issue of Legends of the Dark Knight that Mignola refers to as the first proto-Hellboy story! It is quite cool, all in all it presents a very rough sketch of what would become one of my favorite comics of all time. That and Powers, of course. Still, i got all that for a dollar, and that makes me all kinds of happy.

Page Stuff: So i’m trying something new. I think the articles that would appear in the “Features” block up there could all share a category. I wonder if it would be possible to use a secondary category (”Features” for instance) to set something like that up. It would certainly simplify the code, just needing a MTEntries that has “Category = ‘Features’” and others that have “Category = ‘NOT Features.’” Ah well, i’ll figure it out somehow. I’m pretty sure that’s how other people do it.

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So this one is going to be all over the map, excuse me if i digress, it will be pretty much all i’m going to do today. In case you didn’t know, all us hardworking network techs over at Lex2 has last week off (Apr 14 - 18) on account of k-12 spring break being that week. We have no such luck for summer, but then i think that two month’s paid vacation might be a bit much in all cases. Not that i haven’t done anything postworthy in the last week, i’ve just been way (and i mean way) too lazy to post about it. I took the cats to the vet yesterday, so they’ve been giving me evil glares all day, for instance. Now usually i’d try to pretend that i had made lots of posts but just set them to “draft” status or something and try to fill the last few weeks with little pseudo-posts, but i think i will just make one comprehensive post and get on about my busness.

Round Con: Round con was pretty cool, and i did enjoy myself. I think that next year at the very least i may run some games of “Zombies!!!” or something. That would get me into the dealer room and so forth for free, and that’s always good. Also, if anybody wants i can burn some VCDs or DVDs of some of my fansubbed anime. That should kick things up a notch or two in the anime rooms. I mean not to denigrate Jubei-chan or anything, but i think that a wee bit of Witch Hunter Robin or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex could (theoretically) draw a few more people. Also i have about 75 ports of 10 meg networking and a kinda backwards Linux server at your disposal if you would want to set up a fairly large Lan party sort of situation. Its a dual 200, so its not the greatest, but the nic is quite kickass.

Thai Food: The girl and i went to Thai Lotus last week, and i do have to say that Thai food is incredible. So far i’ve only barely sampled the 15 page menu (and that’s just the Thai side) and i like everything i’ve tried. Tam Young Doon is absoluely incredible. I’ve been snacking on the remainders of the bowl for a while now, and the day i finished it was a day of mixed blessings. I’ll miss the soup, but this does mean i get to go back now.

b>Sushi: I was surprised to find Inakaya full last night, and then it occured to me: its Good Friday. Therefore a seafood restraunt would certainly be way packed. I had some crab and shrimp sushi, which as far as i am concerned take the cake. I imagine that some theoretical lobster sushi would own up, but then there did not seem to be anything like that on the menu, so i will have to go back to dreaming.

Blade of the Immortal: between BotI and Seven Samurai, i think i’ve been getting far in excess of my RDA of Samurai-based entertainment. This isn’t a bad thing, however as SS is chock full of classic samurai action, and BotI is nearly all kickass. I seriously dig on the whole “Man with No Name” thing that is present in both a good Western and in good Samurai stories, so i’m incredibly happy.

Mini-Tanks: I think i have decided to really like little R/C tanks. I need other people (three hopefully) to say that they’d like to buy one as well, but i’m thinking about possibly scoring a T-34/85 at some point. Of course other people would have to be the Hated Germans or the Yanks, but i’m sure there’s no law against multiple Shermans or whatever. Before you buy just on looks or ideology, keep in mind that they do have different strengths and weaknesses. Check out the Konami page.

Halo: That’s one hell of a game. I played in the hotel at Round-Con and beat a level that i haven’t before (the Covenant Ship level) and that thing was superb. I don’t know if the thing that Penny Arcade was talking about sets in much later, but i had fun the whole time i was playing. As far as i’m concerned, the whole purpose of the Warthog is to pick up a sniper as my passenger. That guy was rocking alien bugs before my mini-gunner had even locked on.

Site Work: Still kicking some stuff around. When i get around to it, expect to see Articles, Reviews, and Projects all integrated into the main blog. I’ll use category archives to cut them all into individual pages. That should make managing them way easier. Also i’ll display the newest project entry, review, or article on the main page above the newest entry. Well, the first about 50 letters or something with a link to the individual archvie entry. This should be easier with the projects pages as they will be just an export and import. So yeah, expect some work on Masamune soon, as Mauri has some badass bits for the M-92fs.

Also i’ve read more Powers (lord, i hate having to wait a whole month for more of that.) Everything i’ve ever said about that series is the Gospel Truth. Bendis and Oeming re-invent comics every month, and push the envelope so often that they have been given special cards that can be redeemed for a whole new envelope when they are all filled up. And i’ve also gotten volume 4 of Lucifer, and it just keeps getting better there. I do love three-sided conficts, and i think Lucifer has a four or five sided one going on.

So yeah, i could have cut that up and pretended that i’ve been posting all along, but that would be very disingenuous, and we all know i don’t play like that. So i’m back now, and i’ll be posting and working on this thing more. I just hope that everybody has been checking on me and hasn’t just stopped reading. I had almost a readership, and it would suck if i lost that.

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Well yeah. I do miss the weekend, and i think it is only because i am sick. Not sick as a dog or anything, just annoyingly sick. Everything tastes like cardboard and i’m blowing my nose pretty much constantly. Ugh.

I’m still looking for suitable icons for the categories, and maybe one of these days i’ll find decent ones. I mean who knows, really? They won’t have different title-bar colors, i think that would make my index too busy. As it stands the different bar for the first item may be pushing it a bit. I think i might also get something that puts a few words/letters from the most recent post from either Projects or Articles as soon as i get off my ass and integrate those into the main blog. The only problem is figureing out when i wrote the damn Articles/reviews. I usually did mention them in the blog though, so it might not be that difficult.

Major breakthrough on the Linux front! I got the NTFS thing working, moved the stuff i wanted to keep over, and then fdisked and formatted the 80 gig drive. Then in finally moved everything back on to it and rewrote etc\fstab and got the thing mounting automatically. Two thoughts on the issue:

1. That formatted fast. I mean that was 80 gigs in less than a minute. When i formatted the damn thing in windows i could go get some cereal and still beat the format.
2. How Linux handles extra drives is simply bizzare. It makes more sence the more i think about it though. See the whole OS is treated as a unit. “root” really exists on my master drive, and the only way that you see the slave is by browsing to “mnt\hdb” my way-too-generic name for my alternate hd. There isn’t a “C: D: E:” thing line in windows, or another hd icon like on a mac.

Speaking of Macs, i may have actually found the mac-to-keep. At the moment it is none too impressive with its 150mhz processor and 32 megs of ram, but the potential is there in a way that it never was with the other one. The interesting thing is that it is a “Power Computing” brand “Power Wave.” It has a processor on a daughtercard, so getting one of the G3/G4 upgrade cards shouldn’t be too difficult, and it can support half a gig of ram, so that’s pretty cool too. The fact that it uses a standard ATX power supply is interesting, and the two open PCI slots mean that USB is not a forlorn hope. I’ll have to do some research, but i think the search is finally over.

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So yeah, still dorking around with this site. Though there is the distraction of Linux now, so i’m working on that too. I feel like i need a few more things before i achieve parity with the OS, but it is ever-so-slowly moving foreward. This weekend’s project: get the Red Hat NTFS patch working. Soon as i’ve regained access to my second drive then all will be well.

And if you may notice i added a Recent Comments block over on the right there. The code is like so:

<MTComments lastn=”6″ sort_order=”descend”>
<$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect=”1″$>: (<$MTCommentTotal$> Total)<br>
…<a href=”<MTCommentEntry><MTEntryPermalink></MTCommentEntry>#comment<MTCommentID pad=”1″>”><$MTCommentBody trim_to=”25″ convert_breaks=”0″$></a><br />
<br>
</MTComments>

Yes, there is an odd little tag in there. And that one is the <$MTCommentTotal$> one. That’s a function of the Comment Leaders plugin. That’s also a part of pretty much everything with comments. If there’s a name and some comments then it also displays how many comments this person has made. I think its a pretty sweet plugin myself.

Did i lend my copy of Seed of Destruction to anyone? I can’t find it and am understandibly despondent.

The woman and i saw “Phone Booth” today, and i have to say it was fairly enjoyable. All things considered i think it may be Schumacher’s best film since “Falling Down.” That’s no faint praise, also. Of course, topping “Batman and Robin” isn’t really all that difficult, now is it?

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I always post more when i’m tinkering, and the next few days will be no exception. For the past few i’ve been installed Linux on the new Hard Drive at home, and seeing how long i can keep running Red Hat without slinking back to XP with my tail between my legs. Since i did the install on monday, i guess i’m doing pretty good so far. I wouldn’t say that i’ve completely restored functionality to the box, but i’m working on it. For today i’ve found drivers for my Griffin PowerMate, and we’ll have to see if i can get that working. Other than that i think i can install ADOM and the Open Source Star Control 2. Well, so far the main things i need to find out how to run are ActiveSynch for my Jornada/Nino, and Ragnrok Online. The last will be a stumbling block.

About the web page tinkering: I am working hard to unlock the power of the <MTEntries> tag. If you add lastn=”10″ before the closing bracket, then you get the last 10 entries, irrespective of the seven days set in blog prefs. Also if you create two seperate <MTEntries> tags like this:

<MTEntries lastn=”1″>
Special entries format.
</MTEntries>

<MTEntries lastn=”9″ offset=”1″>
Normal entries format.
</MTEntries>

Then what you get is the first entry is displayed as specified in the first set of code, and the next nine in the normal format. What i’m planning is changing the little “x in a box” that occupies the upper left corner of the entry to a 16×16 icon for each category. Then the first entry will show a different icon, and possibly the title bar for that entry will be a different color (slightly lighter blue?). Other than that i’m working on several other things. Finishing the All-CSS thing (the calendar, status bar, and page header are still in tables), amont other ideas. I’ll post more when i get more done.

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So yeah, there was only three people at the moron convention so i didn’t end up going. Had there been more, and less chance of news vans driving by getting my picture out of the non-crowd, i would have gone. That and i was tired as the dickens.

Honestly, i layed down at about 5 and woke up at 2:30 in the morning. Yes, i did curse up a blue streak at missing Kung Fu, especially because i think that yesterday was “Pay Sifu Day.” Hopefully i won’t get the $15 penalty, because on top of $85 that could be pissy to a person who just put $3500 down on a new (to me) car.

Speaking of that, i got a new car last weekend. Before that i was just test-driving it. It is a silver 2000 Mazda 626. Think Camry, only by Mazda instead of Toyota. It is the midrange four-door import. So yes, i am burning up the road and all that jazz. It is loaded with kickass little touches though, as it has cruise, a CD player, and keyless entry. It has already been four days and i’m still not tired of hitting that little button to unlock my doors. There’s a thing that does the trunk too, which is kind of a bitch. Reason being that yesterday i just jammed on the damn keypad when i was getting into my car in the morning and didn’t notice until halfway to work that my trunk was open. Oh well, i’ll just modify my behaviour in the morning.

The main good thing is that it is slightly larger than my Corrola. This comes in handy as i may be able to drive while in Florence next time, and could possibly get out of being the man in the back seat! The only downside is that it is slightly more complicated to back into my driveway. I am managing somehow though.

See, with the kickass dryer (dries comforters in less than 30 mins!) and the new kickass and dentless automobile i may run out of things to complain about. This can never happen, as when i do that i’m tapped for webpage material. “Oh yes, today was great, i really enjoy life.” Who the hell wants to read that?

Nobody, that’s who. Anyhow, now people have to come over to see my schweet rack and my kickass wheels. I’ll make the heading make sence when i get back to my Linux box at work.

Eh, here’s what i was referencing: Achewood. Damn that’s funny every time i read it.

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