2 Bit Hacker

Another year, another post for the holidays, whichever ones you might choose to celebrate. I’ve been claiming Pastafarianism for most of this year, which prescribes a simple Holiday season. I really ought to pick up a copy of the holy book one of these days.

Anyway, I’ve got my desktop PC up and running again with a shiny new power supply. Hopefully this one will last for a while. Delia’s desktop’s video card started having fits when we hooked it up to a DVI monitor. I had similar issues with another card back when I first built this system, so I think it may have been a flaw in that line of cards. We picked up a new one at Best Buy, so it’s all happy again.

What with the new expansion pack and all, we’ve decided to take up WoW again. I figure with Jason playing and a few other friends on there, it’ll be a good way to waste away some winter nights. I’m looking to avoid all the stupid guild drama crap this time around though. So far it’s been pretty fun. A lot has changed since we stopped playing, so it’s kind of fun to discover all the little new things.

Not a whole lot going on otherwise. Thinking of having a New Year’s Eve party here. Slowly working on getting my stuff out of the second bedroom so Delia can use it as a massage room. She still needs to get in a bunch of practice hours before she can get her state certification back, so I figured having a place to practice would help.

Gaming, Personal holiday, pc, wow

I’ve been playing a fair amount of video games lately, most recently Fable 2 and Fallout 3, both on the XBox 360, with some Castle Crashers mixed in. I also picked up Soul Calibur IV a while back, but that’s more fun to play with other people, and people don’t visit my apartment all that often.

Fable 2 is good, but I found the main storyline to be way too short. Sure, there are plenty of side quests to do, and some obscure achievements to unlock, but it doesn’t feel like the content is all that rich. I’ve played through the main story twice now, in order to try once as good and once as evil, and it just doesn’t feel all that varied. I’ll keep poking at it though, as it’s easier to just let it collect dust for a bit between playings in order to build up cash, since you keep earning in-game while not actively playing. Not a bad game, but I somewhat wish I had rented it instead of buying, though Delia appears to enjoy it.

Fallout 3 on the other hand feels much much larger. I’ve been playing on and off for a couple of weeks, and haven’t finished the main storyline yet. There’s just so much to go out and explore that I find myself wandering around the Wasteland instead of trying to advance the story. At least once I skipped part of the story due to exploring, which I was surprised to find the game allowed. The combat system is a little weak, as it lacks the target lock that a lot of the other FPS games I’ve played on the console have had, and aiming is fidgety. The V.A.T.S. combat stuff makes up for this though, making it so you don’t have to aim on your own, though it does slow down combat, but it also conserves ammo; a precious commodity in the Wastes. I’m considering buying this so I can get on to the next game in my GameFly queue. It’s a great game, and there’s already downloadable content on the way for it.

I’ve also been thinking about fixing up my home PC and picking up World of Warcraft now that the second expansion is out. Jason still plays, and apparently the end-game dynamic has changed a lot since I stopped playing. I just don’t want to get sucked into it again and get wrapped up in all the guild drama. We shall see. At the very least I need a new power supply, and I might need a new motherboard, which would pretty much require a new CPU as well. Tech Report just put out a new system guide, which is tempting me to just buy a whole new system again. We shall see…

Gaming fable 2, fallout 3, pc, wow, xbox360

Happy holidays to everyone and all that. Delia and I just got back from her aunt’s house after eating far too much tasty food. I’m now the proud owner of a number of shirts courtesy of Delia’s family, a few more t-shirts, a neat mug, and PixelBlocks from Delia (in addition to the EV mode kit and floor mats for the Prius she already gave me on the solstice,) and a Garmin nüvi 250W from my dad.

Over the weekend Delia and I got the new TV hooked up, and it’s looking good. I also decided to go ahead and get the Xbox 360, and I’m rather glad I did, as the TiVo HD turned out to be dead on arrival. For some reason it was stuck in a reboot cycle and couldn’t get past it’s initial welcome screen. TiVo support was pretty cool about it and are doing an advanced ship RMA on it, so hopefully I’ll have that soon. The Xbox has been filling the time we would have normally spent watching TV, so it works out, I suppose. For games, we picked up Assassin’s Creed for me, DDR and Katamari for Delia.

Unfortunately my bad luck with new devices has extended to the Garmin my dad sent me. It powers up then complains that it has no maps and is therefore useless. Garmin’s online support is equally useless it seems, as they try to load pages from RFC1918 private address space, or try to redirect you to hosts that don’t exist in the DNS. Their phone support is, of course, closed for the holiday. Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

All in all though, I’m happy. I still think Delia spent too much on me, and I feel bad that I didn’t get her more, which seems to happen every year.

Gaming, Geek Stuff gps, holiday, tivo, xbox360

It’s that time again, when I get bored waiting for Delia to get out of work and I don’t feel like doing anything productive, when I decide it’s time to update ye olde weblog. As usual, I don’t think much is really going on in my life, I continue to work, my left leg is still weird from my last back problem, my car is still running well, though the mileage is hurting in the cold.

One somewhat interesting thing is that I finally broke down and ordered a shiny new HDTV last week. It’s an LG 37LB5D, which is a 37″ widescreen LCD at full 1080p resolution. To go with it, I also ordered a TiVo HD so I’ll have some HD content to watch. They should both arrive tomorrow, at which point I’ll get to have fun getting CableCARDs from Comcast. Oh yeah, and if anyone out there is interested in a used 27″ Sony WEGA tube, let me know. It’s too big to really go anywhere else in my apartment.

The new TV has also got me thinking about picking up an Xbox 360. I haven’t really been doing a lot of console gaming lately, but it looks like there are some decent new games out there, and the whole online thing looks interesting. I think Delia wants one too, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I’ll just get the PS2 hooked up again, and if we actually use it, I’ll get the newer thing.

Other than that, not a lot going on. Some people have asked what I want for the upcoming holiday, so I’ve started tagging some things as “want” on my del.icio.us. Nothing terribly fancy. I’m trying to get the apartment cleaned up and presentable so that people can actually come over. If that project gets complete soon, maybe we’ll have some people over for a holiday party of some sort.

Gaming, Geek Stuff tv, xbox360

So, another birthday come and gone. Nothing terribly eventful this year. Delia gave me a tool bag along with an RJ-45 crimper and a Cat5 stripper, so I can finally make my own cables without having to use tools at work. She also picked up a business card holder for my desk at work, and some additional coasters for the apartment.

I’ve also been on a bit of a spending spree lately, picking up some new shoes from Zappos (online shoe buying is so much easier than offline), a new mouse and laptop AC/DC adapter from Woot, and a new 2007 Toyota Prius which should arrive on Monday or Tuesday.

Car, Gaming bday, gifts, prius

Right, it’s been a while, here’s a rundown of how things in life are going.

Delia and I are doing pretty well. Her massage business is going fairly well, though she’s still working one day a week at Staples. Her concert last weekend (on her birthday) went well. I’ve got some pictures from it on my camera, just need to upload them sometime. I’m still playing way too much WoW, but I’m trying to cut back now that my main character is up to level 60. I should probably just hop on for raids with my guild and a bit on weekends.

We’ve been in the new apartment for nearly two months now, we still have some stuff that needs to be unpacked and put away, but for the most part we’re pretty well settled in. I’d like to rig up something a bit better for our garage door opener at some point, since we don’t have the transmitter for the opener. Right now it’s just a key-switch to open/close it from the outside, but the barrel of the lock likes to come out. I found a few remote control relay boards that might do the trick, but it’s not really a high priority. I’d also like to pick up a box of cat5 cable and a crimping tool of my own to make the ethernet run from the cable modem (in the living room) to the computers (two rooms away) a bit neater.

My car is finally paid off (yay!) so of course it now needs to go in for repairs. It’s been leaking coolant for a bit now, just haven’t had the money to go get it fixed, but I finally do, so it should be going in tonight. Near as I can tell it’s not the radiator or the pump, so I’m hoping it’s just a loose or broken hose someplace. Other than that, it’s been running well. Nearly up to 110k miles.

Work is going along, I’ve been getting quite a bit done in the past couple of weeks, finally getting our notification system mostly finished off. Right now I’m working on speeding up our image capture stuff to something more useful than 1fps. It’s proving to be a bit more work than I expected, since my program wasn’t really designed for it, but I think it’ll work out. I still need to write up a resume and start poking around for a new job. My plan to work full time somewhere else and just do SimPro stuff on a contract basis, which I think will work out better for everybody.

I’ve also been tossing around the idea of a new computer. Mine is still running fine, but it’s starting to fall behind the curve with newer games. I’m thinking a nice Athlon64 on an nForce4 board with a GeForce 6600 should do nicely. I’ve also got an eye on one of the newer 19-inch LCD panels with an 8ms response time. They’ve been getting good reviews, and a lot of places are saying they’re finally ready for gaming. Hopefully I’ll be able to put some money aside and get all that stuff before the next LAN party.

Gaming, Geek Stuff, Work wow

Not really a lot going on at the moment. We’re slowly getting the new apartment into shape, and hope to throw a housewarming party in the not too distant future, though we’re not sure when yet. Delia caught a cold last week, and managed to pass it on to me. Started with a sore throat over the weekend, and developed into sneezing and a fever yesterday. Feeling a bit better today, just tired and sneezing. Hopefully it’ll pass by this weekend, in time for the LAN.

Feels weird that the LAN is this coming weekend, feels like it should be a few weeks off still. Ah well. Should be a good time. I haven’t touched my computer since the move, so I’ll probably get my ass kicked in most of the games we play, but I’m sure it’ll be fun anyway.

That’s about it. I’m supposed to be working on some stuff, but I’m tired and having a hard time concentrating on what I’m supposed to be doing.

Gaming, Personal illness, lan party