11:00pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 3 Mar. 2002 [Sunday]; Post #133:
Quick entry: On Friday, Justin and Phillip came over and we played Quake III on the 1400, 900, and AXP1700+ (the Vaio w/ WinXP wouldn't cooperate, even tho I had all the protocols, IPs, and frame types set right) -- I mopped the floor with them. On Saturday, I assisted w/ a equine dentistry presentation at TRAC (PowerPoint on a laptop plus a projector; more complicated than it sounds) and that evening, Justin, Phillip, CrazyJew, and Matt came over and we played Tile Chess and part of a Munchkin game. The Tile Chess game ended in a surprising stalemate between Phillip and myself. Today, our dog, Segen, got a torsion in her stomach and my dad had to do some hurried surgery on her; she's still under the anesthetic and ill. The pic below is of the set up Tile Chess board (it's CrazyJew's move).

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2:21pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 28 Feb. 2002 [Thursday]; Post #132:
Yesterday my Sony CD-R (24x write) drive and 60 GB Maxtor HD arrived from GoGoCity. The CD-R drive came with a single CD of burning software which I filed away (who needs that when I've got Nero?). I installed both drives and set up the BIOS like I wanted it (that Athlon XP 1700+ seems to run at about 118 degrees F, quite a bit hotter than the 1400 @ 107 F, tho I don't have a 120 mm fan in the codegen case and I ineluctably scrimped a little bit on the HS). I went to install Win XP Pro, but during the installation I got an error saying that the 'ASMS' file couldn't be found. Well, having no other resources for Pro, I aborted installation, booted from my Win 98 Upgrade CD and FDISKed the HD over again (somehow I managed to lose my 1.2 GB Virtual Memory partition from FDISK to formatting -- I'll get Partition Magic and fix that eventually)... Well, the whole system is up and running now (that Radeon 8500 is superb) and my network has been transferring files from the Vaio at speeds I've never seen before (5.5 GB of MP3s in 6 minutes!). I tried out the CD-R drive with Nero and I burned an audio disc of 71 minutes of music (all straight from MP3s on the Vaio over the LAN) in 3:43 (m:s). Wow. Just imagine how fast local stuff will burn. Anyway, I got everything on the machine the way I like it. In my Intranet workgroup, the XP 1700+ machine is IDed as 'Shirley U. Jest.' My 1400 has always been 'Chesty LaRue.' Hanwool's 1.2 GHz was simply 'Helga.' I guess it's kind of a running joke (or something). I'd like to do some LAN gaming this weekend and continue our GURPS Upsidaisium game from last week. A couple weeks ago our next door neighbor, Mr. Sharkey, died from a heart attack... Mrs. Sharkey has decided to move away (to live with one of her kids, I presume) and may be selling her house to my parents. It's a pretty nice place, right next to our house and in front of our back pasture. We also have the property across the street from the Sharkey house (more horse pasture), so if we get it, we'll have one fairly continuous block of land. ION, my mice are becoming pretty domesticated; they eat a slice of apple every day and I've been able to touch them without them biting or scrambling. Okay, here are some pics of Shirley.

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2:32pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 26 Feb. 2002 [Tuesday]; Post #131:
There's a GURPS 4th Edition Poll! This was brought to my attention by Bob Huss on the GURPSnet mailing list. I'd really like to see a single mammoth tome that contains all the rules, in great detail, from Basic, CI, CII, Vehicles and maybe High-Tech. While browsing SJGames' site, I saw Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering, which looks like a must-have.

1:21am [PST; GMT -08:00], 26 Feb. 2002 [Tuesday]; Post #130:
Well, I just got a notice from GoGoCity that they just shipped my HD and CD-R drive. I ordered those on the 19th. Yeesh. Anyway, last night I ordered The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer from Amazon.com. It looks really good. Lately, I've really been into Steampunk, Gaslamp, and Victorian stuff. Johnn Four, who runs about.com's RPG section, accepted my suggestion to add Space 1889's website to the 'Steampunk' section. What else? Oh, I ordered some really kewl 2002 Model Official Girl Genius Goggles from Studio Foglio. I wanna have my prescription lenses put into them. That'd be real flash... couldn't look like some clacking, tyro steam engineer git in those specs. Or something. Right now I'm reading Gibson/Sterling's Difference Engine which I printed from a TXT file on my HP LaserJet 1100. I read it at home and I read Heinlein at school. I wish I had an Apache server I could run Slashcode on for this blog. It looks much neater, IMO. Watched Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back today (as well as all the TV episodes of the Clerks animated series). It was very funny, but also had a lot of profanity. Anyway, it's late, so tchuss.

11:12pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 24 Feb. 2002 [Sunday]; Post #129:
Phillip, Justin, and I had a GURPS game on Friday in the Upsidaisium setting (1883, London). Coincidentally enough, Greg's PBeM campaign is taking place in 1887 London. Anyway, my parents are due home any minute (they've been away for the last two weeks). My character in the 1887 PBeM is prolly going to be a rich Indian prince (or other high Status individual) who has traveled to London to join a society dedicated to studying the occult. I had started to make my PC on Thursday, but computer troubles (XP, wonderful XP) have delayed its completion. I finally finished d/ling Trigun ep. 9 (for some reason, it seems to be rarer than the other ep.'s) and I watched it and 10 & 11 today on the big screen (moved the 1400 workstation into the TV room to see 'em). I also saw some Undergrads, which is an okay show (tho I can see why MTV canceled it), and Shawks. Justin and Phillip (Damien and Friz, in-game) killed three people and stole some money and holsters (and a belt and a gun...). It was interesting. Phil's first time playing GURPS, too. After the game, we saw Lego Chainsaw Massacre and Phil tried to proselytize his Mac Cult.

11:19pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 20 Feb. 2002 [Wednesday]; Post #128:
There was a huge house fire across the street (the other side of Argent) from my house (well, indoor arena). Some place that was under construction... very high flames. I got out there before the fire-fighters showed up and then I ran inside to get my Sony digital camera to snap some pictures. I got 21 pics and sent the best two to a couple of local TV stations and the Tri-City Herald. I've posted my favorite two pics here (edited down from their original 1280 x 960). A local newscaster, Lucinda Kay, actually responded to my e-mail [here; 490 bytes TXT] within 8 minutes of my sending it! Boy, that place was really burning -- I could feel the heat from 100 yards away. Oh, I twisted my left ankle running out there to take pictures (stepped in a bleeping hole one of the dogs dug in the backyard). I have a test tomorrow in Criminal Law, so I'd better go to bed after I upload these files. L8er.

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3:37pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 20 Feb. 2002 [Wednesday]; Post #127:
Ever read Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) trilogy? Well, if you haven't, let me explain one element of the stories: a small device that had a number of entries (like encyclopedias) about everything. This device was called the Guide and it had information written by researchers about every topic, no matter how specific or obscure. Often the entries were (unintentionally) humorous or brief. Anyway, the BBC is hosting some sort of website that tries to emulate the Guide by letting visitors write and search entries. It's really cool. It's called h2g2. Here's one particularly interesting entry I stumbled upon: Entry ID: A695469; Deja Vu. I wrote up Entry A698844 [or here locally; 1.21 kB TXT] (I'm researcher #190146), which is about my home town, Pasco, Washington. In other news, my grandmother flew back to Oregon today at about 7:40am. I started reading a collection of Robert A. Heinlein stories in a book called 'The Man Who Sold the Moon.' It's pretty old -- the earliest copyright is 1939. It's also really good. Anyway.

4:25pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 19 Feb. 2002 [Tuesday]; Post #126:
Well, I got (well, purchased) my hard drive and CD-R drive. Both came from GoGoCity (best prices); the HD is a Maxtor 60 GB (7200 RPM, UATA-133, 8.5 ms) ($107), and the CD-R drive is a Sony 24x10x40 (24x write!!) ($85). Heh heh heh. As soon as they arrive, my system will be complete (I need to go buy a NIC for it tho).

2:05pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 19 Feb. 2002 [Tuesday]; Post #125:
Got my exam back in Investments -- I got 108%. Best score in the class. Woo. Anyway, John Emmett e-mailed me [this, then this] about a bug on the Search page (Excite form code was broken) and then even sent me the corrected code! Thanks John. Actually, the most exciting thing about his e-mail, to me, was the discovery that ppl besides Justin visit this site! Gonna buy my HD and CD-R drive today. I'll post what I got when the time comes. L8er.

10:06pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 18 Feb. 2002 [Monday]; Post #124:
I got a Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder card today! It has a TV-Tuner, 64 MB DDR memory, TV-in/out, and a DVI monitor port (there's a DVI to VGA adapter included). It even comes with a remote. Very kewl. Also, I received my Gigabyte mobo and Athlon XP 1700+ processor today. Installed both into that Codegen case. I was worried at first b/c I couldn't get anything on the monitor with the first two AGP cards I tried... turned out the USB connectors were messing stuff up (the case has front-panel USB ports with odd cables). Anyway, everything works now. Used my Arctic-Silver left over from building the 1400. Oh, and I used a stick of 256 MB PC2100 DDR RAM from the 1400. I just need to buy a CD-R drive and a hard drive for the new machine. I also got Giants: Citizen Kabuto, MS Office 2000, Windows XP Pro, and the first 10 episodes of Trigun over the weekend. Havn't played GURPS for more than 20 days now, so I'm glad this PBeM game is starting up. Don't know when (if?) I'll see Matt/Justin again.

9:30pm [PST; GMT -08:00], 16 Feb. 2002 [Saturday]; Post #123:
It's President's Day weekend. I have Monday off b/c of the holiday. Had Wendy's for dinner tonight. The effort to save Futurama from cancellation is still underway at Can't Get Enough Futurama. It's been updated daily with important information since the whole thing started. They currently have 50,000 signatures on the petition (1 of which is Justin's). My signature is #11,634. Anyway. I joined (or will join; it hasn't reached 'critical mass' yet) a PBeM campaign run by Greg Littmann. He posted about it [3.59 kB, TXT] on GURPSnet and I thought it sounded interesting. I voted that the campaign take place in 1880s London (others asked for 4th century Roman Empire, 4,000 B.C. Mesopotamia, and Rennaisance Europe). The pictures below are of the aquarium and lid (which I built myself) which contain the two wild mice I caught here in the house. Why the duct-tape? Well, I cut the air holes with an 11/16 wood drill bit and apparently it was large enough for the mice to squeeze thru. When I had the divider in there, they jumped onto it and escaped through the center holes... but I caught them bare-handed again! One was on the floor in a computer case, the other was in the back of my bookshelf. Anyway, I removed the divider and taped up the holes (I poked smaller openings in the tape, so there is ventilation). That was last Tuesday, IIRC. On 2/14/02 I went to the Gamache's to fix their main home system (problems with viruses and memory). Oh, found out that Justin's sister (Danielle, I think) knows Drew (Hanwool and I know him from Physics at PHS -- we all played Lunch Money together). It's odd that Drew's in town tho; I thought he was up at UW. Well, whatever. I'm looking up Victorian Sci-Fi/Steampunk stuff on the web. I downloaded 6 gigs of TV shows this week (Family Guy, Seinfeld, News Radio, The Critic, Malcom in the Middle, Justice League, Jackass, and Kids in the Hall, mostly). Want to see some great Flash animation and games? Go look at Spiky Thing.

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