Old
News: January 2, 2003 to January 28, 2003
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5:39 a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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28
Jan. 2003 (Tue); Post #247
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Just
finished Hit Man. Really great book. Too bad Block hasn't
done any more Keller novels. Doesn't look like he's about to publish
another either, according to his web
site. I guess I'll start on Lullaby now... then again,
I'd kinda like to switch back to Kress's Probability series
before going back to mystery (or whatever genre(s) the Block and
Palahniuk books fall into).
After seeing some of Protecta's
RocketBot images (one pictured below), I really want to get
back into modeling. 3D modeling, of course... vectors, polygons,
and renderers, not sun tans, teeth-whitening, and speedos. Lest
anyone get the wrong idea. I spent an hour trying to install 3DS
Max, but it didn't work out. I had to do a ton of legwork (moving
INI files, tracking down C-Dilla for Win XP, lots of installing
and uninstalling), but in the end I came to a part where my authorization
code kept getting rejected when all the readme's insisted it should
work. Yes, I deleted the correct DAT, yes, I restarted, yes, I found
a compatible version of CDSecure, etc. etc.
Anyway, the only 3D modeling progs I've worked with are Rhinoceros
and Bryce 5. I did do
some Quake II maps a few years ago... they turned out pretty well.
After reading some discussions at 3D-ARK,
I'm thinking about trying my hand at Maya.
Well, I'm getting tired. Bye.
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8:26 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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27
Jan. 2003 (Mon); Post #246
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In
Geology, we're doing faults... strike-slip, normal, reverse, thrust...
very exciting. Not. Besides, it's all review from Geology 101. This
class focuses more on physical processes, mechanical stuff; I've
always been more interested in the chemical part (mineral formation
and properties, etc.). Anyway.
I was going to talk about book stuff yesterday, but I forgot. I
finished Probability Moon. It ended up being a lot better
than I thought it would be, but a few elements didn't resolve the
way I was hoping they would. [spoiler] "Shared Reality"
left World only temporarily; I wanted to see it go permanently and
watch the effects as ppl realized they could lie, be hostile towards
others, and have different beliefs. Of course, the way it worked
out, Worlders could leave the planet and never have "headpain"
from reality shifts. Also, I wish Kress had given some follow-up
on the war with the Fallers. Did the Terrans just give up on Orbital
Object #7's counterpart?
Well, after Kress's book, I started Hit Man, the first in
the John Keller series (well, it's only two books, so I guess it's
not really a "series" per se). I read Hit List
last June while in London/Spain. It was really great. Hit Man
may be even better. The style is really fun; even though he's writing
about killing people and so on, it feels more like an episode of
Seinfeld. It's a kind of quiet, calm, introspective character
analysis that's constantly fascinating and never boring. It really
reminds me of The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, two
of my favorite films. The only complaint I could possibly admit
is that the character is the victim of coincidence a little too
often to be totally believable. Nothing outside the realm of possibility,
but there's a string of incidents which are too serendipitous to
be realistic. You really get to like the main character; even though
he casually murders ppl, he's polite, sympathetic, etc. Chapter
3 is really fantastic. If you want to see Lawrence Block at his
best, IMHO, just read those 36 pages.
Been playing Literati a lot on Yahoo!
Games. I've got a 1629 rating... 22 wins, 24 losses. Last night
I spelt "heroisms" for 56 points. Beat the guy by about
30 points, though he did really well considering his rating (low
1400s). Been playing around with anagrams lately (started when I
played against a guy with the screen-name "fatcigarm"
> "a grim fact"). Here're some I came up with for ppl
I know:
- Keith Alan Moore: A lame, tin hooker
- Phillip Rabideau: A hip pail-builder
Okay,
that was pretty dumb, actually. I tried using JD's name (James
Davis Scott), but Js really foul me up.
My 4-unit rackmount chassis came in today. It's really spiff.
Here's a pic. Today's MP3: Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal.mp3
(3:45)
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11:16 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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26
Jan. 2003 (Sun); Post #245
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Skipped
a few more days than I'd have wanted to, but... oh well. Been GMing
a lot of GURPS except for this weekend. A quick update on everyone's
situations: Triton, Zephyrus, and Ate (Beefy's little brother) are
driving across California to try to get Panakheia (Drew's character)
to cure Ephialtes (who's currently brain dead). Why is Ephialtes
brain dead?
Well, to summarize: he entered his "Time of Dormancy"
(a period following a god's 2nd stage apotheosis in which he/she
loses all his or her acquired powers, advantages, skills, etc. that
come with godhood, making him or her effectively mortal), got Athena
to allow him to stay in her palace until his powers returned, saw
Phobos had been captured by thugs he got into fight with (involving
Flame Jets and Flight powers on Phobos's end), asked Athena to let
him go save his friend, did so, yadda yadda, does something foul
in Phobo's hotel room for some reason. Phobos slaps him around (Ephialtes
is just a mortal with ST 13 at this point), frightens him with his
Aspect power (giving Ephialtes a heart attack), slaps him around
some more, leaves. Triton and Zephyrus take Ephialtes to a hospital.
Ate figures out that a nurse has been slowly killing Ephialtes right
under their noses by injecting dangerous drugs into the port on
his catheter. They get him out of the hospital, but he's suffered
major brain damage.
As for Phobos: he took off with Araneidia after the whole Ephialtes
fiasco. Justin's character, Pandaisia, is in the "Banished
Realm." Why? Well, Ephialtes, shortly after entering his Time
of Dormancy, wanted to get into Athena's good graces, so he decided
to turn Pandaisia in for god-spark destruction (destroying the laurels
that serve as a focus/vessel for the powers, skills, memories, etc.
of a god). Athena sends out a low-level god with Insubstantiality
and Telepathy (Teminia, IIRC) to read Ephialtes's mind (worked because
he was basically mortal) and confirm. Pandaisia gets thrown into
stasis (a 1,000 cubic foot pocket dimension where you don't need
to breathe, eat, or sleep) for two months until a god-council can
be called (three gods from each of the three major factions, facilitated
by Mystis). They decide to banish him for 2,500 E-years for permanently
killing at least four gods. (I had him roll for each god, so his
fate was determined by the dice; he could have died.) He spends
a day in New Olympus (a public pocket dimension constructed by UMPME
to serve as a sort of gate-world), then gets thrown through the
portal to Mundus Exoria, an island wasteland (mostly desert with
some volcanic activity) floating in space, orbitting a Sol-like
sun, and spinning on a 72-hour rotation. Current estimates put time
dialation between Earth and Mundus Exoria at about 20:1 (twenty
E-seconds for every one M.E. second).
Hanwool... well, he's in holding at the Austin Police Department
in the form of a formerly-deceased millionaire oil-executive. Don't
ask.
Anyway, ION, Hanwool brought over a Korean anime called My
Beautiful Girl, Mari. The director, Sung-Gang Lee (or Seong-Gan
Lee, depending on romanization style), is his uncle (Father's side).
It's a really nice-looking movie. The animation is very high
quality and looks a little more relaistic than Japanese animation
(e.g. regular-size eyes). The story itself is a little slow, but
not really boring. I found the ending a little unsatisfying. Overall,
it was okay. You can find the DVD for sale if you check import DVD
shops like hkflix.com
or pokerindustries.com. FYI,
the Chinese version is around $10 cheaper than the Korean version.
On Friday, I set the 266 MHz e-Machine system up for my parents
to use at their house (using 300' of CAT5 to connect to my switch,
and thus, cable internet access) and brought the Vaio here, to set
up in my room. I backed up some stuff to CD-R, then formatted the
system in a single 80-gig NTFS partition. Installed Windows XP,
Corporate. It looks very nice... doesn't run badly, either. Did
the usual tweaks; removed Messenger, set up my folder views, replaced
uxtheme.dll, replaced logonui.exe (I have a kewl Iria login screen),
applied a better visual style (OSS by Stafford). Upgraded to Service
Pack 1 (had to do some stuff to the key, etc.), found out my old
uxtheme.dll file no longer worked. Looked around for a while and
finally found a good replacement at Iceman's
Emulation Page. For those of you looking for uxtheme.dll (let's
you use new Visual Styles in XP without buying anything) file's,
here's a couple:
| download |
uxthemepatcher1.zip [16.9 kB]
For Windows XP. Generates a DLL. Instructions included (readme.txt).
From TGT Soft. |
| download |
uxthemedll_SP1.zip [109 kB]
For Windows XP Service Pack 1. Instructions included (howto.txt;
written by yours truly). |
Last
Sunday or so, this friend of my dad's who works out at Hanford stopped
by with a few rackmount cabinets in the back of his truck. He said
they were getting rid of them at his job, so he collected them before
they went into storage for auction. He gave me one! I don't remember
the capacity, but I'd estimate it to be around 30 units. It's really
kewl cuz these things usually go for anywhere from $1,200 to $3,000.
He had this really neat double-wide one with a built-in air conditioner,
but his dad wanted it. Anyway, I went on eBay
and got a 4U rackmount chassis and a GA-7DX mobo (can finally build
another machine; might have to use the 900's 60-gig HD though).
The 4U chassis was $65, the mobo was $26 (a steal, if it works —
it was guaranteed not DOA).
Here's a picture of the computer set up in my room. Long post. Uff
da... adjø!
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2:57 a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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20
Jan. 2003 (Mon); Post #244
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A couple
days ago, I ordered Lullaby: A Novel (Chuck Palahniuk) and
Hitman (Lawrence Block) on Amazon through the "Used
& New" section. I love that thing... I got Lullaby for
$13, when it normally sells for $17.50; got Hitman for 99
cents, new.
Speaking of books, I finished Startide Rising sometime last
week. Thursday, I think. It wasn't bad, but I think I'm done with
David Brin for a while. He has good characters and interesting settings,
aliens, technology, etc., but he takes so long to tell a
story and he's really miserly with certain information (never wants
to give you the satisfaction of fully understanding Galactic cultures,
won't come clean on the specifics of the "Whale Dream,"
refuses to give the reader anything but the vaguest descriptions
of aliens and most technologies). It's like he figures out what
you want to know, then tries to keep you reading by hinting that
he might tell. Heck, I'm surprised he even let us know [spoiler]
that Ktha-Jon was part Orca.
Anyway, I'm reading Nancy Kress's Probability Moon now. It's
okay. I'm getting a little fed up with the World inhabitants though...
they're these weird creatures that are obsessed with "Reality"
and flowers. OMG, every other puler word in the book is "flower."
The book is a little less than what I'd expect from Kress in terms
of creativity, originality. I still think it's better than Startide
Rising though.
On Saturday, on my way back from Psych 306, I picked up some hamburger
patties and various ingredients at Safeway... that evening, I made
cheeseburgers with the George Foreman grill I got from my grandparents
for Christmas. They were extremely good! That grill is amazing.
Anyway, the picture below is of the last burger I made (had it about
an hour ago). Deilig!
The image on the right is the cover of Lullaby.
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1:49 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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15
Jan. 2003 (Wed); Post #243
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Just
finished watching Fight Club. I'd never seen it before...
actually, the movie I thought I downloaded was Jackass
(I'm not really proud of that, but Roeper gave it a thumbs-up and
the file listing said it was a DVD rip). Anyway, I had never planned
on seeing Fight Club cuz it had Brad Pitt and I thought it
was just some dumb, summer action/thriller like Mission Impossible
2. I can't stand movies where some hollywood pretty-boy spends
an hour beating people up. Of course, it's not like that at all;
Fight Club is gritty and ugly, but it has a really clever
story in there too.
I was just looking up the IMDb info on the movie, specifically to
get the name of the original novel's author (I read an article about
a book of his that came out about 6 months or so ago that I wanted
to read — seemed like a Lawrence Block-type thing, of whom
I'm a fan)... according to this,
he was born in Pasco, WA (where I live). A neat coincidence, huh?
Oh, IMDb has this thing where you can search for celebrities based
on their birthdate... kinda neat; according to this, I share a birthday
with Wilt Chamberlain and Princess Margaret. And Bono married Alison
Stewart on my exact birthday (day and year). Woo.
But back to Fight Club; I had this idea for a GURPS game
for 2-4 players where you assign characters to each person. [Fight
Club spoiler] Of course, except for skills and some ads/disads,
they're all playing the same guy. Each player would have to be GM'd
in their own session to prevent confusion, but they'd all be playing
this one guy at different times... some kind of multiple-personality
schizophrenic whose personalities weren't aware of each other. It'd
be neat to see his seperate lives start to interfere with the others.
Of course, this'd all be pretty timne consuming for the GM and when
the players found out, you prolly couldn't run the game for very
much longer. Anyway.
Oh, and I told Justin I'd post a picture of his car on my website,
so here it is. It's a Ford Contour, but I don't know what year.
Um... Shea wanted me to mention that we candled
our ears. That was on Sunday. Lately, I've become more skeptical
about the process. Ran across this
debunking page on Google. Well, later.
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8:51 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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13
Jan. 2003 (Mon); Post #242
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Hummm.
Not a whole lot going on. I started Spring semester classes at WSU-TC
today. Geol 322 was incredibly exciting. Well, not really. Anyway.
There was a new episode of Futurama last night... Kiff and Leela
had tadpoles.
Ran a GURPS game for Hanwool and Shea last night (Hanwool played
longer tho). Some neat stuff happened. Ryan and Hanwool are up to
session 14 now... Beefy, Justin and Aaron are up to session 11;
everyone else is up to session 9 or less.
Been eating a lot of oranges. My mom bought a box of 'em. Oh, and
my dad got a new vet truck (an F-250, I think), and my mom got a
new Explorer (traded in the Expedition). Um. That's about all I
have to say... adjø.
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2:02 a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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8
Jan. 2003 (Wed); Post #241
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Okay,
nothing of significance happened today, but I did play some Counter-Strike.
Look at the image below. The score's not that great, but look at
that ping! 10 ms on a server at the University of Washington (looked
up the IP)... I'm beating a couple guys who are at the UW!
Anyway, I'm still liking the cable. BTW, the IP of the server I
was on is 128.208.56.203,
in case anyone wants to compare... um... pings... or something.
Whatever. Later.
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3:17 a.m. [GMT-8:00]
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7
Jan. 2003 (Tue); Post #240
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Nothing
much happened today. I've been downloading this ISO on IRC (DALnet),
and it's about 60% done. Got disconnected, so I had to re-queue
it in slot #27. I really love my cable access. Earlier, Shea and
Hanwool, then JD, came over. Played Proteus w/ Shea and beat him
mercilessly in a standard game, then again in the Wall Street variant.
I tried playing Quake III: TA on the net, cuz I'd never done it
before (28.8 kbps modem, then 400 kbps satellite with very high
latency, yadda yadda). Kinda fun. I came in 4th or 5th in a few
10-person matches. Then I played Counter-Strike some; also sort
of fun. I won a couple times with a 2:1 ratio (2 kills per 1 death).
My last game was a 4 person bout on fy_iceworld; I had a 60/30 score.
BTW, if you're new to playing CS on the net (like me), try using
GameTiger. JD showed it
to me this afternoon.
Been reading David Brin's Startide Rising. Very good. The
dolphin uplift culture is really interesting... there's this rift
between the Tursiops and the Stenos, plus this thing called the
"Whale Dream" that he keeps talking about, but only hints
at its nature. I wish Brin would spend more time describing his
aliens though. He'll mention that the Soro have three abdomens and
whiskers, but rarely gets more specific than that. It's hard to
visualize them with so few details. But still, how can you not be
fascinated by starships filled with oxywater and a mostly fen (dolphins
> fins, plural: fen) crew?
Anyway. Here's a screenshot of my desktop for some reason. Umm.
Adjø.
1280
x 1024, JPG, 68.7 kB |
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11:38 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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5
Jan. 2003 (Sun); Post #239
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Oh,
happy, glorious day! Rapture! I have a working 1.5 megabit cable
connection and a functional DHCP server. It took about 5 hours total,
mostly spent making, running, and securing cable (plus a couple
snafus with the router and my acct. with Charter)... but now it's
done. Phillip came over around 3:30 and helped me a ton. I'll take
some pictures tomorrow. For now, you may simply bask in the sumptuousness
of my Bandwidth
Place speed test results below.
Beefy emailed me his radio script for The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Very funny, even if he 'borrowed' a few lines. I'd post a link,
but he hasn't put it up on his site yet, AFAIK. Just watched Ebert
& Roeper — it was their "Ten Best Films of 2002"
episode. Very good; reminds me of a bunch of movies I want to see
(Adaptation, About Schmidt, Gangs of New York,
and Catch Me If You Can).
I went with my family to see Die Another Day at 8:00 p.m.
I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it. I've never sat through and
entire Bond movie; usually, they'd be on while I was doing other
stuff... they never held my interest really. But this one was fantastic.
Um... here's a tip for those of you with a SpeedStream 2602 2-port
Router: the reset button does not work. If you forget your
password, you are probably screwed. (Though, I suppose you could
always open the box and remove the battery for a while to clear
the memory.) Well, adjø!
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6:33 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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4
Jan. 2003 (Sat); Post #238
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I actually
got my cable internet access installed today. Well, mostly. I'll
condense the story of my dealings with Charter Cable: Got house
surveyed, ppl came, found out they surveyed the wrong house, surveyed
the right house, said it couldn't be done unless the lines were
extended, yadda yadda, a dozen calls later they say they have no
way to extend the lines unless some mythical entity ("the corporation")
decides to do it, which will be in October, wait no, November, oh
no, never, yadda yadda, I go down to the local office (which you
cannot call via the telephone for some reason), talk to one of the
"construction guys" who says he'll come look at the house
next week (end of December), shows up Jan. 3, I ask if he can just
run cable to the pole near the street and I'll take it from there
(other ppl had told me this was against regulations), yadda yadda,
Jan. 4 I have some coax, bought a cable modem. Uff da.
So, all I have to do now is make and run two CAT5 cables (approx.
355', total) and arrange some water-tight enclosures for the cable
modem and router. I started to do it a while ago, but it's extremely
dark out near the road, I have no help, and I kept getting torn
up by the blackberry bush out there, so I decided to wait till daylight
tomorrow. Here's a crudely drawn
plan [41.5 kB GIF] for my networking. Basically, it goes: coax
> cable modem > ~270' CAT5 > router > ~85' CAT5 >
switch.
Anyway. Hoping to do something fun tonight. Maybe BattleTech. I've
played a lot of Magic lately (my blue counter-control-decking deck
has an amazing record, BTW). Last night, Beefy, Ryan, Phillip, Sheree,
and I were really bored, so we went to Denny's (I had hot chocolate
and cottage cheese) and Safeway. Earlier, Drew and I had watched
most of Moulin Rouge, Jesus Christ Superstar, and
Life of Brian. There was a definite lack of excitement. Early
this morning, Ryan and I played a few games of Proteus against each
other. I think he was trying to lose for the first couple games
though. I can't figure out why. I imagine only two possibilities,
both very unlikely: (1) he feels sorry for me for some reason,
or (2) he's a strategy-game massichist. Weird.
Gonna go see if my mom made any dinner; I think I smelled ribs when
i was there a little while ago. My sister's home, so my parents
are having good dinners al dentro. Maybe I'll call ppl and
see if anyone wants to play Tile Chess or BattleTech. Here's a couple
pictures of my room (I moved the bed and the dresser, moved a desk
in, etc. etc.). Adjø.
 
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11:49 p.m. [GMT-8:00]
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2
Jan. 2003 (Thu); Post #237
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My
brain is mush. Been GMing GURPS sessions everyday for a week now.
Just finished a one-on-one session with Hanwool; he's done 12 now.
Aiee. Too much GURPS. At least some stuff has happened — the
game has been progressing fairly well. There's a growing feeling
that Hekate may move up her timetable for the Subjugation Wars and
Athena's been making some odd political maneuvers.
On New Year's Eve, we had a big 8-player BattleTech game (2 lances
of 60-tonners against each other). My team (Drew, Hanwool, Jones,
and I) won, having destroyed all the enemy mechs except Aaron's,
which ran away. Then Beefy and I played yesterday, then Hanwool
and I earlier this evening. Here are some 'mechs I made today: Horkos
[30.9 kB GIF] (50 tons, ER PPC, Gauss, 2 LRM 5s); Otos
[31.1 kB GIF] (55 tons, 2 PPCs, Ultra AC/5, ER M. Laser, AMS). I
use "The Drawing Board" to design them. Nice freeware
program.
Did a few loads of laundry at my parents' today. Gonna watch some
late-night TV and take a shower. Here's a picture of my sister's
birthday cake from December 26th. Well, bye.
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"I'm
thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level."
— Dana Carvey
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