Should’ve chosen Rt. 460
Yesterday’s drive could have gone better. I made excellent time up to the Busch Gardens exit of I-64; suddenly, the highway turned into a parking lot, and I sat there for the next 90 minutes. Good thing the iPaq has Solitaire and a power adapter. Now we just need flat-rate nationwide 802.11 access!
I think the 90 minutes of inactivity wiped me out more than the drive would have, but I did have enough energy last night to load up DDRMax to make sure everything worked okay – tonight will be my first “workout mode” session. Then I played an hour of Fatal Frame, since that’s on loan and I want to finish it. Nice graphics, very atmospheric and creepy, though I haven’t actually been scared by it yet. I also need to be quicker on the draw with my camera!
I miss Rain already – I’m so glad I’ll see her again Friday. I have to get one or two more items for my costume for Lorelei’s party – I can’t wait to see what Rain picks out for herself. Lots to do this week!
Hup, 2, 3, 4
Today I have:
Climbed to the roof of our building to help check a wi-fi link (I am not doing that again, I had no idea the last part would be a 30′ foot wall-mounted ladder. I don’t like heights and I don’t need to break the remaining organic bits of my left leg. They can find someone else next time.) Climbed back down.
Walked 4 blocks to the boss man’s loft to check the other end of the link, then back.
Walked 4 blocks to the local mall for lunch (I ran out of frozen stuff to microwave and eat at my desk), then back.
Headed up and down 3 flights of stairs all day servicing machines.
Walked 4 blocks to the boss man’s loft to re-install the hardware we uninstalled the first time.
Walked 5 blocks to the bank from there.
Walked 4 blocks back to work.
Much more of this and I won’t miss the gym membership I left back in Roanoke. At least it’s only 85 and breezy out, as opposed to yesterday’s 103 degrees.
RPG Team Meme (Weem!)
Now all I need is a catchy soundtrack and a hyperactive title sequence and I’m ready for cable TV:
9-inch bitmapped glory
Here’s a website that brings back some old Mac gaming memories.
Warning: you might need an emulator to run some of thse titles. Even a newer Mac may need to emulate an older one.
Monday POEE e-supplement
Officials discuss postponing Election Day, fearing terrorism: would this not be another case of handing terrorists the very victory they ask for, that of disrupting our society and political process? Assuming an attack was planned, would not competent terrorists be able to adjust their plans for a postponement? Do we really want to give our government the power to delay elections as long as they feel necessary? When I was younger, I read the Reader’s Digest version of The R Document; a tale of a government conspiracy to declare martial law in the US and suspend the Bill of Rights indefinitely. Of course, I enjoyed it as a fantasy tale that “can’t happen here”.
Speaking of reading, I finished Perdido Street Station this weekend. I picked up the book after hearing much hype about this winner of multiple awards and runner-up for others. Book review
Hacking, pretend and real
Played the new MegaMan card game today (yesterday was official release). Guess who won? If you guessed the other player, you’re right 🙂 Of course, he’d played it many times during development, and this was my first. Decent game – I don’t follow the MegaMan console games or cartoon, but the play of the game was fast-paced, and slightly less complex than ./Hack. Another quick time-killer. Interestingly, your draw deck = your hit points, so every time you take a hit, your combat possibilities diminish. Conversely, you lose a trickle of hit points every turn whether you attack or not.
The staff at LiveJournal has posted in the lj_maintenance community that the terrible recent slowdown has two causes: LJ overgrowing its network, and a Denial of Service attack. Firstly, I’ve never understood the psychology of trying to take down a journal site. The Pentagon, or Bank of America, maybe. But LiveJournal? You gain that much hacker cred from preventing people from commenting about their day?
Secondly, they mention that a significant chunk of the attacks come from innocent people with infected Windows machines. Aside from a wry suggestion of changing OSes, they suggest firewall, anti-spyware, and anti-virus software, or at least changing web browsers to one that doesn’t have a direct pipeline into your OS. The response? “I don’t have time to bother with that!” “I’m not computer-savvy enough to install a new browser!” Or, in other words, “Yes, officer, I realize that my brakes are failing and my steering doesn’t work right, but it’s a real inconvenience to fix it. Perhaps you could make the other drivers just stay out of my way.”
Argh. People.
Year 6’s Title
It’s called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Since some people here would be interested.
Somebody invent the frelling transporter!
Phew. Still a little tired from the accumulated 12 hours of driving this weekend. I had a great time in Riner, it was good to catch up with folks. Ironically, I had to drive back to the B-burg area to see some people who live here on the Virginia coast :p By the end of the evening, I was on the floor of the guest house with a bunch of buzzed people working out the “King James ending” of Space Rogues. Turns out that the cat is more important than you can imagine!
rattrap and rubinpdf helped me with my HeroClix issues, and that was much appreciated. Told several people about the portfolio review – hope they get in and get to draw a card or two!
Thanks again to calandra for a great afternoon and evening!
Weekend in western Virginia
Posting from the handheld, since the computer’s back in Virginia Beach. Rain’s off at Origins, and I’m got a kitty magnetically attached to my lap – she hasn’t seen me in two weeks, nor Rain for a couple days. Boy did she cuss me when I walked in.
Brought some card sets up for this evening. I’ll probably get cleaned up and leave for Blacksburg before long. More driving. Good thing my car’s comfy as they go.
It’s interesting trying to read webcomics on the screen of a handheld. I wonder if I could manage to save up for an nice eBay laptop by Xmas, one I can shoehorn OS X onto.
Kitty’s purring.
