"Memories of Meridian"

So I've gone another week without an entry in my blog. That doesn't usually happen but I really didn't think I had anything to write about. So there's hardly a point in making an entry, right?

On a side note the blog has started to receive more hits this past week. Of course that has entirely to do with the title of the last entry that so many people are search for and getting me instead of something useful. But yeah, like I care.

Now I do have some things to report, such as getting into the beta test for a new MMORPG called Lineage 2. I should clarify I have no important information on this game; I'm just mentioning I successfully got into the beta. The servers of course haven't been up a whole lot so I've put in maybe a couple hours at most. At this early stage in the development cycle it seems a bit rough but the straightforward approach to doing everything has its appeal. I will of course reserve any further judgment until I have played several hours at least.

The one memorable experience I have had so far involved the global chat and someone mentioning AC1 as the best MMORPG ever. I quickly responded that Meridian59 was the best MMORPG ever and one or two people responded in support. Then I started a private message thread with someone who agreed with me and we talked a while. I could be playing with him right now actually. But instead I'm righting in a blog. How exciting I am!

For other news I was offered a meager stand-in-place type job for 8 hours on the weekends. I think I am going to take it as it's supposed to paid quite well even if it is only 8 hours. The next-door neighbor that offered me the job also needed work on her computer so I was over there for a few hours trying to fix some problems. It seems her CPU is at 100% utilization virtually all the time. Two and a half hours later I find out she's on a private network for her work over the Internet, including various remote registry settings. So I'm guessing its installed policies and network modifications made by her company. I tried removing her Norton System Works to rule it out before I knew she had a corporate thing going on.

And finally I have started a network security class, or what should be referred to as a network security class. It's actually called "Ethical Hacking" but would be just easily if not more accurately called "introduction to elementary network security" or something to that effect. Or maybe "defensive network security".

I have also started the last few days trying again with the live bootable Win98 CD. I figured why not since I'm not doing too much and it would be cool show off to someone. I haven't had any more success than before as of now. Actually I shouldn't say that. You see this other article has me created zip files of the \program files and \windows directory and extracting them to a RamDisk drive specified by the system installation on the fly via the autoexec.bat. I actually did get as far as a screen saying there's something wrong with me system registry and it has been restored from a backup, you must restart the computer. Well obviously if the install is now on a RamDisk restarting the computer won't exactly do you too much good.

So then it occurred to me I should just set it up to do this extract on-the-fly to the hard drive from hard drive. If it can't work from there it's not going to work from the CD. Or from the hard drive to a RamDisk. That way I won't have to keep re-burning the CD over and over. That's the other thing different this time: instead being a coaster factory I'm using a re-writable CD. Now I'm thinking I'll just use the files from the bootable floppy (emulated on the bootable CD) on the hard drive and boot on the fly from the hard drive to the RamDisk. That makes much more sense. But then that's what I thought before.

Now also I had a yard sale last Saturday, trying to hock some of the crap I have crowding up my room. I did manage to sell a couple things. Some old C++ books, a calculus study guide I'm guaranteed to never look at or open...and Halo for PC. Yes, that's right, I sold Halo for PC. But not only that: I sold it for only $5. That's a ten percent return on my $50 investment. I purchased probably the very, very first day it was even out for the premium price of $50. I didn't like it however, reminded me way to much of Quake 3. So why did I pay $50 for a game that, in my opinion, is essentially an extremely old game found extremely cheaply at the very bottom of any and all bargain bins? Well it was supposed to be good. The single player should be good, the multiplayer should be good, it should all be good. But I didn't like it. I know I could have sold it for a lot more, but I didn't and don't care.

  ¶ 12:22 PM